Sozlet stories

Everybody at school seems to be doing better with better weather and more recess. Plus J (problematic kid) was sitting at sozlet's table for a while and evidently really calmed down over the course of that. They've moved again to different tables but she says he's still doing way better than he was.

One continuing problem is J2, a girl. J2 really wants to be sozlet's friend. She doesn't quite know how though and tends towards bossiness. Sozlet doesn't like that very much. J2 gets antsy if she feels like sozlet's mad at her and gets more bossy/ critical, and on it goes.

The other day sozlet's best friend was out sick, and sozlet and J2 started a "foot fight." I was a little concerned, sounded like it could be acrimonious, but sozlet assured me it was fun and also that J2 started it. (J2 is usually reserved/ "proper" and gets annoyed at sozlet's more tomboyish/ spazzy tendencies, so that was a bit out of character in a good way.) Then after they were "foot fighting" for a while they each noticed and admired each others' shoes. I laughed and said "well I'm glad you found something to bond over." She replied, "If there's one thing girls can bond over, it's fashion."

Time to go to the library and get those "Sex and the City" DVDs for her.

E.G.: "Did you really tell your friends that my beard is infested with fleas?"

Sozlet: <nods sheepishly>

E.G.: <proudly> "That's my girl...!"

Last Sunday I thought of Sozlet as I unpacked one of my last boxes from Germany. In the box were my old Konrad Lorenz books.

Is Konrad Lorenz a household name in America? In Germany, he's a classic. Lorenz is one of the two founders of ethology, the comparative study of animal behavior. And he wrote plenty of popular books on animal behavior that are suitable for intelligent children. Any child who likes Gerald Durrell should like Konrad Lorenz, assuming the translator has done a reasonably competent job. I read Man Meets Dog when I was about Sozlet's current age, and The Year of the Greylag Goose when it came out a year or two later. I'm reading them again now, and they really are excellent books.

Just mentioning it in case Sozlet's "to read" pile runs low.

Ah, good one!

Yeah, I read the goose book(s?) when I was a kid.

She's been looking for books on my "nature" shelf ("Frosty: A Raccoon To Remember" was a particular favorite), I don't think I have any of the Lorenz books though.

She's been tearing through "A Series of Unfortunate Events" at roughly a book a day (that slowed when she started camp). She's on chapter 10 of the 13th (and last) book of the series (each book has 13 chapters) and she's starting to get depressed about it ending soon. I have "Little House on the Prairie" cued up, hopefully she'll like that and then can tear through the Little House series.

But she's at the age where finding a perfectly sunny/shady, cool/warm, indoor/outdoor reading spot and then diving into a book for hours is one of her favorite things to do. (I'm happy with that on several different levels.) So I definitely need to have a bunch of books ready to get her through the summer, thanks for the recommendation. And keep 'em coming! (There is some reading group thing that she signed up for -- a paper chart that indicates how many hours you've read, then prizes at intervals. She signed up last week. It's supposed to be for the whole summer. She's already filled it up. )

I believe I read all the Little House, Nancy Drew, and Trixie Belden books the same summer. Hardy Boys were in there somewhere too.

Duckie has been reading the Golden Compass series (His Dark Materials). It's a bit advanced for him but he gets through it, sometimes reading it again and again. I have a hunch that sozlet is at least as strong a reader as he is and she might enjoy having a crack at it. It might slow her down at least.

Black Beauty, Nancy Drew, Black Stallion series, then, after we moved, in some amazing dearth all the books in my aunt's house, which weren't all that interesting, they being some damn thing, very dry, on Wyatt Earp, and a few Zane Greys.. thus launching my interest in westerns. Oh, and lots of Dickens, tg for Dickens.

Ah, the Black Stallion. There's also My Friend Flicka which had a couple of sequels, and Misty of Chincoteague and its sequel if she likes horse books. I suppose Lord of the Rings isn't in the cards yet. I remember reading it at age 7 and really not getting it. Hmm. There's also The Phantom Tollbooth. I bet she'd like that. I can ask my mother, too. She wasn't a children's librarian but she knows all the biggies.

Excellent recommendations, thanks guys!

I remembered I had a thread just about book recommendations, went ahead and revived it:

http://www.able2know.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=97527

Had yet another conversation with a friend about how quickly we forget this stuff, and how happy I am that I've written down what I have, so will try to get back in the swing of things...

Had the idea to do just some sort of snapshots, three vignettes or observations per category (sleeping, eating, etc. -- haven't thought of all the categories yet), just to get myself writing SOMETHING.



Sleeping

Beary is still the star of the show, but two or three other, smaller stuffed animals are extra-special ones that earn a sleeping berth. The smaller ones were always disappearing between the bed and the wall or in folds of the blankets, though, so she tied them all together and now sleeps with this single fuzzy Beary-Honey-Pekoe-Snowball mass.

*****

The other day I was trying to wake her up for camp and it was just not happening. So sleepy. She had pulled her pink jersey topsheet up to her chin and had it gripped with both hands. I kept trying to wake her up and eventually she stretched her arms over her head, still holding the sheet, so she created two pink batwings.

I said, "Hey, baby bat, it's time to wake up... it's time for camp, little bat... baby bat, wake up!"

She blearily half-opened her eyes and said "Why are you calling me baby bat?"

I explained.

She smiled a little bit, then rolled over and went back to sleep.

I went back to the hectoring, then she opened her eyes again and said, "Mommy bat...?"

I said, "Yes, sweetie?"

She said "No, call me 'baby bat...'"

I said, "Yes, baby bat?"

She opened her mouth, shut it, said, "I forget," and rolled over and went back to sleep.


(Believe it or not, we got to camp on time... barely.)


*****

This reluctance to wake up is actually a net positive, though. I called her my "hearing ear baby" when she was littler, because she was exquisitely sensitive to sound. Until she started first grade, she'd wake up and want to join the party at the drop of a pin. Since getting enough sleep is always really important for her (she gets grumpy, and her immune system seems to really depend on getting enough sleep), that's meant a lot of sneaking around carefully in the mornings to avoid waking up the baby.

She was in half-day, afternoon preschool and then kindergarten, so didn't have to be up early until she started first grade. She just slept until she woke up, pretty much. (And that was usually earlier than I wanted her to wake up.) Then, once we started waking her up before she wanted to wake up (getting her to sleep in time the night before was its own, not-insignificant project), she finally acquired that blocking-things-out capacity that most kids have. Hindsight is 20-20 and all, kind of wish I had figured that out earlier. But it's nice to just clomp and stomp and talk in a normal voice and not have to worry about waking up sleepyhead anymore.

Getting geared up for school? When does it start this year?

School has started, yep!

She's loving it. Her best friend and her back-up best friend are in her class (and there haven't been any tugs-of-war yet, which I was worried about), and her teacher is really fabulous. Sozlet read with her last year so they already know each other.

What I like about this teacher is that she's very teacher-y -- organized, nurturing, etc. -- but has a bit of a macabre streak/ dark sense of humor. Sozlet loves that.

As an early example, the kids were each given pets on the first day of school. Their own individual pets! How sweet. Guess what they are?

Mealworms!



They will be observing the mealworms as they molt and then eventually become beetles. Part of a unit on insects.

But the kids are encouraged to play with the mealworms too -- very hands-on. They decided to do a mealworm circus. Sozlet asked me for ideas on Wednesday for what a mealworm circus would include. I ventured, "a Ferris wheel?" Thursday after school, she said, "so we did the circus and now we're doing an amusement park -- P made a roller coaster, and we have to make the Ferris wheel." Um. OK!

Evidently the teacher is just rolling with it. She seems to appreciate the creativity.

So, we made a mealworm Ferris wheel!




Main materials were Sculpey and wire.

Works pretty good.

The mealworms had a blast on Friday.

(Asked sozlet if she has anything to add, she says):

Some of them were afraid of heights, and some of them were squirming when they got to the top, and some of them were just squirming the whole time, and some of them fell OUT. And some of 'em just sat back and relaxed.

They sound a lot like people, then.

Do they make any sort of a sound?

PS My nephew started school last week. I know I never started school in August when I was a wee jes. But I guess they've gotta do it for anticipated snow days. He just started 8th grade.

Ohmygosh, that Ferris wheel is awesome soz. You'll do excellent when
sozlet needs to build a volcano in a few years in science class. I just showed
Jane the Ferris wheel, and she's mighty impressed too.

Mealworms are certainly a challenge to overcome, but kids usually don't
share our squeamishness towards those kind of creatures. Jane's second
grade teacher had a tarantula as a class pet, and each week one of the kids could take it home (I passed on that one).

Thanks!

Yeah, sozlet LOVES the mealworms. She says she was the only girl who wasn't grossed out. She raised her eyebrows at the tarantula though..!

8th grade already!

Yeah, we always waited until after Labor Day when I was a kid, but I think they have more holidays during the year now. I tend to appreciate those so I'm fine with it overall.

A couple of years ago, they tried moving the start of school here back to September...the day after Labor Day. The schools were trying to save money on air conditioning. (August is our hottest month.)

It didn't work out very well.

The last two weeks of the first semester then fell AFTER the Christmas break instead of before. That meant the semester-end exams were given in the middle of January, after the long break. Despite spending two weeks on reviews, trying to remind the kids what they had learned before the break, test scores were way down. Everyone was unhappy...teachers, administrators, parents and kids. And the kids were even more unhappy when they had to stay in school 'til the first of June to make up for the two weeks they hadn't spent in August.

So we're back to the mid-August to mid-May schedule, and the first semester ends nicely and neatly at Christmas break.

I love it when I get sozlet stories from other people...

She recently went on a field trip. Her friend's dad was a parent volunteer. Part of the field trip was in the company of a naturalist. Sozlet was her sozlet self -- asking tons of questions, chattering about stuff she knew, answering questions when asked, etc. etc. (She loves this stuff -- bugs et al). The naturalist (according to the dad) finally gave her a disbelieving look and said "How old ARE you??" (Evidently she was speaking in a very mature way -- not just the bug facts but vocabulary, etc.)

I used to watch soap operas -- on and off from undergrad through grad school. One thing I noticed is that there were hardly any kids aged 7 to 12 or so. Babies were there. Little adorable tykes were. Then they'd disappear for a while and suddenly reappear as teenagers feeling the first stirrings of luuuurve...

I thought of that when yet again I realized that I've been neglecting this terribly. Thing is, sozlet's just a kid now. She's seven, almost eight. This age isn't necessarily as interesting as when she was littler. She does cute things but the range tends to be narrower -- she messes up less, does incredibly wow things less. She hangs out with her friends, and does well at school, and has gotten really good at carrying on a conversation.

But she doesn't really do as many anecdote-worthy things anymore.

So I think I'm gonna try to get out of that mindset ("What is the latest sozlet-stories-worthy anecdote?") because I do want to keep writing about her, do want to have something to read when she's twenty and I can't quite remember details of what life was like when she was this age.

So -- warning -- this might get more boring!! Will be writing more for my future self than for an audience per se. (I could just write privately but I find that this is easier said than done -- this format seems to get me writing more often.)

Comments welcome as always! Just fair warning...