the tweney review

Hey, look, my daughter’s on Boing Boing!

Boing Boing: Earth-children vs. Space Robots: things get ugly.

We are all so proud.

Today after preschool a mom I haven’t seen before is putting her son into her car. She greets Clara effusively as we walk by on the sidewalk: “Oh, hello, sweetheart! I had so much fun talking with your grandma last week!”

I look quizzically at the woman. “Actually,” I say, “Clara’s grandma hasn’t been at preschool for several months.”

I know exactly what’s going on, but this woman doesn’t, yet.

She looks surprised. “But … umm … ” she says, and stops. She’s finally starting to realize that she’s confused Clara with another black girl at the preschool, and now she’s getting embarrassed.

A couple of years ago I might have stepped in and saved her from herself. “Oh, you’ve probably mistaken her for Hana,” I would have said. “It happens.” But this time I don’t. For one thing, Hana looks nothing like Clara. Different hair, different skin color, wildly different facial features and eyes. Hana is Ethiopian, Clara African-American. The only thing Clara and Hana have in common is that their parents are white. I figure if this woman is embarrassed, well, she brought it on herself. Maybe she’ll learn to pay better attention next time.

But I’m not cruel. After letting her squirm for a few moments I introduce us. Clara shows an interest in her car (a Toyota Corolla) so the mom lets Clara investigate, and starts asking her questions, and we’re back on normal parent-kid ground finally.

“Your car smells kind of funny,” Clara says. “It smells like Greta’s car. Like old bananas.”

Clara wanted to read her new book Clara and Asha before bedtime. As I’m bringing it over to the bed, she says, “Next time when I’m a baby, I don’t want you to name me Clara. I don’t like that name any more. I want you to name me something else.”

Me: “Oh yeah? What do you think we should name you?”

“Mara.”

“But there’s already a Mara. Don’t you think we’d get confused if there were two Maras?”

“How about Zachary?”

“That’s interesting.”

Clara (looking at her giraffe slippers): “OK. Giraffe. Because I like giraffes.”

“You want me to call you Giraffe from now on?”

“Yes. And I think there should be a remote control, to make you go from a kid to a baby to a grownup. Bbbbreeeeep! [she makes a remote control sound effect, while crouching down onto the floor] I’m a baby! Bbbbreeeeep! Look, am I big now?”

After that, we read “Clara and Asha” without incident. She loves the book. And who wouldn’t love a book whose main character (with one’s erstwhile name) has a friend who is a giant, silver fish who floats through the air?

Clara has been completely enchanted by The Nutcracker for the past several weeks. She first heard the music at preschool, where they’ve got two different CDs of the ballet, and the teachers reported about two weeks ago that she was requesting these CDs and listening intently to them for long periods of time. She also became fascinated with the giant nutcracker toys/statues that appear here and there during the Christmas season — there are a couple of especially nice ones flanking the elevators at a hotel that her Grannie and Grandpa were staying at, and we made a return trip to that hotel last weekend (even though the grandparents had long since moved on) just to look at the nutcrackers.

But she hadn’t seen the ballet. So for an early christmas present, Karen got her a DVD of the Bulgarian National Ballet, or a similar ex-Soviet ballet troupe, performing the ballet, and Clara opened it this morning. We put the DVD on and she was instantly engrossed. Knowing nothing of the ballet or the storyline, she got right into it — purely on the strength of the music, I think. Actually, she’d been making up her own stories to go with the music until this morning (”This part sounds like people sliding around!” … “The scary part is where they’re cracking the nuts! They go BOOM!”), but having her own stories didn’t seem to get in the way of her enjoying the ballet directly.

Amazing. Tchaikovsky is pretty powerful — he goes right for the emotional hot buttons, and even after a century, it still works, even on 4 year olds. Makes me wonder if this stuff is hardwired.

As a bonus, I’m looking forward to having an hourlong DVD that she will sit through. That’s almost three times as much programmed distraction as a Wallace & Gromit short!

Today our excellent crew of carpenters put the roof beam in place, and we celebrated in traditional style by hanging a pine wreath on the end of it.

by Clara (transcribed, and annotated, by a teacher at preschool)



Once upon a time I rided a bike to school. Cause it is hard to get to school on the freeway cause there is traffic. Traffic is so you can’t get through. It never ever lets you. Traffic is cars and they make sure you don’t get to school and you don’t get any energy. Energy is so you can play. Adults use energy to make sure kids don’t get hurt. Riding a bike feels like we’re on a roller coaster. It feels like we’re on a train in the cars. My body moves both sides. My job is to hold on tight to my friends so they don’t fall. Stuffed friends. Daddy’s job is to pull all my straps so I don’t fall down.

My favorite thing about riding a bike to school is moving and going so fast. I like to play. You get to play when you get to school.

The End.

10/11/2005

Here’s Clara’s outstanding robot costume, manufactured with a case of Pacifico and a box of Annie’s Mac and Cheese, plus some silver spray paint, a bit of flexible dryer conduit, a Sharpie, and plenty of duct tape — assembled entirely by Karen yesterday evening. It was all Clara’s idea, though, inspired originally by Junior Senior. More pictures here.

I’m sure Karen will soon have more pictures of the chaos going on here, but here’s a sample. The big project for the past few days has been stucco removal–like flaying the house alive, actually, since it leaves everything still standing and more or less intact, but … skinless. It’s creepy. And a bit scary, too, since we’re actually destroying a significant part of our home. There’s no going back now.

I helped with the skinning for one day. Stucco removal is a bitch. Fortunately for me it doesn’t take much intelligence. You just kind of bang and scrape and smash at the stuff with a two-foot crowbar until it comes off, in big chunks and in little pieces. And try not to hit yourself in the thigh or drop big pieces of masonry on your foot.

After months of work, Karen’s plans for our remodel finally got the green light from the planning department yesterday. We celebrated by sabering a bottle of champagne last night, and this morning Karen — together with a neighbor she hired — started stripping stucco off the outside walls of our house. Next: Lots of digging, then concrete pouring (to reinforce the foundation), nailing plywood onto the outside of the stucco-stripped walls (to provide “shear” reinforcement in case of earthquake), installing concrete footings underneath the house … and, eventually, framing a second story and new roof.

When it’s all done we will have added almost 900 square feet to our house (which is only 1,100 s.f. to begin with), including two bedrooms, two baths, and a laundry room. Clara’s especially interested in the new bathrooms. “When does Mommy start working on the new potties?”

Karen has a new moblog, called Chaos & Construction, which will chronicle the progress. Wish us luck.

This is a picture Clara drew last week at preschool. Teacher Sheila wrote down the story Clara told to go with it:

It’s a person. It’s my Daddy. It’s an angry Daddy. Because I did something bad that he didn’t like. I was throwing things at him. I threw markers at him. They had a top on. I threw toys at him. He said, “You May Not Do That.” I cried when he said that. Then I calmed down. If he holds me I calm down. Then he gets happy. I’m happy too.

Clara
6-21-05

I am so proud!

In other news, Clara learned how to jump into the pool without holding my hand for the first time this past Saturday.