I have to share a digital camera with my husband and his company. So I try to be good about not asking for it very often. But lately, this has been really difficult. I have concluded that I NEED A DIGITAL CAMERA OF MY OWN. It's item numero uno on my Christmas list this year, in fact. My film camera died about a month ago, so I can't take photos and get a CD along with my prints the way I used to! When the digital is at work, I'm stuck with those miserable disposable cameras that don't zoom in and can't focus well on objects closer than 8 feet.
Well, last week I asked for the digital so that I could take photos of the kids dressed up for trick-or-treat (we went on Thursday night to a retirement home). Scott brought it home no problem.
Hurray! I could take oodles of photos of the kids, and finally show off my current projects! I keep getting harassed by rabid knitters to show what I'm working on. Sure, they SAY it's just harmless interest. But I think it's something more sinister.
So I succumbed to fear. I took scads of pictures.
Then I went to download the photos to my computer so I could post them.
Poo! I can't find the download cable! I ransack Scott's backpack. No cable. I scour my desk (which is piled HIGH with papers that need to be sorted and filed...but my need for a secretary is a subject for another time). No cable.
Drat. It's Thursday night, Scott is working in a different office on Friday, and won't be going in at all over the weekend (which is a good thing, lest anyone doubt). So this means I won't get the download cable until Monday night. 4 days from now! Have I mentioned I'm not very good at waiting?
So I did get good news in my email today. Scott said he found 2 download cables at work today. So he's bringing one home tonight that I can keep here. That way he doesn't have to remember to bring it with the camera. And I can finally upload my photos!
So all my trusty readers must wait 8 more hours to see my progress on the New York Yankees hat and to see how cute the kids were this year in their costumes. Oooo...that means I have 8 more hours to knit before crunch time!
Oct 31, 2005
Oct 28, 2005
The problem with Fairy Tales
I'm trying to decide what I think about letting our girls watch fairy tales. We rented "Cinderella" last weekend for girls' night in. (Big Boy and Scott were at a men/boys campout.) Big Girl seemed to enjoy staying up late and watching it with her mommy and aunt. But watching it for the first time since I was little, I was rather disappointed. Maybe it's just that I'm used to the stories written for adults who can analyze and keep up with more complex characters and story lines. I certainly don't want to become one of those isolationist parents who has a long list of seemingly arbitrary don'ts for my kids.
So what could be wrong with Disney's "Cinderella?" It's just a story, a fun little movie with cute songs, cute mice, and a girl who suffers through a rough life and finally escapes in a beautiful happy ending. Where's the harm in that? Three things bothered me about the movie.
1. The main characters are portrayed in very black and white, either/or terms. I guess this could be good and bad. Cinderella is perfectly good. She is beautiful, has no flaws (either physical or in her character), and responds perfectly to all the abuse she gets. In this way, she sets a good example for how to respond to mean people and difficult and undeserved circumstances. But she is so good that she isn't real. Her stepmother and step-sisters are the opposite. They are ugly and totally bad. They are only looking out for themselves and have absolutely no redeeming qualities. Most people aren't wholly bad or wholly good -- they are a confusing and complicated mixture of both. And their physical features have little to do with the kind of people they are. This over-simplification of people's characters, if unaddressed, could lead children to believe that you can just look at person and know if they are good or bad. They could very easily be led astray by someone who "looks" nice and miss some amazing people who don't look nice. I want my children to look past the outside and choose their friends and future spouses by their character, not their appearance or their clothes or their money or whatever fleeting external measure is the fad at the time.
2. The men are laughable. This lack of respect for men is a very strong and consistent trend in entertainment today. Men are buffoons, stupid, self-centered, the butt of all the jokes. Think about every sit-com and most comedic movies made in the last 40 years. Women characters (with the possible exception of blonds) are smart, get to say all the brilliant comebacks, are always right, and if they are made the butt of a joke, always get the last laugh. If women were ever cast in the buffoon role, we'd have a feminist revolt on our hands!
"Cinderella" follows the trend (or leads, since it's an old movie). The king is impetuous, unrealistic, self-centered, impatient, violent-tempered, and abusive. His sidekick, the duke or whatever his title is, has no respect for the king, other than that invoked by fear for his life. He thinks the guy is an idiot and makes fun of him. The prince -- well, we don't know much about him. He has only a couple lines in the movie, so all we can learn is that he seems to be as impetuous as his dad, falling in love and marrying Cinderella after dancing with her for 3 hours.
3. The relationship between Cinderella and Prince Charming is shallow, unrealistic, and moves from initial attraction to marriage in the space of two days (in the real fairy tale, Cinderella goes to three different balls... but that isn't the story Disney chose to tell). "Love at first sight" is the model here. They do not take time to find out what each expects of the other in a husband/wife role, to see if they look at the world from the same point of view, to share dreams of the future to see if those dreams are compatible, to actually disagree and work out that disagreement (if you can't do that, your marriage is doomed!), or to find out what the family dynamics will be. Prince Charming was probably less than thrilled to learn that she had some step-family baggage to deal with when they got back from their fairytale honeymoon!
I digress. I don't want my daughters to think that true love works like this. If they do, they will never have a successful relationship, which means they will experience wrenching pain after wrenching pain. No parent wants this for their child!
So I suppose this could all be remedied by having some good conversations with the kids. They'll need instruction in how to choose friends, keep friends, resolve conflict, respond to ill treatment, and choose a spouse. And maybe a movie with such blatant errors would be a good springboard into some of that conversation. But the ability to engage in that kind of thinking and dialog comes at a later age than my kids are now.
So my dilemma is: Do I let them watch it now because it's fun and they are enjoying the music and silliness, and take the viewing to a deeper level when their maturity level is right? Or do I carefully screen media until they are old enough to think critically about it and talk about it with us? Would doing the latter result in a ridiculous and ultimately un-enforceable policy of "no you can't spend the night at that friend's house because you might end up watching 'Cinderella' without me?"
Ultimately, my responsibility as a parent is to teach my children to think independently and ask these same questions themselves. I cannot be there every moment of every day to point out dangers and prevent them from making mistakes. Part of maturing and becoming an adult is learning to recognize fallacies, fairy tales, and fraud, and learning to respond to this appropriately. How we actually DO this is the difficult part! I have a sneaking suspicion that the method will depend on the individual and their strengths and weaknesses, making it impossible to find one universal answer and apply it to all.
So what could be wrong with Disney's "Cinderella?" It's just a story, a fun little movie with cute songs, cute mice, and a girl who suffers through a rough life and finally escapes in a beautiful happy ending. Where's the harm in that? Three things bothered me about the movie.
1. The main characters are portrayed in very black and white, either/or terms. I guess this could be good and bad. Cinderella is perfectly good. She is beautiful, has no flaws (either physical or in her character), and responds perfectly to all the abuse she gets. In this way, she sets a good example for how to respond to mean people and difficult and undeserved circumstances. But she is so good that she isn't real. Her stepmother and step-sisters are the opposite. They are ugly and totally bad. They are only looking out for themselves and have absolutely no redeeming qualities. Most people aren't wholly bad or wholly good -- they are a confusing and complicated mixture of both. And their physical features have little to do with the kind of people they are. This over-simplification of people's characters, if unaddressed, could lead children to believe that you can just look at person and know if they are good or bad. They could very easily be led astray by someone who "looks" nice and miss some amazing people who don't look nice. I want my children to look past the outside and choose their friends and future spouses by their character, not their appearance or their clothes or their money or whatever fleeting external measure is the fad at the time.
2. The men are laughable. This lack of respect for men is a very strong and consistent trend in entertainment today. Men are buffoons, stupid, self-centered, the butt of all the jokes. Think about every sit-com and most comedic movies made in the last 40 years. Women characters (with the possible exception of blonds) are smart, get to say all the brilliant comebacks, are always right, and if they are made the butt of a joke, always get the last laugh. If women were ever cast in the buffoon role, we'd have a feminist revolt on our hands!
"Cinderella" follows the trend (or leads, since it's an old movie). The king is impetuous, unrealistic, self-centered, impatient, violent-tempered, and abusive. His sidekick, the duke or whatever his title is, has no respect for the king, other than that invoked by fear for his life. He thinks the guy is an idiot and makes fun of him. The prince -- well, we don't know much about him. He has only a couple lines in the movie, so all we can learn is that he seems to be as impetuous as his dad, falling in love and marrying Cinderella after dancing with her for 3 hours.
3. The relationship between Cinderella and Prince Charming is shallow, unrealistic, and moves from initial attraction to marriage in the space of two days (in the real fairy tale, Cinderella goes to three different balls... but that isn't the story Disney chose to tell). "Love at first sight" is the model here. They do not take time to find out what each expects of the other in a husband/wife role, to see if they look at the world from the same point of view, to share dreams of the future to see if those dreams are compatible, to actually disagree and work out that disagreement (if you can't do that, your marriage is doomed!), or to find out what the family dynamics will be. Prince Charming was probably less than thrilled to learn that she had some step-family baggage to deal with when they got back from their fairytale honeymoon!
I digress. I don't want my daughters to think that true love works like this. If they do, they will never have a successful relationship, which means they will experience wrenching pain after wrenching pain. No parent wants this for their child!
So I suppose this could all be remedied by having some good conversations with the kids. They'll need instruction in how to choose friends, keep friends, resolve conflict, respond to ill treatment, and choose a spouse. And maybe a movie with such blatant errors would be a good springboard into some of that conversation. But the ability to engage in that kind of thinking and dialog comes at a later age than my kids are now.
So my dilemma is: Do I let them watch it now because it's fun and they are enjoying the music and silliness, and take the viewing to a deeper level when their maturity level is right? Or do I carefully screen media until they are old enough to think critically about it and talk about it with us? Would doing the latter result in a ridiculous and ultimately un-enforceable policy of "no you can't spend the night at that friend's house because you might end up watching 'Cinderella' without me?"
Ultimately, my responsibility as a parent is to teach my children to think independently and ask these same questions themselves. I cannot be there every moment of every day to point out dangers and prevent them from making mistakes. Part of maturing and becoming an adult is learning to recognize fallacies, fairy tales, and fraud, and learning to respond to this appropriately. How we actually DO this is the difficult part! I have a sneaking suspicion that the method will depend on the individual and their strengths and weaknesses, making it impossible to find one universal answer and apply it to all.
Oct 26, 2005
Germs!
Big Girl has a cold.
I always feel like a negligent parent when she gets sick. I am so dense when it comes to reading her cues sometimes. She was really cranky yesterday, didn't eat much dinner -- which is totally out of character because spaghetti is her favorite, sneezed huge snot-balls through her bath, and her teachers said she slept a lot in school.
Hello, mom. Wake up and smell the saliva-soaked bib. Something's going on with Big Girl!
But did I catch on?
No.
Instead, I put her to bed and she coughed for an hour. Then I got her back up, tried to feed her some more, watched her fall asleep in my arms, get up to put her to bed, watch her wake up whining, and put her to bed anyway. Then listened to her cough in her sleep for another hour. THEN and only then did I realize that she wasn't just in a bad mood. She was coughing her "my sinuses are draining like mad and it tickles my throat and I can't blow my nose or do anything about it so I have to just cough it up" cough. A dose of Children's Vicks and half an hour got her to sleep. I'm sure she was thinking, "FI-nally! She figured it out!"
What's weird is that she was messing around with her Dynavox most of the evening and got on many different pages. But she never went to "What's wrong with me" and said, "I don't feel good." I guess we still have a ways to go with that. She's been getting much better and much more accurate lately (even without the keyguard) at using it for communication, not just to play with. But she hasn't been sick much, so maybe she just didn't remember that she could tell me felt sick, or didn't know that how she felt was "sick."
So now I'm dodging germs. Which is difficult when your child prefers to projectile-cough. I don't know why she does this, but when she's sick, she coughs with her mouth in an "oo" shapes, which serves as a great cannon to shoot all the mucus in her nose, throat, and mouth in a concentrated stream across the room.
She also likes to cough directly in your face. I think she does it because she's looking at me and appealing for some sort of relief. I give her what medicine I can and try to make her comfortable. But no amount of hand-washing and vitamin C and Zinc will protect against that direct contact with her virus.
Why am I so concerned about germs? You'd think that as a veteran mother of 3, I'd be LESS worried. Kind of a "aah, it's no big deal" mentality. Au contraire. I have been infected about 20 times too many by the delightful children featured in my profile photo. Frankly, I would rather only tend one sick child, not three sick kids and myself! I'm a much nicer, more creative, fun-to-be-around person when I'm healthy! And with three kids to keep up with, I simply don't have time to be run down and on slow from a cold.
I also really want to stay healthy because my sister had her first baby yesterday! She lives about 2 hours away from me, so I can't go visit until Saturday. With Big Girl in kindergarten, I can't get there and back and still get her on and off the bus. And I can't go if I'm sick. If a newborn gets a cold, they end up in the hospital. I have been there, done that, and don't want to be responsible for sending a little one there! So I may not go, even if I'm still feeling ok, if more kids are sick by Saturday. I would hate to go and then feel sick the next day -- I would clearly have taken the germs with me the day before. So I'm praying, scrubbing my hands, taking vitamins, and doing my level-headed-best to stay out of the splatter zone. And not touch my face.
In other news, have I mentioned that Little Girl still isn't sleeping through the night? Big Boy was definitely doing it by this age. I guess I am reluctant to let her cry it out because she can wake up Big Girl and disrupt Big Boy's sleep. I would rather get up for 20 minutes to nurse her than deal with 2 cranky kids the next day. But it's getting old. She's like an alarm clock -- she gets me up at 4am like clockwork. Then it is so hard for me to get up when I need to in the morning. I don't have time for this -- I need to bounce out of bed, grab a shower, get dressed, and eat breakfast before any of the kids get up! If I don't get something done before the kids wake up, I don't get it done that entire day.
Yes, that means I don't eat breakfast some days. Other days I don't shower. Other days I don't get dressed until midday. Such is the life of a sleepy mother of three. I swear I need a catapult to launch me out of bed!
I always feel like a negligent parent when she gets sick. I am so dense when it comes to reading her cues sometimes. She was really cranky yesterday, didn't eat much dinner -- which is totally out of character because spaghetti is her favorite, sneezed huge snot-balls through her bath, and her teachers said she slept a lot in school.
Hello, mom. Wake up and smell the saliva-soaked bib. Something's going on with Big Girl!
But did I catch on?
No.
Instead, I put her to bed and she coughed for an hour. Then I got her back up, tried to feed her some more, watched her fall asleep in my arms, get up to put her to bed, watch her wake up whining, and put her to bed anyway. Then listened to her cough in her sleep for another hour. THEN and only then did I realize that she wasn't just in a bad mood. She was coughing her "my sinuses are draining like mad and it tickles my throat and I can't blow my nose or do anything about it so I have to just cough it up" cough. A dose of Children's Vicks and half an hour got her to sleep. I'm sure she was thinking, "FI-nally! She figured it out!"
What's weird is that she was messing around with her Dynavox most of the evening and got on many different pages. But she never went to "What's wrong with me" and said, "I don't feel good." I guess we still have a ways to go with that. She's been getting much better and much more accurate lately (even without the keyguard) at using it for communication, not just to play with. But she hasn't been sick much, so maybe she just didn't remember that she could tell me felt sick, or didn't know that how she felt was "sick."
So now I'm dodging germs. Which is difficult when your child prefers to projectile-cough. I don't know why she does this, but when she's sick, she coughs with her mouth in an "oo" shapes, which serves as a great cannon to shoot all the mucus in her nose, throat, and mouth in a concentrated stream across the room.
She also likes to cough directly in your face. I think she does it because she's looking at me and appealing for some sort of relief. I give her what medicine I can and try to make her comfortable. But no amount of hand-washing and vitamin C and Zinc will protect against that direct contact with her virus.
Why am I so concerned about germs? You'd think that as a veteran mother of 3, I'd be LESS worried. Kind of a "aah, it's no big deal" mentality. Au contraire. I have been infected about 20 times too many by the delightful children featured in my profile photo. Frankly, I would rather only tend one sick child, not three sick kids and myself! I'm a much nicer, more creative, fun-to-be-around person when I'm healthy! And with three kids to keep up with, I simply don't have time to be run down and on slow from a cold.
I also really want to stay healthy because my sister had her first baby yesterday! She lives about 2 hours away from me, so I can't go visit until Saturday. With Big Girl in kindergarten, I can't get there and back and still get her on and off the bus. And I can't go if I'm sick. If a newborn gets a cold, they end up in the hospital. I have been there, done that, and don't want to be responsible for sending a little one there! So I may not go, even if I'm still feeling ok, if more kids are sick by Saturday. I would hate to go and then feel sick the next day -- I would clearly have taken the germs with me the day before. So I'm praying, scrubbing my hands, taking vitamins, and doing my level-headed-best to stay out of the splatter zone. And not touch my face.
In other news, have I mentioned that Little Girl still isn't sleeping through the night? Big Boy was definitely doing it by this age. I guess I am reluctant to let her cry it out because she can wake up Big Girl and disrupt Big Boy's sleep. I would rather get up for 20 minutes to nurse her than deal with 2 cranky kids the next day. But it's getting old. She's like an alarm clock -- she gets me up at 4am like clockwork. Then it is so hard for me to get up when I need to in the morning. I don't have time for this -- I need to bounce out of bed, grab a shower, get dressed, and eat breakfast before any of the kids get up! If I don't get something done before the kids wake up, I don't get it done that entire day.
Yes, that means I don't eat breakfast some days. Other days I don't shower. Other days I don't get dressed until midday. Such is the life of a sleepy mother of three. I swear I need a catapult to launch me out of bed!
Oct 24, 2005
How Could I Forget???
I almost forgot my emergency knitting project that I have to do in the next 2 days!
So add this to my list....
Knitting:
Tigger tail for Big Boy's trick-or-treat costume
My three-year-old tried on his Tigger outfit today and promptly felt his bottom for a tail. No tail! How can Tigger not have a tail? So I must go find some orange and black fuzzy yarn and knit or crochet a striped tail for Thursday. Leave it to Big Boy to point out what Mommy totally missed! I guess I better try on the other two's costumes and make sure I don't need to find anything else last minute!
Thursday should be fun. We haven't taken any of the kids out trick-or-treating before. We're going to a retirement home/assisted living place that night with the kids. Should be safe, non-scary, and mutually-beneficial.
I will attempt to get the digital camera from Scott's work so I can post photos of the kids in costume... and the infamous Tigger tail.
So add this to my list....
Knitting:
Tigger tail for Big Boy's trick-or-treat costume
My three-year-old tried on his Tigger outfit today and promptly felt his bottom for a tail. No tail! How can Tigger not have a tail? So I must go find some orange and black fuzzy yarn and knit or crochet a striped tail for Thursday. Leave it to Big Boy to point out what Mommy totally missed! I guess I better try on the other two's costumes and make sure I don't need to find anything else last minute!
Thursday should be fun. We haven't taken any of the kids out trick-or-treating before. We're going to a retirement home/assisted living place that night with the kids. Should be safe, non-scary, and mutually-beneficial.
I will attempt to get the digital camera from Scott's work so I can post photos of the kids in costume... and the infamous Tigger tail.
My project pile
OK, I can't say that I wasn't warned. But since it didn't happen right away, I thought maybe I was immune. Not so. I have finally contracted the dread disease. I have a to-do list of projects to make for people a mile long. I even have an idea for something to make for myself.
What got me going? We spent a three-day weekend with my parents. Since we were there on a Friday, I went to a "sit-and-sew" with her. Seeing all the cool quilting projects everyone was working on got my creative juices flowing. One type of needlework seems to bleed into another. So now I'm working on a quilt for myself, in addition to the one already started and one sitting in my closet waiting to be done. Then I started thinking about Christmas. Suddenly my idea list ballooned. So here it is, in all its glory (well, some details are being hidden since recipients of Christmas gifts may read this blog).
Quilting:
Queen-sized quilt for guest bedroom we no longer have (but hope to recreate when we move to a bigger home someday)
T-shirt quilt
Christmas tree skirt
Mystery gift item
Crocheting:
Scarf for a friend's birthday (7 months late and counting...cuz scarfs are boring!)
Poncho
Knitting:
New York Yankees hat, to match completed baby booties for a friend's baby (must finish in the next 10 days because we're going to visit and I have to take it with me!)
Mittens for Big Girl
Mittens for me
2 or 3 mystery gift items
Sewing:
PJ pants for Sam (2 pairs)
mystery gift item
fleece poncho for Big Girl (large enough to cover her and the wheelchair so we don't have to tuck it under her straps)
Bibs for Big Girl
Keyboard curtain for church
Scrapbooks:
Big Girl
Big Boy
Little Girl
Beading:
Mystery gift item (or 2)
Am I nuts?
Probably.
I guess this explains why the paper is piling up in the house, along with the laundry and dishes. It's hard to get much done in a day with three small children at home too, so my progress is slow. I HAVE to make food, clean it up, and maintain a decent level of cleanliness in the house. And for some reason I find that I have to sleep now and then. Sleep is such a pesky thing. I'd get so much more done if I didn't have to sleep!
What got me going? We spent a three-day weekend with my parents. Since we were there on a Friday, I went to a "sit-and-sew" with her. Seeing all the cool quilting projects everyone was working on got my creative juices flowing. One type of needlework seems to bleed into another. So now I'm working on a quilt for myself, in addition to the one already started and one sitting in my closet waiting to be done. Then I started thinking about Christmas. Suddenly my idea list ballooned. So here it is, in all its glory (well, some details are being hidden since recipients of Christmas gifts may read this blog).
Quilting:
Queen-sized quilt for guest bedroom we no longer have (but hope to recreate when we move to a bigger home someday)
T-shirt quilt
Christmas tree skirt
Mystery gift item
Crocheting:
Scarf for a friend's birthday (7 months late and counting...cuz scarfs are boring!)
Poncho
Knitting:
New York Yankees hat, to match completed baby booties for a friend's baby (must finish in the next 10 days because we're going to visit and I have to take it with me!)
Mittens for Big Girl
Mittens for me
2 or 3 mystery gift items
Sewing:
PJ pants for Sam (2 pairs)
mystery gift item
fleece poncho for Big Girl (large enough to cover her and the wheelchair so we don't have to tuck it under her straps)
Bibs for Big Girl
Keyboard curtain for church
Scrapbooks:
Big Girl
Big Boy
Little Girl
Beading:
Mystery gift item (or 2)
Am I nuts?
Probably.
I guess this explains why the paper is piling up in the house, along with the laundry and dishes. It's hard to get much done in a day with three small children at home too, so my progress is slow. I HAVE to make food, clean it up, and maintain a decent level of cleanliness in the house. And for some reason I find that I have to sleep now and then. Sleep is such a pesky thing. I'd get so much more done if I didn't have to sleep!
Oct 20, 2005
The Three Cutest Kids in the World!
This was just such a cute photo that I had to post it.
What can I say? I have the world's cutest kids!
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