Sozlet stories

That's great stuff. I can just see the "purple" going off in her head....

Perhaps she needs to take pictures of the dinosaurs to Jones when she wakes up.

:smile:

I think Sozlet will love Douglas Hofstader's Gödel, Escher, Bach once she turns 16. I expect that to happen sometime next year.

More seriously, having mentioned Bach, and speaking as an evil scientist who likes to experiment on other people's little children: Based on the circumstantial evidence I have seen in this thread, I strongly suspect that Sozlet has a gift for classical music. So if your local library has a video/DVD of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, and if you could throw an episode or two at her, I would be curious to learn if they stick, and how she responds to them.

(Finally, I would also predict that Lewis Carrol will be a big hit with her -- but this seems too easy a prediction to bother making.)

That's really interesting timing, Thomas! Yesterday, we were hanging out with friends at a playground that has a sort of a giant xylophone. Sozlet and another kid were whacking at it. I wasn't paying much attention. The friend I was talking to paused mid-sentence, listening, and said, "Hey, they're pretty good!" She said they were both doing interesting melodic stuff, not just plain whacking.

We have a toy piano and a xylophone and a harmonica and such, and she plays with them, but yesterday I realized I have absolutely no idea about her skill level, the way I do when she draws or whatever. So was *just* thinking hey, I should do something about that.

(Hey Bill! :-))

I mentioned on Boomer's "Darth Vader" thread that sozlet was saying that she wanted a witch party for her birthday party. The problem is a) I was 99% ready for a dress-up tea party of the kind she had last year (including a vast quantity of silk flowers bought at 90% off), and b) it feels weird to me to have a witch party (which is, in her description, basically a Halloween party) nearly a month after Halloween.

I was trying to negotiate with her, figure out how this would work. She was describing something with a lot of black, spiderwebs, scary noises, and some kind of witch's brew. I said rather plaintively, "but, what about all those flowers?" She thought for a minute and then said, "OK, this is what we can do. We can have a graveyard. And that's where we can put the flowers."

Great.

I think the problem is that her best friend had a birthday party about a month ago that was a near-replica of sozlet's last year. Sozlet is (ahem) NOT a conformist (more on that in a bit).

I was just trying to think of another female not-cutesy archetype and asked her if she wanted to have a rock star party. THAT she liked. Hmmm. We'll see. Not much time left, though...

Meanwhile, on non-conformity:

I observed in class a couple of weeks ago (the Friday before she got sick.) SOOOoooo fascinating. One thing that was really interesting was the dynamics between her and about 4 other girls who she was playing with; her best friend, another good friend, and a couple more girls. They were in the "climbing room", a room with various types of play equipment where they can basically go hog-wild.

They were all playing in a free-form way and then something started to coalesce about puppies. All the other girls started to be puppies, but sozlet didn't want to. She was kind of doing her own thing but they were all following her and being puppies -- trying to lick her, jumping on her, etc. Then it became a competition -- which puppy would she choose to be her pet? They all were asking "who do you like best?/ who's your favorite?" She was being very diplomatic; "You're ALL my favorite." This went on for a while, with her being the center of attention from the pack of "puppies."

Then a little boy grabbed some computer game that was on the floor -- evidently it belonged to one of the "puppies", and she got upset and went over and told him not to play with it. The teacher said something about, if you bring something like this to school, it makes sense that other kids want to play with it. Maybe everyone can have a short turn? The girl was resistant, but then everyone started jumping up and down and saying me me me me -- except sozlet, who was starting to go off to do something else. The girl said, "sozlet can have the first turn." She was surprised, but went ahead and played with it for a while. Then the girl changed her mind and took it back.

Sozlet shrugged and went off to do something else while the kids continued to clamor over the computer game/ jockey for a turn. (I had an interpreter, which rocked in terms of catching what the kids were saying, but also helped separate me from what was going on as I was just standing there in the corner watching the terp.) She started playing with some foam mats, making a little cage out of them. Then, by herself, she started to act like a puppy in the cage. Arfing and stuff.

Then some of the original "puppies" left the computer game thing and came over and she, as a puppy, ran away from them. They, as humans, ran after her. Then that became the new game -- she was the puppy and the other girls who had been puppies were humans, and they all tried to catch her and put her in the cage she made. Same dynamic both times, one of her and a pack of them.

Really interesting to watch, I love this stuff.

(OK, I made her one of the garlands/ crowns I planned to make for all of the birthday party attendees and she LOVES it, so I think the original plans are back on. Whew. I actually like a lot of things about the witch party idea but the date we'd selected for the party was Nov. 19th and I'm way too whupped and have way too much to do to start from scratch! I'll be sure to consult her more before planning the party next year, don't think I did that enough this year.)

Could they be fairies? Lots of flower possibilities, and pretty girly too. Wings, wands, pixie dust... just a thought.

Yep! That's the basics of the party last year. Sozlet has a lot of dress-up outfits and a lot (3 pairs, I think) of wings. Other kids brought their own outfits, but they all ended up some variation of princesses/ fairies.

Basic format of party is:

Go up to her room, where lots of dress-up stuff is laid out -- not just dresses but wings, shoes, jewelry, and then this year the garlands/ crowns. (You know, like a circlet of flowers and leaves that goes on your head, with ribbons hanging down the back.) The kids can keep those. Play around with getting dressed for a while. I may do face painting then too, not sure. (6 of 'em, may take too long.)

Then downstairs for various games/ silliness.

Then food.

Then presents.

Then goody-bags.

Then bye-bye.

Another one I'd meant to note, that she has this new diplomacy streak that's interesting. For example, I made her bed in a new way (more/ different pillows), and also laid out her pajamas for her to put them on before bed. I sent her up to see what I'd done and to put on her pajamas. She came down and with a very serious expression said, "Mama, thanks for the surprise, I like it. -sigh, pause - But you know that I don't like those pajamas...!" (6 months ago it would've been straight to the wrong pajamas part.) (And by the way she's doing something that both E.G. and I did as kids and we've talked about here before -- I think dag, piffka and ehBeth were part of this club, though I'm not sure -- the whole thing about socks tickling/ being too loose and annoying. That's what she has against that pair of pajamas, too, they're a little to big and bother her.)

We measure naps by animal size -- cat naps are say 30 minutes, then dog naps are longer, rat naps are shorter, etc.

Today on the way to ballet class she asked if she could fall asleep in the car. I said well we're almost there, but sure. Got there, turned off ignition, she opened one eye and said with great irritation, "that wasn't even a WORM nap!!!"

The other one, forgot when I came to write down the above:

We went to vote, and E.G. had told us that when he went (earlier today) there had been a bake sale on the premises, so I used that to lure sozlet who wasn't enthused about accompanying me to vote. We got there and didn't see any evidence of a bake sale -- I directed her to go ask one volunteer who didn't seem busy where it was. She did so, and I didn't see what she said exactly (back was turned) but volunteer said sympathetically, sorry, the bake sale has closed. Sozlet said (turning on her heel a bit as she did so I saw it, and ending up with a sad look at me), "Oh, maaaaan!" Volunteer stifled a giggle and reached for evidently one of her own two cupcakes she'd gotten at the sale earlier, and gave it to a very grateful sozlet.

She has a Little Pony or Pretty Pony or whatever they're called that has a magnet in one of its hooves. I noticed she'd often put it on her doorknob but never really thought anything of it, thought it was just the only metal in her room.

It turns out that she puts it there every night so she can see in the morning if E.G. has checked on her yet. Every morning on his way out he opens her door, turning the handle, and that's enough to dislodge the pony. So she can tell by where the pony is if he's checked on her yet (which for some reason, she wants to know).

I thought that was cool.

Every now and then she goes beyond giggle fits into total laugh attacks -- just had one a bit ago. She was nattering on about some imaginary friends of hers, one of whom was named Maryann. In the middle of a sentence, she coughed, so the name came out "Mary-*coff*". I said, oh, Mary-*coff*, that's a nice name, and she went into paroxyms of laughter. Everytime she'd calm down I'd say another variation -- "I think I'm going to name our next pet Mary-*coff*" -- and she'd be off again. Eventually she clutched her heart and gave me a stricken look, while continuing to laugh, and I stopped long enough for her to catch her breath and say "I was laughing so much it made my heart hurt!!" But then once she was back to normal, she started it up again, and there was another 20 minutes' worth or so of increasingly wacky "Mary-*coff*" jokes.

We're weird.

Weird but wonderful.

My Little Pony!

Well, that's kind of how Richard Feynman got started. Remember his burglar alarm? ("Surely you're Joking" --> "He fixes radios by thinking!") There are worse things for a mother to say about her daughter.

Heh! Kinda...!

DrewDad, I have a feeling that one or more My Little Ponies reside in Casa del DrewCuties...

First one is scheduled to be brought by Santa in late December.

Ah! That's where hers came from, too. (Well, Santa's helpers anyway, Grandmas and such.) Caution -- they replicate in mysterious ways.

Lots and lots of stuff from Chicago trip that I'll try to get down later, but this just happened:

One thing we did on the trip was go to Naperville, first time back since we moved. It was something I'd talked to sozlet about all the way through, that while we were moving away we would still be able to go back to visit. It was a good day, we did this and that, one highlight was that we went to the big sledding hill (lots of snow there!). I had brought along her sled in the car as a rest-stop activity for the drive there and back, which worked out really well.

So we sledded for a while, lots of fun, then it was time to go but sozlet was cradling a wedge of snow (too cold for the snow to stick together in snowballs, it was just a naturally-occurring chunk) and wouldn't give it up. She really wanted to bring it back to Columbus. I explained that we didn't have a way to transport it back, it would melt. She said that was OK -- even if it was water, it would still be special Naperville water.

So I stuffed it into an empty cup we had in the car, and we brought it back.

Just now she said that she wanted to drink some of the special Naperville water, and that it would give her powers. She had a sip, and came back to me with wide eyes saying that the power was spreading throughout her whole body! She's pretty happy about it. She's saving the rest of it for later.

Not sure what's up with all of that, but seems an interesting way to process the move and homecoming. She definitely had a hard time when we were there. I kept asking her if she recognized things, and she kept not recognizing them, and getting more and more disturbed. The first thing she recognized was our old house, but she thought it looked really different. (It didn't -- a bit shabbier, perhaps -- but the block has changed incredibly, so glad we're out of there. In the last 2 years, 50% of the cool old houses on that block have been torn down and replaced with McMansions.)

Anyway, she was definitely on edge the whole time we were there, though sledding was a big hit. The weather was amazing, very cold but the sun came out, so pristine white snow, the little lake to one side, the river to the other, tons of trees, dark blue sky beyond that where there were still clouds, gorgeous.

Just asked what powers the water gave her. Her answer:

- The power to stay healthy
- The power to not barf
- The power to learn how to read

I need to get me some of that Naperville water....





Go Sozlet!

that is great..