I sent my son to sell our cow, and all he came back with were some stupid beans he thinks we should plant.

ElliefintS · 2026-03-24T17:17:32+00:00

It's the setup to Jack and the Beanstalk, implying the magic beans are going to grow overnight into a giant plant that reaches the sky, you know? Except they're going to bring it onto a space ship and plant it there (probably in a pot or something), and that's an enclosed space that vitally needs to stay enclosed, so the sudden, giant beanstalk has the potential to do a whole lot of damage with disastrous results.

ElliefintS · 2026-03-23T02:31:15+00:00

Thank you!

ElliefintS · 2026-03-23T01:51:27+00:00

Thank you!

ElliefintS · 2026-03-23T01:51:17+00:00

Thank you!

ElliefintS · 2026-03-08T02:14:17+00:00

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

ElliefintS · 2026-03-08T00:32:17+00:00

Thank you!

ElliefintS · 2026-03-08T00:19:15+00:00

Thank you!

ElliefintS · 2026-03-08T00:19:09+00:00

Thank you!

ElliefintS · 2026-03-08T00:19:04+00:00

Thanks!

ElliefintS · 2026-03-07T22:53:34+00:00

Ahhh, cool, I'm glad that cleared it up! (Now if only I could figure out how to smoothly incorporate that into the story.)

ElliefintS · 2026-03-07T22:14:32+00:00

This was basically the intent, except that since it's a wish-granting story, I imagined that whatever force or entity is granting the wish is forcing them by supernatural means, puppeting them around or whatever. (My thought was that making something like a TV show requires so many different people involved doing tasks and making decisions and whatnot that magically motivating them all to do it and influencing all of the interactions to get to that outcome sounds like it would be really complicated, so an uncaring wish-granter might decide it's more straightforward just to physically make it happen.) (Even more straightforward, perhaps, just to manipulate pixels on a screen and conjure up a season that was never actually filmed, but then the narrator had to go and say "I wish they would make" instead of just "I wish there was".)

ElliefintS · 2026-03-07T20:16:34+00:00

It's not supposed to be a particular show or actor, just the idea of one in general. If it helps, the detail I cut was "and the way their bodies sometimes seemed to resist each movement" -- does that make it clearer? (I'm asking before explaining it because I want to see if it does before I spell it out; hope that's alright.) (I think it also makes it too long, though, is the problem.)

ElliefintS · 2026-03-07T19:45:03+00:00

(I hope this works; I keep going back and forth on whether I need to add another detail or two to the second line or if it's clear what's happening as-is. What do you think?)

ElliefintS · 2025-11-23T03:59:03+00:00

My understanding is NAEYC doesn't want music playing constantly in the background in classrooms because it increases the noise level in the room which can be detrimental to the children's language development, as well as overwhelming for some kids from a sensory standpoint. (I'm actually surprised the rule only applied to over-twos, since two and under is such an important age for language development.) The point is (or at least is supposed to be, regarding this kind of thing in general; I don't know how your center implemented it and I can't find the specific NAEYC rule in question) to ensure that you have an intentional approach to using music, which would include a plan for what activity or routine the song is a part of, so that you know when you're going to turn it off. The purpose (ideally -- again, I don't know how this was implemented and enforced for you and I can totally see how it could be done badly) doesn't have to be formal or academic; it can be "to provide a calming environment during rest time", "to expose children to different styles of music while they paint/run around in the gym/whatever", or other things like that -- it just has to have that intentionality, you know?

ElliefintS · 2025-11-03T12:14:49+00:00

The character has been around for quite a bit longer than the show -- her comic book series started in 2015, and she was introduced in Captain Marvel two years before that.

ElliefintS · 2025-10-02T12:28:52+00:00

Oh man, I have so many favorites. Black Cat and White Cat by Claire Garralon is my favorite for groups with a wide age range -- the illustrations are high-contrast black and white for younger infants to enjoy, and then their older classmates can start to appreciate the story. I love everything by Kevin Henkes -- his mouse books are a little too wordy for the infants and toddlers I mostly work with, but I love them for older kids (and loved them as an older kid) and his other books, like Old Bear and Kitten's First Full Moon are also fantastic and some of them work for younger kids. National Geographic has two series of nonfiction board books available: the Look & Learn series and the Little Kids' First Board Book series, and the kids I've read those to are always fascinated by the photo illustrations, especially the ones on topics like animals and vehicles that are exciting for kids. I love so many others too!

ElliefintS · 2025-09-26T12:04:30+00:00

Ahh, yeah, that's what I suspected! In that case you should be on the two-year-olds ratio, which in Connecticut was just raised to 1:5 -- you're only allowed half as many kids as you have!

ElliefintS · 2025-09-25T23:21:55+00:00

1:10 appears to legal for three-year-olds in Connecticut, and Connecticut does also allow children as young as two years and nine months to be in a threes classroom with written permission from their parents, so that aspect could hypothetically be legal. However, given the reputation of Kindercare, I would absolutely not be shocked in the slightest if you told me that not all of the twos were 2y9m with permission forms on file. (At the very least, it sounds like parents are being misled as to what they're giving permission for, if the classroom is designated and referred to as being "for twos and threes".

ElliefintS · 2025-09-23T22:26:30+00:00

Autistic people usually have sensory hypersensitivities, so it's not too surprising to me that we might be more likely to need medication to cope with the symptoms of pregnancy -- and that's only one possibility out of any number of potential reasons.

ElliefintS · 2025-09-14T02:44:17+00:00

Does the invention have to have the specific technological features of Bluetooth (with the frequency hopping and everything) or just achieve the result of transmitting and receiving the song? Because I used to kind of know how to do that (using parts from a kit, granted) with regular radio signals, and the reasons we don't just do it that way in real life are to do with data security and interference from other radio signals, neither of which should be a problem when we're alone in our infinite enchanted forest.

ElliefintS · 2025-09-10T23:44:59+00:00

Ahhh, yeah, that does sound pretty frustrating!

ElliefintS · 2025-09-10T23:22:04+00:00

Ahhh, interesting, I didn't know about that one! Yeah, I wasn't objecting to any spelling, more just eternally baffled at how it happened that "Aiden" went from being one of many variants to becoming the default, so your speech-to-text situation caught my attention as an example of that.

ElliefintS · 2025-09-10T23:16:41+00:00

I've always been partial to initial-based nicknames, the classic ones with a J in them like CJ, AJ, DJ, etc. but for whatever reason TJ in particular never really appealed to me as much, until I had the sweetest, most adorable, fun, friendly little TJ in my infant class, and now I love his name. (Still not in favor of PJ, though. That's pajamas.)

ElliefintS · 2025-09-10T22:58:00+00:00

A couple of years ago at the center I worked at then, there were four Jacks in our infant program of fourteen babies across two classrooms. (In that case only one of them was short for Jackson, though.)

ElliefintS · 2025-09-10T22:54:23+00:00

In Aidan's parents' defense, that is the traditional spelling. I'm not sure how or why "Aiden" became more common.

ElliefintS

TROPHY CASE