And as long as I'm posting syrupy updates about the children:

The Sandyshoes family are big fans of The Muppet Show.  We have never seen Hannah Montana or American Idol, but we have all the old Muppet Shows on DVD and the girls know all the guest stars, many of whom their peers have never even heard of.  Dom Deluise, Peter Sellers, Gilda Radner, Valerie Harper, Carol Burnett, George Burns, John Cleese, Dudley Moore, Ethel Merman, and many, many more.  Luminaries!  Statler and Waldorf heckling Milton Berle... it doesn't get better than that.  See for yourself:



The Peanut will often pop a Muppet Show episode in to chill out with when she gets home from school.  She has special favorites that she likes to watch again and again and again.  She gets to know all the musical numbers, and goes beserk for the Muppet News sketches ("This is a Muppet News Flash:  a charter flight carrying the London Symphony Orchestra has been forced to jettison some of the musical instruments [piano falls on newsman].)   Good stuff.


In news you'd think unrelated, the other day there was a Kindergarten Author presentation in her classroom.  Parents were invited to come by and see their kiddos' writing.  The children each had an All About Me booklet in which they'd written and drawn pictures.  It listed their names, birthdays, siblings' and pets' names, favorite foods, etc.  You get it.  One question asked for their favorite song.  And on that line, in her kindergarten print, complete with backwards "y" and little curlicues on the tails of some of her letters, my gentle, cheerful, loving Peanut had written:

Welcome To My Nightmare 

The teacher's eyes got sort of wide when she read it.  I tried to explain about Alice Cooper's guest appearance on The Muppet Show in 1978, but I'm not sure it helped. 


Here's the number the Peanut loves so much (not sure why it has the not-Muppet intro, but whatever):

The child is obsessed. She's talking about dying her hair black when she grows up, and she won't have it in a ponytail anymore because "Mommy, then I can't pretend to be Alice Cooper!"

She's a hoot.  Welcome to my nightmare... I think you're gonna like it.

Guest post by the Bean

The Bean's class had a one-paragraph writing assignment last week.  Topic:  What qualities do you look for in a friend?  Why are these qualities important to you for a friendship?  Here's what she wrote:

These Qualities usually help me with friendship.  Don't look at what they look like, but what is in their heart.  If you want a new friend, and you find someone who looks really pretty, don't take her/him as a friend before you know what is in their heart.  Because if you have a friend that is mean, you will not be very happy.  So if you want a nice friend, look right through them, right into their heart.  The best friends are nice friends that help, share, play, and are nice to you.  These qualities are very inportant to me.  Most of these thing help you choose friends. 

Words to live by, even if the x-ray vision aspect is a little creepy. 

Oh yes, I care enough.

Noted and Blogged is a sap-free zone on Hallmark holidays.

When you care enough to hit "send."

when worlds collide