One of the the things I hate about the Internet is that, when discussing controversial topics, people just ignore the questions you ask them and continue on saying whatever they want.  It's easy to do on the computer.

So today I was reading a blog that I frequent.  I respect the writer of it even though her opinions are different from mine in many areas.  She writes about political topics a lot, so I kept checking her blog to see what this younger generation feminist would have to say about Sarah Palin. I was hoping she might be happy about the pick even though her politics are opposed.

I was disappointed but not surprised.  Apparently, many feminists find it hard to believe that there are women who don't agree with them on the issues.  So since they find it inconceivable that a woman would take the positions Palin does, they are left with discussing her reproductive history and that of her daughter.  There was a link to a piece of drivel on salon.com.  And then she insinuates that Palin's daughter Bristol's pregnancy proves that abstinence education does not work.

So, I posted a comment and asked if she were assuming that Bristol received abstinence-only sex education in her school or if she knew this for a fact.  The answer I got was that McCain and Palin both are on record supporting abstinence only education.  That does not answer my question!  Nor does it logically follow, even if Bristol had received abstinence-only education, that her pregnancy means it doesn't work.  Do students who receive (I don't know what to call it) traditional? regular? explicit? education never get pregnant? 

I know that isn't true!  So if one pregnant girl proves that a whole system doesn't work, then I guess nothing works.  Maybe schools should go back to teaching actual academics and leave this area alone.  And there is also the possibility that the pregnancy was not an accident.  I recently read a (supposedly false) story about girls in New England who made a pact to get pregnant, and a school administrator's response was "We need more birth control education!"  Hello?  How is that going to help when the girls want to have a baby?  They just won't use whatever is given them!

When I started my master's degree and was using the Student Health Services for my medical care, there was information on how to avoid STDs everywhere.  This was the era of "alternative activities" if you get my drift - think Clinton/Lewinsky.  Well, I just read an article in Reader's Digest that was about a man under 40 who had very serious cancer (I believe it was throat cancer, but it was somewhere mouth/neck related).  He had never smoked.  He was told that the human papilloma virus (HPV) can cause this cancer, and it is being spread by those very activities that were promoted as being "healthy, safe" alternatives!  Is this information being shared as well in those classes?  One can only hope.

For me, the only position that makes sense is to wholeheartedly embrace the Catholic Church's teachings on the ethics of life, love, and sexuality.  OK, vent over!

I started to write an entry about the complicated logistics of taking all 6 children out by myself, but then I thought better of it.  I'm sure you can imagine how long it takes to buckle 4 children into their car seats, etc.  You don't want to read about that.  And I don't want to seem like I'm complaining, because as my sister would say, I've made my choices.  I have chosen to have all these beautiful children, and so whatever I have to do, I have to do, and it isn't really worth blogging about.

Last Monday we started to ease back into schoolwork.  The plan for the week was to make sure that we said the Rosary and read about the saint of the day each morning.  I also did phonics with Ryan one day.  This week we will continue saying the Rosary, and add in math for both the girls and do phonics with Ryan every day.  Each week in September I hope to add in a bit more so that by the end of September we are doing everything.  Gabrielle will hopefully begin her tutoring this week as well.  Dance started last week and both girls were thrilled to be back.  They spent the summer dancing in our den.

Brogan turned 4 weeks old today, and I am getting slightly more sleep.  So that may be why it's like a switch has flipped and all of a sudden I am interested in languages again.  The last few weeks of my pregnancy and the first few weeks after his birth, I was actually afraid that somehow I had lost my lifelong fascination!  I have begun studying again, and today I actually spoke German to Brogan.  I have been doing some of the finger plays with him too.  I have been speaking mainly English with the twins, but am trying to add back in some German now that I feel able.

I suppose that what it shows me is that I need to trust my feelings and not put pressure on myself.  I do see improvement in the twins' English over the last few weeks.  Is it coincidence or is it that I began speaking English to them?  I don't know. 

In other news, don't ever watch the movie "Muriel's Wedding."  It was absolutely one of the most horrible I have ever seen.  I only kept watching because I thought for sure it had to get better.  It didn't.

Last week I read Gone With the Wind. I had read it once about 20 years ago and I really enjoyed it then and now.  Margaret Mitchell was very good at creating characters, and she did such a good job describing what happened in the South during the war and Reconstruction.  Robert did not enjoy it as much - it was one of the last things he read to finish his literature credits - and we watched the movie together just before he left for college.  As usual the book is better than the movie.  There's just so much more background and explanation.  Some things don't really make sense in the movie. 

I am now trying to wade through Scarlett, the sequel written with permission from Mitchell's heirs.  It's nowhere near as good, and I am having a really hard time reading it.  I saw the miniseries once but don't remember much of it.

So, that's about it for me.  It's midnight and I should go to bed.

Posted in Christianity

Back in 2004, I began a prayer notebook that has really helped me in my Christian walk.  I have never shared it with anyone, but for some reason the other day I felt like I should blog about it.  Maybe this will help someone be more faithful in prayer, and reminding myself how helpful the binder is will help me to be more faithful as well.

I have a regular binder divided into 6 sections: Bible reading, prayer, memory work, gratitude, insights, and writing.

Bible: I write the date and whatever verses I read that day.  I will confess that I have really not done this at all in 2008, but before I stopped, I was reading through the Gospels in German.  I would read it in German, look up any words I didn't know, and then read it in English.  If I have a thought about the Bible verses, I will write that down in the same place.  Back in 2004-2005, I was also trying to read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but didn't finish.  I will have to pick that back up again as well!  Regular Bible reading is very important and I highly recommend it!

Prayer: This section starts with the 1 Corinthians 13 definition of love.  I try to read this frequently to remind myself what love is.  Then comes the Catholic prayer the "Act of Love." (BTW, just to warn you, when searching for the German equivalent of this prayer, putting "Act of Love" into a search engine is NOT a good idea!)

Next I have a page for each member of my immediate family, and I write long term prayer requests for them here.  I once read a biography of St. Francis of Assisi, and it said that his mother always prayed that he would be a good Christian.  I thought that pretty much summed it up and so that is one of the prayers on each child's page.  I ask their name saints to pray for them and their guardian angels to protect them and help them.  If a request no longer applies, I check it off.

After that, I have a page for each day of the week.  When I was setting up my notebook, I made a list of prayer requests having to do with the larger world and divided them up onto different days.  So I am praying for all these important things once a week (as long as I don't skip any days!)  These requests are things like: an end to abortion, healing for all who have been hurt by abortion, for the Holy Souls in Purgatory and my deceased relatives, for my parish, for my diocese and my bishop, for all priests and seminarians (and I pray specifically for every priest who has a special connection to our family), and for my friends and their prayer requests.

Then I have a page where I pray for specific people to return or convert to the Catholic Church.  These are mainly family members.

After that come specific prayer requests.  I write the date and whatever the request is and then skip a line.  Whenever it is answered, I write down what happened on the skipped line and check it off.  What this does is give me an ongoing history and a praise list - all these prayers that have been answered!

The next page is prayer for anyone affected by a natural disaster.  I added this page after the devastating tsunami that occurred right after Christmas 2004.  Then comes my St. Gerard list.  For those who are not Catholic, St. Gerard is the patron saint of pregnant women.  I write down the names of my friends who are pregnant and pray for them to have healthy pregnancies and babies.  Then after the baby is born, I pray for them for another six weeks as they recover. 

Sometimes I might add in a special page if something else is going on in my life.  For example, when I was participating in a weight loss contest, I had a page with my teammates' names so I could pray for them. 

Last is the page of long-term prayer requests for me.

Memory: I was actively trying to memorize prayers and verses.  However, after the twins came in 2005, I think the sleep deprivation or something damaged my memory.  I have an extremely hard time memorizing now!  It took me from November 2005 to February 2006 to memorize 2 verses and so I just gave up and haven't tried again.

Gratitude: for 2 1/2 years I worked on developing gratitude and wrote something down every day that I was grateful for.

Insights: this is a section to write down those little (or not so little) insights that come every so often.  It's kind of like a spiritual diary.

Writing:  sometimes I am working on a piece of writing relating to all this and do it here.  For example, I love the story in the book of Tobit so much that I wrote a version of it for my children.

So that's basically it.  This notebook has helped me feel like I am doing what I should be as a Christian: regularly reading Scripture, praying, and growing closer to God.

What happens when you have both a three week old baby and a college freshman at the same time?  Well, when you finally do get to sleep, you have strange and confusing dreams about logistics!

Last night at some point, I dreamed that Robert had come home for the weekend, but instead of going back on Sunday as would have been logical, he stayed until Monday morning.  And he has an 8 AM class.  So he wanted me to drive him back to college in time for his class.  I realized this meant getting everyone up and dressed and ready incredibly early in the morning, and I kept saying, "Why didn't we take you back yesterday?"  and Robert was saying I could just take him, but then I said that Roger had to go to work and couldn't watch them, and then, right as I was about to realize that we all don't fit in the van anyway, Brogan started crying and woke me up.

Posted in Pictures

Here are my four little boys and me.  Brogan is obviously on my lap.  Alexander is next, then Christopher, then Ryan.

Alexander holding Brogan.  Note the lovely ketchup smears on A's face.

Mary and Brogan

Ryan and Brogan

Pictures of Gabrielle and Robert forthcoming. I am going to try to take a nap.

"This day has been an emotional roller coaster!" - Aldo, from "Oscar"

It's true, today has been an emotional roller coaster.  It's my husband's and my anniversary, Robert moved out to go to college, I have a 2 week old baby, and I got 45 minutes of sleep last night.

I've always heard and read about moms being upset when children leave the nest, etc, but somehow I didn't think it would apply to me.  I have been extremely excited for Robert and all the new opportunities and experiences that await him.  I was very happy that one of my children was no longer going to be hampered by our limitations of time, money, and energy.  But then one night last week as I lay awake in bed, thinking I really had to get to sleep, all of these terrible things that could happen to Robert started invading my thoughts, and I had a strong impulse to just lock him in his room and not let him go so he would be safe.  Of course, as Dory tells Marlin in "Finding Nemo", you can't never let anything happen to them because then nothing would ever happen.  Or something like that.

I started counting the "lasts."  The last weekend he would be living at home.  The last Panthers game we would watch together for a while.  Then, on Monday as I drove to the birth center for my two week checkup, I started crying.  And I have been on the verge of tears or actually crying since then, especially last night when he wrote an article about how we have been sharing the Carolina Panthers games forever and now we won't be watching them together usually.  And again this morning as they loaded the truck with all his things.  And then when I hugged him goodbye.  And because I couldn't go over to the campus with them and see his room.  And because I know I will miss hanging out with him and laughing together, like last night when we discovered that my favorite Boston song is actually sung by .38 Special.  And then when I went into his mostly empty room.  And then when I saw his sandals by the front door.  And then when I heard our dog whining and staring at the door, wondering where he was.  And then when I saw the security club on the door, knowing Robert was on the other side of it.

When my husband got home, everybody took naps and then we got up and had dinner while watching our wedding video.  I love remembering our wedding, but watching the video is bittersweet.  We see loved ones who have since passed away, couples who are now divorced, friends and family who are no longer part of our lives, and it is upsetting.  We saw Roger's grandfather, who died in 1996, and I remembered how sweet he was, and I was doubly glad that we gave Brogan his name as a middle name. 

It is comforting to have Brogan, but even as I hold him and drink in his newborn-ness, I have proof that it goes by in the blink of an eye.  They honestly, really, truly do grow up very quickly.  And now I realize that I really want to work on making memories with my younger children.

And I can't wait to hear all about college and classes and books and people and girls and sports.  And I'll try not to worry (and also to stop crying), but I can't promise anything.

Back in April, I wrote that I was Feeling Unsettled.  That was a long rambling entry where I pondered what I should do with my future.  What I understand now is that my future as a homeschooling mother of seven is largely already decided, and the part that is left for me to fill in is too small for some of the options I was considering.  If that sounds depressing, it's not really.  I have always suffered from the affliction of having too many ideas, too many interests, and it's comforting to know what exactly I am working with here.

In a way it's like homeschooling curriculum purchases.  I have always been amazed at how much people buy and sell.  Since I don't have a lot of money, I have to think through my purchases carefully, and there are very few things I buy that don't get used (or at least tried).  So, since I don't have a lot of time in which to work and follow my own interests, I have to think it through carefully.  Honestly, I can kind of see that this was what the whole past year was about - the Lord gave me a bunch of different experiences so I could make informed choices for myself, and then He gave me a baby and a renewed emphasis on homeschooling with Gabrielle's test results to return my focus to our home and family.

So what have I decided?  

1. A PhD in anything is off the table.  I will reconsider when I am fifty (which is 13 years from now).

2. I already have a master's in German, so I need to concentrate on finding jobs teaching German and improving my German.

3. That means no online classes in Spanish, no working on improving my Spanish, no MA in Spanish.  The only way I could see working on Spanish is if I am unable to find teaching jobs in German.

4. Working full-time and homeschooling are most likely completely incompatible.  I am not sure how we are ever going to pay off our debt, but I can only do what I can do.

5. Any classes I teach need to be in the late afternoon or evening.

6. This coming year I am going to do some writing since I am not teaching, if I am not too brain-dead to do it.

That's pretty much it. 

Posted in book reviews

A Passage to India: thumbs down.  This book surpasses even Sense and Sensibility for the most pages where nothing happens, which I honestly did not believe possible.

The Jane Austen Book Club:  not making it out of chapter one.  Too much vulgarity.

I used to like fiction.  I remember reading lots of it. What happened?

Posted in Pictures

Have I mentioned before how much I love the book A Mother's Rule of Life by Holly Pierlot?  Well, I do, and tonight I was checking her website and found some great help  on life with lots of little children.  How timely!

Pictures of Brogan coming soon - I promise!!  And some more thoughts on life in general...now I am going to try to sleep!

Posted in Me

I've become one of those people I used to hear about - "Can you believe it?  She has four children four and under!!"  Even saying it another way doesn't sound much better - six children 12 and under.  That makes it sound like I have a baby every 2 years!  Seven children spread out over nearly nineteen years is slightly better - that ups my average to one baby every 2.7 years.

My husband went back to work today, and next Wednesday my oldest son leaves for college.  Brogan will be 2 1/2 weeks old, and I will be on my own.  Is it okay to admit that I am a little intimidated?  I have gone from thinking, "Should I teach 2 days a week at the charter school?" to "Will I even be able to shower?  Will we be able to get anything done in the mornings?  Will I be able to meet the very distinct needs of each child?  Will I have any energy in the evenings to work on my own projects or should I just scrap the idea of even having my own projects?"

So I have one week to come up with a game plan for surviving life with four children four and under. And in a month it will be four children five and under, and that just sounds much more doable, doesn't it? Honestly, though, I thank God for all my blessings.  There was a time when I thought I would never have more children, and I used to wonder if we would ever bring home a new baby to this house.  Now I just need to pray that I am equal to the task of raising them well!

Posted in book reviews

High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed by Michael Kodas was a fascinating book.  I have been interested in Everest since reading Into Thin Air, about the tragedy that occurred there in 1996, when 15 climbers died.  Let me clarify that I have absolutely no desire to climb any mountains myself.  I like breathing too much to depend on a machine to do it for me.  This also means that I do not ever need to scuba dive or go into space!  I spent most of the book wondering WHY anyone would subject themselves to what one goes through to try to climb Mt. Everest.  However, I also freely admit that I lack ambition.

Actually, the hard part is not climbing up to the summit, it is getting back down alive.  It seems that most people die on their way down.  For anyone who hasn't read much about the climb, it actually takes several months.  First you have to get used to the altitude.  Then there are several different camps.  You climb up to one, climb back down, climb back up, etc.  All of this is training for the actual climb.  It takes time and money, and where there is money, there are problems. And here is the actual point of High Crimes.

The disastrous 1996 climbing season made some of us in the world aware of climbing Mt. Everest and how difficult it is (though it is not the most difficult mountain), but it also made other, more unscrupulous people aware of the money to be made there.  Clients are paying up to $65,000 for the journey, guides, equipment, Sherpas (these are the natives who help with the expeditions), etc.  There is no regulation or law on Mt. Everest really, and anyone can call himself a guide - the only requirement is having someone to pay you.

The central story in the book is the sad fate of Dr. Nils Antezana, who perished on Mt. Everest after trusting his life to a "guide" who had never even been to the summit.  Entwined with his story is the story of the author and his Connecticut team's bid for the summit the same year.  And through it all, Kodas reveals the crime, the theft and greed, and the dangerous personalities that cost lives on Everest every year. 

Brogan is now four days old and doing very well!  The Lord answered all my prayers: that he be under 10 lbs (close enough!), that he not be late, and that he nurse well!  God is so good!  I am just overwhelmed to have such a beautiful baby - what a special blessing he is!

All the children are enjoying him.  The twins have been very good and gentle with him, and have adjusted well to having other people help them with things besides Mama (before Brogan's birth, they often would not accept help from somebody else, and so I was a bit concerned about this.) 

Robert is busily getting ready to leave for college in just under two weeks.  The girls have a few weeks before their dance classes start again.  I have decided not to go back to the charter school to teach, and am working on our homeschooling plans for the coming year.  I intend to blog each week about what we plan to do and actually do.  I am thinking about starting the first week in September with some subjects and then adding the rest in the following week.

I am not sure where I stand with speaking German to my children.  I recognize that for right now, I don't want to speak German to Brogan - it just does not feel right.  And I am really tired and having difficulty speaking it, and also had been feeling ambivalent about speaking only German with the twins over the last few weeks.  I haven't spent much time with the twins since the birth, but it has really felt like overload to be speaking English with one of the older children, then switch to German to say something to one of the twins, then switch to English to talk to Brogan.  I just. can't. do. it. right. now.  So, I will be thinking about this over the next few weeks and coming up with some sort of game plan, but I am thinking that it will not involve 100% German use with any of the children.

As for work/teaching related topics, I don't really know.  While my husband and I were discussing the charter school issue this week, he said he wanted me to meet my goals, and I replied that I didn't know what those were anymore.  So he said, "Maybe you need to figure that out."  I think that I got a lot of good experience the last year or so, and because of Brogan's birth, I now have an opportunity to sit back and reflect on what I really need to do, want to do, and should do to help our family move forward.  Right now, it's obvious that helping my family means me staying home, whereas last year, it was obvious that it meant me working.

I will post a picture of Brogan tomorrow - I need Robert to teach me how to do it since he will soon be gone to college and not able to do it for me anymore!  He really is the most adorable baby!

Just in case anyone is checking my blog for new baby info, he hasn't arrived yet.  I am due in two days.  And good news, I finished ONE of my goals on my summer goal list!  Out of the original twenty or so.

I had a checkup yesterday.  Baby boy does not like the midwives listening to his heartbeat - he kicks the little wand and then moves all around trying to get away.  Gabrielle made an excellent, logical point that if he doesn't like it, he can just come out and then they'll stop trying to do it.  But I have never noticed babies responding well to logic.

I went to the library after my appointment and was so glad that no one talked to me about being pregnant.  I am incredibly sick of people asking me questions - I think I was giving off a vibe that said, "Ask me when I am due and I will punch you.  Ask me if I am having twins (as 3 people have done so far) and I will kill you!"

I got out 3 books to read: High Crimes, about the seemy underworld that surrounds Mt. Everest, The Jane Austen Book Club, and A Passage to India.  I am about halfway through High Crimes.  For some reason lately, I have been more into non-fiction than fiction.

TTFN!

Posted in book reviews

I just finished reading a book that I have had for a while called Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life by Daphne de Marneffe.  This book is not really about what I thought it was about, and so I was mostly disappointed.  The author has a good point but never explores the why behind it.

Basically, she believes that there is a lack of recognition among feminists and society in general that many women *want* to mother their children, ie, maternal desire.  So I thought, since the author is a psychologist, that she was going to explore where maternal desire comes from, etc.  Instead the chapters are more like essays on various topics: Fertility, Adolescence, Ambivalence, Pleasure, Child Care, Midlife, etc.  I actually thought several of these were misnamed - "Fertility", for example, seemed to be more about infertility, and "Midlife" was more about intergenerational interactions between women.  There really seemed to be a lack of clear focus.

I don't know why I keep reading books by feminists.  I guess I am trying to understand them, but so often I just have no clue what they are talking about. In the chapter on "Adolescence," she discusses a book called The Hungry Self by Kim Chernin, which is about eating disorders.  Chernin argues that eating disorders are "a way for young women to manage their guilt and fear about surpassing their mothers."  Apparently Chernin drew from the psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein, who suggested "a kind of normative greed in infancy, expressed in fantasies of scooping out the mother's insides and sucking her dry.  A psychologically healthy mother communicates to her baby that she has survived her baby's 'attack' by being loving and constant in the face of the baby's inevitable greed."  What?  Do people really believe these things?  How on earth would we know if a baby was "fantasizing" and further, what the baby was fantasizing about?  Why would we assume that the baby is having such a destructive fantasy?  What a horrible view of babies, that they consist of greed!

I really have to say, in all the books I have read by feminists, that in general, I think they have real issues with their mothers.  These issues are probably at the heart of their problems with motherhood and why the direction of the feminist movement has never been to support mothers, but rather to make women like men.  I don't include the author of Maternal Desire in my sweeping generalization here, just to clarify.  She actually sounds pretty level-headed, and at least willing to admit that she likes her children and likes being with them and taking care of them.

Several times, the author comments on mothers' feelings that they have done nothing, which reminded me of a much better book I blogged about in the past: What Mothers Do: Especially When It Looks Like Nothing by Naomi Stadlen.  Here is a link to my 3 part review of that book.  My recommendation: skip Maternal Desire and read What Mothers Do, and if anybody knows a book that explores why women want to mother without denigrating them, please let me know about it!

Posted in Me

Even though I love Enrique and ABBA and various other groups and genres (from Latin to country to classical to whatever), I don't make you listen to them.  I invite you to, I might provide a link, but then it is your choice to click it or not, to listen or not.  It's your loss if you don't want to listen to Enrique, but again, I'm not going to force you into it.

This is my new pet peeve.  When I visit a blog, I don't want music to play.  Ever.  No matter what music it is.  I don't know how to turn it off - I don't know if I can turn it off.  Very often, I am already listening to Enrique and the blog's music then goes over it.  That is annoying.  Decorate your blog however you would like, give me any links you love, but please, don't put music on.  I visited a blog for the first and last time tonight, where the writer had put a youtube link of a scene from Mamma Mia!, but I couldn't even click on it and listen to it because her other music was playing!  And let me tell you, Pierce Brosnan's voice does not improve with other unrelated music on top of it!

And if you wonder how I am doing at 38 1/2 weeks pregnant, I am hot, tired, grumpy, huge, and prone to finding new pet peeves! ;-)

Avid readers of my blog know that I like ABBA quite a bit.  When my daughter asked me if I had any songs in Swedish, I could honestly answer yes.  All of my children above the age of 5 are also devoted ABBA fans (unfortunately I have never been able to convert my husband.)  Last fall, my oldest son and I were blessed to have some extra money and the opportunity to go see the play Mamma Mia!, which is based on ABBA's songs.  We loved it!  When I heard that a movie was coming out, I immediately wrote it on my calendar.  Robert and I went to see it last Saturday, and again, loved it.

However, when I told my mom how much I liked it, she was surprised and told me I should read the review from Time Magazine by Richard Corliss.  So I did.  Um, did he see the same movie?  My son refused to finish reading it - it was that bad!  Last night, while trying to go to sleep, I thought, "I should write a review of the review on my blog!"  When I told my son this morning, he burst out laughing and told me to.  So here it is.  I will quote the review in italics and write in my comments.

Now the big genre challenge: musicals. The very form is antique. Young filmgoers often have to be told why the people in these movies are suddenly singing instead of speaking. And nothing dates faster than musical styles.

My children like musicals - I don't understand why the "very form is antique."  Maybe it's jaded Manhattan reviewers who need some explaining done.  And then he goes on to even mention High School Musical!

So who'll go see Mamma Mia!, the new movie based on the 1999 stage show with nearly two dozen songs by the Swedish pop group Abba that were hits some two decades earlier? One guess: a lot of the women who saw Sex and the City, plus kids who loved High School Musical, plus some gay guys. And, a big plus, most of those who saw the original musical, which by now has grossed over $2 billion--more than any movie has ever earned in theaters.

By my count, that's four guesses.  At least he spelled the name of the play right and got the exclamation mark in there, even if he doesn't know that it's not "Abba" - it's "ABBA."  The name of the group comes from the first initial of each of their names: Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, and Anni-frid (usually known as Frida).  I have never, nor do I ever want to, see the TV show he mentions or the movie spawned from it.  I liked High School Musical, but I'm not a kid, and I obviously don't fit his third category!  His last guess, is of course, right on, which suggests that the rest of the world gets something, to the tune of $2 billion, that he seems determined not to get.

But making a mint could be a struggle. The other big film musicals of this decade--Chicago, Dreamgirls and Hairspray--had casts of mostly young actors. The Mamma Mia! contingent is different, as will now be proved with a précis of the movie's plot (a knockoff of the 1968 comedy Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell) and a few actuarial stats.

From the LA Times: "Last weekend, amid all the hubbub about "The Dark Knight," this frothy film set a record of its own. Its domestic gross of $27.7 million edged out "Hairspray" by $200,000 to become the movie musical with the highest-grossing opening weekend ever. And in its first two weeks of international release, "Mamma Mia!" has made an additional eye-popping $72.6 million."  Enough said?

Donna (Meryl Streep, 59), an American who runs a little hotel on a remote Greek island, has invited two old friends, Tanya (Christine Baranski, 56) and Rosie (Julie Walters, 58), to join her for the wedding of her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried, who is, all right, 22). Sophie, who doesn't know who her father is, has found Donna's diary from the summer she got pregnant. Her dad must be one of the three men mentioned in the diary. Sophie lures them all to the island--Sam (Pierce Brosnan, 55), Bill (Stellan Skarsgard, 57) and Harry (Colin Firth, the baby at 47). They arrive the day before the wedding, and intrigue ensues. Who's the real father? Will Donna be able to cope with three thorny reminders of her wild youth? And how will the movie shoehorn such Abba hits as Waterloo and Money, Money, Money into this far-fetched farrago?

OK, she doesn't actually "lure" them to the island - she invites them to the wedding as if Donna was inviting them.  "Lure" is just a bit too strong of a word there.  As for his last question, anyone who has done his homework would know that the play was written around the songs, not the songs "shoehorned" into the plot.  Actually, "Money, Money, Money" fits into the story quite well, and "Waterloo" pretty much sums up the whole plot.  At least they didn't try to put "Fernando" in there - it's like my least favorite ABBA song.

The last question is the easiest to answer. Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, the boy half of Abba, may have been writing for the Top 40, but their songs explored a gamut of dramatic situations, from the vagaries of celebrity (Super Trouper, Does Your Mother Know) to the wistfulness a woman feels as her daughter grows up (Slipping Through My Fingers). And since Abba's vocalists were women (Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Faltskog), the guys composed enough hits over the group's nine-year run to accommodate all the female characters in Mamma Mia!

Um, where do I start LOL?  Has this guy ever listened to "Does Your Mother Know?"  It has nothing to do with the "vagaries of celebrity" and IT IS SUNG BY A MAN!  In the play/movie, they have changed it so that a female character sings it.  But Bjorn and Benny did their share of the singing in ABBA.  And while they wrote many Top 40 hits, they also wrote many deep, interesting, soul-searching songs.  Also, there are actually the same number of male and female characters in the movie.

We'll say this once, then run for cover: Abba was not just the top-selling group of the '70s; Andersson and Ulvaeus created the smartest, most buoyant body of work from any pop group since the Beatles. Their gaudy gear, with the spangles and spandex, made them easy to deride, but their real sin was that they lacked "depth," which is to say they didn't pretend to be miserable. Instead, like pop performers from an earlier age, they pretended to be happy. Their music did too. The lyrics to the song Mamma Mia confess to erotic obsession and serial masochism, but the perky melody puts the pain at an ironic distance. It was heartache you could disco to. That's why millions of people, not all of them idiots, felt better listening to Abba's music. Hearing it now, people still do.

Huh?  Their real "sin" was that Americans never got them.  They didn't want to tour here until they had a number one hit and I don't think they ever had one.  Again, if one actually listened to an entire album (and I am not talking ABBA Gold here), one would hear lots of depth. ABBA is definitely more than disco!  And what is this about "Mamma Mia" being about "erotic obsession and serial masochism"???  It's about being in love with somebody who hurts you.  I suppose I could see the "serial masochism" part, but honestly, it's just a song.  And what is this snide insult "not all of them idiots"? 

That's the mood the Mamma Mia! movie tries to tap, but with a sledgehammer. The cast, especially the older women, is given to giggles and girlish body language. You're meant to think everyone making the film had a great time, so you should too. At one point, Streep shouts, "Let's go have fun!" But the bonhomie is oppressive; the high spirits are not impromptu but imposed: Listen, people, you vill haff fun!

It is fairly normal for friends to act silly when they get together.  Didn't your alien leaders tell you that? (Stealing that line from The Ref!) I don't know if the actors had a good time making the movie, but I sure had a good time watching it.  I plan to get the DVD specifically to watch when I am in a bad mood!  Hmm, somehow, I haven't heard anyone who has seen the movie describe it as "oppressive" - there isn't much that includes a sunny Greek isle, lots of great songs, and Pierce Brosnan that could be described as "difficult to bear, harsh" or "tyrannical" or "weighing heavily on the spirit or senses" (the three definitions of oppressive according to my dictionary).  And what is the German accent supposed to evoke there?  Images of Nazis telling you to watch Mamma Mia! and have a good time?  HUH?

The chief exponent, or perp, is Streep. She's lively and limber, executing a saddle jump to gymnastic perfection while bouncing on a bed and singing Dancing Queen. But she also spends a long part of the film in a strenuous simulacrum of pleasure. She has the laughs the way a consumptive has the coughs. You worry that when Streep dies and goes to Actor Heaven, the recording angel will say, "On this scale we have decades of transcendent performances, and on this scale, that Mamma Mia! thing. Begone!"

I honestly have no idea what he is talking about here.  She spends half the movie upset and trying to figure out what the three men from her past are doing there.  And does every role have to be weighty? 

One problem is that the creators of the stage show--producer Judy Craymer, writer Catherine Johnson and director Phyllida Lloyd--gave themselves the job of turning it into a big movie, but none had ever worked on one, and the inexperience shows. A small point: the glare of the Greek sunlight is punishing to the face of anyone over 30. A larger one: the dance numbers are edited so choppily that the rhythm and feeling of the songs suffer.

Maybe they didn't want experienced movie-type people ruining what the public loves about the play - I was pleasantly surprised at how similar the movie was to the play.  I actually thought all the actors over 30 looked great, especially Streep at age 59!  They are supposed to be older.  To me, it's actually OK if older actors look older than the younger actors.  But maybe I am weird. Again, I have no idea what he means about the dance numbers being choppy - they did not seem that way to me.

The inanities multiply. Firth's character has a reverie song, Our Last Summer, but it's about Paris, not Greece. And all the chat about the year Sophie was conceived evokes hippies and flower power, which suggest 1967, but the film is set in the present, so that ecstatic summer was more like 1987, when the cry was less "Free love!" than "Let's not have sex because we might die."

If he was paying attention, he would have heard Firth's character explain that he met Donna in Paris and liked her so much he followed her to Greece.  Nowhere does the movie say it's set in the present, and hippies and flower power continued into the 70s.  The play was written in the 1990s, twenty years after the seventies, which is when ABBA was performing.  The timeline works fine unless you are just looking to criticize wherever you can.  And, I didn't hear anybody saying that in 1987 either!

Eventually, as Donna and her gal pals don trashy frocks to do Abba's greatest hits and a Greek chorus of villagers materializes as a backup group for practically every number, Mamma Mia!'s flouting of narrative and visual logic starts to suggest a cunning subversion. The film is not failed kitsch but triumphant Dada. It exists in an alternative universe, an Abbaworld, where 40 years telescopes to 20, the Seine is the Aegean, and Streep's outsize cheerfulness is the expression of a soul in mortal panic.

Did he miss that, back in the past, Donna and her two friends had a group called "Donna and the Dynamos", and what they wore were actually stage costumes?  I found the Greek villagers very funny.  The rest of this ridiculous paragraph I dealt with in the last section, but I have to say again, where is he getting this idea that Streep is always cheerful in this movie?  Did he see the movie?

In the end, the movie beats down even the most stalwart viewer's resistance, in a Guantánamo of giddiness. The supporting actresses help out. Baranski, slim and large-mouthed, and Walters, wizened and hiding behind shades, might be Mick and Keith in a Rolling Stones girl tribute band, and they lend all their show-biz savvy to vivid renditions of, respectively, Does Your Mother Know and Take a Chance on Me. Seyfried, from the HBO series Big Love, is in full control of Sophie, the film's one sensible character. And Streep comes back to earth in a handsomely calibrated rendition of the power ballad The Winner Takes It All. By the end-credit sequence, when the stars appear in spandex outfits to reprise Dancing Queen, the audience may be singing along as if they'd overdosed on ouzo.

How on earth is Sophie the movie's one sensible character???? This is the girl who thinks that she will know just by looking at them which one is her father, the girl who all along declares that she wants to marry Sky more than anything and then changes her mind, the girl who invites the possible dads and thinks she can hide them from her mom until the wedding.  What about her, exactly, is sensible?

Posted in book reviews

The Bilingual Edge: Why, When, and How to Teach Your Child a Second Language by Kendall King and Alison Mackey is a useful guide for parents who are interested in raising bilingual children.  Rereading it the last few days has helped me get over my meltdown of a few days ago.  The book is clearly organized and written by two mothers who also happen to have PhDs in Linguistics and are professors at Georgetown.  They noticed that many parents these days are interested in raising their children to speak more than one language, but worried that the research about how children actually learn languages was not getting through to them.  One of the best aspects of the book is the little sections where they highlight a study and present its findings.

Most of the information in the book I already knew, but it was great to read it all in one place and written so well.  While reading through this time, I highlighted some parts that stood out to me. 

Section 1 discusses why two languages are better than one. Chapter 1 begins with advantages of bilingualism: "advanced knowledge of two languages has been shown to result in specific brain benefits, like enhanced creativity and flexibility, increased test scores, and improved literacy skills, as well as social advantages such as great cross-cultural understanding, adaptability, and increased competitiveness on the job market down the line."  It's important to note that they are talking about advanced knowledge, not just being able to count or say a couple phrases. Chapter 2 deals with myths and misconceptions about language learning. 

Section 2 answers "Which Language and When?" Chapter 3 is about choosing which language.  Chapter 4 discusses when to start (in a word, now!) and addresses specific concerns with different ages of children, along with tips. Chapter 5 talks about birth order, gender, personality and aptitude and how they affect language learning.

Section 3 is "How?"  Chapter 6 is particularly relevant for my situation.  "Children who hear more language and more complex language in everyday interactions tend to produce more language themselves" and "Children learn their first, second, and third languages best by being exposed to rich, dynamic, engaging interaction in each of those languages.  The best way to get your children talking is to surround them with language."  This is definitely something I need to work on.  I started actively memorizing more of those Fingerspiele (scroll down for the part about fingerplay) and the twins love them!  Kendall and Mackey also reminded me that "it's less important for your child to hear, for instance, perfect Korean than it is to have some early and meaningful exposure to Korean."

In Chapter 6 they present a study which shows that "reading aloud clearly seemed to affect these toddlers' language skills."  When two languages are involved, the same holds true. "In fact, the frequency with which children were read to in a foreign language had more of an impact than even the total exposure they had to the language."  Wow!  Reading this made me realize that I read to the twins in German and nobody reads to them in English, so that will definitely be a part of this coming school year for my daughters.  Reading aloud to the twins will benefit Gabrielle as well.  I also may try to work in reading out loud to all of them in English as part of our school day.

They also answer how much of a language is enough for the child to actively speak it.  Research shows that the minimum exposure necessary is one-fifth of the child's waking hours.  In order to help families determine what exposure their child is getting and whether it is active or passive, they designed a "Family Language Audit" that looks helpful.

Now, here comes the part of the book that is confusing to me.  While discussing minority language at home families (for example, a Russian couple who move to the US and want to continue Russian at home), they present a study that links home language use and academic performance.  The researcher studied 3 kinds of families:  English speaking families who only spoke English at home, minority language families who regularly used the minority language, and minority language families where the adults spoke English.  Scores from groups 1 and 2 were similar, but "children whose parents spoke their non-native language, English, at home (group 3) fared considerably worse.   As an explanation, [the researcher] suggests that the parents' 'use of their native language was beneficial because it provided rich, complex language input for the children.'"

If earlier in the book they were saying that language input need not be perfect, and then now they are saying that children do better when parents speak their native language, which is it?  Is it just that the parent must make sure to provide good input?  Or are they really saying that parents shouldn't speak a non-native language to their children?

The next chapter is about the whole "edutainment" business and presents some shocking findings.  In a study of 9 month old babies, one group got one-on-one reading and play sessions with native speakers of Chinese, while the other group watched videos of the same speakers doing the same things.  "The researchers found that the babies who watched and listened to the very high-quality videos did not learn any  Chinese sounds. In fact, they seemed no better off than a comparison group who had been exposed to no Chinese at all."  The same holds true for toddlers - they basically will not learn language from a DVD. 

Instead, Kendall and Mackey recommend doing something I started doing a while back.  I only have one video in German (Bilingual Baby).  I haven't wanted to hassle with DVD region codes and buy expensive German DVDs and now I am glad I didn't.  What I decided to do was to comment in German about what's happening in the English DVDs they are watching.  I figured they may be watching in English, but I could at least provide some commentary in German.  Whatever language is on the DVD, the authors suggest pausing it and discussing, asking questions or simply repeating things the characters say.  As they clearly state, "it is human interaction itself that is crucial for language development."  However, there is a place for foreign language DVDs for school-age children.

Chapter 8 talks about various kinds of schools: immersion programs, private classes, classes for heritage speakers, private tutors, etc. 

Section 4 is called "What If...?" and talks about various situations or problems that families may have along the way: language mixing, language delay, so-called expert advice (just like when you have problems breastfeeding, the advice is usually "Stop nursing", when bilingual families have problems, the advice is often "Stop being bilingual"), special needs, and apparent lack of progress.   Chapter 11 discusses trilingualism and dialects, and point out that knowing a second language makes learning a third even easier.  Chapter 12 focuses on family problems, like children resisting the language, problems with extended family, and divorce. 

There is an interesting section about bilingualism making your family stand out.  "Only 9.3 percent of Americans speak both their native language and another language fluently (compare this with 52.7 percent of Europeans!) In real life, these statistics mean that there will probably be times when you or your child feel a bit odd...about using a language other than English."  I know that when I take the twins out somewhere, I do feel strange speaking to them in German.

The book can be summed up well by this quote from the conclusion: "the most important thing parents can do to promote language learning is to talk to their child as much as possible in the languages they want them to learn.  Both quantity and quality of talk are important here!"

I was so inspired by writing this review I took an hour break in the middle to sit on the floor and play with the little ones in German and read to them (when they let me - Alexander has confiscated "Das magische Baumhaus" so he can read it himself).  It was fun!

If you look closely at my way-too-over-ambitious summer goal list, you will notice that I have "Organize my room" on there.  Ever since the twins were born, and probably before, my cleaning tactic has been to take everything that is in the way and put it in a box to sort through later.  As we all well know, later usually doesn't come.  I can't just throw the boxes out because there are important things in them, along with a lot of trash, and lots of info identity thieves could make much use of.  So they must be sorted through piece of paper by piece of stupid paper.

Tonight I found some notes I made after the twins were born, written on the back of an unopened piece of mail (where else would I write them?).  If I had been writing a blog then, I would have made the notes into a blog post.  So here you go, nearly three years later.

When a Homeschooling Mother has Twins

A wise homeschooling mom can provide hours of school lessons from just having twins.  I suggest giving these lessons when you used to be sleeping, because sleep will become but a distant memory.

Math

Here's an equation for you:

epidural wearing off plus 2 posterior babies vying to be firstborn equals PAIN

And a word problem:

If a new mom of twins is in a hospital room for only 40 hours, how many different people can find a reason to enter her room?

Science

How can identical twins look completely different to their mother and completely identical to everyone else?

Grammar

Which sentence is the best?

I am seriously never doing this again.

Seriously, I am never doing this again.

I am never doing this again...SERIOUSLY!

Religion

Using the cable channels available at the hospital, compare and contrast all the televangelists that are on TV at 3 AM.  (We're sending Bibles to El Salvador, right, Cathy? ;-)

I hope that was even slightly amusing.  Remember that I was seriously sleep-deprived when I wrote it.  And when I said I was never doing it again, well, I meant, having twins in a hospital.  Having this baby in a birth center is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.  Right?