where i'm from

ny street fair

we are in the big apple

end this joke contest

a sea captain, a gypsy, and a naked guy walk into a bar. . .

[I just heard a short clip of Tom Waits on Letterman in 2002, and it made me happy to hear his humorous stories. Inspiring this quirky post.]

summer 09

relief

The rain. Yes. The rain.

Animoto.com

Love for the Papa

Here's a new video.

no fear

Engaging in the most thoughtful questions these days, my son is constantly trying to figure out the world. I realize that at times the discourse in schools has griped me in fear. I admit that I worried and even succumbed to sending him to a program that has not been as creative as I would like. I am going to be more of an in your face kind of advocate now. I promise to let my ideals for him propel the type of programs or schools he attends.

waffle obsession

The food of choice these days are waffles with almond butter. We have to limit them. Seriously.

This morning M drew a waffle on his teacher appreciation card for one of his teachers. Beautifully classic.

favorites

Recycling is a new thing here. Marcello says that his favorite food is cheese. His favorite color is red mixed with green (brown). He likes the mouse as his favorite animal because it is smaller.

love that boy

I love that boy like the earth loves the sun

Tamers!

These are round and fruity frozen sweets that M ate in California. They come in different flavors from what I understand. Some are banana with ice on the front and banana on the back. Others are purple in the back and ice on the front. They are also blue in the drawings.

who knew--singing in after school

M is now in a multi-age after school care at a wonderful woman's home. She said, "Marcello has been enjoying the kids and visa versa. We are all enjoying his singing. He is definitely not shy and will join in."
I love to hear this!

knowing through drama, modes of thinking and knowing

I found an old note I had written about Marcello in July 2007 on a trip to the Dominican Republic when he was less than 3 years old. It reads:

What are we to do to get to the child's experience. Always an interpretation of children's acts unless we know the performer well or parents or both. I asked Marcello, "Do you want more apple juice?" "Ice cream!" Imaginative play feeds the soul of my son. He was talking about me making him another playdough ice cream cone.

Two interesting things about this are that he does things again and again, acting them out. Also, his mode of learning is related to getting into something completely. I saw the same thing today when we got home. He took off his shoe in the elevator and told me we were going into the ocean and needed our shoes off. The carpet in the building hallway was the ocean for the rest of the day. He would stay, "It's cold!" "Get on the boat!" and other instructions to me. I told him I had my boat shoes on. He commits to something and decides to master it. This passion and flow is perhaps what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi talks about. I am not sure as I have not read him yet. I just know that we get into things in periods and that thing takes off. Last year it was chicka chicka boom boom for a while, as you can see with earlier posts.

costumes

Space Ship

We spent the morning playing with Buzz and making him a ship from an old Annie's mac and cheese box. We covered it with foil and decorated it with wings and drawings. To infinity and beyond. . .The best part is how he fits in it just perfectly with his helmet made out of an apple juice bottle.

recent activity

Relations with adults and the balance of power and attachment seem to have shifted with the five nights I spent away in Philly and CA. M is now asking for his daddy's help with everything from the potty companionship to nighttime routines. Yesterday on the way to a playdate, he cried because his daddy was at work. He has spent intensive time with him, and I believe that made it more likely for him to want his attention and companionship. I was fascinated, but I was a little taken aback that he didn't seem to miss me that much, especially as compared with other times we've been separated.

Likes
M continues to have a preference for sweet foods, and he likes goldfish and juice for a snack. His favorite color is blue at the moment. He also often has a favorite number, but this usually changes quickly. This week his job is to pick out a song and he told me yesterday the name (I can't remember but it sounded intriguing). He loves to play with friends, and he enjoyed our playdate. Lately, as you can see in the last posting, he talks about dates and opposites, like hot and cold. Yesterday, he and his friend put together a bunch of connecting opposite words. I guess this affinity started with a song that is a pop song "Your hot and your cold" and we extended this with other examples. He also loves this dinosaur book that he and his dad made up a song for. He sings "I don't like you" as the triceratops and said that his eggs was poo poo. Another recent joke was to add "poo poo in his farty" to the title of the book I read and in addition to other lines as I read the story.

Dislikes
He still does not like medicine and doctors. He will recoil at me zipping his coat because I accidentally zipped his chin a little one day when he was recoiling his head down. He doesn't like waking up in the morning some days, and he often does not want to go to bed. He hates to have his nails cut. Again, he seems to remember not liking the process of getting them cut.

A recent kind of drawing has been Buzz and Buzz and Woody. The Buzz always has appropriate headgear, his helmet down. Interesting because on his doll he also had to put tape to show the helmet. He really wants a doll that has wings, and we had previously constructed wings and taped them to the doll. When he draws him, he has a very exact image of how he wants the wings to be. I was helping him, and he did not want a certain type/shape of wing so we had to start over.

Sometimes he is very descriptive with his words. An orange squirting was like it spit it out or something like that (I can't remember now, but the words he picked were poetic--I should have written it down).

Recently, on a playdate with a slightly older friend the two were drawing together (a favorite activity for both) and M created a style of drawing that resembled his friend's. It had a strong outline of the shape of an "s" with the inside colored every color of marker he had. This he labeled "the Aogot" and put an arrow pointing to the part he was going to click (like the cursor on a computer)--neither one of those aspects were like his friend's drawing. Since then, he has created a similar drawing. He likes to invent words sometimes and then define them as in "that means" such and such telling me.

When I think about words that describe M humorous and deliberate come to mind. He is a good person to keep a long standing joke. Like when a friend kidded him that they were going to have stinky cheese for dinner, he continued to bring that back. He likes to laugh and make others laugh too. He also tends to have an image in his mind of how he wants things to be. Before he could write letters he directed me to make certain ones. Now he sometimes asks for me to draw for him before he takes on a new subject. At first, given my process oriented style, I recoiled at this. Then I realized after doing it collaboratively a few times, he sort of apprentices himself into learning how to draw it as he envisions it.

decode it if you can

Aqrghje Cthjk hot hun hki
gyujl yjkp jhu cold mkl jko
gyuhh April 3RD UJNMB JKM
CVBH
JNM/
MJU GHUGF
GNH GYHB

ladybugs and mobiles

Today M has been celebrating Valentine's day. In anticipation he made some valentines for his teachers and friends. He brought home a whole bunch of goodies including a beautiful card and present for us. We thought the soaps were candies and both actually attempted a bite. Yuck. We like the windup ladybug one of his teachers gave him and a gorgeous mobile he made. We are loving the way he continues to say, "Mama, I love you," in a monotone voice and then throws himself on me. I heart my boys.

Remembering Marion

Marion Frances Macon Falchi was born in Queens and moved a whole lot in her lifetime. Yesterday was my mom's birthday, so I am going to reflect a bit on her story. She spent a couple of years at a "good job" at Bell Labs before going back to school to teach. She started teaching in NYC, but, after a while, she was tired of the subways and remembered the trip she had taken to visit her aunt in California. She moved there as a young, single woman and met my dad at a young Catholics group. They got married and moved to Nebraska, where he was studying for a doctorate. I guess he got ABD and then my brother was born. He got a teaching job at a small university in Ohio, and they moved there, where I was born. Flash forward a couple of states later and we were in Missouri after a tour of Michigan and Minnesota. It was so small town. She must have had us sit and say rosaries enough to get my dad a job a UCLA. Glad to be back to California, she taught in a Catholic school--my class--for 2 years! Yes, a nun came along and wanted the 5th grade, so she was bumped up to 6th. We survived and she was even my principle in 8th. That was after she and my dad had split up and she had to support the family. It wasn't much of a living as a teacher, so we moved to a small house behind the church. I went to work after schools cooking for the 9 nuns. Thus, I learned too much about the church. I knew details about the priests and nuns that did not improve my opinions about the church's wealth and hypocrisy of how women are treated. So I continued at Catholic high school on a scholarship but also became a bit of a bad girl. My mom was always there for me though even though it was stressful. We shared a room with a bookcase between our beds until my aunt helped me to fix up our garage and I moved out there. I had about half the garage and my own key! I painted and my mom would knock on the wall every night to say goodnight. I wonder about how much she knew. By then, I had been sneaking out for years with friends. We managed, and I moved to go to school; she continued to live in LA. Eventually, she bought a condo. My brother moved back from NY and moved in for a bit. She eventually nudged him to move out on his own. She traveled. She read, and she knew how to laugh. As for work, she start to work downtown in the central offices of the schools. Her best friend is now the head of all elementary schools. In those days, they taught teacher, principals, and secretaries workshops. She knew how the schools worked and what a difference it meant to be living in poverty from first hand experience. Although she started to make a better living, she always lived simply. Her trips were sometimes educational ones, where she would learn about opera or other topics. Looking back at lectures she planned when she taught teachers in a college, I realize how smart and sassy she really was--Freire, Illich--she talked about people I am reading about now.

update on the boy

height: 45 inches (I think!)
weight: 46 pounds
languages: English and Spanish, sometimes invented
new passion: calendars, months of the year
bedtime: ?
favorite color: brown and cold pink
favorite foods: alphabet soup, pizza, croissants (we were at a park once and some mom gave them to her kids--go figure)
favorite character: Froggy
wants to be: letterman
stinkiest people: doctors

going out to Bklyn today

To visit new mama Sarah and her little baby, Raya.

To bring orange juice, 2 grapefruits, root medley, lentils and brown rice.

Welcome Kingsley Nolin and Raya Martine!

The image is Vive l'amour by artist Niki de Saint Phalle.

truths, realities, and knowledge

I am curious about the way that we get information and use it. Some ways are considered so much more "truthy" than others. For example, I am able to speak with a neurologist and get some information from her about my son's brain if she has scanned it with a EEG. However, the same neurologist may not know about speech and language development in a practical sense, and so she may not know how to best support language development. When did we (Westerners) become so specialized? The person who believes in animism sees the same person in an entirely different light.

My sense is that even though we can study and know, there are no absolute truths just as there are infinite realities. Knowing does not make your truth equally compelling. It is also who you are, in relationship and how you present your knowledge. How your truth resonates in what contexts is worth thinking about.