Totoros Are Everywhere

My son gets stickers as rewards.  He gets them for things like cleaning up and getting in and out of the bathtub without making a fuss. 

I'm the one who picks the stickers, so I got a pack from My Neighbor Totoro a while back.  They're high quality stickers, the puffy kind that have some heft to them, but not the slick puffy kind that are stiff, these are the mat puffy kind that can bend and curl.  We used to put them on a cardboard long box from the comic book store, but lately he's been peeling all the stickers off so that he can give them to himself again.  He sticks these stickers to his shirt and walks around the house.  And while the less hefty stickers get shed all over the place because they're not sticky anymore, the Totoro stickers get peeled off his shirt and put in strange places, where he presses them down enough and they are still sticky enough as to be hard to remove when he's not looking.

The other issue is that he saw My Neighbor Totoro for the first time a few weeks ago, and his little mind was blown at the idea that Totoro exists outside of his sticker collection.  So he's been targeting the Totoro stickers in his re-stickering. 

This is a long way of saying that I've been finding Totoros all over my house, and have consequently started taking photos of them.

The Bathroom Floor

Bedroom

Living Room

My Desk

Inside His Crib

Hiding

My Closet

Rahm's Little Readers

My son and I did the Chicago Public Library's summer reading program this summer.  While I was looking into it online, I found a reference to a parent reflection on doing the summer reading program with your child that could win you some tech stuff.  That sounded right up my alley, so for the last few months I've been working off and on on a short story reflection on the summer reading program.

It was getting late in the summer and I hadn't heard anything more about it.  I wanted to know the rules before I got my story all polished.  Was there a word limit?  Did it have to be in a certain format?  Did I e-mail it somewhere or print it out and hand it in?  So I asked.  And I was told to ask my librarian for "the form."  The form?...Oh no.

The parent reflection is a single page form with two and a half lines to describe an activity I did with my child, two lines to say what we learned from that activity, and two lines to say what our favorite part was.  It's also a raffle, not a contest.

I was disappointed, and felt stupid for jumping the gun so much, and also for what was now almost a complete misfire of summer reading activities (as you will see.)

At least I can post it here!  Enjoy!
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Read the One about the Witch

When he was two months old, I took the baby to story time at 57th Street Books.  This was part of my initiative to do all sorts of activities that would make him well balanced and educated and sociable from a super early age.  I was going to take advantage of the cultural enrichment of the city, and we were going to go to T-ball and boy scouts and piano lessons and museums and the beach and farmer's markets and volunteering and parades.  Lately this drive to get up and do stuff has turned into a desperate need to kill time for a few hours and absolutely having to get out of the house every day.

The week I picked to start going happened to be Halloween.  A bunch of the kids were in costume, including the penguin sitting next to us that kept trying to sit in my lap.  All the kids were older than my baby, (because I guess people generally don't bring their two-month-olds to story time) and I was starting to get the feeling that this was a mistake and I was once again doing everything wrong.  I mean, he didn't even have a Halloween costume because I had big plans to make him a bee outfit and then never got around to putting it together.

But, oh well, we'd try it.  What was the worst that would happen?

So story time started with going around the circle and handing each kid a cupcake.  (Except my kid.  He wouldn't know what to do with it.)  Then they went around the circle and handed each kid a napkin, but by then it was far too late.  Then they handed every adult a can of Sanpellegrino.  Then they gave each adult a discreet paper bag with Halloween candy that they could later decide to give their kids or not.  They did give me a bag of Halloween candy, and I decided to not give it to my kid.

So far so good, aside from the frosting covered penguin next to me. 

The baby was fascinated by all the kids with their glitter princess costumes and their shouting and their ability to walk.

Story time got started with a brand new book about an elephant and a pig.  The kids perked up, bouncing from their butts to their knees to get closer, whispering about "Gereld."  The adults gave me the impression that the release of this book was an event to be celebrated in the Hyde Park Community because Mo Willems was a friend of theirs.  Maybe he usually came to story time, but just not this week for reasons everyone but me already knew.

This was when I got the inkling that we were in trouble for reasons beyond my social anxiety, because the woman running story time was a fantastic, emotive reader.  This would not be a problem for someone who's not two months old and doesn't have freak outs during hammed up readings of "The Monster at the End of this Book." 

We were already walking a fine line with just a story about a pig sharing slop.  Any second, the pig was going to be too distressed the elephant didn't like his slop or the elephant would be too belligerent about how slop is gross and the baby would respond to these raised emotion by bursting into tears.  Already a little line was forming between his eyebrows.

Ready to snatch him up and comfort him, I gripped my hands into fists and prayed he'd be distracted by the penguin.  I prayed the stories would stay relitively tame.

The minute I prayed this, the story time leader announced that it was Halloween and she was going to read scary stories.

The second book was "Leo: A Ghost Story" about a ghost boy who a girl mistakes for an imaginary friend and they had a great time together.  No incident.  Okay.  We were going to get through this.

Then a kid in the front sat forward.  "Read the one about the witch!"

Oh God.

In her best witchy voice, the woman running story time started to read.  The baby's eyes widened.  Then they scrunched.  His little fists shook.  A high, piercing wail burst out of his tiny body.

We left as quickly as we could, which was not quickly at all given that the penguin had hold of my pants and I had to gather my coat and the diaper bag and the baby and my half finished Sanpellegrino.

"Okay," I told the baby as we walked home, him looking much better now that he had trees to look at.  "That was an adventure.  We get points for trying, and we'll try again in a few months."

Over time, it's turned from a depressing story about how I don't understand age appropriateness because I'm a terrible mother to a funny story about how the baby's scared of witches.  All the Halloween candy I ate as soon as we got home probably helped with that.

He's seven months now and he not only doesn't scream when he hears a dramatic story, but thinks it's kind of funny.  Added to this, he took a really short nap, which threw off my plans for what we'd do that day.  So why not try story time again?  No one will remember our retreat.

There were no cupcakes and no glitter princesses, but there was singing and a discussion about colors.  The baby flirted with the woman behind us and tried to crawl to get the kid's backpack next to us.  I'm starting to relax when the story time leader pulls out

"Leo: A Ghost Story." 

Ha.  Oh man.

Then she looked me right in the eyes, and with sudden dread I knew she remembered us.

"I won't use a scary voice," she said.

"We're those people forever," I thought.  "Okay," I said.

Two-Month-Old Reading Preferences

I have vivid memories of giggling uncontrollably as my mother read The Monster at the End of this Book in her best manic Grover voice.  So, of course, I got this book for my son as soon as I started building a library for him.  I pulled it out with a grin and cleared my throat for my best grover voice. 

He hated it.

He did not like how upset I got and started crying in response.  He's also not at the developmental level yet where he turns pages, which is most of the fun of that book, and it's also like I was turning the pages, then yelling at myself for doing it, then doing it again.

Since then, I've learned that he's not ready for pretty much any children's book I remember enjoying.  He gets bored with a lot of them and only this week even started looking at the pictures.

We had to reassess, and we found that two-month-olds like lyrical language and stories with structure.  Or maybe my son just has a persnickety personality.  Who knows? 

He likes books that rhyme and have a distinct meter.  He likes books that have a set, predictable format, where optimally the last word or phrase of each verse would be something that everyone in the room can shout together  and wave their hands as if to say "ta dah!"

"Is your mama a llama?" I asked my friend Dave.
"No, she is not," is the answer Dave gave.
"She hangs by her feet, and she lives in a cave.
I do not believe that's how llamas behave."
"Oh," I said.  "You are right about that.
I think that your mama sound more like a
BAT!"

A BAT!  YAY!

He goes nuts.

He goes nuts for Goodnight Moon and Time for Bed too. 

And there were three little bears
sitting on chairs
and two little kittens
and a pair of mittens
and a little toy house
and a young mouse
and a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush
and a quiet old lady who was whispering "hush"

Every couplet, he kicks his feet and beams like chairs and mittens are the cleverest things he's ever heard.  He really  likes it, but it's not a bedtime book.