conuly

Here's a nifty trick. I often see people who have tantrummy kids trying, frantically, to keep them from kicking either the parents or the seat in front of them.

And this is what they do. If they're standing, they hold the kid under the armpits and put their other arm on the top of the kid's knees, and if they're sitting they do the same thing, but, you know, sitting.

This isn't very effective. The kid is still able to get in a few good kicks, and if you're standing they're also able to wiggle down and possibly out. If they fall and bump their butt in a tantrum they're REALLY be unhappy.

Hopefully, this doesn't come up very often, but sometimes you have to get from here to there without being kicked - either in the shins or off the bus. So this is what you do:

Put ONE arm around the kid's chest, under the armpits. Put the OTHER arm *under* the kid's legs. If you're walking, put them directly under the kid's knees so that the knees are higher than the butt. The kid can't wiggle out this way, and kicks will go harmlessly up into the air. If you're sitting, put that arm slightly lower, under the kid's calves. Kicks will go harmlessly up into the air (and not rebound onto your legs), and you'll also be able to maneuver better to avoid being headbutted.

Evangeline eventually did calm down, though this time we never did find out what was upsetting her. She kept saying NONONONONONONO!, but it's hard to deal with that when you don't know what she's saying no to.

In other news, Ana currently has 4 teeth out of her mouth, and another one or two loose. This has got to be some kind of record. The teeth that are coming in are HUGE. She already had big teeth! I suppose it's going to compensate for the few weeks she's spending more or less toothless. She just came into my room to inform me that the Tooth Fairy can take a vacation, LOL. I told her it's her mom's turn to be the Tooth Fairy.

Ana went to this program today. 45 minutes of trampoline and 45 minutes of rock climbing. AWESOME! She loved it, big grin on her face the WHOLE time.

Didn't nab a single picture, I'm sorry to say, but that's okay, I plan to go back.

Here's the thing. The group of 14 kids was divided approximately by age. Ana, of course, was in the younger group.

The older group did rock climbing first. I noticed as they did it that all the kids were up on the rock at once, on the part of the rock face that juts out a little and is somewhat more challenging.

When it was Ana's group's turn for the rock, because they were younger, they went in what I could see is the "easy" spot - straight up and down. Unfortunately, that spot (the corner) was small enough that only one kid could go up at a time (this after 15 minutes talking about safety, which was necessary, no argument). So Ana didn't get much climbing in... and as it was, she was getting up there (15 feet!) pretty fast. It wasn't difficult for her at all. (It never is, no type of climbing.)

I totally intend to go again (and get some pictures next time)! She had so much fun! But if they divide roughly by age again, I want her in the group that does more climbing. Watching her and the other kids I think she's ready for it (with the same level of help that the others had, of course), and I know she'd prefer to do more climbing instead of sitting down.

How does one go about requesting this without coming off like one of those people, though? You know, the ones who think their kids are sooooo special rules just don't apply? I don't think there is a hard-and-fast rule here, but I certainly don't want it to seem like I think my niece is just much too advanced, etc. etc. etc.

Well, I was browsing Wikipedia, and you know how it is, you start off trying to find some information on hats and such, but before you know it, you're reading about popular songs of Communist youth organizations.

Which is how I got here, and I wasn't exactly surprised to read that it has retained its popularity after the fall of Communism in its countries, nor that it used to be sung by preschoolers. I mean, if the translation is at all accurate, it's a song about a little kid drawing a picture and being all saccharine about it! What's not to love and be nostalgic about? And once communism fell, those preschool teachers still had to sing songs and teach, right? Why not keep the ones the kids already knew, at least the ones that didn't explicitly go out and go "Yeah! Communism totally rocks!"?

Well, you know, kids songs are an abiding interest (not a passion, just an interest) of mine, so I wanted to know the melody. Surprisingly, it's not that hard to find recordings of the chorus in English, but I really can't settle for that. So I've spent the past half an hour diligently searching, until (finally) coming across the Youtube recording of some schoolkids singing this song. Apparently, schools everywhere* are the same as the ones in the US in some very important ways.

Anyway, now that I've found it, I can hopefully put this entire incident out of my mind.

This has been your daily update into What Connie Does When Bored.

*_{I've been singing Finlandia a lot lately, and yes, that echos the lyrics. Don't ask me why. Once I went through six months accidentally finding myself humming Dixie at the worst possible times. It wasn't stuck in my head (thank goodness), it'd just come out my mouth once in a while. Drove me batty.}