2006
find, find, find the secret
maura @ 11:57 am
Well hello, internets, how’ve you been? In my house we have been BUSY. Like you couldn’t have guessed that taking a class and working and spending time with Gus and all the usual chores wouldn’t keep me running constantly, but I must have been in denial because it totally took me by surprise. Busy, busy, busy. Too busy to blog. There could be a Dead Kennedys joke in that, but I’m too tired to make it.
Through the magic of time-lapse I am once again speaking to you from the past! Right now it is Friday and we three are on Amtrak train 56, “The Vermonter”, en route to visit my dad + stepmom in northern Vermont. How long does the trip on Amtrak’s majestic Vermonter take, you may ask? Eight and one-half (8 1/2) hours, I respond. We’re nearly at hour 3 and Gus has just passed right the hell out on Jonathan’s lap. He spent the time thus far looking out the window, providing a running commentary on whatever he sees. We take the subway nearly every day, but this is his first time on a big train and it’s kind of an understatement to say that he is very excited. Let’s hope we’re all holding up this well by hour 8, and that 2 days is enough time between 8.5 hr train trips because we do it all again to come home on Monday.
I’ve just finished my second week of classes and so far library school is a blast! I mean, probably it is not for normal people, but for me it is a party. I’ve done all kinds of super nerdy things in the past two weeks, like get a NYPL card (I only had a BPL card) and join the ALA and memorize acronyms (kidding) and spend hours browsing online library catalogs and databases and read TWENTY WHOLE PAGES about dictionaries, then another 20 on encyclopedias. Yippee!!!
It’s just about naptime for me too, but before I go I have to be an awful bragging mommy for just one minute: Gus is starting to read! It’s completely taken us by surprise, because of course like everything since birth he won’t do it if we suggest it. But the other weekend we were down at my mom’s and we heard him sounding words out to her, and picked up some bubbles and read “bubble fun” on the label like it was nothing at all. Now of course the challenge is to encourage him casually, so he’ll still want to do it because he’ll think it’s his idea. Which is hard when I’m so excited I want to get the t-shirts printed up that say MY KID CAN READ!!!
4 comments on “find, find, find the secret”
Yeah, that is the huge thing for us right now, not to push because it has to seem like it’s his idea. But seriously, with all the books around this nerd house I’d hope he realizes that reading is a priority for me + J! Helps that the library is a block away, too.
Now I just have to restrain myself from calling the kindergartens we’re waitlisted at and bragging.
I totally don’t get that kindergarten thing. It’s about as obscure to me as the whole “buy an apartment” thing in nyc.
Well this is completely w/o context (when did that ever stop me?) but I had a dream Tex was a huge hip hop star. She was staying down the street from my mom’s and the Beastie Boys were staying with her! So that they could bask in her hip hop glory! You had to speak to the press to tell them when she would perform. I was going to do her makeup but someone else did it instead. Plus some stuff about my family. But the main thing was hip hop mogulista Tex and her huge following!
Anyway just wanted to mention that, and I’m too tired to write it anywhere else.
Man, I could explain the kindergarten thing to you, but it would take forever and you’d be really bored.
That dream is intense! Hip hop Tex — we need an action figure of her!
It’s so exciting, mostly because it just clicks w/o warning! Nobody really knows how it works and you can’t watch it happen. All parents seem to stress out about reading, but if you think about it–most people learn to read eventually, right? I guess the thing is, you want them to like it. (Just warn them not to become English majors and then go to law school, if their eyes don’t shrivel up their will to read will!)
Oh but the drawbacks–they can read over your shoulder when you write e-mail, they can read all the labels in the store, they ask questions about the newspaper, they hog the comics on Sunday, they won’t stop reading to eat dinner, no more lies, etc.! But it’s worth it and fun. Congratulations!!!