for girls

On Sunday, as we meandered Goodwill waiting for the baby to fall asleep so we could go eat Mothers' Day lunch, I asked George if he was in the market for anything in particular. He said he wanted a new baby, so to the baby section we headed. Lest you think he was trying to trade in his sister, he did mean a doll; Baby Tony, his little vanilla-smelly Corolle doll, needed a friend, he told me. On the way to the toys we stopped off at the shoe section, because once I spotted a thrashed pair of Wall-E sneakers there and hope to someday find another, wearable pair because I believe in dreaming impossible dreams. I picked up a pair of sandals -- teva-ish numbers in brown and hot pink -- and asked George what he thought. 

"Those for girls." 

What?! "Silly mama, those for girls!" he repeated. 

Okay. I can say with absolute certainty that neither I nor Nathan have ever told him that something was "for girls" or anyone of any gender, for that matter. He owns and regularly chooses to wear hot pink (and purple, and sparkly unicorn-emblazoned) clothes. He doesn't even have a great grasp of who in his life IS a girl (according to him, everyone but his sister is a "guy"). And yet, there he was, poo-pooing the pink sandals. 

There have been a few moments in recent times where I've felt like a contestant on some sort of mean-spirited game show: one where your kid does something, asks a question, makes a comment that requires you to be the perfect parent in response. In this game show, you make the right call and life goes on sort of tenuously as you wait for the next terrifying opportunity to turn your child into a sexist, racist homophobe who eats only simple carbs. An incorrect response, however, is met with a flash forward to your derelict 40 year old son catcalling women on the bus or something. This was one of those moments. I had to stop and suppress the urge to be like what in the hell? I took a deep breath and said, 

"There are no boy or girl shoes, just different shoes that different people like for different reasons." Yes, that ought to do it, I thought. I may have even peered around to see if anyone heard me pull off that expert move. George looked satisfied, even appeared to rethink his dismissal of the hot pink shoes (until he spied a pair of black and red crocs). Feeling like I'd dodged a bullet, or even like I stood my ground and dirty-looked the bullet until it turned around in disgrace, I steered us down the toy aisle in search of a baby doll. Before we made it to the sad pile of naked dolls with one eye permanently stuck open and sharpie stained heads, George got distracted by cars. Something Batmobile-esque caught his eye, but an oversized purple VW Bug with working seatbelts seemed more his speed. I held it up. Then. 

"Mama, this car for GIRLS! I want to hold that one! The scary one!" Good lord. What the crap? I thought we had just settled this! 

"George." I said, "This car is for boys or girls! It's purple; you like purple. Papa has a purple shirt, right?" He looked at me warily. "The black car is for bigger kids." "For bigger GUYS," he insisted. "No," I told him, "bigger kids. Any kids. Any bigger kids." Things were taking a...less articulate turn. I scanned the microfiche in my mind for some relevant article or text on feminism or gender studies and how not to reinforce stereotypical expectations of gender presentation and allow for free expression while supporting your child's own gender identity and and and...

"I want to hold THAT." Huh? "That baby! Oh, so cute! I want to hold that baby! I love it." He was shoving the purple car back at me and pointing excitedly at a half-lidded, cloth bodied doll with limbs akimbo. I took it off the shelf and he snatched it up, cooing at and rocking it like he sees me do with Zelda. He planted a big kiss on its plastic hair. "Is that the toy you choose?" I asked him, and he nodded emphatically. At the cash register, he tried to garner compliments for his new baby by repeating to the cashier, "so cute! Aww, so cute!"

He didn't notice that the woman behind us was buying a black and metallic blue remote control car, and I didn't point it out. It seemed that, despite all my reading, despite my anxiety over the right way to correct him -- gently, factually, without overloading or shaming him -- he figured it out. You know, I'm sure some real a-holes wear pink shoes, but it takes a pretty nice "guy" to fawn over a lazy-eyed, misshapen baby. 

quick hit: placentas, floor beds and sharing

A few things from around the internet:

My doula and friend, David Goldman, was featured on Peaceful Parenting! He's a great resource for information on the benefits of placenta consumption, and I'm so proud to see him getting some recognition, especially on such a well-respected site. 

Melissa of Vibrant Wanderings wrote a pretty great post on sharing from the Montessori perspective. We like and encorporate into our lives lots of the Montessori approach to child-rearing, but are by no means scholars on the subject. Since Zelda's birth, George has caught a(n age appropriate) case of The Mines, and at playdates it was becoming unclear whether I should force him to share or just let the struggles over toys shake out between the kids. This was just the read I needed, and sparked some great discussion amongst my friends when I shared it on Facebook. Thanks (again), Melissa!

Speaking of Montessori, we finally made the transition from George's crib to a floor bed. He loved his crib after moving into it from our bed, when he was about 15 months old, and it became apparent by his all-night starfishing and tossing/turning that he needed his own space. I was inspired by this (very old) post at Bloesem Kids and this (also old) post at Sew Liberated and, after a little whining about the change, George is nothing short of thrilled about his new bed. Some of his more recent frustrations seemed to be centered around being "unable" to do things on his own when I'm occupied with Zelda, so I'm hoping that this will foster his independence a little and show him that it can feel just as good (or better) to do things on his own. It seems to be working, so, awesome. 

Lastly, we've been doing things like this:

G & Z, same outfit, same age (give or take a few weeks). 

misty watercolor memories (of disneyland)

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.

chag sameach

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. 

america's pastime

Did you have a security blanket when you were a kid? I did. A literal security blanket called blanky, homemade and possessing of one perfect blue broadcloth square that I could find in the dark, with my eyes closed, by running my fingers along the blanket's hem until they lit on the threadbare area I liked to work between my thumb and forefinger. I always assumed this was a universal thing, the security blanket. Not necessarily a blanket, but some soft, snuggly object dear to each child. Before George was born, I bought a few different things I anticipated might become his blanky -- a Kathe Kruse sheep head with a floppy flannel body, a little "taggy", a beautiful upcycled monkey -- and I made some quilts but none of them took hold of his little heart. For awhile, I actually worried that George's lack of attachment to an object was abnormal. It turns out, however, that often securely attached children don't need a security object (go figure). So, eventually I gave up on finding him a blanky of his own.

Fast forward to the opening of Christmas stockings, 2010, when George received not one but two small, vinyl soccer balls. The ramp-up to complete ardour was gradual enough that I didn't notice it happening until Soccer Ball's (and, for that matter, Number Three's, as he dubbed the other one) accompaniment was necessary for leaving the house. This coincided with the beginning of a very unexpected body-and-soul obsession with sports.

We are not "sports people." Nathan has a passing interest in baseball; we go to one Mariners game a year, on Fathers' Day, and he watches the World Series when he can, as we don't have cable. We don't get invited to Super Bowl parties; we don't follow basketball; I am confused by soccer and despite several promises to attend, I've never made it to any of my friends' hockey games. I actively avoid buying clothes for George that have sports themes, because they're usually so tackily gendered and come emblazoned with stupid sayings like Daddy's Little Super Slugger All Star Champion. And yet. 

My son -- the one for whom I bought ballet slippers and baby dolls -- began not just running, but "running the bases." He started talking about "baseball guys," "football guys" and "basketball guys." He perfected his slide into home by practicing it over and over on the living room rug, and would gleefully demonstrate it for you regardless of the venue and how appropriate it may or may not be to lie on the floor there. When he outgrew his cool old Adidas, he picked out some new sneakers, declaring them "baseball shoes" and begged in specific terms for a red baseball shirt unlike a toddler whose whims are forgotten in a matter of seconds, but daily, randomly, like someone who was legitimately pining for a freaking red baseball shirt. 

All of this without owning books about sports, without watching television shows or movies about sports, without any friends or family who are particularly enthusiastic about sports. 

Before I had kids, I argued vehemently that, in the nature vs. nurture debate, children's interests are nearly 100% nurture. That we feed our girls pink princesses and our boys blue trucks and thereby they learn to be docile or aggressive, caretakers or just-plain-takers. I really, really believed this to be true until having my own kid who has flatly rejected so many of my attempts at piquing his interest in things he just doesn't care about. It pains me on two fronts: 1) I feel like a Feminist sell-out, because this implies that male and female humans may actually be wired differently, to play and process things differently, and 2) because I HAVE A SPORTS-OBSESSED SON. 

Real talk: When I found out George was a boy, I consoled myself (I always imagined myself with only girl children) with my steadfast knowledge that I could make him the good kind of boy. A pint-sized feminist from the get-go, who was equally happy in dress up dresses and mud puddles. A kid essentially without a gender identity, until THE MAN weaseled his way into my radical son's little brain somewhere around school age. The funny thing about that, aside from...you know...its fundamental absurdity, is that I never considered that I would fall so madly in love with my kid that his interests wouldn't matter. I didn't have a fantastic model for this, myself, so who can blame me for my misconceptions?

 

I still shake my head in amazement over George's full-bore love affair with sports. I'm consistently baffled by the details he knows, and where he could've picked them up. But, I'm pretty proud to say that we found him a red baseball shirt on one of two excursions specifically for that purpose. Pre-George me would've said hell no; no child of mine will wear a Super Slugger Baseball Game Day t-shirt. But? Mine does. I never thought you'd hear me yelling, "go, go, go, run the bases!" or telling my child that baseball players do, in fact, wear rainbow striped pajamas similar to the ones he didn't want to put on after his bath. But I yell that multiple times a day; I have used that line not only for jammies but food, socks and boring errands. The most surprising thing of all is that I think it's really cute. All of it. The clumsy slide, the devastation over being too little for the bat he keeps eyeing at Target, the rapt attention to Ken Burns' Baseball documentary, the requests to see "basketball kids" whenever we drive past the high school where Nathan took him to see a game once, and the undying love for his now well-worn, filthy soccer balls that appear in nearly every un-cropped photo of him. 

He is most assuredly not the child I envisioned myself having, but what I've learned is that I appreciate other qualities more than the superficial things I pictured, and those traits I truly value are not mutually exclusive with sports fandom. I'm raising an empathetic kid who gives hugs freely, who frets over pictures of sad cartoon animals, who loves being read to, who loves music. He's trusting and confident and communicative. And he has interests that he's cultivated all on his own, which assures me that he's not too easily influenced. I'm still hopeful that he'll be amenable to the idea of dance class, but I also can't wait to see how cute he looks in his tee ball uniform. I hope he always feels supported in his interests, no matter how misaligned they are with mine.