Isabelle's Room

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: