I picked up a couple of books for the kids at the library this week: Blue Jasmine, about 12 year old Seema, whose family moves from India to the USA; it was shelved in the young adult section, but I’m going to buy a copy for us for right now. (By the way: does anybody know whether age recommendations on kids’ books are supposed to refer to maturity of content or reading comprehension level?)

I also checked out The Whipping Boy, which I’m now reading aloud. The setup involves an unsympathetically mischievous prince, who by law cannot be spanked, thrashed, whacked, or whipped. (I had to stop reading to ask my kids why they were frowning at this, since there are laws against these things in our house, too. They asked why the prince couldn’t have time out in a quiet place until he was ready to make better choices.) (And I thought: hey, they’re looking for solutions! They recognize that actions have consequences! I’m a good parent!)

When the prince and his whipping boy run away and get caught by bandits who want a ransom, my kids both scoffed. “The king will never pay it,” Abigail said. “He won’t want that horrid prince back.” I tried to explain about parents loving their children even if those children do happen to be horridly behaved, but neither of them was buying it. “Maybe some kids,” they conceded, “but not that one.” (And I thought: Hmm, never mind about that “good parent” thing!)

So they’re practicing suspending their disbelief a bit while we read. It’s a useful skill. And they’re enjoying the story, even if they don’t think the king ever wants to see his arrogant and now-bedraggled child ever ever again.

Dear Alma Mater,

Wow. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that you’ve finished up your current fund-raising drive. And months ahead of schedule, too—way to go! I would be more excited if I didn’t suspect you were already cooking up a clever name for your next donation drive, but hey—it’s still nice that my inbox will get a short reprieve from your attempts to guilt me into handing over my checkbook.

And it’s good to know that the editorials will die down for a while—you know, the ones about how you’re raising all these zillions of dollars to quietly beef up your brand-spanking-new School of Engineering rather than tending to any of the traditional (and traditionally-underfunded) departments, or, you know, to the scholarship fund (pesky students!). At any rate: nice work!

However! You are welcome to keep your postcards thanking me for donating. Another one appeared in my mailbox today, rather inexplicably, seeing as I’m not what you’d call a Big Donor. Or a donor at all. Now, see, this is partly because I just don’t have any change to spare. But if I did, I’m thinking I might not choose to send it to a school that, barring a major policy change, won’t even consider my kids’ applications when they’re ready to apply a decade from now—a school whose official policy says that the education it provided doesn’t adequately prepare me to teach my kids their times tables.

If I were really clever, I might find some way to donate huge amounts in an attempt to convince you to rethink your admissions policy. You know, the one often described as “hostile to homeschoolers.” The one that causes the University to regularly appear on annual “least homeschool-friendly” lists. But I’m not going to do that. See, I love you—I think you’re a great school. I’m just not willing to try to bribe you into loving me back.

Yours,

A Whiny Alumnus

Abigail and Owen went to bed on time tonight. I think I don’t appreciate enough when the kids do the things they’re supposed to do. I mean, they don’t know the difference if I appreciate their being asleep or if I don’t, seeing as they’re ASLEEP. I’m just saying, maybe I need to spend a little more energy on gratitude for these things.

Because Audrey, she did not go to sleep at all. She’s normally asleep before either of the other two are even in bed, but tonight they were tucked in, and she was still perky as could be.

“If I had to pick one word to describe her right now,” I said to Dane, “it would not be sleepy. I think it would be… paisley.”

He nodded sagely. “Paisley.” (It was the pajamas; pink paisley from neck to knees.)

Probably our calling her Paisley for the rest of the evening didn’t help her fall asleep, but she got there eventually, so who’s to say, really?

Poor Paisley is just really feeling her toddler-hood right now; there are things she wants to do but doesn’t know the words for, or things she can tell us she wants, but we can’t let her have (being able to say “knife” doesn’t mean you’re old enough to wield one, last time I checked). Mostly she just wails all day long. Apparently, though, it’s not the kind of wailing that tires one out.

She also seems to have gone through a little growth spurt. I’m feeling a wee bit cheated by this fact, since growth spurts usually involve extra sleep and we’ve certainly had exactly NONE of that recently. It did leave her somewhat more likely to trip over stuff—she seems unsure of where her body is in space for the moment—which leads to additional wailing, but of a slightly different sort.

I feel like I ought to change things up around here tomorrow, break out of our regular scheduled day to throw off the frustration-induced howls, but I can’t come up with a brilliant plan. Disneyland is out of the question. (Okay, only Abigail or Owen would suggest that anyhow. But suggest it they would, over and over again, if I asked them what unusual thing they wanted to do tomorrow.)

Today is Owen’s birthday. I heard a rumor that when he woke up this morning, he stayed in bed whispering: “One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four,” until someone else was awake for him to ask, “Am I four yet?”

And then: “I’m four! I’m not going to be three anymore!”

And later: “But why am I four?”

And: “Why is it my birthday?” (Possibly he was trying to figure out how to conjure a repeat performance of the day.)

And finally, smiling blissfully: “I want to be four forever.”

So everyone’s home from the BlogHer 2007 conference. Yay you! I, on the other hand, am among the Chicago-deprived. I didn’t go at all; something about airlines not preferring to let enormously pregnant women board planes. Also something about not wanting to leave the toddler who nurses to sleep. And something else about Dane having to work and therefore not being available to hang out with the kids while I traipse across the country.

At any rate! I tried reading all the zillions of liveblogging posts to see what you jetsetting bloggers were learning, because I’m conference-happy that way. But liveblogging, as it turns out, feels too much like interrupted conversations among harried mothers at the playground: half a quote from this person, half a response from that one, and no real sense of what the heck the sessions were about.

Then I got distracted by the zillions of pretty pictures and only slightly fewer witty anecdotes, and forgot about trying to figure out what the take-home message might have been. (What? The pictures are so shiny! And everybody’s so smiley! And clean! And smashingly dressed! I can always try to learn something next year.)