Chloe and I have been having a couple of good movie months. I love that she’s now old enough to watch some grown-up films with me. “The King’s Speech,” “True Grit,” “The Source Code” and “Jane Eyre” are some recent highlights. Tonight, we’re watching “Inception.” She won’t understand any of it. And she’ll be talking the entire time, asking questions to which we won’t have the answers.
Continue reading Beyond Cartoons: Watching Grown-Up Movies with Chloe
During a meeting at work today, my mind started to wander a little bit. I don’t recall what prompted the wandering or what, more specifically, prompted to me to start thinking about the beach. And taking the girls to the beach this summer.
Chloe’s mouth is like the Energizer Bunny on steroids. Chloe doesn’t shut up. She just told me that Fergie’s (of the Black Eyed Peas) real name is Stacy Ferguson and that her nickname as a kid was Fergie. She then offered to scratch my back if I would buy her a song. I am trying to watch “American Idol,” but she keeps talking and talking and talking.
I arrived home from work to find the girls in summer clothes, tossing a ball in the front yard with Grammy. It was easily 80 degrees outside. We enjoyed the fresh and warm air for a little while, and it put me in a good mood. Until Chloe and Sophie started yelling at each other. My mood then dimmed. And the clouds started rolling in – ominously.
Oh, to be five again. When you’re five, you get away with a lot of things. You can eat treats. Set up a cushy corner in the living room to enjoy your goodies. Make lots of crumbs. Get yogurt all over your clothes. Gulp a cup of milk. Go to the movies with your best friend. Go to the little kids’ playground after the movie’s over, where you now tower over the toddlers just as the big kids used to tower over you. Arrive home to enjoy a special night with mom and dad but no sister, who’s at a friend’s sleepover party. Ride your bike to the local creperie for dinner. Go to bed, happy as a clam, after reading three more chapters of Junie B. Jones with your mom. Life sure is great.
Sophie is such a girly girl. We’ve known that for a very long time (so much for trying to avoid it by painting her bedroom blue), but her girly essence still doesn’t cease to amaze me. And the fact that she’s so different from her sister is pretty crazy, too.
I’m sick of writing about it. I’m sick of complaining about it. And this will the last time this week (I can’t promise that this will be the last time this year, as much as I’d like to make that promise) that I will mention how sick I am of this crappy weather.
Chloe’s poems are a little different and shorter than usual because:
(1) she wrote them for her homework
(2) they had to be based on New Jersey
(3) one had to be a Tanka poem (5-7-5-7-7 syllable format)
(4) one had to be a Haiku poem (5-7-5 syllable format)
Tanka
Greens, oranges, reds
Leaves floating down from their trees
Piles form on the ground
It slowly starts to get cold
Now there are rocks, snow and ice
Haiku (about hot air balloons)
High up in the air
Silently floating bliss
Wind blows in my face
Is it possible? Could it be that spring is finally here? It felt a little bit like spring this weekend. Enough, in any case, for Chloe to convince me to play some tennis outside. After I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, it was great therapy to get on the court with my daughter.
Last week, Sophie announced that she wanted to get her ears pierced. She was adamant. We tried to warn her off, explaining that having holes drilled into one’s ears is painful. Very painful. She didn’t care. She likes earrings and clip-ons hurt her ears. She begged. She pleaded. She told her grammy of her desire to get real earrings. We told her we’d think about it.