There's a Little Birdhouse in my Soul 1

Last night was neat. We went to see They Might Be Giants in Iowa City. TMBG was the first band I heard when exiled at my aunts farm in CO at age 14 that was not Debbie Gibson or Madonna radio pop. I bought Apollo 18. Good stuff.

When I moved to Iowa at age 17 there was a high school radio station. One of the DJ's played Benny Goodman, the Violent Femmes. and TMBG right in a row. I drove down to meet this guy in Iowa who had my exact same musical tastes. He was really nice. I met him again on and off as friend of friends and such. 12 years later? We are married with one small tot.

So you see, TMBG runs deep in our family. Lil'Bug says Giants are her favorite band. I think new York City is one of the most beautiful love songs ever. My husband has almost every album ever including but not limited to the concert downloads from their website.

On to the concert.....

Little Dancer in my Heart....plus thoughts on our lifestyle

Today was our first day of fall Music Together. It was awesome. Lily asked to wear her spinning dress and declared at the end of class, "I love my new teacher!" She danced and danced and sang and was excited to hear that in this class the instrument is the flute. I grumbled a bit when they didn't include it in the welcome packet, but we do already have a recorder at home. I was hoping for a pan flute since that's what on the CD and we do not already have one. Meh. We'll just have to get one on our own.

I also set up her phonics computer game. She doesn't do the mouse very well so it was the two of us clicking through together. She does know her letters and sounds better than I thought and even a few words too. She wanted to do this for hours and hours and hours. It sure does take a big dose of patience parenting and homeschooling but the trade off is definitely sitting next to me delighted!

I've been thinking more about TV lately and my personal relationship with it. I grew up with cable TV, 100 channels with nothing on. We would watch and watch and watch. I don't object to watching movies because 1) there is an intention when putting one in the player and 2) there is a lot less selling than the commercial driven networks. I realized that what I object to the most is the advertising. I object to being advertised at. I object to exposing my child to this. She recently saw an ad for Chuck E. Cheese's. She's never been nor do we intend to take her there unless someone else is hosting a birthday party and that is unlikely that anyone in our friend circle will do that, but she's been talking about it incessantly- because of an advertisement. Blah.

Our lifestyle in general is different from mainstream Americans. We grow food, bake bread, read to each other, oh, and homeschool our almost three year old. That last one really puts us out there. Why? I've always been eccentric, artsy, and well read so I am used to being different, but even among our "crunchy" friends we seem to stick out a bit. I'm not sure why it is bothering me today.

Now for your obscure pop culture reference: I'm squishing your head!
Squish squish squish.....

Oh, and that is a chocolate goatee she has. Dark chocolate. Yum. I had one too- we had a really fun lunchtime. :)

Weekly Topics Vote

On the table this week is another Random Meme that I am working on the answers to. For some reason I am having writer's block! :)

Last week's vote the results were very much for showing my art projects in progress. I shall try to have them up for Thursday.

I also plan today to post my modified zucchini bread/muffin recipe and my chai tea recipe.

We had our first fall music class today. Music class? Aren't we unschoolers? Indeed. It's a music together class to teach me, the tone deaf rhythmically challenged mama, how to dance and sing joyfully. Lil'Bug is just along for the fun of it all.

She also has been bugging me for ice skating experience. It's 95 billion degrees here in Iowa and she wants to ice skate! She saw some clip on PBS about Olympic ice dancing and then Arther's sister DW (also PBS) was worrying about learning. I thought at first Lil'Bug was just imitating TV script but she asked after dinner for me to teach her and woke up in the middle of the night upset from a dream where she fell on the ice trying to learn to jump. So I must make an effort to find a free skate open to tots locally in the humid hot end of summer of Iowa. Geesh, what a challenge.

That's about it. Oh, and we are entering birthday party season around here. We know sooooo many people with fall born children, including mine. I am really awful at the whole gift thing and we usually end up gifting cash but I always feel lazy about that.

Just random ramblings I know. :)

Living History

I'm going to include more pictures from our farm day here BUT I'd also like to reflect on the place we went a bit. It is a "living history" farm. I used to work at a museum across town that was a part time living history (read, I had to dress up for tours) and from my museum experience I know a lot about the behind the scenes of what makes these places work. We often shared resources and once I had to stump to save their State funding from being line itemed out of that year's budget.

It gets my goat when tour guides tell the kids that the upstairs portions are blocked off because its not safe. That's not true. They are blocked off to the general public because of ADA compliance laws, which I find ironic since most of the grounds were inaccessible to those who travel with limited off road mobility. The upstairs are perfectly safe. Do not lie to my kid.

I did appreciate however that the guides at the 1750 farm site did not dress up as Native Americans. That would have been Disneyish and silly. I also thought it amusing when the guide there explained that they didn't start the cooking fire today because a "school" group was coming through and the kids mess with the fire. Ha. Our "school" group was angelic. She meant the 30+ 6th graders up the road.

I did not see anywhere signs posted and had to ask about the buildings' authenticity. What I mean by this: many of the sites were replica buildings built new and authentic buildings moved in to the new foundations to create a false historical setting. It is a learning tool but they are supposed to make it very clear what is real and what is set up for learning purposes like a movie set. The original buildings are impressive but not a whole town and 4 eras of farms.

The employees, other than having a rote script when asked questions sometimes (see ADA reference, gah), are amazing with children. In my experience, we have had ok days, but today was by far one of Lil'Bugs favorite days at the farm. That was in no small part due to the encouragement and interaction of the guides.

One other minor item to note: two of the town buildings were closed off due to fire damage. Arson. I asked and was told that the arsonist(s) broke into the buildings and were burning specific items on the floor which caused structural damage. ???? Who does that? Why? I'm going to look up the articles in the local news and ask at the State Office and see if there is more to this story that gets told to school groups and moms with tots on a day outing.