Oh, man. William has been invited to a birthday party this weekend. Furthermore, he got the invitation yesterday, which means there is not much time to think. And William is the sort of child who, if you ask him what his BEST FRIEND SINCE FIRST GRADE’s favorite color is, will say “……Humm. Maybe….blue?” And if you say, “Well, what does she like to do? Does she have any hobbies?,” will say “…..Humm. Uh….” So on the topic of this weekend’s birthday child, a classmate he has known only since school started this year, I feel very lucky that he happened to know whether the child was a boy or a girl.

And eleven is a tricky age to buy for. I don’t even know what to get my OWN children in that age range. Well, there is nothing for it but to dig up some candidates, which is something I had to do before Christmas anyway.

Crafting With Cat Hair (photo from Amazon.com). I realize this is odd. I realize this is the sort of item that may need some further explanation, or perhaps would have been better suited to the unusual miscellany list from last week.
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Holidays can be tricky to explain to children. Columbus Day, for example, after the children came home from school saying they’d learned (1) Columbus wasn’t supposed to be searching for America, and (2) he didn’t realize he had discovered something new, and (3) people were already living here, so isn’t that more like being a conqueror than a discoverer? “So what IS Columbus Day, Mother dear?” “A Monday off from school in October, children dear.”

Thanksgiving is tricky, too, with all the awkward issues that crop up now that we look back on it. BUT WE PERSEVERE. And this is what I love about children’s books: the authors too have struggled with how to explain it, but unlike me they have come to a conclusion, and I can read that conclusion to the children and then make modifications if necessary. (And if you’re looking for an assortment of books, all the books in this post qualify as of posting time for Amazon’s 4-for-3 deal: if you add four books to your cart, one of them will automatically be free.)

Thanksgiving is For Giving Thanks (photo from Amazon.com). “Yes, yes, pilgrims and Indians,” this book seems to say, “But perhaps it would be better at this point in history to focus on the MODERN meaning.” The things we eat! The things we are currently thankful for!
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Paul reads to the kids each night, but because they’re so spread out in age, he reads to them in three groups: first to just Henry (age 4), then to Elizabeth and Edward (age 6), and then to Rob and William (12 and 10). (The plan is to eventually combine the two younger groups, but right now Henry is still a little disruptive in a group and does better one-on-one.) Henry still likes picture books. Elizabeth and Edward like the short chapter books like the Franny K. Stein series. But Rob and William are in YOUNG ADULT. Well, or maybe in “old childhood”—they don’t quite go for the ones about pimples and dating yet.

Old Childhood / Young Adult is a strange field to navigate, especially if you have children who are a little…sensitive about scary or violent stuff. Young Adult assumes that kids can start to handle some more serious plotlines: some social commentary, some unhappy home life, some not-always-turning-out-right, some GRIM.

I like to put a book in each kid’s Christmas stocking, so I’ve been thinking about some of my favorite books from when I was that approximate age range.

Beloved Benjamin is Waiting, by Jean Karl (photo from Amazon.com). As a child and young adult, I loved the sort of books where children had to handle their own care. In this one, a girl named Lucinda has a family life that has disintegrated to the point where it’s no longer safe for the children to live there. Lucinda hides in the abandoned caretaker house in a graveyard, hiding not only from her home life but from a gang of kids that starts picking on her. In the caretaker house is a broken monument statue of a little boy—and the statue starts talking with her. I looked this up at my library but they no longer have a copy, so I ordered a used one from Amazon. Childhood books are often disappointing when re-read as an adult, so I’m a little worried, but I also wonder if my kids might be as fascinated with it as I was.
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This week a little virus sped through our household: sore throats and 103-degree fevers for everyone except me. If I ever wondered if I might have been a good and kind and angelic nurse in, say, an army tent with rows of patients, the answer is “Probably not.” Six people asking for more juice, more water, a blanket, the remote, maybe another piece of toast, was pretty much all I could handle pleasantly, and probably the adverb “pleasantly” is pushing it a bit, even in much nicer conditions and with much less upsetting illness/injuries than would be in an army tent.

There are certain things I keep in the house always, so I have them on hand when illness visits us and don’t have to add “running to the store” to my toast-fetching list:
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I’ve been considering a tattoo. At this point, I don’t know if I’ll actually get one, or if I’ll get one and then get lots more, or if I’ll decide I don’t want one after all, or if it will be something I’ll dither about for the rest of my life.

For now, I am having fun experimenting with temporary tattoos. It’s a good way to experiment with size and placement and whether I actually LIKE art on my skin, and it’s been fun to go to the pool and have all the other parents wondering if I actually have a big unicorn on my upper arm. I’m totally lying: I have not gone to the pool with a temporary tattoo. It’s because I’m worried people will either (1) think it’s real or (2) know it isn’t, but think I think they think it is.

But! We’ve been having fun with them at home. The ones I bought the most of are only $1.50 a book (they’re small books—those little Dover ones that are about the size of a notecard), and contain about the same square inchage of tattooage whether there are 4 largeish ones or 20 small ones. Amazon has them on their “4-for-3″ deal, so if you buy four books, one of them will automatically be free. If you buy eight books, two will be free. And so on. (Make sure you check each listing to make sure that one has the “4-for-3″ deal mentioned under Special Offers. All the ones I got did—but there are other sellers selling things on Amazon, and of course theirs don’t qualify.) All photos below are from Amazon.

Henna tattoos. This combines the tattoo fascination I’ve never acted on with the henna fascination I’ve never acted on. I also got the Henna Paisley and the Henna Floral ones.
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It’s not like I have more time during the summer than during the rest of the year, but I persist in thinking of it as a time for lying around on the beach and reading. Ha ha ha! But anyway.

Stories I Only Tell My Friends, by Rob Lowe (photo from Amazon.com). I put this on my list after being assured by many reviewers that it was the GOOD kind of celebrity autobiography, rather than the kind that makes you go totally off the celebrity. I concur: I had many eye-rolling moments, and yet I came away from it wanting to see more of what Rob Lowe had done.

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My 6-year-old daughter will soon be having a tonsillectomy. Even though this is a totally routine outpatient procedure, I am fretting. And one way I deal with anxiety is by preparing—or perhaps more accurately, over-preparing. I’d like to buy her a number of fun things to entertain her during the two weeks the doctor suggests we plan for her to be in a nest on the couch, and I’ve been distracting myself with the decisions.

Our Target has some of the Littlest Pet Shop Petriplets sets on clearance, so I bought Elizabeth the kitties one (photo from Amazon.com) which has three cats and a little triple cat-perch, and the bunnies one which has three bunnies and a little triple carrier. These don’t seem to me to have high play-value, but they’re cute and she likes cute, and they can be played with from a couch nest.

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What I laughingly call a “craft bin” at our house is in fact a tower of disaster: a bunch of stacking baskets (like these) that we got for free at the dump, filled to a teeter with the litter of a decade’s worth of “Just toss that in the craft bin.” Several half-used packages of card stock. Sheets of felt, partially cut into. Rubber stamps—where is the stamp pad? Stickers that came with charity pleas. A protractor that came in a kit of school supplies. Foam letters spilling out of a bag. Empty Play-Doh containers—what the heck? A package of beads, a package of jingle bells, a package of popsicle sticks. A bunch of craft books we always think someone will want to leaf through for ideas, but no one ever does. Clearly there needs to be a heavy cleaning-out, but this is the sort of area where as soon as I throw something away, a child wants it for a project.

Despite the oppressive nature of our own craft bins (and, as I know from babysitting and nannying, other people’s craft bins), craft supplies remains one of my favorite gifts for children’s parties. They’re the kind of gift that tends to pass parental inspection, even with all the things parents can object to (”girl” vs. “boy” toys, violent toys, toys that perpetuate beauty culture, toys from particular countries, princess toys, a certain brand of toys with an amusement-park tie-in, TV/movie-tie-in toys, “cheap plastic crap,” etc. etc. etc.), and in general they tend to be gifts that work no matter what the particular child is interested in: not every child likes crafts, of course, but statistically-speaking (and if you have to take a certain risk with the gift anyway), more of them like crafts than like, say, Bakugan.

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Henry has recently cooled on his dinosaur obsession, and seems to be starting up a new thing with knights and castles. His birthday is next month, so I’m looking for ideas.

Fisher-Price TRIO Wizard’s Castle (photo from Amazon.com). This is the castle Henry liked best of all the ones we looked at. My mom bought it for her playroom right away when I told her.

Knights to go with it. (Photo from Amazon.com.) And more knights, so there can be fighting.
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Please please please let it be spring soon. I am tired of complaining about wet snow gear, and would like to switch to complaints about muddy clothes and shoes. In the meantime, a taste of spring for our poor wintered eyes:

Sunny Morning art print by paintedbliss on Etsy ($18) (photo from the shop). Sweet little birdie + sunshine + sunny yellows + spring greens + spring lilac. Aaaaaaaaaaaaah.
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