The following was related by Jennifer:
- Jennifer was dealing with a crying Simone while Magda was unsuccessfully trying to get her attention.
- So Magda addresses her sister with an empathetic "Simone, damn your tears!"
- Jennifer, horrified, tries to make Magda understand that using curse words is not appropriate for children.
- Magda, confused, asks what a curse word is.
- Jennifer elaborates.
- Magda, still confused, exclaims "but dam means 'to stop water from flowing'!"
- ...
Magda has really taken to reading and it's amazing to watch her evolution and progress from week to week. She's known her letters for years and has been wanting us to "follow the words with our finger" when reading to her for a long time. But she really only started to seriously try to read since beginning kindergarten this fall.
And then something clicked and she's started enjoying the process of making her way slowly through early-reader primers. And then it became more fluent. A couple of weeks ago she was "bored" at Kat & Steve's Christening party and Kat's dad lend her a big-ol' Dr. Seuss book and, to her surprise, Magda made it through Green Eggs and Ham all on her own. Now she often grabs a book and reads for pleasure. Usually it's stuff that she's heard many times already, though she doesn't just recite from memory. But often it's new early-reader books she gets from school or we pick up at the library.
Today, we picked up a couple of Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa books from the library. She started reading one in the car and then walked from the car to the kitchen with her nose in the book barely paying attention to anything Jennifer was trying to ask her. I can totally see my young self in her.
She also has started reading pretty much any environmental text that catches her eye - ads, posters, the panhandler signs at intersections, etc. Sometimes she asks what some complex word means, but most often she just reads. We were at Barnes & Nobles today, and while I was looking at some books and kind of ignoring her, I snapped at attention when I heard her haltingly read one of the many calendar titles on the shelf. To my relief she didn't ask what a "Bitch" was - I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing that she didn't, but I'm going to pretend she thought it had something to do with dogs. On the other hand, she didn't have any problems with the cursive typeface it was written in, so that's a good thing, right?
And then something clicked and she's started enjoying the process of making her way slowly through early-reader primers. And then it became more fluent. A couple of weeks ago she was "bored" at Kat & Steve's Christening party and Kat's dad lend her a big-ol' Dr. Seuss book and, to her surprise, Magda made it through Green Eggs and Ham all on her own. Now she often grabs a book and reads for pleasure. Usually it's stuff that she's heard many times already, though she doesn't just recite from memory. But often it's new early-reader books she gets from school or we pick up at the library.
Today, we picked up a couple of Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa books from the library. She started reading one in the car and then walked from the car to the kitchen with her nose in the book barely paying attention to anything Jennifer was trying to ask her. I can totally see my young self in her.
She also has started reading pretty much any environmental text that catches her eye - ads, posters, the panhandler signs at intersections, etc. Sometimes she asks what some complex word means, but most often she just reads. We were at Barnes & Nobles today, and while I was looking at some books and kind of ignoring her, I snapped at attention when I heard her haltingly read one of the many calendar titles on the shelf. To my relief she didn't ask what a "Bitch" was - I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing that she didn't, but I'm going to pretend she thought it had something to do with dogs. On the other hand, she didn't have any problems with the cursive typeface it was written in, so that's a good thing, right?
We had a blast on Halloween this year - once again taking the kids to Avenue F. This was really the first time Magda got into it and would walk up to the houses by herself or, preferable, with Kayleigh by her side. Over the last few weeks, Magda vacillated between different costumes. For most of the time she wanted to be Ariel, then she wanted to be Zlatovláska (Princess Goldenhair) and wanted a wig made "like Dominik had in the summer" (for my brother's Michael Jackson impersonation, my aunt made him a wig from a skein of wool and it looked horrid), then she wanted some "colored hair spray" (after getting colored in a school carnival), and along the way she also wanted to be "something scary" (since Kayleigh was going as a witch). Eventually she ended up going as a "princess goblin" which consisted of a black outfit, a punk girl wig, a cape, fairy wings and face paint. She totally loved it and I was pleased that we avoided Disney, cheap commercial costumes or lots of work (I had to replace her waist band, but that was nothing).
For Simone we borrowed a wonderful Eeyore costume from Kathy H. She looked disgustingly adorable dragging her treat bag behind her and wandering around through the crowds. To our surprise, she actually kept the hood on for quite a bit of time. Simone was having a blast too, fascinated with all the dressed up people around her and completely unaware that any of that was supposed to be scary.
Jennifer went as a (unintentionally) creepy clown. She had gotten a wig and I tried to put her face paint on. But we were running short on time, Magda wanted to help and Simone was getting into the way too. So Jennifer ended up looking like something between Heath Ledger's Joker and Steven King's IT - with glasses. I allso used some of the pain to turn myself into an office zombie.
