The Right Story

Just Plain Gross

2008-12-11T20:31:00.000-08:00

In the car this evening, we passed The Casket Store. Emma, being the burgeoning reader she is, sounded it out and asked "what's a casket?", which led to a discussion of caskets, cremation, and funerals. I explained in an age-appropriate way how cremation is only done once you are sure the spirit has left the body and how the ashes can go back to the earth but for people who want their bodies buried in a box, it takes much longer for the body to return to the earth but that's what some people want... and you have a funeral, which is a special ceremony....

Emma: "Do you have cake?"
Gail: "Well, not at the funeral, but sometimes there is a reception..."
Emma: "When Nana dies, can I make a cake?"
Gail: "Well, we hope that won't be for a while..."
Emma: "I want to make a cake with a dead body on it! Or maybe an actual dead mouse!"
(She was very pleased with herself.)

I guess the topic will be re-visited at a later date.

Silly Questions

2008-11-05T16:35:00.001-08:00

Gail to Emma: "Why don't you have any pants on?" (This is a common question for the "cocktail hour" for some reason.)
Emma: "Because somebody got baptized in the church!"
What planet am I on??!

Storymania

2008-10-13T18:14:00.000-07:00

Another story today!!

Girl + Keyboard

2008-10-13T08:19:00.000-07:00

Emma sat down at the computer this morning and must have run out of time to play computer games, since she typed a story all by herself. Here it is, unedited. Emma says "I hope you enjoy this story. As you can see, it's by me, Emma. Now sit back and enjoy!"

Frog,s Brthday
By Emma

frog,s Brthday wus the best
day in his life. he invited three
frogs. Fly,s present wus a new tung.
hopr,s present wus new legs.
greeny,s present frog stickrs.
then it wus cake time. the end

Quotable Quotes

2008-10-08T19:47:00.000-07:00

Looking back through my Emma journal tonight, I came across several choice quotes from days past (mostly around age 3) from Ours Truly:

“Every day I am amazing myself."
“You’re only one woman; you’re not another woman, because we have a pickle.”
“Sometimes when I’m in trouble, I just clean the trouble up.”
[after learning the word "destroy" from a movie] "“No! Daddy—don’t kiss Mommy; you might destroy her!”
“If Sylvia gets the whole rice cake, I’ll be crushed!”
“I can’t [put that in the trash now]; I’m really dreadfully busy.”
“I’m chasing my own bottom” (she was!)
"I don't want to be calm. I want to be loud and cranky!" (she was.)
“I’m going to worship God by painting my toes” [you go, girl!!]
“Mommy, you deserve great love. I’m going to give you a massage.”, and the ever popular:
"My bottom is not for sale."
"I'm glad we don't live near a volcano so we won't be erupted!"

Birthday Party

2008-09-14T18:27:00.000-07:00

Today was Emma's sixth birthday party. We held it at the place where she learned to love swimming this summer. It was a blast! She helped me decorate the cake. We're taking bets on how many days it'll be before the planning starts for next year's event. Sorry I can't think of anything more clever to say but my feet hurt and I need to go collapse.

From Soccer Mom to Lunch Lady

2008-08-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's not all about me... in fact, it's actually all about Emma's becoming a big kindergartner. She was pretty anxious before her first day, saying she didn't want to go, etc. As we were walking in, she announced she was going to walk in like a big girl. I asked if this meant not holding my hand, and she specified "like a big girl holding your hand." After I took her to the classroom, the bell rang, and I waited outside the door with a few other parents while the kids said the pledge of allegiance and had their very politically correct moment of silence. Emma had this look on her face of "I'm not totally sure about this..." when I waved goodbye. All summer long, I've looked forward to getting my life back, but it didn't surprise me when I went home that morning and cried. Kent and I reminisced about how fast our girl has grown and said a prayer for her. I have a feeling that, as parents, we would do well to make friends with that bittersweet mix of pride and letting go.

She had a good first day. By day 2 or 3 she was pushing me out in the mornings "go, Mom!!" (smiling) and asking how many more days until first grade. One of the side benefits of her being in Miss Robinson's class is sometimes at home she just goes crazy with "yes Ma'am, thank you Ma'am"s, and has discovered what an instant antidote to grow-up grumpiness that can be and how it increases the chances of her getting whatever she wants dramatically.

After experiencing life at a cooperative preschool, where I got so familiar with each classroom, where things were kept and how the teacher liked things done, as well as relating to and disciplining other people's kids and vice versa, I wanted to ward off feelings of being an outsider to this new world of Emma's, so I signed up to volunteer once a month in the school cafeteria as a cashier. Yesterday was my first shift. Emma gave me a big hug and I learned that, according to Highland Park ISD, anyway, tater tots are a vegetable (?!?). So now, I'm even sexier than a soccer mom; I'm a soccer mom AND lunch lady!! (No hair net, thankfully.) It was pretty fun.

Here are some photos from Emma's first week at school, including one with her teacher, Miss Robinson, and one with Emma and her special two-toned jello and home-made white chocolate chip cookies as part of her happy first-day of school dinner. She planned the menu: spaghetti with meatballs and broccoli with cheese sauce and, of course, a special fancy surprise dessert. (Her latest favorite word is flabbergasted. She enjoys the looks of flabbergastery on people's faces when she shows them she knows what it means. My latest favorite word, meanwhile, is flabbergastery.)

Pure, Unadulterated Parental Pride

2008-08-06T21:42:00.001-07:00

Emma scored a private lesson w/ her swim teacher, Mr. Hal today since the other two girls didn't show. They had a really good lesson! Hal called me in after it was over & coached Emma in showing off what they'd been working on. She really is confident now in the crawl and easily goes from one side of the pool to the other. They're working on breathing now with that. She can also flip over in the middle of that to her back, do a sort of backstroke on her own and flip back over--its' awesome! AND she can do an amazing push off from the wall. He said she's really learned amazingly quickly this summer, which just confirmed what I'd been thinking, too, given that at the beginning of the summer, it always felt to me like she was within an inch of her life in the water. Anyway, we're now the proud parents of a Giggle Duck (after only 5 wks. of lessons)!!

Could Be Worse, Ch. 349

2008-07-22T16:57:00.000-07:00

What a horrible night! Emma woke up twice and between that and my being such a poor sleeper, I hardly got any. We just got home from a marathon run to Target to look for, among other things, a night light (apparently the reports linking them to myopia in 1999 were flawed). We walked in and she said something cheery and I said something like "it's been kind of a difficult day, thanks for being such a good sport" and she said cheerily "It's not as bad as the Knights of the Table Round being stuck in a pit with snakes!" (We'd just read about Sir Gawaine's imprisonment in the Dolorous Tower and I'd said something at the time about how we can think of that when we start feeling sorry for ourselves. Hot damn--they do listen!) I just broke out laughing and she couldn't understand why I would express such joviality at Sir Gawaine's misfortune.

NFS

2008-06-21T13:41:00.001-07:00

Overheard today:

Emma [some stinky comment]
Kent: "Come, here... let me smack your bottom" (kidding, of course)
Emma: "My bottom is not for sale."

It's amazing how many opportunities since then we've found to say "My bottom [insert age-appropriate synonym, depending on who is in the room] is not for sale."

Everybody Into the Pool

2008-06-10T19:01:00.000-07:00

Emma had been a bit behind the curve on her swimming, very hesitant to put her face in the water and requiring various types of inflatable Things as well a me close by when in the water. I couldn't seem to get her ready to put arms and legs together. Not only was this not a lot of fun for me, but I had so much fun in the water when I was a kid, I wanted Emma to be able to experience that, too, if she could instead of being tied to the edge or shallow end when her friends were jumping and diving. So when the opportunity arose for her to take a swimming class with a friend, I signed her up.

The teachers seemed particularly great with dealing with beginning swimmers and their anxieties (unlike Kent's teachers with their sink or swim philosophy, pretty scary for a kid with as little body fat as Kent!) Emma enjoyed watching the sample class but basically said no way was she getting in that pool with those strange people. When the day of the first class arrived, I told Emma all she needed to do was to get in the pool with her bathing suit on and we could go to Kohl's and get the $5 BarbiePrincessFashionWhatever with the microscopic shoes she'd been talking about for two weeks straight. After that, if she really didn't want to take the class, she didn't have to. She did fine that first day. Only cried once (when she saw me--how awful a feeling is that?!). She could hardly wipe the smile off her face during the second class. When she woke up in the morning of day #3, she said out of the blue "Mommy? I LOVE swimming class!". At the next pool party, she really enjoyed seeing how much she could do on her own or with just a little help from me, including swimming using the kickboard. I always get a report when she's put her face under water and opened her eyes and it "didn't hurt at all". Having successfully navigated how hard to push her to get her past her fears and into a fun, confident place, given the right environment, I felt exhilarated. Emma and I talked about it in terms of how the mommy bird knows when her babies are ready to fly and how they each feel when it's time. They say we need to give our kids roots and wings, and I'm sure I'm only beginning to understand why everyone is so sure the roots are the easy part. Here's a photo of Emma and her favorite teacher, (Mr.) Hal.

Swearing Off Colonel Sanders

2008-06-10T17:01:00.000-07:00

I just started my summer job: teaching a video production class at an elementary school summer arts camp. Doing anything creative with kids is tons of fun, but it's left me pretty pooped by the end of the day with Emma on the days I teach. But I've made a crucial discovery: as long as Emma wants to play surgeon, I can lie down when I'm the patient. Today, I came to Doctor Lisa with stomach pains, so she performed surgery on me. I was more than a little surprised to learn postoperatively that my pain was due to some foreign items in my stomach, namely: a hairball, a chicken bone, and two fat chicken legs. (Next time, I'll just get me some hairball medicine.)

A Day of Firsts

2008-06-01T19:33:00.001-07:00

Emma lost her very first tooth today!!! (And Mom shot her very first wedding!) We left the tooth in an envelope under her pillow along with some questions for the tooth fairy. "How old are you Miss or Mr. Tooth Fairy? Are you a boy or a girl? Are you real or pretend? What do you wear? Is there more than one Tooth Fairy?" (I added the last one. I'd really like to know.).... Later: it looks as if the tooth fairy has answered all of Emma's questions, but not in order. The tooth has been removed from the envelope and several slips of paper have been left in its place, fortune-cookie-style, to whit: "older than the oldest tooth", "I am woman, hear me flutter!" "What do you think?", "I wear wings", and "Is there more than one Emma?".

Nomads

2008-05-26T08:35:00.001-07:00

Emma and I started going through our history book this morning. Drawing a cave painting evolved into playing nomadic family. So here is Zinda and King Cat in front of Zinda's fabulous cave painting. My name is Lanka (Zinda's mom) and we collected nuts and berries this morning. (Don't think for a moment that that's Pocahantis because it's not.) Now she's singing a long nomadic ballad ("I have a bad feeling about someone named Ick.... let's just go and fight them all... fight them all... fight them all..." I hate to tell her, but that cat looks a bit docile to be taking on Ick.)

Last Day at Preschool

2008-05-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

Miss Kathy: "Thank you all for such a great year!"
John: "Group hug!"
(That's Emma in the light blue & denim.)
I got to co-cop (help out) on the last day so we had a picnic with watermellon and I helped Kathy lead the kids in a musical round about making new friends and keeping the old. When Emma and I left for school that morning, she was sad Kent wasn't coming (he'd come to the school picnic the day before.) Halfway through the morning, he surprised us all by showing up at preschool, so he got to be there for Emma's last day, too.

Local Preschooler Wins Galactic Mother's Day Art Competition!!!!

2008-05-11T17:09:00.000-07:00

Kent helped with the bejeweled frame and the "icon" concept, but Emma did the drawing of the royal version of the two of us. What more could a mom possibly want (other than regular naps)?

Butterfly Festival

2008-05-07T12:29:00.000-07:00

Daddy's Little Girl

2008-05-01T17:53:00.000-07:00

Overheard in the car today: "I am not the most exquisite lady but I am positively the most accurate lady."

Camerawork Only a Mother Could Love

2008-04-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

Last soccer game of the season, Emma sees her friend Libby make two breakaway goals and pouts "I can never do that." I say "imagine you're running down the field, doing what Libby did. You can totally do it!". Then I catch myself praying one of those soccer mom prayers... God, if you're not too swamped today with the famine in Hati and everything, and this isn't too annoying, could you please help my daughter get a goal for the Northaven Kangaroos? So she goes in last quarter and snags the ball from the other team.. goes running down the field with the ball, kicks, and... misses the goal by about an inch. But at that point, hey, who cares?! (And of course I was too busy cheering to actually aim the camera or anything, but if you look really carefully, you can see her skinny little white legs run past, and if you're genetically related to Emma, you'll probably still enjoy the video.

... and the post-game wrap-up:

The Get Well Nana Dance

2008-03-07T17:00:00.000-08:00

Aren't You Out of Your Mind??

2007-09-07T18:36:00.000-07:00

Emma turned five today. She was extremely excited last night to realize that she would go to sleep four and wake up five. As you can see in this brief video clip, though, the milk and strawberry tart have clearly gone to her head. Party Sunday.

Could You Be More Specific?

2007-09-04T18:44:00.000-07:00

"But how do the sperm get from the Daddy to the Mommy? Can they fly?"

Oops!

2007-08-31T14:20:00.000-07:00

[said with just the right mix of annoyance and righteous indignation]: "God shouldn't have made mosquitos!" (Anyone have a good comeback for that? I didn't!)

Score One for Grammy

2007-07-11T17:15:00.000-07:00

In the car today, we were talking about what it meant for God to bless us and naming things we were grateful for and talking about loving others as the way we can be most like God in the world and how we can be God's arms, ears, legs, etc. Emma said she really wanted to be God's feet. Who knows what metaphysical seeds were planted (or what the eventual therapy bill will be--guess we'd better start the fund now!) but later, Emma wanted to pray before dinner: "God, thank you for all the colors of the world and the green, green grass and the green leaves on the brown trees and that we don't just have white grass and that we don't just have white trees. And thank you for these things we have to drink and oh! I forgot thank you for the food and for clothes to wear and that Grammy knew to do her work and get me all these wonderful clothes. Please bless [insert everyone's names] and everyone in the whole world. Amen."

Who Can Get Me Underwear??

2007-07-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

Today Emma said "Who can get me underwear?". I replied "Can't you get your own underwear?". She said it was a new game show. Whoever could get her underwear the quickest wins. I'll take what's behind the curtain, Monty! I wonder if we're just not getting out enough...

Out of the Blue

2007-06-28T13:02:00.000-07:00

Recent Out-of-the-blue-isms:

"Why are my eyebrows moving?"
"Why can't I squeeze my head?"
"When can I pick up a turtle?"
"Mommy, you don't look like Snow White." (Hey, kid, let me explain middle age, thyroid disease and marriage to you...)
"Mommy, if we get a dog, could we name it Tippy?"

Creation Bus

2007-05-11T20:43:00.000-07:00

Just catching up here. Here's a photo of Emma and her big cat Henry. Henry was named for the guy who gave him to her after his mom said, hey you're sixteen, this cat is just sitting in your closet, how about giving it to Emma?? This was after The Makeover. (Are we not fabulous??)

A prayer Emma offered completely out of the blue before a recent meal: "Thank you for the world. Thank you for this day. It was lovely. Remember this day when you took care of us. Thank you for making the world. AMEN!" (Seeing your child's original artwork or hearing her begin to verbalize prayers are such elemental validations of goodness and have provided some of my favorite parenting moments so far.)

Finally, one of Emma's little spontaneous rap numbers overheard the other day (this could be big): "God has more creation than us, we have more creation than God, we’re all on the creation bus..." (Please don't ask me what it means.)

Tornado Warning!!

2007-04-13T17:43:00.000-07:00

When Emma heard there was a tornado watch in the area tonight, she immediately grabbed Toto and set up her storm cellar in the living room (after jumping around wildly when that mean old lady tried to steal Toto. Of course we had to start from the beginning of the soundtrack...) When the watch turned into a warning, we went into the kitchen & turned on the radio. No tornadoes in the immediate vicinity, although one did pass a few miles away--just quarter-sized hail. You just never know in Kansas--I mean Texas--apparently.

Dream Factory

2007-04-11T19:26:00.000-07:00

Right before Emma goes to sleep, I often say to her I hope she has "silly" dreams (which are the best kind to have if you're four, apparently). Tonight, I also, as I sometimes do, told her that after she's asleep, we each kiss her on the cheek and Mommy often whispers something in her ear like "Mommy loves you" or "God loves you" or "You're going to have a great life" or something I want her to know deep in her heart. Her reply to me telling her all this tonight was that she had a factory inside her that made her dreams. They were made in her brain then they went down to her heart then out from the heart into the real world. Kerplunk! (I added the kerplunk.)

In less metaphysical matters, she seems to have crossed a key threshold in her soccer career in actually stepping onto the field during a game tonight--twice! Finally, the power of that leg will be unleashed upon an unsuspecting city. Be afraid, be very afraid! Her team is the Northaven Kangaroos. They play teams that are named things like the Gators and the Pickles. What would that do for corporate morale if, instead of R&D Applications Development, your department were named The Pickles? Get your dream factory working on that. You go, Tiger!!!

The Goat With a Coat in a Boat

2007-04-09T15:01:00.000-07:00

Emma has re-discovered her enjoyment in naming things. Last night she once again made up names on the fly for all 20 bunnies in the story The Country Bunny. Today she told me that if she had two children, she would name them Javry and Mavry ("Not Mav-ER-y!"). Her inflatable monkey (actually and clandestinely, its second iteration) remains Cooches.

In other news, our huge bibbed purple irises on the side of the driveway have begun blooming, so I brought one inside and she asked if she could kiss it. This cute little girl habit started when Kent brought me red tulips for Valentine's Day and Emma and I practiced being very gentle with them. Kissing them as gently as possible was one thing she enjoyed doing and I enjoyed photographing.

Over the weekend, our church had its annual sunrise Easter service. Mercifully, it was held inside vs. at the lake in the freezing weather. (The last time it was this cold in Texas in April was the 1930s.) And, yes, the things one says to one's self in the car on the way at 6:15 am after stuffing Easter eggs then going to bed at midnight are decidedly un-edifying... Emma gave me a painting she'd recently done of a shining sun with a sky and asked if we could hang it up inside since we wouldn't have a real sunrise, which we did.

Today, we wrote our first joint publication. It is entitled "The Goat With a Coat in a Boat". Emma stapled the book together, did the title & end lettering, colored the illustrations, and we wrote the story together. I won't spoil the ending for you, but the dramatic tension is nicely resolved. This brought back fond memories for me of writing and illustrating tiny books when I was a girl. There was one about a cat and a mouse that no doubt mirrored my relationship with my sister, and one for my Mom about why she should stop smoking (which she did 30 years later, but I'm sure without the book it would have taken at least 35 years).

Shameless Emma Enjoyment

2007-03-29T09:40:00.000-07:00

Some pics you might have missed from the past year or so:

"That's Not the Right Story!"

2007-03-28T20:51:00.000-07:00

Every night for the past, oh, year and a half or so, after we turn out the lights to say goodnight to Emma, two stories must be told. She will let us know who is to tell each of these stories by issuing a familiar formulaic edict "Mommy; Daddy." The first named individual then proceeds to concoct a brand new story out of thin air. When that story is over, Emma (or someone else less drowsy) will say "That's not the right story!", at which time the second named individual (could be the same unlucky bloke) tells the story of a tiny baby girl who came home from the hospital with a perfect little nose, perfect little toes, etc., etc. but there was one little problem: she was too happy. She used to wake up in the middle of the night and feel like playing, which she did, even though "Mommy and Daddy were soooooo tired" until she had played enough and then everybody went to sleep. The end.