rivka | (no subject)

Things at work are... interesting. And so you guys get a post about my kids!

The Colin version: Michael is allergic to oranges, so we didn't let Colin try them until he was a year old. The other day I set out a snack for the kids to share: clementine segments and graham crackers. Colin was thrilled. I didn't realize quite how thrilled, until he toddled over with cheeks puffed out like a squirrel in November and, with difficulty, extracted two segments from his mouth and put them back on the plate. He still looked a little funny after that, so Michael made him open his mouth. Two more segments were still in there. At least he seemed to have those two under control. Michael urged him to chew and swallow, and Colin looked at him blankly: Why would anyone want to stop having oranges in their mouth?

Perhaps ten minutes after that, he came over and tugged at my sweater hem. I picked him up to nurse. It felt distinctly strange. So I unlatched him and poked my finger in... and tucked against his gum like a plug of chewing tobacco? One last orange segment.

"You can't nurse with food in your mouth," I told him, and put him down. I don't know which one of us was more surprised that I would make a rule like that.

The Alex version: Alex has two passions right now: Disney movies and the Middle Ages. Guess which one I am enjoying.

During the Snowpocalypse we started burning our way through Edward Eager novels, which have held up remarkably well considering their age. She loved Half Magic and liked Magic by the Lake, but Knight's Castle has woven together her love of Robin Hood and princesses and noblewomen and castles and magic in a very satisfying way.

One of the things I love about Eager is that the characters are so passionately devoted to stories. When I read Knight's Castle as a little girl it made me desperate to go out and find a copy of Ivanhoe. Alex, too. Fortunately I was able to find an excellent, illustrated, considerably abridged version to read to her. (Yes, yes, I know, abridged books are evil. Except that this one removes the anti-Semitism as well as the excessive wordiness, so I can't be anything but grateful.) Alex, probably like generations of little girls before her, admires the dashing Rebecca and can't imagine what Ivanhoe sees in Rowena. Me either. Maybe that part got left out of the abridgment.

Two other books I particularly recommend, if you are looking to either stoke or satisfy a child's love of all things medieval: Margaret Early's beautifully illustrated retelling of Robin Hood, and Castle Diary: The Journal of Tobias Burgess, Page - also vividly (and amusingly) illustrated. That one's a wee bit educational, but still very fun to read and examine the pictures. (Oh, yikes! Apparently they've taken most of the pictures out of the edition I linked to. If you look for this one, get a big illustrated version from the library.)

It's funny to see how factual bits of medieval history get woven together with fiction and with Ye Olde Disney Fairytale Past in Alex's mind. One minute she's defending some implausible detail because that's how it was done in Beauty and the Beast - and yet the next minute, she's correcting me for referring to Jasmine's home as a castle. ("Jasmine lived in a palace, Mom." "And what's the difference?" "A castle can be defended.")

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

txanne.livejournal.com

I'll make extra sure that all my medieval dancing music is on my netbook when I come visit.

From:

kiya

Hah. I've just had to try to explain the physics of nursing to KJ: "No, you cannot nurse AND chew on your fist at the same time."

From:

rivka.livejournal.com

Wait til she can climb all over your lap with a nipple in her mouth. That takes the physics of nursing to a whole new level. "Yes, I suppose it's technically possible to nurse while standing up and bending upside down, but..."

From:

ailbhe

Over the shoulder! The reverse fireman's lift. My favourite for showing new mothers that being completely picky about positioning is usually only essential while everyone is still *learning* how to do it.

From:

rivka.livejournal.com

I am still picky about positioning, if only because he's unsteady enough in his antics that sometimes he has fallen off my lap while still latched on. Ouch.

From:

ailbhe

He'd be a bit big for me to sling over my shoulder, too. But Emer wasn't.

I think at that stage Linnea was required to stand up for most feeds, but I can't quite remember. She was pretty big.

I don't think I ever had anyone fall off my lap while latched on, but yes off the bed while side-lying...

From:

anthologie.livejournal.com

We have the "you can't nurse with food in your mouth" rule already, mainly because I wind up with food all over my nipple.

From:

ailbhe

There are times I require toothbrushing between eating and nursing.

From:

badgerbag.livejournal.com

I tried Edward Eager books but they are horribly full of unnecessary comments on the girls being annoying because of being girly. They're so neat, but those parts are pretty bad.

From:

rivka.livejournal.com

Yeah, true. The advantage of using them as read-alouds is that I can skip those side comments. This is why we read classic literature early, and save more modern stuff for when she can read it herself.

Edited Date: 2010-02-27 01:35 pm (UTC)

From:

ailbhe

I find abridging on the fly really difficult. Are there, like, tricks and techniques I could learn?

From:

badgerbag.livejournal.com

This is sort of a future-reading tip, put pencil dots and "sexist!" or "racist!" in margin for when they go back and read it themselves. 8-)

Otherwise there are bits that are easy, stuff like, "Alice screamed and ran from the scary, scary, swarthy gypsy. Oswald thought, "Huh, just LIKE a girl." Usually easy to just leave out. For really complicated things I'm afraid I resort to sudden distraction, get up and get a drink or something, and then come back to the book, "Now where were we, oh let's see, the kids ran away from the bad guy and got back to their own time and now they're looking for more clues" -- so, picking up a bit later in the story with a summary. I guess the hard bit is knowing when that's about to happen, on the fly. So sometimes explaining is in order and I'm never sure if my brief explanations are good enough...

From:

ailbhe

I do commentary and explanation, but sometimes it would be nice to have the story be just a story and not a social lesson...

The distraction thing doesn't work for us because L will remember the last thing I said verbatim and make me start again there, so I'd just have to work out how to skip that bit and abridge-on-the-fly anyway. And if I leave words or sentences out, I can hear it in the flow of my speech, it's just not as smooth. And if *I* can tell, they can tell.

From:

rivka.livejournal.com

I guess that this is where being a Unitarian comes in handy, because I have practice scanning ahead while singing hymns, to see if I agree with the next line. ;-)

I don't abridge the large-scale stuff. That's where pre-reading comes in handy - if Alex picked up Elsie Dinsmore and wanted me to read it to her, I wouldn't even begin. Pre-reading let me know, for example, that we'd better skip Little House on the Prairie and go straight to On the Banks of Plum Creek until Alex is much, much older and ready for a serious discussion about treatment of Native Americans.

The annoying sexism in Eager is mostly along the lines of the annoying sexism in Pippi Longstocking. I find it pretty easy to edit "Martha looked up to Mark, who was a boy and knew everything" to "Martha looked up to Mark, who was older and knew everything." Or I'll paraphrase "He didn't listen to her, because she was just a girl" to "He didn't listen to her, because she was just his little sister." I'll usually just skip right over comments like "Girls never understand these things" and go on to the next line.

But Alex also knows that these books were written "back in old-fashioned times" when people thought that girls had to do different things than boys.

From:

ailbhe

My mother never put a book in our library without reading it herself. My two have inherited some of Rob's stuff, too, which makes that harder (Thomas the $%£ tank engine).

Pippi has a few nice things to say about sexism herself, anyway. Shame about the racism (though we've avoided those ones entirely so far).

From:

baratron.livejournal.com

I guess that this is where being a Unitarian comes in handy, because I have practice scanning ahead while singing hymns, to see if I agree with the next line. ;-)

Laughed so hard I almost fell off the bed. Thanks :)

From:

badgerbag.livejournal.com

me too, I still skip a little and also provide commentary. When we read The Mad Scientists' Club there was a lot of explaining of sexism I had to do but it was worth it. 8-)

From:

antonia-tiger.livejournal.com

And then there is the Disney animated movie of Robin Hood... (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070608/)

From:

papersky.livejournal.com

Have you read the original Ivanhoe? Because I don't think it's anti-Semitic at all, in fact the opposite.

But they didn't cut the explanation of why anyone would prefer Rowena, it wasn't there to start with.

From:

rivka.livejournal.com

I read it once or twice when I was pretty young, so it's certainly possible that I'm unfairly maligning it. What sticks in my mind is an episode - at the tournament, I think - in which one of the good guys sticks a piece of ham in Isaac's face and Isaac recoils and falls down the stairs because, you know, Jews and ham are like vampires and garlic. I remember the scene as being played for laughs, but when I was seven or eight I could easily have missed indications that I was supposed to be reading it differently.

From:

chargirlgenius.livejournal.com

We checked out Castle Diary a few months ago, and I've gotta say, I was pretty darned impressed by how well they did, accuracy wise. Well, except for the clothing, but NOTHING gets the clothing right. :-)

In April (20th-ish, I think), we'll have a historical timeline event near Greenbelt, MD. There will be a couple of medieval groups, as well as every other time period all the way up to the Persian Gulf War. My only worry is that she'll ask me lots of questions I don't know the answer to. :-)

From:

rivka.livejournal.com

Oh good, it's nice to get your endorsement of that book given how very much more you know about the era than I do. We'll look forward to the historical timeline event!

From:

kazoogrrl.livejournal.com

A book I remember loving at a young age was Ronia the Robber's Daughter. Not medieval per se, but tapped in my passion for all things of that general time period.