Tuesday morning, after I went to work…
Shelby was sitting and playing some kind of video game (at a time when he would normally be at school).
Annie went up to Jim and whispered, like it was some kind of secret or scandal, “Why is Shelby still at home?”
Wonder what she’s going to think when summer break rolls around 
I’m reading the ‘Boxcar Children’ series of books to Shelby. We’ve read a dozen or so, now.
He’s also enjoying Scooby Doo, although he’s already noticed the patterns in the shows. Whenever we ‘play’ Scooby Doo, it always has to end with an unmasking, and the villian saying “And, I would have got away with it if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids”
Tonight, we read chapter 8 of ‘The Chocolate Sundae Mystery’. Benny & Henry are walking with their dog, Watch, as they followed a trail of melted strawberry ice cream. Watch stops and watches a cat in a tree go up to a higher branch. Shelby interrupted me with, “That’s it! It’s a robot cat with cameras for eyes!”
:D
He’s goofy
http://www.dailyherald.com/story.asp?id=170448
Responding to a complaint by a parent, Geneva school officials convened a committee Thursday to decide if a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon book — on some district elementary schools’ shelves since 1987 — should be removed.
Superintendent Michael Jacoby said the committee’s decision won’t be formal until it is delivered in a written report to him.
Jacoby said he expects to receive the report soon, but there is a “continuing process,” to a decision.
Jacoby can either accept or reject the committee’s recommendation, and his decision could be appealed to the school board, he said.
If the book is removed, it would be the first such action taken by the district, said Jane Gazdziak, superintendent for curriculum.
“It was written as an adult book,” she said. “It does refer to violence and sex.”
Named after a 16th-century theologian and 17th-century philosopher, Calvin and Hobbes are a 6-year-old boy and imaginary tabby cat/tiger, respectively, who go on a series of adventures.
Written by Bill Watterson and published by Missouri-based Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, the first of 17 Calvin books garnered a complaint about a month ago. Copies of that book were removed from elementary shelves, Gazdziak said.
Parent-teacher organizations probably bought them for libraries soon after the volume was published in 1987, Gazdziak said.
Four other Calvin and Hobbes books are circulated in Geneva school libraries, but just this book contains questionable material, she said.
“If my child brought it home, I probably wouldn’t have noticed,” she said. “(But) we’re looking at whether or not it supports district philosophy or whether it is offensive.”
Geneva, Batavia, Franklin Park, and St. Charles libraries list the book as adult non-fiction. The Glen Ellyn library lists the book as juvenile non-fiction.
The American Library Association, which keeps an official list of “challenged” books, does not list any objections nationwide to the Calvin book.
The Geneva committee deciding the fate of the book is made up of seven people including parents, an administrator, a librarian and teachers from an elementary and the middle and high schools.
A majority of the group must decide on a recommendation to be made to superintendent, Gazdziak said.
Either way, the district isn’t going to ban the book, Gazdziak said.
“If a child brought it to school, we wouldn’t take it away,” she said.
The Calvin strip ran in more than 2,400 newspapers from 1985 to 1996. Books featuring the duo have sold more than 30 million copies, McMeel said.
Inside scoop from my sister, who is an elementary school librarian in that town… - they complained specifically about one panel where Calvin uses the words ’sexual discrimination’, the many times Calvin says ‘Die!’, and that one strip where he stayed home sick from school & was watching TV. In that panel, he’s watching a soap. There’s lots of kissing noises, then one character says to the other “Wouldn’t it be great if we were married……… I mean to each other”. And, Calvin says something like “Boy, you sure learn a lot when you stay home from school”.
When my sister started telling me about it on the phone, I was incredulous, I said “What could possibly be wrong with Calvin and Hobbes? I’ve been reading it to Annie & Shelby before bed for the past month!” She laughed & called me a horrible mother
And similar in shape and girth
Were the children of the earth.
They looked like two girls
Rolled up in one.
The song is called ‘Hoppipolla’, which means ‘Jumpin Puddles’ in Icelandic. They sing in both Icelandic and Hopelandic, which is a language the band made up to use in their songs.
These are the lyrics translated into English:
Jumpin’ puddles
Smiling
Spinning ’round and ’round
Holding hands
The whole world a blur
But you are standingSoaked
Completely drenched
No rubber boots
Running in us
Want to erupt from a shellWind in
And outdoor smell of your hair
I hit as fast as I could
With my noseHopping into puddles
Completely drenched
Soaked
With no boots onAnd I get nosebleed
But I always get up
(Hopelandic)And I get nosebleed
But I always get up
(Hopelandic)
[/quote]
The video is simply wonderful. You can stream it at http://www.contactmusic.com/new/home.nsf/webpages/sigurrosx28x11x05 <- scroll down to the bottom of the page & pick your video player and bandwidth
Before he even knew it had a name, my husband practiced attachment parenting methods with his daughter. Even after the divorce, when she was in his care, he practiced his own form of AP. Even when I first met her, when she was 6, he was still treating her with respect, as an individual, who he had to understand so that he could guide her in life. He was not the boss, he was a guide that she respected and trusted. Of course, there are always times when it comes down to ‘Because I’m the parent and I said so’, but those times were much fewer than I was used to seeing. It was a bit annoying to me, at first, being used to a more authoritarian and hands-off method of parenting at that time in my life.
As far as we know… My stepdaughter’s mother was a more authoritarian parent, demanding obedience instead of teaching understanding and respect.
Now that she’s 14, we don’t have any problems with her behavior when she’s with us. She still trusts us to guide her and we trust her to make good decisions for herself based on the intelligence and empathy that we know she possesses. I can’t remember the last time that I had to ‘discipline’ her in any way.
On the other hand, whenever her mom talks to my husband about her behavior in their house, it sounds like she is more of a rebellious, trouble-making teenager there. Her mom’s always worried about the potential of her getting into trouble in the coming years.
I’m glad that we’re using AP methods with the younger kids, now It just feels like the naturally right way of teaching them about life and relating to them.
I’ve had this song in my head since yesterday morning:
Deadbeat Club - B52’s
I was good, I could talk
A mile a minute,
On this caffeine buzz I was on
We were really hummin’
We would talk every day for hours
We belong to the deadbeat clubAnyway we can,
We’re gonna find something
We’ll dance in the garden
In torn sheets in the rainWe’re the deadbeat club
We’re the deadbeat clubGoing down to Allen’s for
A twenty-five cent beer
And the jukebox playing real loud,
“Ninety-six tears”
We’re wild girls walkin’ down the street
Wild girls and boys going out for a big timeLet’s go crash that party down
In Normaltown tonight
Then we’ll go skinny-dippin’
In the moonlight
We’re wild girls walkin’ down the street
Wild girls and boys going out for a big timeAnyway we can
We’re gonna find something
We’ll dance in the garden
In torn sheets in the rainChorus
Oh no! Here they come
The members of the deadbeat club
Have been listening to it on Rhapsody and singing it to the kids… It really reminds me of those wild, fun, carefree days, way back when (which, I’m sure weren’t as wild, fun or carefree as I remember them being )
Was singing it to Annie last night, before bed, when we were in the bathroom & I was putting a bandaid on her owie thumb.
Me: Are you a wild girl?
Annie: No
Me: Do you think you’ll be a wild girl when you’re a teenager
Annie thought for a second then said, “Maybe. Who knows?”
I hope she has fun, anyway. Nice safe polite kind but wild fun.
