Letters to Santa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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)

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

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

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.