Posts by Jolisa
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So many great titles! Am madly jotting them down. We've had fun with the Magic Faraway Tree books too. Say what you like about Enid Blyton's deathless prose, but anyone who can invent a magic tree with a super fast slippery spiral SLIDE inside, for speedy exits from dramatic situations, deserves maximum respect.
I love Russell Hoban's Frances, too. Mainly because she's not always very good, or clever. She won't eat dinner. She doesn't like her baby sister. She hops out of bed after her parents put her back. Keepin' it real.
Speaking of which, Astrid Lindgren's two books about "Noisy Village" have been a major hit as we get ready for the Iceland trip (I know, she's a Swede, but it's good stuff). All the kids do is walk to school and back and have various mild-mannered adventures in the course of a year. But again, there's a tree - one they can use for climbing from one upstairs bedroom to the upstairs bedroom in the next house! - and a dog and an invalid grandpa and some busy parent and just lots and lots of pottering around outside. It's blowing big brother's mind up, to use one of his favourite phrases...
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Oi Russell, you hussy. Where's my cheese?
When I feel confident about supplying a bright orange cheese with blue mould in it to a nursing mother, I will deliver the cheese.
And she will inhale it. I think listeria is only a worry during pregnancy; after that it's open slather. The only rule of thumb for nursing mothers I know of is "Can I eat it with one hand?" Oh, and "Try not to drip chilli sauce on the baby's face."
There are important food safety rules for new Dads, though. Take a lesson from the friend of a friend who was making himself a delicious roast beef and dijon mustard sandwich, shortly after having changed the new baby's nappy. Noticed a stray blob of mustard on his hand and happily licked it off... only it wasn't mustard...
Anyway, huge congrats Jennifer and David! He's gorgeous and that's a helluva classic birth story. I do hope all hospital-related excitement is over, so you can get down to the reassuringly boring stuff like broken nights and Plunket weigh-ins.
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I'm quite sensitive about this, not wanting to feel like I'm indoctrinating my child.
I'm with you on this - he mostly got it from the Hurricane Katrina coverage and figuring things out for himself. We try to be mild-mannered and even-handed with answers to self-generated questions, including the unanswerable "Why is he President, anyway?"
But Leo gets most of it from in-game chat and the like. Mr Bush's image is unflattering out there in cyberkid land, big time.
Yep. And you should hear the trash talk on the playground. Man... really harsh, like "That President Bush, he'll never be on a dollar bill!" BAM! Take that, GW!
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Mrs Windyflax and the Punga People
My Brown Bear Barney
[scribbling frantically, always keen for recommendations]
The Rainbow Fairies
[reaches for bucket] You poor thing. They sound vile. We've suffered a similar phenom with Captain Underpants, which get pretty wearing long after you've realised that the truly cool thing about them is the author's underdog story (punished at school for writing Captain Underpants comic books; grows up to be prize-winning author and write Captain Underpants comic books that make fun of bad teachers, hooray!). But yeah, as you say, any old gateway drug will do if it gets them onto the good stuff eventually. I whiled away my teens reading unmentionably bad science fiction, not even the good stuff, and it didn't do me any harm :-)
I'd definitely buy the Sin Fairies. And you never know, they might appeal to kids... to the copyright office, quick!
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As a teacher, I say you are so right to enjoy his version of language as sadly his originality and freshness will be squeezed out of him.
I fear so. And yet, his Dad is a tireless coiner of words and user of curious turns of phrase, some of which have entered the vernacular, so we live in hope. I remember seeing heads turn when a two-ish Busytot said, after an expecially messy cup of cocoa, "Daddy, would you please wipe my muzzle?"
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Those cartoons taught him everything from what life might have been like for our dad growing up on a farm to where babies come from.
Er, yes. All those cartoons with Cyril the reluctant ram, or Dolores the ravenous sow, or indeed Jess the bitch with the little love-hearts floating up off her... Haven't fielded any detailed questions yet but I expect them any day now. Farm kids (and parents) have such an advantage there!
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And I can confirm TV3 led with Miss Hilton. They crossed live.
Who was the newsreader? Imagine if they'd been bold enough to do this. Go Mika Brzezinski!
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Cool kids -- and my how they've grown!! OMG, those fab side-whiskers on Jimmy!
Thank you for trusting the film makers, and having the lads tell their own side of the story. It's illuminating to see how they're charting their own interesting paths through this overly normal world. Lucky them to have such great navigators for parents.
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NPR's Terry Gross interviews the lads here and only misses a couple of jokes. Worth hearing for the spit-roast story alone.
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Hey Paul, that depiction of the old-school OE is fascinating - especially the sadly hilarious image of only meeting up with other New Zealanders while rustling around in dark rooms, which rather put me in mind of the kiwi house at Otorohanga. Or of the inefficient mating habits of kakapo, booming at each other from one isolated mountain valley to the next, but never actually meeting face to face.
I guess maybe the godwit *is* the better image for the current migration -- we definitely seem to move in flocks these days and you're right, the web is to blame or to thank. Makes it so much easier to organize events and spread the word, and to keep an oar in back home. Even in the (gasp, can it be this long) nearly fourteen years I've been out of the country, it's fundamentally changed the nature of being away, and how it feels to be a New Zealander.
One thing I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to test is, has it changed the nature of going back? Paul, how does it look from your end these days? And how are your kids finding life at the other end of the world from where they grew up?