Joe's Spring Conference

"The best part of kindergarten is making words.  I like making words because I like working with letters."

In other news, this week brought spring conferences at Joe's school.  We picked him up at Kid's Place Thursday evening and all sat down with Mrs. D to hear how things were going.  So much to celebrate, Fans!  Our Hero is much improved on the "work habits" (begin and complete work on time, organize work and belongings) front.  He's always willing to try things on this own.  He is still sometimes too easily influenced by the troublemakers, but Mrs. D stressed that Joe is always willing to own up to his misdeeds; he's very honest.  He's also very good at listening (he's not "a blurter"), but Mrs. D hopes he'll share his thoughts more at group time.  Oh group time!  The bane of introverts everywhere.  On the academic front, it was fun to learn that Joe not only knows all the 50 kindergarten sight words, but all but one of the 100 additional first grade sight words.  He's reading books now that have language patterns more like written than spoken language and contain more abstract ideas or those which are more removed from the world he knows and the full range of punctuation.  In advance of the conferences, Joe and his classmates had to write a sentence or two about what they liked best about kindergarten.  You can see that Joe likes all things letters best, but he likes math, science, and Spanish, too.  He's on track to go to first grade.  Most important: Our Hero likes school and has made friends.

Waiting for Little House at White House

Fans, we are deep into Little House in the Big Woods. We have learned so many things about being pioneer life: how to smoke meat, the importance of storing food for the winter, that Christmas is awesome (Laura got a rag doll--thank goodness), that Sundays are boring, and that you probably should have a fondness for all things maple (sugar, syrup). We are nearly at the end of LHBW which is why we were searching for Little House on the Prairie this morning at the library. It was not there. We learned from the interwebs that, as it happens, the St. Louis Park branch doesn't actually own a copy, and that copies housed at every other nearby branch were checked out, or in transit, or otherwise unavailable. Humph. We put in a request for it, and the third installment in the series, Farmer Boy, straight away.

In the meantime, Julie queried her friend Anne and known fan of all things Little House as to whether she had a copy of LHOP that we might borrow. No dice; only By the Shores of Silver Lake and These Happy Golden Years. But, Anne did suggest--in a very pioneering way, we might add--that we might find LHOP at Half Price Books. Brilliant.  So this afternoon, we walked over to the nearby Half Price Books to see if we might find a copy there. No dice, save in a boxed set, overpriced given its water damage and mustiness. But bambini were told they could each select a book, but that Julie and Ted had veto power.  Clara gravitated practically instantly to princess books festooned with battery-powered, twinkling, and trilling wands and tiaras.  By gravitated we mean she managed to open the packaging of one before being stopped by Ted who vetoed all in that vein by declaring that we were not buying a book with "garbage" on it. We left with two more Fancy Nancys: the Christmas one and a pre-reader spin-off--and a B. Bears DVD from the clearance shelf!

So now we wait for the Hennepin County Library System to deliver us.  Sort of like pioneers waiting for Christmas, or Monday, or spring.

Daddy's Rain

Earlier Friday found Clara in the big bed, snuggling with Julie while Ted was showering, which is the usual routine. Joe doesn't always come in anymore. (When he does, he flings himself onto the bed and onto his side by Julie in one full, fluid motion that makes your heart squeeze and sigh.) So it's the girls there most mornings: Julie, Birdie, and Berenice. Birdie brings a book for Julie to read, usually before snuggling.  This past Friday, Julie was telling Birdie about how when Birdie was a baby, she and Mommy would lay for hours on the big bed, listening to the rain on Raleigh House's roof, and sleeping. Birdie took that in and then whispered, "We can listen to Daddy's rain!"  True, and so they did.

Let It Go. . .Never!

Brigade, as we have reported before, Our Birdie flies through life with a song in her heart. Like young girls across the nation, she is taken with the theme song from Frozen, Let It Go. It would seem that it is on daily rotation in Pre-B at the KinderCare because Birdie seems to have it memorized. If you want to make like you are living at the White House, click here for the five-minute extended remix of Birdie belting out Let It Go as she got dressed Friday morning. Then play it again.  And again.  And again.  And maybe again. (The only thing you hear more often than Clara singing "Let it go! Let it go!" these days is a worn down Ted, Julie, or Joe, exclaiming with exasperation, "Clara!"  As this reporter files this report, Birdie is singing the song in her bed, and Joe has already hollered out "Clara!" from his, once.)  The chorus making the song identifiable to those unfamiliar with the hit except perhaps in passing hits around 3:45, and the songbird herself comes into view around 4:30. Those who are patient will be rewarded with a sweetly blown kiss and a softly whispered "Bye!" with one of her usual hand gestures.  If you are not up for the extended remix but still would like to hear the song bird trill, you can click here, for a 1:30 second snippet of just the chorus, recorded this morning as Julie drove Clara to swimming class.  (But really, you'll need to play it at least twice to get the full flavor of what it's really like at White House.)

Bookworm Bambini

Birdie, in the stacks.

Lately, after swimming class, Julie has been routinely swinging by the library with the bambini. Usually something we have placed on hold is in, and the bambini are permitted to pick out a number of books that is equal to their age.  Although they are not always returned at the same rate, we usually do also have books to return, which will sometimes prompt Clara to bellow charmingly as they are swept off down the conveyor belt, "Bye bye books!"

Birdie likes to do as Joe does, so they both usually make a beeline for the pre-readers. Right now she gravitates toward the Barbie series, her favorite one of which features Barbie battling a fairy queen who thinks she is in love with Barbie's Ken, whom she forces to propose to her. The spell is broken when Barbie makes up with her frenemy, Racquelle, which turns them both into fairies--a fairy secret!  Fans, we're not making up that storyline (we use the term loosely).  The Witch of Blackbird Pond and such awaits, but for now, we have Barbie and Racquelle, the dopey Ken, and their fairy secret!

Last week, Joe got some more books from the Fly Guy series to which Sara introduced him at Christmas in Julie and Sara's annual holiday book swap.  These are quality pre-readers: simple but clever.  Nary a fairy secret--or weapon--in sight.  Joe's version of the above Barbie pre-readers feature plot lines that devolve into a fight of some sort on page three.  Later that same weekend, Joe made himself a pair of fly eyes (i.e. compound) out of crumpled balls of paper and one of Birdie's tiaras.  (They were fly.)

This weekend, Julie decided to check out Little House in the Big Woods, the first in the Little House on the Prairie series, which is basically a primer on how to be a pioneer. So far, we have learned about how to slaughter various animals and store their meat for the winter, how to make butter, and how to make bullets and clean a gun.  It's winter in the little house in the big woods and frankly, Fans, it all seems rather grim in spite of the toasty fire over which Pa is making bullets before entertaining the family with the fiddle.  But Christmas is coming and fingers crossed, four-year-old Laura will be able to retire her corn cob doll for a rag doll like her older sister, Mary. Naturally, the bambini are riveted by all this romantic seeming deprivation: bears, panthers, guns, and fiddling.

All of this happened not far from here, too, of course.  We are in historic Laura Ingals Wilder territory up here along the Minnesota-Wisonsin and Minnesota-Iowa borders. We told the bambini perhaps we would take a tour of some historic Little House sites this summer and Joe gasped in anticipation.  We better tell him there won't be panthers, and that we won't be salting and smoking our lunch.

Fly Guy--looking so very fly.