Mark's Musings

Yeah, so.

When I was five or six years old, I saw my first Star Trek episode. It was called “Operation: Annihilate!” and I found it to be extremely scary. In it, creatures hiding on the walls and ceilings would swoop down and attack the good guys by attaching onto their backs. I remember being unable to watch the entire thing because of how scary it was. On the positive side, I’ll always remember where I was when I saw the overgrown amoeba latch on to Spock.

So I should know better than to show Star Trek episodes to my kids, yeah? Guess what I did last night.

The episode they saw, from Star Trek: The Next Generation, is called “Aquiel“, and it’s a kind of mediocre effort. However, at the end of the story, when the mystery is solved, there’s a blobby sort of peanut-shaped blob that blobs after Geordi. He takes care of it fairly easily (I don’t think it’s a spoiler to reveal that Geordi doesn’t die in this episode) but, for the few seconds that Mr Blobber was on-screen, it scared the be-blobbus out of my two elder kids. My youngest wasn’t around to see it, fortunately.

Of course, then it’s bed-time, and they both complain that they’re too scared to go to sleep. *headdesk*

The headdesk is for me! Not for them.

I talked to them about the episode. I told them the blob wasn’t real. “But what if it IS?!” I told them the story was just fantasy. “But maybe there’s a real blob out there!” I tried again to convince them there’s no such thing. Samantha supposed that she would need a sleeping pill to get to sleep. Man, what makes an eight-year-old think of something like that? I tried a different tactic and asked them what happened to the blob in the story. “Geordi killed it.” A-ha, a bit of a breakthrough. It’s dead, I told them. Even if it had been real, it couldn’t come after them.

This calmed them down until Samantha said, “maybe there’s more of them.”

*headdesk*

Yeah, for me again.

I said there were no more. Geordi took care of the only one. They’re fine. They seemed to relax, and I turned off the light and left the room.

Minutes later they’re coming down the stairs claiming to have heard a thump noise come from one of the walls. Back up I go to get them into bed. I listen to the wall; I have them check out the room on the other side of the wall; I thump my head against the wall to see if it would make them laugh — *headwall* instead of a *headdesk* maybe? Eventually they agree to try to go to sleep.

Half an hour later, I’m coming up the stairs. The door to their room is closed and locked, and the light is on.

*headdesk*

Lesson learnt: no more Star Trek just before bed-time.

(Yes, they eventually got to sleep, after I had them unlock the door and turn off the light and I promised I would be in the next bedroom over from them.)

For a while, I’d been posting Zoe’s progress every four weeks, along with pictures of her as she grew. I’ve since stopped the posts, but I’ve continued the pictures. Some day I’ll share all of those.

But what I wanted to write about today was how each of our kids approached books. This may be one of the last generations to actually have books (cute toys notwithstanding), which would be a shame from the perspective of a 40+ year old. What better way to preserve my memories of my kids’ love of books than by blogging about it, then?

Alec always loved being read to. As soon as he was able, he’d turn the pages on his own, sometimes faster than I could read them to him. And the books we read back then were of the Boynton variety, so you can imagine how quickly he flipped. And he didn’t seem to care whether he was flipping forwards or backwards. I had fun with it, though. I’d start to read the page and then, once Alec flipped it, I’d pause and then start to read the new page. This way, on the rare occasions when he wanted to hear the story from beginning to end, I actually read the whole story. But when he got impatient, we would sort of fast-forward through the book.

As he got older, he was more and more interested in reading on his own. He learned his letters very quickly, and was great at learning new wacky English spelling rules. The first word he could spell on his own, at age four, was “friend”. As he got better, he enjoyed it even more. His teachers frequently comment on what a good reader he is. This is also sometimes a problem: when we want to go somewhere, he often is not ready on time because he’s got his nose stuck in a book. When cleaning his room, he’ll frequently get distracted by “accidentally” starting to read a book when it should be put away. When practicing his violin, he will “take a break” by reading. I think it’s great that he loves reading so much, and I look forward to introducing him to all the books I loved when I was his age. But it can be frustrating sometimes.

Samantha, on the other hand, never really was interested in having books read to her. She would not want to sit still long enough to read a book. The only exception to this was the bedtime book (which I speculate was only because it delayed the actual going-to-bed part of the ritual). We tried working with her as we did with Alec, and we signed her up for the same phonics courses that we did with Alec, but she never seemed all that keen on learning. Last year in Kindergarten, she fought us all the way. Reading was too hard, or too much work, or took too long, she’d say.

Luckily, this year is a different story. After taking the summer off from reading, she’s suddenly interested in doing it. She’ll actually pick up a book occasionally, on her own, and quietly read it. Sometimes she’ll even fight with her sister about which book she gets to read.

Which brings us to Zoe. Whereas Alec would want to read the same book over and over again, and Samantha would not want to read any book, Zoe wants different books all the time. She’ll bring you a stack of books and climb up into your lap, refusing to leave until the stack has been taken care of. No “read it again!” for Zoe – after you’re done reading, it’s time to move on. She’ll also happily sit quietly with a book, turning the pages and looking at the pictures, all on her own. That’s something that Alec and Samantha never did. She likes books that are not only aimed at her level, but also those belonging to her siblings. “Captain Underpants” is one of her favorites.

In terms of writing, Zoe can almost write her name – she has a problem with the Z, but the O and E are fine (even if the E ends up backwards sometimes). Alec and Samantha will write when required to, but also sometimes when they feel like it. Alec once wrote a two-page mystery story which borrowed heavily from the Hardy Boys books that he had been reading (and still reads). It wasn’t quite something I’d want to put up on his blog (he does have one, but given that he publishes something to it once a year, enh), but I liked the fact that he was trying.

He did write a poem about high fructose corn syrup, though. I found it when cleaning up the family room, and I’d like to share:

High froctose corn syrup is bad for you
You shouldn’t eat it, no matter what you do
You can eat it sometimes but I’m warning you
Never Eat It Too Much No Matter What You Do

I reckon the discussions that Julie and I have about what foods we’re going to buy have made an impression.

Just a quick entry on a snapshot of the kids’ food habits, since it came up on ifMUD.

Alec (7): will eat many kids of food, and eats well. He can eat a hamburger and a hotdog and sides and still have room for dessert. He eats almost as quickly as Julie and I do. His favorite food is grilled cheese. His favorite dessert is anything sweet.

Samantha (4.5): will eat only with a struggle. She takes forever, takes small bites, chews for a really really long time, and then rarely completes a meal. She claims she doesn’t like the taste of many foods we foist upon her, and yet she keeps it in her mouth, chewing and chewing. Her favorite food is peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Her favorite dessert is a lolipop.

Zoe (1.5): will rarely eat. She’ll sometimes suck up a few spaghetti noodles, and she’ll eat a cracker or two, but currently her main source of nutrition is Pediasure® mixed with powdered milk. Her favorite food is veggie puffs. She doesn’t yet eat dessert.