Uliante

Isabelle Sez

2011-10-01T18:20:00.002-05:00

If it's a gaggle of geese, and a drive of dragons, and a pride of lions, what do you call a large group of grown-ups?

One night when the parents and grandparents were yacking unstoppably, Isabelle told us, "You should call it a 'talk' of grown-ups."

Partial Zero Emission Vehicles

2011-09-18T18:30:00.003-05:00

I just saw that Honda is advertising a "Partial Zero Emission Vehicle," which sounds really cool. No one else is marketing a Zero Emission Vehicle right now. This is "Partial Zero," but as every 3rd grader knows, a part of zero is still zero. Try it: 1/10 * 0 = ??

I suppose it's possible that they intended to hyphenate, indicating that their car is partially a Zero-Emission-Vehicle. This makes me wonder, which part? No emissions on the left side? Or from the front? Of course, nearly all cars in good repair could be called zero emission from the front, all the emissions come out the back. So maybe the zero-emission part is just the passenger cabin. Of course, this would depend on operator skill. For instance, too much chili could compromise the zero-emission nature of the car.

Well, I'll just be mystified for the moment. In the meantime, I can't wait until some car maker remembers the actual zero emission vehicle they made in the 1990s, and decides to market it again.

Recipes

2011-07-10T20:26:00.003-05:00

The other day I was thinking about how good it is, the taste of melted ice cream in soda, and it hit me: you don't need to make an ice cream soda to do it. Here is a low-fat, low-calorie alternative to soda that is aspartame and saccharin free:

Serves 2:
to each glass:

Add 2 Tbsp. half-&-half
Add 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Add ice
add 1/2 a can of unflavored seltzer.

It helps if you pour the seltzer down the size of the glass, like a beer, because it will foam.

For those of you who wince at the very words "half-&-half," I provide my Nutrition Facts, with comparison to a 12oz Coke:

	Cream Frizz	Coke
Calories	40	140
Fat	3g 9%	0g
Sat. Fat	2g 10%	0g
Trans Fat	0g	0g
Cholestrol	15mg 4%	0mg
Sodium	25mg 1%	45mg 2%
Carbs	1g 1%	39g 13%
Sugar	1g	39g
Protein	1g	0g
Calcium	4%	0%

Apart from the fat, I win. I wouldn't drink ten of these a day, but on the whole I call them healthy enough.

Isabelle's Snowman Extravaganza

2011-04-01T21:02:00.007-05:00

Even Carrie doesn't believe me now about the number of snowmen I counted in the back yard, so here is my photo documentation.

#2 is a baby snowman held in the Mommy snowman's arms. #5 is sledding, so deliberately on the ground.

#5 was originally holding a shovel. He dropped it overnight before I got this closeup shot.

I don't remember why #3 was built on the ground. This is a close-up of my original aerial photo, as #1 was gone by the time I took a closer shot.

Count them up and tell me if I'm lying:

5 in the family set
5 in the garden gang
4 individuals
3 in the "hidden set" by the pine tree.

The final number is... 17.

For the record, when Isabelle came in from this work, she was so tired and cold she was crying. Hot chocolate and cuddles cured that, though, and now she's happily telling everyone how she got a little hypothermia.

ebook and paper book compared

2011-03-22T16:40:00.003-05:00

I really like my Nook. But it is astonishing what a bad deal it is:

Ebook	Paper Books
c. $12.00	c. $15.00
Not returnable. The moment you click "Confirm purchase" your stuck with it.	Returnable
Can't resell	Can resell, for $2-8. Final price $7-13
Can't buy used	Can buy used, for $2-8, and then resell again, perhaps breaking even.
Can loan out once, if friend has same device	Can loan or give away freely
Depends on technology. Can be lost by tech failures or changing formats	Lasts centuries with reasonable care.

The principle advantage, as I can see it, is that an ebook doesn't take up space on your bookshelf, and you don't have to wait for it to come in the mail. It's fun to be cutting edge, but, really...

Of course, almost ALL of the disadvantages of ebooks are CREATED by the publisher.

Oh, yeah, that reminds me of the BIGGEST advantage of ebooks: you don't have to rely on major publishers to create them!

Cosmos Continued

2011-02-12T10:42:00.000-05:00

So I asked Isabelle how far she had gotten into "A Brief History of Time," and she gave me that stern look little kids sometimes have for adults who obviously don't know what they are talking about and said, "Dad. I'm not going to read the whole thing."

Isabelle and the Cosmos

2011-02-10T20:26:00.003-05:00

Isabelle asked if we had any books on the beginning of the universe (apart from my Story of Everything, which she has read many times). I said all we had was Stephen Hawking's "Brief History of Time," which was "very complicated, and even Daddy doesn't quite get it."

Tonight I noticed she had the book out. "I haven't met any words I don't know yet," she said.

"How far did you get?"

"They were just talking about how some people think the earth is round and flies through space, and some think it's flat with a lot of tortoises."

Hmm. Yes, I think I remember the tortoise.

She continues: "Then it just asks a lot of questions."

"Like what?"

"Like how did the universe begin, and was it going to end."

Okay, not a detailed critique, but I'm damned if she doesn't have the concept down. If she can tell me about the "arrows of time" next week I'm going to lose my teeth.

Art, Emergencies, and Money

2011-01-09T09:52:00.004-05:00

So Isabelle once again has the sign on the door:

Artist at work
do not disturb
(inless an amgincy)

You can see her spelling is improving, though still has a way to go. I knocked on the door.

"Daddy? Is this an emergency?"

"Yes," I said. "Your friend is going to be here in ten minutes and you need to get dressed." Okay, so I stretched the definition of "emergency," but she was okay with it. Then she showed me her fine drawings, and informed me:

"If you buy three at full price, you get a coupon for a free drawing."

Somehow I think I'm raising a little Yankee trader.

I'll try to post some of the creations, once I get the scanner and computer talking to each other.

Best Audiobooks

2010-12-23T12:51:00.006-05:00

IHMO, these are really great audiobooks. A combination of a great story with great storytelling.

In no particular order:

The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger) Uses 2 narrators: Henry and Claire. I could hear what they look like!
Bloody Jack series (L. A. Meyer) Rollicking fun. The narrator's voice changes as Jackie becomes more sophisticated.
Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword (Tee Morris) A dwarven warrior becomes a PI in Al Capone's Chicago. Hilarious, available free at podiobooks.com. (Full Cast)
Ship Breakers (Paulo Bacigalupi) A post-apocalypse, global-warming style. Gritty, very real (although a little fantastic).
Paper Towns (John Green). A young-adult coming-of-age story.
Changeling (Kristin Cashore) Great characters and strong plotting make this otherwise standard fantasy story a great listen. (Full Cast)

My Little Mozart

2010-09-07T19:37:00.003-05:00

So we've been worried that Isabelle's class isn't quite where she is in the reading department. Carrie called the teacher, who said they'd just given a reading assessment to the kids, and Isabelle was at the top of the entire first grade. How far at the top? Well, they give this same test at the END of first grade, and most kids score between 12 and 18. Isabelle, at the BEGINNING of first grade, scored 20.

Her math is at least in the neighborhood of the other kids.

The school is going to make a special reading group with Isabelle and the only other first grader who has a hope of keeping up with her, to make sure she gets challenged. Good solution.

Now I'd better post this, because if Isabelle looks over my shoulder, she will of course read this, and it's a little early for her to see herself standing out quite that far.

The Toothfairy, Magic, and Sleight of Hand

2010-07-20T19:14:00.004-05:00

With great fanfare, Isabelle lost another tooth: the first upper incisor. (Lopsided grin!) She put the tooth under her pillow, I got ready for my job interview the next morning, made sure things were ready for her first day at camp.

I'm up at the crack of dawn the next morning, getting on my tie, and Isabelle says, "Daddy, don't make so much noise! The toothfairy hasn't come yet, and if she hears you she won't come."

<OH MY GOD I FORGOT >

"Really?" I say. "Let me see." She shows me the tooth under her pillow. "Well, go back to sleep, she must be running late."

Then I grab the money, come back, "Let me give you a kiss," and with a little stealth and sleight-of-hand, the tooth fairy has come.

Later that day, Isabelle tells me, "You know there has to be magic in the world, Daddy. Because the tooth fairy got under my pillow and I didn't even feel it!"

Isabelle's First Movie

2010-06-06T17:42:00.004-05:00

How's this for a rainy day activity? I swear I had nothing to do with the creative aspects of the film, just the technical rendering.

Green Lawn Mower

2010-05-16T17:37:00.004-05:00

So, my bro-in-law Nathan's lawn mower died, which is a problem, because I always borrowed it. Thinking that he was likely to muddle along or borrow his neighbors, I bought a new one. A cordless electric. I am in love. Comparing it to the previous gas mower (not a very old one):

Power: toss-up. I ran it through 10" wet grass and it did a great job. If it had a few more moments of "woah, too much" than the gas, it made up for it by never stalling.
Noise: no contest. It sounds like a fan. I can hear Isabelle talking to me in a normal voice, whereas with the gas, if Carrie screamed at the top of her lungs, I got a vague impression that maybe there had been a sound.
Smell: no contest. All I smell is cut grass.
Weight: at 77#, it's a little heavier. But it's well balanced and easily maneuvered, and, if I need to actually pick the darn thing up, I pop out the battery, and then it's lighter than the gas.
Endurance: here the gas probably wins with a big yard. Mine's a 0.1 acre, and it had no trouble. Other have mowed much more, but if you have acres, you might need to mow half now and half tomorrow.
Bonus: no gas can. Never leaks gas. Never have to run for gas. No oil. No spark plug to repair.

Bicycle Adventures

2010-05-16T15:10:00.004-05:00

I took Isabelle out for her first ride on her bicycle. Her brilliant father bought her a five-speed, which he can't put training wheels on. But we gave it a try! I warned her, "Nobody learns to ride a bike with falling off and getting hurt once."

Off we went. After half an hour she had more directional control, and a little bit of balance. Woopee. Then just as we decided we were done for the day, the inevitable spill happened.

Isabelle barely scratched her knee. Her father, however, in his effort to keep her upright, tripped over her bike and caught all his weight with his outstretched thumb. I don't think I broke it, but I haven't been in this much pain since I don't know when--probably the time I drove a splinter the size of half a toothpick up under my thumb nail.

Isabelle composed a poem for me:

Bikes crashing,
Babies flying,
Daddies crying.

All Species Day

2010-05-04T20:25:00.004-05:00

Isabelle went to All Species Day as a Jaguarundi (Central & South American wildcat):

That's her friend Zella as the black cat:

Notice her stuffed cat, who, for the occasion, put on a "girl costume."

This is some random guy dressed as a N'avi warrior (the guys from Cameron's Avatar), whose picture I couldn't resist taking.

I also had a teacher-moment. There was a young woman there, probably fifteen-sixteen, who looked familiar. It was only after I left that I realized I had last seen her as a little stick of a fifth-grader in my student teaching. I haven't been doing this long enough for that to happen!

Song

2010-03-02T18:09:00.002-05:00

Sing to the tune of "Yesterday."

Mania
My daughter's gone insania
Her shrieks would shatter crania
Oh how did she get mania?

Where did my girl go?
I don't know, she won't stand still
But if this goes on
Very long
I'll need a pill.

Isabelle's First Poem

2010-02-20T21:33:00.002-05:00

Fat
by Isabelle Helene Rouillard Wightman

Fat Fat
What about Fat?
Bake Fat
Make Fat
Buy Fat
Eat Fat
Cook Fat
Book Fat
Fat is very tasty
People like Fat.

How to play banana

2010-01-25T19:27:00.003-05:00

So Isabelle wanted to wrestle, and I wasn't up for so much activity. She proposed a number of variants on wrestle, like "naughty horse," which involves her riding on me and tipping her onto the floor.

Looking for redirection, I said, "Let's play..." and I couldn't come up with anything, so, stalling for time, I said, "Let's play banana."

Frown. "How do you play banana?"

uhh... "You walk along, and then you say, 'woops I slipped on this banana.'"

"Great idea!" she exclaims.

Next thing I know we are playing a game that involves throwing yourself on the floor and blaming it on a piece of fruit.

Have to be quicker, next time.

A Taste of Preteen

2010-01-18T19:10:00.000-05:00

I came home today to discover the door to Isabelle's room firmly closed, and a sign on the floor in front of it that said, in big letters:

Doo Not Disdrb

Check this out

2009-12-16T18:44:00.003-05:00

Now I might be an infatuated dad, but I've been looking at this boat of Isabelle's for some time, now, and I'll be damned but that boat is coming toward me. It's in 3/4 profile with perspective.

I was somewhat relieved when I found out that she was drawing from another picture, not her imagination, which means we don't have a Mozart-level prodigy on our hands (six year-olds do NOT draw with perspective), but even so, she was able to capture the picture. I'm impressed.

An extended Christmas story

2009-12-12T15:14:00.002-05:00

Overheard one morning while Isabelle played with the little wooden creche set:

And then after the angel of the lord appeared to the shepherds, she appeared to the reindeer, and she said, "Guess what? There's going to be a new holiday. And you get to pull the sleigh.

Mix and match, why not? It's an old tradition.

Martinis & Pete Seeger

2009-11-15T18:38:00.006-05:00

Am I the only one who gets irritated that the word "martini" is used for every cocktail in those restaurants that don't use the word "margarita" for every cocktail?

This is a martini: gin, a drop of vermouth, and an olive. If you use an onion instead of an olive it's a gibson. If you use scotch instead of gin it's a rob roy.

I suppose, to be open-minded and flexible, I can allow a vodka martini or a sake martini. But the other day I have a drink that was sweet and chocolate-coconut flavored, called a, I don't know what, an "arctic frost martini."

Cocktails are a cultural thing. They are evocative. A party where martinis are served conjures up an image, quite different from a party with margaritas, different from a party with mint juleps or old fashioneds. Even as recently as The Simpsons Bart was commended for his perfect Manhattan. Connecting with history, and doing something very well, have been tossed away for shallow "creativity."

Which brings me to Pete Seeger. He was a folk singer, like thousands of others today. But unlike his descendants crooning in coffeehouses across the country, Seeger didn't write many songs. Mostly he sang old songs. Nowadays, you'd be hard pressed to find one in a thousand folksingers who would admit to singing "Froggy Went A-Courting" at their last concert. Instead, they write their own songs. Twenty years later, a lot of those songs sound pretty dated. But the old ones are still great.

You know what else? Pete Seeger could sing. Bruce Springsteen--while his album was really cool, and a true folk album--sounds like a croaking frog next to the man he honored.

A Story by Isabelle

2009-10-11T21:21:00.002-05:00

Isabelle has been writing stories at school. I find her acquisition of writing to be fascinating, so I thought I would share the picture...
and the story, interpreted for those without extensive experience in Kindergarten phonetics:
Many alphabets don't bother with vowels, Isabelle doesn't either sometimes: "wr" for "were" and "trnin" for "turning." I'm also quite intrigued with her use (and inversion) of the "ck" trope: "Kculrs" for "colors" and "wokc" for "walk." She (or should I say "hse") often inverts "sh", although not, apparently "th". Isn't the human mind fascinating?

Ripping Apart the house.

2009-05-31T09:05:00.002-05:00

Here is our house. Note the broken retaining wall, and the tilted stairs:

Another View. This piece of the wall has been broken for 20-30 years, but it has been moving, each spring, a little further over the sidewalk. Contractors assured us it was held in by steel rebar.

Contractor touched the chunk with a backhoe, and over it went. Guess it didn't have any rebar, after all. Here is what our yard looks like, after the stairs have been removed:

View from the porch, showing holes on either side of the wall, because the water main and sewer ran under the stairs and under the wall, and were in danger of breakage, so this was the time to fix them.

What fun!

More Isabelle Art

2009-02-28T19:16:00.003-05:00

I'm on an Isabelle art kick, but I think she's drawing the greatest pictures. Like this one:

Playing Catch in the Rain
Text reads: "Splash Splish"

Or this portrait of her family:
Am I wearing a tie?

More LolCats, & Isabelle's writing explained.

2009-02-28T10:08:00.004-05:00

One more, can't resist...

"You Know We, Don't You"

To read Isabelle's writing, this vertical writing is effectively right-to-left, and mostly phonetic. Its letter-for-letter transcription is "yoo no we dot yoo." Needless to say, she wrote all these captions herself.

More from IHasFams.com

2009-02-27T16:33:00.007-05:00

There are also entries for some of her friends:

I Has Thumbs
& Zella
No Get Out of the Basement
No get aot av oa basmit

I Has Fums
& Michelle
Oo, Shiny
oo shine

I Has Thumbs
& Casey
Now I Perform the Letter C
nau I pfoam the se

Isabelle Online

2009-02-27T16:25:00.006-05:00

Two of Isabelle's favorite sites online are "ICanHasCheeseburger.com" and "Lolcats.com" (For the uninitiated, these are websites that post pictures with funny captions, lolcats specializing in funny pictures of cats.) She's decided to make her own website known as "IHasFams.com" (That's "I Have Thumbs" for people who can't read Isabelle's spelling). Here are the first entries, with captions translated below:

I Has Thumbs
& Brian
Yum Yum

I Has Thumbs
& Carrie
I am Hungry

Acitivism Starts Young

2008-12-24T14:30:00.002-05:00

I wasn't able to catch all the details, but this morning Isabelle was playing in her room, telling a long story about some adventure, involving fairies being chased by some wicked force... that happened to be named "President Bush."

Isabelle Sez

2008-12-14T12:22:00.001-05:00

"The difference between children and adults is that adults get cold looking at naked children, but children don't get cold looking at naked adults."

Cure for the Blues

2008-11-25T19:47:00.003-05:00

Isabelle wanted me to post her cure for the blues. If your child is sad, Mom or Dad should recite the following, which Isabelle typed herself on the computer:

Zxcdsaqwertyhbvnmuipfgjklohgutugeevbhbubnbunhbbnjbnjetujtnbjmbjernjrjiusiytnsvnsnbesvmsvevmvbjgjngjeinefnesgitumfnbkmbgibkbitbmimbisss iigkkg gigbbimjgijggjhijhikgjkgihjbbhgjjhbjfkfngjbbmm jpfgjfghfufgvfvfmnbjfhgfnfvhhrystsusebvsvhvvhsv vryvnvrgjhdffhfghgdfhagsdfghjklzxcvbnmqwerttyuiopsgyrhfbhyfgbfybrb b bfbf b bbbhbjbbhbhbcncccnnccnxnbvcxzasdfghjkloiuuytrresxffdsxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

If your child isn't laughing when you're done, you must have had the accent wrong. Try again, this time with your mouth full of marbles.

A Proper Lady

2008-09-03T18:38:00.003-05:00

Growing Up

2008-08-27T17:43:00.002-05:00

Isabelle has grown since I last posted a photo here.

Cuddling with her frog

At Boulder Beach this summer

A Green Egg Moment

2008-07-31T07:49:00.002-05:00

Spicy corn quesadillas were on the menu. Usually, when we have them, Isabelle opts for a cheesy-cheesy quesadilla, which contains, of course, only cheese. The spicy corn recipe contains her most reviled food: onions. Carrie was out, so I asked Isabelle, "Would you like some corn in your quesadilla, too?" Yes she would.

I concocted a new quesadilla, much like the spicy corn recipe, but without onions or cayenne. Just as I was about to serve them, "No! I want a cheesy quesadilla!" Nothing for it, I fried up one more with just cheese.

She gobbled up her cheesy-cheesy, and was thinking about more, when I cut of a big piece of cheesy-corny and said, "Just taste this and tell me if it's too yucky to eat."

Chew. "It is! It's yucky!" Frown.

"Okay. Thank you for trying it. Just chew it up."

Chew-chew. Suddenly her eyes snap wide open in surprise. "I do! I like this!"

"You want more?"

"Yes."

On the meaning of science

2008-07-09T18:09:00.000-05:00

Isabelle and I were talking about pine cones, and the difference between green pine cones and brown pine cones. I told her that pine cones held the seeds of pine trees, and that “scientists calls them ‘cone-bearing trees.’”

“Dad,” she told me. “A scientist, science is telling things with your hands, and not your mouth.”

Maybe a surprise to Aristotle, but I thought it had some merit. Don’t just say it’s true, show that it’s true. I told her I would tell her Uncle Bruce, because he is a scientist.

“Really?” she asked. Then she told me how to say “tie your shoe” in sign language. I didn’t quite get the segue, but that’s not too rare with a 4 year-old.

I repeated her marvelous quote. “Science is telling things with your hands, and not your mouth.”

“Shh, Dad,” she said. “Use your hands.”

That was when I realized she had not, after all, defined a scientist, but rather a “silent-ist.”

Isabelle Art

2008-05-03T18:03:00.004-05:00

Isabelle attempted to make a portrait of our cat, Teezer, as a kitten. She set out with this photo as a guide:

Isabelle was very disappointed in the results. She actually burst into tears and was inconsolable, until she made me promise to draw a picture of Teeze that she could color in. Now, I created a picture of Teeze that more acurately reflected her proportions. But it didn't have half the spirit or Isabelle's picture, which, of course, is posted below:

Teezer's bib outline was actually done by Mom in an unsuccessful effort to calm our high-standards artist, but all the rest is genuine IHRW, pen and marker.

Isabelle Art

2008-03-06T18:20:00.002-05:00

More, I'll let these speak for themselves:

House, with one fixing the sky

pencil and crayon

Too Many Kids

pencil and crayon

Zone of Proximal Development

2008-03-06T16:35:00.004-05:00

The other day Isabelle and I were drawing together, and I decided, on the spur of the moment, to not draw with my cartoon style (as from my MLK book) but to adopt her style, and add just a little sophistication. The Russian developmental psychologist, Vygotsky, called this the Zone of Proximal Development, which is to say, teaching not what the child knows, nor what you want the child to know, but just a little more than they can comfortably do. The next day, Isabelle drew this:

Me and Jenna

pencil

Jenna has a big mouth, because she eats a lot. And she's got a strawberry, Isabelle told me. But I noticed two things: 1) the eyes are not simple circles, but suggestive of eye shape, with the pupils properly lower than center, 2) the addition of hair. Here's another:

The Monster in Us

pencil

On the right is the monster, on the left is a ghost, probably Ghostey, her ectoplasmic imaginary friend. I like the difference in the ghostly features of Ghostey, and the more corporal features of the monster.

Still doesn't worry about the number of digits, though.

Isabelle, Tolkien, and reincarnation

2008-02-29T10:03:00.004-05:00

For those who don't see Isabelle in person, you should know that she has beautiful blue-gray eyes. She is also a social-leader type, attracting around herself a small court of admirers.

So the other day, Isabelle put a hand towel over her head like a kerchief. She wrapped a body towel around her waist like a robe. Then this little gray-eyed pilgrim looked at me and told me she was going on a journey.

"Where are you going?"

"To Numenora."

I swear that I have no memory of ever telling Isabelle Tolkien's tale of the Kings of Numenor, or showing her my "Numenor" website, or even speaking the word in her presence. Numenor is just not one of my oft-told tales. Carrie likewise. While one might expect a reincarnation of a Numenorean to be taller, still she has the noble bearing, magnetic personality, and those gray eyes.

Isabelle's favorite books

2008-02-28T18:15:00.003-05:00

Isabelle has long loved to pull books off Daddy's bookshelf. At some times she'll do this daily. Generally the same ones. In relative order of preference, Isabelle likes

The Mother Dance by Harriet Lerner, Ph.D.
Dinosaur in a Haystack by Stephen Jay Gould (Biology, not fiction)
Relativity, the Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein
Asymmetries in Time: Problems in the Philosophy of Science by Paul Horwich
Western European Costume by Iris Brooke
The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould
The Double Helix by James D. Watson
The Essential Enneagram

Does she want to be a scientist?

While most of these books are together on my shelf, many are not (such as Mother Dance and European Costume). There are also a number of non-science books near the others that she never selects. These are definitely her favorites.

Genevieve

2008-02-28T10:25:00.007-05:00

Isabelle has a naughty alter ego. For a long time I thought she was calling her "Jenna-thief," and if I ask her about "Jenna-thief" she will answer as if I have correctly named her. Carrie heard the name as "Genevieve," which is probably what Isabelle intended. But I keep hearing her say "Jenna-thief," probably because the name is evocative for me. When I listen carefully, I can tell that her 4-year-old effort at the sound /v/ is unformed, and often sounds more like /f/. Since /f/ and /v/ are allophones most of the time in English (that is, one can substitute one for the other without changing the meaning -- "vor" is heard as a variant on "for," whereas "gat" is not a variant of "hat"), my ear hardly notices her unformed consonant, I simply translate it into something that makes a word. "Jenna-thief."

What does Genevieve do? Everything naughty. She first emerged in an ecstasy of storytelling, with Isabelle running about her Grandparents' home in Massachussets describing the havoc Genevieve wrought.

"She took those books and threw them on the floor. She took that pot and she broke it. She ripped up those papers."

Eventually she ran around the room pointing at various objects, "she broke that, and she broke that, and she broke that."

Later, Genevieve became more sophisticated, although her goal of thorough naughtiness remained her raison d'etre:

She rides in the car without her seatbelt
She parks on the sidewalk
She goes shopping in her pajamas
She makes people climb on the roof and then pushes them off
She feeds the cats milk and chocolate
She throws Mommy's shelves without taking the horses off.

But have no fear. If Genevieve comes near, Isabelle says she'll get Mr. Incredible to throw the house at her.

"But honey, if he throws the house at her, where will we live?"

"That's okay. We can live in the hole where the house was."

Isabelle's Room

2008-02-13T13:42:00.002-05:00

Isabelle's Room

pen and crayon

This is a thorough diagram of Isabelle's room. On the left side, you can see Isabelle coming in. The rectangle around her is the door. At the top you can see her bed, surrounded by ruffles, with a pillow, and rumpled blankets. Moving clockwise to the right, there is a square which is her window, and then her dresser, with all the drawers for her clothes. In the lower right corner, the circle with lines is her hamper. Along the bottom is the hallway, narrow next to the hamper and widening into a rectangle. The green is our ugly hallway rug.

A Song of the Heart

2008-01-31T18:14:00.002-05:00

So I just looked down at a pile of Isabelle's papers, and this is what I saw:

I asked her what it was, though it was obvious, and she told me it was a song. "A Song of the Heart."

Others may not think this is such a big deal, but I was utterly floored. Consider that she's spent the past year and a half practicing drawing letters and numbers, and hasn't yet done so independently and with confidence, but here she spontaneously wrote out musical notes. Mostly eighth notes, but some are conjoined and some are independent (with their flags projecting forward). There's even a pair of sixteenth notes. The thing in the upper left may not look like much, but it seems to be holding the place of the G-clef. I don't know if Montessori has had them look at written music, or taught them about it, but her exposure here has been mostly limited to one embarrassing effort of Daddy's to play the "Bad Babies" song on his guitar.

tales of teaching

2008-01-29T09:53:00.000-05:00

Okay, so this isn't about Isabelle, but it's a quote too good to pass up:

STUDENT: Can I have a rubber band?
ME: [suspecting catapult construction] What do you need a rubber band for?
STUDENT: I need it to hold a rolled up piece of paper.
ME: [seeing no such thing] And this rolled up piece of paper is where?
STUDENT: I just made it up so I could get a rubber band.

Isabelle Art

2008-01-27T09:05:00.000-05:00

A Valentine Picture

A Flower

A Falling Star

"Like the one Howl caught. This is what it looks like when a demon steals your heart."

Manners

2007-12-14T21:20:00.000-05:00

So Isabelle went to a party at her friend Zella's house today. There was a little girl there who did a lot of toy-grabbing, resulting in a few tears, particularly on Zella's part, but Isabelle minded her manners. As we tucked a very tired little girl into bed, we complimented her on being so polite, when all the other children had forgotten their manners.

Isabelle said, "There was another kid there. He was older, he was a boy. He didn't grab. He was like my cousin Benjamin."

Tradition

2007-12-07T09:26:00.001-05:00

Since I get up at 5:30 am to get to school on time, Isabelle is instructed not to get up when she hears me, but to wait for her good morning kiss about 6:20.

Each morning, after I wash up in the bathroom, I head back to my bedroom to dress, and glance, as I walk by, into her room to see if she is sleeping. She usually is.

This morning, as I started down the hall, my nose tickled, so I turned back to the bathroom to grab a tissue.

A cry rent the night. "Daddy! You forgot to look in my room!"

Creeping middle age

2007-12-06T09:27:00.001-05:00

The other day I remarked upon the great quantity of hair that had caught in the hair trap of my shower drain, as it has every time I've taken a shower for over twenty years, and it occurred to me that it could be--it just could be--that my hair might be thinning in my advancing age. My hairstyle typically involves a center part and ponytail hiding my hairline, so I peaked under my hair, intent on a close inspection to see if there was any thinning.

I didn't find my hairline where it should be.

To my shock and surprise, it had moved back almost an inch. It looks rather like I thought about giving myself a mohawk, then changed my mind after shaving a bit on both sides. If I had parted my hair on either side, or combed it back, or cut it off, I would have noticed the creep long ago, but the center part hid it.

Ten years ago I noted my silver hairs with pride. Two years ago I started wearing granny glasses on the tip of my nose, with pride. Some decades hence, if I live so long and need a cane, I will swing it with pride. But oh, I did want to keep my hair.

I am determined to grow old with pride, to reject the deification of youth and beauty. Since my hairstyle naturally hides my hair loss, I could easily fall into the sin of wanting it hidden. To avert this misdemeanor, I thought I should announce it to the world.

The Left Hand of Darkness

2007-11-06T18:58:00.001-05:00

Lots of kids have scape-goats. What was the cartoon, "Family Circus"? that had an invisible character named "Not Me" that ran around and got the kids in trouble. When I was a kid, I called it "Mr. Nobody." Isabelle occassionally invokes Mr. Nobody, but usually, misbehavior is caused by "the hands."

"Isabelle, don't splash."
"It's not me, daddy, it's the hands."

"Don't play with your food."
"It's not me, mommy, it's the hands."

The fact that the hands are connected to her is convenient, because I don't have to contradict her: "If those hands splash daddy again, they're going to have to get out of the bath, and anyone attached to them, too."

But the hands have personalities, as well. There is a good hand, and a bad hand.

Why is being naughty so fascinating? I swear Darth Vader has more fans than Luke Skywalker, or even Obi Wan Kenobi.

My dear, sweet, left-handed child, just told me today that the good hand is the right hand, and the bad hand is the left.

Isabelle Art

2007-10-19T11:34:00.000-05:00

On the left we have Isabelle's most recent Totoro drawing. On the right we have the one she made back in June. The earlier one actually looks a little more like Totoro, with the little eyes and the big belly and whiskers. But the previous toothy mouth was just a jagged line, and the new one is a full mouth with teeth. I like the energy of the new one, too, it seems it could just jump off the page.

Isabelle hasn't watched Totoro in a while, which may explain why her newest one less resembles the movie character, but I thought the comparisom nice to display the evoluntion of her style. In both pictures you see the Totoro has filled the paper, a good skill for a preschooler Isabelle came to naturally. The new one shows her "head with arms and legs" rendering, which in the case of Totoro, might be more accurately termed "body with a little face" (as in the older one).

In her new Totoro, Isabelle has used circles not only for the obvious: head, eyes, nostrils, and hands, but also for feet, toes, and fingers. These could represent totoro's claws, but I think rather this is a large portrait, and the circles are to show that fingers have dimension mere lines don't suggest. I think they are just "ends of the fingers" and toes.

Isabelle Art

2007-10-18T15:17:00.001-05:00

Here's a sample of Isabelle's latest drawings:

My Family

Isabelle H R Wightman

crayon

10/15/2007

Ghost

Isabelle H R Wightman

pen and paper

9/16/2007

I like the expressive face in ghost. In her family portrait, it is Isabelle on on the left, Dad in the middle, and Mommy on the right. The enormous red dots are, I believe, navels. I also find in interesting that Isabelle doesn't do the traditional stick figure. She has often done faces with arms and legs, rather like the ghost. In family she seems to be expanding the concept of circles from a single circle to represent head and torso to a pair of circles. That the legs on Dad start in his head suggests her slowly adding on the concept of a separate circle for the body.

One of the first (really representational) things Isabelle drew was a sun, which looks a lot like it does now in the family portrait. You can see the echo of this sun in the hands, particularly the ghost's hands, with its generous allotment of fingers. She is expanding off this circle-with-lines to represent many other objects.

Drink and be Merry

2007-10-14T19:49:00.001-05:00

Okay, this has nothing to do with being a dad. Unless of course your the dad of a very grouchy girl who is crying because she's cold because she refused to get out of the bathtub until all the water had gone down, while your wife is asking you worried questions about the budget and could you please take out the compost, it stinks like a... compost heap in here.

My first orginal drink recipe:

Old Vermonter

1&1/2 oz bourbon
1/2 oz maple syrup
1/2 oz applejack
1/4 tsp lemon juice

Combine in a shaker, serve over ice in an old fashioned glass. If desired, garnish with a moose antler.

Cheers!

(PS. arguably, an Old Vermonter should be made with Canadian whiskey, Vermont being closer to Canada than Kentucky, but I've never tried it. If someone tries it with Canadian and has an opinion, let me know!)

Isabelle's Fourth Birthday

2007-10-02T07:23:00.001-05:00

More than a blogging Daddy can resist. The party was an orgy of toys and clothes. Isabelle had been looking forward to it since October 2nd 2006. She was in a frenzy of excitement for 3 days, and it took her 2 days to recover. A smashing success. She loved everything she got, but there was one present that stood out, one present that she had wanted beyond all others, that her parents couldn't get, and didn't believe anyone could get for her. But her cousins, Allison and Benjamin, with the help of her aunt and uncle, struck gold. Witness the following video:

How to Speak Isabelle

2007-09-24T18:26:00.000-05:00

For the benefit of those with less familiarity, I thought I would post an Isabelle lexicon. Her pronunciation is quite good, but some of her word choices are unique...

even again:	ever again. Usage: "I won't do it even again"
jaki monster:	I did it. Origin: yakimash'ta (Jp: "I did it")
forty hundred degrees pounds:	an awful lot. Usage: "Do you know how much it cost? Forty hundred degrees pounds."
too much:	a lot. Usage: "I'm going to eat too much apple pie."

A Proud Dad Production

2007-09-11T19:30:00.001-05:00

A Heap of Dolls

A video. This is what happens when proud fathers are unemployed and have access to things like video editing software and tools.

Click on the "play" button to run. If it stops and starts a lot, click the "pause" button, and wait several seconds for more of the video to download, then click "play" again.

Isabelle Says Her Prayers

2007-09-11T18:04:00.000-05:00

All on her own, Isabelle decided she needed to say prayers before going to bed. For three or four nights in a row, now, she has, at the moment of bedtime, said, "Wait, I need to say my prayers." (Much more motivating when it can delay bedtime...) Then she clasps her hands and says:

"Please welcome. I had a busy day. Amen."

Rowing Her Canoe

2007-09-06T20:18:00.002-05:00

Family Portrait

2007-09-06T20:16:00.001-05:00

The Artist at Ease Among Her Work

2007-09-06T20:15:00.002-05:00

A Great Time at the Fair

2007-09-04T19:53:00.002-05:00

Maybe too much fun! That's Grandpa Conrad, being the pillow.

Three images

2007-09-02T17:37:00.001-05:00

Warming Herself By A Campfire

Isabelle built this fireplace after reading Little House on the Prairie.

Scouting Out a Place to Build

Another Little House inspiration. On the side of Mount Philo we found this little sheltered nook, where Isabelle decided she would build a house, with furniture and a floor and (something Charles Ingalls didn't know how to do) a garage!

A New Sandbox

Good for hours of landscape modification. "Look, Daddy, I dug a place for my butt!"

Birthday Wishes

2007-09-01T07:03:00.001-05:00

Isabelle has been making plans for her birthday since last October. But she now can give her own ideas for presents. For instance:

"For my birthday I want my own cornapration."

That's a "corporation" for those who don't speak 3 year-old. What will this corporation make?

"Toys! For me to play with!"

So, there you have it. If you don't know what else to buy her, buy her Mattel.

The Wisdom of Isabelle

2007-08-27T10:43:00.002-05:00

Daddy, that's how I pay bills.
I look at each bill,
and then I throw them all over the floor.

Isabelle's New Job

2007-08-25T15:54:00.002-05:00

By the way, Isabelle has a license that says she can go to work.

Dad: "What do you do at work?"

Isabelle: "Artisting. That's what artists do."

Isabelle Art

2007-08-25T15:40:00.001-05:00

Snakes Rouillard
Isabelle H. Rouillard Wightman
pencil on paper cut-outs

Carrie and I, for reasons unknown, were both tickled by these. They are fat snakes, because they ate a lot. We particularly liked the various expressions. Snake "C" is growling because he's mad at someone. Snake "B" is very happy, Snake "D" is not sad but grumpy, Snake "A" is upset. Snake "G" is just a baby. (I created the letters just for reference).

The snakes are named "the same as me!" Isabelle? No, Rouillard.

Wedding Bells & Oedipal Moments

2007-08-21T18:49:00.001-05:00

Well, Freud didn't make it all up.

As many of you are aware, Isabelle has a baby, who came out of her belly, named Aim. Sometimes "Ain." One day Isabelle proclaimed that she was Aim's mommy, so I asked her if Thomas (her bear) was Aim's daddy.

"No. You are!"

Moments later, she proclaimed that Aim was her brother. I pointed out that if she was the mommy, then Aim was her son.

"No. He's my brother!"

Well, I suppose, given Aim's parentage, he is her brother!

But a few days later I learned that I was safe. Isabelle was married. She had a husband, and his named was Janth.

"Janx?" I asked, suspecting a lisp.

"No, Janth. I have two husbands."

"What's your other husband's name?"

"Uh... Coff. I have all kinds of husbands."

Why not? Take two, they're small.

Isabelle Art

2007-08-05T09:54:00.002-05:00

Ghost

by Isabelle H. R. Wightman

pencil

Taro and the Glopposite Islands

2007-06-21T18:27:00.000-05:00

Isabelle's favorite bathtoy is "Taro," the dragon-boy, a little plastic person who resembles nothing so much as a character from Charles Schultz's Peanuts strip, if one of them wore a moustache and a pirate outfit. Unlike his namesake in the excellent Japanese animated movie (Taro the Dragon-Boy), who is a soft-spoken but determined little boy with the strength of 100 men, Taro rides a pirate ship and is mostly concerned with family matters and going swimming.

Taro is accompanied on his escapades by his mother, played by a pencil-thin fairy queen with a bare midriff, and his father, played by what appears to be, if he is her father, a cross-dressing teeny-bopper. I don't quite understand it, but Taro's dad wears a halter-top, mini-skirt, and lots of plastic jewelry, including an anklet on her bare feet. Of course, he does have a large, bushy ponytail, which might explain things, except that he has another, equally bushy ponytail on the other side of his head -- and of course his hair is red. It's a mystery to me, but I like it.

Truth in advertising: I don't know that Taro actually has ever gone to the Glopposite Islands, but I thought Isabelle's effort at "Galapogos" was so funny I had to get it in there somewhere.

The Sacrifices of Parenting

2007-06-14T20:10:00.001-05:00

Now that it is summer Isabelle likes to play outside. Her favorite game is "chase," in which she runs and I roar and occassionally head her off to create the illusion I am running.

But I cannot resist the temptation to get her into the garden. So as the spring unfolded, I showed her the strawberry blossoms, the tiny green buds that would be fruit, the green fruit that would be ripe, and finally, the strawberries started ripening.

Just two. I ate one and she ate one.

Jump ahead one day. A lot more strawberries are getting ripe now. We noted this with excitement.

Now, one thing parents do is they are always looking for games their children can play while they work. The best games are games that help: "Hey! How fast can you get these bottles in the recycling?" But any game that keeps her busy is a help. For instance, I'm building a border to hold a gravel bed along the side of the house, she's playing "flip ball," which, near as I can tell, involves running around, sans ball, and falling over backwards. Good game.

But then she disappears.

Put down the tools. Go look. There she is, in the middle of the garden, a beautific smile, smeared red with strawberry juice.

Well, there'll be more tomorrow.

Flash forward to tomorrow.

DADDY: "Let's pick some strawberries for Mommy."
ISABELLE: "I want to pick strawberries for me!"
DADDY: "Okay, you pick strawberries for you, and I'll pick strawberries for Mommy."
ISABELLE: "I'm going to eat them all!"

Pick pick pick. Hers go in her mouth, mine go in the bucket. I eat a couple, fill a bucket with eight strawberries.

Usher little girl out of garden as she starts eating -- and liking -- even the white ones.

Dessert time. Can't eat strawberries in front of little girl and not give her any. I've had a few, so I put four in her bowl, four in Mommy's bowl. Then I have to leave to see my former students graduate from Elementary School. A moment later the phone rings.

Mommy talks briefly to Grandma Bev. Looks down. Both bowls are empty.

On the upside, strawberries are at least good for little girls!

Isabelle Art

2007-06-02T12:18:00.000-05:00

So Isabelle drew a pair of pictures, and I looked down, and, to my surprise, I instantly recognized what she had drawn. This is Totoro, the tree-kami from My Neighbor Totoro, one of her favorite movies.

I thought she had drawn two:

But after I posted them, I showed them to her and just checked to be sure I was right. "This is Totoro, too, right?"

"No, Daddy, that's you!"

Lady Isabelle Rides to the Rescue

2007-05-26T09:07:00.000-05:00

Okay, so she didn't take the horse to the rally, but she was there!

Too bad there isn't sound on this picture, because she is shouting "Initiate impeachment!"

Fashion sense

2007-04-30T15:51:00.000-05:00

Isabelle says some day when she's all grown up she's going to get ear rings.

She says she's also going to get a nose ring.

And I thought I was radical getting my ear pierced when I was 18!

Garden girl

2007-04-30T15:35:00.000-05:00

Spring has finally come to Vermont. Normally, Isabelle doesn't like to wear jackets. But we both had dark T-shirts with pictures (hers: Lightning McQueen, mine: Vermont Reggaefest), blue jeans, and white socks with gray on the soles, and I was going to wear my jean jacket. So...

She helped prune the roses, and dig up weeds. Here she is running across the yard and posing under a tree.

Isabelle Art

2007-04-14T08:44:00.000-05:00

Isabelle's first stick figure. In the middle you can see "sunglasses" (the black sideways B, not the orange circles). Just had to share.

Isabelle Art

2007-03-03T16:49:00.000-05:00

This picture was made with a special Montessori technique of dipping a marble in paint and then rolling it about the paper.

Isabelle told me it was called "A picture of my daddy"

The Wisdom of Isabelle

2007-02-25T15:23:00.001-05:00

After one nap, Isabelle informed me

I've been dreaming of stepping on things. You may want to step on toys and
you may not. If you do want to step on toys you want to step on other girls
toys.

News!

2007-02-23T19:57:00.000-05:00

The licensure committee at Vermont College has just voted to recommend me to the state for licensure as a Special Ed teacher. Woo-hoo!

On Witches and Modern Sensibilities

2007-02-16T19:48:00.001-05:00

With much fanfare, Isabelle watched the Wizard of Oz. We had a glorious time. I am happy to report that the urban legend that the Wizard accidentally filmed the suicide of one of the munchkins is utterly false. We saw several clips of different parts of the movie purporting to be the unfortunate scene. The one most often cited is, on close inspection, an out-of-focus crane (bird) flapping its wings.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about witches. After watching, Isabelle was talking a lot about witches, and asked if witches ate people. Unable to resist an opening, I told her the story of Hansel and Gretle. She asked for another witch story, and so I told her of Baba Yaga.

Isabelle didn't appear terribly frightened by this, but she was a little concerned, so we told her that witches that ate people lived far away. Then, remembering that some of our friends and family were witches, we pointed out that, just as in Oz, there are good witches and bad witches.

How confusing is the modern world! But that's not what I'm here to talk about either. I'm here to talk about myself. I imagine everyone does this, when telling a story to a three year-old, I made some quick judgements about what of the story was appropriate for her young mind. I merrily told her about Hansel holding out a chicken bone, and the witch checking to see if he was fat enough to eat. I told her about Gretle pushing the witch into the fire. I didn't say that she made Gretle work as a "slave" in the kitchen, because I didn't want to explain slavery, and I left out the huntsman and his wife abandoning the children in the forest.

How peculiar! That witches would eat children struck me as deliciously frightening, the kind of scary story that is so much fun. But that parents should betray their children was unspeakable to me.

One more photo

2007-02-16T14:55:00.000-05:00

Our front door.

Did I mention that it took the entire day to dig out?

Saint Valentine's Blizzard

2007-02-15T17:24:00.000-05:00

A "bonzo" (smiley face) out our kitchen window. (The window is about 4' above the ground.)

Nighttime view of our backyard. Those tracks are only halfway down through the snow.

Isabelle plays in the snow outside her second-story bedroom window.

(Okay, I admit, there is a porch roof about a foot below the window)

Pooped from too much shoveling.

Of course, there was a lot to do!

The Times They are Achanging

2007-02-04T19:32:00.000-05:00

The dreaded time is approaching. Isabelle is giving up her nap. She still needs it. Sometimes she sleeps. But sometimes she doesn't, and oh, then is it a tough day.

But one era closes, another one opens. This afternoon, ushering her back to bed, we found her sitting up, buried in a mountain of books.

And when she has to go to the bathroom, she'll often proudly tuck a book under her arm on her way.

Where ever did she get these habits from?

Ladybug, Ladybug, Stay real dry

2007-01-07T12:06:00.000-05:00

One advantage of the warm, rainy winter, is that Isabelle got to try out her mud season outfit in January.

See, she had these boots. And she really liked them. And she needed a raincoat. So Carrie ordered a matching raincoat from ebay, and the seller was on vacation. And the person who was supposed to put things in the mail (her husband?) said, "Oh, was I?" So when she got back she was so embarrassed she offered the umbrella as well. We didn't want to take it, but the possibility of this photo was more than we could resist.

The downside is the havoc we wrought at the grocery store. Every woman in the store we passed said "Oh, she's so cute!" (some of the guys, too), excepting those who had preschoolers with them, who were all chiming "Mommy, I want one of those."

Songs

2006-12-29T09:41:00.000-05:00

One day, banging mightily upon her xylophone, Isabelle began singing off-key at the top of lungs:

There was a baby Jesus
Oh my Lord, Oh my Lord,
Way down in Bethlehem

A few days later, at Grandma & Grandpa's, banging mightily upon the piano, she improvised a new song:

Baby Jesus went to a scary place
And it was very dangerous
And it was too scary for Baby Jesus
To stay there at night
But she stayed there
And there was a scary lion
Who tried to eat her

Different twist on the Christmas story. I thought it worth preserving.

A first Christmas pageant

2006-12-21T18:34:00.000-05:00

Isabelle's Montessori school had a Christmas pageant! Not what I was expecting. They had a singing bit at the party today, including "Deck the Halls," a Channukah song, and something about a Frosty Winter. (This is second hand.) That was what I expected. The only "Christmas" songs conspicuously not Christian, and then a Jewish song for balance. But then came the Christmas pageant, and it was the story about Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus looking for room in the Inn. (Had a little problem with the chronology here, but hey, close enough.)

The kids playing Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus walked around to the other kids and asked them if there was room at the Inn. All the Innkeepers said, "No." Apparently, our own Isabelle couldn't bring herself to turn the family away, repeatedly saying "Sure, you can stay here" during rehearsals. So Isabelle got the starring role, as the animals in the stable!

I'm so proud of my stubborn little actress.

Isabelle Sez

2006-12-17T16:28:00.000-05:00

"This is your patella"

Letters to Santa

2006-12-09T10:11:00.000-05:00

Isabelle wrote her first letter to Santa, with her first squiggle writing. Previously, she has written messages (most notably, "Help, Piglet, Me.") but they were little distinquished from her drawings. These have the distinctive formation of lines of text. She wanted to stamp it, and Carrie had the brilliant idea of using the "penny stamps," which have the satisfaction of being "real" and probably cost less than play stamps.

What you see above is the address line, of course. The text inside, I am told, reads as follows:
"Dear Santa, I love you so much, and I want you to bring me candy and presents."

Isabelle sez

2006-12-07T18:37:00.000-05:00

The following appeared in the Montessori school newsletter, attributed to an unnamed three year-old I think I can name:

"I'm painting a beautiful shark. Sharks are mean. They have bad table manners."

Then there are the identities of her rubber duckies. For a long time I've referred to our household as "Brian's House of Girls," because I've been the only male mammal living in it (not counting the shrews in the basement) since Chris (Carrie's last male guinea pig) died in Boston. Isabelle's ducks keep up the tradition.

"This is the Baby duck, the Daddy duck, the Aunt Tammy duck, the Mommy duck, and the other Mommy duck."

Isabelle Poetry

2006-12-03T13:22:00.000-05:00

The grapes are falling from the sky
Like raindrops
On a stick.

--Isabelle H. R. Wightman (composed while waving about a small bunch of green grapes)

Guiding drawing with Isabelle

2006-11-10T16:56:00.000-05:00

So I drew a silly, scary face on a piece of paper, and Isabelle said it needed a chin. I added a chin. She said it needed a top, and drew it on. Guided drawing was born. The one in the upper right is the original. The circles around it are ears. The smiley face next to it I did the facial features, she completed. Over on the left, I drew the bodies and she drew the faces, with eyes, hair, and ears (top only). The upper one is Mommy. The lower is Daddy. "And heres a curl, and another curl, and another curl, and another curl."

Spelling, names, and school reform

2006-11-01T16:35:00.000-05:00

Well, that Montessori School may be a liberal education, but Isabelle is learning some facts at an impressive rate. With only two months of schooling under her belt, she has learned the days of the week (at least Wednesday-Saturday), the months of the year (except November), several adorable songs, and now she is learning phonics! The other day she surprised me with "O. O is for Owen."

Knowing that Montessori was teaching phonics ahead of letter names, I asked after the sound "j," and she told me "j" was for "Jonathon." So we are having lots of fun now with letter sounds and people's names, although "b" is for "Brian" but "d" is for "Daddy" is still a challenge--an inconvenient overlap that I shouldn't have called attention to, did it by accident, momentarily forgetting my name. Hey, I have three of them. I'm "Brian" in the teacher's lounge, "Mr. Wightman" in the classroom, and "Daddy" at home.

Speaking of which, I've finally figured out where I stand on names. I've decided that it is the place, rather than the title. The school rules ask you to address teachers by their last name, that is school culture and it is respectful of people to address them as they wish to be addressed. Personally, I prefer my first name, but I don't wish to oppose the school culture. Outside of school I will happily answer to either name. Moreover, I will try to address you as you like to be addressed. I think it's a happy truce. There are arguments on both sides for the proper address of teachers, and it's not on my school reform list.

The Lorax, the Oncler, and Isabelle

2006-10-22T14:43:00.000-05:00

Isabelle got The Lorax for her birthday. Actually two copies of it. One of Mom and Dad's favorite books. We can't read it without getting all weapy eyed. Something about the last bit, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing's going to get better. No really, it's not." When I was a kid I took that line very personally. And now the "Unless" is being passed down to a new generation, because my generation failed.

Isabelle loves The Lorax. The problem is, I think she likes the Oncler better. He's got all those fancy construction vehicles, after all. Cranes, and cars, and machines. What fun! She's running around the house right now with a necklace of beads, exclaming in a loud voice, "I'm knitting a Thneed!"

Of course, this is the same girl who, at a party last summer, ran out into the woods in my professor's back yard and shouted. "I'm in the woods! Walking on leaves! Under the trees!" So there's got to be some Lorax in her too.

Preschool, Stair Gates, and Vocabulary

2006-09-22T15:41:00.000-05:00

They say that children are wired to slowly shed their need of Mommy and Daddy. As they grow, they get more confident going further away, until one day they are grown and as independent as anyone ever is.

They say that parents, unfortunately, are not wired with a complimentary shedding of their need to be Mommy and Daddy. Kathleen Poole, the teacher at Isabelle's Montessori Preschool, say she has more trouble with parents letting their babies go than with babies wanting their mommies.

So, yes, Isabelle started preschool. Each little milestone is great excitement for me, but they are also a little bit sad. There is little of her babyhood left. The stair gates are down (except for the basement and steep back stairs). The locks are off the kitchen cupboards (though not the medicine chest). She only wears diapers when she sleeps, and hasn't had an accident in weeks.

And then there's her vocabulary. To date, her language is all recognizable to me. She has certain phrases I recognize from books or movies or quirks of ours. Words she's made up on certain occasions ("color storm" for "fireworks"). She's made them her own, but they came from me or Carrie or things we picked out.

The other day I was cooking, and she wanted to see what I was doing. Sshe said, "I want you to bring your work right here." It's a Montessori phrase. What a child is doing, be it a picture, a puzzle, or a stack of tinker toys is her "work," her labor and creation.

There's something intimate about language. Something that links deeply with thought and identity. Someone else's language is now going into her language. A little part of her is growing without us, already.

Isabelle Art

2006-09-17T15:43:00.000-05:00

More Art from my littlest artist.

She seems to be using color more deliberately now. This one on left you can see she's segregated her colors, having defined areas of various mixes. You can also see she's drawn a line using three different colors.

In this one she's chosen a limited palette, mostly blues. I think it looks like a crashing ocean.

Big Girl

2006-08-29T17:39:00.000-05:00

[Caution: graphic content]

Well, we've made the plunge.

As in, toilet plunger.

Isabelle is wearing big girl underpants.

We're not out of the woods by any stretch, but she's only having about a mistake a day. Contrary to my expectations, she's doing quite well at peeing in the potty, but having more trouble with poop.

So the other day I come upstairs, and I hear an excited girl, crowing, "These fit me! These fit me!"

I come around the corner, and there's my big girl, naked from the waist down, waving her underpants over her head like the victor in "Capture-the-Flag."

[that's it for graphic content, sorry if I disappointed anyone]

Isabelle Can Spell (sort of)

2006-08-15T18:41:00.000-05:00

And her first word is... not her name, but "rescue." As in "Rescue Aid Society." She's been running around the house singing at the top of her lungs the theme song from the old Disney movie, The Rescuers:

"R -- E -- S -- C -- U -- V"

Okay, so she won't pass any spelling bees with that, but I think it's a good first effort!

The Worst Night Possible

2006-08-06T10:07:00.000-05:00

There are nightmares and then there are nightmares. August 4, 2006. Stomach flu. Projectile vomitting. All three of us.

It goes like this. Carrie tucks Isabelle into bed, comes back and lies down. Isabelle cries for a drink of water. Brian gets up to give it to her and winds up in the bathroom puking instead. So Carrie gets up to give it to her and winds up in the kitchen puking. Isabelle gets her water, we get back to bed. Woops. Isabelle's turn. All over her bed, again. So weak we can hardly stand, but we had to get her up, wash her, get her changed, change the sheets on her bed, put them in the laundry. All the while Isabelle is howling because she's sick and exhausted and wants to go back to bed but has to wait until we get the clean sheats on it. Back to bed. Woops, our turn to puke again. We only had two pairs of sheets for Isabelle's bed, but we changed them three times. It would have been four, but once I succeeded in getting her to puke in the bucket.

All night long.

But wait, there's more! Not only were we all puking, but the cat was, too. Every time Carrie went downstairs to puke or do laundry, she stepped in it. In her bare feet, of course.

Did I mention that that evening, knowing that Isabelle was feeling queazy, we had bought of 12-pack of ginger ale? The cheap box broke open and the cans rolled out and exploded on the kitchen floor, six of them, spraying soda on all four walls and the ceiling and every surface in between.

The next day went like this:
11:00 get up. eat crackers and sip ginger ale
11:30 Watch the Rescuers
2:00 go back to bed
5:00 get up. eat crackers and sip ginger ale
6:00 Watch the Rescuers again
8:00 go back to bed.

Isabelle's Art

2006-08-04T20:07:00.000-05:00

I've been watching and admiring Isabelle's art skills maturing, and decided it was time to document them. Her first pictures were back and forth scribbles in one corner of the page. Then, she sought to cover more of the page in straight, back-and-forth scribbles. Later, she added circular scribbles, and then dots, to her artistic repertoire. This summer she has just begun giving names to her compositions, and they have begun to have resemblences to their subjects.

Isabelle, as I have mentioned, is into the movie Cars. This car, probably a fire truck, because of the blocky shape, has a clear pair of eyes and a mouth, as well as suggestions of wheels.

I'm not sure where the spider is, but I suspect its in the darker squiggle. This may be an interpretation of a scene in the movie The Rescuers, in which a spider weaves a web in a swamp to catch a dragonfly. I may possibly have the picture upside down, I'm not sure.

"A Grounding Wire." One of Isabelle's latest fascinations. We discovered them on telephone poles, now we look for them on houses. The yellow may represent our yellow house.

Isabelle has a genetic disease

2006-07-30T20:24:00.000-05:00

Friends, it is sad but true. Isabelle has inherited a genetic disease. It's her Mother's fault. No one in my family carries this gene. She got it from her father, and Isabelle got it from her. All indications are that it is incurable, will cost a lot of money to treat, and will affect her the rest of her life.

She's a collector. It made be some time before the effect of the disease is clear. Carrie, you may know, exhibits this principally by an irrational desire to build new shelving systems to cover every available wall surface in display space for model horses. Although we do have our bedroom bureaus covered with Lord of the Rings merchendising. I hear tell the disease doesn't necessarily fix its symptoms in children this young. Right now it is model cars. Cars cars, as in cars from the Pixar movie Cars, which she has seen twice in the theater and loves.

It happened like this. Carrie found a "Lightning McQueen" car in a cereal box at work. She thought how Isabelle liked the movie, so she brought it home. Isabelle loved it, and said she needed another car. Unable to resist, we bought her Lightning's best friend, "Mater." Isabelle looked at the pictures on the box and said, "Want to get them all."

The diagnosis was confirmed when we noticed that, rather than play with the cars, at first she just wanted to line them up and look at them.

So now her idea of a good time is to go to the toy store and look to see if there are any new cars in. As of this writing, she has, in addition to Lightning and Mater, Sally, Doc Hudson, Ramone, Filmore, Red, Stanley, Luigi, and Wingo. Wingo, however, is in a different scale, which bothers her, and she wants to get one that is smaller. We, the indulgent parents that we are, have squirreled away Flo, a second Ramone in an alternate color, Guido, a tractor, and a second Luigi who came with Guido for birthday presents.

Oh well. At least she plays with them, now.

You know you're getting old when

2006-06-19T20:20:00.000-05:00

So when Isabelle was born she received a copy of the Harper Collins Collection of Classic Picture Books for children. I was delighted to see old favorites, such as Harold and the Purple Crayon and Hats for Sale. Most of them I didn't recognize, however.

Put the book aside for when she was ready for such tales. Got it out the other day, now that she is ready for the concept of more than one story in a book. She loves pointing to the various pictures of the book covers around the edge of the volume -- "I read... THAT one."

Discovered that, apart from Harold and Hats and a couple others from the 40's, all of these "classic" stories are younger than I am. Several of them were not yet written when I graduated from high school. I think young parents are supposed to be younger than we are.

Wisdom of Isabelle

2006-04-23T18:14:00.000-05:00

What does the duck say?

"Quack"

What does the horse say?

"Neigh"

What does the cat say?

"Please please can I go outside."

(No, I do not make these up!)