A.M. Leibowitz

queer slice-of-life stories

AM Leibowitz

A Letter to Santa

KidSpeak

I realize that it is pretty early to be thinking about Christmas.  I’ve been trying to reserve holiday preparations for after Thanksgiving.  We haven’t put up our tree yet, for example.  But in the mind of young children, it is never too early to start thinking about Christmas.

We have some books that were given to us by another homeschooling family with older children.  Among the stash, my 5-year-old found a book of Christmas cut-outs with a page at the back for writing a letter to Santa.  My son is just learning how to write and was very excited by this development.  He sat down and got right to work.  When I finished my morning chores, I checked in on him.  He was just adding the finishing touches.  I asked if he’d like to read it to me.

He read, “Dear Santa, I love you.  Love,” and he had signed his name.  I have to admit, I was surprised.  I assumed he would write a letter about what he wanted for Christmas, like most kids.  I asked him, “What do you love about Santa?”  He replied, “I love that he eats the cookies we put out!”

Not to be outdone, my 3-year-old piped up, “I wrote a letter, too!”  She showed me a paper with her scribbles on it and told me it said, “Dear Jesus, thank you for Santa.  Amen.”

Their beautiful innocence is so precious to me.  That sweetness will carry me through all the rush and bustle of the season, reminding me to take the time to consider what’s really important.

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I have the script memorized!

KidSpeak

I’m beginning to understand just why we need to be careful what we say around our children.

My kids have this amazing ability to remember, with frighteningly accurate detail, every scene from their precious movies.  Today, while waiting for the kids at dance class, I was chatting with my friend.  She and I share the driving, as our children have class together but the classes don’t start at the same time.  I drive the big kids early, and she arrives later with our little ones.  She told me that my daughter provided the entire script of an episode of “The Magic School Bus” in the car.  Apparently, she was explaining how digestion works.

Now, why doesn’t this amazing memory apply to other things?  Say, putting dirty laundry in the wash bin, or washing up before dinner, or not hitting each other on the head with plastic sticks?

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Slime!

Craft Projects

I thought it was time to post a fun little project you can do at home: homemade slime!

I recommend that you do this in a large bowl in the sink, or else pretty much tarp an entire room.

Put a lot of corn starch in a bowl.  Add water a little at a time, mixing with your hands, until it feels right.  It is done when you try to pull your hand out fast and get clumps, but pull your hand out slowly and it runs.  Add a few drops of food coloring and let the kids go to town.

I suggest you strip your kids down at least to the waist, maybe more if they’re under age 4 and prone to fingerpainting.

There are recipes online for slime using Borax.  I think that for kids under age 5 or 6, you should just do the corn starch one, especially if they try to eat science experiments.  With the safe slime, all that will happen is they will think it’s yucky and maybe get a green mouth.

Enjoy!

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Out to Lunch

Public Behavior

Is that what we did today or my perpetual state of mind?  You be the judge.

I took the kids to lunch today with some friends.  First of all, I should make a note that I do enjoy taking them out to restaurants.  My kids are very well-behaved, by anyone’s standards.  When my husband and I take them out, we all have a lot of fun.  I suppose this is because of one of the best pieces of advice I ever read.  In one of those child-rearing books that are so popular these days, the author was commenting on restaurant behavior.  He said that the children whose parents were really enjoying their company were behaving far better than the kids whose parents were mostly paying attention to each other.  When we take the kids out, alone or together, we give them plenty of our attention.  This pays off for everyone, including the other (grateful, I’m sure) patrons.

Today was another story.  I took them out with three other moms and their kids.  I try not to do this, since I know what will happen, even without the aid of a crystal ball or the Psychic Friends Network.  What prompted this temporary lapse in good judgment was this morning’s play date.  The other moms said they were going out to lunch, would we like to join them.  I wasn’t in the mood for the meltdown that would have occurred, in stereo, if I said no.  So I agreed to go along.

As predicted, my son kept annoying the boy seated next to him, while my daughter tried to sit on her brother’s head.  One of the other moms kept telling my kids to settle down.  To be fair, the other boy was definitely baiting my son, but that is no excuse.  They somehow managed to eat their lunch, after which my daughter asked for ice cream.  Now, I had no intention of buying ice cream, but she did ask nicely.  Besides, they had both had a pretty good lunch.  So I agreed, of course.

It turned out that was the best decision I made all day.  Because the other moms didn’t want to buy ice cream too, they all left.  I was alone with my kids at last.  It could not have been more fun.  We laughed and talked, sharing the ice cream.  It was amazing what a difference I saw in their behavior.

Never discount the time spent with these little ones.  Even if it’s just cheap ice cream in a semi-fast food restaurant, they’ll thank you for the moments you took to nurture them.

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Signs of Life

Daily Life

My son has a new hobby.  He likes to make signs.  For absolutely everything.  It started one night after dinner.  He was in the bathroom and my daughter kept trying to go in with him.  This was bothering him, especially when she ignored his repeated requests for privacy.  When he came out, he decided that we needed a sign for the bathroom:

(The extra drawing is my daughter’s artwork.)

Next thing I knew, he was making signs and hanging them up all over the house.  We have the “ghosts” in the kitchen doorway, the “cool tool” sign in the kitchen, the “in” and “out” signs by the front door and on the porch.

Speaking of ghosts, apparently we have a “nice” haunted house.  My son made a new sign for the bathroom:

As a result of the original “PRIVIT” sign in the bathroom, my daughter became quite distressed.  She wanted to be able to join her brother in the bathroom.  Being the sensitive boy that he is, he didn’t like seeing her so upset.  So he decided to remove the original sign.  I suppose he figured it might not be enough just to take the sign down.  After all, he hadn’t informed his sister of the change in the rules.  So he produced yet another sign:

There is peace in the land at last.

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Homeschooling

Homeschooling

I had to post this, since it relates to that parenting seminar mentioned in my previous post.

We are a homeschooling family.  No, we’re not vegans, we don’t grow all our own food, I don’t make our clothes, we’re not “religious nuts” trying to shelter our kids from all things evil.  Yes, the kids are learning “real things, like math and reading, they do have physical education, and they have a better social life than I do.

I do like some of the comments I get.  Most people who ask how long I plan to do it are just curious.  So I say, truthfully, that I don’t know.  I hope to send them to school eventually, but by then, they will be old enough to choose for themselves.  Some people, though, ask because they think that you can’t possibly do it all the way through high school.  For those people, I give the same aforementioned answer, but I long to say, “I plan to homeschool through graduate school.”

At the parenting seminar, I posed a question about how to handle my 3-year-old’s challenging behavior when she doesn’t want to go to one of the group activities.  I couldn’t believe that the woman leading the seminar had no better advice than, “You’re trying to parent two different children the same way.  Maybe you should reconsider and send them to school, or at least send one of them.”  I politely said that we felt their educational needs couldbe better met at home (while inside, I was thinking, And you think the public schools are going to take interest in their unique personalites?).  So her advice was to hire a sitter or ask another mom to babysit, or have someone else take my son to the activities (which are actually for both kids).  Wow, yeah, I’ll get right on that.

Fortunately, there was another mom there who is familiar with homeschooling and had great advice for me.  Once again, I think I’ll skip the parenting experts.  Geez, I hope they don’t comebeating down my door with CPS workers next week ’cause I’m not sending my kids to school.

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