Thursday, April 30, 2015

Owen and his Animals

When Owen arrived in our household, there were already five of us living here:  me, Sean, Dorothy, Plum and Posy.  Whereas his appearance was a little traumatic for the pets (well, except that we think it took Posy about four months before she noticed he was there), Owen’s landscape has always included beasties lying about.  And he is quite good (so far) with all the animals, especially since he is not very physical with them in general.

He is fond of Dorothy and will introduce her to us and whoever else might come to our house.  When we are away from home running errands, he will say that he wants to go home to Dorothy.  And when they are outside together, he will bring her sticks (which is good, since Dorothy will take them from him regardless).




I’d say of all three pets, Plum is the one who likes Owen the best.  Dorothy knows she has to behave well towards Owen, but she is jealous of him and will often sit on the couch and cry when we play with him (Oh! The long suffering bulldogge!).  So her feeling towards him is more tolerance and a grudging acknowledgement that she had better be nice to Dad’s young.  Plum, on the other hand, is interested in Owen – no doubt it is probably more that he is willing to have another lesser being in his, the alpha male’s, household, but this manifests itself in affectionate leg rubbing while Owen is watching TV and a general interest in what Owen is doing.  Plum will talk to Owen too, and meow at him in a friendly way.  This is all good, since Plum’s tendency to urinate outside the box has not put him in his father’s good graces, to put it mildly.  Being nice to Owen seems the least he can do.




And then there’s Posy.  Posy’s reaction to Owen is generally to hightail it in the opposite direction.  Quickly!  Owen is solicitous of her – or rather, he became so once he heard me calling her Posita.  His version of “Posita” is po-di-TAH, and he likes to shout this at high decibels.  He’ll call po-di-TAH when it is time for her dinner, or when he is just wondering where she is.  Needless to say, she does not come running.

The name’s Posy.
But you don’t call me anything at all, little boy.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Owenisms

For a long time this fall, Owen’s favorite event to talk about was the time when Pa dropped his fork on the ground.  As of late, that incident has been replaced by two other calamities.  The first is from one Sunday a month ago when Sean apparently “crashed into the strawberries!”  I don’t think it was actually as violent as that sounds, but apparently strawberries ended up on the ground, and Sean was the culprit, and Owen has not let him forget it.  For weeks, when I would get into the car at the train station at the end of the day, Owen would remind me that “Daddy crashed into the strawberries!” while Sean would be muttering in the front seat that what happens in Trader Joe’s stays in Trader Joe’s, etc.


Lately, his new favorite tale of woe is the time (months ago) when I put a piece of apple on my plate and Owen popped it into his own mouth.  It seems to be a guilt he is compelled to confess daily (even though I really didn’t mind – if it had been a piece of cake, that would have been a different story.  But a piece of apple?  Knock yourself out, kid.).  He will say multiple times a day:  “I ate Mommy’s apple!  From her plate!  I did it!  I put it in my mouth!”  And then sometimes he will try out blaming someone else, like Daddy or Nanny.  But eventually will return to “I did it!” and I will tell him “that’s okay, I don’t mind!”


He was playing with a ball the other day and when I asked if I could have a turn, he said, “No.  It’s not a toy, Mommy.”  Which is apparently a phrase we say to him often!


When we get ready for swimming on Saturdays, I change from my glasses to my contact lenses for the pool.  When Owen sees my face, he’ll say, “Where are Mommy’s glasses?  Don’t worry!  I’ll find them!”  And then starts walking around calling, “Mommy’s glasses!  Mommy’s glasses!”


He always asks for a “Mommy hug”, especially when I am getting him dressed in the mornings.  One morning he said, “I need a Mommy hug!”  And when I said just a second, he replied, “But it’s important!”  Lately he’ll say “I need a Mommy hug!” followed by “I need fifty hugs!”


When he is feeling particularly loving, he will say “You’re my best friend.”  It is rather sweet.


Friday, April 17, 2015

Owen and Books

As I have mentioned in previous entries, Owen isn’t yet the bookworm that I figured any child of mine would naturally be.  Right from the beginning he has liked books, but only certain books, and he usually has about ten or so that we can read to him at any given time, yet won’t accept substitutes or a new book thrown into the mix.

In the last few weeks, however, he seems to be showing a renewed interest in books, so I have been reading to him as often as he will let me.

Owen sneak listening to another kid's story:
  
My friend, Elisabeth, recommended the Mo Willems books, and I got a few of them for Owen for Christmas.  I had to do some wrangling at first, but now they are part of his rotation, especially the pigeon finds a hotdog book.


I do notice that he’ll bring up phrases and occurrences from the books we read to him, so they are definitely permeating his consciousness.  Sean called me once in hysterics because he had asked Owen if he wanted a taste of something Sean was eating, and Owen replied no, because “it tastes like chicken” (which is something that occurs in the pigeon and hotdog book).  And because we laughed when he said it, now it is one of Owen’s standard phrases….

I also have watched Owen sit down with his books recently and “read” them to himself, and he uses a lot of the “right” words on the corresponding pages – so at least I know that he is paying attention to the books he allows us to read.


I also find it true that if I try to read a book a few times, and only get a few pages in, eventually Owen will add that book to his rotation.  For example, he wouldn’t let me read “Where the Wild Things Are” for several months, but now it is his favorite.  He still loves the Maisy books, too.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Spring Weekend


Despite the fact that Owen had a cold this weekend, we thoroughly enjoyed our first weekend of really great Spring weather!  It was in the high sixties with a blue sky – and I really think this is the first time we have had two days in a row of blue sky since December.  Since there are no mosquitoes yet, we were able to spend hours on the porch playing with trains:








And Owen also did a good job “helping” with yard work:





Sean worked non-stop raking our front and back yards, and cutting ivy off trees at my request (I hate seeing trees choked by ivy, and our area has both ivy and some other pernicious vine which chokes every plant it can reach).  He also built a planter for our front porch (from scratch! He’s handy!), and we went to Lowes and got some pansies and violas for it.  Owen was very excited about the whole process, although I had to work hard to keep his helping from hindering:  his idea of helping to plant the flowers tended to be to pick them and then try to stick their stems in the dirt.



I am liking Owen’s current age of 2 ½ though – he talks non-stop and says hilarious things.  Although because of his cold half of what he said this weekend was “Can I have a boogie wipe?” (a genius invention of a wet tissue), and then “Thank you” when I was done wiping his nose.




We finished up his swimming classes on Saturday too, and signed up for the next session.  Despite his continuing proclamations of the locker room being a “terrible mess!”, he very much enjoys going to the pool each week.  He likes to jump in and wall-walk, and is beginning to participate in everything except for floating on his back.  When I try to get him on his back, his legs pop up at a 90-degree angle.  We are working on it!  We also sing songs in the pool and do swimming things along with the songs, and Owen will put in a request for “Wheels on the Bus”.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Easter at the Zoo

We began Easter this year with an early morning trip to the Philadelphia Zoo.  It was sunny and in the high fifties, so a perfect day for zooing.  We got there when it opened, too, and had the primate house to ourselves in the beginning!  I learned about gibbons from a helpful zoo worker (they are in the ape family, and thus have no tails; monkeys have tails), and watched the huge male silverback gorilla eat close to his weight in lettuce, and scratch his thigh.

Here’s a giraffe, a rhino, an Andean bear (I’m sure he gets tired of being called Paddington), and some orangey flamingos.






Owen had a good time looking at the animals, although was worried at one point when a tiger walked straight at him.

We had dyed some eggs the day before:




And then on Easter afternoon we had an egg hunt in our yard.  We didn’t know if Owen would at all be interested in hunting for eggs (he had seen the “easter bunny” in the mall few times and mainly just seemed a little creeped out about the whole easter affair).  But he had fun searching for eggs in the yard, even if he wanted nothing to do with the jelly beans inside the eggs.








Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Book Reviews March 2015


George Eliot: A Life by Rosemary Ashton.  In my opinion, there is nothing better than a good Victorian biography, and this one by Rosemary Ashton is a specimen of excellence.  I wanted to read a more traditional George Eliot biography after reading Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch, and this was one she recommended, so I put it on my Christmas list and received a lovely jacketed copy (thanks, Mom & Dad!).  I then proceeded to read one chapter on Saturday and Sundays during Owen’s naptime – if indeed there was a naptime – and looked forward to it all week.  It’s the perfect blend of Eliot’s life and work, and was very respectful of Eliot and Lewes, and fair.  As a good biography of a writer should, it made me want to re-read those books of Eliot’s I’m familiar with, and read the few I’m not.  Eliot herself was an interesting blend of progressive and conservative.  She was intellectually progressive, of course, but her living a “married” life with an already-married man made her conservative in political gesture.  That is, since her status kept some men from bringing their own wives to visit her, she was hesitant to rock the boat except in her writing.  I think Middlemarch is close to perfection and this biography of its writer a gem.

Leaving Before the Rains Come by Alexandra Fuller.  This is Alexandra Fuller’s third memoir, and I have very much enjoyed all three.  Whereas Don’t Let’s Go To the Dogs Tonightwas about her parents and her childhood in Africa, and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness was more about her mother, Leaving Before The Rains Come is about the slow dissolution of Fuller’s own marriage, while also concentrating a lot on her father and the advice he has given to her over the years.  After spending her first 23 years in Africa on the various farms her English and Scottish parents try to make a go of, Fuller marries an American and moves to the US with him, eventually settling in Wyoming with their children.  Fuller seems very intense, which is contrasted with her now ex-husband’s normalcy.  And the husband doesn’t come off looking so good.  But on the whole it is a very well-written (a great use of language) and sad story of two people who are a really bad fit.  Fuller repeatedly refers back to her whirlwind of a childhood, and creates what seems to me a very honest and compelling portrait of how there got her to here, and how she is trying now, post-marriage, to live her beliefs. 

Exile by Denise Mina.  This was the second book in Mina’s Garnethill trilogy and my review of it is mixed.  I still plan on reading the third – and I’m still interested in reading Mina’s other books – but reading this one was a bit of a slog.  Basically, when the book begins Maureen is working at the women’s shelter where her friend, Leslie, also works.  A woman who had stayed there gets killed down in London, and Maureen then goes to London to solve the crime.  While in London, she very much misses Glasgow – and thus the “exile” of the title.  The writing on the whole is good, and I still like Maureen, but to be honest, I find her drinking problem stressful.  She is an alcoholic and is always drinking too much whiskey and then doing things that are dangerous because of her relaxed inhibitions.  She goes into the apartments of drug dealers she doesn’t know, and gets beaten frequently.  I’ve started the third novel already to get closure, and I’m hoping that in it Maureen finds some peace!  I can’t take much more of this!

My Berlin Kitchen by Luisa Weiss.  I am very fond of a food memoir with recipes, and this is a great one.  Weiss grew up in Berlin and Brookline, MA, with her divorced American math professor father and Italian journalist mother.  She lived in Berlin until the divorce at age 4, and then lived primarily in Brookline with her father, but spent her summers and holidays in Berlin (and Italy) with her mother.  Her childhood seemed rather lonely, since she was of and not of three cultures, and she often turned to cooking, and to cooking the food of the place she was missing.  In her (very) early twenties (seriously, this woman lived a lifetime by the time she was 30, in a way that makes me quite jealous), she put her love of reading and food to use as a successful cookbook editor in New York City.  In 2005, she started a blog which she called The Wednesday Chef, since the main focus of the blog was to try out the recipes she had clipped over the years from the New York Times food section on Wednesdays.  She had a fiancé who didn’t like to travel, and eventually she realizes that staying with him would mean choosing to be just a small part of who she is.  So she rekindles a previous relationship with a Berliner, and returns to Berlin with a book contract of her own, and sets about to cook.  She’s a good writer and leads a calm yet fascinating life.  And the recipes!  I have a long list of ones I plan to try, beginning, perhaps, with the seven-hour ragu.  I recommend this book highly—in ways I can’t quite put my finger on, it is an inspiring tale.  At the very least, it will make you hungry.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion.  This is a very cute read, and I’m not using that term pejoratively in this instance.  The narrator, Don, is a genetics professor who has Aspergers but doesn’t really know it.  He does know that he sees the world differently from other people, and that he has to very consciously decide how to respond correctly in social situations.  He’s 39 when the book begins and decides that he will try again to find a wife, and so begins The Wife Project, involving a long questionnaire for women to fill out if they are interested in dating him.  Towards the beginning of the project, he meets Rosie, who is on a hunt to find her biological father; Don starts helping her with her Father Project, as he calls it.  It’s very funny and very easy to imagine as a movie (in fact, it was originally a screenplay before being turned into a novel).  I found it a bit slow at the start, but then very enjoyable as the story progresses.  Don is unwittingly hilarious in his rigidity, yet he is not unwilling to learn new things and tries his best to make sense of a world he can’t quite understand.  It is a fun book.

Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres.  This book made its way to my kindle via two interviews I read over the past few years with the actress Emma Thompson:  in both, she stated that Corelli’s Mandolin was the only book she’s read that made her cry.  I was intrigued!  So knowing only that, I began the novel with tissues at the ready.  And reader, I did not cry.  But I very much enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book.  De Bernieres has an excellent sense of humor – I laughed often and merrily.  The book takes place on the island of Cephalonia in Greece during World War II.  The island was eventually invaded by the Italians under Mussolini, and then the Germans, and then became occupied (and perhaps treated the worst) by Greek Communists.  Anyway, the story focuses first on an erudite and humorous doctor who lives with his daughter, Pelagia, a young woman.  The doctor is an amateur historian and is always working on histories of the island, which are in the book, and which more often than not get eaten by Pelagia’s goat.  Pelagia follows in her father’s footsteps and learns from him all his medical knowledge.  We also get the narrative point of view of an Italian soldier, who barely survives the Albanian campaign before getting transferred to Cephalonia.  Before long, Antonio Corelli, an honorable captain in the Italian army, and a musician, gets billeted at the doctor’s cottage, and a friendship and romance begins.  As I said above, I really enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book.  All the characters are very well done and the writing is witty; he tells a good story.  My problem with it is that he didn’t know when to stop writing, so the story goes on and on and on until all the characters are in their eighties in the 1990’s.  We just didn’t need to know all that and it could have been left to our imaginations.  Plus there is one really annoying and cheap-trick plot twist which we learn at the end, and almost ruined the entire book for me.  I shook my fist; I did not cry.

Resolution by Denise Mina.  This is the third book in Mina’s Garnethill trilogy, and unlike the second one, I liked this one very much.  It is partly a more satisfying read because it is back to dealing with the original mystery begun in the first book, and a lot of the plot gets wrapped up.  It’s also better because the main character, Maureen, begins to try to stop the downward spiral that took over the second book.  She still causes a few fights, and still gets in a lot of trouble, but she is once again admirable with her blunt speech and her insistence on sticking up for the underdog.  I read in a review of Mina’s work in general that “Her novels explore feminist themes in a radical way” and that she on purpose writes female characters who do the work and solve the crimes themselves.  Mina herself seems quite interesting – she went to law school later in life and then taught criminology in Glasgow.  She’s also a big graphics novel aficionado, and did the graphics novel version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” series.  Interesting, no?  Anyway, this third book was a success and a good read.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald.  You will read this slowly, because it is lobster and chocolate cake – a rich feast that takes time to digest.  You’ll read of how the sudden death of Helen Macdonald’s father and the grief she felt caused her, a former falconer, and current birdwatcher, nature writer, poet, instructor, to buy a baby goshawk to tame and train and allow to hunt.  You’ll be amazed at the vocabulary used in each sentence, and how specific is the language of hawking.  You will shudder, however, at the amount of rabbits a hawk can kill and how it delights in the killing.  But it is all so evocative and clearly drawn and exquisitely seen.  You’ll find the T.H. White parts a little tiresome, since it turns out White (of Once and Future King fame) was a rather odious man – but the comparison she makes between White’s trial and error and her own more knowledgeable approach is interesting.  You are glad the hawk is in her capable hands.  You will wonder why as a six year old you didn’t clamor after your own falcon or goshawk, and learn to make jesses and small leather hoods to turn day into night.  You take a moment to reflect upon how you’ve wasted your life.  But Macdonald’s writing is so satisfying that reading the book and her tales of Mabel (the goshawk) become an act of forgiveness and a renewal.  And you will read these sentences slowly, and savor them, and let your thoughts go where the sentences take them, and you will be very very pleased. 

& Sons by David Gilbert.  If I had written a review of this book when I was halfway through reading it, I would have started with:  “If you want to read about a bunch of jerks, then this is the novel for you.”  There are five narrators, more or less, and I only liked one of them (the 17 year-old boy).  The other main characters – a Salinger-esque writer, A. N. Dyer, his two sons, and the son of his childhood friend – are all very flawed and unlikeable, although this does seem to be the author’s intent.  (There are no main female characters at all – just, of course, an ex-wife, a maid and nanny, and a few girlfriends, sigh.)  However, in the second half of the book, Gilbert’s really excellent and witty writing more or less won me over, or at least led me to forgive him some of his trespasses.  I got this novel after reading a very good review of it in The New Yorker, and he is definitely a really talented writer – I laughed often at his phrasing, and with one exception the overall structure of the plot with its layers of quotations from the books of A.N. Dyer and letters, etc. was very clever.  One thing that does not work is that throughout the novel, the son of the childhood friend, Philip Topping, is sort of the uber-narrator, so that even when you think you’re seeing things from the viewpoint of one of the sons, say, it is really the viewpoint of the sons via Philip.  I get why Gilbert did this structurally (A. N. Dyer used Philip’s father as a character in his most famous novel, and not very sympathetically, so now Topping’s son gets to tell the story of the Dyers), but it often was confusing:  you’d be in someone’s head and then all of a sudden Philip would start talking and it would take me a while to figure out who was saying what.  So:  a very witty novel, impressive writing, yet the story of a bunch of not very likeable men.

In contrast, here's a likeable man: