Tag: Lydia

The Lydster, Part 89: Beatles 1

I’m afraid she already knew Hello Goodbye from one of those Glee soundtracks her mother owns.

You might think that, since I have so many Beatles albums, that when my daughter expressed interest in the band, I might have given her some of mine; you would be mistaken. Instead, I ordered for her the most popular album in the first decade of the 21st Century, Beatles 1. I figured she ought to have something of her own, and if she lost it, it wouldn’t bug me as much. In fact, she has misplaced the CD case, but not the disc.

I never owned #1 myself; I have all the albums. Some purists think it’s a terrible intro to the band, merely picking the songs that made it to #1 on the US and/or UK charts. But it includes many songs she was previously familiar with.

Love Me Do she knew vaguely before. It is a simple song and she now knows all the words.
A Hard Day’s Night she knows so well, she now intentionally muffs the lyrics, switching ‘dog’ and ‘log’ in the first two lines as she’s singing along.
Help is probably her favorite song, as she knows all the lyrics and asks me to sing with her, even when the recording isn’t playing.
Unbidden, she will sing Eight Days A Week, Penny Lane, and more interestingly, parts of Come Together.
She is particularly fond of the “Life is very short” bridge of We Can Work It Out.
Yesterday she knows well. At some level, I think she gravitates mostly to the more melancholy songs.
Yellow Submarine allows her to imitate the nautical noises. She loves the ‘sea of GREEN’, as well she should.
Eleanor Rigby she calls ‘Lonely People’; I attempt to correct her, and she replies, “Whatever.” She knows most of the lyrics to this song.
She is specifically fascinated by the reprise of She Loves You within All You Need Is Love.
I’m afraid she already knew Hello Goodbye from one of those Glee soundtracks her mother owns.
When she hears Hey Jude, she’ll substitute, “Hey, Jules” ever since I explained that the song was written by Paul McCartney to John Lennon’s elder son Julian, after John’s breakup with John’s wife and Julian’s mom, Cynthia.

The only songs not on the album that she had previously expressed interest in are Tell Me Why and, again to my surprise, I Am the Walrus.

So yes, I’m indoctrinating my daughter with music from my favorite band.

The Lydster, Part 88: Dead Ant

As we assassinated the critters, the Wife and I had to make a game of it.


For some reason, this spring, we had an infestation of black ants. Those big carpenter buggers. We’ve had a few before, but this rainy spring brought in more than usual. They’d get into everything. Especially the food in the pantry, which is near the back door.

One day, I discovered ants in a box of Froot Loops, but they did not bother either the Cheerios or the shredded wheat; the FL cereal ended up in the refrigerator for a time.

Conclusion: ants have a sweet tooth.

I also spilled some mouthwash (21% alcohol) in the bathroom. I cleaned up the stuff that landed on the toilet, but missed some on the floor; the ants were congregating there as well.

Conclusion: ants are lushes.

As we assassinated the critters, the Wife and I had to make a game of it. So we would sing, to the Pink Panther theme:

Dead ant. Dead ant.
Dead ant. Dead ant. Dead ant. Dead ant.
Dead annnnnnnnt.

Or, to the Long Ranger theme:

Dead ant, dead ant, dead ant, ant, ant.
Dead ant, dead ant, dead ant, ant, ant.
Dead ant, dead ant, dead ant, ant, ant.
Dead ant, de-de-dead ant, dead ant.

Or something like that.

The Daughter thought we were very weird. I’m sure it won’t be the last time.

The Lydster, Part 87: The Book of Acts

I like that Lydia has three syllables but only five letter; very efficient.

Very early on in this blog, I laid out the rules for naming the daughter, most of which were negative:
*No name in the top 10 in the Social Security list of most popular names for the most recent year available.
*No naming after any family member, living or dead.
*No unisex names…This comes directly from the fact that my father AND my sister were both named Leslie.
*No single-syllable names; it had to have two or more syllables, to balance off the shortness of Green.
*No names that easily went to the nickname.
*It should have a recognizable spelling.
*No names beginning and ending with A. We have nieces named Alexandria, Adrianna, and Alexa.

But I should have emphasized more how much I liked the name, Lydia. I like that it has three syllables but only five letters; very efficient. I actually didn’t notice at the time, but I like that she has the same initials as my late father.

And I like that it’s not only a Biblical name but a New Testament name.

From Acts 16 (NIV):
13 On the Sabbath we [Paul and his companions] went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. 14 One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. 15 When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.

So Lydia was a woman of means, she was hospitable and she had faith, something I hoped for my daughter, who seems to have the latter two, and she likes purple to boot.

Father’s Day 2011

I appreciate the fact that the Daughter makes me something each of the last couple years.


The interesting thing about my mother’s internment this year is that it became the first time that my daughter had had the opportunity to see where my father was buried. She has seen pictures of him, and she talks about him fairly regularly, surprising considering the fact that she never in person. Somehow, it seems as though he became a bit more real to her. And this made me happy.

I also appreciate the fact that the Daughter makes me something each of the last couple of years, and takes pride in creating it. Maybe it’ll be a craft or a drawing – she’s actually a quite talented artist – but it comes from her own initiation. That makes me happy too.


***
From the Census Bureau:
The idea of Father’s Day was conceived slightly more than a century ago by Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Wash., while she listened to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909. Dodd wanted a special day to honor her father, William Smart, a widowed Civil War veteran who was left to raise his six children on a farm.
A day in June was chosen for the first Father’s Day celebration, 101 years ago, June 19, 1910, proclaimed by Spokane’s mayor because it was the month of Smart’s birth. The first presidential proclamation honoring fathers was issued in 1966 when President Lyndon Johnson designated the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. Father’s Day has been celebrated annually since 1972 when President Richard Nixon signed the public law that made it permanent.

Pictures c 2009 Alexandria Green-House

The Lydster, Part 86: Homework

I wrote a letter to the teacher pointing out the ambiguities, and hoping the students wouldn’t be marked as wrong when when grading the assignment.

As I’ve noted, I tend to be the one who works on the homework with the Daughter. She even had an assignment during the week off from school for Passover/Easter. Only 7 of the 24 students actually did the assignment, and Lydia was the ONLY one to color it, as requested, albeit on a Monday morning she was returning to class.

On the weekly homework, there are 10 spelling words to copy plus a bonus word. She’s quite good at this; I don’t think she’s gotten worse than a 95 on her weekly test. The homework also includes writing sentences and some math.

Occasionally, I find the exercises with the graphics to be a bit obtuse, but never more so than earlier this month.
The exercise:

“When y is at the end of a word, it can stand for the long sound of I as in dry, or the long sound of e, as in pony. Say each picture name. Circle long E or long I to show the sound of y in each picture name.”
You may not be able to see the graphic clearly, but I was having difficulty discerning what was being asked for:
2. city or sky?
5. cry or baby?
6. why (that’s a REALLY subtle concept for a first grader)
8. sunny or sky?
9. shy or boy (shy is REALLY subtle here)
10. heavy? (pry is the answer, again not a concept my daughter knew)
15. cloudy or sky?


And the next page
4. sleepy or yawn?
So I wrote a letter to the teacher pointing out the ambiguities and hoping the students wouldn’t be marked as wrong when grading the assignment.

That very evening, I got a note back from the teacher, in which she, working 1-to-1 with another student on the homework “realized the difficulty and confusion with this worksheet page.” She promised to remove the assignment for next year’s homework, and that the Daughter wouldn’t be penalized for any errors.

I think it’s very comforting that her teacher, who I’ve met with a couple of times, was so responsive.

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