Eve was sick today (cough, low fever) and I took the day off to stay home with her. Alan was with them Monday and Tuesday while I was doing parent conferences. She started feeling bad on Tuesday and Alan said she kept going to the window and asking if mommy was coming home yet. He said it started around 10am and he promised her I’d be home around 3pm… then I got lucky she fell asleep because I didn’t make it home until 4:30pm! But I was home to wake her up at 5:00. Anyway, she wasn’t up for school today and I wasn’t up for leaving her (and Alan wasn’t up for a third day off from work) so I stayed home with her.
We have been reading really stupid fairy books that she loves and she promised me that when we finished the series she would let me pick the next book. Today I chose Little House in the Big Woods and she protested. She argued and refused. I was annoyed, but tried to be patient with her. This evening she basically put herself to bed and when I went up to read to her I found her in bed with the lights off. I asked if she wanted me to read a few pages of the book and she agreed, granted I let her lay down and if she got bored we could stop.
Turns out she loved it! Also turns out I either have not read this book or completely forgot the entire first chapter. The whole thing is about them preparing for winter, which means killing and slaughtering many animals, and it goes into great detail! They even describe in detail how to roast a pigs tail and how delectable it is. Yuck! I kept asking her is she wanted to stop and she said no. Either she liked the book a lot or she liked seeing my yucked out face! When we finished the first chapter she said we should read more tomorrow.
I bugged her so much to read it I can hardly say no now. Note to self: preview books, don’t rely on memory from long ago.
Those are my FAVORITE books!!!!! Reread them yourself though before you start with the kids. They are way way different from an adult/parent perspective! I decided that I was not ready to tackle some of our less than awesome American history, (taking land from the Native Americans) so we have only read the first two books together. The second book is called Farmer Boy and is about Almanzo’s, her future husbands, childhood.
I loved Farmer Boy because it goes through a whole year of seasons and activities on an upstate New York farm (WAAAY upstate/Malone). Tessa, is there a separate book that’s called ‘little house on the prarie’? That was the name of the TV show, maybe that’s what you remember most.
XXXOOOO
Glad Eve is branching out a little tho….from magical cats and fairies…hahah
Definitely preread those Little House books. We got into Little House on the Prairie and there’s a scene where their dog gets washed away while they cross a river. It was VERY upsetting for Molly. The dog does come back later but you don’t know that! And like Anna said, there’s a lot of derogatory language about “savages” and such in the second book. I thought the first one was really nice, though. I never read these as a kid. It struck me that a lot of Waldorf early childhood is basically playing Little House, with the crafting and simple toys and playing outside. :)