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Showing posts with label child. Show all posts
Showing posts with label child. Show all posts
Insomniatic Musings Child Of The Month
Now - let me just point out that i've been so lax with running features that i cant even remember which friday of each month i said i would do Child of the Month. So, forgive if i'm a little out of wack here ......
NAME: Emily Bear
AGE: 8 years old and counting
CUTENESS FACTOR: Off the scale!
REASON FOR FEATURING: I’m featuring Emily Bear for two reasons: firstly because she’s talented, and secondly ? Because she’s just so cute! Seriously – have you seen her on the “ The Ellen Degeneres Show “ ? She’s just pure cuteness on a stick! Altogether now….awwww. For those who haven’t seen her on TV, Emily is a young piano prodigy who also happens to be adorable. I’ve seen her twice on “ The Ellen Degeneres Show “ and although I’m no music virtuoso myself, I have to admit she’s pretty impressive for her tender age. I mean, she composed a song for Ellen and Portia for their wedding, which made Ellen cry. How sweet is that?
Amongst her other achievements: she played at the White House when she was 6 years old; she's the youngest musician ever to have featured at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago ( ok, this one doesnt mean anything to me but apparently its noteworthy ) and she's released 4 albums so far. 4 albums at 8 years of age..... holy guacamole.
I suppose the cynics amongst you might argue that she’s probably being pushed by bossy stage parents, or that any pieces that have been written by Emily must have been, at least in part, written by an adult. Shame on you! Sure, maybe her parents did push her to start piano lessons at a very, very young age ( NOTE: I’m not saying they did. If your Emily Baer’s parents, please don’t sue me ) – but most children that age wont keep something up unless they really enjoy it. They also wont be good at something unless they have a natural ability and a passion for it. So, as far as I’m concerned Emily Bear is a cute, talented little moppet whether its her choosing or not.
So congratulations to Emily Bear on being Insomniatic Musings Child of the Month – see what kind of acclaim talent and a cute set of dimples will get you ?
Amongst her other achievements: she played at the White House when she was 6 years old; she's the youngest musician ever to have featured at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago ( ok, this one doesnt mean anything to me but apparently its noteworthy ) and she's released 4 albums so far. 4 albums at 8 years of age..... holy guacamole.
I suppose the cynics amongst you might argue that she’s probably being pushed by bossy stage parents, or that any pieces that have been written by Emily must have been, at least in part, written by an adult. Shame on you! Sure, maybe her parents did push her to start piano lessons at a very, very young age ( NOTE: I’m not saying they did. If your Emily Baer’s parents, please don’t sue me ) – but most children that age wont keep something up unless they really enjoy it. They also wont be good at something unless they have a natural ability and a passion for it. So, as far as I’m concerned Emily Bear is a cute, talented little moppet whether its her choosing or not.
So congratulations to Emily Bear on being Insomniatic Musings Child of the Month – see what kind of acclaim talent and a cute set of dimples will get you ?
Feature Friday: Insomniatic Musings Child of the Month
Name: Olive Hoover Age : 7 years old
Hometown: Alberqueque, New Mexico
You Know Her From Where ?: The film " Little Miss Sunshine ".
Reason for featuring: Because she is one of my favourite child film characters of the last few years. For starters - look how cute she is with her little teeth, and her chubby cheeks and her huge glasses. Seriously, those glasses could rival the specs i wore as a child, so anyone who can wear those and look so gosh darn cute is a-ok with me. But what i really love about her is her self confidence. If you havent seen " Little Miss Sunshine " ( why not ? Go rent it now! ) little Olive wants to win a beauty pageant, and her whole dysfunctional family take a road trip in effort to help her achieve that dream. Her father is a motivational speaker who cant sell a damn thing; her brother has taken a vow of silence; her grandfather is hilariously funny, but addicted to drugs; her uncle is a suicidal gay scholar; and her mum is trying to hold everyone together. And Olive ? She's just this little kid that likes to dance and 80's throwback sweats.
What i love is that Olive has no real idea that her family is so dysfunctional, and neither does she think of herself as awkward ( even though the massive glasses would, stereotypically, suggest " nerd " ). Nope, Olive is just a sweet, chubby, little girl with a dream - and a an awesome pageant coach/ junkie Grandpa who encourages it. The whole final dance scene at the pageant, and Olives attitude in the face of pageant judgery ( is that a word? it is now... ) just melts my heart.
So here's to Olive Hoover - to her big glasses, her old school sweatbands, her awesome choice of music, and her dysnfunctional family. A worthy recipient of Insomniatic Musings Child of the Month.
The Unveiling
Alright - so i spent a few hours trolling websites looking for a free Blogger skins and this ( God, please tell me you noticed! ) is what i came up with. Why the fish ? Well, i have goldfish and i liked the imagery of the one goldfish making the leap from the bowl. I'm making a leap right ? Sure, i've been leaping for quite a damn while and havent exactly landed yet, and when i do land my fishbowl wont be empty ( it'll have a partner and a baby fish in it! ) but still - it said something to me. So there you have it - i've gone from Lauren Bacall to goldfish. Decide for yourself whether that was the right direction to take.
Now, as far as this new regular feature i mentioned.... i'm having a baby, i like children, kids are great. So, in that vein, why not celebrate them ? So, here it is:
Now, as far as this new regular feature i mentioned.... i'm having a baby, i like children, kids are great. So, in that vein, why not celebrate them ? So, here it is:
" INSOMNIATIC MUSINGS CHILD OF THE MONTH "
NAME: Bartholomew Jojo Simpson ( aka " Bart " )
AGE: 10 years ( and has been since 1989.... )
HOMETOWN: Springfield, SomeStateNo-oneKnows, USA
REASON FOR FEATURING: Bart gets to be my first featured child of the month basically because he's the most famous 10 year old in the world. Right ? I'm pretty sure even children in war torn 3rd world countries know who is. So what do we know about him? He's the eldest of the Simpson children; he has mad skateboarding skills; his hero is Krusty the Clown; he had a number one hit in the 90's with " Do The Bartman "; and, suprisingly enough, he's voiced by a woman.
Bart has always been my equal favourite Simpsons character ( its hard to go past Homer... ). In fact, when i was around 10 years of age my self, my parents banned my brother and I from watching the Simpsons because they thought Bart had too much of an influence on our behaviour. Which, lets face it, cant be that good - he's a smart arse ( " Eat my shorts! ), he pays little attention at school and revels in raising hell for Principal Skinner, and just does naughty things in general ( hello prank calls to Moes Tavern! ). But that doesnt mean Bart doesnt have a heart of gold. We've seen it from time to time - helping Grandpa find the Hellfsih Bonanza; getting Lisa's yearbook signed by the " cool kids " on vacation; and taking up bike riding and tea-partying with Marge when no-one else would. THAT'S why i love him: he's mischevious and rebellious and sometimes downright rude, but when it comes down to it he's a little sweetheart.
And so, thats the first of my Child of the Month feature posts. The child of the month may be a fiction character from either tv, film or literature; a particularly talented or prodigious real world child; or just a kid i know that i reckon deserves a write up. So, in the spirit of keeping it interesting for the rest of you, if you have a candidate that you'd like featured that fits that bill, drop me a comment and let me know!
Until we walk in those shoes....
I have been reading the latest post on Richard Catto's blog and it has prompted me to share something with you. For those of you who havent read it, Richards writes about a story he read in the news of a young girl killed by a stray bullet in a suburban neighbourhood, an area which her mother did not leave even though she thought herself in enough danger to call Chubb security. It is not so much the story itself that has prompted me - sadly, violence has become an all too common occurence - but what Richard has written in his comments following :
I wonder if her marriage will survive this (assuming she’s married, that is)? I don’t think I could stay married to such a woman. I would blame her for the death of my child and never be able to get over it.
Four weeks before my 6th birthday, on Christmas Eve 1989, my brother died. He was not a victim of violence, but his was a child's life lost nonetheless. He was almost 2 years old, two weeks from this milestone, and being a small child he had fallen asleep on the way to my nan's house on the other side of town. Being so young myself, i do not remember the exact details of the day, but i do remember that when Eli woke up he did not appear to know who anybody was. He had already begun to talk, to communicate in small broken sentences, but he couldnt recognise my parents or myself, or my brother. Nobody. He was just crying, screaming, non-stop. He was also feverish, as far as i remember. My parenst took him to the local hospital, where he was diagnosed with meningitis, an illness that causes inflammation of the covers over the central nervous system area of the brain. It was decided that he needed to be rushed to a specialist childs hospital in Sydney, by helicopter, which would normally take around half an hour. On this particular Christmas Eve, their was fog covering the Blue Mounatins (hich serve as a gateway to Sydney from the west)and, whilst being transferred from the helicopter to a more suitable plane, my brother passed away.
He did not make it to the hospital for treatment, and was pronounced dead on arrival.
The point of sharing this story is to demonstrate my disagreeance with Richards idea that he could never forgive this particular woman her mistake, if he were the childs father. Perhaps disagreeance is not the right term, because i do see where those feelings come from, but i do not think things are so black and white as that.
I have never spoken to my parents candidly about how they felt when my brother died. Being a small child at the time, you understand that mummy and daddy are sad, you are sad, everybody is sad because Eli has gone away and cant ever come back. It's not until your late teens ( in my case ) that it occurs to you that there is more than just sadness involved. I would imagine that their would be a massive degree of guilt to be sorted through. I do not think my parents would have blamed each other, but blamed themselves. That is, they would not have blamed one another as seperate people, but rather themselves as a parenting unit - what if WE had taken him to the doctor at the first sign of fever ? What if WE had called an ambulance sooner ? What if WE had recognised his symptoms as signs of meningitis rather than just a simple cold, or earache? Surely they must have felt guilt at the actions they did not take but, rather than rip them apart, i think it may have brought them closer together.
I would like to think that my parents, or myself in their situation, would try and hold onto the love i had for my partner and for my remaining children, even admist the devastation of having lost someone. That i would cling to the to the love that drew me to my partner in teh first place, all the adoration and admiration i had for them before we become parents, and use that as my strength to pull me through my grief. I believe, without ever having confirmed it, that my parents, my father in particular, had quite a difficult time after my brothers death but here is the strange thing - my sister was conceived, and then born in October of 1990, approximately 10 months after my brothers death.
I do not mean to equate physical intimacy with love, but only to say that my parents must have been pulling together, perhaps in one of the best ways they knew how, if only to stop themselves from tearing apart.
I wonder if her marriage will survive this (assuming she’s married, that is)? I don’t think I could stay married to such a woman. I would blame her for the death of my child and never be able to get over it.
Four weeks before my 6th birthday, on Christmas Eve 1989, my brother died. He was not a victim of violence, but his was a child's life lost nonetheless. He was almost 2 years old, two weeks from this milestone, and being a small child he had fallen asleep on the way to my nan's house on the other side of town. Being so young myself, i do not remember the exact details of the day, but i do remember that when Eli woke up he did not appear to know who anybody was. He had already begun to talk, to communicate in small broken sentences, but he couldnt recognise my parents or myself, or my brother. Nobody. He was just crying, screaming, non-stop. He was also feverish, as far as i remember. My parenst took him to the local hospital, where he was diagnosed with meningitis, an illness that causes inflammation of the covers over the central nervous system area of the brain. It was decided that he needed to be rushed to a specialist childs hospital in Sydney, by helicopter, which would normally take around half an hour. On this particular Christmas Eve, their was fog covering the Blue Mounatins (hich serve as a gateway to Sydney from the west)and, whilst being transferred from the helicopter to a more suitable plane, my brother passed away.
He did not make it to the hospital for treatment, and was pronounced dead on arrival.
The point of sharing this story is to demonstrate my disagreeance with Richards idea that he could never forgive this particular woman her mistake, if he were the childs father. Perhaps disagreeance is not the right term, because i do see where those feelings come from, but i do not think things are so black and white as that.
I have never spoken to my parents candidly about how they felt when my brother died. Being a small child at the time, you understand that mummy and daddy are sad, you are sad, everybody is sad because Eli has gone away and cant ever come back. It's not until your late teens ( in my case ) that it occurs to you that there is more than just sadness involved. I would imagine that their would be a massive degree of guilt to be sorted through. I do not think my parents would have blamed each other, but blamed themselves. That is, they would not have blamed one another as seperate people, but rather themselves as a parenting unit - what if WE had taken him to the doctor at the first sign of fever ? What if WE had called an ambulance sooner ? What if WE had recognised his symptoms as signs of meningitis rather than just a simple cold, or earache? Surely they must have felt guilt at the actions they did not take but, rather than rip them apart, i think it may have brought them closer together.
I would like to think that my parents, or myself in their situation, would try and hold onto the love i had for my partner and for my remaining children, even admist the devastation of having lost someone. That i would cling to the to the love that drew me to my partner in teh first place, all the adoration and admiration i had for them before we become parents, and use that as my strength to pull me through my grief. I believe, without ever having confirmed it, that my parents, my father in particular, had quite a difficult time after my brothers death but here is the strange thing - my sister was conceived, and then born in October of 1990, approximately 10 months after my brothers death.
I do not mean to equate physical intimacy with love, but only to say that my parents must have been pulling together, perhaps in one of the best ways they knew how, if only to stop themselves from tearing apart.
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