TV Tuesday. Or is it?

9-11-07 Tuesday

This morning Leo read Bug in a Rug (Graves), Marian read If I were an Ant (Moses) and then helped Leo read a bit of it. We listened to a few chapters of the Tao Te Ching, and I read them (and childcare kids) Amelia Bedelia (Parish), Good Work, Amelia Bedelia (Parish), and Thank You, Amelia Bedelia (Parish). I taught them one of my favorite rhymes:

Moses supposes his toeses are roses,
But Moses supposes erroneously.
For nobody’s toeses are posies of roses
Like Moses supposes his toeses to be.

I also did a dramatic recitation from memory of Shel Silversteins’s “There’s a Polar Bear in My Frigidaire” (not the correct title, I don’t think). It was such a hit that I had to do it 2 more times. We sang the songs “Wishy Washy Washer Woman” (added some new verses), “The Tree Song”, “The Fish Song”, “The Beatnik Three Bears Song” (it tells the whole story), and many silly and active verses of “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” Then we sang and signed (ASL) “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” If anyone wants me to write out the lyrics or find a YouTube of any of those songs, let me know. :)

We listened to a Cat Stevens cd (at Leo’s request), and also listened to some adult alternative music, country music, jazz, Spanish jazz, and easy listening. We compared them all to each other and also to the classical and folk music we listened to yesterday. We had conversations (initiated by kid questions) about rhinos and hippos and their relative affinity toward water, college and the ages, studies, and job possibilities related to it, and puberty changes (breast buds, menstruation, voice changes) and their accompanying celebrations for the passage into young woman/manhood (moon time, voice changing). Lots of verbal addition of 2 digit numbers.

Spent an hour at the shelter, where the kids got to see dead roundworms that had been expelled from the kittens I treated yesterday, they learned how ringworm is spread, they assisted me with cleaning litterboxes and filling food and water, and of course loved on all the kitties. At home the younger two played in the backyard for awhile while Marian opted for some alone time and took a walk to the end of the block. She picked some crabapples for Leo and Sophie and surprised them when she got home. (So sweet. :)) Now they are all playing dress-up with our big costume collection.

We are getting cable today, after not having any TV reception in the home for almost 8 years. We’re excited and are hanging out at home for the next several hours until the cable folks come and go (sometime between 1pm-5pm).

Leo and Sophie watched a LOT of episodes of "The Electric Company" after hearing I’d be sending it back to Netflix tomorrow, and Marian opted to hang out outside. We all watched a couple internet videos on how TV works, and they played on the bikes and scooter and climbed trees and such outside. While we were out there, we observed the changes in the dead bird we had seen earlier in the day (it was fresh around lunchtime). Only a few hours later and it was being devoured by yellow jackets at a pace that we could actually sit and observe. Here’s a picture, but not for the squeamish:



We all thought it was really cool. There are also a bunch of ants on the head and eye, but they don’t show up in the picture. We checked on it again a few hours later and saw a noticeable difference.

Marian had her first ballet class tonight (first one in 2 years, anyway) and enjoyed every moment of it, and I also learned how to do a real bun (part of the dress code for her class) and it stayed in wonderfully; even the other parents were asking me how I’d done it.

We ended the day with a fabulous new moon house purification ritual that really connected all of us. Now Marian and Leo are in bed upstairs listening to Harry Potter and Sophie is in bed listening to “Friends” music and leafing through a large pile of books.


And after all that waiitng, the TV folks never showed. They said they'd be here tomorrow.