Sunday 27 February 2011

Sunday Projects

  • (Unsuccessfully) attempt to sleep in – apparently the ability to sleep late into the day is not a genetic trait that passes on to ones children.
  • Drink coffee and read the papers – well Gábor read a paper, I don't suppose it is really "reading the paper" when it is online. Anyway this project was just about possible except for the occasional "Muuuuum!" or "Apaaaaa!" yelled from the other room. Lily's desk used to be her sanctuary for her drawings and her small things, unfortunately Ernö has learned to climb but Lily hasn't adapted to this new set up yet.
  • Listening to Gábor reading Folk Tales (from the book from the library which is the same as the one that Lily's Teacher reads) while snuggled up under the duvet.
  • Manó cabin construction – A Manó is creature a bit like a gnome but it lives in the forest not by a garden pond. Lily has a little one made of felt who apparently does not have an adequate home at the moment. Not to worry though, Gabor and Lily are taking it upon themselves to give this poor creature the most stunning home a Manó could dream of. So far the have made bricks from clay, built a brick wall with a chimney and started construction of the 3 other wooden walls. Lily has already woven a rug for it and I have promised to do some felt landscaping.
  • Piroska és a farkas books planning (INCOMPLETE) – We found these lovely little books in the Library. 5 books, all telling the story of Little Red Riding Hood; no words, only picture, each book done by a different artist. Lily has had the wonderful idea of us making our own. This project I am getting a little carried away with (I have been planning stitching little books and making hard back covers for them). I am trying to convince Lily that a project like this needs some planning and that story boards would be a good place to start but she doesn't believe me and is resisting. So far we have only gone as far as telling the story to each other and thinking what are the essential elements of the story and considering what materials we are each going to use. Lily has opted for water colours, Gábor – simple pencil, and I am thinking about some kind of cut paper collage.
  • Dinner – yes, we have dinner everyday but today it seemed like a bit of a project, unfortunately I had misplaced the camera when all 4 of us were sat round the table tearing the stalks out of an enormous bag of spinach for the lasagne. (I found the camera inside the arm chair – I think I was sitting on it at some point to try to stop Ernö from playing with it. He loves the camera at the moment, he likes to say hello to the little people on the screen)
  • Apple Chip Experiment - FAILED
  • Re-watch Doctor Who (11th Doctor) before the next season starts – Gábor had sudden panic today that we haven't started this project yet and we may be running out of time so we should get started. Ernö had a sudden tantrum, exhauseted himself and went to bed, delaying the commencement of this project.
  • I have one more project to do before I go to bed. Make the yogurt for the week (although I didn't get round to make the granola today and the apple chips failed so it will just be naked yogurt in the morning) this one gets saved for right before bed. Once the culture is added to the milk it needs to be kept cosy by hugging it all night. It is definitely the simplest and snuggliest yogurt recipe I have found.

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Saturday 26 February 2011

Providing some visuals

Gábor descrided a few scenes from our home the other day and I thought I would add some photos of them.






In our family Gábor normaly does the words and I do the images. I am try to breakout of my comfort zone and I would like to encourage Gábor to step out of his too. My friend Gail has an irrational fear that there will be no pictures of her and her son together if she dies and I am starting to develop this fear too. I am almost always the one behind the camera and when Gábor does take a few naps they are generaly pretty awful. Maybe if you took more photos, my love, you would develop some skills as a photographer.

Sunday 13 February 2011

Today she learned the letter “D”

A couple of years ago, Lily and her friend taught each other to read and write in Finnish. They would write notes to each other, make puzzle books filled with word puzzles and write stories and annotate pictures. She learned to read pretty well in Finnish and was also doing pretty well with reading English (despite it being a silly language with spelling that makes no sense). Since moving to Hungary her Hungarian reading has excelled. She comes home from the library with a stack of books each week and laps them up. Despite complaining that English is the hardest language that she knows to read in, she read me the bedtime stories last week. Then the other day when I was asking her about what they had been doing in school, she announced "today we learned the letter d".

She learned? Really?

Initially I reminded that she learned "D" about 3 years ago, so she didn't actually learn it in class. But I have reconsidered that. She said "WE learned ...D". If we consider that knowledge emerges collaboratively within a context then perhaps Lily was right; THEY did learn D. Ahh Lily, a natural postmodernist.

On a separate but (vaguely) related note: All vowels are sonorants, as are the speech sounds l and m. Therefore "Liliom" is a name that is made for singing.

Friday 11 February 2011

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stuff

Sometimes I think that our 50m2, 2 room apartment is too small for my family of 4. Then I start thinking that the problem is too small for 4 people's stuff. But I think the truth of the matter is, given that we are the products of a consumerists society, we 4 people simply have too much stuff.




Edit:
I wrote these 3 sentences and then stared at the computer for a long time. I asked Gábor if he thought it was enough to leave the blog entry as 3 sentences or if I should write a longer explanation. Eventually I decided that I had said all that needed said...here is Gábor's response

Monday 7 February 2011

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On Blogging


Some reason I feel like I should apologise for the last post. While I like the text (mostly) and genuinely wanted to share it, but somehow it seems out of place, a bit of a cop out. Perhaps it lies in my motivation for posting, I think it was really that I wanted to post something – to keep things moving – but wasn’t sure what to write. A/r/tography has been populating most of my thoughts and so when I sit down to write, I want to write about the understandings I have come to about this methodology about living this kind of inquiry. But that would be like spoilers; like being told the story before you read the book – would it not? So I stop and don’t know what else to write.
But then again, I have played with the idea of using the blog as a “study journal”. I like the idea of study journals, it is important to spend some follow up time reflecting on articles, lectures, seminars etc, raising questions and making connections. However, I have had trouble writing them in the past. I normally need someone (normally Gábor by default) to listen to me as I reflect, comments are helpful but a “hmm” or an “I see” is enough, but a journal just doesn’t give enough response. Perhaps a blog would work, maybe I will get enough response to help me put my thought together (and give Gábor a break from listening to me).
I have also been wondering about comments on blogs, well specifically Gábor’s blog. I often have comment on his posts but he is normally sitting next to me as I read them. I want to make the comment on the blog but I can talk faster than I can type. I try to keep it in, but I can’t. But then I wonder if I should type it anyway, even once I have said it. Is that just odd?, or is it just blogging our dialogue like we blog the events in our like?
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