collecting tokens

Standoff at the P.P. Corral

alejna — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 05:06:39 +0000

Prologue: Following a week of scattered confrontation, Phoebe “The Kid” and the Marshall square off for a day of showdown.

Scene 1: In a kitchen, shortly after breakfast.

Phoebe “The Kid”:

The Marshall: [perkily] Do you want to try sitting on the potty?

Phoebe “The Kid”: No!

Scene 2: In a living room, about 20 minutes later.

Phoebe “The Kid”:

Marshall: [perkily] Okay.
[Phoebe and the Marshall go into the bathroom. Phoebe pulls down big girl underwear, climbs onto the toilet with special potty topper for small-bottomed bandits. Phoebe tenses up. Silence ensues.]

Phoebe: I’m all done now!

The Marshall: But Phoebe, there was no pee-pee. Can you sit there for a little bit longer?

Phoebe “The Kid”: I’m all done now!

The Marshall: [Attempts to negotiate, using various pleas, grovels, bribes...] Just like you’ve done so many times before. And you can get a sticker!

Phoebe: [starting to sob] I’m all done now! I don’t need to go pee-pee.

Scenes 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, …
Scenes play out much as above, with dialog varying slightly. Intersperse with scenes of Phoebe looking uncomfortable and wanting to be held like a little baby. The music builds. The bladder holds tight. The underwear stays dry. The Marshall’s resolve withers.

Summary of the upteenth scene, the final standoff, over 4 hours later: The Marshall realizes that she is outgunned and outwitted. Banging her head against the wall (which offers no more than a satisfying thud), she is about ready to raise her hands in defeat and give in to the diaper demands. In desperation, she calls for backup. The reinforcements come. As the Marshall sits pouting on the couch, the reinforcements’ masterful negotiating skills convince Phoebe to surrender her urine to the potty. Phoebe “The Kid” appears to be reformed, and is awarded a star.

Stay tuned for the riveting sequel, wherein new versions of the scenes above are played out following the nap.

———–

Over 6 weeks, 4 full charts, 28 stickers each chart, representing well over a hundred successful potty usages. (Things were looking so promising that we weren’t even putting stickers for most pee-pees. I’m sure you don’t want to get me started on the topic of “the other,” which has been another story. Actually, the story hasn’t been all that different from today’s feature film. Imagine dialogs much like those above, repeated about every other day.) Anyhow, we seemed to be in the home stretch. Phoebe had been using the potty at daycare for 2 straight weeks, coming home in the same dry pull-up diaper we sent her in. And then this last week, she stopped using the potty at daycare altogether. It could be that a new baby started at daycare. Which doesn’t quite bode well for the upcoming weeks…

It’s not like we’re back at square one. Phoebe is still using the potty at least once a day. But damn would I like to be done with this.

head in the clouds

alejna — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:49:31 +0000

For no particular reason, this Themed Things Thursday list is about clouds.¹

A Cloud List

Little Cloud. A picture book by Eric Carle about a cloud who likes to change shapes.
Sector 7, by David Wiesner. A Caldecott Honor-winning picture book with no words about a boy’s remarkable encounter with some clouds.

Winnie-the-Pooh. In the first chapter of A. A. Milne’s classic book, Winnie-the-Pooh attempts to pass himself off as a small dark cloud in order to sneak some honey away from a beehive in a tree. Eeyore, for that matter, is often depicted as having a cloud hanging over his head. (In this case, though, it is not Pooh.)
head in the clouds. An expression meaning “having a poor grasp of reality” or “not paying attention.”
on cloud nine: an expression meaning “extremely happy.” (So what if you are on cloud one? Are you only marginally happy?)
every cloud has a silver lining: a saying suggesting that there is always something good to accompany the bad. (And an irritating thing to hear if you are a pessimist.)
head under a cloud: means “in a bad mood,” typically either gloomy (eg. Eeyore, above) or cranky (eg. me, sleep deprived).
(storm) clouds on the horizon: an expression meaning that trouble of some sort is foreseen.
The Simpsons opening sequence: The parting cumulus clouds from the opening to this cartoon are quite memorable.
“Little Fluffy Clouds,” a song by the Orb. (video on YouTube)
“Cloudy,” a song by Simon & Garfunkel. (listen on YouTube )
“Cloudbusting,” a song Kate Bush. The video is a short narrative film featuring a machine that manipulates clouds. (YouTube)
Cloud Jumper: a free flash game you can play online that primarily involves jumping from cloud to cloud.
Cloudscapes stamps: a 2004 series of stamps from the US postal service. You can learn more more about the cloud types depicted in the stamps from this National Weather Service page.
If you find yourself hankering for more clouds and cloud trivia, you could consider joining the The Cloud Appreciation Society. Those people love their clouds.

————–
¹Sometimes, I just need to write about a light and fluffy topic. What could be lighter and fluffier than clouds?²

² Actually, I’m really quite partial to clouds. I recently had a little conversation with YTSL on this topic when she posted about her own affinity for clouds, along with a cool photo of a dragon-shaped cloud. And I found myself thinking: “I should do a cloud list.” So I done went and did it.

Preparing the Home for Baby (Tips from American Hovel Magazine)

alejna — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:25:55 +0000

As someone in the final throes of the third trimester, I have spent a lot of time recently sitting in an ob/gyn waiting room. Usually I go equipped with some sort of reading material.

On occasion, though, I have felt compelled to pick up one of the various maternity magazines that litter the waiting area. These magazines give all sorts of largely redundant advice about how not to kill your baby, and what host of $80 products you will absolutely need to give your baby a bath.

Since it’s been a while since I have contributed to American Hovel Magazine (The Magazine dedicated to lowering acceptable neatness standards in the home), I felt inspired to submit a few tips of my own for getting ready for baby.

AHM’s tips for Preparing the Home for Baby

Decorating the Nursery:
Other magazines will advise you about sets of exquisite crib bedding, with coordinating sheets, bumpers, window valences and diaper pail cozies. Not only are these items expensive, but they will lead to your child setting high expectations for style and organization in the future. It is best, then, to make sure the nursery fits in with the decor of the rest of your home. As it is, the room you intend to use as nursery is probably already functioning as a storage area for various piles of clothing and dirty dishes, boxes of bills and junkmail, as well as broken electronics and half-completed craft projects. Many of these items are quite colorful, and will be attractive additions to the baby’s room.

Be advised, though, that it is best to keep power tools, sharp knives, and hazardous materials out of reach of baby, and these should not be stored in the crib or sleeping area itself.

Where the baby will sleep:
While you may opt for a piece of furniture, such as a crib or cradle, it is also possible place your baby in a mobile storage container for temporary storage. Such an item is often called a Moses basket, befrilled versions of which can cost upwards of $200. A laundry basket works just fine. Don’t worry if the laundry basket has dirty laundry in it: the baby would get it dirty soon anyhow. Those buggers spit up like crazy, and diapers leak all the freakin’ time.

Caution should be used when adding dirty laundry to the laundry basket: covering the baby in piles of clothing may cause the little tyke to struggle for air, and may also make it harder for you to find the baby when relatives come to visit.

Laundry hints:
AHM typically advises you to avoid doing laundry. However, with a baby in the house, you may need to do a load of laundry or two over the course the first month.

You may remember the advice to separate light from dark clothing. Also make sure to separate the baby from the clothing. While running the baby through the washing machine may be tempting as a time-saving shortcut, this method is not recommended. Even on delicate cycle.

Home Safety:
With a newborn in the house, safety is always of the highest priority. Make sure that your smoke detectors and fire extinguishers are functional, and that your home is moderately free of the squirrels, raccoons, and other potentially plague-bearing animals that typically inhabit your living area and furnishings.

Congratulations, and best of luck to you as you prepare for the arrival of your little one!

early intervention (part 4): getting up to speed

alejna — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 03:22:12 +0000

This is part of my series about our experiences in getting Early Intervention services for Phoebe’s expressive language delay. Phoebe started receiving services in January of this year, which consisted of one-on-one meetings with a speech pathologist, and weekly attendance of a parent-toddler group. For background, you can refer back to parts 1, 2 and 3. This post is a bit about the course of Phoebe’s language progress, and a bit more about what went on during the services she received.

(I should make it clear that the rapidity of Phoebe’s progress is not typical, and most likely not due solely to the EI services she received. I also can’t say how the service she received compare to those of other locations, and other kids. But here is what we experienced, for what it’s worth.)

—————-

When Phoebe started EI services in January, she would primarily use single word utterances, with occasional utterances of 2 words or longer. Through the next couple months, we would get plenty of the 2 word utterances, like “eat cake” or “candles hot”, with more and more 3-word strings.

She was getting more and more comfortable making requests (which became more and more like demands). We tried to encourage her to request using a sentence, such as “I want X,” like the more advanced speakers at the playgroup would do, but she would only produce this reluctantly. She must have been giving this a lot of thought, though, as there was one early morning in March when she was apparently practicing in her sleep. I was startled (and amused) to hear the words “I want a cookie” ringing out loudly and clearly from the baby monitor. (And then she went back to sleep.)

By April, 3- and 4-word sentences were the norm, with more and more of the adult-like grammatical elements showing up. (She would regularly produce plurals and articles, for example.) More helpful to us, though, was that we were getting to the point where Phoebe could really communicate. She could tell us not only her wants and needs, but more information about her state of being. After she had been sick, it was really thrilling for us to hear her produce the sentence “tummy feel better now.”

In spite of all this progress, it was like she was a different child at the playgroup. She would often not say a peep for the first half hour of free play, aside from occasional single word responses to questions. Then at snacktime, she would only whisper her request, which was often only a single word even after she could make longer requests at home. Over the months, she would more and more often make the full-sentence requests that she’d make so readily at home, but very very quietly. Whenever Phoebe was particularly tired, such as after we’d returned from a weekend trip, she’d get even more quiet. Likewise when a new child (and accompanying adult) started in the group, or when a substitute group leader took the place of our regular person.

Things were different with the speech pathologist, J, when we’d meet with her for our one-on-one sessions immediately after the group. Phoebe would need a few minutes to warm up, but would gladly respond to questions and use her words. Our meetings continued to be play sessions, centered around various toys, and Phoebe showed no signs of believing them to be anything other than sitting around and playing with J. I’d sit with them and watch, and play, and sometime encourage Phoebe to tell J about something we’d done since our last visit. Phoebe tended not to speak in quite as complex ways as she did at home, but even so, J never failed to hear evidence of Phoebe’s rapid progress. Each week, I’d have some new bit of language development to report, and Phoebe would usually obligingly produce that construction, if not during that session, within the next one or two. Plurals. Articles. A range of negatives. Multi-word constructions. Past tense. Then full sentences with all the right bits in place. And then, suddenly, complex sentences with subordinate clauses.

Each week, J would write up a report for us of her observations of Phoebe’s progress, and recommendations for things to work on. She’d include a few samples of Phoebe’s longer utterances, which will be nice for me to look back at. She also would give me various handouts about activities we could do to encourage speech, and information about development stages. After the first few weeks, J said that Phoebe’s progress was steady enough that weekly one-on-one sessions were no longer considered necessary. However, seeing as Phoebe enjoyed these sessions so much, and I got a chance to observe the process in action, I asked if we could keep up the weekly meetings. J was happy to continue. (I also got her assurance that there wasn’t some other child waiting in the wings for an opening in the schedule, though.)

I don’t remember when it came up first, but the speech pathologist let me know that come our next assessment, which would be scheduled 6 months from the date we started services, Phoebe would no longer qualify for services.

——————–

I’m still not done with this yet, though it’s getting closer. Next time, I’ll talk a bit more about Phoebe’s progress in the playgroup setting, and perhaps also about our 6-month assessment. I’d also like to share more about what I think that Phoebe got out of the Early Intervention services, and how it may or may not have affected her language development.

Eight 8 things for 08/08/08

alejna — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:08:43 +0000

Today is August 8th, 2008. As in 08/08/08. Which is a very cool date. I decided to forego my usual Themed Things Thursday list in favor a special 8-themed Friday list. (Actually, I wanted to do 8 lists of 8 8 things⁸, but I came down with an attack of temporary sanity, and decided I should get some sleep instead.)

8 8-related things

octave: the musical interval between a note and one of half (or twice) its frequency in hertz. It’s divided into 8 tones to make a scale.
octagon: a polyhedron with 8 sides. A red octagon is iconic as the stop sign.
spiders: eight-legged arthropods. (You can visit my spider ThThTh list for lots of spiders.)
the 8 ball: The black ball from the set of pool or billiards balls, emblazend with the number 8. There’s also the Magic 8 ball, a toy used to tell fortunes.

crazy 8s: a card game (played with at least one other person) where the goal is to discard all your cards. 8s are “wild.”

octopus. An 8-legged cephalopod. (I came so close to making an octopus list…)

“8 Days a Week“: a song by the Beatles. (What should the 8th day be named? Maybe Pantsday?)
“Figure 8“. The School House Rock song about the number 8:

———————–
⁸ Here are 8 scraps from the various 8 lists I envisioned: 1) section 8 (a former military discharge for psychiatric reasons) , 2) The Eight (a book by Katharine Neville), 3) Eight Men Out (a 1988 directed by John Sayles), 4) Eight is Enough (a 1970s TV show), 5) 8-track tapes, 6) 2³=8, 7) V8 (a juice) and 8) After Eight (a candy).

——————
Image sources:
octopus: Chandler B. Beach, The New Student’s Reference Work for Teachers Students and Families (Chicago: F. E. Compton and Company, 1909), from etc.usf.edu.
music scale/piano keys: Kantner Book of Objects from etc.usf.edu.
cards, spider, stop sign: public domain images from wpclipart.com.
Magic 8 Ball: wikipedia

heroine addicts

alejna — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:25:31 +0000

It’s been my goal for quite a few years to put together a website featuring information about and ratings for movies and other media featuring women who kick ass. One of my goals in starting this blog was to work towards that end, and I made some progress with various posts that have been part of my kick-ass women project.

In the course of my “work” on this project, I’ve come across a few other sites and resources on this topic. One great such website is Heroine Content, described on their about page as follows:

Heroine Content is a feminist and anti-racist blog about women kicking ass. More specifically, we write about women kicking ass in action films, with a side order of television and video game commentary as things catch our eye.

Just last week, Skye and Grace (the authors) celebrated 2 years of Heroine Content. In their celebratory post, they mention that they have reviews almost 100 movies, and even give a nice, handy list of those reviews.

If you haven’t visited over there before, and if you have an interest in seeing women kick some ass in the movies, definitely drop by. They have reviews handily organized along the following rating scheme:

my 100 movies: the second 50

alejna — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:23:21 +0000

So, a couple of nights ago, I posted a list of my favorite movies. (Inspired by lists from Webs of Significance and Falling Stones are Not Heavy) The lists that inspired me were of 100 movies, but in order that I might get to sleep that night, I focused on my favorite 50. Tonight I’m posting the next 50.

Here’s the thing. It was pretty easy to make a list of my real all-time favorite movies. The movies I have watched over and over. The ones I can quote from easily. The ones I will reach for as audio-visual comfort food.

The trouble is, that list was only about 40 or so long with my initial braindump. A bit more poking around (in my brain, DVD cabinet, and Amazon ratings) filled out another 30 or 40 pretty easily. It’s been harder deciding which others should fill out the rest of the 100.

It’s funny to realize that I’m choosing a few movies that I consider quite cheezy, and even some that I’m slightly embarrassed about. Meanwhile, I’m leaving off most of the greatest films ever made. (If I were to make a list of the best films I’ve ever seen, my list would be quite different.)

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
101 Dalmatians (1961)
The Addams Family (1991)
Addams Family Values (1993)
Amélie (Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain) (2001)
Back to the Future (1985)
Batman Returns (1992)
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
A Bug’s Life (1998)
Charlie’s Angels (2000)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Conspiracy Theory (1997)
Dolores Claiborne (1995)
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill, But Came Down a Mountain (1995)
Ever After (1998)
The Fisher King (1991)
Gone with the Wind (1939)
Heathers (1989)
Iron Monkey (1993)
Jurassic Park (1993)
L.A. Story (1991)
Ladyhawke (1985)
Little Voice (1998)
The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997)
The Matchmaker (1997)
Memento (2000)
Monsters, Inc. (2001)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
Peking Opera Blues (1986)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Pleasantville (1998)
The Replacement Killers (1998)
Roger and Me (1989)
Roman Holiday (1953)
Say Anything… (1989)
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Splash (1984)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Strange Days (1995)
Strictly Ballroom (1992)
Tank Girl (1995)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
The Truman Show (1998)
Waiting for Guffman (1996)
Wing Chun (1994)

my 100 movies: the first 50

alejna — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 06:33:30 +0000

A few weeks back, I saw a post by YTSL of Webs of Significance listing 100 movies “which have particularly impacted and/or impressed [her] over the years.” Not too surprisingly, this list inspired me to think about listing my own personal favorite movies. (YTSL had, in turn, been inspired by a list of movies at Falling Stones are Not Heavy of that author’s own 100 movies to which he felt a particularly strong connection.)

Seeing as it’s late at night, I will start by posting only 50 movies. This first half of my 100 movies includes my all-time favorite movies, though I have not ranked them here. I have instead followed YTSL’s lead and simply listed them alphabetically.

These movies are not necessarily all good movies (though many are great ones) but I have connected with them in some way. It amuses me to see the recurring themes in the movies I list: dark humor and paranoia, time distortion and surrealism, silliness and whimsy, as well as women kicking some ass. My weaknesses for costume dramas and musically-oriented movies are also revealed. Anyone notice any other trends?

12 Monkeys (1995)
Amadeus (1984)
Beetle Juice (1988)
Best in Show (2000)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Bob Roberts (1992)
Brazil (1985)
The Cable Guy (1996)
Chasing Amy (1997)
Clueless (1995)
Cold Comfort Farm (1995)
The Commitments (1991)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Dead Again (1991)
Fargo (1996)
The Fugitive (1993)
The Full Monty (1997)
Gosford Park (2001)
Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
Groundhog Day (1993)
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
Lone Star (1996)
The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
Mystery Men (1999)
Office Space (1999)
The Princess Bride (1987)
The Professional/Léon (1994)
The Remains of the Day (1993)
Run, Lola, Run (1998)
The Secret of Roan Inish (1994)
Serenity (2005)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
The Sound of Music (1965)
Supercop (Police Story 3: Supercop) (1992)
This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Tremors (1990)
Truly Madly Deeply (1990)
The Truth About Cats and Dogs (1996)
Unbreakable (2000)
West Side Story (1961)
Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
When Harry Met Sally (1989)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Wolf (1994)
Zero Effect (1998)

juggling acts

alejna — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 04:16:03 +0000

It’s been one of those weeks. Nothing major has happened, just a lot of little things that make me realize I can’t quite keep all of my balls up in the air.

I’ve had a lot of demands from work this week that I wasn’t expecting. There’s another deadline at the end of the month, and seeing as I don’t expect to be terribly available then, I feel particularly compelled to contribute as much as I can now. It turned out that a lot of the new data we were adding to the pool for this particular study needed a lot of cleaning up (as well as some of the old data), and I was the one in the best position to clean it up. So I’ve been putting in a lot of hours, including late night hours, this week. I’ve been quite productive, and yet since it was work I hadn’t anticipated, I don’t get the satisfaction of feeling that I’ve made progress. (Especially since this has left me virtually no time to work on my own research projects, and every time I have a pause in the progress there, it takes me a while to get my momentum back.)

Then Phoebe came down with a stomach bug that had been looming at daycare. I had toyed with the idea of keeping Phoebe home, but for one thing, I needed the work time. And for another, it was probable that Phoebe had already been exposed to the bug by the time we learned of the menace. So keeping her home wouldn’t have likely made much difference.

Phoebe is largely okay, though there have been some rough stretches. (This was actually the first time she’d ever vomited, aside from one flukey time when she was a very young baby. She was pretty freaked out by it. And can I just say that I’m lucky I didn’t lose my laptop to the inaugural event, which happened on the couch?) She was pretty chipper by this evening, so hopefully we can put this behind us. (And can I also say that I really, really don’t want to catch a stomach bug right now?)

I am so, so not ready for the new kid to arrive. The guest room still needs to be readied for my mother’s arrival (or for the contingency plan), the infant carseat installed, and there’s some form I’m supposed to send to the hospital that I haven’t even looked at. I haven’t even visited the hospital to find out where to go, where to park, etc., when the time comes. I’m told I’m supposed to have packed a bag by now, but that feels too much like admitting that I may need to use such a bag soon.

When people ask about “decorating the nursery,” I can only laugh. As far as nesting goes, I’ll be lucky if I can find the time and energy to clear out whatever lifeforms are currently nesting in my fridge.

So if you’ll excuse me, I have a few balls to chase around.