The Kid Sings

What the kid is up to.

Rock N Roll Institute from Vixen Productions on Vimeo.

Pencil

I found this in Ella's pocket.  

Machinery

Depress this button and observe the delicate steel arm swing up with an immediate satisfying click.  Now the paper is changed forever. Steady snapping from brain to page.  Look child, this is how a machine works. Before vacuum tubes and silicone circuits and plasma screens and 3-D printers this is how pulleys and levers changed the world.

I'm glad you said you liked the font.

I'll Pick Up My Guitar and Play

Ella: I'm in a play and I'm a fern and I hate it.

Me: Why do you hate it?

Ella: Because I'm the only girl fern... They're all boys... and goofy boys.  Harumph!

Me: Why are the goofy?

Ella: We have to sing rock-n-roll and do air guitar and it's not my style.

I commenced to showing the kid videos of chicks that rock trying to sooth her.

We started with Tina doing Proud Mary, then Joan Jett, and then of course Le Tigre, Bikini Kill and Veruca Salt (ah the classics.)  Still Ella seemed unsure.  We watched my freinds daughter's band (below) and she liked it but nervously mentioned "that air guitar thing" again.



I realized the stupidity of air guitar and decided to find some people doing cool looking air guitar, or something close to it.  So it turns out, the air guitar championship for 2012 had two women in the top three contenders.  We watched the video.  Ella loved the first lady.

 

Spoiler alert!  At a minute forty five the lady smashes her air guitar on the stage.  In the next clip she gets it out again and Ella said "Oh yeah right! Where did she get ANOTHER air guitar?!" and I couldn't stop giggling.  Then she realized what she said and we were both laughing.

She concluded "So it's like miming but to music!" and I said "Exactly! It's mimming!" (she loves mimes.) I'm sure dude-bros all over this nation would just love to hear my eight year old say "I just loove mimes!" in response to their rockin' out to Rush in bars across the land.

When the second air guitar guy comes on, he's pretty good and Ella asks "Why do they keep jumping around on stage?" and I realize the key piece to this whole lesson is that my kid has NEVER seen a lead ax man go nutty on stage.  She has never sat in front of MTV hoping to see Eddie Van Halen or Angus or Slash, she has no idea why anyone is even smashing an air guitar, and there's no context for wanting to  twiddle your fingers near your crotch and to the left of your body while making crazy grunty faces.  She has never experienced the worship of a guitarist.

Yes, we spent the next half an hour watching crazy solos while I explained "No that's not a woman that's a man dressed up like that because he thinks it's tough," and "Yes, the band IS named after him," "His body is shiny and sparkly because he's been sweating all night and jumping all over in velvet school boy short pants," and finally  "You're right, the heavy metal look really never went away, it did just turn into Goth."

While Ella forgot her homework in her desk today, I feel fully satisfied with what she learned at home.

I leave you with this:

Wonder Child

Happy 8th birthday to my green eyed baby.  

First Day of School

For the first time in five and a half years I am alone for seven hours. So far I've accomplished everything on my list. It's only 9:41am.

Last Sunday

Games All Day

Yesterday, me and some of my skatey mates put our uniforms on and went out to Rock-Con (Rockford's big game convention) and taught strangers how to play "Roller Derby Mayhem" the board game. Dan and I wrote the rules with lots of help from skatey mate DD Hunter and we used those little happy meal my scene roller girls for skaters and we gave away a t-shirt to one lucky winner. It was complete fun. We did alot of yelling "Hit someone!" followed by "Roll a one!" It was particularly nice to be able to direct out of town gamers to their local roller derby leagues. So the kid from Iowa will definitely be going to see a Mid Iowa Rollers bout and the fellas from Chicago were happy to hear about the Chicago Outfit and the Windy City Rollers (who had free beer at the UIC pavilion last night WOO HOO!) Lots of players asked if the game was for sale, it's not but in a couple weeks we'll be posting those same rules on the SRDD Blog.

After the mayhem cleared we packed up and went out for sushi followed by bowling. The bowling alley had a Halloween event and so we got to see zombies, army guys and batman, Ella was very excited about that. She also beat me 72 to 65 (with bumpers that is, I would've totally beat her if we had gutters - so there!) Ella had a little 5 pound ball and every time she ran down the alley and stopped at the line to roll it she'd let out a war cry that was cracking me up. "YA!" she'd yell and then she'd jump up and down and clap while the ball crawled it's way to the pins.

OMG! MY SAHM IZ MKING ME CRZY!

Have you ever watched someone eat and thought "This person is the cutest chewer in the history of chewing"? I tried to take a video to explain and she's was all "Mom! Just let me eat!" Yes, I embarrass her already. It's a hard pill to swallow. Last week my skatey-mate Breetlejuice was here for a photoshoot for the latest derby poster. Bree was sitting on the floor crimping her blonde and pink hair in front of the mirror and Ella was sitting crosslegged next to her chatting up a storm. When I walked over Ella said to me "MoooOOOooooOOM! We're talking about girl stuff, we need some private!" Sigh.

Three Yellow Things

Today was preschool show and tell, bring something yellow day. We forgot until late last night and so I scoured the house for three things that are yellow. We picked one this morning. The choices were a giant parrot feather from Grandpa C. yellow on one side and blue on the other, a canary yellow silk scarf that lilts to the ground when tossed into the air and smells like perfume, or an old ticket for the merry go round with three holes punched in it from three rides over this summer. She picked the merry go round ticket.














What would you bring?

First Day of School

Pox

Saturday, we went to the Renaissance Fair with friends and yes, you can check out the website from 1599. But before you click the link, here is the bell on a yarn necklace that the Contessa gave my little buddy Dancing-Boy. He promptly stuck it in his ear and made a midieval i-pod.

***

Last week Ella very suddely came down with spots all over her body, they were even on the bottoms of her feet. She said she felt fine but they were everywhere, I had never seen anything like it before. They weren't at all like chicken pox, they were every color of the rainow and she wasn't even itchy. After a long bath they went away. I guess we'll never know, perhaps she was allergic to imaginary lions.

Epiphanies

You’d think after RollerCon and then practice last night, today I’d be sick of roller derby. I have to tell you – it just can’t happen. I was so happy to see all my lovely league mates last night, I get so encouraged to work harder every time I see them (as if I needed an excuse to be a workaholic). Last night was also the debut of our new coach, Diamond Dan. Something about having a person yell “Go! Go! Go!!” really amps me and makes me skate harder. Funny, at 34 I’m just now experiencing the significance of cheerleaders, but in my defense I never really played a competitive sport before.


I took Ella to the county fair yesterday and saw something I'd never seen before... baby chicks hatching. I was astonished. I just wanted to stop random people and say "Do you know, over here there are chicks HATCHING right NOW!? Come over here and look! New life! - TAH-DAAAH!" Instead I told my inner 4 year old to pipe down and whispered into Ella's ear about how amazing it all was. I got all teary eyed explaining to Ella about how the fuzzy little chick was being born right before our eyes and how hard she was working to get out of her egg and then she'd have to find the strength to get some corn all by herself.

Ragamuffin Couture

The latest couture for macaroni and cheese dining is the reverse cotton athletic tee worn over the head. Paired with Curious George underpants and tennis shoes (not pictured) today’s fashion forward child is guaranteed to be the talk of everyone at breakfast.

Mystery - solved

I made a breakfast of waffles with strawberries, whipped cream and sprinkles on top. I found it well received by La, her imaginary brother Arthur, and their friend Beddermish who is very tiny. Arthur goes almost everywhere with La and if he’s not with her she knows exactly where he is, sometimes he’s at school and sometimes he’s visiting his Grandma. These are places La wishes she could go. Beddermish is new; he’s just visiting for breakfast this morning. La said Beddermish is left over from one of her dreams last night.













10:42 update: Dan called, "Betameche" is the character Jimmy Fallon plays in the movie Arthur and the Invisibles.

We're Going on a Bear Hunt

I told Ella we were going on a bear hunt. She wrangled her sandals onto her feet, found our sunglasses a bottle of water and a net and we set off. We walked all over the neighborhood, encountering one little old lady getting her mail who wished us luck on our hunt even though she hadn’t seen any bears in the neighborhood lately. We crossed two “rivers” and found many treasures including; fairy earrings, three walnuts one of which a “beaver” ate but would be perfect to “lure bears” with, three dandelions that would be put in a vase at home, a strange spherical seed pod and one rock for hippity hop scotch. We put them in our net for safe keeping. We walked all the way to “Wisconsin” where we found ourselves standing at the edge of “The Underdog Park”. After a rest and some water in the shade and a short detour to the edge of a real corn field where we procured two pinches of corn silk to put in our net with the other riches, Ella politely asked me to give her an underdog on the swing, after all we were at The Underdog Park. As I ran underneath the swing propelling her as far as I could with my arms she yelled “I’m not even scarred!” Three more underdogs and we were exhausted and ready for the long walk four blocks home and jelly sandwiches with black berries on the side. It was a good and expedition even though we didn’t catch any bears.

Typical Monday

Yesterday Ella and I walked through the neighborhood down to the river that goes through tiny town and we threw rocks. This is like the best thing in the world to a three year old, how far, how fast, how many, if the fish see them. I also took this picture and realized what Ella will look like when she grows up. Heavy sigh.

In the afternoon we went to the fabric store and bought ½ a yard of orange shiny goodness, 1 yard of pretty ribbon, ½ yard of those poofy pink balls and then we rushed home and made a cape for “Super Girl” Her super powers include extraordinary river rock throwing, hippity-hop-scotch deluxe, making up songs on the spot about anything in the world, and super cuteness.

Crime & Punishment

Crime & Punishment in the eyes of a three year old

“I’m gonna pull your face!”

“Don’t pull my face that hurts.”

“I’m gonna pull your head off then!”

“Oh my! Then I will be broken… and then what?”

“There will be blood.”

“And then what?”

“It will be a mergency”

“And then what?”

“The police will come talk to me”

“And then what?”

“I will have to stay in my room forever.”

“And then what?”

“I will miss you” – whimper whimper.

“Well, that’s probably why we shouldn’t pull people’s heads off right?”

Frantic nodding followed by big hugs.

PB&J Networking

What a 3 year old's business card looks like:

Translation: