Galileo

As the toddler walked proudly in the living room, he proclaimed that he had "found my telescope", as he peered through the cardboard tube of an empty toilet paper roll.

It was more cute before I walked into the bathroom and found a big fluffy mess of white TP that he had discarded during the process of discovery.

Thursday Pony Blogging

A beautiful setting

My biggest flaw as a parent so far is that I am a big coward. Oh, not for myself, for my children. Yes, I am the one at the playground, beach, forest, constantly droning "Be careful. Be careful. Be careful." I know it is a huge problem. I want my children to be confident. I want them to feel that their world is safe. I want them to trust their instincts and their strengths, and yet I can't seem to stop myself. So what better way to work on this problem than signing both girls up for horseback riding lessons. Right?

Iris handles the reins

Stella likes Macaroni

Today was such a beautiful Spring day. It was the first day ever that the girls got to ride outside.

Is this thing on?

I learned something today.

When you're 2½, the color of your sippy cup is of paramount importance.

Why?

Jrette. is 2½. She has reached the age when "Why?" is the question for everything. Everything I say to her, it seems, leads to a "why?"

Of course, the next stage is represented by Jr., at 8½, who no longer asks "why?" because he knows everything.

And then there's me. At 42 ... okay, almost 42½ ... I ask "why?" all the time: "Why do so many people think John McCain -- er, Huggy Bear -- is the best man to be president?" "Why are the mass media arrayed against the truth?" "Why is Drunky McStagger respected by anyone, anywhere, at any time?" ... and so on.

The answers for the kids tend to be easier, I'm afraid.

Monday Book Blogging

The power of parent propaganda is potent and persuasive (and I like alliteration when I'm tired). I recently caught myself poo-poo-ing teenage girl singers who do that phony cutesy-sexy thing that I can't stand. I figure my daughters can make up their own minds about music, so I'll try to keep my opinions in perspective. But when it comes to politics, I have no qualms about telling the truth as I see it.

A friend of mine, whose daughter was in my daycare at the time, brought me this book sometime before the last election so that, as she said, I could combine my vocation and my avocation. The story started many conversations with my children and some of the older daycare children and gave me lots of opportunities to indoctrinate them into the progressive paradise. The cliff hanger ending in The Three Little Pigs Buy The White House, by Dan Piraro, was resolved unfavorably in real life, but it ain't over yet...

Monday Book Blogging

Here we go again! Late with my homework! What kind of example am I setting for my children??

Well, I have a good excuse: I've been practicin' for life as a solo performer (I've got a month until Eschacon08). My kids may not see a very punctual or organized mom, but they do see a musician. And they have already started writing their own songs. It has been my experience all these years working with young children that they all love music (and visual art--but we'll save that for another Monday). All the kids I've known will at least wiggle to whatever music you offer them. Some will also dance, sing, and play whatever they can make into an instrument. Somewhere along the line, we give children the message that if they aren't experts, they shouldn't try. Many kids reach the tween years unwillingly to risk possible embarrassment, unwillingly to express themselves in music. And so most people enter adulthood unable to play music with their friends and family. Without getting too far from a family blog, let me say that I think that singing and playing music alone & with others is one of the top five physical pleasures in life.


This week's book, Music Over Manhattan, written by Mark Karlins, illustrated by Jack E. Davis, celebrates the thrill of music.



And as a starting point for creating a solo performance, I videoed the songs for my Eschacon08 set so my guitar teacher can work with me. This is my rock-n-roll hit, Lay Down.

On Religion

As a DFH with secularist tendencies, my children have rarely been to church. I realized this yesterday as I dressed them for one of their rare forays there--and not even to what I, with what I recognize as typical Roman Catholic condescension, would consider a "real" church. They don't even have church clothes (necessitating an emergency trip to Target) and they have no idea how to behave there (though luckily there was a nursery and something called "Junior Church" involving puppet shows and crafts). We were only there because the 8YO's favorite cousin was being baptized, which involved a pool and swim trunks and full immersion (the cousin is also 8).

But I got to thinking how regular church was for me as a kid, how soothing it was to think that there was some force in control of the universe and that it acted according to clearly defined laws (even if I didn't know what "adultery" and "false witness" were). I spent twelve years in Catholic school, but that was more about forming a tribal identity than actually studying the faith--though I took religion every day. Still, Catholics don't really read the Bible, so it wasn't as though I were absorbing tons of information.

I retained a residual Catholic identification right up until 2005: the ascension of the worst, most narrow, backwards-assed aspects of my co-religionists was too much for me to take. Benedict is everything I hate about Catholicism, with none of the social justice tempering his nuttiness. My late mother hated Ratzinger with the white hot heat of a thousand suns: thank God she didn't live to see him Pope. My father, a very faithful man who attends Mass daily and belongs to the Catholic Workers, tried to keep me on board by pointing out that Benedict was old and wouldn't last long. Long enough to confirm a successor who shares his worldview, I noted.

Protestantism was right out for me: as James Joyce said, why would I trade a logical absurdity for an illogical absurdity? Catholicism at least has good art and an intellectual tradition; why someone would give it up for PowerPoints and Amy Grant is beyond me.

And so my children have only been in church a few times in their lives. SP is not even baptized. As my brother's minister assured me I was going to hell yesterday (not personally, but I think I was the only "outsider" there, and he specifically addressed that point), I suppose I should be glad they're coming with me.

But I'm still Catholic enough to feel guilty about that.

The Oscars!

I grew up in southern California. Atrios is right: we do watch the Oscars with civic pride. Of course, since I grew up in a family that communicates by quoting movies, we were even more invested in the winners. And we kept score and got prizes! My children here on the east coast won't see the show 'til they're much older since it's on three hours later here.

When I got ready to watch tonight, I tried to hunt down an antenna for the TV, even though I vaguely remember throwing it away because we don't watch TV. I couldn't find it. But I remembered that years ago, my dad, who loves gadgets, had given me a little portable TV that runs on four double-A batteries. I found it! And I had batteries! And here I am...

Confessions: The Worst Parent in the World!

Somewhere in the process of raising cadres for the revolution, one realizes that they have done something so heinous, so egregious, that they deserve to have all their parenting cred withdrawn for the duration.

I had that day yesterday.

Colleges, as you may be aware, keep peculiar schedules, unlike any other business. We organize our vacations around convenient breaks in the schedule, not around national holidays. When I was a student, my heavily Jewish college had classes on Labor Day, but not Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. In my current job, we have a break coming up (starting tomorrow), but we had classes yesterday and today.

Since I've been in this business a good 15 years, you'd think I'd take such things into account, but no. There we were yesterday morning, sitting in the driveway with the car running, babies strapped in, Thers drumming the steering wheel impatiently, fearing he'd be late for class. The boy, bundled up and backpacked, stood forlornly by the road waiting for the schoolbus while I frantically called the transportation office demanding to know where his bus had gotten off to.

And then I remembered. President's Day. Not just President's Day, but an entire week off school.

Oh.

Maybe it will be funny someday.

Monday Book Blogging

Food. Glorious food?

Yes, we love food in our house. I'm happy that my children prefer bacon & onion pizza to the universal kid pizza: plain cheese. They love basil-rubbed pork ribs. Rosemary potatoes. Gorgonzola cheese & balsamic vinegar on their salad. They like salad! Most of the time.

Most of the time, the junkiest junk food in the house is homemade chocolate chip scones [full disclosure: they get granola bars in their school lunch bag for snack time]. Most of the time.

Then, there are holidays. Their loving Grampa sends them See's Candy boxes for holidays, as he did this week for Valentine's Day.

And then, the beast is born.

In our house lives the candy fiend.

And though she is only 5 years old, and 40-ish pounds, she terrorizes me. It starts out innocently enough. "Mom, I'm hungry," she coos from the playroom. "What would you like to eat?" I inquire, the hostess, waitress, chef and busboy, all in one. "Give me some suggestions," she demands. And I rattle off my list of all the things she loves most of the time. But none strike her fancy. She knows there is candy in da house. And there will be no peace until it is eaten. So I let her devour it. The good news is: it's finally gone today. The bad news is: Easter is early this year! Will my concerns be undermined if the world knows I love candy, too? Oh, and ice cream...

I love Rosemary Wells's books. Her illustrations can help me recover my equilibrium. One book that I have read a lot and was even requested as a daycare naptime book for awhile is Max Drives Away.
So here is a quick minute of a book to remind me that, while eggs or cereal are good most of the time, sometimes we have to have ice cream for breakfast.

Monday Book Blogging

Once again I barely make it to the EST deadline for qualifying as Monday. In my two weeks away from the inter-tubes, I came up with a grand plan for this week's post, involving a discussion of how our interests as children can grow from the tiniest seeds. Of course, my road to hell is well-paved. Not to mention, the 5yo has been sick for the past two days.

My favorite book as a child was The Magic Friend Maker [one googled site lists it available for $53 and Amazon says starting at 39 cents, but the bad news is no one's posting a picture of the cover]. I tell myself that my romance with New York City was started with this book. I still have my copy, which I have read to the girls and planned to read here, but remember that dark road to hell??

Anyway, when I was pregnant with the 7yo, I found this book



at the local Unitarian Society book sale and loved the beautiful city-inspired illustrations.

So here is a messy, raw version of One Monday Morning, by Uri Shulevitz.



So far I have only taken the girls to the city once--to see Christo's Gates in Central Park. We'll see if they are as drawn to the city as I was...

Kids say the oddest things

Trifecta's post about his son's chanting made me think of my own kids' peculiar speech patterns and habits ... my favorite one right now is how Jrette. (age 2½), after seeing the movie Alvin and the Chipmunks (which, I must point out, her mother took her and her brother to see), goes around saying "bow chicka wow wow" all the time. Let's hope she grows out of that one. Of course, she still says "Daddy" like "Daddily," which is also very cute. I've always wanted to be an adverb.

Meanwhile, Jr. (age 8½) still has trouble pronouncing his r's. He's been in speech therapy at school for a while, and it's definitely improving. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to be self-conscious about it, nor does he seem to be passing the habit on to Jrette. If it were me, I'd look for ways to avoid the letter "R" altogether:

Hi! How goes it? I was listening to the ... um, I tuned into NP ... National Public ... ah, scwew it.

When he was very young, Jr. had an endearing tendency to repeat initial syllables of polysyllabic words. Example: singing "Twinkle, Twinkle," he would always say, "Like a die-dime in the sky." Or his dad's favorite football team would be the "Buh-Bucs" for "Buccaneers." I never did figure that one out ...

Both children have been astoundingly articulate with enormous vocabularies for their respective ages. I'm convinced that it's because their mother and I never really talked to them in "baby talk." First thing I said to Jr. after he popped out was a detailed explanation of the infield fly rule, and it's just gone from there.

I look at it this way: it's all going to give them a lot of fodder for their therapists someday.

X-X-O-O-9-9-GO

For some reason, the toddler chants this every time he drags his big truck on a race around the house. He also has decided that D and E suck as letters and just omits them from the alphabet, acting morally offended if we correct him.

He's weird, but I love him.

Monday Book Blogging

Monday Book Blogging will be on temporary leave until Monday, 11 February.

A friend of mine got arrested for drunk driving and has to go to a 14 day rehab. He isn't allowed a computer there, so in solidarity, I'm giving up the internet for two weeks. I'm keeping email, 'cause I need it for work. But otherwise, it's meatspace for me, babe.

In the meantime, check out his very witty blog or ponder how to keep these two from his fate...

Fright Night

The boy, 8, is afraid to sleep alone.

We don't really know what to do about this: solutions already attempted include bribes, punishments, really cool sheets, really cool games, really cool everything.

We're at our wit's end. If we close our bedroom door, he opens it and sleeps at the foot of the bed. If he gets busted doing that, he sleeps on the floor near the foot of the bed. If we lock the door, he sleeps on the floor of the hall outside. In any of these scenarios, it's entirely likely that he will get kicked or stepped on, completely accidentally, by a bleary-eyed adult without spectacles in the dark.

On the rare occasions that we can actually get him into his bed, he insists on every light being left on all night. The light clipped to the head of the bed, the closet light, and the overhead, all burn brightly. If we turn them off once he's asleep, he will wake and turn them on.

When asked about this, he says, quite simply, "I'm afraid to sleep alone." While his honesty is touching, it also makes us feel like bums. After all, *we* don't sleep alone.

Any advice?

Ignorance Is Bliss

As I was feeding the baby, I stood up, turned around and noticed the bathroom door was closed. This is a sign of danger.

Opening the door, I discovered the toddler naked on the floor. He had dragged in his comforter, two pillows, and our Siamese cat.

I really didn't want an explanation.

Monday Book Blogging

This morning, courtesy of jurassicpork, the girls and I watched some of Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech. Though she asked a few questions, I could not hold the 5yo's attention. I got a few minutes further with the 7yo, but even she lost interest after determining that Grandma was, in fact, not there. So it was just Martin and me, and those hundreds of thousands, dreaming of a world of peace and justice.

For today's book, I've chosen a Navajo legend, How the Stars Fell into the Sky, written by Jerrie Oughton, illustrated by Lisa Desimini.


I guess we've been trying to figure out how we made such a mess of things for a long time. And with a spoiler alert, let me say that this is as good a reason as any.

As the pulse of the second day brought it into being, the people rose and went about their lives, never knowing in what foolish haste Coyote had tumbled the stars...

...never knowing the reason for the confusion that would always dwell among them.

I don't know where to go in discussing such a big topic with the girls, so we take it in small pieces. My ever-reliable, "some people believe," line gets me some mileage, but I can't explain to them why the values of the people in power are so different from my own. I can't explain how hatred just keeps getting reborn. Over at the crack den the other day, Phila got a good laugh at my naivete when I commented that I was shocked that the 7yo had heard someone on the schoolbus say to one of the few black kids at the school, "I hate black people." Phila assured me that this is impossible, for there no longer exists racism in our society. It's alright, Ma, I'm only dreaming.

I'm so proud

Riding in the car this evening and looking for some toys he'd brought along, Jr. said, "Daddy, where's the box with my balls in it?"

He paused for a moment and added, "That didn't sound too good, did it?"

That's my boy. Eight and a half, and already out-snarking his old man.

(I didn't have the heart to tell him that someday his wife would keep that box with her ... forever.)

Learning

Once again, the 'Blue's Clues' book was the choice of the toddler for night night story. We went through the clues for the umpteenth time, and had settled in on the story of Blue going to school. One picture in the book revealed a dog holding some letter blocks.

Taking this as an opportunity, I started reading out P-L-A-Y spells play. The boy told me, "No Daddy, it's my turn! A! Y! L! P!!!"

He then correctly described the full palette of colors from the painting scene from the next page.

I love the boy.

Monday Book Blogging

Okay. Here it is again, just barely still Monday. I put the girls to bed, put some laundry in the machine, and now I've got the Monday book blogging to do. This is still the germ of an idea, I suppose. So I don't actually have to use a tripod or lights yet, right?

In celebration of the Liberal Mountain teen graduating from high school, I've chosen another inspirational story about being yourself, My Head Is Full Of Colors, text by Catherine Friend, illustrations by Kiki Oberstenfeld de Suarez.


When I have taught painting and drawing classes to adults, I've struggled with how much to correct someone's work. It seems important to help them recognize that their style could help convey their ideas, while at the same time making sure they acquire the skills to make active choices.

As I watch my daughters develop, I feel a similar push and pull. I want them to have the confidence to be who they are, yet as their only parent, I'm very aware of my influence on their choices. The three of us spend a lot of time together, just us. Both girls are already great visual artists and budding musicians. Would they love those things if I didn't already? Will I be as supportive if one of them wants to start gymnastics or ballet? When I look at my girls as they grow, will I be able to see what's in their heads--who they are--or only what I want to see? Taking the ego out of parenting is hard when you have an ego as big as mine.

The mom in this book is damn supportive, but reading it tonight, she seemed a bit stiff!

*Yawn!*

I am a morning person. My whole family are morning people: my birth family, that is. (On Liberal Mountain, where the children refuse to sleep until very late, morning is my "me" time.) I've generally up before 6 no matter what time I go to bed, and nothing surprises me more than the increasingly rare times when I spend the night in the same place as one of my blood family members and discover that they're the same way, particularly my beloved elder brother.

The reason he surprises me so much is that my memories are filled with various colorful examples of my mother's heroic efforts to get him out of bed for school. Music, lights, calling every few minutes, screaming (eventually), once dumping an entire glass of water on him in the bed (though that may have been a deputized sibling, now that I think about it)--getting Phil up for school was a constant, colorful struggle.

My own teen, who eagerly starts her last week of school today, is actually pretty good about getting up in the morning--I rarely have to wake her actively. But on her own, on non-school days, she routinely sleeps until 1 or 2 pm. And as a teacher, I know that as much as I like earlier classes, students do tend to be somewhat, shall we say, logy in them, and absenteeism is higher.

As it turns out, this is not a moral problem at all, but a biological one.

Research shows that teenagers’ body clocks are set to a schedule that is different from that of younger children or adults. This prevents adolescents from dropping off until around 11 p.m., when they produce the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin, and waking up much before 8 a.m. when their bodies stop producing melatonin. The result is that the first class of the morning is often a waste, with as many as 28 percent of students falling asleep, according to a National Sleep Foundation poll. Some are so sleepy they don’t even show up, contributing to failure and dropout rates.

The answer? Let them sleep in a bit.

In 2002, high schools in Jessamine County in Kentucky pushed back the first bell to 8:40 a.m., from 7:30 a.m. Attendance immediately went up, as did scores on standardized tests, which have continued to rise each year. Districts in Virginia and Connecticut have achieved similar success. In Minneapolis and Edina, Minn., which instituted high school start times of 8:40 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. respectively in 1997, students’ grades rose slightly and lateness, behavioral problems and dropout rates decreased.

Later is also safer. When high schools in Fayette County in Kentucky delayed their start times to 8:30 a.m., the number of teenagers involved in car crashes dropped, even as they rose in the state.

There are a ton of logistical problems with this, of course. Here, the district HS starts at 7:45, then the buses go out for a second pass and get all the elementary and middle-schoolers in for their 9am start time. Kalish suggests here that rather than making things logistically more complex, we could just flip the elementary and high school schedules. Of course, that creates increased need for after-school child care: If the little kids are done by 2:30, they can't just be dumped at home the way teens can.

I like the suggestion of a longer schoolday, myself.

Massachusetts has opened more than a dozen “expanded learning time” schools, which add about three hours to the school day. Students spend additional time on subjects like math and English, but also enjoy plentiful art, music, physical education and recess — all of which are being slashed at many schools.

Also, why not make sure there’s built-in time for doing homework? That way, children could get their work done at school where professionals can help them, freeing them to spend time with their families when they do get home.

Now, homework is Kalish's "issue," so it's not too surprising to see her swipe at it here, but she has a point: one of the things about the alternative school I noted in my last post is that there was very little outside work. Almost all projects were completed during class time. And you know what? I didn't miss those fights at all. (Because it took students from multiple districts, the alternative school started later, too, which might also have had an effect.)

I'm not wholly convinced she's right, but it's a compelling argument.

Pride of the Yankees

The teen is graduating from high school next week.

I am blown away by this fact.

I don't know if it's possible to raise children without feeling guilty, or at least utterly convinced that you destroyed them at some point, but I was sure, concretely, that this kid was going to end up dead someplace and it would be all my fault. After all, I divorced her dad when she was a preschooler, uprooted her world again at 7 by moving her 1500 miles, brought a troubled teen into the house, sent her to a school with crazy teachers (was it 4th grade she didn't finish, or 5th? I pulled her out of school with two weeks left to go when a teacher called her "evil"), another school, later, with more crazy teachers--it really wasn't until 8th grade that things calmed down and she made some real friends. She's 17, and she's lived in six separate domiciles. She suffered academically because of this, and by the beginning of her junior year, it looked as though she really was going to drop out.

And I'm her mom: of course I blamed myself. If I had been older, waited until I had an established career before having kids, had her think of one house, one town, even, as her own, if, if, if....

I think this is a pretty human response to raising children, especially if a kid has problems. It took some time for us to get to what her real issues were, and as it happened, they had nothing to do with things I'd done: all I needed to do was support her. Once we figured that out, it was all good.

The other thing we did that made a huge difference was transferring her to an alternative school halfway through her junior year. She went from a school of about 2000 kids to a school of 40. She went from a traditional program, with homework and enrichment and all that stuff to one of shorter schooldays, longer class periods, and a hands-on, discussion-based grading model. I can't tell you the difference it made. Well, yes I can. She's gone from flunking out to graduating early. She lost some things she liked--the wider variety of art classes at her other school, marching band--but what she gained was incalculably greater.

For many young people, the current centralized megaschool model just doesn't seem to work very well. I'm really glad we go out of it, and I'm totally proud of my kid for succeeding.

Reverse Psychology

Sometimes, desperate parents fall back on desperate measures. If the boy is engaging in olympian level stubborness, it may be time to pretend that he can't have or do exactly what I want done.

This is my bubble bath. You wait your turn! These are daddy's carrots! Daddy wants to go to sleep, you stay up. More often than not, this strategy works, due to his lovely oppositional streak. But, it should be used only sparingly. Fifteen years from now, it would be a bit of a bummer to encourage him to flunk out of school to do his pop proud.

Then again, in fifty years, I might find myself saying please don't visit. I want to be left alone!

Go, Diego. Just Go.

In Katha Pollitt's terrific essay on gender roles and children, "The Smurfette Principle," she talks about how young girls are routinely expected to filter their cognition and experiences through what boys do. Her core example, Smurfette, is a blonde, fluffy little thing who whines a lot and is just one flavor of the many flavors of Smurf (mostly blueberry, one supposes).

Pollitt proposes something fairly interesting: that children learn what gender means at least partly through media. Though some of the situations Pollitt outlines have been alleviated somewhat (there are now two, count 'em two, female muppets on Sesame Street), the general trend continues.

Or did, until Dora. Finally, a strong, smart, capable female protagonist who engages kids attention! Maybe boys won't grow up to be such bloody little misogynists! WooHoo!

My son, now 8, loved Dora. He loved the maps (still does adore maps), the useful Spanish lessons, the whole thing. Watching him watch her, I though that maybe, just maybe, the gender gap was being brought together, even a little. Nevertheless, I talked him out of a Dora backpack on the first day of kindergarten, with a pang of liberal guilt. I didn't think it would do him any good to get beaten up on the school bus.

As his Dora-watching petered out, his sister's picked up, and now SP is a fan, too.

But apparently, having a mixed gender viewership is not good enough, or something.

Dora's popularity with both boys and girls is apparently so threatening that it needed to be neutralized with a parallel male character, I guess so boys wouldn't end up thinking too highly of girls. Dora's brother? cousin? Diego now has his own show, different than Dora's, with animals he heroically rescues. Kids love it, and Diego is, if anything *more* commercialized and licensed than Dora.

So we're back to little girls funneling their identity through boys again. But unless it's a two-way street, it just pisses me off.

A Song For Thursday

The 5yo's best friend was trying to teach her to sing some of his favorite songs, but since he didn't quite know the words or melodies, it was tough. I asked his mom if she would be willing to make a mix for us so that the 5yo could learn the songs and then they could sing together.

When she gave it to me, I gave it a listen. On a 75 minute CD, there was only one song that I already owned, but I knew most of the songs. They're a certain kind of radio hit, aka earworm, but listening to them through the ears of a 5yo, they are fun in a way that they never were for me before. They woke me up even better than coffee.

I went looking for a YouTube of my daughters' favorite from the disk. And since I learned over at the crack den that liberals love cats, this seems like the perfect version.

When little things become big things

On Sunday, Jr. and I drove up to Tampa to watch the Tampa Bay Buccaneers take on the New York Giants in the opening round of the NFL playoffs. Jr. was decked out in his #40 Mike Alstott Bucs jersey, and I in my throwback #63 Lee Roy Selmon (the only Buccaneer in the Hall of Fame) jersey. We were ready to roll, and Jr. was very, very excited.

If you saw the game, though, or read about it afterward, you know that, other than a Bucs TD on the opening drive, it was pretty sad for the hometown fans. Final score: Giants 24, Bucs 14. We left with about ten minutes left in the fourth quarter, after the Giants scored their last TD to make it 24-7. As a season ticket holder since 1998, I don't believe I've ever left a game early -- surely not that early -- but it just stopped being fun.

I was bummed, of course, but you know, it's just a game and all that. Jr. seemed disappointed, too, but not unusually so.

Until we got in the car.

As we left Tampa to head for his mother's house, Jr. hid himself under his blanket. Shortly, I heard little whimpering noises coming from beneath the blanket and, thinking that he was pretending to cry as he occasionally does, I teased him, "hey, quit faking it!" Suddenly, he whipped the blanket off and indignantly retorted, with tears in his eyes, "I'm NOT faking it!"

Gently, I asked, "Why are you crying?"

"We LOST!"

The issue crystallized for me in that moment, and it became one of those little incidents in parenting that teach me what it means to be a loving, caring dad. Sure, to me it was just a game. But to Jr., it meant so much more than that. Maybe it was partly my fault for pumping it up ... on the 3-hour drive to Tampa, I kept talking about how important the game was, being the playoffs, and how the season would be over for whichever team lost. But, ultimately, I realized that the things that seem relatively insignificant to jaded adults may take on enormous meaning for our kids. I imagine that's only going to increase as my kids get older, as they get a bad grade or get turned down for a date or don't get The Part in the school play.

In short, good parenting requires great sensitivity. And while a parent certainly ought to be mature, it's a good thing if we don't forget what it was like to be a kid, when we saw the world through a magnifying glass.

Monday Book Blogging

As the last in a long line of friends to have children, I inherited a lot of loot, including many books. It has been a pleasure discovering favorites with my children. It is my hope to feature a favorite each week on this here blog. Hopefully my skills as a cinematographer and blogger will improve with practice (a tripod, not to mention learning to focus the camera, and continued work with complete sentences will help).


When I first saw the cover of I Look Like A Girl, by Sheila Hamanaka, I thought the story was going to be about a boy who everyone thinks is a girl. Instead, I found an inspiring story about girls with big imaginations who do more than play princess. I came up with a theory that the seed for this story came from these lines:

Throw out those glass slippers.
Send the fairies to sleep.
No prince is waiting for me.

As a parent of girls, I am drawn to stories that rewrite the rescuing prince myth. However, in the context of this very poetic book, I found these lines to be the weakest, so I changed them!

After reading the story a few hundred times, a melody came to me and I started singing it. Each time one of my children or daycare children brought the book to me, I'd ask if s/he wanted me to read it or sing it and s/he always requested that I sing it. So here goes.

Caution: Mother Singing

We fell into the princess trap slowly in our family, and I'm partly to blame. We don't watch TV and the children didn't start watching videos until they were three, so I had a lot of control over our household cultural artifacts. And if you knew me, you'd know I'm not a model princess.

It all started innocently enough: one of the board books that entered nap/bed time rotation was a brief version of The Nutcracker. After reading the story to my daughter countless times, and explaining that the illustrations were based on a ballet, I decided she should see the ballet. Enter Grampa and his gifts of three different versions on DVD. So things are going well--the only movie we watch is a ballet, nice and elitist. Perfect. Of course, there are other ballets out there. Sure enough, we get Coppelia, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Cinderella.

Then it hits me: am I being fair to the children? After all, there are cartoon versions of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella (and also, I will discover later, Swan Lake). Shouldn't I share those with the girls, too? It didn't feel like a cliff, but it was. After that, we were fully in the pink (okay, purple and pale blue, too). In trying to offer some kind of balance, I would strut around saying that sleeping for a hundred years waiting for some guy to kiss you is no way to go through life! But still the princess backpacks, dolls, and dress-up dresses piled up.

I Look Like A Girl is an easy book for me to love. The artwork is gorgeous, the world it creates is full of spiritual magic. I love it because it celebrates the strength of girls and the freedom to explore whatever rolls interest them. As I've said before, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of three little words, "Some people believe..." Some people believe that women aren't as smart as men. Some people believe that women aren't worth as much as men. Some people believe that a woman can't be president. Crazy, huh?

The Claw: A Nightmare Of Tragic Proportions

My 8 month old has discovered the joys of grabbing everything within grasp. Spilling drink cups, trying to yank cords out of the wall given a five second head start are just part of the norm.

What is very difficult now is that he is fixated on parts of my face. He loves to grab my ears, nose and lips tugging very hard. My right ear seems to be his favorite. Through the last several days of dilligent effort, he has rubbed it raw. This morning my temper finally gave out when he attempted to pull my lip down to my feet, and I screamed in pain.

This upset the boy to no end. He was just having fun and exploring after all. Veteran parents out there, have you had a child who had a lethal left hand? What do you do about it when they are this young, and corrective action is not that effective. It might be good to stock up on ointment or perhaps make him wear socks on his hand.

I was this close to taking him to the police station and registering his fingers as lethal weapons.

A Different Perspective

I cannot even begin to tell you guys how much I love reading your posts about the joys and heartbreaks of child rearing. Why? Because I am officially done with all that and don't need to worry my pretty little head with trying to find solutions to what seems like insurmountable problems.

In the course of one week my younger daughter scratched the new car with a rock to see what was under the blue, peeled away the wallpaper to see what was underneath and drew a dragon with a sharpie on the new floor tile. I wrung my hands and lost countless hours of sleep worrying that she had a serious destructive streak that would ruin her life forever. I figured it was only a matter of time before she was locked up. I considered therapy. I considered spanking (a big deal in our house). I considered having to watch over her till I died. She was all of four years old. And you know what, she grew out of it all on her own. Which isn't to say she didn't provide further sleepless nights or hand wringing. In fact, she still does worry me somewhat at 27. But the one lesson I've learned is not to sweat the small stuff. Sounds so simple, doesn't it. She's a fine young woman who is leading her own life. It's not the life I would have chosen for her, but it also is not my happy that she is pursuing.

Who knows if she would have turned out as well if I hadn't spent so much time worrying and trying to correct what I perceived to be faults. I do know that when she was fourteen and really giving me a hard time that backing off was the smartest thing I ever did as a parent. We were having one of our endless arguments as to why she didn't bring a certain book home so she could do her homework and I was screaming like a mad woman and asking "Why do you do these things?" She got the most unhappy look on her face and replied "I don't know." When I saw just how grieved she was I realized, in a flash, that I wasn't making anything better by constantly harping on what a terrible person she was for not doing her homework or keeping her room clean. I believe that backing off from that point on is what has allowed us to be great friends now. Further, we both realize that forgetting to take out the garbage is not a major personality flaw and doesn't mean one is a terrible person. Nor is it a deliberate passive aggressive act of rebellion. Sometimes forgetting to take out garbage just means one forgot to take out the garbage.

One of our pediatricians told me that by the time a kid is twelve, a parent's work is essentially done. They are who they are, and no matter how hard you try, you're not gonna be able to change that. I laughed it off and totally discounted it at the time. Now, however, I can see that he was more right than wrong. In fact, I would go further. I saw personality traits in both my kids almost from the day they were born. Learning to accept these traits instead of trying to change them was possibly the most important lesson I learned. Sure, you can tweak around the edges, but if you are a loving parent, providing a safe and warm place for your child to grow and learn, you're doing your job well. And don't sweat the small stuff.

An Evening Out

Parenting brings many joys. This afternoon for reasons that remain obscure we decided to take the Whole Family to the mall. It was a hideous experience. The smaller progeny thought it was a giant playground and behaved accordingly -- do you know, if you are a small person and decide to take off running and screaming your head off in JC Penney, as soon as you duck into the little forests of clothes on racks, it's next to impossible for your grownups to catch you? See, you can just run under all the hung-up clothes, while your grownups must buffalo awkwardly through the forest of cut-rate fashion.

It was fun watching the 17-Year-Old get hit on by a Boy while we were waiting to buy stuff at CVS, though. Not least because she was buying feminine hygiene items which she quite coolly slipped to her stepfather as he approached the counter, utilizing a nice behind-the-back underhand motion. 17-Year-Olds are not always noted for such aplomb. As for the stepfather, he refrained from loudly asking her "so, you get the right sized pad then?" Clearly, he too deserves kudos.

Then we went to Outback Steakhouse for dinner, because at Christmas my brother and sister-in-law gave us a gift card for that establishment. It was a hellish ordeal, because we brought the whole family. Children, eating out, gah. The highlight? When the 3-Year-Old declared she had to go to the bathroom and then ran for it, leaving her father to take off in hot pursuit, only to see her disappear into the Ladies' Room, where he could not follow. As the door closed she yelled at the top of her lungs, "Daddy I'm a BIG GIRL!" -- followed, inevitably, by the unmistakable sounds of her cries of dismay as she tried to keep her scrawny little butt from falling into the toilet bowl, a problem she often encounters, being in fact much smaller than she thinks she is. The woman who was in there at the time came out laughing her damn head off, though in fairness I suppose the sight of me banging my noggin into the wall might have been genuinely entertaining. But seeing her whole table then proceed to toast me as I repeatedly and desperately yelled "HURRY UP!" into the women's bathroom was, I am sure, just a bit over the top.

On the way home the 3-Year-Old asked, "can we go to the eat-store again tomorrow?" It was certainly adorable that her term for "restaurant" is "eat-store," but the answer to her question, shouted in unison by Molly I & I, was "NO. NOT IN A MILLION BLOODY YEARS."