Pippi Longstocking Fans

Over the past couple of weeks, I've read aloud Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking books to Lucia. We'd finished Ronia, the Robber's Daughter previously, and Lucia really enjoyed that book, so I brought out Pippi to see how the humor would work with her. (Lucia herself is reading beginning readers series.) Often, things that are funny have to be explained to her why they are funny, but Lucia has been laughing outright over Pippi's utterances and actions.

I realized recently that Pippi is a child's superhero. She has amazing strength, and she uses it for good to defy those who would squelch children, i.e. bullies, robbers, domineering grownups. Her table manners are deplorable, but she is generous and sensitive to those in need. She is "rich as a troll" with her suitcase of gold coins, but she herself wears rags and lives in a ramshackle house called Villa Villekulla, and uses her wealth to buy presents for others.

Lucia admires Pippi greatly, and wants to be like her. We've had to talk about some caveats besides the obvious (don't eat mushrooms in the forest, drink coffee before you've stopped growing, or tell tall tales about how people live in other countries). We've also had age-appropriate talks about post-colonialism and perceptions of people outside one's own culture as "other."

In the meantime, Lucia has made paper dolls and dioramas inspired by the Pippi books. Here are her latest creations:


Villa Villekulla with Pippi (Mr. Nilsson the monkey is on her shoulder), Tommy, Annika, and the horse


Tommy, Annika, Pippi

Last night, we learned of the the existence of Astrid Lindgren's World. Who's up for a trip to Vimmerby, Sweden?

Gnome Home

One of the places we regularly visit has a tree that houses gnomes:



Lucia knocks on the door every time we go by, but alas, we always come by on market day, and the gnomes are never home:



We have a pine tree in our back yard that would be a perfect residence for gnomes. We've sent out the word. The housing market is difficult right now, and so far, there have been no inquiries about the property. However, I feel confident that we shall have gnomes take up residence in our pine tree before the summer is over. Gnomes make excellent neighbors. They weed gardens and water the plants.

June 2015 update: We finally have a door in our tree. For those of you looking for fairy and gnome doors, visit Nothin' But Wood.

The Expressive Napkin

Last night, we had some family and friends over for dinner. At one point, Lucia took her napkin and dipped it into my brother's girlfriend's wine. I was shocked. "That was mean and rude, "I said. "Why did you do it?"

Lucia replied, "I was being Veronica wiping the face of Jesus."

"Oh," I said. "I'm glad you weren't being mean-- you were just being... interesting." I asked her apologize to my brother's girlfriend anyway. I explained to the group that the legend of Veronica (whose name comes from the Latin for "true image") came up in conversation recently when Lucia befriended a girl of the same name.

Last night's interchange reminded me of another curious occurence at the table a few months ago: as we sat down to eat, Lucia placed her cloth napkin over her head. Bede laughed at my incredulous expression, and said that they had been listening to a rebroadcasted program on NPR called Francois Mitterrand's Last Meal. The "last meal" was the illegal French dish of roasted ortolan, a songbird that is now on the endangered species list. Fans of the dish place a napkin over their heads while they're eating. The reason is twofold. (1) They are able to appreciate fully the aroma of the meal, but (2) they are also hiding their heads in shame because they're eating a songbird, and one that has been prepared in a cruel manner to boot.

"Please leave your napkin on your lap," I said to Lucia.

The Spell of Medusa

I recently reviewed Mythological Creatures: a Classical Beastiary, by Lynn Curlee. I read to Lucia the one-page overview of the gorgon Medusa, and now the pages of her sketchpad are thronging with snakey-haired gorgons. Next to one of the pictures is an M, a character that looks like an A but is supposed to be an E, and a D. Bede said that Lucia told him she had spelled “Medusa.” This is the first time we have ever known her to attempt to spell.*


*Full disclosure: Lucia knows that P-A-R-K spells something wonderful.

Castle

I thought you might like to see the latest completed picture from Lucia's potty challenge. For each day that Lucia goes without wetting her trousers, she gets a picture of her choice in one of the windows. The windows in the two turrets are reserved for night-time challenges.



Here is a partial list of the people she's requested for her windows. Can you spot them?

A robber (inspired by Audrey Wood’s “Twenty-fourteen robbers”)
Two girls holding ginkgo leaves (extra points for spotting the girls with ginkgo patterns on their dresses)
St. Nicholas
Santa Lucia
A girl holding a runcible spoon
A boy holding a candle in an apple candlestick (from the Winter Spiral of Light)
A girl holding a candle in an apple candlestick (ditto)
A girl holding a microphone
Cinderella with a bird on her head

Get Me to the Loo On Time*

Some of you may remember my attempts to potty-train Lucia during Mother Reader's 48 Hour Book Challenge and my search for a patron saint of potty-training. My daughter now uses the potty consistently. The next challenge is getting her to go consistently to the bathroom before it becomes an emergency.

Bede and I were inspired by the Advent calendar as an incentive for Lucia to use the potty even when she's enrapt in a drawing or play scenario. Bede drew up a house with 10 blank windows. Each time Lucia makes it through the whole day without wetting her trousers, Bede draws a little person of Lucia's choice. Once the 10 windows are filled, Lucia gets to choose a place for us to go out to lunch. It's worked! For the second round, Bede drew a houseboat:



The next challenge entails Lucia staying dry through the night. Bede plans to draw a Victorian house with 10 windows for the main part of the house and 10 windows for the turrets (to mark the nighttime efforts).

*You got the My Fair Lady reference, right?

A playhouse of our own

Greetings! I have missed you all. Sure, I've been reading your blogs, but it's not the same as actively participating in the kidlitosphere. As you read this, we are preparing to return to Seattle from Victoria, British Columbia. Prior to visiting our relatives in Victoria, we spent a few days in a tiny town called Tahsis on North Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Bede and I won a week's stay in a cabin in Tahsis through Lucia's school auction. The school auction was my very first live auction, and so I didn't know to put my number down right after I had waved it around-- I thought I had to wait until the auctioneer called out my number. After we won the week's stay in Tahsis (and we'd had no idea where it was other than the description provided), I gave the number to Bede and said that it was safer for him to hold it. I doubt we'll attend the auction next year ( we'll go to the more financially feasible Family Night).

Anyway...

Remember the playhouse I wanted to build for Lucia? We'd decided to build it from scratch, using plans I'd ordered online. As the summer progressed, that option seemed less likely. In the end, my aunt and uncle bailed us out by getting for us a kit. It arrived the day that two of our beloved brawny cousins came to visit. My uncle and the two cousins build the playhouse/garden shed in a weekend. They were undeterred by the rain.

For perspective, here is what my brothers and I used as a playhouse when we were children:


Yes, we played in a doghouse. My grandfather had built it for our St. Bernard. The St. Bernard never used it, so we did. The doghouse was dark and windowless, but two children could fit inside it comfortably as long as those kids didn't mind resting their heads on their own shoulders.

After I moved to New York City, my mother and her boyfriend bought a house on the Maryland side of the Washington D.C. Metropolitan area. The house had a treehouse built onto the deck extension plus a gazebo in the woods below the house. The woods were filled with mosquitoes (note: it's a bad, bad idea to build a city on a swamp), but the gazebo had screens, and I spent a good amount of my visiting time sitting in the gazebo with citronella candles around me. Here's a picture:


Could those people in the photo actually be Ulric and Brad the Gorilla? Impossible! Brad is over 450 lbs. There is no way he could sit on a hammock without breaking it. But lo, here he is:


Ahem.

Here is the photo for which you've patiently waited:


Here is what the playhouse looks like from our bedroom window:



The size of the playhouse, including the porch, is 6 X 9 feet. It feels as if we've increased our living space. We're planning on putting window boxes or potted plants by the porch, and we need to clean up the dirt and mud tracked in because of the rain.

Now I can understand how Philip Pullman is able to write his books in a shed. Maybe I'll take my guitar out to the playhouse and give back a little of the love that's wafted its way over via supersonic car stereos and people bellowing "Car wash! Car wash!" for their various fundraisers.

In the upcoming days, I'll let you know about a new Saints and Spinners feature I'm developing.

In search of a wee bungalow

I'd like to help build Lucia a little outdoor playhouse. I don't want anything like this or this, but would prefer to build something more like this (or even simpler). If any of you have any recommendations or experiences to share regarding the building of playhouses, please let me know about them in the comment section. As much as I admire fancy dollhouses, I think outdoor playhouses should be simple and leave much to the imagination. Also, building them shouldn't cost as much as a down-payment on a bathroom renovation. Please. Then again, I'm sure I could happily trade in any house renovation plans for this:


I found the photo here.