Random Bullets of Curious Girl

• There's a sign on Curious Girl's door tonight, a sign she dictated to me during dinner, for use later in the evening:

The Noodle Girl is sleeping, because her belly is full from all the noodles

Kitsune udon, to be precise. She and a friend just couldn't stop eating at dinner, and I am just loving it. Her friend's grandparents, who first met her when we were doing 5 tube feedings a day, couldn't believe it either.

• Conversation while driving home from the synagogue this morning:

Curious Girl: "I love Baby Jesus."
Me: "Hmm....you love Baby Jesus? Um, what do you like about Baby Jesus?"
Curious Girl: "That she's so cute."

• She's ready for the Super Bowl. She wore three layers of Giants gear today.
  
  
  

Five Years and Two Days

I never liked the term Gotcha Day to mark the anniversary of adoption--it's too informal, too grasping, too cut-and-dried to make sense of the complications of adoption and family. We call it Family Day, although we've never been sure how to celebrate it. The first year, think we made a point of watching some video we'd shot on the first day we met Curious Girl (but then I left it in the VCR and something recorded over part of it, which caused me great trauma, although we eventually found another copy that is whole). We made a dinner with food from CG's homeland (which she didn't eat, having a feeding tube at the time). Another year, we had a friend over. We've never really settled on a ritual. I've read that some families have very particular celebrations (like presenting the child with a gift from their homeland every year), but we've never come up with much of anything.

This year, we didn't do much of anything. Politica is away--although we had talked about the fact that she would miss family day at home--and somehow, I think we lost track of what the date is. Maybe that's OK: I'm still not sure exactly what we're celebrating. There's so much loss wrapped up in her early months, and I'm very aware of that as I think back on our time with her in her orphanage.

I love December and January, though. They remind me of that most magical period in 2002-2003, when we learned about Curious Girl, started making travel plans, and met her. When we went to court, when we held her, when we dressed her. Every day, I marvel at her: her language, her self-awareness, her joy. I treasure the unfolding relationship we have, the steps she takes toward independence, the snuggles she wants in the morning and at night, the sling she still wants to ride in when she's sad or scared, the books she shares with me, the art and letters she makes. I love the way she can talk about adoption, heartbreaking as it sometimes can be. In December, when her class put on a play, she asked "Will [my birthparents] be there?" I explained that no, they wouldn't, which led to a series of questions and comments about whether they had our phone number and if they could come to visit. The other day, she was trying to explain that she knew more things than a younger friend did. I pointed out that younger friend could do a lot, knew a lot. "But he doesn't know about orphanages," she said. Not that she remembers hers directly, but I did allow as he didn't know much about orphanages, having been born to his mother.

Judges made Politica and me mothers, legally. But Curious Girl makes us mothers over, and over, every day. And for five years and two days, it's been an honor and a privilege--I wake up every morning wanting more.

And City Books!

When I dropped Curious Girl off at school today, we read the board together. In her responsive classroom, there's always an interactive part to the morning message, and today's was "Name one thing you find in a city." Her classroom is heading into a unit on cities, which will culminate in Mini City, where each 4/5 classroom opens 4-5 stores and the children alternate between being shoppers and being shopkeepers. On the final of the three mini city days, it's open doors among the 3 classrooms and the little shoppers can go anywhere! Last year, CG's classroom had a jewelry shop, a pet shop, and the Lookin' Good Salon, where you could get a shave, manicure, makeover, and hair cut.

So I'm also thinking about city books for the spring. I'll check out Elswhere's great list in her comment on the prior post, and maybe push back The Chicken Chasing Queen for later in the spring. Knuffle Bunny Too, which CG is pushing for this week, does have a multicultural friendship developing (not to give too much away!). I also like Music Over Manhattan for its cityscapes; I'll check out Ezra Jack Keats' work, too, as it's set in cities.

But now, off to work, where I'm working on an essay about teaching English. Time for some writing of my own!

My Wednesday Book Club

Edited to add a book I forgot--and check out the great suggestions in the comments!

Edited again to add: Mo Willems (now the Geisel winning, Caldecott Honor winning author) has a blog.

S. asked in a recent commet how my reading went last week. Every Wednesday, I have lunch with Curious Girl and her 15 classmates, and after lunch, I read them a story. This didn't start as a regular pattern, although I do try to go and have lunch once a week at her Posh Progressive School (tons of tuition, and she gets free lunch everyday, and so do I anytime I want to join them. Plus free school pictures. Such a deal!). Sometime in September, we'd been reading Borya and the Burps, and CG asked me to come to school and read it to her friends. Sure thing, I said. Then we were reading another book at home, and she asked me to read again. The teachers love it, and I love it, and now the girls think that any parent who comes to the classroom after lunch is going to read to them--they automatically sit on the mat for storytime. I love that part.

So I've been having a ball thinking about what books to read with them. So far, we've read

• Borya and the Burps, by Joan McNamara (and we also looked at a few pages of CG's baby pictures from her orphanage--this book is a wonderful story about a burpy boy who gets adopted in an Eastern European story; it really captures some of the emotions an infant can feel during all that transition)
• Library Lion, by Michelle Knudsen, who has a blog (a great book for people who love books: what's not to like about a lion who loves to go to the library, and has to learn that sometimes, it's OK to break the rules)
  
• Jessica, by Kevin Henkes (who is rapidly becoming one of my very favorite authors)
  
• The Adventures of Polo, by Regis Faller (a graphic novel for kids!)
  
• The Trouble with Chickens, by Bruce McMillan (on his author site, select Books at left and the Trouble with Chickens will come up in the right frame--scroll down and you'll get interesting links to the amazing illustrator's work--Gunnella. He does a lot of work in Iceland)
  
• Knut: How One Little Polar Bear Captured the World, by Craig Hartikoff. A true story! And CG got to share the Knut stuffed bear we got near the Knut exhibit last summer
  
• The Apple Doll, by Elsa Kleven (it has directions for making an apple doll at the back, and it's a great story about a girl and the rough start to a school year and how imagination saves the day)
  
• The Quiltmaker's Gift, by Jeff Brumbeau
  
• Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Martin
• Miss Bridie Chose a Shovel, by Leslie Connor
  

and perhaps a few other titles as well--like Chester's Way, another Henkes title. The girls are a wonderful audience--they are wiggly squiggly, of course, but they clearly love our reading time. When I arrive at the lunch table, several of them ask "What book did you bring today?" I usually try to have some kind of interactive portion of the reading (during Jessica, for example, they got to be an antiphonal chorus, half of them being the parents saying "There is no Jessica" and the other half responding, "But there was.") Or I'll ask them to look for things on the page, or to predict what a character might do next, or how someone might be feeling. Curious Girl handles the questions and comments at the end (3 or 4 participants), and it's so cool how they all raise their hands to tell everyone what they liked or to respond to whatever question I've posed. Last week, as I closed The Quiltmaker's Gift, one girl exclaimed, 'That is the BEST book! I love all the pages!!" I just don't see that kind of enthusiasm spilling out in college classes.

I'm a teacher, so I"m always looking for activity tie-ins. For Snowflake Bentley--the true story, gorgeously illustrated with Mary Azarian's woodcuts, of the man whose photographs of snowflakes are the basis of the first scientific study of snow crystals--I brought them all a piece of black construction paper. If you keep it in the freezer, and take it out when it's snowing, you'll be able to see the snow crystals on the paper. The different shapes are truly amazing. We also looked at online images from his collection (click on any image to embiggen). As the girls said, "Hey, that one looks like a snowflake!" (when it had that what-you-think-a-snowflake-looks-like-shape) but for others, "a flower!" and other shapes. Even if you think you know that snow crystals are unique, you'll be amazed at what you see.

Last week, after the Quiltmaker's Gift, I cut up some scrapbooking paper into squares, rectangles, and triangles, and the girls all made paper quilts the next morning at choice time. I have been working on more ways to get scissors, crayons, and coloring opportunities into my writing courses in college, too, but the crafty possibilities are endless with the preschool set. I also decided to try having them help me read--when we did Polo, I had each girl read through one two page spread. They didn't hold each others' attention as well as my reading does, but I liked encouraging everyone to come up and read.

As I've been thinking about this post, I realized my list of books has mostly white protagonists, so I'm going to make some extra efforts to diversify my selections for the spring readings. Next week, we'll be reading The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County, by Janice N. Harrington. Tonight at home, we read Norton Juster's The Hello, Goodbye Window (illustrations by Chris Raschka, another one of our favorites; yes, that is the same Juster from The Phantom Tollbooth) and I may take that one in. Because it's an all-girl class, I've been emphasizing books with girls, although not exclusively--Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney is on my mind for sometime, too.

I guess I don't need to sell the value of reading to kids to anyone taking the time to read blogs by mothers who like to write and academics who read and write and think and teach. I've been reading to Curious Girl since our first night together, and I've been enjoying introducing her to old favorites of mine and learning my way around new-to-me authors like Mo Willems and Kevin Henkes. But I am just loving the informal structure of my Wednesday Book Club--my little moment to think about themes, rhymes, illustrations, colors, activities that will engage my very loving, wiggly audience. I love getting to know the girls, know who gets scared, who likes to participate, who needs some encouragement. And I love seeing their appreciation for longer stories emerge.

And to tell the truth, I like the books, too, with their merging of visual and textual features. They're fun.

So what are you all reading, aloud or silently, with the kids in your lives? And any suggestions for our spring selections?

Rollercoasters, List Version

The Home Front

• Politica is off on a professional adventure. Yay her.
• Emotions are, um, turbulent. Curious Girl and I are not getting enough sleep, and tempers were fraying last night, starting with an argument about why I am the meanest person ever because I would not let CG stay up until midnight even though Twin Friends (allegedly) got to stay up until midnight one night, ending with over 90 minutes of sobbing and screaming (not all of it CG's, I should mention).
  
• Have I mentioned how much I love CG's teachers? They knew CG was off-kilter the minute we walked in. Short Teacher suggested that CG could draw a picture of what she's mad about, when she gets all mad.
• So today, we're going to make a Feeling Box, with art supplies in it, so that we can draw mad pictures when we need to. Cross your fingers that this works. (It well might. Similar tactics have.)
• I'm going to lunch with CG's class today. I'll have to post about my post-lunch reading series with the girls. They are a great audience.
  

The Office Front

• Performance review season is always here. That stresses people out, and there are a million little questions about what to put where on the form. My university requires everything to be classified as teaching, research, or service, and that leads to a lot of fretting about whether, say, judging the student magical mystery competition is teaching or service or whether writing a short article for publication x is research or teaching. It's not easy to balance reassuring the stress with encouraging people to step back and think about how their report communicates what they did.
• My favorite part about being department chair is helping people--it's so emotionally rewarding to have conversations helping to move toward tenure dossiers, for example. The flip side of that, though, is being a responsible chair even in situations where things are not emotionally rewarding--I'm learning strategies for not taking it personally when colleagues are doing things that don't work so well. It's hard, but important, to keep that boundary up. Thank FSM for the therapy that taught me about boundaries. They rock.
  
• I cleared my desk yesterday! (But my desk at home is now piled with stuff from the bedroom, that's getting painted. Boo.)

I am now going to read and write until lunch, at home. I love Wednesdays.

Even Dr. Google has his limitations....

Background info: Curious Girl loves John and Abigail Adams. and last night, when she couldn't sleep, and she got into a fit of giggles with Politica around midnight, I asked what was so funny and she said, "The presidents!! They slept sitting up! John Adams slept sitting up!"

So at dinner, Curious Girl is looking at her placemat o' presidents, and says, "these ones (pointing to the top row) slept sitting up. John Adams! John Adams! Last night, I almost slept sitting up!" Politica had remembered a museum docent somewhere telling us that the reason old beds are so short is not because the people were shorter (although they were, a bit), but because people used to believe it was healthier to sleep sitting up. So we all got to wondering which presidents slept sitting up and which would have been of the era when the thinking about sleep changed and people would begin to sleep laying down.

Politica says, "Let's ask Dr. Google," and moves over to the conveniently located laptop. Curious Girl, who'd been on the way to the bathroom to wash her hands, runs back in the room. "Dr. Google! Can I see? Is there a picture of him?"

As I'm clearing the dishes, I hear these questions spilling out, as Politica is googling various things, calling out to me "what about this phrase?" "how about this one?" to try to find an answer to our question (I'm hoping this is the sort of little detail Trillwing might have encountered in her seems-to-me-incredibly-cool-program, or my favorite librarian readers might have a tip). All the while CG is keeping up a patter:

Does Dr. Google know everything?
Does he know about me?
Why don't you ask "why do cows have black spots?"
Can we go visit him?
Does he know about lions?

Reference librarians will never go out of business.

Pinky Promise

We need a little levity around here, what with the drama I've been writing about in my last several posts. Just to show you another side of life in the Granola household, here's a scene from yesterday afternoon, when Curious Girl was having a skating party indoors with all her (imaginary) loved friends. (In case you're wondering how to make an indoor icerink, here's how: scatter paper all over the floor, take off your slippers, and slide around, saying "Mama! I'm skating!").

Curious Girl: You can be the girl police officer who takes care of the party. And you're my cousin. But pretend you didn't know it was my skating party and I didn't know you were coming.

Me: OK. (pause) Hey, cousin, is that you?!?

CG: Cousin!!!! You're here for my party.

Me: Hey, kids! No pushing on the ice. Good job, babies!! Look, CG, aren't the babies doing a good job?

CG, beaming: Yes! I teached them how to skate.

CG skates around, then returns to me. "Pretend you're going to live with me in my house for the whole rest of the year, but I don't know that."

Me: You know, there's not much left of the rest of the year. When we wake up tomorrow, it'll be a whole new year. Now, it's 2007, but tomorrow, it will be 2008.

CG: No way! Tell me the truth.

Me: Really. Right now it's December. I can show you on your calendar. Tomorrow starts January, and it's a whole new year then.

CG: No it is not. I don't believe you. For real? Tell me the truth.

Me, trying not to laugh: Really, truly, for real life. It's going to be 2008 tomorrow. It's the last day of 2007.

CG: But tell me the truth. Pinky promise? (extending pinky) For real, pinky promise?

Me: Pinky promise it is really going to be a new year tomorrow.

CG: I don't believe you.

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This morning, when CG wakes up, having slept in a little after the late night she had at a new year's party with our friends, I tell her "Happy new year."

CG: I didn't believe you yesterday. But today I do.

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Some cool new year's posts are up at Magpie's, Rhymes with Javelin, Profgrrl's (the post before that is a good New Year's meme which I may do later in the week), and Geeky Mom's.

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So however unbelieveable it is that a new year has arrived, may it bring you and yours bountiful hope, joys, and community.

A Popsicle

Things are looking up, and I am wordlessly grateful for all the comments on the previous post.

Quiet Friend is better today--recognizing more people, more alert, even sat up to eat a popsicle. It may be that the combination of not enough platelets and too much fluid in the body caused weirdness in the brain.

So things are looking up, today. And Mississippi Friend, ever a believer in the kindness of strangers, will be touched by your comments. Thanks for helping us wait this out--today, hope seems more possible.