I’ve been watching my phalaenopsis orchid sending up a new stem and growing new buds over the past several weeks. I was very excited to see the new growth. The cold snap we had a couple of months ago finally overcame the heat created by the sunlight constantly hitting our side of the building. Up until then, the apartment had not gotten cold enough to encourage another blooming of my orchid, and I was starting to wonder if it ever would! Haiku as a beautiful, unique form of poetry had come up in conversation a few nights ago. Yesterday morning while I was looking at my orchid before Johann woke up, I thought about my observations and was inspired to write my first haiku:
Budded orchid stem,
Like a dancing king cobra,
Follows the sunlight.
I read it to Johann. He liked it a lot and decided to write his own informal haiku based on one of his favorite Zoboomafoo shows:
Kinkajou-
Peek-a-boo,
Power-climbing mammal!
Both of our poems have a lot of spring to them!
People laughed when Eric said he loved Belize so much, that if it wasn’t for the fact that Johann and I were waiting for him at home, he wouldn’t have come back. They don’t realize how serious he was. They didn’t hear how flat his voice sounded on the phone when he called me from the Miami airport to let me know he was back in the U.S. He was lovesick over Belize.
That state of mind lasted for the first week Eric was home. He wanted to keep wearing shorts and sandals like he did in Belize, never mind that snow was on the ground. He went out to the grocery store to buy coconuts, bananas, and tropical fruit juices. He’s only wanted to listen to the reggae and Caribbean music we have. The funny thing is that I understand. I’ve traveled to places that have affected me the same way.
Johann has enjoyed fresh coconut and coconut water. He now has more coconut shells to play with as instruments or boats in the bathtub. He and Eric have been floating them in the water while shining the underwater flashlight through the ripples in the bathwater, creating water reflections on the walls and ceiling. Johann is going around the house singing Bob Marley songs. We hung up the wooden tropical saltwater fish mobile with chimes that Eric bought. Eric lamented that since he can’t buy Belikins here, he had to go out and buy some Coronas to drink. Johann piped up and said, “What? You’re going to drink some PELICANS, Daddy?”, followed by his infectious laugh. So Eric is slowly readjusting to the reality of our life in Connecticut and we’ve reached a new state of abnormal with Belizean flare. Don’t worry, be happy, man!
In watching “The Muppet Show”, Johann has been introduced to a number of actors and artists that he had never heard of before. So he would ask about what made these people well-known. “Who is Gene Kelly?” led to us watching “Brigadoon”, “An American in Paris”, and “Singing in the Rain”. “Who is Jim Nabors?” led us to watching “The Andy Griffith Show”. We still need to find some of her old heyday movies to answer the question, “Who is Ethel Merman?”
During one of these discussions, Eric said we should also include Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon in our who’s who of American culture. He told Johann the most recent movies they both were in were “Grumpy Old Men” and “Grumpier Old Men”. At first Johann said he wasn’t interested in watching two old men being grumpy, that didn’t sound like any fun. We assured him they were good movies, the men just got a little grumpy like Daddy does sometimes. Johann was sure he didn’t want to see that. Then he perked up and exclaimed, “Mommy! We don’t need to watch those movies! We already live with a grumpy old man!!”
We spent Christmas and New Year’s in Texas with my in-laws. I struggled with my allergies the whole time and had a lot of drainage in my ears. Usually, I have better than normal hearing, but because of the liquid in my ears, I was mishearing a lot of words. The further we were into the two week visit, the worse it got. It was a very frustrating situation for me to have to constantly ask for things to be repeated and then still not always get it. We were in church on New Year’s Eve and Dr. David got up to read the first scripture. I heard him begin, “And now we will read from the Book of Galoshes.” What?!
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Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Miss Suzanne told us about the Walter Wick exhibit at the New Britain Museum of Art, which ran from September to November. We finally made the time to go on Veterans Day. Trying to find the place was challenging, since so many roads in CT are simply not labeled. Quite often you will be on a road for several miles and go through many major intersections without seeing one street sign (a major pet peeve of Eric’s). Just when I was wondering if we were going to run out of gas before we found the place, we found it. Eric was worried about an entrance fee, but, thankfully, there wasn’t one. We took the museum map and the Walter Wick pamphlet and went inside.
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Tuesday, December 26, 2006
We had a full October. Eric had a field trip to Bushy Beach October 4. When he saw all the monarch butterflies on the blooming seaside goldenrod along the beach, he wanted to bring us to see them. During the monarchs’ migration that seems to be a preferred pit stop. When we went on the following Saturday, we missed seeing the hundreds of butterflies that Eric saw, but we still spotted a few stragglers and had a fabulous time walking the 5 mile round trip to the beach. Johann had his nature notebook with him and drew pictures as we went. Before we got to Bluff Point State Park, we stopped at Avery Point for Eric to take some pictures of the birds and Johann to make some drawings.
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Wednesday, November 8, 2006
The weekend before last we had a bad storm with a doubled high tide, heavy rain, and strong winds. Saturday we stayed home. Johann was frightened by the sound of the wind. When it comes through our courtyard at just the right angle, it can really make a loud howling noise. Sometimes it sounds like a ghost.
I wanted to appease his fear, but saying it was just the wind wasn’t enough. I wracked my brain for a fun way to look at it. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing, which would only deepen his fear. Then the light bulb went on. I told Johann it sounded like his train whistle. If you think about it, the square shape the brick buildings make and the wind passing through it to make a noise, that’s what it is. I exclaimed, “Johann! We live in one big, giant train whistle! What do you think about that?”
But it still sounded scary. Sometimes the wind sounds like his train whistle, but other times it goes, “Hoooooooooo!” like a ghost. I told him it sounded like his owl whistle to me. Then he smiled and said when the strength of the wind changed yet again, it sounded like his elephant whistle. He pulled out all three instruments and started playing them to match the wind, switching where it was appropriate. Before long he was no longer scared. He was playing a duet with Nature.
The new storytime with Miss Annie at the bookstore has been a lot of fun. She reads three books instead of two and a related activity. Johann was upset about it not being the same. I pointed out that even though it was different, it was still good. The trade-off was an extra book. Besides, we could come up with our own activities, which was more challenging.
One of the books for September was Library Lion and since the other two books also had something to do with reading or the library, I thought it would be fun to create an activity that would also introduce the Dewey Decimal system and how to find books in the library. I made two worksheets. The first was completed in the library, where Johann located one book from each of the 10 classes of the Dewey Decimal system and wrote down the number. Then I had him circle the first digit of each Dewey Decimal number, to reinforce the beginning number of each class. Those numbers then had to be matched to the first row of numbers on the second worksheet. With that layer of the encrypted puzzle solved, the new numbers had to be used with an alphabet code key to reveal the secret message: Reading is fun!
Johann wanted to check out all the books we found from each section, which has been wonderful. We’ve spent so much time in the 500s (science) and 800s (literature), that we really had been neglecting the information in the other areas of the children’s section. I made sure to re-read Library Lion to Johann with the activity. He always feels defensive of the lion, since one of the people who runs the library is so strict about the rules. The moral of the story was that sometimes you have to break the rules, such as in an emergency, in order to help a friend. Johann often complains that Shanti School has too many rules. He doesn’t know how good he’s got it! So I had to laugh the day he came to me to announce, “Mommy!!! I just put Library Lion into Delicious Library under Shanti School, because it’s all about following the rules!”
Johann has inherited my love of words. He wonders about their origins and savors literature filled with words that paint pictures and appeal to the senses. Of course as a 6-year-old boy, lately he tends to be fascinated by gooey, gross words. His latest two favorites are “slurp” and “slime”. He likes to pronounce them as follows: When saying “slurp” imagine you are actually slurping something. Think about the sound you would be making and say the word to imitate that sound pattern, placing emphasis on the “ur”. Your voice should dip down in the middle and rise up at the end like a question. (Sl-ur-r-r-rp!) When saying “slime” pretend you are a jolly Igor. Emphasize the long “i” sound and repeat the word three times. Then repeat the sequence at least three times. As a wild card, for the last time you say “slime”, occassionally say it as if you are also laughing it (ha, ha, ha) when you get to the vowel. (Sli-i-ime! Sli-i-i-ime! Sla-ha-ha-hime!!!!!!!)
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Eric’s Physics class just covered Newton’s Laws of Motion. Eric thought of making it real and fun for Johann by doing the elevator experiment. Eric tested our digital scale, but since it didn’t work, we went to Wal-Mart to buy an analog scale. The next evening after dinner, we all got into the elevator with the analog scale. We took Johann’s weight while the elevator was on our floor. Then we began going up and down in the elevator, reading what his weight was at the top and at the bottom. It returned to normal in the middle of the ride. I was the official data recorder.
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