Recently Read: Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou

Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In a nutshell, this autobiography, raw with emotion, reads more like a memoir than an autobiography.

My introduction to Maya Angelou, like many others, was being assigned I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in high school. I remember finding it incredibly moving, especially since it read like a novel. It was also my introduction to the novelized autobiography, a rare but beautifully effective genre. I probably don’t have to point out that high school was quite a while ago for me. I haven’t reread Caged Bird, though I feel like I should. My memory of the book is sketchy at best. Till now, it was the only one of Angelou’s autobiographies that I have read, although I have read much of her poetry. Having now read Mom & Me & Mom, I think I should remedy that. I have now read her first and last autobiographies. I plan to read the ones in the middle after I reread the first.

What has always struck me about Angelou, particularly in her poetry, was her strength and confidence. It seems odd that I connected with her poetry, particularly when I was a shy, quiet, reserved, white teenage girl growing up in a somewhat sheltered upbringing in the suburbs of Los Angeles. My life experience has been radically different from Angelou’s. There is very little I have in common with a woman who seemed so regal to me, having achieved such wondrous greatness, rising from disastrous tragedy and pain. I couldn’t relate to her struggles. I couldn’t possibly understand why she had to fight her whole life for things I took for granted. Yet, there I was, sitting in my college dorm room soaking up her inspiring poetry, applying her wise words to my life, my situations. Angelou has been called “America’s Poet,” and rightly so. There is universality to her words, themes and messages. Her eyes have seen more, she has lived through and survived much more than most of us will ever experience. Yet, she had a knack for expressing thoughts that we have all felt, speaking to each of us and all of us in terms we could relate to. Her poetry was about the human condition, and that is the one thing we all have in common. We are human, first and foremost.

I’m not sure what I expected when I started reading Mom & Me & Mom, but I certainly did not expect the level of insight this autobiography contains. It begins with Angelou’s birth and ends with her mom’s passing, but the events in between are not consistently written chronologically. Not even remotely resembling a novel, it reads more like a memoir than an autobiography in that it seems Angelou told stories as they occurred to her. The order was chosen for how it illustrated the point she was making at the time. As the title suggests, the primary focus is Angelou’s relationship with her mother, although she also touches on her relationships with both her brother and her son. Angelou does not hold much back. She speaks frankly about the circumstances of the episodes she chose to include. She describes situations and characteristics of people as if they were normal and average. Many events described would have made excellent plot ideas for “The Sopranos.” She included actions she wasn’t particularly proud of, and many things her mother shouldn’t have been proud of. Still, you get the impression that they were mostly actions that made her proud of her mother, and actions her mother would never feel the need to apologize for.

The overall, lasting impression this autobiography left me with was the important role that Angelou’s mother played in her becoming the strong, confident woman she was known to be. Before, I felt that such qualities must have been bestowed by her grandmother who raised her till she was thirteen, who wasn’t physically affectionate, but would proudly boast of Angelou’s attributes. In this autobiography, it is clear that her mother, Vivian Baxter, was the one who showed her, taught her, the strength necessary to succeed as a black, single mother at a time when society in general was against all those things. When she lacked the confidence to try, Angelou was supported by the faith her mother held in her. When she wasn’t sure she could do what she set out to do, her mother believed in her and propped her up till she gained the confidence to keep going on her own. Her mother made mistakes. No one is perfect. Their relationship had its troubled times. Angelou saw the flaws, but they were overshadowed by their love and appreciation for each other. The role of a mother, or at least part of it – the part Vivian Baxter did best – is to instill in your child such strength and confidence. They should grow up knowing their worth and taught to fight for themselves. They should know, as teenagers and adults, that the key to happiness is to like yourself, be proud of yourself, know your faults, your limitations, and accept help when necessary. Go out into the world, do what is necessary to get what you want, and know that you are capable. Be the person that you can proud of. Give to others with an air of gratitude for the way in which they enrich your life, and don’t give anyone the power to hurt you. Angelou’s mother taught her these lessons in a harsh way, but she wouldn’t have been the person she was, the legend we now mourn, if it wasn’t for Vivian Baxter.


View all my reviews

Recently Read with the Boy Wonder: "Dinosaurs Before Dark (Magic Tree House #1)"

Dinosaurs Before Dark by Mary Pope Osborne
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was my 6 year old son's first step into the world of chapter books. It has been a long time for me, as I no longer really read children's or young adult literature for my own amusement. We read it together, as he still occasionally needs help with the bigger words, proper nouns and rule breakers. I had forgotten how chapter books are prone to fragments masquerading as complete sentences. Other than that, though, we both enjoyed the experience.

For my son, this was an amazing new adventure. At first he was put off by the fact that there wasn't a picture on every page, and that the pictures were not in color. However, he was still fascinated by the content and detail of the drawings and how well they illustrated what he just read. The story kept him engaged, and was just the right length not to lose his interest. It didn't hurt that the story involved the characters interacting with dinosaurs. We would sit down to read one chapter, and at the end of each chapter my son would declare "Just one more." When we were done with the entire book, he declared that he not only wanted to buy his own copy, but also the entire "Magic Tree House" series. That is the best kind of recommendation for a chapter book possible, I think.

As the mom, I was thrilled to see my son so engaged in the book. The premise and subject matter is much like the type of books that attracted me as a child, and I look forward to exploring the series with him. As an avid reader and amateur writer, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of writing. I have been disappointed in books that reinforce poor grammar, such as the Junie B Jones series. In sharp contrast, the "Magic Tree House" restores my faith in children's literature by illustrating beautifully that you do not need to write in poor grammar for young readers to understand and enjoy a good story. The writing in "Dinosaurs Before Dark" was age appropriate, yet witty and clever. The story, though short, was filled with surprises and a couple clever plot twists. As a well seasoned reader, I of course knew that Jack would have to go back for his backpack, but the way he escapes back to the tree house was not at all predictable, unless one looks at the illustrations.

All in all, this is an excellent book to be shared by parent and child. There is nothing quite like escorting a young reader into the beginning of a life of reading, and this is an excellent series to facilitate it. They are engaging and clever stories with an educational element. They are fun for the young reader, and pleasant for the parent. Some books for young readers are banal, predictable and boring for the parent. This is not one of those books. I look forward to sitting down with my son and diving into #2.


View all my reviews

Recently Read: "The Mommy Diaries"

The Mommy Diaries: Finding Yourself in the Daily Adventure by Tally Flint
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was passed on to me by my sister-in-law. I don't usually read this kind of self-help/improvement book. I'm wary of books that mention God on every page for seemingly no reason. I decided to read it anyway, as I've been working through some difficult situations and thought the book might trigger some introspection on my part. I'm not a member of MOPS nor plan to be, and expected the book to be geared towards the Fundamentalist mentality. I was not wrong.

The first chapter was a bit preachy and sappy, but I found one essay interesting. Also, each chapter ends with reflection questions that could be thought provoking to answer. I took a little something from each story in chapter 2, except the last one. It was one of those typical "I was mad at God. Now I'm not, and I literally spend all my free time away from the kids in prayerful devotion." stories. I got nothing out of it, but I liked the other stories in the chapter, particularly "A Defining Moment." Chapter 3 dealt with cultivating relationships and their importance in our lives. All the stories were interesting. Chapter 4 was on the importance of asking for and accepting help, and could've been combined with the previous chapter on relationships. I really liked the story "Peanut Butter Love." "Dusty Trusty Guidebook" was trite and tired, and promoted the idea of plucking Bible verses out of their context and applying them to modern life. I don't agree with this practice and consider it possibly dangerous, though the Bible can be a source of guidance if used correctly. Chapter 5 on gaining perspective was disappointing. All the stories were preachy, and none of them were terribly interesting. A few were actually condescending as they informed the reader of the great insight they were given in their "a ha" moments. Chapter 6 was on hope and, as expected, focused primarily on finding it in God and/or MOPS. A few of the stories were interesting and somewhat engaging, but two stories, "Lost and Found" and "My Best Years," in particular, left a bad taste in my mouth. These two stories seemed to promote the notion of giving up everything to be a full time mother, because nothing is more important. A list of priorities in "My Best Years" didn't even list the pursuit of personal interests. This is completely counter to the idea expressed in the book's subtitle, "Finding Yourself," and stressed in the first two chapters on "Identity" and "Growth."

Since I didn't expect much from this book, I was not overly disappointed. Some of the stories were engaging and interesting, but none revealed anything earth shattering that would change my life for the better. It's nice to read that other mothers have similar problems to mine own, and the questions at the end of each chapter were somewhat fun to answer and did in fact prompt some self-reflection. However, I would have gotten the same insight into myself by skipping the text and just answering the questions. This is not a book I would recommend to others, and I probably would have passed it up if I saw it at the Dollar Tree. Because I enjoyed answering the questions though, I gave this book an extra star.

View all my reviews

Sharing my Laptop with a Toddler – Part 2

UPDATE: I no longer recommend Kido'z. Evidently the "free" version was only for a limited time. I recently discovered that while they offer an updated version of the pay version, they did not update the free version. Furthermore, they no longer offer any support for the free version. I was matter-of-factly informed by the support team that many new additions to the menus (websites, games, videos, etc.) will not work as time goes on unless I install and subscribe to the premium service. Obviously, this made me angry. I quickly found a replacement: Kidzui. It isn't as simple as Kido'z, but is better in many ways. It is not walled in, so it is much easier to add favorite websites, games, etc. As my son grows, he will be able to add websites on his own, and the filters are excellent. It can be operated through a stand-alone browser or as a Firefox add-on. Honestly, Kido'z had some technical problems, and would occasionally glitch and freeze. Plus, it was so drastically different from normal browsers in design, that I think a transition to Firefox, etc. would prove difficult. Kidzui is much similar to your average browser, and doesn't have the social and email features we weren't using anyway. And, best of all, Kidzui is really free. There is a premium service offered, but it's for access to more security/parental settings and not a different browser. So forget about Kido'z, they're greedy bastards who don't care about internet safety nearly as much as fleecing worried parents.
END OF UPDATE

My husband telecommutes from home. My son is often told to be quiet because “Daddy’s working.” Mo looks over and watches my husband type away and click the mouse. Later on, he’ll climb up on my husband’s chair and announce “Mo working!” as he randomly types on my husband’s keyboard and pushes the mouse all over the desk.

In the last post I mentioned that I was setting up my laptop so that Mo could use it for his own “work.” I secured the laptop as much as XP would allow me, and added a toddler-friendly browser called Kido’z. The next step in this project was to pre-select some websites to add to the favorites category. The browser gives pre-screened suggestions for the age of the child, and I did add a few of those to Mo’s favorites.

I started poking around and looking for websites that Mo would find entertaining. I also tried to find some that had at least some educational value, and some that would give the little guy some practice operating the computer (i.e. using the mouse and keyboard). Turns out there are a lot of blogs on the subject. Such as . . .

Online Toddler Games (2008)

Mostly Mommies

Educational Freeware – Toddlers

Little Kids’ Games Online

. . . just to name a few.

Obviously the toddler games with recognizable characters have the most appeal, particularly the characters from the toddler’s favorite shows and movies. For my guy, that really does not limit the choices, as he watches Nick, Jr., Disney and PBS.

Nick, Jr.

Disney Playhouse

PBS Kids

The cool thing about these websites is that they are connected to children television networks that claim to be educational for toddlers. One of the tag lines for Nick, Jr. is that their programming is “like preschool on TV.” I don’t know how accurate a description that is, but the website does have a lot of material that can be used to supplement your child’s education. In addition to games, there are also activities, crafts and as well as printable activity sheets, coloring sheets, and workbooks. The content is updated on a regular basis and includes seasonal themes. The content on PBS Kids is not quite as impressive, but there is an incredible catalog of games that are educational. Each show has multiple games and activities. Disney Playhouse is perhaps the least educational of the three, but it has a lot of games, requiring varying degrees of computer skills. Some of the games can be played by simply pushing random keys on the keyboard. The games on Disney Playhouse are animated well enough to compete with the televised shows they are based on.

Being an inherent non-conformist, I want Mo to also have some non-licensed fun. The Disney websites especially have many links to merchandise and products. I feel that the games on both Disney and Nick, Jr. are, at least in a way, advertisements for all the related merchandise and products for sale at all major retailers. Here are a few non-licensed game sites that I came across.

Kneebouncers is really more for infants. Mo is actually too old for it now. All the child has to do to play is push random buttons on the keyboard to make the characters move, etc.

Peekuboo has fun games with some educational values and interactive stories with simple yet fun graphics. Many of the stories and games also impart lessons of social awareness. To move through a story, all one has to do is press the spacebar.

Fisher Price (I admit this one barely qualifies) has fun games that are not necessarily related to the products they sell, as well as games based on such product lines as “Snap ‘n Style”, “Power Wheels” and “Little People.” They are fun and also include games to teach numbers and letters. There are infant and preschool games as well as those for toddlers.

Minimops is beautifully simplistic and light-hearted. It features five games. In one game you connect the dots using your mouse. Another you piece together jigsaw puzzles to form dinosaurs. In a third game named “Flower,” you grow flowers by using your mouse to plant, water and clear the sky in the right order. In “Music Show,” the child can click on different characters to turn off and on their instruments as they play a song. The last game is called “Rainbow” and is a colorful way to make music with your mouse. I spent a great deal of time playing that last game myself. Mo, on the other hand, was not nearly as mesmerized as I had hoped.

I do not recommend Pocoyo World. It seems to be a social game much like Second Life, but with little games. I easily made an account and walked around. I could have chosen to pretend to be a child and interact with the other children with no problem. This made me uncomfortable. I would not feel safe letting Mo play such a game unsupervised. Also, there seems to be no way to cancel your account. I had to send an email to request that my account be canceled.

As you can see, there are many games available to entertain a toddler. The only thing I had to really search for were ways to teach Mo how to actually use the computer. Some of the games on these sites gave him practice, but I wanted to find games that could help me teach him to make the connection between mouse and cursor as well as the fine art of click and drag. These were a little harder to find.

The first site I came across was found on Mostly Mommies. This overly simplistic game is designed to teach your child the concept of moving the mouse and clicking. While this might be a good place to start, I doubt it will hold your child’s interest for long, as a small, purple ball on a slightly lighter shade of purple background is not really all that interesting. However, some of their other suggested games are much better.

For instance, there’s Aven’s Corner. This has various games organized into three categories of different skill level, the first of which teaches basic computer skills. The other two levels are educational games the toddler can play once they know how to use the mouse. Some of these games require Microsoft Silverlight, which is not supported by the Kido’z browser.

Another good site to teach computer skills is EL BUHO BOO. The games are divided between three categories: pressing keys, moving the mouse, and clicking and dragging. The graphics are just plain cute! So far, Mo likes the first category of games, a few of which are basically animals making sounds or popping out of places. Just the other night, he was playing one called “Shells,” which involves parts of an animal appearing from inside a shell with each key stroke. First comes a turtle, then a snail, followed by a hermit crab. The turtle’s head had already appeared and Mo was clicking to make the rest of him come out of the shell. My husband asked, “Mo, what is that?” I think he expected Mo to say “turtle.” Instead Mo replied matter-of-factly “legs.”

As I mentioned earlier, there were many activities on the Nick, Jr. website of educational value in addition to games.  These activities could prove useful when I want to get Mo off the computer and give him a little practice for preschool. I came across a few other treasure troves of such worthwhile “home schooling” material.

I already mentioned all the stuff on Nick, Jr., but here is a direct link to their catalog of printables.

PBS Teachers – makes up for the lack of material on PBS Kids.

The Education tab on PBS Parents is also full of helpful info for parents.

StoryPlace has various “libraries” divided by educational level which feature a variety of themes. Each theme includes a story, online activity, take home activity, and reading list.

Learn to read with phonics is a free online resource to help with reading skills. The child starts with the ABCs and progresses to more difficult exercises. I have only looked at the ABCs section, which seems sort of like animated flashcards.

Pre-K Smarties has a list of even more online learning tools for preschoolers. A number of these look promising, but I haven’t had a chance to check them out yet. The list appears to include printables and resources as well as games and online activities.

The last thing I want to mention is a new website PBS has launched called PBS Kids Island. After creating an account for your child, he can play various educational games featuring the various PBS characters. The games get progressively harder as your child progresses and earns rewards. There is also a feature to track your child’s progress. I do not think Mo is quite ready for this yet, as he would have to be able to play on his own for the progress report to be accurate. However, since it is free, I see this as a viable option in the near future.

I have shared a lot of links with you, but I feel as if I’ve barely scratched the surface. There are a lot of different ideas on how to best teach young children the basic learning blocks, which now includes computer skills. Just as there are a lot of self-proclaimed “experts,” there are many of us parents afraid of not doing enough to give our kids a head start in their education. I want Mo to be a happy, well-adjusted child. For me, this means letting him be a silly kid and have lots of play time. At 2 ½ years, I do not want to stifle him by sitting down for “school time” at the dining room table with workbooks and flash cards. However, I see nothing wrong with sneaking some learning into play time. That being said, I’d like to leave you with a fun and timely online activity with little educational value. Enjoy!

Crayola Fireworks!

Sharing my Laptop with a Toddler - Part 1

UPDATE: I no longer recommend Kido'z. Evidently the "free" version was only for a limited time. I recently discovered that while they offer an updated version of the pay version, they did not update the free version. Furthermore, they no longer offer any support for the free version. I was matter-of-factly informed by the support team that many new additions to the menus (websites, games, videos, etc.) will not work as time goes on unless I install and subscribe to the premium service. Obviously, this made me angry. I quickly found a replacement: Kidzui. It isn't as simple as Kido'z, but is better in many ways. It is not walled in, so it is much easier to add favorite websites, games, etc. As my son grows, he will be able to add websites on his own, and the filters are excellent. It can be operated through a stand-alone browser or as a Firefox add-on. Honestly, Kido'z had some technical problems, and would occasionally glitch and freeze. Plus, it was so drastically different from normal browsers in design, that I think a transition to Firefox, etc. would prove difficult. Kidzui is much similar to your average browser, and doesn't have the social and email features we weren't using anyway. And, best of all, Kidzui is really free. There is a premium service offered, but it's for access to more security/parental settings and not a different browser. So forget about Kido'z, they're greedy bastards who don't care about internet safety nearly as much as fleecing worried parents. 
END OF UPDATE

I haven’t been very creative lately. I don’t really have much of any excuse for not writing. I keep finding myself occupied with other projects and situations in day to day life. I find that I am never short of methods of procrastination, being the mom of a 2 ½ year old. My latest kid-oriented project has been setting up a user account on the laptop for him. I decided to write a blog post about it, since I have no new writing to share.

Mo really likes the computer, possibly because he’s usually forbidden from touching it. He’s been introduced to YouTube, on which he demands to watch Adam West as Batman, and always wants to go to the toddler TV websites (Disney Playhouse, PBSKids, Nick, Jr., etc.). So I decided to take advantage of the hot desert summer to teach him computer skills. I’m told he’ll take to it like a fish to water, and thought it would make for a good alternative indoor activity. I need an arsenal of indoor activities because, once the temps reach triple digits, we can’t go outside to play till early evening. Last summer, Mo was content to sit and play with wooden blocks and Megabloks for hours on end. I don’t think that will work this year. So the plan is to alternate between indoor play, educational TV, snacks, a little preschool prep, potty training (fingers crossed on that one), and computer time.

This decision led me down the unfortunate path towards setting up the computer. My first goal was to keep Mo from completely destroying the laptop that has become mine by default. Due to our current living arrangement, I do not have access to my beloved pc tower with Vista, so I’m using Mike’s old work laptop, which has XP. The first thing I discovered was that unlike Vista (and the new Windows7), XP does not have built in parental controls for user accounts. Bah. I set up a limited user account (as opposed to administrator) for Kurt so that he couldn’t randomly download or change crucial settings. I then proceeded to customize the user settings to what I thought would be most pleasing to an almost 3 year old. I made Firefox the default browser (more on this choice momentarily), changed the desktop picture to the picture of fish (I’ll find a better picture later), made the type big, chose the biggest cursor I could find and slowed down the cursor speed considerably. I then added short cuts to Paint and WordPad to the desktop. I made the desktop picture “center” instead of “stretch” so that there was a border where I could put shortcut icons. I thought this would make it easier for Mo to see them.

Further research led to the discovery that IE has built in parental controls to filter content. That’s great, except that the settings applied to all users. Any, we prefer Firefox to IE. Since this feature is standard on IE and other browsers, it surely must be on Firefox, right? You would think, wouldn’t you? Turns out I needed to find an add-on. Okay, fine. So the first one I find and download is “FoxFilter,” an effective enough filter, but lacks a crucial feature. The free version is not password protected, so your children could simply disable it anytime they want. Of course, you could always subscribe to the premium service for $10/year. Right. I disabled this when I found ProCon LatteFirefox without my supervision, so I did not add a shortcut to the desktop.

I began to think that perhaps a simpler browser might be good for a toddler’s use. Firefox is great for older kids, but I thought perhaps all the buttons and options would be too overwhelming for a beginner. So I started looking for a streamlined program with fewer choices and specifically designed with the little ones in mind. I came across a kid browser called “Kido’z” and decided to try it out. The child doesn’t need to know how to read to use it, and it is a very, very simple browser. It is so simple, in fact, that it does not feature a “refresh” button. Mo took to it immediately, as he can choose between thumbnails of his favorite websites. This helps me, because he calls every website “PBS Kids” for some reason. At this age, he’s too young to “surf,” and really just wants access to the same familiar sites. Unlike some other options I saw, Kido’z allows the parent to add sites in addition to the ones that are already featured. It automatically filters for content as well as age appropriateness. There is a premium service offered at around $40 that gives you more control options, but for us this is not necessary. There are a couple websites that are not supported by the browser, and those can only be viewed on “grown up” browsers such as FireFox. Otherwise, I feel confident that Mo can operate this browser on his own once he has computer skills. There is also a social networking and email feature where Kido’z users can befriend each other, but I don’t think we’ll be using that for a while. I also want to mention that the browser keeps Mo from accidentally exiting the program. You can’t even pull up the task bar while in the program. I added the shortcut to the desktop so that Mo could find it easily.

I had one more problem to solve, but the solution was obvious. I mentioned before that this is a laptop, and I wish to protect it as much as I can until I can get my PC tower back. Also, the keyboard is small and has the little red button “mouse” in the middle of the keyboard. I sometimes use a trackball instead of a mouse, but that does not keep Mo from being distracted by the bright red dot as well as all the other extraneous buttons in close proximity to the keys I’d prefer him to focus on. So we decided to buy Mo his own keyboard and mouse. There are numerous brightly-colored, expensive toddler keyboards out there, the least pricey being Crayola. Since Mo will seldom, if ever, be out of my sight while using the computer (mostly he’ll be sitting on my lap, I think), we decided instead to purchase a cheap keyboard and mouse that he can trash. The less options the better. Mo is attracted to the computer partially because it doesn’t look like a toy, so I don’t think he will mind a plain, black keyboard and mouse. I can always add stickers, etc. to help him learn certain functions later on. For instance, I think I might add a sticker to the right mouse button so that it’s easier for him to remember which one to click. P A smaller mouse is preferable for smaller hands, but Mo grabs his dad’s relatively large mouse with little problem. We have yet to purchase these yet, but I found some good candidates on Walmart.com. For all its faults, Walmart is a good source for disposable merchandise.

The next step was to research and preload websites and activities for Mo to use, but that is another post entirely.