Thank goodness for good lighting

The sun came out this afternoon, and the combination of the afternoon sun and all the light reflected from the 2" of snow we got last night was enough to illuminate my office sufficiently for some videotaping.

Which is a fancy way to say, check out my daughter the well-lit reading genius!

Oh, and the parts when she is staring off into space happened when she got distracted by the Hooked on Phonics game I left idling on my computer while I got her to read for the camera. I know it looks like she's having some sort of episode, but she's just really, really into that game.

The fat cat sat on the mat.

So, after completing the first lesson in the "big girl" Hooked on Phonics set earlier today, my daughter can officially read most three-letter words that end in -at. Except "sat," which for some reason she has to sound out every time she sees it, even if she just read it two words ago.

She read the little cartoon at the end of the lesson in the workbook, although I didn't manage to get it on video because I was too busy trying to be all encouraging and shit. Once we managed to convince her to actually look at the words, rather than just telling us what was happening in the picture, she got the hang of it relatively quickly. I still had to remind her that the words "is sitting in a big chair" hadn't appeared in the earlier lesson, so maybe "sat" would be a better choice, and for some reason whenever she couldn't figure out a word she thought it was funny to insist it said "pig," but after a couple repeats she had it down cold.

A few hours later (after doing nothing educational at all) there was a lull in conversation at dinner, so I wrote "The fat cat sat on the mat" on a piece of paper and handed it to her. She read her 'secret message' right away with no help (sounding out the offending word, of course), despite having never tried to read a mix of sight words and phonics words before then. So she's actually reading, not just guessing from pictures or memorizing placement in lists of words.

I don' t know who is prouder - the kid or us. No, wait - it's us. She's freaking brilliant, this one.

And she's asked me three or four times since dinner when she gets to do the next lesson. Hooked on Phonics, we love you!

Episode 38, in which I ruin a good thing by writing about it

Liza wants to learn to read. Really, really wants to learn to read.

We made Bingo cards out of the 25 most-used sight words, and she's got maybe 15 of them down pat and another few that she can sound out. She regularly points out these sight words in new circumstances (like on the Wilton cake decorating class poster in the bathroom stall at Jo-Ann Fabrics), so I know she actually can read them, not just make an educated guess. She knows all of the letter sounds, although she still mixes up Y/U/W for some reason. She likes playing the Starfall games, making fewer and fewer mistakes every day. She can reliably tell you what letter a word begins with (unless it's a weird exception, like a soft g or something), and she's a really proficient rhymer. She thinks The Electric Company DVDs she got for Christmas are the most awesome thing since Little Einsteins.

My mother-in-law got Liza the pre-K Hooked on Phonics kit for letter sounds (pre-reading) for Christmas, and Liza couldn't wait to get started. We hung up the posters, got the stickers ready, and installed the software. Now, two days later, Liza has finished all but the last five letters. She wants to finish those today so she can move on to the actual reading Hooked on Phonics kit I found at Ollies for $40. I realize she's going to have to go slower on the next one, since it will be more new material instead of just review, but it's still exciting to see her soooo pumped about reading.

Well, she's given up on trying to nap and is pestering me to finish up those last five letters, so I guess I'll stop babbling now. Wish me luck!

PS - anyone whose kids started reading before hitting kindergarten - how did you handle it? Were they really bored in school, or did the school somehow make allowances for kids who could already read? Because I'm afraid she's going to get bored and get into trouble ... not that I would know anything about that, of course.

From the mouths of babes

The last few days Liza has been waking up around 5am and wanting to sleep with us, which is fine with me, but she totally hogs Jason's side of the bed so badly that he resorts to sleeping in HER bed, just to get a break from the flying elbows and knees.

Tonight as he was getting Liza in bed, Jason told her that he wanted her to stay in her bed and not come sleep with us tonight.

"I know I'm supposed to sleep in my bed, but sometimes my body just carries me in to your room anyway."

"Well, if it carries you in there tonight, I'm just going to pick you up and carry your body back to your bed."

"That's okay, Daddy. I like when you carry me."

Merry Christmas!

Here's the official Circle of Sock Goodness, as of about 8am this morning. Shortly thereafter we shared a coffeecake that looked like it was born with a horrible deformity and then run over by a truck.

Yeah, that Bundt pan has been nothing but trouble since I bought it. That sucker's headed for Goodwill tomorrow. Good thing the coffeecake tasted better than it looked, or we'd all be in the hospital for food poisoning by now.

Hope everyone had a great day and is looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend!

Christmas Eve

See that? That's the last pair of socks for this year, finished before 8pm on Christmas Eve. So now I have time to wrap the last two presents and make the coffee cake for tomorrow morning and STILL get to bed before midnight. Score!

Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

(I'm done I'm done I'm done I'm done ...)

Can't blog now

Must knit. Only one more pair of socks to go by 12:00 Thursday morning. Whew.

That was a first

This year I decided to bite the bullet and buy an offical Honeybaked Ham for Christmas dinner. We've had imposters in the past, and while they were okay, for some reason I'm convinced that this one will be ambrosial. For what I paid, it had better be.

In order to procure this most crunchy of holiday entrees, I had to drive in the snow for half an hour, at which point I found out that the store was so busy they had police directing traffic for the parking lot. Like, half a dozen cops, with orange cones and "lot full" signs and the largest boom box I've seen in years blaring Christmas carols out into the scrum.

We managed to park at the restaurant next door, and I carried 40 pounds of sleeping preschooler across the icy unshoveled parking lot in 9-degree cold (with a wind chill in the negative teens) to wait in the cattle line they had set up inside the front door. Luckily, there were only a handful of people ahead of me, and they had - no kidding - eight people working to pull hams for customers, plus another four or five on cash registers, so we were out of there before Liza even woke up all the way. I still got to carry a 40-pound kid in one arm and a 10-pound ham in the other, all the way back across the ice.

And this was AFTER the $185 trip to the grocery store, when I purchased the heaviest load of groceries in recorded human history. Start off with a 25-pound bag of rock salt, five pounds of flour and a couple pounds of sugar, and it's all downhill from there. I think I was probably pushing 150 pounds of cart/kid/groceries by the time I got to the register. Let's not do that again, okay?

My god, the cuteness - it overwhelms me

When I downloaded the photo of the Christmas lights from my phone, I also found this one, which I took while we were waiting in line for Santa at the mall a few weeks ago:
Curses! Why didn't I find this in time to make it our Christmas card this year?

Doing it right

We've gone out to dinner a couple times this week, and I made sure to drive home a different way each time so we could see different neighbors' lights. Tonight, though, Liza wanted us to go past this house again, because it's "the best one ever!"

Yes, there are strands of lights covering the whole house - including the roof - at 2' intervals.

Personally, I prefer the house in Westlake that has something like 20 different inflatable decorations in their front and side yards ... we're all about the excess when it comes to decorations, at least when someone else is paying the electric bill.

Two weeks without school or dance class?

She was home from her last dance class for less than two hours before she decided that all of her toys were boring and the most fun thing in the world was to tie one of her stuffed animals to one of my stuffed animals (a giant ostrich - don't ask), stack some Playmobil people on the back of the ostrich and drag them in circles around our house so they could "surf on the lake." Now she is running around wearing nothing but a see-through housecoat (don't ask) and a pair of mittens, randomly yelling "IT'S SNOW WORLD, EVERYBODY!!!!!!"

I knew that letting her eat that candycane was a mistake.

Gonna be a long, long two weeks around here. So, playdate anyone?

Urgh

The only thing "it's beginning to look a lot like" around here is a Slurpee. Wintery mix sux.

What should I do?

My Christmas cards are home, Jason won't be home for dinner so I don't need to cook, and MY DAUGHTER IS TAKING A NAP FOR THE FIRST TIME IN WEEKS.

(cue celestial chorus)

Wii Fit, here I come!

And I might knit more socks, too (sigh)

Here's a heaping load of indignity for you, guys!

Liza tends to shed clothes during the day, leaving a trail of discarded socks and other items behind her throughout the day. And half of the time she refuses to wear the items again, preferring to get a new pair of socks or a different skirt out of her room instead of just putting on what's sitting right in front of her. One memorable day I cleaned up six pairs of socks ... from just the living room.

At any rate, when Liza showed up in my office without her Christmas-y headband, I wasn't too worried ... I figured I'd just trip on it later or have to pull it out of the vacuum in a few days. But then I went downstairs and found what she had done with it ...

That right there is the photo of a cat weathering a huge indignity with as much pride as she can muster with a huge red bow around her neck. How Liza managed to get Bella to hold still long enough to get this on, I have no idea. What that cat puts up with ... poor thing.

While I was taking photos of Bella, Zach was laughing his head off - did you know cats can smirk, too? - so it was only fair that he be next in line.

I think he looks pretty dapper, but Zach didn't agree.

"Oh, this is so embarrassing."

"Embarrassing? You haven't even seen the beginning of 'embarrassing,' boy."

"You aren't going to post this on the computer, are you? Because the squirrel already laughs at me enough as it is ..."

Lazy Mama Designs going out of business?

Okay, so if you're at all crafty you have probably heard about this, but it could stand to be repeated here because it WILL impact my business.

The government has recently passed a rather poorly-thought-out law,
the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act, which goes into effect February 10 2009. On the surface, it sounds good, requiring additional testing of children's toys and equipment to reduce exposure to lead and other harmful substances. Great! I'm all in favor of not poisoning our children.

The problem is, this applies to EVERY toy and children's item, not just those manufactured by large companies or places with histories of problems in the past. And the testing has to be done by an official third-party testing facility, which can charge hundreds of dollars for one test.

So, for example, the tummy time quilts I make to sell on etsy for $18-50 would have to be sent away for testing to make sure the materials and design are safe for kids. Every quilt is made of a unique blend of fabrics and a unique design, so testing one quilt won't apply to all of them. And pretty much every etsy artist who makes things for kids faces the same problem, unless they are large enough that they are mass-producing items (which includes maybe half a dozen etsy folks ... the rest of us make very limited runs of whatever we make). We're stay-at-home moms, crafty parents, owners of small businesses, people who just like to make little stuffed animals. And we're pissed.

Come February, we're going to have to make a choice - quit selling children's items, or be non-compliant and risk major fines and legal entanglements. Personally, I plan to quit selling kids stuff - the most profitable and popular part of my product line - rather than risk getting caught. And I know a lot of etsy folks feel the same way. So next Christmas, good luck finding handmade children's items that don't cost an arm and a leg ...

Unless we can modify the law. If you'd like to learn more about the topic and find a list of ways you can support artists who would be put out of business by CPSIA, pop on over to the round-up on Cool Mom Picks. Write your congressman and senator, contact the folks at the CPSC, sign the online petition, add the button to your blog.

Please take the time to look into the issue and add your voice of support, if you can. Thanks!

What to say, what to say?

Preparing for the big recital - note the official Ballet Bun and light makeup that (mostly) concealed where she and Penelope attempted to headbutt each other Friday night. Try not to notice the worried expression.

I had to pry her off of my leg so I could help distribute programs, and by the time she was supposed to perform I was only giving about 30% odds that she would actually make it on stage. She made it, though, as did everyone else in the class, and they all made it through the dance. As was to be expected from a class of 3- and 4-year-olds, it was pretty painful to watch, but at least now we've got it over with.

Here's most of it, should you be interested. Liza is easy to spot - she's the one on the left of the front row standing stock-still for most of the song**.

But hey, at least she didn't bolt!

And the Big Girl Ending - Ta-Dah!

I got so many inquiries about the legwarmers I made for the girls as Christmas presents, I may just have to start making them to sell. What do you think?

**I told Liza how proud I was of her performance, and I asked her what it was like to be on the stage. "I stood there," she said, and I asked her what she was thinking when she stood there. "I wanted to go jump off the stage." Actually, if you watch the video closely you can tell she was scanning the crowd looking for someone (us? cookies? Santa? who can tell?), and that it was taking every bit of her effort to keep her shit together. THAT'S why I'm proud, not because she managed a couple wrong-way twirls.

I've spent the past three years telling her that being brave doesn't mean you're never scared, it just means that when you're scared you go ahead and try it anyway. I guess it finally got through to her. Brava, baby girl.

Stepping up

I was busy wrapping Liza's Christmas presents, Liza and Jason were looking for an activity, and I had a tub of cookie dough that needed to be transformed into edible somethings in time for the dance recital tomorrow. Which is why I got to see this today:Daddy-daughter bonding time over mint chocolate chip cookies.

Everybody, on the count of three ... 1, 2, 3, awwwwwwwwwww

Busy holiday-ish day

Yesterday we ventured down to the cultural center of the city to visit the winter fest at the Cleveland Botanical Garden. Long-time readers will remember that Liza and I went there the first summer we lived in Cleveland, but we haven't been back since then.

The festival stuff was mostly inside, with real Christmas trees and a gingerbread house contest that Liza really liked. Here's her favorite, a Japanese pagoda rendered in candy canes.She was also in favor of the storytime they had in the library, where she got to spread Crisco on a toilet paper tube and roll it in birdseed.

She also really liked the glass house, which features stuff from the deserts of Madagascar and the cloud forests of Costa Rica. She was interested to see that the chameleon they had was a different color than the ones at the pet store.

And she was nice enough to stop chasing butterflies long enough for me to take this photo of some orchids in the Costa Rica exhibit.

It was still early when we finished with the gardens, so we hiked across the circle to the natural history museum. We've been there a couple times before, but this time I wanted to drag her back to see the fossils to bolster a discussion we had over dinner earlier this week*. She was fine with being friendly with Steggie II long enough to get the Required Shot.

The fossils were okay, and at least this time we didn't leave the room screaming, but as far as Liza is concerned, a trip to the museum means just one thing: running up and down the hall to the planetarium exhibit about 15 million times.

I don't get it. I mean, yes, there are cool lights on the walls, and black-light circles that light up randomly on the floor, but apparently to a toddler or preschooler, this is Pink Floyd and Christmas all rolled up in one neat bundle. I wish we could get a membership to just the hallway, instead of having to pay for the whole museum, since this is where we spend most of our time.

*Jason and I both read The World Without Us, which is basically a 200-page-long thought experiment on what would happen to the earth if every single person just sort of vanished. Jason and I were talking about megafauna and how one thought is that in order to help the environment we should reintroduce the closest relatives to extinct North American megafauna (like introducing elephants to replace the mammoths that died out tens of thousands of years ago). Liza wanted to know what we were talking about, which led to 10 minutes of explaining how people are sort of messing up the planet, and how some animals aren't around anymore, and how we can learn about the animals that are gone by the fossils they left behind. And the dinosaur hall at the museum has a full mammoth skeleton and things that show the relative size of mammoths and elephants, so it was a logical extension of the conversation. Plus, I like dinosaurs, and it had been a while since I'd visited Lucy.

Liza's dance recital

Liza's teacher had the parents come in to watch the last practice before the informal recital the girls are having on Sunday afternoon. I'm guessing this was so that when half of them melt down and have to be carried from the stage in tears, the parents still got to see them perform it at least once.

It was like watching a (very cute) slow motion train wreck. There is no way any of them are going to be doing anything approaching the choreographed routine for more than 0.07 seconds. Mine was doing lots of posing, following the steps about three moves behind the teacher, and just standing there staring at me in the mirror.

Should be fun on Sunday when she gets to do it for real. At least there will be cookies!

Because I am the greatest mother in the world

Pros:

• I managed to get her to sit on Santa's lap for the first time ever!


• Without screaming!
  
• And she told him what she wanted for Christmas!


• And she made small talk with him!


• I didn't have to take her to see Santa 14 different times in order to build up a tolerance for bushy white bearded strangers.


• She's the one who suggested we go to the mall so she could talk to Santa today. Wha? Since when?


• We ran errands afterward and several people noticed her dress. She had to tell each of them in detail about visiting Santa and what she said and what he said and how great it was.

Cons:

• Her expression sort of looks like she's visiting Santa Claus, Nightmare Proctologist.


• She wants a Sleeping Beauty dress for Christmas, which is not sitting in a bag in the back of my closet with the rest of her presents (yet).


• Least charismatic Santa in the midwest.


• I did have to prep her for the experience by taking her to look at the Santa near my in-law's house from about 50 feet away, and taking her to look at this Santa once or twice from increasingly closer distances, and time it so that Santa was at lunch when we got there so we had time to wait in line with the other kids and get used to the idea of the Lap of Santa.


• $25 for a CD of the picture so I could post on the blog.


• And I might have kind of told her that if she'd sit on Santa's lap and get a pretty picture taken, I'd let her ride the train at the mall and buy her the $4 folding brush she's been pining for from the Disney Store. So much for that stocking stuffer.

For comparison ... here's 2007's Santa photo from preschool:

And here's 2006's Santa photo from the mall in Lexington:

(sitting on my lap, not Santa's, although it really looks like it's his, doesn't it?)