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Apparently she's been stealing the fun-tac to fidget with (we'd noticed the fun-tac, but she'd managed to imply her teacher let her have it!), and she filled the inside of her desk with glue (!!!), and she put her hands on her head during play rehearsal instead of keeping them by her side. At the last one, I can only imagine the teacher is just getting frustrated, because seriously? I don't think that deserves a note home, or even PART of a note home. Certainly not when compared to the glue...! The teacher said she's "still having trouble with reading", and I'm not going to bore you with my opinion on that again. I also still don't get how she can spell words mostly fine when I dictate them to her at home, but then fail on the test. She's supposed to "write the words without looking" once a week, but the truth is that I never let her look at the words. It's probably different with other children, but if Eva's copying, she's not thinking. (And what's really funny, I'm starting to realize, is she's more likely after the test to misspell her predictable "word study words" than her unpredictable "sight words"... maybe because she's more familiar with words like "know" than like "peg"? Her misspellings there are more likely to be transposed letters than skipped ones.) But what really, really bugs me is her math test. See, the very day after this note we got a math test home. She has a perfect score. In her "open response" portion (where they're supposed to explain their thinking, the bane of Ana's existence) I actually think she did that better than her older sister does! On one she was supposed to pick which student had measured the page correctly with buttons, and she picked the ones where the buttons went in a straight line, touching, across the page. "I think Rodrigo put the buttons on crele (correctly) becus his buttns are steratocrus (I think this is supposed to be "straight across") and do not have the spasis." Ana probably would have said "I picked him because his go in a line. And that's the right answer. So I wrote it down." (But you know, Ana can be awfully passive-aggressive, especially when there are explicit or implied rules about how many words or sentences to write.) So why is it we get note after note about how Evangeline "can't read" (no comment, no comment, no damn comment) but none of them mentions, even in passing, how her math is doing? When I was an underachieving kid, nobody ever held a parent-teacher conference or dragged me into guidance without first starting with "Connie is a very bright student" and spending a few more sentences talking about the particular strengths they thought I had. And THEN they talked about how I didn't do my homework or my classwork or whatnot. The end result of this is that I cringe a little when people start extolling my virtues, anticipating the worst, but that's beside the point. Isn't it a little basic to start off with a softening compliment before you get to "what needs work"? (Even on Supernanny, the conversations with the parents all seem to start that way!) Anyway, in other news, yesterday I told the nieces the story of how Ana, on her 4th birthday, slid down a very very tall firepole at the playground. (I can touch the platform if I stand on my tiptoes.) And I told, in dramatic tones, how when I saw Ana up there I wanted to scream and yell, but I was scared that if I did she'd just FALL, so I kept my mouth shut and, afterwards, pretended I hadn't seen her. And I reminded them that I rarely say things like "Don't do that, it's dangerous" because I want them to listen when it's dangerous, but at that age so many people still followed their kids around on the playground and it really irked me because the kids played less safely when their parents did that. Ana: And anyway, if you follow your kids around and say "No, no, no, that's not safe", when do your kids get to have an adventure? Eva: Yeah! And when do they learn anything? Like my classmate, his parents treat him like a baby! And they come to EVERY event at school and even tell him how to spell words! (Maybe this is why the other kids spell better than Eva does! "Sound it out for your own self" has been the rule here since Ana was in kindergarten, followed closely by "This word is wrong. Go look it up" now that she's older! Seriously, Evangeline sounded like she was revealing that they spoon-feed him purees or wipe his butt for him, not that they help him with his homework!) Tags: daily stuff, family, school
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If you pay attention at all to the parenting drama that goes on incessantly all over the internet, you know that sometimes little children (boys and girls alike!) pretend to breastfeed their dolls, and that sometimes people who don't breastfeed are totally squicked out by the very thought.
If you pay attention to discussion on child-raising that goes on incessantly EVERYwhere, you know that many people think that animals all do it by instinct, and that therefore humans should be able to do so as well. (This may or may not coincide with "don't give your child toys that train them to be mothers, are you a misogynist/do you want your son to be gay?" depending on the general tenor of the conversation, see "drama".)
Now, the part about animals doing it all instinctively is dead wrong, at least for mammals. I have personally seen what happens when cats kitten too young (I once had somebody wax poetic about why teenage motherhood shouldn't be the upsetting thing it often is to grandparents, because, "after all, nobody worries when their young cat gets pregnant", and quite aside from the fact that he's comparing teenagers literally to alleycats, anybody who's seen the fallout from an adolescent cat having kittens DOES worry), or when cats who were abandoned or mistreated by their mothers have them. And I've read the same old studies everybody else has about monkeys "raised" by wire mothers instead of real ones - the long term effect was monkeys that could not parent their babies. (Not to mention, human cultures, even "traditional" ones, all have varied ideas of ideal child-rearing. So... yeah.)
But to tie this into my first paragraph, yesterday I got to see an interesting sight.
See, Mama cat has long since weaned her kittens. She did it kinda abruptly, actually - instead of gradually letting them nurse for shorter and shorter periods of time, she just went straight to growling and hissing at them if they tried to suckle.
Naturally, despite it having been a month already, the kittens haven't given up. They still keep trying to tuck their heads under her legs! And they get swatted for the effort, too.
Yesterday I got to see three of the remaining four kittens enthusiastically cuddled down nursing on the fourth - a neutered male. His fur was sopping, and he even flopped over in that classic "Yup, milk for everybody!" position. His remaining brother outweighs him by a good pound and a half.
I've seen, in the past, a friendly and accommodating tom "babysitting" kittens to the point of letting them "nurse" off of him. (It's a myth that all toms hate and attack kittens. Cats really do have individual personalities.) However, I must say, this is the first time I've witnessed this among littermates!
Of course, humans aren't cats. But when you consider how many of these arguments back and forth are couched in terms of what is and isn't dubiously "natural", it's useful to have a perspective on what other mammals do. Cats, at least, can now be said to have been observed "pretending to breastfeed" in childhood. This may or may not help them be good parents (well, if they hadn't been fixed....) in adulthood. (No doubt other people have seen similar. I just never have until now.)
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We've been having spotty internet lately, and have finally tracked down the problem: My router, which was cheap when I bought it, is eight years obsolete. I need to get a new one. Well, they can't possibly have gone up in price, so it won't break the bank, I don't think. Gave away a kitten today. Apparently, this was Evangeline's favorite kitten. Tough for her. I didn't say it to her face, but I'm sure he'll be happier in a home with three doting grown-up people who are at home all day than in a home where his needier siblings hog most of the attention and the only one who dotes is six years old and still thinks he likes being hugged. (No, I don't let her squeeze kittens around the middle, even though she wants to.) Anyway, on to those links! Israelis Facing a Seismic Rift Over Role of Women
There are pictures( Read more... )
New Definition of Autism May Exclude Many, Study Suggests( Read more... )Here's an article about segregated housing for vegetarians only in Bombay
And one on Bastøy, a very free prison in Norway
State notes alarming spike in starvation of adopted children. They list the signs of potential starvation in a child, but of course it's worth noting that with adopted children, many of these psychological signs (like hoarding food or bolting it down quickly) could be a sign that they went hungry BEFORE being adopted.</a>
Report: Medical Marijuana Laws Reduced Traffic Fatalities
Texas doctors lead open-notes movement
And finally, BSG (remake) as an 8-bit RPG!Tags: articles, autism, europe, feminism, israel, law, links, religion, videos
I'm feeling:  bouncy
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This was great. I like salmon just fine, but...
You know, it's almost a stereotype that autistics avoid strongly flavored foods and only like bland, safe tastes and textures. This is probably because the kid who subsists on mashed potatoes and sauceless pasta worries his parents more than the grown-up (or kid!) who eats just about anything.
However, differences in sensory processing go in all directions, and I have the opposite set-up. I love and crave strong flavors!
So to me, I love lox (eaten with lots of onions!), but plain salmon is... well, it's a mild fish. And it tastes all right, but mostly what I taste is just that it's very rich. I can only take so much of that!
The nieces LOVE salmon. At $10 a pound, they damn well better! I don't buy it very often at that price! A pound of salmon is just not as much as you might think, and they could polish that off easily between the two of them.
They didn't like the horseradish topping very much, but it was easy for them to scrape off. I think, in fact, I may have found the perfect salmon dish for us - a strong topping for me, and mild salmon for them! Except that it's going to be a while before I make it again at that price. What am I going to do to use up the rest of the jar of horseradish?
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An appallingly absurd commercial came on.Basically, two coworkers are on a plane. One is drinking water with Crystal Light, to help lose weight for bikini season. (I would think that plain water, with no calories, would work better than Crystal Light with 5 calories, but that's beside the point.) Her coworker points out that they live in Chicago and work long hours, and aren't going to be near a beach anytime soon. Cue the plane wreck. And now Mr. Hot Guy wants her to help him fetch stuff from the water, and she's going to have to show off her awesome body!!! OMG! Now, we can sit and list everything that's wrong with this commercial, but really, what stands out to me is this: She is on a desert island. Unless there's a lot of easily recognized fresh fruit and easily caught fish there, I'm thinking that pretty soon she's going to regret all that skimping and calorie counting she engaged in. Remember, in the event of a desert island, unless you all engage in predatory cannibalism odds are that the fatter people will last the longest! Tags: links
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Tonight I made lasagna (which I'd never made before) using, instead of pasta, butternut squash and zucchini, cut thin with a mandolin.
You would not have expected it to be as good as it was! Alas, the kids still didn't eat the squash, but I do believe that's because they knew it was in there. They ate all the rest of it, and if they had just not picked at it they probably wouldn't've even noticed. Which is what I told them, not that they believed me. Anyway, we also had green beans and cauliflower, so they weren't going to starve or anything.
I have to use, next time, less sauce. Although I thought I didn't have enough, because I was cooking with squash instead of pasta, the lasagna got MORE moist as it cooks! But it was still delicious.
Next time you want to make lasagna but don't have any lasagna, or need to use up a squash, or want to avoid gluten, you have GOT to try doing this. It works SO well, and when you think about it, the net effect is just to add another serving of vegetables to your day, so win win win all around, and it even tastes good.
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One on a dog who jumped between his owner* and her abusive boyfriend. They both got tossed out a window. The women's shelter didn't accept pets, but when she said she couldn't go without her dog, they not only made an exception but decided to add a whole new wing for pet owners, on the grounds that many women stay in abusive relationships rather than leave their beloved pets with their abuser. *I've noticed, when buying cat food and watching the occasional TV episode live, that more and more companies are referring to people as "pet parents". If it helps them sell their product, more power to them, but I, for one, refuse. I think it just sounds silly, and the alliteration doesn't help in this case. Are people really that averse to saying they own a cat or dog or ferret or hamster or fish? Here's an article about the tiniest frog - nay, the tiniest vertebrate - yet discovered. I'm sure it's a good article, but I didn't read it. I was too busy cooing over the picture of the frog perched on a dime, with ample room to spare. And here's an article with a video of a sledding crow. In the comments are links to more videos of corvids playing around. One of the comments just bugs me. The guy says that obviously the crow was trying to get food, and obviously, since crows are crows, it's not sledding, and obviously anybody saying it IS doing such a thing is anthropomorphizing with no good reason. Now, it's possible that the crow is trying to get food. It's also possible that the crow started out trying to get food, and then through serendipity realized that this was a lot of fun. Whee! I don't know, I'm not a crow and I'm certainly not this crow. No, what bugs me is not the accusation that we're foolishly putting a human perspective on animal's actions, but the assumption that since anthropomorphizing can lead to stunningly wrong conclusions, this means that animals are unlikely to have the same motivations as humans once you move past the basics. Clearly, saying "Well, if I did that for this reason, it's likely that this random cat/crow/cricket is doing a similar thing for the same reason" is flawed and illogical reasoning, but can "If I did that, it would be for fun, but this is a cat/crow/cricket and obviously it must have another, less human reason for its actions" truly be any better? I don't know why crows do what they do. All I know about them is that they are clever animals and can mimic speech. But it's not that far-fetched to believe that once in a while they might do things for the same reasons we do, is it? (Which isn't to say that the crow was necessarily doing this for fun. I really don't know much about crows and am not about to hazard a guess as to this one's motivations here. But I doubt these guys know either. Yes, that includes Mr. "I've kept pet crows". A pet crow, near as I can tell, is like a human raised by wolves. They may still be clever and friendly, they may be able to survive, but I wouldn't look to them as a guideline for normal behavior.) Tags: links, videos
I'm feeling:  sleepy
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Starting in September, sweaters must match the dress code as well. I've got no problem with this. It's a uniform school, the kids wear a uniform, I'm okay with the sweaters having to match the uniform. (In fact, I've never understood why the kids get to wear non-uniform sweaters all day. Why not ask them to put it in the cubby with their coats?) I do, however, have a problem with the stated reasoning, that it's "distracting". This is nonsense. If your kids are distracted by a red sweater instead of a navy one, this is a problem with the kids, not the clothes. Why not just say "We like the way it looks" instead? That, at least, is the truth. Also, I have a problem with the way it's all typed up, but I'll reproduce it for you in all its italicized (the whole letter is in italics!) glory. ( Read more... )Whoever types these things up needs to have her quotes key and formatting confiscated. It's for the greater good. (Also, notice that sometimes the punctuation is inside the bold and sometimes it's not? Yeah, that's not me being inconsistent, it's them. If I'm inconsistent, I'm the only one who looks bad. When they're inconsistent, the whole school looks bad.) And don't get me started on the "Homework is essential" crap.
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And while MOSTLY PMS just makes me bitchy, like everybody else, for a day or two in the middle I'm awesome and understanding and compassionate. It's great! I hit that stage yesterday, and just in time. Evangeline had been throwing a (mostly) silent tantrum on the bus all the way home from the Y, furious that I wouldn't allow her to take up two whole seats. When we got off the bus she immediately started to scream. Not words, just "Aah! Aah! Aah! Aah!" like a busted car alarm. She didn't want to hold my hand or walk with me, so I had to hold her arm with two hands. Now, in the bitchy part of PMS, I would respond to this with snapping and yelling. And then I'd feel bad, and worse, it wouldn't even work. It'd just make her scream more. In the normal part of the month, I'd proceed while attempting to ignore her. After all, she wasn't hurting anybody, and we weren't lingering around long enough to disturb anybody's peace. But this is my brief time to really shine. As I'm dragging her up the hill, the thought enters my head that she is one very unhappy child. She probably wanted to stop carrying on, but she couldn't do it without letting me win! So I stopped dead. "Eva? Do you want me to carry you?" ... "FINE." She threw that out for all the world like she was going to do ME a favor! Ha! So I picked her up and she immediately stopped screaming, tucked her arms in like she was tired in the wrap, and started sobbing. Poor baby. And then she calmed down and we went home. Ana, to give her credit, was amazingly understanding as well. *huggles* It was Ana's seat that Evangeline kept trying to shove her way into, but she didn't get upset about it. She's really a good kid. (They both are scrupulously fair when it comes to injustice regarding their sister. I don't know where we went right.) Oh, also, the two of them climbed on top of their mom's closet yesterday, on the part of it that juts into their room. It's actually a great little nook, though the climbing up part wasn't very safe. I won't describe how they did it (Jenn didn't want the memories of the feat preserved), but let's just say that next time? They have to use a real ladder. And, um, not go up there in their new leggings. Filthy, filthy, covered in dirt. Had we been there we probably could've enforced both of those, but nobody thought they'd do this! (Well, that really is always the way.) Tags: daily stuff
I'm feeling:  calm
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I'm reading the comments to an article on how natural diets may help ADHD (well, duh) and got to read an angry little screed on how the US has the highest cancer rates in the world and this is ALL the fault of the evil corporations who value profit over human lives and the sell-outs in the government who, unlike their counterparts in Europe, don't care enough to ban dangerous chemicals. "Do you think this is a coincidence???"
Actually, the nation in the world with the highest cancer rates is Denmark, followed by Ireland. The US is number 7 on the list... but that's not very surprising, as wealthier nations tend to have higher cancer rates.
The WHO attributes this in part to better medical care in richer countries. If more people are able to get to the doctor and be diagnosed with cancer, the rates will increase.
Also, although the WHO does not say this, it seems obvious to me that if you live in a country where you're likely to die in childhood from diarrhea, or in your teens from AIDS, or in your early adulthood from war, you're not going to live long enough to die of cancer!
In the US we're very lucky in that we mostly do not die of easily preventable diseases like measles or polio, we have ready access to clean water, and war is unlikely to touch us in our own streets. But that means that we have more time to die of rarer diseases like cancer.
And it's not that I don't think that the eeeeeevil corporations put money over human lives at least some of the time (but not all of the time, after all, they need paying customers!) or that the government isn't in business's pocket. I just don't like people making shit up when it's just as easy to google it and find out the truth.
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I was going to take my calicos, but it's been very warm here and the mama was acting suddenly super affectionate. That's never a good sign, so I confined her to the house for a week and took her instead, and the vet confirmed that she's probably in heat.
It's definitely the wrong time of year for that, but as I said, it's been very warm all winter. This is how sometimes you can get as many as three litters a year, if you have a warm winter!
It occurs to me that I knew this cat was pregnant before she was bulging, and a lot of people find this difficult. It's really not that hard to tell if you know what you're looking for, and this is what I was looking for: She had enlarged, visible nipples (normally the nipples on a cat are not prominent), and it was just the right time of year for kittens, albeit a late litter. You're more likely (at least in this area) to see kittens in mid-June than the end of August, but it's not that unusual or unlikely to see them at any point in the warm months.
So it's as easy as that. If the timing is right for kittens, and the female cat has enlarged nipples, there's a good chance she's pregnant and she'll get bigger in a month or so. This goes double if she just spent a few weeks with a dramatic, drastic behavior change, and it's pretty much guaranteed if she ran away from home and then returned.
You want to be able to recognize the early stages of pregnancy for a few reasons. First, because if you intend to have kittens it's good to know exactly when they were conceived. Second, because if you do NOT want kittens, you need to move on that NOW to get your cat fixed. Kittens develop faster than humans, and by the time most people realize their cat is pregnant it is much, much too late to have the kittens aborted. It'd be like you aborting an 8 month fetus - unless it is a literal life or death situation, virtually everybody finds that unacceptable and squicky. At that point they could be born already! Many vets won't do the procedure, or will only do it if they are certain that the kittens will not survive.
Ideally, of course, it should never come to that. Cats can go into heat as young as 5 months, and a pregnancy at that age is detrimental to mama and kittens. (Mama IS a kitten at that age!) Get them spayed early.
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They haven't been overly cute lately, but let's see....
Today Ana did some word problems with me for practice and she noticed when she messed up. Admittedly she then got frustrated, but I still was pretty happy and told her so. We did a few two-step problems as well, and I carefully explained to her how to write out each step before you do it. (So if the problem is "X is 68 inches tall on a stool. The stool is 9 inches tall. How much taller is X than the stool?" she would write out "How tall is X?" and "How much taller is he than the stool?" so she doesn't get lost.). This, of course, is pointless, she never forgets halfway through! *eyeroll* If I keep on insisting she does this, though, she'll eventually make it a habit even though she doesn't want to, and then it'll be true that she doesn't forget halfway through what she's doing.
She also did this amazing flippy spinny thing on the bannister today where she flung herself wildly over the stairwell. I was genuinely impressed, as was Jenn, and we told her a. never to do it again or at least b. not where anybody will see her. It was impressively frightening, though there's no point telling her things aren't safe. (Jenn turned her back on her the other day for a few seconds and she ended up three stories high in a tree. She's constantly frustrated that I don't let her climb trees, but my problem is that these trees are both in other people's yards and clearly visible from the sidewalk. Whatever you may think of casual trespassing, you really can't do it where the whole neighborhood will see you, especially if you're up in a tree.)
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(No, it's not a holiday that I know of, I just want to be cheerful and happy today.) So here's an article on the effect of noise on your brain. They mention, of course, a case of an elementary school near train tracks. The kids in the classrooms on the train side did noticeably worse on tests than the kids on the other side. What they don't mention, of course, is that the effect of noise on learning and education is class based. It hardly bears mentioning (but it's so much unmentioned that you have to wonder) that of course, the people most likely to live near train tracks have less money than the ones with money. Who wants to live that close to the train? And I'm not going to run around and check, but I'm guessing poorer districts are more likely to have their schools close to noisy structures as well. And they're definitely less likely to be able to afford really good soundproofing. People talk about why different groups do better or worse in school, but it all seems to build up together, doesn't it? You can't cure any one part of it because the others just... like... expand to fill the gap. There's a school near us that's slated for closure, not for the persistent bullying problem (I know two different families who both managed to get a transfer for safety reasons, and that's not as easy as it sounds!) but because the test grades are so abysmal. There are protests about "keeping the kids in the neighborhood", though it's all a bit silly. The city's not going to waste a perfectly good school building, they'll just open a new school in the same building. But at any rate, the kids aren't "neighborhood kids" that much. At any given time, a significant proportion of the student body is homeless. Those that have more permanent residences are, frankly, somewhat short-term, and it's unusual for a kid to be in that school more than two years. In and of itself, that wouldn't be a problem, but moving schools repeatedly, probably mid-year, isn't great for anybody's education, and no doubt they've made other school changes before. Those kids aren't going to do any better just because they put new staff in that school and call it a new name. The school might help if they cut the classes in half, but do they have the money? The city could probably help these kids, with a plan and some effort, but all they're going to do is close the school and open a new one. And in a few years that school will have persistently failing grades as well. (This school's right by the train as well, maybe a fifth of the mile on one side and, because the track curves there, a third of a mile on another. We live HALF a mile from the train and I can clearly hear the doors opening and closing at night.) I got rambly. Sorry.
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I posted a review on Amazon where I mentioned, among other things, that I don't think it's a terrible thing for a picture book to include the line "Llama Llama hates this book!" to show that a small child is very upset and NOT willing to cooperate. This is the sort of thing, I said, that four year olds often say. (I was very clear when I said four year olds.) In my experience, they just looooooove to say strong and shocking things, especially if it gets them a reaction. And in my experience, they don't learn these words from books, they learn it from the people around them, their parents and other adults. Something happens and we grumble that we HATE it when that happens.
To this I get the reply from somebody who thinks she is normal (she said that!) and HER toddler doesn't say hate because even though "of course she says it" she's a grown-up and doesn't say it to him.
Four year olds aren't toddlers. Aside from the fact that few parents really do say "I hate this" to their children (under their breath around their kids is sufficient), four year olds aren't toddlers. Her kid, judging from her recent reviews, has just started potty training. He's not four years old.
Which means that in another two years, her kid is going to start shocking her with his language. She's got some time for him to do that! The question is, at that point, will she remember my comment about her kid not being in the potty-mouth stage yet?
A word to the wise: If the kids in your life are not yet a certain age, when you see kids of that age acting out, or hear people talking about it like it's normal, don't assume that those people are just nuts. They might be, of course, but it's very likely that you just don't know anything about it yet.
Also, be prepared for the fuckin' fours. Oy vey.
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So I went without, which... I would rather have not.
(It wasn't urgently necessary to look at my chest and stomach anyway, so go me!)
The doctor agreed that there's a good chance it IS strep, because Ana has it... but it's a little asymptomatic and the strep test didn't come up positive. The rash doesn't entirely look like strep rash in particular, and strep isn't usually (though google says it can be) itchy. (Itchy is a bad word for how it feels, but I don't have another one. Bad tingly, sorta. It's not like anything I've ever experienced, exactly, but it's not horrendously painful.) So I got a prescription for antibiotics (just in case it's strep) and one to treat the rash (in case it's not, or it's strep AND something).
The one for the rash is insanely complicated, to be taken over six days - take two before breakfast, one after lunch and dinner, one before bed on the first day. The next day take ONE before breakfast, one after lunch and dinner, one before bed. Every day the set of pills declines by one... and they taste HORRIBLE. Like earwax, but a dozen times worse at least. Blech. I have no idea how I can lose that taste in my mouth.
And the amoxicillin is HUGE. Ugh.
All I can say is this had damn well better be the right medicine to fix things. I couldn't even find the marzipan to drown my sorrows in.
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I have a kitten on my roof. My FAVORITE kitten. I have no idea how she got up there. She's scared to move off her perch at the very top of my roof. I have no way to get up there and grab her (besides, the roof is too steep) and I don't know how to get her to come down to where I *can* grab her.
HELP.
Edit: Okay, well, after I hung out the window with a board for her to jump on and a can of cat food for nearly an hour, I gave up, put on my shoes and jacket, and hollered for Eva to do the same. (Ana's at the doctor with Jenn.) I intended to go to my backyard neighbor and ask to borrow his ladders that are clearly visible on the side of his house.
Just as I was standing at the back door, Callie and Miss Tiny came running down the stairs. Apparently, Tiny had fetched her sister. Because I was downstairs and Eva was finding her shoes, we don't know how she got back in.
Still, she's in, safe and sound and no longer howling! I gave her a big snuggle, which left her a little nonplussed because she's not a very snuggly kitten, but whatever.
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SOMEbody is very concerned with toy marketing and the color pink.There are two types of comments here. The first runs "Well, you can buy a boy girl toys, or a girl boy toys, so it doesn't matter". This one is so frustrating that I have no coherent response to it. The other goes "Oh, there's no way this kid made this observation herself, she's just parroting". To that I say "So what?" Okay, maybe she's not, and likely she is - but again, so what? How do you expect children to learn your values if you don't talk with them about them? (And if she'd decided she wanted a pink princess tea set because that's what she'd seen on TV or that's what Grandma pushed on her, that would be... what, exactly? Not parroting?) But regardless, it's still a nifty video. Tags: links, videos
I'm feeling:  cheerful
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Turns out that, true to my suspicion, she did have it on Monday. A-ha! And she also had it last Monday but didn't do it... but now that I'm trying to remember I can't recall if she did it (but didn't hand it in) or if she said her teacher didn't assign it and I let it slide.
The teacher sent home a note saying Ana hadn't done any homework (and I *know* I made Ana do her math handouts, so I don't know what's up with that) for two weeks, and did we know about this?
She got the note back, too, signed - but no homework!
And no, we didn't know any of this. Ana had signed it herself ("Because I forgot to give it to you and didn't want my teacher to be mad!!!") and handed it in herself.
*sighs*
Ana, Ana, Ana. That sort of trick really only works once, and you squandered it in the third grade. Poor you!
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(And face it, we were overdue for a big fiasco) people go "Oh, I'm gonna move!" and a few of them actually complete the process.
And you know, I always intend to keep up with my moved friends on DW (which, incidentally, does not require invite codes for the rest of the year), and I never do.
So if anybody has moved over to DW and wants me to friend them, or thinks I'd like to know, please - post your username!
I, of course, am conuly wherever I am. (Except when I'm not, but that's another story.)
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1. Is it wrong, when Ana comes home without spelling homework (and I know she usually has spelling homework) that I make her do it anyway? Because she seems to think I'm "a big fat meanie", and I think I'm just being prudent and also, don't care what she thinks.
But I do want to be able, next time it comes up, to say "SEE? EVERYBODY does this!"
2. Evangeline brought home a math test today. At the back she had "extended response" questions where she has to write down her reasoning. (I think this is absurd, but all the schools do it now, it's on the tests.)
I wish I had a scanner, but I'll retype.
For one of them, she was told that there are six wheels on a number of tricycles, and asked to find out how many trikes there were. So she drew her picture, and then wrote "I know tata 3 + 3 echwos 6."
On the other, she was told that somebody had 5 cookies and then got 3 more. How many altogether? So she drew her picture (neatly making the 3 cookies chocolate chip, and the 5 NOT chocolate chip), and then wrote "I cowtib the cookies attr I brow dom."
Huh. And today she wrote "friend" in a sentence. She started off fr, then stopped and neatly inserted an e between the f and the r, ending up with "ferib". (Or "ferid", really.) It's interesting to watch her write, but a little scary as well.
I gotta go up and make sure Ana's starting her homework, and then I have to start grating and grating and grating and grating potatoes. Any excuse to gorge myself on potato pancakes and doughnuts, I'm gonna take it! Happy Hanukkah : )
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A book report. She was supposed to read a book on any holiday (December holidays implied, but not explicitly stated) and then write about what she learned about the holiday. In the spirit of the thing, I put a book on Diwali, which I know little about other than that it exists on hold at the library. The library promptly lost it. So we had to scramble to get a Christmas book for her to read. She decided to read Jingle Bells, Homework Smells. Well. She did this all at the VERY last minute. We literally finished her second draft (she has to bring in a "sloppy copy" and her finished work) on the train to school. Funnily enough, "don't put off your homework" is the supposed moral of the story... but we'll get to that. She didn't even want to do it right. Her "three sentences" barely counted, and I had her redo them entirely for her second draft. "The main character is Gilbert. He doesn't do his work. He hands in his book report late." She utterly refused at first to write "I learned not to put off doing my homework" or anything of the sort because, of course, she didn't learn that and to write it would be lying. In vain did we all point out that her teacher would neither know nor care! Lying. Is. Wrong. On the train I managed to get her to write a little more, retelling the story. As I pointed out, her teacher doesn't care if she learned anything, she just wants to make sure Evangeline understands what she read. So, assured that she wouldn't have to lie, Evangeline managed a full paragraph about this book. And then we came to the moral. She suggested (correctly, I think) that the real moral of the story is "If you make a snowman instead of doing your book report, and bring in your report a day late, you'll still get full credit. So why rush?" But she as quickly rejected this as not being appropriate for school. (I wish she hadn't!) Instead, she wrote down, very carefully, that Gilbert learned not to put off his work, because he might not be able to get it done at the last minute. (She, of course, learned nothing of the sort, as seen by the fact that she was doing her own report at the last minute. And heaven forbid we lie!) On the subject of homework, Ana says she's not allowed to take notes in math because her teacher assumes they're WRITING notes and takes it away. How she's supposed to study or do her homework when she can't refer to classwork, I don't understand. Yesterday she got very upset because her homework asked her to identify the "mode" and the "range" from a set of data, and she couldn't remember the definitions - and of course, she couldn't find them in her notebook either. I'm not entirely sure she's correct about this, but I told her to talk to her teacher and if the teacher still refuses we'll write a note in. This is ridiculous. (Of course, throwing a tantrum within 3 seconds of reading a difficult math problem instead of thinking about it and/or asking for help is also ridiculous, but I can't solve that with a note to the teacher, can I?) Tags: daily stuff, school
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(Which is a nice change of pace from her usual questions about the start of the world.) And after giving a very brief synopsis of the fact that right now there aren't many rich people but they're very very rich, and there are a heck of a lot of poor people (and trust me, the way I grew up, that was positively apolitical), she thought for a bit and then came out with "So... we're kinda in the middle between rich and poor, right?" Yes, welcome to America, with the world's biggest middle class! After I amused myself laughing for a few seconds I corrected her. No, although you might miss it by the fact that we have a house, and internet access, and a heck of a lot of books, we are actually poor. (Why on earth does she think we walk everywhere? In the rain or the cold or the dark, no less! I've got a twisted ankle (again), and I'm still walking everywhere because bus fare is $2.25!) I explained that although there are plenty of people in worse shape than we are, we're definitely not "in between" anything. Which makes me roll my eyes reading this little post. Look, if you're rolling in the dough, just tell your children that! "Yes, we are actually fabulously wealthy. We're very lucky." How hard is that? (Of course, if being rich is shameful, I can think of a few things to spend all that money on. They can send it right to me, I'll take it off their hands, no questions asked!) Tags: economy, links
I'm feeling: cheerful
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And first they whined about how to split the cookies evenly, but then they thought about it and worked out that 14/2 = 7 cookies each. So Evangeline carefully counted out her seven cookies, and Ana decided to have hers later. A few minutes down the line, when Ana took the sleeve of cookies, Evangeline said, apparently totally seriously: "Those are your cookies, but be careful, that's my crumb!" On top of the stack of cookies there was one cookie crumb. Ana: Your crumb?!? Evangeline: Yes. That's my crumb. Ana: YOUR CRUMB?!?!?!? Evangeline: My crumb. Ana: Your... CRUMB???? Evangeline: MY CRUMB! My mom: What's all this about? Ana, you're supposed to share evenly! Ana: Yeah, but she says that's her crumb! Evangeline: It is! My mom: Your crumb? Evangeline: That's what Ana said! Tags: 'cdotes, daily stuff
I'm feeling:  amused
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retreat.... 
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