Today I turned on the holiday music.  Normally we have 30+ seasonally appropriate cds in rotation in our stereo, but the full Holidaying of the Abode has not commenced (i.e. I’m still trying to untangle some gingerbread people garland from the one box I cracked open, and dang it if I’m opening another without having closure!).  So I turned on the two stations that play Christmas Music Til Your Ears Bleed Candy Cane Stripped Blood.

And the boys would have none of it.  Elmo and the Orchestra was the request, followed by some generic kids cd with The Wheels on the Bus, because Abe *loves* the wheels and sings it constantly, but only the last words, so it sounds as follows:

Rou

Rou

Rou

Rou

Taugh

Beep

Beep

Beep

Beep

Taugh

UpDow

UpDow

UpDow

UpDow

Taugh

You get the picture.

One of my goals as a parent is to impart the love, the excitement, the utter absolute need to listen to one holiday album each year, to feel incomplete without the melodic, culturally-relevant, lyrically-genius, melodically-classical symphonic masterpiece of:

Bing Crosby’s “Merry Christmas”

NOT “White Christmas”, mind you:  that pales in comparison to the compilation of songs carefully crafted and chosen for this album.

I love the movie “White Christmas”:  the dancing, the singing, the fake snow.  NOT the modern art piece:  thooey.  But the dresses:  oh, the dresses.  And the happy world where people come to salute their former general who’s down and out in a ski resort without snow:  now THAT’s the holiday spirit. 

Actually, I find it a most excellent means of wrapping gifts:  makes those corners and that tape awful snappy.

Holiday Hoopla, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

“Mama, how can I help?”

Dreaded words for a chronic “I’ll do it myself” person.  And yet that’s what my eldest has been asking all morning.

I know I should be grateful that he wants to help because it will only last for so long (if any of my DNA runs through his veins, which, by the by, are blue and carry blood away from the heart as he will tell you and other small tykes on the playground:  thank you, The Busy Body Book).  But I just want to do it *myself*.  Because I can do it faster.  And “right”.

Hubby and I were discussing the grace-growing experiences we’re having with JJ as of late.  Grace-growing as in “stretching us in ways we don’t wanna and don’t think we should hafta and yet we gotta or it’s gonna be ugly”.  Even the way we form sentences are being restructured, working the Dr. Phil out of us (“YOU need to do this; YOU have to change; YOU must do it this way; YOU YOU YOU”), engaging some more creative grammatical structure:

Rather than “Shut the screen door already!”, “It’s TIME to close the door!”

Rather than “I’m going to throw your shoes in the street if I trip over them again!”, “Shoes go in the closet!”

Rather than “For the love of all that is holy and good, stop sitting on your brother!”, “When Abe is sat on and starts screeching, I get frustrated because my ears hurt.  What can we do about this?”

Hubby commented on how the books we’re reading have such nicely laid out situations for solving tension:  “The kids reason and offer solutions.  I did what the author said:  JJ just fell on the floor and rolled his eyes.”  I told him he needed to read further, because the author says, “Of course, sometimes none of these things work out, and everyone screams and goes to their rooms.  And then you can apologize and start fresh again.”  That’s the only reason the book didn’t end up in the street with size 11T shoes.

I read about Montessouri methods and home schooling and think, “Oh, that sounds so wonderful and experiential and cool”.  That would be my idealistic side.  Taking time to have the kids clean alongside me, not minding that they go slowly or don’t get all the crumbs.  Letting them get covered in paint from head to toe and not feeling that I needed to scrub everything to get it clean.  Setting up a station for them to sit at and play not needing or wanting supervision ….

It’s TIME to stop laughing now (note how I didn’t command you to stop laughing:  look at me growing).

Somehow this Montessouri education is happening, and yet it’s mostly to me.  This is not what I had planned.  I already went to school, skated through, in fact.  Lesson learned, kids:  when one thinks they know it all, all the things they don’t know or didn’t think they needed to know move into the house and become covered in pudding pop goo, as I now have the opportunity to discuss the finer points of getting food *in* one’s tummy, not *on* one’s tummy.

Entertaining Evidence, Mama Musings, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »