The Wayfaring Wordhack

 Today, my daughter turned 12.

Wow, that went fast.

And after having 6 other girls over for a sleepover last night, I love my daughter all the more.  It is just a mother's love/pride/familiarity speaking, but she really is a great girl.*  <3<3<3



_____________
*which is not to say that the others aren't, but , you know, all that mother stuff mentioned above. ;)

 Sprout is really something in a lot of ways, as most parents would likely say of one of their children, but when it comes to her feminist streak...let's just say, her streak is a mile wide or more.

I am reading a book with her called Herstory: 50 Women and Girls Who Shook up the World, and while I blubber like a baby at some of the stories, she gets fired up and ready to go to war. It is too late for me to go into a lot of detail about the book or Sprout, but she said something to me today after we watched Aquaman that I wanted to record.

"Mom," she said, "do you want to know what I just made up? The robes of king can fit well on a queen."

To which I heartily agreed.

Then she came back and told me, "Here is another one: In a fight, brain makes more might."

She is in bed, and I can't ask if that second one was her exact wording, but the sentiment is there. 

She might not ever shake up the whole world, but she sure shakes up mine.

As you can guess from the subject line, Sprout is still crazy in love with dinosaurs (at this time in her young life she says she'll be a paleontologist when she grows up), so dinosaur fun it was.

A peek at the preparations and some party photos.

I made my first ever pinata, a triceratops that I failed to get a picture of before it was smashed to pieces. Huge Fail. Especially since it was finished days before the party. Have some production shots:


My mil tactfully said, "That's not a dinosaur. It's a rhinoceros." And then wisely--since she'll be the first to tell you she isn't really "up" on her animals, much less dinosaurs--added, "Or maybe not." LOL

OK, I lied. I pulled a stillshot of the finished pinata from the video of the kids smashing it, but it was filmed at night and doesn't do it justice. If I do say so myself.


Out of salt dough, I made four dinosaur skeletons, one for each team of mini paleontologists to race to assemble. Here is part of the pterandon, drying:


Each dino had 45-50 "bones"  and measured one meter long. That's a lot of salt dough. I assembled and photographed them so the kids would have a "cheat sheet."  I had to use it myself to double-check the spinosaurus.


I would have loved to have the kids excavate the "fossils" and then put them together, but a) we don't have the room in our yard, and b) I didn't think the fossils would survive that. :P

Since this wasn't a surprise party, Sprout and Junebug got in on the decorations:


I got the idea for this cool banner off Pinterest:


Instead of cutting out each letter, I drafted the whole on three large sheets of paper, which I taped together.

I made dino eggs out of salt dough and coffee grounds with a small (not as little as I wanted, actually) dinosaur figurine inside. I was going to make one for each kid, but Egypt is not the US where one can find any little trinket one wants, not even in the Egyptian Toys-R-Us. So the eggs, which looked very much like rocks, doubled as decor, holding up an ostrich egg as a centerpiece. You can barely see them in the photo above, but I'll post another. There where just enough eggs that I could give them out to the members of the winning team in the Great Dino Games. But we played those after snacks, which were:

Herbivore Munchies, Cretaceaous Chips, (GF) Carnivore Chicken Bites, (GF) Pterosaur Tuna, Dino Tails (baby corn), dinosaur eggs, dino DNA, Fruitivore salad, Marshosaurus Molars (large and small marshmallows; I was pretty chuffed to find a dinosaur called Marshosaurus); dinosaur fossils (huge pain in the butt; will never make again), dino print cookies, and prehistoric popcorn.


After snacks, the kids divided up into their herds: Triceratops, Stegosauruses, Spinosauruses, and Pteranodons.

Then they played Dino Stomp, which consisted of a timed race to pop all the balloons tied to J's ankles and wrists while he did his best to escape them. Next was Pterosaur fishing, at which the Pteranodon team exceled, clenching their victory of the games since they were able to catch the "special" fish, worth ten points. :P Then came the fossil puzzles, and finally the naked egg spoon race. That didn't last long, as you can imagine with small children, but it was OK because it was getting late and time for cake.


SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave

This morning, Sprout and Junebug donned J's and my clothes so they could be the parents.  Sprout informed me that our housekeeper would be keeping us "children" while she and Papa went to the Opera.

She and Junebug went into the yard and were sitting on the steps:

Junebug sings "Who Let the Dogs Out!" *
Sprout: That is not what you listen to at the opera!

Sprout begins to hum a La, la, la, lilting tune, and Junebug insists on repeating, louder, Who let the dogs out!!!!

Sprout: No, no, no. That is not opera music.

:P

______________
* Junebug's interest in (and knowledge of the existence of this song) is thanks to his father who heard it over 15 years ago during his first visit to the States to meet my family. He never heard it again. Talk about a good memory for earworms. If only he remembered other things as well as he remembers music. ;)

Junebug sings this a. lot. A couple of weekends ago, we were on a family retreat, and at 1:30 a.m., Junebug woke up crying.  Both J and I tried to comfort him, to no avail. Finally, he began to quiet down, and we heard a dog bark outside. He happily sang, "Who let the dogs out" and fell back asleep shortly after. :P

Last week, Sprout and I were in an accident on the scooter.

It was my fault; for some reason, unknown and completely unrecallable, I accelerated when I was trying to brake to avoid hitting two cars who were closing the gap I was driving in.

I flipped over the front of the scooter, landing on my back, a mercy for a woman who is 7 months pregnant.  My right side was banged up from flying over--and breaking--the mirror, but I had no other big injuries. Sprout's bottom lip and chin were cut by the visor of her helment, and her left wrist was abraded, but the sweet love's first words were, "Momma, are you OK? Are you all right, Momma!?"

Many Egyptians came to our aid, offering help, water, comfort...even returning the two coins that had fallen from my pocket.

When Sprout finally calmed down enough, she told me that she is not used to crash landings. To which I fervently replied, neither am I and I hope we never have to get used to them. The baby was moving normally that night, and since I had no abnormal pains or anything suspicious, the doctor said all was well. I was a little nervous upon discovering a bruise just above my navel, but Coquille has been unfazed.

The next day, I was pretty sore, but Sprout seemed fine. She and Kainam got the full-fledged flu, though, and I got a nasty cough that insured this was one tiring week.  The kids still have fever today, but I hope we are all on the mend...

Tonight, Sprout enjoyed telling us (pseudo-enacting?) her conception at the supper table.

Sprout, pushing J's beer bottle next to the water carafe:  This is Papa and this is Momma, and you have to put them really close because, you know, they have to be touching so...

Sprout puts the salt shaker behind the water carafe, opposite the beer bottle: This is me. What do sperm look like?

J: Comme des têtards (Like tadpoles)

Sprout, taking pieces of bread and molding them into tadpole shapes: OK, so we're going to have the girl's team and the boy's team, and we're going to see which one gets to Momma's egg first.

Me: On your mark, get set, go!

Sprout, making the sperm swim, with the girl sperm in the lead: Ha! You know why the girl sperm got there first? Because all the other girls were holding the boys' tails!

And that, friends, is why Sprout is a girl.

Last week, we celebrated Sprout's fifth birthday. All parents say this, but, Wow. Where did the time go?  A little update on the not-so-little Miss:

( Read more... )

At last, a full week on the creative front.  I finally finised the "Project of the Week" that I've had on my agenda since we got back from our holiday by the sea:  Make Junebug a bucket hat.

I used fabric from my stash, which means one side of the reversible hat is exactly like the last hat I made him, and the other is from one of the hooded towels I made from Sprout before she was born. Nothing like getting mileage out of one's purchase.

The model was not too pleased with having to wear the hat. Naturally.

( Photographic proof of productivity this way... )

I also did a lot of research about illustrating children's books--watching videos, tutorials, browsing sites for inspiration--and now I need to get back to finishing up the text.
____________
* Sticky tack is the greatest thing for paper dolls, infinitely re-stickable yet mess-free. Way better than paper tabs that get weak and tear from overuse.

I don't know if I've shared before that we are planning on unschooling our kids or not, but yes, we are.

Anyhow, yesterday, we were carpooling to and from ballet and as we were approaching our building, I turned to Sprout and told her to say bye to her friend.

Sprout: I'm telling Salma about unschooling.
Me: Oh, I'm very interested to hear what you said.
Sprout (while we were climbing the stairs to our apartment): I told her it means you can do whatever you want, whenever you want.

After a good belly laugh, I gently corrected that to: LEARN whatever you want when you want to.  And yeah, you get to do a lot of stuff you want to do, just because you want to.*

And don't you know Salma must think unschooling is a pretty cool thing. :P

___________
*Obviously this is missing a lot of nuance, but she's only 4. ;)

I keep saying I'll take photos of what I'm doing so that I can make a decent snippet post, but we've taken other pictures of late, which I'll include under a cut.

On the creative front, I've been crocheting a sweater for Junebug.  Given the shortness and mildness of Egyptian winters, I'm making for 18-24 mo, but I don't know if it will be big enough next year. I've also been doing some sketches, working on a suitable style for a picture book idea I have. And baking: galettes, pizzas, bread. Baking counts, right?

So photos:
( family time )