An Art Lesson

Lately, Bennett has been asking about the State of Liberty. I can't remember how his curiosity about her began, other than I know it started when we were sans internet for those few days. He wanted to see a picture of her so that he could figure out what a Statue was. (Sidebar: he calls her the Statue of Livery. Cute!)

We finally have internet and we showed him her picture tonight - again. This started a discussion about statues in general. Some questions: Why does a statue have a crown? What is in her hand? Where is she? What's that red thing? (Fireworks in a 4th of July shot) etc. We decided to look up photos of other famous statues. The first one that came to mind was Michaelangelo's David. Of course, "Why is he nekkid and the Statue of Livery is not?" "Where is his crown?" "Why he not holding a flame?" Okay - we decide to try another statue. This time, The Thinker. And then we needed to show him a female statue, so we pulled up Venus de Milo.

Big mistake. "Where her arms go, mama?" "Why her arms broken, mama?" We talked about Venus de Milo and her broken arms for at least an hour and a half. He was distracted through three stories, potty time AND brushing his teeth by that darn statue. GARNET! I decided to explain her broken arms with this story: You see, Bennett. Venus de Milo was created nearly two thousand years ago! That is a very long time in the past. You know how we've talked about the things we did yesterday being in the past? Venus is also from the past, but even older. Kind of like Daddy-o! (grins) Anyway, when Venus was finished, the artist needed to move her from the studio where he built her into the art gallery. They didn't have cars or fancy packaging back then, so he just loaded her into his cart and pulled her behind his horse. The road was very bumpy and they hit one bump too hard and she fell over, which broke her arms. "Didn't that hurt her mama?" No, baby squirrel, it didn't. Because remember, Venus de Milo isn't a person. She's a statue, she's made of stone. And stone sometimes breaks . . .

Anyway - I had to retell that story about twenty times, likely more. He worried himself serious over that statue and her broken arms. Unfortunately, we were trying to get him to fall asleep when he was worrying about this. He wanted and tried his darnedest to get to sleep in our bed, but I stood my ground. I'm very pleased that by being gentle but insistent, he stayed in his bed and there were NO TEARS! Hallelujah. Granted, my great idea was to talk about how Venus was really just a picture in his head and he needed to think about other pictures in his head. "Bennett, you're in control of the pictures you see in your head. Do you remember how Ernie (of Sesame Street) sings a song about imagination? Do you think we could use our imagination to think of a different picture?" "Sure, mama. Let's take Ernie to Old MacDonald's Farm." "That's a great idea, love bug."

Of course, that meant that I had to make up a seriously long and involved verbal description of what we were seeing on Old MacDonald's Farm, but it worked. Beanie fell asleep in his own bed by his own self.

Now - artsy folks: tell me how I can talk to him about art without freaking him out about the bad things in the world? He has shown us some serious empathy and we want to make sure to develop that without scaring him too much. He's curious about a lot of grown up things and I don't want to discourage the curiosity, but I want to make sure the art he experiences is age appropriate. Help!

And also - what's the real story behind Venus de Milo's arms?

Big Boy Bed!

First of all - I need to note that this blog has been read 2996 times as of right now. Really? Who's reading this besides our parents??? Anyway - how neat! Especially since I haven't "advertised" it or linked to it or whatever one does.

One of the neat things we discovered when we moved into this house was that some of the furniture was left by the previous tenants, who just happened to be a gaggle of college girls. One such piece was a lovely twin bed made by Ikea. I'm pretty sure it is this one. We had looked at several beds during a recent trip to Ikea and weren't really sure which one we wanted for Bennett. By leaving this bed behind, the previous gals made our choice for us and we couldn't be happier! We think that they left it because the drawers were broken, but not really. Whomever had put it together before didn't have the handy skills of my husband, who promptly found the building instructions on line and fixed those darn drawers. With the help of his father this morning, we were able to get the whole bed upstairs into Bennett's room where he napped on it and is now sleeping like a log! We let him choose the sheets and blanket. No surprise that he chose red. Oh my that kid is killing me with the red! But doesn't he look so cute?

Friends

We went to the playground at our neighborhood school this morning. We've gone to this park nearly every single day that we've lived in London. It's within walking distance and has a lot of fun stuff for Bennett to play with/on. Usually, we're the only people there, save for a couple of bigger kids. Today, there was a whole gaggle of children and about four women who were watching them. After being there an hour, I figured out that it was some sort of day care situation. The adults were sitting on a bench or blankets while the kids were playing. As Brian and I are wont to do - we were in the sand with Bennett encouraging him to talk with the other children. The other kids were really keen to talk and play with Brian and me. That was fun, but also discouraging because these caregivers spent the whole time we were at the park chatting about their own grown children and how they were enabling these "kids" to maintain status quo blah blah blah.

It got me thinking about friends and how hard it is to make friends when you move to a new city and how lucky I was/am to have found the Buffalo Mothers Group when we were in Buffalo. I really miss those gals and hope to find something similar here because Bennett had such a good time playing with those kids each week.

I found a similar playgroup on meetup.com (which is how I found BMG) but already, I'm disappointed, simply because it's not like the other group. I guess once I spend some time with them, I'll have to see about making it a little more active. They only schedule one event per day despite the fact that they have over 100 members. Really? I'm a little baffled that they're able to stay afloat!

Anyway - I'll give it a go. Getting out for anything will be way better than sitting at home being Bennett's only playmate!

Thanks so much to all of our friends in all the places we've lived. We miss you more than ever right now.

Vocabulary

Bennett is almost three and still frequently wets his pants because he's too distracted by having fun to stop and take a break. However, when he say stuff like this, I'll forgive him:

(As I'm walking out to the backyard where he and Brian are playing. )
B: Mom. You can't come out on the field. You can watch. That means you will supervise.
Me: *without words to respond*

Climbing

We live within walking distance of two great playgrounds now. We typically go to the elementary school after dinner. Tonight, we decided to go to the community center park instead for a little climbing.

Moving, also known as "I Got The Preschooler Blues"

Moving with a preschooler is NO FUN! Honestly - I have a hard enough time with the act of packing and moving (ask my mother who has helped me with EVERY.SINGLE.MOVE. and somehow manages to keep coming back.). I don't like it. Not one bit. I don't mind going somewhere new. I don't mind unpacking and putting everything away. I simply can not stand the idea of putting all of my stuff away in boxes for the minute amount of time that it's transported.

Apparently, my disdain for moving was borne into my son as well. Today was a really rough day. Brian was still in London trying to make the house as move-in ready as possible. Mom and I are here in Buffalo trying to tie up loose ends while entertaining the little fiery ball of energy we call Bennett. Boy Howdy it was tough today.

I woke up in a bad mood, not excited about facing the tasks of the day. I was overwhelmed before the sun came up, which is not a good sign. Mom took Bennett away for the morning which helped because it meant that I got to make some phone calls and finally got some questions answered. They went to the Herschel Carousel Museum in town and had a great time. Bennett rode the carousel FOUR times. Twice by himself. I can't believe it, but mom says it really happened!

He came home and was an absolute mess when I tried to get him to go to the bathroom, but then he collapsed for his nap. I figured mom and I would get two solid hours to work in the kitchen organizing things. Nopes. He woke up after only an hour and boy was he an angry hornet. Nothing would appease him. We simply took turns managing him for the next six hours.

Then - he pooped in his pants while he was having a fit in his room. He stomped through turds and tracked them to six different spots on the carpet. Thank the heavens above we have super shitty carpet upstairs. I used a little "resolve" and some elbow grease and other than the chemically smell, you wouldn't know he'd made a mess. We'll steam clean them on Saturday as planned, but no extraordinary measures will be made.

Of course, he was terribly upset that I wouldn't let him handle the caustic chemicals I was using to clean up said turds. After he got calmed down, I asked him to apologize to my mom for being a turd. He said he was sorry, but didn't add the qualifier. Darn! (Sidebar - one of his favorite expressions now is "Garnet!" when he's perplexed by something. Much like a grown up (which one? I"ll never say!) might say, "Darnit! or Dammit!!")

He finally fell asleep at 9:00. There is still much to be done, but I figured I'd better get this off my chest before it festered too long. See there? I feel better already. Muchas Gracias!!

p.s. One really neat thing happened this evening as we were coming home from the playground in our neighborhood. Granna had pushed him to the park on his bike/trike. He pedaled home!!! Go Beans!! I got some video and will post when I learn how.

Modeling at Ikea

On our way home from London last weekend, we stopped at Ikea to do a little shopping (read: time killing). We have been talking about getting Bennett a big boy bed and wanted to see what they had to offer.

We found several that we liked, and after Bennett "tried them on", we picked one that will be perfect. We can even paint it red!

What was really neat and fun was that Bennett got to try the beds out. And boy did he have fun with that! Once he learned that it was okay to be in the bed with his shoes on, we couldn't keep him out of them. He seemed to always choose the beds that were on the main walkway and put on a heck of a show for folks walking by. We got lots of attention thanks to his silly theatrics.