Speaking of sleep...

Two books about sleep arrived in our offices recently. Both are excellent choices for parents-to-be to read or skim through.

Just last week, we received "Sleep Deprived No More" by Jodi A. Mindell, Ph.D., the associate director of the Sleep Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Earlier this year, we received "The Lull-a-Baby Sleep Plan" by Cathryn Tobin, MD, a pediatrician and midwife and member of the Canadian Paediatric Society and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons.

"Sleep Deprived No More" is primarily given over to helping parents, especially mothers, manage their sleep needs from pregnancy through the first months after childbirth. Only one chapter is devoted to information and advice about infants and sleep. The premise seems to be that if parents understand their own sleep needs and are well-rested, they'll be prepared to tackle the needs of their baby with empathy and rationality.

"The Lull-a-Baby Sleep Plan" focuses on preventing sleep problems by using what the author calls the Window of Opportunity (beginning at 6 to 8 weeks of age and lasting until 6 to 9 months of age) to instill good sleep habits in children. The Window of Opportunity is the time when an infant's brain is most receptive to forming sleep patterns--so why not make them good sleep patterns?

Both books are written in short segments with plenty of break-out boxes, lists and real-life examples. Both are about 200 pages long and $15 retail, but ask your local library if they're available for check-out.

January: It's inevitable!

Our January issue is on stands now. It's all about sleep, which is what I want to do between December and March. Unfortunately, parenting and hibernation are not compatible.

This is also our annual camp issue, since--and this ceaselessly amazes me--January is the time to start making summer plans. Yesterday Emily had her 11th birthday party, which included cookie decorating and a sleepover. One of the mothers dropped off some girls and asked me, "So, what time should I pick them up tomorrow morning?" I looked at her blankly. It was only 1:30 in the afternoon. I hadn't really thought beyond 4:30 p.m., when the cookies would be out of the oven and decorated, and I would be sweeping red and green sugar from the ceiling, walls and floor. She wanted to know my plans for tomorrow???

Really, getting a January issue to press by mid-December is all the forward-thinking I can manage.

Shhh... There's a flower fairy hiding in my house.

Don't tell Helen, but this is one of her Christmas presents:

"How to Find Flower Fairies" by Cicely Mary Barker, a pop-up book published this October by Warne. Info here, but you can order it through a local independent bookstore!

When Skies are Gray

I finally got around to watching "Little Miss Sunshine" this weekend. I think it's the best family movie I've ever seen. No--not the best movie FOR families, but the best one about a family.

I recognized the intense mixture of anger, tenderness, fear, hope, stupidity, understanding, misunderstanding that is family life. These emotions flash by--yes, within a 48-hour period--and are still underpinned by love. "Little Miss Sunshine" doesn't overdo any single one of these and is also quite good, for a movie, at showing characters' gradual and meaningful change.

I've cried at plenty of movies, and laughed at plenty, and done both at a few. But this may have been the first time I simultaneously laughed and cried. At the movie's outrageous climax, it reached right into my gut, right for my primal instinct to protect my children from the knowledge that the rest of the world doesn't love them. I will fail at protecting them thus, as I must, but at least I hope to succeed in showing my love for them.

So when it was over, I went upstairs and lay down beside my four-year-old and cried some more.

We Went, We Played, We Conquered!

Richmond Symphony's "Come and Play" concert was a fabulous success, at least from my perspective from somewhere in the middle of 36 cellists! Emily, who sat across the arena among nearly 200 violinists, was thrilled, too. She had put a good bit of effort into practicing music that was challenging for her, and reported after the concert that she had only gotten totally lost on the last piece.

In addition to the fun of making and hearing music, the concert provided a way for people to support music in Richmond Public Schools. Registration fees and donations at the door are being matched by the Bryan and Kathryn Harvey Family Memorial Endowment to repair and purchase instruments for kids in school music programs.

For my original column about the Come and Play concert, see the December 07 "First Thoughts."

Review: "Pincus and the Pig"

Several years ago, the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra worked with children's author/illustrator Maurice Sendak to write a Jewish adaptation of "Peter and the Wolf." Sendak retold the story and drew the characters, and Shirim klezmerized Prokofiev's music. The result, "Pincus and the Pig," is truly an all-ages audience pleaser. The piece is available as a recording, but seeing it live is a thrill.

Shirim performed at the Modlin Center's Camp Concert Hall on Sunday, Dec. 2, to a nearly full house. Our seats in the center of the third row gave us an excellent view of the band--clarinet, trombone, piano, banjo, tuba and drums--though it may not have been acoustically the best place, as Emily and I agreed it was hard to hear the banjo and piano. A screen above the performers showed Sendak's illustrations during the "Pincus" piece.

The band opened with three traditional klezmer tunes, the kind that electrify the seat cushion, so that anyone who thought they were coming for a little bit of storytime and music would realize, happily, that they were mistaken.

Then Shirim performed five pieces from their "Klezmer Nutcracker," which does to Tchaikovsky's famous piece what Weird Al Yankovic does to... well, to just about any over-played pop song. I loved the woozy "Dance of the Latkes Queen." The interpretations weren't all just musical inside jokes--they were at times even gorgeous and jazzy on their own merit--but I think Helen and Emily got a little tired of the set.

As the main event, "Pincus and the Pig" serves up "Peter and the Wolf" with extra Yiddish on top. From the introduction that identifies each character with an instrument to the triumphant procession at the end, with the duck inside the wolf/pig, "Pincus" follows its model closely. This lets listeners familiar with the original put the oy in enjoy by listening for the Yiddish words throughout the text and anticipating the klezmer twists to the music.

I thought the duck as trombone took some getting used to, but the cat as banjo and grandfather as tuba were perfect. Susan Watts, the narrator, was fabulous, especially as the excitable bird.

Helen, who hadn't known the story at all before today, had a hard time following along, but she understood exactly why, as the littlest animal, the bird was so high-strung. (She also picked up on the moods of the music and would ask, "Why is this music sad?" or "Why is this music loud?" when she needed me to fill her in on the story.)

After the performance, Emily had a hard time articulating what she liked about the show. She said she liked the lighting effects (simple and kind of random, I thought) and how the narration and the music overlapped sometimes, then she tried to explain what she liked about the klezmer music. Finally, she simply said, "I liked how the notes sounded."

What more is there to say?

Kid-friendly Weekend

We use the adjective "kid-friendly" a lot in our pages, but I have to admit that weekends aren't usually that kid-friendly in my family. Between laundry, grocery shopping, house cleaning and all that routine, we're happy just to get outside and play or take a family walk. Sunday evenings, I sometimes look at the RPM calendar and go, "Oh, yeah--that would've been neat to see..."

But this weekend the kids lucked out. Emily spent Friday night at a friend's house, then they went to the Christmas parade together on Saturday morning. Manuel took Helen to the parade, too.

I overheard the girls talking to each other when we were all back at the house: Emily, 10, started in with a jaded, "It wasn't that great" analysis, but Helen was describing the charming antics of the Hello Kitty balloon with such unjaded, 4-year-old enthusiasm that Emily, bless her heart, realized that she should just keep her big-girl opinions to herself.

In the afternoon, I took both girls to the Children's Museum. I performed Christmas music with a violinist in the Commons area, then the girls and I played in the exhibits. I hadn't been to CMoR in many, many months, and it was great to see the changes.

The new apple tree has several improvements over the old tree--most importantly, small children can actually reach the apples to pick them now. Plus, the tree itself is more attractive--it looks like it grew to life from the pages of a children's book.

The "Tower of Power" has been removed, allowing more light from the dramatic skylight to reach the floor. In its place is a low-key dinosaur play area, including two bone excavation pits. (One has sand and one has chopped-up rubbery bits, so don't wear your nice clothes.)

But wait... there's more! On Sunday we headed to the Modlin Center at the University of Richmond to see a performance of "Pincus and the Pig" by the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra.

I had to wake Helen up from her nap, unfortunately, to make the 3 p.m. performance, and it was quite a scene. The drive there was long enough for the screaming to settle into some noisy kvetching, then into irrational insistence that I carry her into the auditorium barefoot, then into a resigned clamming of the hands upon the ears. But the hands came off eventually, and we all loved the show.

And now the weekend is over, children are in bed, and it's a nice, quiet, mom-friendly evening.

When Screws Come Loose, I'm Right There

I love my humble, handy screwdriver. Recently I've used it to tighten:

-the knob on a kettle lid.
-the toilet seat onto the bowl.
-a doorknob-plate onto the door.
-a child's tandem bike attachment on the back of my bike.

I also like Allen wrenches and pliers, but I'm not much good with a hammer.

Thanksgiving Visitors

We have four extra guests at our house for Thanksgiving this year, but they don't take up much space and are light eaters. They do seem to complain quite a bit, but I can't really understand what they're saying.

Even if they might have a bad attitude, all is forgiven because they are so CUTE!

Yes, three baby chicks hatched from a 5th-grade science class incubator. I happened to be in the classroom at the right/wrong time on Wednesday morning as the science teacher was apparently feeling a little anxious about plans for the wee ones. You can't see the 4th chick in this photo--it's a little bitty quail chick. I'll post him soon.


The chicks had been living in a series of "habitats"--boxes decorated to look like farms or forests or meadows, taped together with doorways cut between. We took two boxes, one of which someone had thoughtfully decorated with a jungle theme, complete with pipe-cleaner vines, construction paper trees, acorns dangling from yarn, and photos of wild animals from an old Ranger Rick magazine.

So you've never seen a quail chick? Neither had I.

Bailey the quail is about the size of a cotton ball on toothpicks. Here, he's lurking around near Ronnie, who is likely to trod upon him out of sheer obliviousness.


At least the big chicks don't pick on poor Bailey, who needs them for warmth. He keeps trying to hop up on their backs when they sit down to sleep, or nuzzle under someone's wing.









All four fluffies operate on a random on-off schedule. They'll be pecking around, cheeping and scratching the floor, when suddenly they'll fall silent and nod off for two or three minutes. Then someone will wake up and complain that everyone else is a lazy, boring oaf, and they'll all wake up and do whatever they were doing before.

The chicks usually sit down to sleep, but the quail seems unable to manage the leg trick to make this happen. He'll waver back and forth, eyes closed. When he really sinks into sleep, his head drifts forward until his beak is almost touching the ground.

At one point during the day, someone stuffed an old sock into a Lego unit and put it into the habitat, possibly to serve as a nest. Bailey discovered that if he stood right in front of it, he could lean against it to sleep:

(See how he's up on his tiptoes, as if he fell asleep trying to scramble into bed? Awwww!)