MamaStories

Amie is at the moment in her tent, erected with sofa cushions and a sheet in our living room a couple of days ago. With the aid of a flashlight she reading aloud from an Usborne Farmyard Tales book. She has made strides reading. If she keeps it up, she’ll read fluently from, say, Henry and Mudge, in a couple of months. She is also getting better at addition and subtraction, and is “getting” the rudiments of multiplication. One of her favorite sayings these days is “seven plus seven is fourteen. That’s two times seven, you know?” She says this almost once a day. The “you know?” and “right?” are added for  emphasis, or rather coercion. They mean “don’t you disagree with me now!”

I must admit that we haven’t kept up the “bridge schedule” we had planned: 3 pages of  math (we use the average exercise book) and 3 pages of reading/writing (Explode the Code) a day. Our family life  this summer has been in a mess (in a fun way, mostly), and we’ve not been disciplined enough. Especially her writing has suffered, but I’m happy enough with the reading. She is realizing that to be able to read a book yourself is a real treasure and privilege. Now comes our task of finding good books for her.

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There has, of course, also been lots of art making. When Amie’s Dada (paternal grandfather) suggested that she become a doctor – a real doctor, not a Permanent Head Damage kind of doctor like her Mama and Baba – she immediately and vehemently protested that she was going to be an artist.

There was drawing from nature. With Thaam, the few sunflowers I managed to grow despite the squirrels and chipmunks:

The resulting drawing:

The butterfly we caught:

And Thaam (paternal grandmother) watching the fishes (love those kissy mouths):

And lots of drawing from imagination:

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and my favorite:

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Under the influence of her grandmother she has learned all the songs from The Sound of Music. I’ll try to capture her singing “Do a Deer” sometime and post it. It’s very cute, but after the fiftieth time I have ask her to sings something else.

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Amie turned five this August – we both blew out the candles because she was, of course, born on my birthday (it’s all hers now). We had a mega party (potluck). Though she was on the verge of angry tears for a moment, when I told her I had asked people not to bring presents, she bravely listened to the reasons and then agreed. Some people broke the rule anyway (grrr!), so she did get some presents, including the pottery wheel in the picture. It needed some Mama magic to make it work.

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The most important event was that magical two-week play date with her friend from New York City. One week they played and swam in Cape Cod, the next week they spent playing here at home. E. is a year and a half older than Amie and they get along so well. E at 6 is a fluent and voracious reader and that was a great model for Amie. They played intensely and when it didn’t work so well anymore they had no problem separating and finding a spot to be by themselves a bit.

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When you ask her “What will happen in September?” she’ll respond: “Pottery class with Lisa!” I enrolled her in a hand-built clay creations class with my teacher, Lisa Dolliver. Let’s see how much she will insist on working on the wheel -  wheel throwing only starts at age 11. She’ll be getting a break as it is, because the clay creations class only starts at Grade 1… Oh, and then there is, of course, also Kindergarten.

While in Belgium – rainy, gray, cold – we do a lot of drawing and painting. Here is one project:

Oma draws the outline (it tickles!)

Done

Work in progress

Finished

Amie made a heart for me this morning. Hearts within hearts, then she cut it out. As she was giving it to me she saw Baba also needed a surprise. After a couple of minutes she came running to him, with… a brain.

We’re all retreating into the living room around the warm fire. There’s so much to do in this contracted world.

• Art

Not a day goes by when Amie doesn’t work at her art. She’ll often pronounce “I am practicing because I want to be an artist.” She enjoyed discovering the technique of splashing by rubbing an old toothbrush over a net. She also likes our instruction book on how to draw basic animal figures (ours is an out-of-print Usborne). She was intrigued when I drew some circles and proposed she draw the basic emotions. She got them down right without my help, contorting her face to feel the shape of her mouth, her eyes and nose.

Lions, step by step, from How to Draw Animals

Trying the toothbrush and net splash technique, and the result:

Emotive faces

Girl on a bike, from a (paused) video

The last drawing was made from a tiny video still, and Amie became very frustrated with it because it wasn’t turning out exactly the way it looked on the screen. I explained that it was a very difficult subject – the word “subject” is now her favorite – and that the example was really too small. Still, she was nearly in tears, and I cursed myself for not gently leading her away from the project. l will be conscious of  this perfectionist streak in her and help her keep it under control. I know how it can ruin the fun! (Also read Lori’s helpful advice in the current Camp Creek Blog thread).

• Reading

Our 100-books-a-month table, with list

Amie is reading spontaneously now, here and there. Only last week she deciphered “Reese’s Buttercup” and “travel” and “cheese,” all of her own accord. Three-letter-words are read fluently, as well as certain sight words like “the” and “and”. Four-letter-words will soon be rolling off her tongue as well.

I know that at her preschool (Montessori) she uses cards and lists of words and all kinds of reading aids, but here at home she just reads books. She has mostly stopped trying to guess what the words could be by looking at the pictures – not all “first books” are clever in that regard! – but she’s good about using the context of the story and the sentence to speed up her reading. In our 100-book-a-month challenge we are aiming for 1 out of 4 to be read by her.

• Writing

Amie lists another title

Writing does not come as spontaneously as reading does, but she has gone from penning nonsense words and collections of letters to spelling out real words. When I suggest she write the title of a book we’ve read in our 100-books list, she readily grabs the pen and sets to the job. She will read the words and spell them out as she writes them down, or she’ll copy the letters of the more difficult ones and wonder aloud why some are spelled the way they are. What can I say, English is a funny language! For the latter though I’d rather she use invented spelling than mere copying, which becomes automatic and then she mindlessly forgets letters.

We are now starting to pay attention to her penmanship: the size of the letters (I draw lines) and whether she wants to use capitals or small letters. She still feels more comfortable with the capitals.

• Math

Doing algebra

Amie will happily spend half an hour on algebra exercises, but usually only with constant encouragement or if we sell it as “homework”. She’ll also do basic exercises on DH’s Ipod. She can solve:

5+8 – _

5+_=13

13-5=_

etc.

For anything under 5 and the addition or subtraction of 1 she no longer needs her fingers, doing them in her head – though sometimes it helps her to imagine cookies. She’ll still resort to her fingers, and her toes if need be, for the higher numbers, and we usually stay under 20. We don’t use flash cards but cheapo math books, because she likes to make that mark. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but she does like a sticker as lure and reward, and it helps if the math is presented as a game, like a maze.

It’s finally here, the book!

At the beginning of 2008 I got an email from Marjorie Wilson. She and her husband, Brent, are the authors of the seminal Teaching Children to Draw, published in 1982. Marjorie wrote that they were putting together the second edition. She was doing research on the net when she found the YouTube video of Amie drawing the three-headed person (here). From there on she made it to this blog, where she found “Drawing as it Develops,” my record of Amie’s drawing progress. She wondered if we would let her use Amie’s example in her new Introduction.

Of course!

We emailed, I sent her scans of Amie’s drawings, and we had a wonderful phone interview. Amie picture was chosen for the front cover, and her drawing of Tigger (this one) is printed, in color, on the back flap. The new Introduction tells the story of her drawing from age 1.5 to about 3 and how a lot of what she and we did corresponds with their findings and recommendations in the book. There are stills from the video and photographs of the resulting three-headed person, of Amie’s first scribbles, of DH carrying her in the backpack, and of this collaborative drawing in my journal.

Amie doesn’t quite understand – her first reaction looking at the still of the video was: “That’s not how you hold a pencil!” But she knows how happy and proud we all are.

And for me there could be no greater confirmation of the value of this blog. All those entries on Amie’s drawing are not only a record (that I would have failed to keep so orderly and punctually in my journal), but they are also of actual use to others, for their viewing pleasure as well as for information on how children draw.

So the book is finally out – Amazon says it will only be released in February 2010 but that seems to be a mistake. If you’re interested in childrens drawings, this is the book to get: full of insightful observations, great practical advice and lots and lots of fun examples. Brain food and eye candy. And our Amie, of course.

Now can you believe that I have been keeping this under my hat for over a year?!

It’s coming down hard: thick globs of melting snow. The wood stove is giving off enough heat to dispel any gloom: it’s merely cozy, as long as I don’t need to go out there.

Which I did have to, earlier on. One of the rain barrels was overflowing, and not through the overflow tube. In this weather I would have left it but the excess water was undermining the cinder blocks the heavy barrel is sitting on, slowly eroding away the soft soil. I didn’t relish the thought of it coming down right by the side of the house and the bed with the chard.

So out I went, and shook the overflow pipe, but nothing came out but a dreadful stink. O-ow, dead animal alert! I opened the barrel’s lid and saw the hind part of a chipmunk sticking out of the overflow pipe. It must have crawled up the pipe in drier weather, landed in the water, then made it back to the pipe only to get stuck.

It had that ghostly look of a thing dead in water. That half looked well preserved in the cold water, and I only considered for a second what the other half looked like. When I tried to dislodge it with a stick its skin just came off. I un-threaded the pipe and as the excess water suddenly rushed out all over me I shook the poor dead beast out in the bushes.

I usually take a picture of any dead animal I see (here and here and here) but this one, well, it was just too gruesome.

We’re spending the rest of the day inside, drawing animal tracks in snow. Squirrels, deer, chipmunks…

Amie is drawing like a mad woman nowadays – wanting to become an artist and all that requires lots of practice – and she was taping her drawings all over our walls, with lots and lots of tape, of course. Fearing for our paint job, I gave her a large stack of cheapo IKEA frames purchased many years ago. So she has been framing and decorating the living room. I’ll take some closer-up pictures of them soon.

The little bed is at eye level with the wood stove, which it faces directly. It’s very comfy and Amie loves it for her retreat. The intention is, on cold winter days, to all of us be together in the living room, which will be the warmest place in the house. I like that idea of life contracting to a warm, cozy core as winter takes hold of everything around us.

It seems I’m no longer writing in my (analog) journal. Don’t know why, but in any case I am jotting down Amie’s sayings and doings on pieces of paper here and there. Here’s an effort to preserve them.

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Amie had to have four shots at her four-year well-visit. We did two during that visit, and the two other ones a few weeks ago – the day before school started, actually. Each time Amie jealously guarded the tiny round bandaids that covered the puncture wounds. In the bath and shower she screamed, wanting to keep them dry. When one was hanging on by a thread and DH pulled it off, she became hysterical. We could never quite figure out why. It was a mystery, until today.

When she saw that the last banaid was coming half off, she started crying.

- Does it hurt?

- No.

- Then why are you crying?

- I want to go to school!

?

- Aaah, I see. But you just need the shot to go to school, the medicine. Not the bandaid.

Glad that’s solved. The connections they make!

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(In the first drawing Mama is upside down because she is lying down on the bed and Amie is sitting on top of the door with a cat. The second drawing is of a Mama and Baba fish and their tadpole children. The other two are self-evident.)

Amie reiterated this morning that she wants to be an artist – she’s been practicing. DH asked her if she didn’t want to be what he is.

- What am I, again? he asked.

- A new scientist, she said. I don’t want to be a new scientist, but an artist, like Thhaam (grandmother).

(DH is a neuroscientist.)

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We were having lunch when she suddenly said to me:

- Mama, when you were a little kid you were much older than I was.

- But when I was four years old, I was four, right? Same as you?

- Of course. Everyone has to be four years old at some point, after they’re three.

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More about time. One day she also came to me to ask me, out of the blue:

- Mama, this day has never been, right? This time has never been before?

I told her the truth. I would have quoted her Jim Harrison, but kept it for later:

“We think of life as a solid and are haunted

when time tells us it is a fluid”

This must be the tenth time I read The Road Home. I love that voice.

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We’re having a lovely Sunday. We got up at 10 (Amie loves to sleep in and we oblige) for our Sunday tradition (week 5) of DH and Amie making waffles/crepes. Then while listening to seventies music we munched and read, drew, sewed and surfed the net. Then we cleaned up the kitchen after last night’s party (we had a three-course feast with fish stew and risotto for ten). I finished the apple peel jelly (*) while DH chopped wood and Amie played outside in the newly warm weather. Then I split some more wood – I’m getting pretty good with the splitting maul. All this in our pajamas. Now we’re relaxing with a glass of wine, and soon we’ll have our dinner of leftovers.

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(*) It was a bit of a chaotic business. First of all, the recipe in the Backwoods Home Magazine didn’t mention how many 1/2 pints the 5 cups of apple peel juice make. I doubled the recipe (and still have about 5 cups of juice left) and found I needed more than the 12 1/2 pints I had prepared. In fact, I had a whole quart jar left over (pic), for which there was no room in the canner. The recipe also didn’t mention to stir constantly while you let it boil hard for that one minute – I only found that out when reading another jelly recipe. I didn’t stir it at all… I remember our utter disappointment one winter when we opened the first jar of my mom’s home-canned crabapple jelly and found it still liquid, as well as the next, and the next…

Amie cans a quart of water

The Indian summer came, went, and came again. Last Friday we hit 37 F – cutting it pretty close – but yesterday it was 70F. It’s going to get cold again soon, though.

Plant. Moved (replanted) the 2 rhubarb plants, because in the end we chose their first bed as one of the beds to be covered by our winter hoop house. Planted 50 or so garlic cloves (3 varieties) next to the rhubarb. Sowed peas and planted onion sets for overwintering and early spring germination in outside beds. I’m investigating more winter sowing in containers here.

some onions at least made it to scallion stage, the celery is thin but tasty, the carrots are small but super sweet

Harvest. From plants still going strong: Swiss chard, kale, peas, green beans, potatoes, parsley, basil, scallions, carrots and all the culinary herbs. Last ones: cucumber, eggplant, cherry tomatoes. Pulled most of the celery for mirepoix (with own and Farmers Market carrots and Farmers Market onions).

Mirepoix in the Dutch oven

Preserve. 6 quarts of green beans, 3 pints of pickled cucumbers, 6 pints of peach pie filling  making the (preliminary) total of jars to 101… PLUS (just in) 5 pints of Caribbean peach chutney – and that’s the end of the peaches. So 106. Froze 5 lbs of mirepoix (I first cook it in butter, until just soft; I just love chopping it up; and I could cook it every day just for the smell of it). Froze 2 quarts of vegetable stock made form scrap (mainly celery leaves).

Waste not. We had a largish party, during which I was planning to do an experiment: I was going to set out paper napkins and cloth napkins and see which were most popular. Then I noticed I was out of paper napkins, so cloth it was, and the defunct experiment was the talk of the evening. We also used metal cutlery and recycled and compostable paper plates. The ashes from the 7-hour ribs went into a ash-bin for the compost and soil improvement. Filling a large bag of veggie “waste” (e.g., celery leaves) in the fridge: once I have enough I’ll make veggie broth and freeze or can it. For the rest, we continue on with our usual stuff.

Want not. Bought more canning jars (for some reason there weren’t many 8 oz jars in my Freecycle/Craig’s List hauls) – they were on sale this time. Our toothpaste was on sale too, so now we have enough for a year. But nothing else. It’s pathetic – I really want to be better prepared, for flu or power outage or whatever, but my self pep talks on the issue fizzle out so fast. I wish I had a buddy nearby to do this with.

Build community food systems. Chatted with farmers at the Market, getting on a first name basis and getting nice discounts too – I never ask for them, and when they’re offered, I always ask: “Are you sure? I know it’s not easy for you…” Some tell me about how they are just scraping by, and I also get to see how competition among the farmers at the market plays out. It’s very educational. I also went to a Transition Town meeting, and local food is of course a large part of Transition (more on that later).

100% homegrown "shepherd's pie" filling, to be topped with homegrown potato mash

Eat the food. Ate most out of the garden and whatever is left over from canning – one evening when it was just Amie and I, I had only green beans for dinner, almost an entire quart of them. Amie was so impressed: how can anyone eat so many vegetables!? We’ve eaten nothing from our canned stores yet: it will be special, cracking open that first jar.

"See, I can do this, Mama, because I've seen how you do it!"

Amie’s drawing is becoming more complex and colorful every day. Something must have pushed her onwards. It’s amazing! Let’s see if Mama can keep up with the developments this time. Click on the pics to see them larger and also go to the Flickr set with Amie’s art work to see tags and notes; also visit the Drawing as it Develops page for the history of Amie’s drawing since she could hold a pen.

Amie and Mama in the garden with bumblebee, ladybug / with birds and clouds and a big watering can, and flowers

Amie in the garden (the bumblebees and ladybugs for some reason all have eye stalks, like snails) / Amie and Mama in the garden holding hands.

Amie swimming (on top) in the water with fish and shark with big teeth.

Top to botton: a rainbow, a rocket ship, a horse.