saved by the belle

have i mentioned before that our daughter just happens to be a tad interested in princesses?  i have?  have i talked about how she beelines it to the disney section every time we're at the library, and has checked out every title the system owns multiple times?  have i told you that stuffed in boxes in her closet are dress-up gowns for belle, cinderella, snow white, sleeping beauty, tiana, and accessories for ariel and rapunzel?  (the glaring omission from this list of disney beauties is jasmine.  she' a tramp.  the girl needs to find an outfit with a higher neckline and a lower hem.) 

the obsession began when she was, oh, two years old, and really hasn't waned since.  even with newfound interests like gymnastics and art classes and choir, susanna gravitates toward all things sparkly and fancy and with an happily-ever-after at the end. so it was with elation that she found out that they were re-releasing "beauty and the beast" in theaters in 3D. 

i'm not a huge fan of shelling out close to $25.00 (yes, you read that right) on two tickets to see a movie that we actually own, but the prospect of seeing it on the big screen AND in 3D AND with one of her best friends was just too good to pass up.  we made it a girls' night, going to chick-fil-a with a coupon she had been given as part of an award from school, and then dashed over in the pouring rain to be captivated by belle and the beast for a few hours.

decked out in her royal finest, susanna sat next to me, mesmerized.  and what's not to love about a heroine whose favorite pastime is reading books?  she might be my favorite princess of all (and yes, susanna and i have had multiple conversations on this very important matter).  she's a girl who's educated, is devoted to her father, and who falls in love by looking past appearances and into someone's soul.  no wonder the movie was actually nominated for the 1991best picture oscar.

i just wish jasmine would take notes.  and pull that hoochie mama top down past her rib cage.

come on, disney.  a princess movie in 3D ... and no bedazzled glasses?  it's kind of ruining the whole look

the reader

there's big news in the mann family these days:

susanna is reading.

i hate to compare our children, so i'm not going to go into how young liam was when he began to read, but it is interesting to compare their two different learning styles.  with liam, his reading seemed to be an all-of-a-sudden thing.  i even remember exactly where we were when we realized he could actually read -- we were in our rental apartment when we first moved back to raleigh and were waiting on our house in asheville to sell.  he was sitting on the floor in his temporary room, opened up one of those "i can read!" short little books that we'd just gotten at the library, and pretty much went to town.  i remember screaming to chris, and him running from the other side of that tiny apartment, convinced that someone must have broken a limb.  but we stood there, in awe, marveling at how our son had somehow overnight mastered this skill.

susanna, on the other hand, has been much more gradual.  over a year ago she started recognizing smaller words, but stubbornly refused to go any further.  "i know you know this word!" i'd encourage her as we read one of her many princess stories.  but she'd refuse to play the game.  "i don't want to read.  i want YOU to read.  so read," she'd demand.  and not wanting to turn our reading time into something negative, chris and i would oblige, inwardly wondering how old she'd be before she finally decided that this was something she wanted to do.

so she began kindergarten as a master of her ABCs and not much else.  and this is where i have to admit something that i'm embarrassed to say: i sort of doubted that her kindergarten teacher could accomplish much with our bullheaded daughter.  i mean, if we, working closely one-on-one with her, couldn't get anywhere, how in the world was a teacher with 22 students of varying abilities going to achieve any more than we did?

(what's embarrassing about this is that, of course, i am a teacher.  and i'd be offended if any parent ever voiced that concern to me.  i can't imagine someone saying, "i just don't know how you're going to teach my kid how to solve a quadratic equation, since there are 29 other kids sitting around him."  um, well, that's what teachers do.  so why i questioned what she'd learn in kindergarten is beyond me.)

anyway, something must have clicked, or her teacher waved her magic wand, or ... well, her teacher used her talents and did what she's been trained to do.  because after four months of elementary school, susanna is a reader.  her face beams with pride as she works her way through her books -- haltingly, to be sure, but tenacious.  one night last week she'd begun reading a dr. seuss book to me before i had to leave her to attend an online webinar.  i suggested that she continue reading to her stuffed animals, a captive audience lined up on her bed.  i returned a half-hour later to find her on page 51, sometimes pausing on the longer words but trudging through just fine.  she looked up at me, beaming, so proud that she was almost at the end.  it seems her stubborn streak has resurfaced as a determined streak.  it's funny how what was once a frustrating personality trait has become something quite awesome.

susanna smiles a lot these days.  she smiles when she receives a birthday party invitation, and when she finds out we're going to see beauty and the beast in 3D, and when she's allowed to choose a dessert at the grocery.  but there's no question which smile i love the most: it's the one that lights up her face as she proudly reads.  it's a smile of joy.  a smile of accomplishment.

it's the smile of a reader.

holding all the cards

i absolutely adore christmas decorations.  we haul our boxes out of storage each year on the day after thanksgiving, chomping at the bit to get them out and festivate the house.  (i totally just made up that word.  i think i like it.)  i love the electric candles flickering from the windowsills, the wreaths hanging on the doors and windows, and the fresh holly and stockings on the mantel.  i even look forward to hand washing my christmas fine china and crystal to display in the dining room -- which is saying a lot since i hardly ever hand wash anything.  this is why we start the season relatively early; not only do i just love the mood set by all these decorations, but it takes so much dadgum time and effort for us to get it all up that i want to enjoy it as long as possible.

but as soon as new year's day hits, i'm over it.  the boxes are back out and ready to be repacked, soon to be bursting at the seams with the new additions that inevitably come via neighbors, friends, and school art projects.  i find myself eager to start fresh, freeing the tabletops from their nutcrackers and angels and manger scenes, and regaining the much-needed floor space that's been held hostage by the christmas tree for the past five weeks.  and when the kids finally depart for their first day back at school, i look around at my newly uncluttered, empty house, and breathe a small sigh of relief.

but it's january 11 -- a week and a half past the moment that we closed the storage room and bid a fond farewell to our seasonal stash -- and there's one big project i have left to tackle.

 

it's our christmas card collection.  all 76 of the picture ones, anyway.  with our new house layout this year, i mulled over how to display them, and ultimately decided to just attach them to the doorways in the kitchen that lead into the dining room and breakfast room.  that way, we'd see them all the time.  sure enough, on any given evening as i'd cook dinner, i'd be peppered with questions from liam and susanna: "who's that?"  "how do you know them?"  "what's a sorority sister?"

i'm not totally sure why i've hung onto the cards for as long as i have.  perhaps it's the task ahead: for years i've stored them away in a huge photo album, trimming them down to 4x6 size and even going as far as arranging them alphabetically by last name.  i know i'm going to run out of room with this year's additions and will need to make a trip to a craft store to find another album.  (and yes, i'm aware at how this post is painting me in my most obvious type-A light.  i'm learning to embrace my dorky side.)

but i think that it's really that i just don't want to say goodbye.  the pictures of our friends and family have become, well, friends and family themselves.  they've sparked long-forgotten stories that we share with the kids, from descriptions of  playgroups in asheville (whose members, who at the time were tiny newborns along with liam, are now in the second grade) to recounts of trips chris and i made all over the country pre-children.  we've re-lived weddings and camps and college days to a surprisingly rapt audience over dinner each night, and i think it's given liam and susanna a truer sense of their place in our lives.  they might have thought that we really didn't exist before they came along, but they've started to see the larger picture.  they're beginning to understand how we're part of a larger community of people -- some whom we've known for decades, some whom we've known for just a few months, and still others whom we've known for so long that we don't even remember how we know them.  a community that's now represented on glossy photo paper and matte cardstock of various sizes, with return addresses from all over the continent.

tomorrow, i will take down the cards.  at some point in the near future i'll place them in an album -- although i've sworn to myself that this year i won't worry about alphabetical order -- and will store the album with the rest of our christmas boxes until the day after thanksgiving next year.  and on that day, we'll dust off the cover and flip through the pages, smiling at the 172 children (92 boys, 80 girls) smiling back at us, marveling at how many of them have grown.  and then we'll eagerly await the mailman's arrival every afternoon as we begin to fill our kitchen doorways with our community once again.

wordless wednesday

one of the highlights of  our days when the temperatures don't reach much higher than freezing:  hat head!

lord of the dance

"have you seen that little blond boy dancing over there?" i overheard a woman ask her husband as i passed by them last night at our club's new year's eve party.  "i cannot take my eyes off him.  he's cracking me up!"

i knew without looking that they had to be talking about liam.  i'd been getting similar comments all night, as friends and acquaintances stood around the dance floor in awe of our firstborn.  as soon as the deejay cranked up the music, he hightailed it to center stage and did not stop moving for two hours.  in chris's footage below, you can tell the moment that liam realizes he's being taped -- and his moves don't change a bit.  he just beamed, loving every minute of doing his self-described "freestyle".

and what a perfect way to open up 2012 ... with a smile.  may this be the year that, as the saying goes, we all dance like nobody's watching.  (or, in liam's case, dance however you want, regardless of people are watching or not.)

happy new year!