Wildlife and Norbert Rillieux

First week in the Preschool classroom, we were told that Eugene was assigned a "topic"--Wildlife (see it's never too early to start doing research and presentation).

"Great!" was my answer to the beloved teacher. And the fact is on top of the housework and my own research, I officially start to worry about my kid's homework.

To comfort myself, I said in my mind, even Eugene knows google, bing, and yahoo--we sure can do it!

And yet, life always gets more complicated than we expected. Our printer ran out of ink, so we couldn't get those gorgeous pictures of prairie and rainforest animals down from the screen. What to do?

Of course, if there's only one thing that I can claim I've learned after years of study for a PhD in humanities, it's the skills of searching (yes, it's "searching", not "researching") in a library! So off I went. I managed to find a whole stack of books on wildlife with fantastic pictures. I dropped some books with pictures that might look too bloody, violent or terrifying to little kids, and some with too specialized content. I ended up with a few with bright colors and a variety of different aspects of wildlife. Among them, a book with beautifully-drawn animals on maps of different continents became my favorite. Eugene's class had been learning a "continent song"--the book would certainly appeal to the kids as well as the teachers.

So, dinner/reading (see how outrageous it is--Eugene loves reading while eating his dinner, which I actually liked doing when I was little, so how can i stop him from doing this?) time, I showed the wildlife/continent book to Eugene. it won him immediately; so did the idea of taking the book to school.

It was said he was very proud to show the book to his friends in their circle time, and that the kids enjoyed the book very much.

You think that's it? well, once it began, it would sure continue. Even before I got this first task done, there had already been another assignment: "Norbert Rillieux--what did he invent? How does his invention affect our life?" Gosh, who is he? Neither the PhD nor the PhD candidate in our family knows about the man. Looks like we need to do some serious research this time...

I may become an encyclopedia before I get my phd!

E-Birthday

It's Eugene's 3rd birthday.
He started going to the preschool classroom and it was such a relief for all of us. Hope all the stress and unhappiness of the previous room (mostly because of one the teachers there) will never come back and he will have a truly happy time here in the new room.

In addition to performing all those stories he loves and re-living all the shopping/museum and park-going trips in our living room, lately Eugene has come up with more real-life scenarios for his pretending/imagining/performing play:
--He would block the hallway with all sorts of things, then move a big brush on the hallway wall, and tell us he's remodeling the library and doing some construction work and the library is closed for now and we have to ask for permission for passing. --a flashback about our local library's renovation project months ago.
--He would collect several little bottles and try to feed "tylenol" and "motrin" to his stuff animals, saying they're having a temperature. --obviously due to his frequent sick days in this past winter.
--He would go into an empty box and stay there, pretending to be a little puppy and waiting for us to find him and carry him home. --i'm not sure where this comes from!
--He would have our study room be the check-in place of an airport and give his "baggage" to whomever sits there. Then suddenly he would give up the passenger role to become the pilot and drive an imagined airplane with a Frisbee (which is also the steering wheel of his imagined car). --he certainly remembers our last trip to SD.
--He would throw all the small puzzle pieces on the floor and then collecting them with a little set of broom and dust pan, saying he's cleaning the fallen leaves. --probably because he saw a page of people cleaning leaves in one of his books??
...
...

(I'm still wondering, though--what do you do when your child's teacher doesn't like him/her, and especially when you yourself don't like the teacher very much and don't really buy what he/she says? i know it'll be a problem if you let your child know that you disagree with the teacher and we've always tried to enforce the same rules, but emotionally it's really such a hard thing to deal with... anyway, i'm glad that we don't have this problem anymore, at least for now.)

清醒的声音

早上看到这篇书评:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/books/23thomas.html?_r=1
关于Michael Thomas's Man Gone Down.
作者对自己得奖原因和后果的思考和提问, 表现出一种对当下政治和与政治有关的文化市场极其清醒的认识, 那种不轻易相信任何表象, 时刻反省的态度让我想立刻开始读他的小说.

相比之下, H 这个我一直试图在人前为之defend作者就逊色太多了. H好象总想对舆论证明自己作品的受承认不是因为非文学因素, 但他有意无意的撇清却总因了实际上并不太出色的技法而适得其反. 如果他能对自己作品的市场接受进行深层思考和反省, probably his writing can become more interesting. His latest book seemed so tedious that i kept falling asleep over it on my last flight from AA. and i tried to finish it after i got back but decided to give it up. it's not that i couldn't bear the extremely bland style of prose; it's simply unbearable that between the lines of that prose i couldn't find anything as deep and thoughtprovoking as the author's name seemed to have promised. I'll stop defending him. for after all, i was just trying to defend a voice from home, or the home itself.

about the film I haven't seen

The official favorable reviews of Lu Chuan's Nanking Nanking made me suspicious about the film-- for years, I've found it impossible to like the officially acclaimed works. And then i'm relieved, sadly(because i almost wished my doubt could turn out ungrounded), to find different and thoughtful and very informative reviews like these:

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_49b4dd4e0100d41f.html

and

http://rna.blog.hexun.com/32183285_d.html

I'd like to do some historical research on this when I'm done with the dissertation. One more year. I decided that it would be too outrageous if i do more than 8 years.

快三岁了.

Eugene居然就要三岁了!

躺在床上长长一个人,小小crib都快不够睡了, 问他要不要买新床,无比恋旧的他当然是大喊不要.

近来最爱抱怨"睡觉太慢"--他发明的句子, 表示sleeping takes too much time, 他着急玩, 实在没耐心躺着呀.

自从开始去preschool教室适应环境, Eugene就不再说不要上学了. 正巧原来的那个严厉老师最近也不在, 上学忽然变得好玩起来. 对新玩具和大孩子产生浓厚兴趣. 放学回来, 我问他, 听不听得懂他们说什么, 他老实回答听不懂, 却还是开心的.

little gym一学期快结束了, Eugene各项体能没大长进, 胆子还是不够大. 可爱的老师一点不给压力, 鼓励有加, 还总花时间来陪我们这个差生单独玩, L和我屡屡谈起, 在对待小孩子的弱点上, 觉得很受老师启发.

最近的问答--
--明天是什么day?
--Monday.
--明天还要上学?
--上学.
--上次, Monday怎么是Memorial Day, 就不上学?
--是, 上次是holiday.
--明天怎么不是holiday?
--阿... ... (ft, 是不是holiday也不是Mommy我说了算啊.)