The Family Brood

Four Hours with a Three-Year-Old

2009-05-12T09:46:00.000-07:00

For about four hours today, I tried to write down every question the Dragon asked me (as I simultaneously tried my best to answer said questions). In addition to the 54 questions below, there were about two dozen plain old “Why”s that I didn’t bother to write down.

Besides providing a peek inside the energetic and curious mind of a preschooler, I think this list also serves as the basis for a good explanation of why parents are so tired all the time. Because, as any parent knows, the 75+ questions I fielded in a four-hour period – not all of them simple by any means – were really just the running commentary to the actual activities of the day: cleaning the kitchen, making lunch, doing prep work for dinner, cleaning up after lunch; playing puppeteer, shooting baskets, building an imaginary boat, helping engineer sandcastles; reading books, coaching lowercase letters, helping with the potty, changing clothes at least twice … and so on.

Anyway, for the record, here are the questions I answered from about 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. today:

1. Mama, what does “giving up” mean?
2. Can I watch Word World?
3. Can I have a pancake, and can you put it on the small table?
4. How many sides does a square have?
5. How do we spell “stage”?
6. Do we need to go shopping today?
7. Is there coffee or water in there [i.e. in the coffee pot]?
8. Mama, can you tell me a story?
9. What’s the little boy’s name [in the story]?
10. Mama, why the magical deer ran away before the boy could say thank you [in the story]?
11. Do we sit on this [wedge pillow]?
12. How do we sit on it?
13. Are these clothes clean [in the washing machine]?
14. Can you get my kitty stuffed animal for me?
15. Mama, wouldn’t it be more fun if we had four arms instead of two arms?
16. Are you packing up sandwiches to go to the park?
17. I forgot my list of what I need to bring [on his imaginary boat ride]. Can you bring it to me?
18. Can you come here?
19. Can you sit by my boat and my basketball so I know it’s there?
20. Can you write “basketball” on my list?
21. Mama, could you find me a crayon to color my list so it doesn’t wash away?
22. Could you keep a watch over my stuff while I go to work?
23. Are you done making our peanut butter sandwiches yet?
24. Why you’re having salad?
25. Where did that spider come from?
26. Why is it dead?
27. Want to play in the sandbox with me?
28. Would you like a toy to play with?
29. Did I scrape you, Mama?
30. Why did you find that book [Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears] when you were a little girl?
31. Who was the librarian?
32. What was her name?
33. Why Daddy doesn’t hear us right now?
34. Did he close the door?
35. Why he doesn’t open both doors so he can hear us?
36. What does “focus” mean?
37. Mama, why everything looks different from far away?
38. What’s that kind of bug?
39. Where did it go?
40. Is that enough water to make a sand castle?
41. Why is water coming out from underneath the cup?
42. Can I put a little bit sand in the pond?
43. Why my swimming suit is too small?
44. Is it June?
45. What’s a month?
46. Why I can’t stand in the sand table?
47. What are ankles?
48. Can I watch Word World?
49. Is this dinner?
50. What’s an hour?
51. Mama, how high do you jump when Big Grandpa sneezes?
52. Why are you biting your popsicle?
53. Why do we need sun and rain to make a rainbow?
54. Can I sit on your lap, Mama?

After that last one, he crawled up in my lap and we both fell asleep.

Christmas 2008

2009-01-04T19:19:00.000-08:00

My goodness it has been a long time since one of us entertained the Internets with our wit. So in order to kick off 2009 with a bang I give you these:

Fist off is a little video which illustrates how our family comes together to work out a problem.

This next short feature shows us taking advantage of the Seattle Blizzard of Aught Eight. The Dragon was very sad when the snow finally melted, the adults were mixed. OK, only Alan was sad when the snow melted...

More to come in 2009.

Tension of Opposites, Family Style

2008-08-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

Another recycled post by Kathy from an earlier blog of ours. I think these are too good to leave fallow there so I brought it over here. From April 2007.

Although it was only two years ago, my Master’s degree in depth psychology now seems like a foggy lifetime ago. But one phrase from those days keeps tracking me – quick, elusive, grainy, like wolves in shadow.

Tension of opposites.

There was a time when I could have told you what exactly Carl Jung meant by this delicious phrase and expounded on the nuances of psychological thought that have spun out from the extreme truth of those three small words.

But now, instead, we are living it, Alan and I and the little dragon.

It has something to do with the intolerability of having two contradictory feelings or drives at the same time, for example needing to be financially responsible while wanting to be lazy and selfish and spendy, or needing to be socially normal while wanting to rip your clothes off and dance in your front yard during a thunderstorm. These seemed like reasonable examples of tension at the time.

I had no idea.

It seems our entire life since the little dragon came is one colossal Tension of Opposites – not those fleeting id moments when you know you should be heeding the call of the superego, but pervasive, insidious opposites you learn to live with long-term.

The most obvious is the tension between working and parenting. We traipse off to work every day in a tall building with windows that don’t open and interact with adults who stand upright and don’t cry when it’s naptime (though they might want to) – but we both long with all our bones and blood to be spending the day instead with our toddling, blabbering, chortling boy, draped in sunshine and mud and oatmeal and even, yes, as today, poop gushing up out the backside of his diaper. What we do clashes so violently with what we wish to be doing that we find ourselves trapped in the prison of opposites.

Another such tension is our persistent effort to balance the sudden triangle of need we are faced with: to be together as a family, to be together as a couple, to be alone. How very much we love the little dragon and want to spend time with him; how very much we love our marriage and want to spend time with each other; and how very much we long for time to ourselves, to attend to that elusive I who seems so neglected now. Time has become such a precious commodity that I sometimes feel ashamed that I’m looking forward to the dragon’s naptime, or hoping Alan will have other plans so I can just be with myself for a while.

But Alison McGhee, author of the children’s book Someday, hit the bullseye about the Tension of Opposites, Family Style, in an interview with NPR (March 13, 2007):

Once you have a baby, you’re filled with … overwhelming love and you’re also filled with fear, all the time, because you love something so much. And maybe [writing the book] was a way for me to understand what John Keats called “negative capability” – that ability to hold contradictory thoughts in your mind simultaneously. You know: I love this child more than anything, I want to keep this child safe. In order to keep this child safe, this child needs the strength to go live her own life fearlessly.

Aah, McGhee hit on the most frightening tension of opposites for parents – the real tension at the core of being a mama or a daddy: the constant, excruciating coexistence of unfathomable love on one hand and unbridled fear on the other.

Because from the moment of conception, your primary energy changes. Suddenly every breath is laced with The Big Question: What if something happens to him? Followed immediately by the obvious: And how can I stop it? Followed immediately by the much less obvious: I can’t.

This is the Tension of Opposites, Family Style.

I can’t stop the course of the little dragon’s life. He is here, subject to this world. Already, at 19 months, his life is his own, not mine. Most decisively not mine. And yes, I can plug electrical sockets with little plastic thingies and lock the front gate when we’re playing outside and cut his hot dogs so small he could inhale them through his nose if he wanted to (and believe me, he sometimes appears to want to). But wanting desperately to control what happens to him runs right up against the reality of the naked opposite, which is that I can’t. I can’t control, and that is heartbreaking and frustrating and scary.

And yet ultimately it tempers the I that I think is getting neglected but, I realize, is really just being run through the wringer in a way that therapy could never hope to do in 50 minutes a week.

Happy Father's Day!

2008-06-14T21:05:00.000-07:00

Alan and I met in 1995 and began our relationship under rather unusual circumstances -- we lived two days' travel apart in a third-world country and had to ride in clankety buses with chickens and sheep in order to see one another.

But despite the odd situations in which we sometimes found ourselves -- hiking eight hours round-trip in hundred-degree weather, for instance, to buy a plastic bag of moonshine through the side window of a mud house -- none was more surreal than the morning we found out we were going to be parents.

Until the day this photo was taken, after the Dragon had been in NICU for six days, and we finally got a chance to hold him.

I remember watching Alan carefully for signs of what he was feeling. The last time he'd held his son, the boy had turned purple. We still weren't out of the woods here, but things had definitely looked up. Though you can't see much of Alan in the photo, you can definitely see some relief, but more than that, unbridled joy in his expression.

Alan has fulfilled the promise of this ecstatic smile every day since this one. Seeing him with the Dragon -- whether they're playing, talking, cooking, walking, napping, gardening; whether Alan is comforting his son or teaching him or simply being with him -- has become one of the greatest joys of my life.

Sometimes I feel utterly humbled just to be able to witness the unfolding of their relationship. And in a world replete with stories of deadbeat dads and absentee fathers, their obvious love for and enjoyment of each other also heartens me to no end.

You're an amazing and talented dad, Alan. Thank you.

Bed Sores

2008-06-10T21:04:00.000-07:00

Sometimes -- no, all the time -- I wonder where we went so horribly, horribly wrong.

Everyone else we know whose kid is 2 years and 9 months or thereabouts old has loooooong since conquered the sleep demons. But our kid, nooooo, our kid continues, at the mere suggestion of sleep, to put up blood-curdling screaming fights that leave the whole family angry, depleted and psychically sore. And probably the whole neighborhood on the phone to DCFS.

This doesn't happen every night, but frequently enough to let us know that it -- is -- not -- okay -- to leave him alone to fall asleep. So most nights we resignedly stay with him, rubbing his back and singing a lullaby until he drifts off 15, 30, 45 minutes later. We creep out of the room like we did at six months, 12 months, 18 months, barely breathing and hoping the floorboards don't creak. And wondering when the hell the torture is going to end.

We never believed in cry-it-out of the extinction type, and for the record we still don't, though I can't say it hasn't crossed our desperate minds. We have, however, made several attempts to "wean" him from us slowly, to help him learn to self-soothe, in the currently-most-recommended fashion. This almost worked, just once, when Alan went solo with the process for three weeks straight. But when we brought me back in to try it, WHAM!, back to square one, and it hasn't been so promising since.

Moxie has a great theory that crying causes some kids to increase tension and others to decrease it. In her view, the increasers generally don't respond well to cry-it-out because they get too overworked by crying to settle into sleep. The decreasers, on the other hand, need a bit of fussing before they can doze off, and many of them get too stimulated by the very things that soothe the increasers: nursing, patting, lullabies.

Moxie had 99 comments on her post positing this theory. The vast majority were from parents saying, "Thanks so much! You've unlocked a great mystery for me! Now I get why X or Y solution didn't work for us!"

Alan and I, however, had different views on it. After two hours of trying to get the Dragon to sleep tonight -- one hour of me patting and singing to the Dragon; one hour of Alan going in and out as he (the Dragon) cried -- I described what I'd been reading.

Then, I said definitively, "He's an increaser. He only settles down with lullabies and patting; whenever we've let him cry a bit, he gets more worked up. It's hellish."

"No, no," said Alan, "he's a decreaser. Every time I go back in, he's settled down a little bit more."

I looked at him like he was an alien, then realized that our intelligence is completely fucked up. We need a spy -- some objective spook to lurk in a corner and take notes while we beg, bribe and cajole the Dragon to sleep, so we can get our story straight, so we can grow a real solution, so we can finally have some time to share work gossip, watch our backlog of Lost and fall into bed at 10:00, tired but perhaps finally sane once again.

Two New Things

2008-05-12T11:21:00.000-07:00

As regular readers know - wait, do we have regular readers? - we have written about our sleep issues before. We now have a whole new website dedicated to kids, parents and sleep.

The Children's Sleep Project

Built in part to act as a clearing house for information that we found scattered all over the internet, we thought there need to be a place to try to bring it all together so sleep deprived parents could find as much information as they can in one place, and share and console each other as well. Please do check it out.

In other news, Kathy has relaunched her Astrology blog into a full fledged website.

Depth Astrology

Check it out. See if there are any workshops you might want to go to, read her articles and maybe even get in touch with her to see what she knows about you and your life. Folks really have found it interesting and helpful.

Thanks, The Management.

More on Why Parenting is Awesome

2008-05-07T16:36:00.000-07:00

Another recycled post by Kathy from an earlier blog of ours. I think these are too good to leave fallow there so I brought it over here. There's something very exciting about being with someone who has no baggage.

It happened yesterday when my friends-sans-child were watching the little dragon, and he drooled, and just kept right on doing what he was doing, no mouth-wipe or embarrassment or heh-heh-heh or anything. It was no big deal to him or, frankly, to me -- drool happens all the time in our house -- but they all laughed with delight, commenting on how wonderful it must be to have no inhibitions.

Indeed.

One of the most awesome things about parenting is getting to watch that inhibitionlessness up close and in action day after day. You could try to impose your own sense of meaning and realization onto it, but truly there's nothing really to realize about it. It's just cool. It's cool to see what we'd all be like without the stress of conformity and social anxiety. It's cool to be with someone who's so self-confident without being cocky, so comfortable in his own skin all of the time. It's a relief to know that there's one person in the world who's pretty okay with pretty much everything he says and does -- and, even better, with pretty much everything I say and do.

You realize that he accepts you completely because he accepts himself completely.

I know that will all change -- that no matter how hard I try, someday just being me is going to result in baggage for the little dragon. But in the meantime, being in the presence of total acceptance, and total self-acceptance, is pretty awesome.

National Teach Children to Save Day

2008-04-29T12:00:00.001-07:00

The (reportedly) fine folks at the American Banking Association are sponsoring National "Teach Children to Save" Day.

Now before you go thinking, "This is how they will over come the mortgage crisis?" they really are interested teaching the importance of saving. It says so right on the page.

And in those pages are some good ideas about sitting down with kids and getting them to think long term about money and how you can help them. You say you don't know how to think long term about money? Well maybe you can all learn together as a family. I can't think of an exercise that will pay off better in the long run for all involved.

And Another Thing

2008-04-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

Another recycled post by Kathy from an earlier blog of ours. I think these are too good to leave fallow there so I brought it over here.

Another thing that's awesome about parenting is that you get to see the world fresh. I know it's trite, but there's nothing better for renewing a weary spirit than listening to a toddler's perspective on the world. It makes you believe in magic and other worlds and stuff like that again, in a way that's real, almost tangible, tastable. To wit:

Little Dragon: (exuberant) I see fish!

Me: (incredulous) Really? Where?

Little Dragon: (pointing to the sky) Right there!

No, there were no clouds or airplanes or anything else that could conceivably (to my mind) have resembled fish. The sky was clear and there were no trees or cars in his line of sight that could have been mistaken for a fish. No pond, no river, no lake. Nowhere logical for a fish to be, nothing that could have looked, even momentarily, like a shimmering flash of fish.

I looked and looked, bemused. Nothing.

But the little dragon said he saw fish, and pointed to the sky.

So I believed.

Uncle

2008-04-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

Another recycled post by Kathy from an earlier blog of ours. I think these are too good to leave fallow there so I brought it over here.

I know it's a little late to jump into the bloggentary about the latest "daycare is bad" study. After all, it came out more than a month ago -- light years in the blogosphere. But I've been so busy working my 49 hours of overtime that I haven't had a shred of energy to focus on my feelings about non-news statistical averages that attempt to quantify, of all things, human behavior.

In my belated effort to find some sane responses to the daycare research hysteria, I stumbled upon an alarming amount of vitriol between two warring parties who I had always, silly me, assumed were made up of fairly reasonable and compassionate people. There appears to be dangerous stockpiling of WMDs (words of maternal destruction) scattered strategically all over our otherwise-pristine Internet. Most disturbing is that the stockpilers seem to be mostly mothers themselves.

In fact, the war of words over who's better -- working moms or stay-at-home moms -- has been raging since the Internet's antiquity. At least since 1997.

So anyway, now I'm feeling all twitchy.

I didn't intend to sign up for enemies when I became a working mother. And in the spirit of my own stubbornness, I flatly refuse to join in on the kind of polarity thinking that ends up pitting good people against each other. The only enemy I'm willing to take on is narrow-mindedness (is that narrow-minded?).

So:

If we can all agree that no two children are the same (and I've never seen it argued otherwise), why can't we all agree that different scenarios might work for different children, for different families? Why do some people get angry and upset about the care that others choose for their child?
Why must we stake out sides in the home vs. daycare debate? Why must there be a debate at all? Why does it seem so hard to concede that there are good aspects to home care and to out-of-home care -- as well as, perhaps, less desirable aspects to both? And, hell, neutral aspects as well? Can we bring ourselves to admit that neither one is perfect because life isn't perfect? Do we need to have an opinion about everything?
Why must we observe, categorize, quantify and average out the behaviors, skills and emotions of hundreds or thousands of children in order to know what we should do with ours? Why can't we simply observe how our own children respond to life and adjust our own world accordingly? (I'm not suggesting there's no place for research, but sometimes it does seem to get in the way of trusting our own instincts, besides fueling factional bitterness.)
Why do people need to make themselves feel better by putting others down? Is successful parenthood a zero-sum game -- i.e., if you're really good at it, I must not be? The better mother you are, the worse you've proven me? What is that? (One article that actually covered both "sides" fairly well did reveal its underlying bias when it asserted, "Any possible advantage of daycare is heralded as proof that working mothers don't need to feel guilty; the feelings of at-home mothers and fathers are ignored. All too often the efforts to make working mothers feel better end up making [stay-at-home parents] feel worse.")

Uncle.

Seriously.

Let's let go of the anxiety about how we parent. We do what we do, and we can change tacks if we want. Nothing is set in stone. Kids' brains and hearts are pliable, and if we make a mistake, we can admit it and do something differently. Let's try not to worry so much about how our kids will turn out. We each have the input that we have, and beyond that -- even at 1, 2, 3 years old -- they are largely independent beings. We can't control everything. Life is messy. Growth is messy. Childhood, hopefully, is messy. We all do the best we can with what we have -- money, resources, knowledge, love, time -- in any given moment.

And beyond that, we have to let go. Of anger, of vitriol, of anxiety. Of enemies among our peers, for Pete's sake.

Maybe if we all just held hands in a circle and sang together, we'd feel better about ourselves.

That'd be pretty cool, 'cause circles don't have sides.

Mystery of the 20-Month Sentence

2008-04-08T08:43:00.000-07:00

Another recycled post by Kathy from an earlier blog of ours. I think these are too good to leave fallow there so I brought it over here.

How does a kid make the jump from no language at all to "Daddy!" to "I see Daddy!" or from incomprehensible babbles to "Yogurt!" to "I want more yogurt!"

?????

The last two weeks, the little dragon's language seems to have exploded from monosyllabic grunts and angry or plaintive cries to full-blown grownup sentences. With this development comes a fuller expression of personality and some clarity about his complaints. While I find I'm kind of missing the mystery of his less sophisticated grunts, there is also relief in our ability to communicate more fully.

For example, last week, he tried to pull a freckle off my skin. When I explained it wouldn't come off, he gave me a very contrary look and insisted, "It came off!"

The way we learn languages in school (Good morning!, then My name is____!, then nouns, then a confusing variety of verb conjugations...) is so far removed from the way a toddler learns to express himself that it's no wonder none of us can remember how to say "I want more yogurt!" in French after the books are closed and the test is taken.

How on earth did he know to say, "It came off" instead of "It come off" or even version 1.1, "YEEEESSSS!" or version 1.0, "Aaaugghghhfft!"? Where did he pick up not only the basic verb but the correct form of it for his current purpose? Because he clearly didn't consciously think about what he was saying; it just came out, and it came out right.

Similarly, while we didn't used to understand "Gfeushshhgggft!" to mean "I want more yogurt," we do understand when he says it now. And he gets more yogurt. And mostly, that's a good thing. Except when, as in the last 24 hours, he is so clear in stating what he desires that he ends up eating 27 ounces of yogurt in the space of 12 hours. But then at least he's now able to say, "I pooped!" with more clarity than ever.

What I dread is the further development of language, that polite nuance we all (well, most of us) develop when we begin to worry about diplomacy and people-pleasing, when instead of "I want more yogurt!" we say, "I'd love some more yogurt, if you wouldn't mind" or "I kind of disagree that the freckle didn't come off; I'm pretty sure I got it off. But if you want to double-check, please be my guest."

I want the little dragon to assert himself, be direct and clear, make his desires and intentions known in no uncertain terms.

Of course, when he's 15, "I want more yogurt!" may simply be annoying. Because I'd like someday again to eat my own dinner while it's still hot.

Spot On

2008-04-04T09:25:00.000-07:00

Click here to see more of these.

Parenthood in the Neck of the Amphora

2008-04-02T20:37:00.001-07:00

A recycled post by Kathy from an earlier blog of ours. I think it is too good to leave fallow there so brought it over here.

Huber astrology uses, among other things, the metaphor of the amphora to explain human development and individuation. The belly of the amphora is seen as the place where worldly concerns -- security, safety, physical drives, emotional needs and so forth -- accumulate and "cook" until they either burn out, boil over or rise up to the next level.

(Stay with me, this is about parenting.)

As the steam rises, a person can develop Will and achieve personal goals. Insight and understanding gain traction; wisdom ripens; new experiences are enjoyed and hone the personality. I remember this delectable process from my child-free days: drinking irreverently from the soup of life! Flashes of understanding coming at me like headlights on a freeway! Goals accumulating like a ten-car pileup in a dense fog!

But the process of personality development often hits a snag at this point -- specifically when it's time to make profound transformations. Such as when one becomes a parent. You can't become a parent through mere flashes of insight and goal-setting. Squeezing through the bottleneck of the amphora -- the narrow passageway connecting the belly of the beast with its wide-open mouth -- requires more than street smarts and glittery insight. It requires, in astrologer's terms, Neptune.

Neptune symbolizes divine love: unbridled self-sacrifice that stems from deep compassion. It is the willingness and ability not just to walk in someone else's shoes but actually to embody their experience so utterly that you can't help but feel deep compassion, which is the ultimate expression of love.

At the moment our babies are squeezing through the birth canal, we are, hopefully, squeezing through the bottleneck of the amphora, transforming from what we were into someone who can rise for the 10th time tonight to nurse, walk, rock and sing the baby back to sleep -- who can mask our disgust at the smell of a particularly ripe diaper -- who can express authentic sadness when a favorite toy is lost -- who can revel in the joy of a proud new skill right along with the child -- who cannot imagine going another single day of life without this child beside us.

This is how we are born and baptized as parents.

Toys and Breakfast

2008-03-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

Toys and Breakfast are two things I love, and if I can get them together, great! From the great Frank Kozik comes this fine play set that will teach your kids many different things depending on your angle:

Just don't give a crap? Then this will be the perfect play set for your little one because, well, who cares, you don't give a crap!

Want to toughen your little one up? Is he or she getting pushed around the sandbox? Well this fun quintet will inspire an attitude of, "Oh no you f@#%en don't!" and give them the confidence they need.

Need to teach the evils of smoking and cholesterol? You are in luck! These will be the perfect bad guys for all the other dolls to gang up. Just have Pooh or Elmo drop kick these guys behind the hamper and your little angel will stay on the right side of the tracks.

Well, maybe they could kick Elmo's ass...

Need to prove your coolness to yourself and other parents? Need I say more?

In Case Your Fridge is Out of Space

2008-03-13T10:37:00.001-07:00

So here is a nice little thing, THEBLOG WEEMADE. It is a collection of kids artwork that is user submitted. Want to share your kids creations with the world? Get it up there. Perhaps you will see the Dragon's greatness up there soon.

How To Clean Your House

2008-02-27T10:02:00.000-08:00

From Lifehacker come these links on how to get your house clean quickly and keep it that way.

Hopefully.

Cleaning Bursts from zenhabits

Curbly's how to clean like a maid

FlyLady's decluttering technique

lifehack.org's 150 cleaning tips (how to remove beer stains!)

There are others out there but I need to actually clean our house rather than read how to clean it.

Good luck.

Feed The Pig

2008-02-25T15:48:00.000-08:00

Now our Brood is all about saving money, getting out of debt and knowing what the hell is going on with our finances. In general resources that promote financial literacy are a good thing.

But this latest one, Feed The Pig? Mmmmm, I'm not feeling it. That logo to the left is fine, cute and too the point. But the freaky thing in these videos? No, that is the stuff of nightmares. And didn't we do away with website sound effects a few years ago?

I am sure that there are good ideas here and I appreciate the CPA community getting together to help those who don't know squat about the ways of money. But please go back to the drawing board and come up with a better concept. Please?

Child's Play

2008-02-21T10:31:00.000-08:00

NPR did a really interesting story on play and imagination this morning, here is the link to the story and the podcast. I found it fascinating to hear about a time when toy companies only advertised at Christmas and that one of the first toys advertised on the early Mickey Mouse club broadcasts was a gun.

One could write more on how media stifles imagination and that kids need free, imaginary, open play time to help them develop as much as / maybe more so than lots of structured time (and we may!). But I wanted to focus on the one part of the story I heard clearly before driving into the parking garage in which they said before the advent of The Toy Industry "play" time was all about imagination and creating your own toys. That play went from focusing on the activity of play / imagination to the toy itself.

I would disagree a bit with that. As an only child, and a bit of a spoiled one at that, I had A LOT of toys to occupy me. Every time my grandmother sent me a dollar in the mail I made my mom take me to the toy store to get a Hotwheels car. I set up worlds and battles and games that would cover several rooms of the house and it never seemed to me to be about the toy, but about how what I had in my hand allowed me to create what was going on in my head, to see my imagination made real. Much like computer effects have done for bringing mutants, Hobbits and Transformers to the big screen in a believable fashion. The toys added to my sense of imagination.

This is not to say that I will heap mountains of stuff upon the Dragon, but I don’t think that toys are an imagination killer in and of themselves.

Finally, as the Dragon is getting older I hope to be able to start playing more and more games with him. I know a big kid classic is Candy Land, and I think with the help of this information, I should be able to kick his ass.

What Do You Think Of

2008-02-08T10:16:00.000-08:00

When you here the words Okiedog Fropper?

Is it this?:

Me neither.

Thanks MightyJunior.

Taking a Moment

2008-02-06T09:52:00.000-08:00

After 38 years of waiting, wishing and imagining a woman leading our country -- after a four-year degree from a bona fide feminist institution -- after the slow-growing hope and satisfaction of having two home states represented by two female senators (each!) -- after watching our homeland crumble for seven years under arrogant, disdainful, stolen "leadership" -- I stood at the voting booth yesterday in the auditorium of our local elementary school and felt the moment in my bones.

I stared at her name. I was surprised to feel my skin prickle and my eyes fill with tears. My throat squeezed inside. I inhaled once short and quick, then once long and slow.

I thought, "Am I really about to do this?"

Then, still staring at her name, I picked up the pen, whispered, "I'm sorry" under my breath, and voted for Barack Obama.

***

I remember casting my first-ever vote for Bill Clinton behind a curtain at Government Center in Boston, Massachusetts in 1992 -- but not the absentee ballot I sent from Morocco affirming my decision four years later. I remember standing in line for an hour and a half outside a small house just this side of the freeway in a mixed-race, low-income neighborhood in Pasadena, California to vote for Al Gore in 2000 -- the longest I've ever had to wait to vote. But I don't recall the hopeless, hapless mark I made for John Kerry four years later, when the world had turned upside-down.

Although I almost always vote, even in the most obscure municipal elections, I don't recollect the actual moment of voting in any of the four primary elections in which I must certainly have taken part.

But I will never forget that moment this year.

In fact, I wondered intermittently throughout the day whether, 40 years from now, I might regret my vote. Not because of anything a President Obama might do but, instead, because if we end up with another President Clinton, I would not have participated in that historic moment. I would not be able to tell my granddaughters and grandsons, "Yes, I helped a mother become the leader of our country."

***

The Dragon and I did go to the polls on the way home from daycare last night. We stood at the door and I pointed at the people getting their paper, slipping it into the machines, marking it with a pen, returning it to the box.

"They're writing on the paper who they like best," I said. "They're telling the people who they want to be our leader." He watched intently for a few minutes.

"Do you want to vote when we get home?" I asked. He nodded vigorously.

When we arrived home, I printed out pictures of all the major candidates for him: Clinton and Obama on one sheet, the four Republicans on the other. I told him to choose the one he liked best from each sheet.

He looked at the Republicans first and just shook his head. "No," he said.

"Which one do you like best?" I asked, pointing at each one in turn. "Him, or him, or him, or him?"

"I don't like them," he insisted.

"What if one of them was going to be your teacher?" I said.

"No."

"Or your grandpa?"

"Grandpa?" he said.

"Just to pretend," I assured him. "Which one looks like a good grandpa?"

He pointed tentatively to John McCain.

Then I gave him his Democratic ballot. Before I could even set it on the table, he pointed to Hillary Clinton. "That one," he declared.

"Are you sure?" I said.

"Yes. That one." He poked at her face again. "The mama."

"Oh," I said, pointing to Obama. "Daddy and I like him."

"No," he said emphatically, his finger again on Hillary's face. "Her."

We drew dolphins on the back of his ballots as we watched the returns from all across the country. I printed off more ballots for him and his responses were always the same: No on the Republicans; Hillary over Barack.

Just before bedtime, Clinton climbed the stairs to the podium in New York. When the Dragon heard the cheering, he looked up at the TV and pointed.

"There's the mama!" he shouted, his eyes sparkling. "Yaaaayyyy!" He stood up and clapped.

Hillary raised her arms to the crowd, and the cheering subsided. The Dragon and I sat absorbed, his bedtime ticking past.

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you."

She cocked her head, the way she does. "You know, tonight we are hearing the voices of people across America -- people of all ages -- of all colors -- all faiths -- and all walks of life.

"People on the day shift -- the night shift -- the late shift with the crying baby."

And for the second time that day, my throat tightened and my eyes filled with tears. I didn't hear anything else she said.

She gets me, I thought.

For the first time in memory, I sat and listened to a politician say something about my life that truly reflected my life: not just my beliefs about health care or the economy or the war -- not something about a frustration I have with a doctor or a school or an employer -- not something about who I wish I could be -- but something that goes to the core of who I am, right now, in every moment.

This is someone who has carried a baby in her belly and in her arms, obsessed about its health and safety, awakened with it at three in the morning to nourish it and comfort it. She has sacrificed physical independence and restorative sleep -- two of our most elemental human needs -- in order to build and sustain another person. She knows what it is not just to lead, to be powerful and victorious and proud and idealistic -- but also what it is to be led, to be humble and humbled and scared, to follow not just her ideals but also her instincts, her intuition, her obligation.

I don't mean to imply that men don't do many of these things, too. But I was struck, last night, by that one turn of phrase, "the late shift with the crying baby," that she intimately knows about those most difficult moments of my life because she has experienced them, too. And I was struck by how seldom the deepest threads of our lives, the almost-imperceptible string of moments that make up our days and our nights -- whoever we are in life -- gets woven into the fabric of political speech.

***

Had the world not gone the way it did in the last seven years -- oh, not even the world, just the country, or perhaps simply the Presidency itself -- I would not have hesitated to vote for the first-ever woman candidate with a viable shot at the office.

But this time around, the mess we're in trumps my longstanding dreams. My heart hurts with the political gash that's ruptured our country, and with its bloodier, messier reflection that we've provoked in Iraq. I think, more than any single traditional "issue," that this country is hemorrhaging with vitriol and mistrust. It's a country that desperately needs healing.

As much as her words made me feel understood as I wake up with a child at three in the morning, mumbling soothing words while exhaustion atrophies my energy, I am not at all confident that the people who hate Hillary can let go of their hatred long enough to allow her to campaign fairly and, were she the victor, to then lead the country with strength. Without laying blame at her feet, I can't shake the sense that she is too entwined not in the policies or the structures of the past but simply in its abject meanness.

I am very tired from sleepless nights, yes. But I am even more exhausted and frightened by the seemingly endless partisan rancor. I am quite afraid that, in order to win, Hillary would need to mudsling as well: There would be no change in our country's political culture, which is where change is needed most of all. I don't know anyone personally who would stand up in front of a crowd and disparage their neighbors, who would dig into their friends' pasts to discredit them, who would spend more time on the bickering than on restoring peace, health and hope to the world. I cannot withstand another year, or four years, or eight years, of meanness and arrogance while the earth keeps on shattering.

Right now I -- we -- need a healer at the helm. Obama doesn't seem, to me, to engender the vitriol that Hillary does. He appears to listen, to weigh the complexity of arguments, to get nuance, be able to hold opposing viewpoints and unbraid them, in order to understand them, in order to form opinions with foundation and vision -- and flexibility. God, please let our next President be someone with flexibility. He seems, perhaps because he has such a short history in the nation's Capitol, to transcend the destructive factionalizing that's now a Washington tradition. He seems like a healer to me, at a time when we need one more than anything.

So, with a little pang but a lot more hope, I'll continue to support Obama -- and perhaps help history in an equally important way. Voting for the first Black man to make it this far: It's not as personal to me as a vote for another mother, but I'm proud and excited and humbled to do it nonetheless.

***

And yet.

The woman and the mother and the feminist in me quietly continue to circle their own tired wagons -- clinging to a secret bit of hope that I still get the chance to support her victory in November.

First Civics Lesson

2008-02-05T14:39:00.001-08:00

The Dragon was thrilled last night when we told him we'd be going to vote in the morning. "I wanna go on a boat!" he shouted as we climbed the porch steps after daycare.

The Wizard and I laughed. "Vote!" we said, and showed him our teeth on our lips. "VVVVVVV."

He made the sound. "VVVVVVV."

This morning he jumped up and down. "I wanna go vote! I wanna go vote!"

"Do you know what it means to vote?" I asked.

He tossed his head nonchalantly. "Yeah."

He does this sometimes. I smiled and said, "It means we get to tell people what we think."

The Wizard nodded. "We get to tell them what we want to happen in this country."

"What's the country?" he said.

"It's all the people you see every day," I said. "It's the buildings and the trees and the houses and the streets and the animals. But mostly it's all the people."

He leaned over to the ficus tree that stands in our dining room and fingered a leaf. "It's the tree?" he said.

"Yes. It's the tree."

He let the leaf go and looked up at me. "I wanna go vote!" he shouted, glee filling his cheeks. I had to break it to him that it would be 16 more years before he was allowed.

The Wizard left to go to the polls while I wolfed down my breakfast. The Dragon stood on tiptoes on the couch and watched the Wizard drive away.

"Daddy's going to vote?"

"Yep!"

The Wizard returned, and it was my turn to go. The Dragon was heartbroken that he didn't get to come with me. Oops. We've taken him before, but this morning we were just too harangued.

He threw himself on the floor crying. "I! WANNA! VOTE!"

I sat down next to him. "I! WA! NA! VOTE!" His wail was piercing. I let him cry for a while and rubbed his back. Soon he turned over, wiped his nose with his sleeve and sighed.

I kissed his cheek and asked, "What would you vote for?"

He looked up at me with hope.

"To have some cookies," he hiccuped.

I guess we're all looking for some change.

---
P.S. We'll stop by the polls tonight on our way home from daycare and have a look.

Green Brood

2008-01-18T14:18:00.000-08:00

So I've been reading The Ethics of What We Eat, by Peter Singer and Jim Mason, which a coworker loaned me upon finding out that she'd inspired me to try on veganism for a while.

Though I'm only about a third of the way through the book (and through my six-week commitment to an animal-free diet), I've spent the last several days simply nauseated by the appalling descriptions of large-scale animal operations in this country.

Now, I've never been a particularly gung-ho animal lover: Neither my eight years of vegetarianism during Bush #1 and Clinton (#1?), nor my recent foray into the vegan underground, has been spurred by tenderheartedness toward chickens, pigs and cows. Instead, my concern has been much more about the avalanche of damage that industrial farming visits upon the environment every day. Oh -- and more recently, by wanting to fit back into my skinny clothes.

I'd heard things -- read fleeting news reports, listened to stories about lawsuits, seen grainy undercover videos taken at industrial chicken warehouses. But to have the animal cruelty, the environmental degradation and the economic injustices documented, described, referenced and compiled all in one place is -- well, simply astounding. I highly recommend this reading. It's also pretty measured and non-proselytizing, which is nice.

Like I said in my last post on this topic, I'm not really into self-righteousness. And I don't post this one to push buttons or pit people against each other (and especially not against me). Because while there are a lot of super-radical things I believe in (universal health care, clean air and water, equal pay for equal work -- you get the idea), I really loathe people who act all superior about their lifestyle choice.

No, I'm writing this more for ... more for ... (wait for it) ... the children.

I'm just so afraid of what's happening to our environment, to the kind of restrictions and realities the Dragon will grow up with and have to pass on to his own brood. Not just the big scary effects of global warming that are almost too huge to wrap your mind around, but little things that I always just took for granted as part of our world -- like swimming in natural lakes and streams without threat of infection, like deep-breathing country air without coughing and hacking. (Seriously, Singer and Mason say that California's Central Valley, or "America's fruit bowl," as it's affectionately known in these parts, has the third most polluted air of any region in the country -- from industrial farming.)

The documentation that Singer and Mason provide makes it clear that these birthrights of childhood are in serious danger, not from seemingly faraway abstractions like global warming but directly from industrial farming practices in our country -- i.e., from the food we eat. Did you know that human waste has to go through a complex treatment process before it's disposed of, but there are no similar regulations for animal waste? Had I not already been abstaining from meat, that fact alone might have driven me there.

I mean, ew.

(I haven't gotten to the chapter yet on produce farming. I'm sure it's no better, though I'm not aware of how potato poop is handled in this country. I'll let you know when I get there.)

According to the Nature Conservancy's Carbon Footprint Calculator, food choices only account for 15.1% of the average American's annual carbon output. But it's a 15.1% that a lot of us have more control over than, say, the 44.3% that's consumed by driving and flying, which would require significant financial commitments from a lot of families -- for example dumping the old clunker for a hybrid, or selling the house to move closer to work.

It's a 15.1% that could be significantly cut without even giving up animal products entirely. Just downsizing the number of meat dishes you eat each week, or just buying free range organic instead of not, or both, could make an impact on the kind of world the Dragon, and his cousins, and all their friends, and all their children and grand- children, and all theirs, and all theirs, and all theirs, someday end up living in.

Please consider it.

Pretty please?

(Image credits: Piglet, Pig warehouse, Kids)

Heartbreak, by Boynton

2008-01-16T13:19:00.000-08:00

The Wizard's mom likes to decorate for Christmas.

No, I mean really decorate.

There's not an inch of shelf, table or counter space in her house between Thanksgiving and New Year's that's not specially reserved for a stuffed snowman, a cat in a Santa hat or a tiny ceramic sleigh filled with tiny ceramic toys. Each regular pillow on the couch is traded out for one with bells or holly appliqued onto it. Tables and buffets are adorned with Christmas-themed candles, and special holidayware replaces the plates, forks and glasses we use in boring old October. The bathroom towels are red and green, and the soap is shaped like a present. The cat snits and scratches at the jingle bell tied to his collar. This year I counted not one, not two, but at least six junior-size Christmas trees everywhere from the front hall to the kitchen table. And that's not even counting the big one in the front window.

So heavily laden is this house during the holidays that I couldn't even find a comparable example on Google images. So you'll just have to trust me, enjoy the picture of Ned Flanders's house and fill in the rest with your imagination.

For the most part, the Wizard and the Dragon and I are the simple beneficiaries of this abundance and intensity. We show up, exchange presents, eat a nice meal, enjoy the conversation and depart.

Except for one little thing: The Wizard's job is to get the boxes down from the high shelves in the garage for his mom just after Thanksgiving, and return after New Year's to retrieve them again so she can put the occasion to rest for another 11 months. The Wizard is a good son.

So this weekend he proceeded with his task. But as he was perched on the step-stool, reaching for the last empty box, something went awry and a half-dozen full boxes came tumbling down, landing with a thud and a crash on the floor.

"Oops," he said.

"Oh, that's okay," his mom said. "I've been meaning to ask you to look through those to see if there's anything you want. If not, I'll just give it to Goodwill."

And so, with the Dragon playing a safe distance away, the Wizard and his mom picked through the sharp ceramic remains of my husband's childhood.

In the end, he only came home with three pieces: A mug that said "Father," which he'd given to -- guess who -- his father for, you guessed it, Father's Day when he was about eight. A mug with a blue flower pattern that the Wizard remembers fondly as The Grownups' Mug, from which he relished, with kid-like delight, his coffee on Monday morning. And this:

Just to be clear: The picture above is three shots, from three different angles, of the same mug. It shows the Boynton cat sad and blue on the left, going through a whole range of emotions, until he happily arrives at the bright red heart -- smiling and content. The Wizard vaguely recalls it being a gift from himself to one parent or another some hazy Valentine's Day at least a quarter-century past.

He must have drunk his Tuesday morning coffee out of it, because when I arrived home with the Dragon last night, there it was on the kitchen counter with the little spooling dregs dried on the inside bottom. The Dragon clambered up onto his chair at the counter and demanded fish sticks. While I went to work putting dinner together, he picked up the mug.

"What's this, Mama?" he asked.

"That's a mug that Daddy brought home from Grandma and Grandpa's," I said. I came closer. "See, the kitty is sad there. Then --" I pointed and twisted the mug. "-- he gets happier and happier until he's really happy!" I stabbed at the happy cat with one finger. "Happy, happy, happy!"

I turned back to squirt ketchup into a little bowl, like the Dragon likes.

"Why is the kitty sad?" said the little voice behind me.

I turned and looked at my son. "I don't know," I said. "Why do you think he's sad?"

The Dragon nodded earnestly and said, "Because his Mama was late to get him."

Now, in my defense, I was not later than usual last night. In fact, I was earlier than most days. But he asked me about it in the car on the way home, and here it was again. It seemed like a long time to him -- the time between when he started wanting to see me and when I actually showed up.

"Would you like me to pick you up earlier?" I asked.

"Yes." He nodded emphatically.

"When would you like me to pick you up?"

"After I finish playing with my friends outside," he said. It seemed as if he'd already thought about it, had somehow planned the conversation and the mug was just the device he needed to make it sound offhanded and casual. I know that's not really where a two-year-old's mind is at, but his certainty was startling, somehow eerie.

"So after you come back into the classroom from outside, you want me to come right away? You don't want to have to wait in the classroom after you're done playing outside?"

"Yes," he said.

"Well." I sat down next to him for a minute. "I'll try to get there as early as I can," I said, "but it's going to be hard for another month or so. Then, after one more month, you'll get to stay home with me more, and I'll be able to pick you up earlier. How will that be?"

"Okay," he said, and nodded.

I'm so unsure how to quantify time for him. After lunch is conceivable to him. When you wake up in the morning he usually gets. But After one more month? After you go to daycare 20 more times? I wonder how he took that in, what he's thinking a month will be. A month from now, will he even remember that I said that? How many more conversations like this will we have in the next four weeks?

And will I really pick him up faithfully at 5:00 after I quit? Or will I lose track of time, working on my own, at home? Will I try to squeeze just one more thing in before I leave? Will I sneak in an Oprah in the afternoon, feel guilty about the lost work and toil till 5:45 to make up for it, just barely arriving before they close the gates and drag my child to the holding room to wait for me?

Will he always feel like he's just waiting, endlessly, for me to show up?

"Why is the kitty happy?" asked the Dragon.

"Why do you think?" I asked.

"Because he saw his Mama!" he shouted, and laughed.

I came toward him with a hug and a kiss. "Are you happy when you see me?" I said.

"Yeah!" Another shout.

"I'm happy when I see you, too," I said and snuggled his hair. "There's nothing I'd rather do in the whole world than be with you."

"I want my fish sticks," he said.

(Image credits: Flanders's house, Boynton mug)

Garden of Vegan

2008-01-11T15:01:00.000-08:00

Today marks Day Five of my vegan adventure.

It started Monday morning with a desire to lose the 30 pounds of baggage I've been packing on for the last year.

It proceeded quickly into quiet enthusiasm for a lifestyle I long eschewed in favor of cheese.

(But let's take a moment, shall we? Mmmmm.....cheeeeeeeeeeese.)

Okay, now to business. I have to admit that leading the resistance to Vegatopia was my assumption that there was no variety in the vegan diet. I thought I'd be bored to tears, feel deprived, and resent the flat, uninteresting taste of each meal.

Boy, was I wrong. This week I've eaten:

Raw peppers and carrots (up at which I had previously turned my nose)
Lots of pears, apples and berries
Eggless egg salad on whole grain toast
Lentil-tomato salad with dill
Tofu chili from a can
Corn puffs from a bag
Wild rice, both with and without raisins
Balsamic blueberries and pears
Wine. Yummy, yummy wine
Yam fries

Yam fries, people! Yam fries!!

Granted, some of these things aren't low-fat (the balsamic blueberry syrup, for instance, and the raisins in the wild rice). I do need to get serious about myself and cut even the vegan fat out of my diet if I'm ever going to be svelte and stunning again. But you could have knocked me over with a feather this week (well - a bucketful of feathers, given that I'm still about 30 pounds overweight) when I realized that my pre-vegan diet was actually the limited one.

I mean, I bought a butternut squash this week. A butternut squash! I have no clue what I'm going to do with it, but I've made pretty good friends with this Internet thing, and I'm sure she'll have some ideas. I keep marveling at how much I've missed out on because I so craved the cheese. My diet was getting just plain monotonous what with the chicken and the cheddar and the occasional bowl of chocolate ice cream lovingly drenched in a big old puddle of guilt.

And speaking of cravings, I started the week intent on finding a reliable supplier of dairy-free chocolate. Now I pretty much don't care. I haven't had a sugar craving all week, much less a chocolate craving or any other kind of craving. That was pretty much from the get-go. Not only that, but my skin is clearer than it's been since the first wallop of puberty. I'm sleeping better. Less back pain. Fewer mood swings. Much, much, much more energy and clarity up top.

And my GI tract -- oh, sweet, sweet, GI tract. Finally you love me.

***

Okay, since this is a family life blog, I suppose I should say something about the family here. I've always resisted the idea of fixing two or three different meals for a single family at dinnertime. And yet, I'm really not into guilting or pressuring someone to make a lifestyle change they're not interested in. So unless the Wizard does a 180 on his own and starts eating vegan with me (a girl can dream), it looks like we might be headed in that direction.

There could be worse things. We'll probably just have to be really organized, planning meals more carefully to minimize the work and maximize the use of ingredients. It would be nice to have one or two dishes at each meal in common -- less for the work and more for the relationship that grows when people break bread together. The same bread. It doesn't seem quite as connected if each person's meal is totally separate.

And then there's the whole thing about saving the planet for our son and all his little friends. I've long known that it takes lots and lots of land and water to produce a pound of beef (much less so for a pound of chicken, but still...). Plus, we'll (temporarily) be a one-income family come February 15, and hell if veggies aren't a lot cheaper than meat and cheese. I guess that's 'cause of all the resources it takes to raise a bleating pound of protein.

But. It's now Friday afternoon and I'm not quite ready to ponder all those complex thoughts. I'm just looking forward to a weekend of exploring my new hobby. Dairy-free cornbread, here I come!

Image credits: Garden of Vegan, GI tract

Merry Christmas

2007-12-24T21:58:00.000-08:00

While gearing up for present wrapping I found this:

Best to you all...

Santa Stuff

2007-12-20T15:27:00.000-08:00

So perhaps the traditional sitting in Santa's lap and asking for presents isn't your thing? The maybe you should read about these alternative Santas.

And to see other kids who didn't like Father Christmas, go to this Chicago Tribune slide show of photos.

Go away, big monsters

2007-12-17T13:55:00.001-08:00

The Dragon has always had a hard time getting to sleep. Most nights it takes an hour for him to find a breath that is steady enough for dreamland. It’s often another half-hour before we can tiptoe out of his bedroom and quietly shut the door, our own breaths tight and thin in hopes of not waking him.

During this 90-minute toss-and-turning jag, the Dragon sometimes whispers under his breath – a light, lilting babble like a little brook with its volume down low. Or, alternately, a sweet, innocent version of the disconcerting jungle whispers in the American TV drama Lost just before something creepy happens. In any case, I’ve never been able to decipher what he says when he’s whispering just before sleep.

Until two nights ago, when I distinctly heard him command: “Go away, big monsters.”

My first response was a little internal maternal heartbreak – first, that this dear, sweet child felt he had to deal with the monsters on his own; and second, that he was even seeing / hearing / imagining monsters to begin with.

My second response was the thought, "I’m the big, strong, wise adult here. I have to do something smart. And helpful. And now." And then: "Dammit." And then: "Now."

I don’t know whether it’s built into the DNA of parenthood or into the sociological knee-jerk response structure of our society, but my initial impulse was to tell the Dragon, “There’s no such thing as monsters.” But I didn’t.

I didn’t because, although we might believe in the objective truth of the statement “There’s no such thing as monsters,” there is a deeper truth that this child needed validated in that moment: that he was, in fact, experiencing monsters. Infinitely more than scientific explanations, he needed me to be compassionate – literally, to “feel with” him in that state, in his fear of monsters, and to acknowledge the truth of his fear.

***

Though Carl G. Jung based his psychological theories mostly in adult experiences, many elements easily apply across all age groups. His work around archetypes and dreams is particularly pertinent here. An archetype is essentially a universal experience: a relationship, role or situation that is a basic part of everyone’s psychological makeup. There are archetypes of mother, father, child, savior, teacher, warrior, lover, rebel, nomad, god, goddess, addict, shadow, trickster, despot. And many more. Including monster.

Archetypes often show up in our dreams or imaginings or artwork as literal pictures or symbols. Those archetypes that we’re having trouble with in life may show up as frightening pictures, like venomous snakes or axe murderers or big monsters. The picture gives form to the problem, helps us to see it and address it -- often much better than if it remained a slippery, abstract, cerebral description. Bringing the problem from Logos to Soma, from mind to body, means we can grapple with it through all of our senses. We can meet it on its own terms.

The monster in a dream may be an emotion that the child (or the adult) is having trouble processing: frustration about potty training, sadness about a dog who has died, the perils of separation anxiety. It could be a secret he’s keeping: abuse, illness, something “bad” he’s done that he doesn’t want to admit. It could be a situation he doesn’t know how to handle: An overly-demanding teacher, a new brother or sister, a move to a different home. It could be the bigness of growing up, of leaving babyhood behind and becoming a little boy and all that that means.

Symbols demand that we respond, at least initially, in their own language. This is especially true when the person visited by the symbol is a child: Children live and breathe metaphor. The logic-based response, “There’s no such thing as monsters; you don’t have to be afraid,” takes them out of that reality and plunges them into one that makes as little sense to them as monsters and magic make to us wise old adults. Because, in their reality, there are monsters. We’re not going to logic the monsters away. And suggesting there aren’t any only implies that the child is lying, or loony. And we know he is neither.

And yet the Dragon, of course, is not yet ready to understand explanations about archetypes, symbols and metaphors. He is not ready for a discussion of his feelings beyond telling me what they are: “Scared.” “Sad.” “Happy.” It turns out he is also not ready to imagine what the monsters might want when they visit.

So we just got a little more familiar with the monsters. We talked about what they looked like (hairy, with eyes and teeth), how many there were (ten) and where they gathered (definitely in the Dragon's room, definitely not in Mama and Daddy’s room). But when I asked what they wanted, the Dragon remained silent. He just knew he needed them to go away. So I left that question for sometime later.

Instead, I marched out to the kitchen, dug around in some cupboards and finally located the Monster Spray I keep on hand for just such occasions. I returned to the bedroom shouting, “Go away, monsters! You’re not welcome here! You leave the Dragon alone!” I circled the room’s periphery, spraying walls, corners and furniture so no monsters could enter that night, so the Dragon felt safe.

And within literally – and I do mean literally – ten seconds, he was fast asleep.

***

The Wizard was out that night, and when he returned home, I told him what had happened. The next morning, when the Dragon awoke, the Wizard asked him all about the monsters. Then he led his son by the hand to the hall closet and took down a feather duster. “I know Mama sprayed for monsters,” he said. “But if they come back, you can use this to fight them off.”

The Dragon took the duster earnestly by the handle and brandished it like a sword. “Go away, big monsters!” he shouted, stabbing at the air, practicing. “Go away!” He ran all over the house fighting monsters.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” I mused. “I just protected him. I didn’t let him take care of the problem himself.” I felt badly, then, that I had taken the monsters into my own hands and let the Dragon sit back without an active role.

And then, after a cup of coffee and a few musing hours, I realized that, though the Wizard and I had each responded differently, each response was equally valuable to the Dragon's psyche: I showed him he wasn't alone in the fight; I showed him that we are here to protect him; I engendered a sense of safety within our home and our family. The Wizard gave him the magic to go out on his own, to fight any monsters he might face, to believe in himself as well as in his family. Both roles are necessary: A child must feel a certain level of safety and security before he can venture out to become the hero of his own life.

***

The next night, the Dragon again awoke screaming. “Tigers!” he cried, flailing his arms. “No! No! Tigers!” His little face, even with eyes closed, was anguished and fearful.

Breathing soothing and encouraging words, I groped for the feather duster and pressed it into his palm. He squeezed his hand around it and dropped back into the pillow. His body relaxed, and his breathing evened out. He was asleep again. He had not even opened his eyes. The whole episode lasted, again, only about ten seconds.

He slept until morning, the hero of his dreams.

Monster Mash

2007-12-13T21:31:00.000-08:00

So you may know that the dragon was having trouble sleeping because he was scared of monsters. Well we tried some other ways to deal with them tonight.

First we made a couple of monsters:

He handed me the pieces, I assembled them, and he didn't knock them over. Good team work!

Then he grabbed his Monster Whacker and took care of business:

Hopefully a good nights rest again.

Night night buddy.

wiggle, wiggle, wiggle

2007-12-11T20:19:00.000-08:00

So the Dragon likes the Wiggles well enough, and after he got bored with my searches for Tool performances we looked for some Wiggles videos. Wow, talk about variety!

This one is pretty straight forward:

The next is weirder, but the Dragon eventually got into it:

Now here is where it started getting strange:

And finally we had to end it here after a few seconds, but I came back and watched this one on my own (warning, adult themed):

Thank you, Internet.

"I hereby bequeath..."

2007-10-04T16:28:00.000-07:00

So we have wills now. And medical directives and life insurance upgrades. We are thinking about who would take care of the Dragon when we die. We have life insurance forms and 529 applications!

WOW!

I don't know if I feel good, old, responsible, or depressed. Probably some combination of all of them. It's good to get all that Responsible stuff done, get your shit in order. Depressing for the obvious end-of-life-reasons, but not really much of that, nor the "old" part either.

Realizing we have enough crap that we need a formal way to disperse it all is interesting, but out of all those feelings was a kind of big, watershed-y moment feeling, like something important happened. But what though?

The fact that I now have a will? That it was far easier to do than I thought (link to software we used) is one thing, and as I mentioned there is almost a comfort in getting it done. Am I more of a grown-up than I was before I had a will? Sure, but that isn't all of it.

I think it boils down to taking care of the two most important people to me. I have taken steps to make sure that they will be OK, at least financially and at least for a little while, when I kick the O2 Habit. There are instructions and guides that will help get them trough (what BETTER be!) sad and trying times. It feels good to take care of the people you love, to do something nice for them.

Failure

2007-09-09T14:00:00.000-07:00

In the last week, I've failed twice as a mother.

I'm not talking about spilling the milk or sending the Dragon to daycare with his shirt on backwards. I'm talking about major failures: changes in habits and behaviors that -- I thought -- were central to my identity as a mother.

And hallelujah, by the way.

First, I stopped cleaning constantly. I thought I had to have a clean kitchen or I would go crazy. I thought I couldn't think straight if there were socks in the hallway or puzzle pieces between the couch cushions. I thought having the round Tupperware on the bottom shelf and the square Tupperware on the top shelf, sorted by size, color and the relative recyclability of the plastics used, was a prerequisite for sanity.

I've always liked a clean house, but after the Dragon was born it's like my neurotic need for the tidy just ran over any sense of moderation I'd once had. Suddenly I couldn't rest until the thumbtacks were perfectly lined up on the bulletin board, the spoons were stacked neatly in the tray and every speck of dust was wiped clean from the top of the refrigerator, which frankly hadn't seen a dust rag since the Clinton administration.

At the same time all this insanity was assaulting my psyche, I was having a hell of a time getting the Dragon to sleep. The Wizard and I used to trade off nights putting him to bed, but it always took so much longer when it was me. I would get impatient and angry and upset that the Wizard would be in and out in less than 15 minutes whereas, on alternate days, my evening just whittled away while the Wizard read or played video games on the other side of the wall. I myself had no time or energy on those nights to play, read -- or clean. And once I got out, I always felt the need to clean so I wouldn't go insane.

As it turned out, that's what all was making me loony.

That, and I was feeling bad about my body. Still up about 15 pounds from pre-pregnancy weight, with a sugar addiction that defies all human rationale, I was also resenting having no time or energy to exercise.

Then, with a sweep of his hand, the Wizard made it all better.

"Why don't you let me put the Dragon to sleep every night," he said, "while you exercise? You'll feel better and we'll have more time in the evenings."

There was a reason this wouldn't work. I just knew it. "I won't be able to clean the kitchen if I'm exercising," I said. Ha! Try to find a comeback for that.

He looked at me like I was crazy. Which I was. "So the kitchen doesn't get clean. We'll get it done as we can. It doesn't have to be perfect all the time."

I hate to admit it, but I felt like a dewy doe just awakening in the clearing, rays of Sun peeking through the trees, all moss and clover beneath my feet. Cue the cloying music.

It d-d-doesn't? Have to be p-p-perfect?

The next night, with a little hesitation, I left the Dragon's room right after story time. I kissed him goodnight, turned away from his protest cries and closed the door. I closed two more doors between us as the Wizard worked his sleep magic. I turned up the music in the sunroom and started running in place. How could I exercise when dishes were dirty and my child wasn't yet asleep? Were my priorities that screwed up? How much of a failure was I? Was I really not meant to be a mom, after all?

The longer I ran in place, the more things fell away: dishes, crying, chronic sleep deprivation, chronic loss of self. My breath came harder and my muscles ached. A few more minutes and I couldn't sing along to the music anymore; my muscles and neurons joined into that Zen zone. A few more minutes and the Wizard flashed me the thumbs-up through the window. The Dragon was asleep. I'd forgotten all about the dishes.

When I saw them later, I spent a minute straightening things up. It didn't seem as daunting as I'd remembered.

(Image credit)

Threats to our children

2007-09-06T09:02:00.000-07:00

We here at the 'brood mean to keep you informed of things we see as important, and the safety of our children is number one. I have disagreed with our President on many occasions, but I must say I am behind him on this one.

You have been warned.

Sorry, buddy

2007-09-05T15:57:00.001-07:00

Inspired by Gladstone and his blog at Offsprung, I'll put out this post to the "end of summer."

Sorry you have to be back at day care little man. It was totally fun with you at the beach, hanging out with your grandparents, playing with cousins. We had a blast. Then you were back to the routine for a few days and it seemed OK. But then you had a four day weekend with us! A four day weekend with a birthday! There were kids and a pool and cake and other kids and cake... How cool was that!

But then back to day care. It's not like it's a bad place, you like the kids there and the teachers are nice and there is lots to do. But its not home, and we aren't there (and happily, you like hanging out with mom and dad!) and its really tough when we leave you, isn't it?

Well, it's tough for us too. We would much rather spend the day with you than be at work, much rather introduce you to all the world has to offer than pay others to do a lot of that. It sucks, but that is how it is right now. We are working on it, promise, but for now we just have to get by the best we can.

Take care,
dad

Beware the Uber-Stink

2007-07-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

Between random stories of daily life in our house, we'd like to share some serious (and not-so) resources and ideas for managing as a two-working-parents family.

It's tough to find the time and energy for the boring and/or icky stuff, which in most people's books includes things like vacuuming, dish-washing and cat-box-cleaning. That's because, give or take a few details, this is a typical day for a family with two working parents and a toddler:

1. Wake up, if we haven't been up all night already. Get everyone cleaned, fed and dressed. This is a lot harder than it sounds when a toddler is hanging on your leg begging to nurse while you're struggling to squeeze into the slacks that are (cringe) too tight. Again.
2. Make sure everyone has what they need for the day (briefcase, diapers, Xanax) and pile into the car.
3. Drop kid(s) off at daycare and drive to work. Counterintuitively, the commute can be the most relaxing time of day for the working parent. Sometimes I'm positively THRILLED to see a long line of cars snaking down the freeway in front of me. I turn off the radio and revel in the silence.
4. Work.
5. Commute. Aaahhhh.
6. Pick up kid, dirty diapers and the day's 18 art projects. Drive home.
7. Nurse.
8. Fix three different dinners: carnivore dad, vegetarian mom, particular toddler. Wipe yogurt off windows.
9. Screaming Bath(TM).
10. Pajamas, nursing, singing, stories, nose-blowing, medicine (various types, for one or more family members), tooth-brushing, singing, stories, music, lights out for kids.
11. Rub baby's back for 15-60 minutes till he falls asleep.
12. The Daily Show.
13. Short crying jag.
14. Lights out for adults.

In short, there is no time here for the things we used to do. I'm not even talking about the fun stuff here. I'm just talking about cleaning the kitchen or folding the laundry. Our house is consistently 98% less clean than it was three years ago. I walk around a little shivery from the spores. I try not to think about it.

So imagine how thrilled I was to discover -- thanks to The Wizard via Slumbering Lungfish -- ChoreWars, where you can waste even more time you don't have putting off your chores by making an awesome role-playing game out of them. Now Cleaning the Kitchen can be an Adventure fraught with dangerous monsters like Uber-Stink and MoldishFruit. But hidden treasures are possible, too -- things like GoldenSpatula, TitaniumFridge and, most valuable in my imaginary(?) world, ChocolateMedallions.

Seriously, I've already racked up 50 online gold pieces just by doing what I normally do in the course of a day, when I squeeze cleaning in between The Daily Show and the crying jag. If I can't be rich in real life, at least I can be rich in some Scottish guy's made-up world that all of a sudden eerily interacts with my reality.

Woohoo!

(Image credit)

How things have changed

2007-07-19T21:33:00.000-07:00

The first time the Nymph and I took the Dragon out of the house it took 45 minutes just to get "stuff" ready. The little D. was ready to roll, he just lolled around in his carry-all watching us bump into each other as we asked questions like, "Do we have enough diapers? Are you going to grab another onesie*?" We were only going to Target where in theory we could have bought anything we had forgotten. Which we did, I cracked open a package of pacifiers, rinsed them off in a drinking fountain and plugged the crying hole**.

Now it still takes us 45 minutes to get out of the house, but now it is because we chase the half naked Dragon as he runs around the house yelling, "NO WANT PANTS!"

* FUN FACT - It took me less than two weeks to not feel weird saying, "onesie."
** - The Dragon's

Debt or Baby? Debt or Baby?

2007-07-11T16:13:00.000-07:00

An interesting string on Offsprung got me thinking more about the intersection of finances and the family. The inquiring mind wanted to know if financial stress should be a deterrent to having a child, or if the couple should just plug their noses and jump in.

There are certainly parents who think throwing their kids in the water is a great way to make them learn to swim. But in my completely unresearched estimation, more parents than not these days try to teach their kids to swim before throwing them in the deep end. Therefore I think there's wisdom in making financial preparations for Mouth #3 while fully intending to jump into the engulfing chlorination of parenthood.*

But how?

First order of business: For God's sake, get yourself out of crushing debt. If you're not already as obsessed with this goal as you are with your (choose one or more) weight / sex life / alcohol consumption / cat, then change out your neurons right now. Get on the debt-free bus. The express one. Like losing weight (eat right and exercise, dummy!), you know how to do it. It's just a matter of implementing the plan. But just in case, here's a quick checklist:

1. Pay off your consumer debt. Cut up your credit cards. Not only that, but also: Black out the number on the statements sitting in a pile on your desk; delete them from your online accounts; and do everything you can to deliberately forget them. The truth is, you don't need credit cards in hand in order to use your credit card. So cutting them up isn't likely to have an impact. You have to get rid of every easy way to use them. And then, pay them off. Divide the number of dollars you owe by the number of months left until you want to get yourself or your partner pregnant. Add a few bucks for interest. There's your monthly payment (assuming you don't charge anything else between now and then. Don't.). Okay, if the number is so through the roof that it puts pregnancy at age 80, then you'll have to get a little more creative. See Tip #5.

2. Cut your spending so you can pay it off quicker. Unless you're already living off the land in a squatter in rural Montana (is there a non-rural Montana?), you can cut your expenses. Rent/mortgage, groceries and, depending on your habits, transportation and/or entertainment usually take the biggest bite out of your take-home pay. (This is assuming you have a job or a great freelance gig. If you don't, you're reading the wrong blog.) If you're absolutely unwilling to move to a cheaper place or can't refinance your house any further, you can still cut your grocery bill and probably even the cost of your ride. But don't overlook the small things, either -- even look at them as challenges. Seriously, this can be fun: Can you go without TiVo for six months? Can you go on cheap or free dates with your spouse? Can you get rid of the land line and just use cell phones? Can you eat out 50% less? Buy thrift store instead of new clothes? Make it a game: The person who saves the family the most money each month gets a trip to the library! Just be sure you put the money you save toward debt reduction.

3. Prioritize. This should probably be #1, but I don't feel like going back to edit. Take a look at all your debt and decide which one has to go first. There are a few schools of thought on this: (a) The sensible school: Pay off the highest-interest debt first. (b) The sentimental school: Pay off the one you most desperately want to pay off first. (c) The random school: Pay off whichever debt starts with the letter closest to the letter of your last name. Our advice is to go with option (a) but you make your own choices in life, so do what feels right to you. Just pick something, and do it. Stop getting yourself into debt and start getting yourself out.

4. Get serious. Here's the hard part. You've got to make debt elimination a priority. If you talk about it, dream about it, resent the hell out of the fact that you're not doing it -- it'll never get done. Just like that 20 pounds you keep "trying" to lose. Don't try. Just do it. Lose the weight, lose the debt. If you say, "I really want to, but I just can't give up my TiVo," then no, you don't really want to. Getting out of debt is hard. It doesn't happen instantly. It takes work, it takes sacrifice, it takes time. Commit to the work, the sacrifice and the time. Recommit to it every day -- every minute if you need to. Debt reduction, like weight loss, happens at a thousand junctures a week -- at every opportunity you have to put food into your big mouth or to let cash leave your little hands. Get serious about making the right choice every time.

5. Get creative. For most people, cutting expense is easier than increasing income because mostly it takes less time. You just have to get into the habit. But if you find that cutting your spending and paying off your credit cards still isn't enough to dig you out of debt, get creative. Find ways to make money on the side. I know it feels like you're so busy already, but truthfully, I haven't ever heard anyone say, "Boy, I'm so glad I had kids because my life is so much more relaxed now! I have so much more time than before!" Nope. Use the planeloads of time you really truly have now to sell stuff on eBay, have a garage sale, assemble crap for companies who need you to assemble crap, work overtime, work seasonal jobs, get a freelance or consulting gig, deliver papers, babysit, mow lawns -- whatever your skills allow. Put every penny you earn that the government doesn't seize toward paying off debt.

6. And by all means, grow a spine and ask for a raise if you deserve one. You probably do.

* Statistically unlikely phrase.

I Wanna Be Rich!

2007-07-05T19:33:00.001-07:00

The Wizard and I met in the Peace Corps. He had been been there for a year already before I arrived, and I looked up to him with all the drooly admiration of a mascara-caked Boy Band groupie. He was In The Know. And I wanted to know what he knew. So, dewey-eyed, I asked him:

"What have you learned about yourself since you've been in Morocco?"

He looked down at me with what I thought were Big Wise Eyes (though I hate to admit it now, I might actually have been sitting at his feet. Aak!) and said swiftly, "That I wanna be rich."

As deflated and repulsed as I felt -- this was not the profound, self-searching, introspected gemstone of truth I had been seeking, and I was new enough in country and in life to still be putting poverty on a pedestal -- I somehow still ended up marrying the rake.

It's 12 years later and guess what? We're not rich!

BUT. We do all right. We have no consumer debt, our credit scores are off the charts, we have a few decent investments, and we're pretty easily able to save for the things we want. We don't own a yacht, we haven't been on pseudo-safari in Africa, that passenger flight to the Moon is still out of reach. But we own our own home, drive two working cars, go on inexpensive vacations a few times a year (and an expensive one every few years), and we'll be able to send our kids to college, if they don't make their millions on the Internet first. We'll retire without debt at a fairly decent age and may even be able to afford a retirement home that hasn't been featured on 60 Minutes. We have a pretty nice life.

And I can pretty much guarantee that, if we ever have the energy to get a divorce, it won't be for financial reasons. That's more than a lot of couples can say. So we think we have the authority to intersperse random tales of managing life as working parents with financial advice that's based on nothing but our own foibles and made-up factoids.

Advice #1: Respect and try to accommodate each other's financial goals. For example, I respect the Wizard's desire to be rich. That's easy, 'cause about six months into my Peace Corps stint, I changed my tune and decided I wanted to be rich, too. But equally important, he respects my desire for a label maker that doesn't run out of label tape. He understands -- and this is Advice #2 -- that money is a tangible symbol for intangible values. He's willing to keep me in labeler tape because he knows that being organized is important to me. If I'm not organized, I'm cranky. If I'm cranky, I'm not productive. If I'm not productive, I nitpick, nag and complain a lot. Which he hates. Therefore labeler tape = Happy Wizard. Win-win.

Sleep Country

2007-07-03T15:04:00.000-07:00

Just because I'm sleep deprived doesn't mean I can't a coherent sentence.

This just-released (1999) study I found on the Internets ***PROVES*** that the reason I'm still carrying around 15 pounds of "baby weight" when the Dragon is almost 2 years old is his fault, not mine. If he'd just sleep through the damn night, my body would certainly be able to metabolize the six pounds of chocolate I go through each week.

Or, if it's too much to consider blaming a 2-year-old for my eggish figure, what about The Wizard? If he's just let me sleep through the screaming fury of a restless toddler in the next room instead of insisting that I get up to help, too, we'd all be a lot happier.

Because I'd be thinner.

Cars and Bubbles

2007-06-29T16:01:00.000-07:00

Last night as I was unloading the car the dragon crawled up into the drivers seat and stood there holding the wheel with an impish grin. "Wanna drive!" It starts soo young...

This morning the dragon looked up at his mom and said, "I want bubbles!" To which my lovely mate promptly responded to by blowing spit bubbles at him to much delight. She is a keeper!

The Family Brood

Four Hours with a Three-Year-Old

Christmas 2008

Tension of Opposites, Family Style

Happy Father's Day!

Bed Sores

Two New Things

More on Why Parenting is Awesome

National Teach Children to Save Day

And Another Thing

Uncle

Mystery of the 20-Month Sentence

Spot On

Parenthood in the Neck of the Amphora

Toys and Breakfast

In Case Your Fridge is Out of Space

How To Clean Your House

Feed The Pig

Child's Play

What Do You Think Of

Taking a Moment

First Civics Lesson

Green Brood

Heartbreak, by Boynton

Garden of Vegan

Merry Christmas

Santa Stuff

Go away, big monsters

Monster Mash

wiggle, wiggle, wiggle

Recommended Reading

"I hereby bequeath..."

Failure

Threats to our children

Sorry, buddy

Beware the Uber-Stink

How things have changed

Debt or Baby? Debt or Baby?

I Wanna Be Rich!

Sleep Country

Cars and Bubbles