Halloween Speaks

I thought tonight I would sit down and read a "SPOOKY" Halloween story with my two girls, since Halloween is only a week away and it has been so gloomy and autumn-ish.  What did we read?

The Spider and the Fly
Awesome Tony DiTerlizzi's interpretation of the classic poem.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/601598.The_Spider_and_the_Fly

At the end of the poem, on the very last page is a letter written by the spider, since we know what happened to the fly.

The last phrase says this, "Take what has transpired within these pages to heart, or you might well find yourself trapped in some schemer's web."

Mia stops, looks all excited and re-reads this line.

Mia: "Mom, that's an Idiom."

Me: "What?"  (she is eight after all)  "What do you know about idioms?"

Mia: "It means that you should watch out or someone will take you."

Me: (stumped)  "A lot of adults don't know much about idioms.  When did you learn about idioms?"

Mia:  "Hello Mom... Second Grade..."

Me: "Well of course."

Mia:  ".....and Martha Speaks."

I knew PBS would educate my children.  Hooray for IDIOMS and MARTHA SPEAKS!
Thank you PBS!

Storytime with Daddy

It was my husband's turn to read to my five year old Jules before she went to bed.  I listened from the living room as I typed on my laptop.  This is what I heard.

Jules: Let me pick out the book, Daddy.

Daddy: What? Barbie, A Fairy Secret?  Where did we get this crap?

Jules: Please Daddy? (very charming)

Daddy:  *sigh*  "It was the opening night of a new movie starring Barbie and Raquelle. Raquelle was the first to arrive at the theater. 'Raquelle, we're so thrilled you could make it!' gushed the reporter. Suddenly, Barbie and Ken walked down the red carpet..."  Really?  This is lame.  Did you mom buy this?

Jules: Come on Daddy. Read it.

Daddy: "Furious that her spotlight was stolen, a jealous Raquelle stepped on Barbie's dress."

     I could hear the disgust rising in his voice, but he kept reading.

Daddy: "Barbie's stylists,"... Stylists? "Carrie and Taylor, rushed to the rescue.  Barbie didn't know it, but the two girls were really fairies from a secret world called... Gloss Angeles????"

Jules: Ummm.... Maybe I should pick another book.

A Lesson in Fashion

I am full of excuses...

My first, that I attended girl's camp for a week and left my very patient husband with my two girls for the week, in which he went and bought clothes for them, because not enough were packed - my fault.  He picked what he thought were very fine matching outfits, but that I later discovered - something that I have never told him - that he bought my eight yr old pajamas without knowing it.

Second, that since the school year I started working very early in the morning and don't have the opportunity to get my two girls off to school.  This leaves my once again, very patient husband, the opportunity to get them dressed and do their hair on his own.  I have tried to be thoughtful and get everything ready for them, so he will not need to pick out any clothes or worry about matching socks - I will take care of all.

Which leads to number three - sometimes I am run late - and who could blame me at such an hour.  My five yr old I usually have nothing to worry about.  Jules is fashionable and matchy, though a little flashy for a Kindergartener.  She likes to dress up in sparkly do-dads and, thank heavens, she brushes her hair.  No severe cause for alarm.

Eight yr old Mia is a completely different character.

The other day she did something I feared - she wore the previously mentioned pajamas to school.  She told me when I picked her up,

Mia: "You know what, Mom?  I think you are right.  I think these are pajamas."
Me: "And why do you think that?"
Mia: "Someone in my class has the same pajamas.  She told me."

I'm mortified, but she has such charisma that this didn't bother her in the slightest.  I actually think that she likes being the odd one in class.

This morning was another such morning for me; flitting out of the house in the wee hours without a thought to what my daughters would wear, remembering near lunchtime that I had not set out their clothes and wondered how my husband ended his morning.

When I picked up my Jules from Kindergarten she looked great - picking out her fashionable "Jeggings" and her favorite bright animal shirt.  Mia, however, when I saw her I started to laugh.  She had dressed herself in blue and gray plaid shorts, a red and orange and yellow tie-dyed shirt with japanese character writing on it and a big monkey of the front, a shirt she grabbed from my closet I might add, and that hung around too big for her little shoulders, a baseball cap she had stuffed her hair in, creating a large ball of tangles, and very obvious mismatched socks - one long florescent polka-dotted sock and one small striped ankle sock.

I asked her:
Me: "Where was you dad this morning?  He let you wear this to school?"
Mia: "He doesn't care what I wear, Mom, just that I'm dressed."

I thought about what she was wearing:
Me: "I don't mind that you want to be different--"
Mia: "I don't like matching Mom."
Me: "I understand.  But I think there needs to be a limit.  Maybe just one thing at a time. You ook just like Junie B. Jones."
Mia: (all excited) "I know!  Cool huh?"

She didn't say much to me about it until later when she came up and said,

Mia: "I want to break a record."
Me: "What do you mean?"
She looks at her socks...
Mia: "I want to keep my socks on for a week."
Me: "Mia, that's gross."
Mia: "Well, I'll change them up, like I will put this sock on the other foot, so people don't know, they will think I am wearing the match or something."
Me: "Well, can I at least wash them during the week?"
Mia: "No, Mom, that ruins the record."

So, I have learned my lesson:

1. I must deal with the fact that my daughter wants to personify any title character created by Judy Bloom or Barbara Park.
2. I will need to wake up earlier in the morning and make sure that my girls have clothes and socks that MATCH.
3. And I will educate my very patient husband, the good man that he is, that outfits for girls, even one with cute cupcakes on them, are not made by JOE BOXER.

Insurgent Review

Insurgent by Veronica Roth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

First thing... I loved LOVED Divergent, and I have had this book since it's release afraid that it wouldn't meet up to the first. So here I am finally finishing it today months later and sadly, I am really on the fence about this. Not in the fence, not outside the fence... I'm right in the middle. Didn't love it or hate it, just ....huh.... so there it is.

I would like to say somethings about it.

First, I had to give Ms. Roth some credit. The writing was not explicit. I felt Tris was Divergent through the style of writing as you are in her head the whole time her thoughts and actions felt natural and normal. I liked that. First person - present is hard to pull off if you don't do it correctly and she dida great job at making the writing and speech natural. I was emotionally connected to her struggles, for the most part. And it is hard to write fight scenes, so kudos there.

But can I just say...

There was way too much arguing. I think the author was creating tension and drama between Tris and Tobias in order for the emotional draw at the end to have a bigger impact. So there again, I am very neutral about. Do what you have to do I guess.

This book is so unpredictable that it basically drove me kinda bonkers. Sometimes I felt as if it was rambling. But it was consistent rambling with a full scope and vision for the reader.

Here is my biggest problem - for as much as Tris was constantly evaluating human life and the consequences of her actions, the author made me not care about any of it. In the first book I started out with a clean palette and valued every character introduced. I was a little shocked at all the violence in Dauntless and the people that died. In Insurgent I couldn't care. It was a blood bath. The value of a human life was lost, which is crazy to say, since that is all Tris talked about, but there was too much dying. I was introduced to new characters and within a few pages they were dead. What happened was a became desensitized and detached to the inhumane reality these characters are going through, which was the whole point of the book. When JK Rowling killed off a character you felt it. Here someone jumps off the roof and I'm like, okay well I figured she'd go, she was too likable... NEXT!

And what I really wanted to know, of course what everyone wanted to know was what lies beyond the fence. his was something I picked up on in the first book, so it was my main draw. But, honestly, because of all the wasted time killing each other, when it FINALLY was revealed in a sense... I no longer care.

I think the point of these books is to value of human life, and if that is the point it should mean it.

View all my reviews
 

A Letter for the Tooth Fairy

You could easily call me "The Worst Tooth Fairy in the World" and I think my daughter knows this.  One time when the tooth fairy skipped our house, because she must have slept in - my daughter Mia actually slipped a paper under my door in the morning for the Tooth Fairy, who must have forgot her cash reward.  She's a sharp one. 

Well, today her tooth was very wiggly.  Once again the Tooth Fairy was unaware of how wiggly, since she was out of cash again.  It came out pretty fast after a morning of playing with it during church.  This girl was so excited. She told me that the first thing she was going to do was place the tooth under her pillow. She was in her room for quite awhile, but I didn't think anything about it. When Mia emerged she told me that she wrote the Tooth Fairy a letter and placed the tooth in a little box we had around the house. I even told her, "Who sweet of you to do. I'm sure the Tooth Fairy will love it."

Fast asleep, the time approaches for the "Tooth Fairy" to appear. After rummaging around for a good half hour for some money, the "Tooth Fairy" finally gets the nerve to find the box under the little, angelic, sleeping child.

I thought it was so cute of her to tape it all around. I was excited to open up my charming daughter's note to the Tooth Fairy.

Here is what the letter said:



For those who have a hard time reading the pencil font of an eight year old, let me help.

Dear Tooth Fairy, I don't want just somthing like .25. I want a dollar.
P.S. I need the money.
You're friend, Mia Thomas (marked with a sparkling tooth for the dot on the "I")