Ladybug, Ladybug, Stay real dry

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

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

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

"This is your patella"

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.