Wednesday, April 25, 2012 at 9:44AM I started a Facebook page for the blog, so if you like it (the blog, that is), you should "like" it here.
First post-baby date to the ballet, a toddler room re-do and some other gratuitous cuteness.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012 at 12:38PM Yesterday at a playdate, over a mojito ("Would you guys like to come over and play? Can I make you a mojito?" let me think... YES.) I had a conversation with a friend who is planning to take her two and a half year old son to Disneyland soon. Apparently, upon telling others of this plan, she's been met with lots of comments like, "Why? He won't remember it."
Now, I'll interrupt myself for just a moment to say: I love Disneyland. The Disney industrial complex? That, I could critique for hours unabated. It's an unfortunate thing, to be sure: stories that re-enforce the heteronormative, that teach girls that physical beauty is of utmost importance, in which problem solving is all but absent and "heroines" are doomed by their own trusting nature to wait in peril until a handsome guy shows up to save them from themselves, or, in some cases, someone else. Someone...ugly! The horror. I dislike just about everything those stories represent, but somehow I am able to divorce that distaste from my feelings about Disneyland. Main Street's cherry sours, the Matterhorn's abominable snowman, Space Mountain's winding line -- I love it all and, since I grew up in Southern California, have been there more times than I could count. I am stoked for her and stoked for her son.
Okay, back to it: When my friend told me that people poo-pooed her plans for a family vacation to Disneyland, I was surprised. Who in their right mind would advise against taking kids somewhere they are guaranteed to find magical, just because they might not remember every second of the trip? Do they parent this way all the time, and if so, what kinds of things do they consider passable, just because their child won't remember? And then it dawned on me. Cry-it-out. Circumcision. Feeding schedules. Spanking. I've heard them all justified the same way. Oh, they won't remember! It's easier to do it now, when they won't remember.
I try not to dwell on this sort of thinking too often, but occasionally I'll look back on a day and ask myself: if this were George's (or, now, Zelda's!) last day, would I feel bad about the choices I made today? I don't think, "Eh, who cares? In 10 years he won't remember that I yelled at him!" or "I'll just let her cry; she won't remember it when she's 20!" I replay our days, hopeful that the love and respect I feel for my children was evident in my actions and my words. If I can't honestly say that it was, I apologize and promise to try again the next day. It doesn't matter if my kid is 6 months old or 65; the way I treat them doesn't hinge on what they'll be able to recall, but what will assure them of my love in the present and future, and what will, I hope, better their lives.
In the running for first memory: the time we forced him to go sledding
A lifetime is made up of a million small decisions, outcomes, and lessons, right? Patterns get created; habits form; preferences take shape. While I'm the first to admit that some days are a total wash and subsequently try to forgive myself, I also realize that those days aren't necessarily immediately water under the bridge. Even minor parenting missteps can have lasting effects that our children can't always articulate. Does the fact that I raise my voice in excitement -- both angry and otherwise -- create a yeller? Well, duh: yes. But, if my son hollered in the library, do you think he could explain that he was doing so because he heard me yell last Wednesday when I was railing about the Presidential primaries? Probably not. On the flip side, however, if he can remind me of the location of every public restroom in every store or restaurant he's ever visited? Some things must be sinking in. There's no scientific journal quite like a two year old, and certainly none as cute.
The nothing-counts-before-five(?) rule may work for some families, but I'd rather not go through my kids' early lives with fingers crossed that this punishment/pain/other regrettable situation isn't the dreaded first memory. And what will that first memory be? The one they recount on a lazy morning in bed when asked by a boyfriend or girlfriend; the one they tell in a team building exercise at a new job; the one they talk about around the fire at sleepaway camp? I don't know. But if it can't be a story about meeting Winnie the Pooh, I'd gladly settle for a memory of loving, attentive parents in some mundane, everyday situation. Our luck, though? It'll totally be the sledding.
circumcision, disney, disneyland, kids, memories, mojitos, parenting, remembering, spanking, toddlers in family Wednesday, April 18, 2012 at 9:47PM On Facebook the other day, Dee posted a link to an article about a play garden. George likes to mess around in our fallow raised bed, though between him and the chickens this has proven a bad pastime for the growing season. Our family plot will be locked down with chicken wire this year, high enough to keep a curious toddler and his three clucking cohorts at bay until their "assistance" is needed, but I wanted George to have a place to grow things of his own, to dig and hunt for worms and shovel away to his heart's content. I also wanted it to have some sensory components aside from the squishy mud, and The Imagination Tree's post about their sweet little garden gave me some inspiration.
Ordinarily, I am not one to recommend shopping at the dollar store, as I usually find thrift shops more fruitful and less, well, crappy, but when you've got about 20 solid, no-cry-guarantee minutes to get supplies for both a garden and dinner, you do whatcha gotta do. At the dollar store, I found:
And at Home Depot, which shares the parking lot with the dollar store -- another place I would not ordinarily discuss patronizing, as there is a lovely local hardware shop and there are myriad pleasant little nurseries around -- I got:
At home, we already had a little trowel, a shovel and some terra cotta pots. I found some rocks and stones in the yard and piled them in one corner of the garden.
I used some of the soil from our raised bed, as it needs to be supplemented anyway, and made a large-ish dirt pile in the hopes that George might not dig up the plants. The rocks and stones, I imagine, will gather some critters underneath (looking for and identifying bugs is currently a hot hobby around here), and a blackberry branch that needs to be pruned back is holding up the wind chime whose cheapness is, honestly, rather obvious. The dull clinking adds something nice to the space, though; I'm glad I thought to buy it. Already, the scents of the lavender and mint waft around when you walk by...especially when a certain hapless gardener is accidentally crushing the plants with his galoshes.
An hour of this morning was spent playing in the new garden, a good portion of which "makin' dinosaur fossils!" with his little raptor. Sometimes I am confounded over the fact that two years ago, my full-sentence-speaking, archaeology-interested child was this small and drooly:
His sister enjoyed the view from her little coccoon, and maybe she'll be big enough to dig around a little, herself, by the time summer's really here. Because summer doesn't really get here until August, anyway.
Happy spring!
Wednesday, April 11, 2012 at 10:36PM It's a cliché, but for good reason, I guess: mothering comes with a decent amount of guilt attached. Guilt that you're overindulging, guilt that you're depriving, guilt that you've made the wrong decision. Holidays shouldn't induce guilt, but they often do, and the Spring ones are no exception. This year, George noticed those dreadful pre-made Easter baskets in the stores. Specifically, he noticed the one displayed prominently at our local grocery store that seemed to have been made just to entice him -- containing not one, but two full-sized, "big guy" basketballs -- and he asked to buy it on more than one occasion. When I tried feebly to explain that, actually, those are Easter baskets and we don't celebrate Easter, but rather we have a very long dinner during which we read a story and eat some food ("Noodles?!" Uh, no...) and drink a lot of wine, well, he was unimpressed. Passover has no dreidel and gelt, no presents. It's an admittedly tough sell to a two year old, albeit one I'm more than willing to keep peddling, as these traditions are important. The least "fun" being, arguably, the most important.
So, as we sat around our hosts' seder table for the second year running -- as our friend led the meal in broken Hebrew befitting a crowd of Athiests, cultural Jews and... others -- my son ran around with his new little friend, having as much fun as a couple of toddlers could have at a Pesach seder. He spit out the maror, passed wholesale on the dinner and didn't live up to my dorky dream of joining everyone in saying cheerfully, "Next year in Jerusalem!" now that he actually could.
I felt bad for bringing a rowdy child to a seder, no matter how irreverent. I wanted to supply coloring pages, to make a cute felt envelope for the afikomen and pass out masks illustrating the plagues for any guests who were game to wear them, but my shit was decidedly not together. I wanted George to have fun, to see that he didn't need an Easter basket or a chocolate bunny, but I also wanted him to understand the gravity of a holiday without gimmicks. I failed, it seemed, on both counts. And felt guilty.
Despite all that, after a lovely meal with friends new, old and somewhere in between -- Zelda's first seder -- we came home and went to bed. The next day was glorious. Sunshiny. Springtime. I decided to give myself a break: that our cultural identity wouldn't be compromised if I indulged a little, to celebrate this beautiful season. After all, we've made it through the winter, and our modern, first world plagues: seasonal affective disorder, outrageous heating costs, perpetually damp pant hems and a lack of local fresh fruit, icy roads, waiting for the bus in the rain. Our chickens are laying reliably again -- as sure a sign of improved conditions as any -- so bright eggs may as well be hidden around their yard for a sun-starved toddler to find.
Find them he did. And he had a ball. More fun than his time playing around the Pesach seder? Who's to say? And does it matter? Cultural sell-out or not, I want my kids to have fond memories of childhood. While that might not mean they get the double basketball grocery store Easter basket, I'm pretty okay with the plain old wicker one, and eggs filled with dimes. And if later they decide to go back outside to hunt for worms?
Yeah, much better than a stuffy church. Or temple, for that matter. Sunday best is relative.
Friday, March 9, 2012 at 9:52PM
Boy oh boy are we watching a lot of TV. We are also: waiting for a nursing break to strap on the baby and play some indoor soccer/have a dance off; doing manicures; "playing bowling"; watching insane amounts of condor/panda/elephant cam. 'Tis better to watch entire seasons of Super Why and Little Bear from the comfort of one's snuggly couch than be mean mom, so watch entire seasons we shall.
