tl;dr: Users of Reddit.com funded the purchase of 2,100 children’s books for a “free bookstore” I started at my daughter’s elementary school. Students are motivated in their classwork by earning a visit to choose a free book and struggling students receive special encouragement. Reddit’s generosity arrived at a pivotal time as the bookstore idea was coming together.
That’s what 2,100 donated children’s books look like. They were purchased courtesy of random strangers on Reddit.com for a “free bookstore” at my daughter’s elementary school. This post is for the donors. See close-up images (left, and right).
I guess the message your Gravity Defyer athletic shoes conveys to the ladies is that your boys can swim.
Side note: You’ll find the darnedest things when buying used copies of National Geographic at a yard sale in a gambit to get your daughter excited about geography.
My 3-year-old son is playing on the hard floor of our living room with a wooden train set.
“Mama, I see an ant!”
[Mom is walking in from another room.]
“We need to make it dead.”
[He smashes the ant with a train.]
“Mama, we have to take it outside so it’s not dead in our house.”
[Side note: Although he gladly squashes insects, he is opposed to eating meat, so we've stopped using the words chicken and turkey at the dinner table.]
This came to mind while communicating with a new parent who adopted a child from a troubled background. In short, there are lots of highs and lows and uncertainties as they bond and the past comes flooding out in tears. A phrase in the conversation caught my attention, “us being new parents and all.” I said, “Us old timers fall apart too. None of the rest of us know what we’re doing either.”
Of course, the Greatest American Hero didn’t either. He lost the instruction manual for his super hero suit before he got the suit home, yet was able to blunder his way through life saving the day. Here’s a longer stunt reel for the show. Here’s the theme song which also seems appropriate.
What I’m not sure is whether this mom realizes that everyone who knows what’s she’s doing is super proud of her… no prior parenting experience (not that anyone has it), choosing to adopt a child knowing there are issues to overcome. She’s certainly a hero in her child’s life.
Well, us old timers fall apart too. I’ll raise an obscure 1981 TV show in defense, The Greatest American Hero. An ordinary special education school teacher is given a super hero suit by aliens that gives him all the powers that come with being a comic book hero. He loses the instruction manual before he gets the suit home. Accordingly, he blunders his way through the greatest job on Earth. That’s a long way of saying none of the rest of us know what we’re doing either.
With the Easter Bunny’s arrival today, we decided to quiz our 6-year-old daughter about fact versus fantasy in what we dubbed a Truth Deciding List. Each item on the list had three columns in which to place an X for real, fantasy or unknown. Here are her answers:
Real
Desk fairies*
Fairies
Flying reindeer
Gnomes
Santa Claus
Vampires
*Desk fairies periodically visit her classroom, placing a sticker or other goodie when a student’s desk has been kept clean.
A seed of doubt was planted about the Easter Bunny because, as she tells it, her Mom was too quick to say “I see one!” during the egg hunt, apparently not looking hard enough for the eggs. Never mind that this was the first year the bunny visited our home. In the past, we’ve gone to community egg hunts on Saturdays, then traded our kids’ candy for a new toy purchase the same afternoon. This year, I loaded up on sugar free candy for our own in-home hunt.
Meanwhile, regarding aliens, her uncertainty is rooted in things I’ve told her about the probability of life existing elsewhere in the universe (e.g., there is life, but we’ll probably never contact it). Unfortunately, I failed to quiz her specifically about the race of Alien Brain Crunchers who regularly visit our planet.
After making the list, my daughter insisted on being told which items are real or fake, but we told her everyone has their own truth deciding lists. Her list shows her truths at the moment.
Yearbook photos are taken in the fall. These are our spring photos. Her teacher this year asked via e-mail: What is the reason for the robot helmet? When we take the class photo I would like for her not to have it on.
I replied: Whoops, sorry for the confusion. The helmet is only for the single portrait photo. The whole-class photo would have no helmet, if only because robot bigotry is institutionalized at our school. The Rebel Alliance had the same problem. You didn’t see R2 or C3PO donning medals after the Death Star was destroyed. And don’t get me started about how Chewbacca got slighted. But, specifically about the helmet, if I’m paying for the photo, and it’s not for the yearbook, why not? And, my daughter thinks it’s fun.
It doesn’t hurt that our principal is from the UK and grew up watching Doctor Who. And, seriously, class photos are never good. They never capture your kid’s spirit. Last year’s photo was angled a little high, making my daughter’s forehead look big. This year’s is pretty spot on though. Nice sheen.
“Both of you, time-out. I don’t care who started it.”
Saying you don’t care who started it tells me you don’t care about my personal actions. I can do wrong and get away with it because you’ll punish both me and my victim, which is to my advantage because my victim gets punished first by me and then by you. My victim will soon learn he’s better off shutting up and being bullied in silence. You, misguided parent, perpetuate a cycle of violence.
My paragraph response above started out as a tongue-in-cheek reply in a web forum discussion, but now I’m starting to wonder if it’s true.
87235-BF Musical Baby Feeder keeps the toddlers of the neighborhood well-nourished with a storage capacity of three quarts. Just hang it on the porch, open your curtains and enjoy the antics of eager infants lured by the soothing sounds of classical music and the aroma of strained bananas. Available musical selections: Debussy, Strauss, Traditional Americana, Cajun Zydeco. Runs on 16 AA batteries, not included.
That’s an entry from the tongue-in-cheek New Child Catalogue. Oh how I wish they had photos. Link via my brother’s friend’s boyfriend who operates the website. In a few more steps, I get to meet Kevin Bacon.
That’s my 6-year-old daughter recalling her experience last night waiting for me to get home from her school’s kindergarten recruitment event. She’s doing a read-a-thon to support the school library and plans to read 2,000 pages by the end of the month. That amounts to most of our Roald Dahl and Beverly Cleary collection. She told me that while reading in her room she found herself unaware of the time or day, not sure if it was morning or night, dissolved in her own little reading world.
I was reading a book to my 2-year-old son on the couch a few minutes ago when my wife in the next room began singing the Bean Song, a favorite in some toddler song circles.
A typical stanza goes like this:
My dog Lima likes to roam.
One day Lima left his home.
He came back all nice and clean,
Where oh where had Lima been? (pronounced as bean)
Lima been.
Lima been.
Where, oh where, has Lima bean?
And then you repeat the stanza with a new dog name, frequently the name of a bean so as to be mildly amusing to the parents and keep them from going into a coma. So, there I am, listening to her sing:
Jelly been.
Jelly been.
Where, oh where, has Jelly been?
I alert my son.
“Hey, Momma has jelly beans. Jelly beans are candy. Go tell Momma you want jelly beans!”
He runs into the kitchen and you can guess the mild unrest that ensued.
