Squidbits

In the Squid's own city, he has a different Mommy and Daddy. At first, there were no parents in the city at all - just kids - but in the last week or so he has added them in. They are not us, and not necessarily a great deal like us; the Mommy is nice and the Daddy is mean, and that's kind of all we know. They are just part of his mirror world. In his own city, he has a car and a truck and a train and a house and a bunch of other wish-fulfillment stuff. He also tells us, when we wonder about the veracity of this statement or story or that, that he saw it in his own city, or it happened in his own city. He saw a crocodile with no teeth that lived on plankton in his own city. Jet planes fly with their windows down. And snakes can have legs and not be lizards.

It's a permanent part of his imaginary life and he incorporates it into all his narratives - the narratives that aren't blatantly ripped off from books and movies he has read or seen, that is. I can usually tell which are which based on the consistency and coherence of the narrative, but not always. There's one about Peter and Mr. McGregor that seems to have nothing to do with anything Beatrix Potter ever wrote, and one about a "baby seal puff" (Me: "a baby seal pup?" Him: "No, a baby seal PUFF.") that gets rescued by its mommy. He weaves a decent yarn, these days.

But he has a crappy attitude. Not always, but sometimes - too much of the time - it's like he turned thirteen on us when we weren't looking. He rolls his eyes (a behavioral tic both Himself and I are also guilty of), sighs loudly, mutters "crazy old Mommy" under his breath, whines, stamps his feet, refuses to do what is asked of him, negotiates everything, and told me the other day, when I said he had to wipe down the toilet where there was pee on the rim, "That's not my responsibility." I would like to know whose responsibility you think it is to clean up your pee, then, bucko. I told him to eat his broccoli the other day and he actually got up off his chair, walked over to me, and kicked me in the shins!



Part of it is just that we have gotten tired of being permissive and are starting to crack down. He is almost four, and clearly capable of many of the things we would like him to do. He is now more consistently expected to clean up after himself, put away his toys, put his dishes in the sink when he is done, and eat the food he is served before getting any of the things he considers "good" in life (books, movies, playtime, dates with friends, dried fruit, etc.) Increased responsibilities mean increased policing and nagging. Spitting noises, lack of cooperation, throwing things, and other such behavior gets time outs or the loss of privileges.

Part of it is, I am sure, that like all of us, he does not want the responsibility part of being an adult. I hate that part too. It sucks. It also comes with the territory he does want to claim, and I think there's ambivalence about that. Or it could be that while he still naps every afternoon for an hour or two, he is staying up later and later past his bedtime. Our friends next door say he is ready to drop his nap, but we are not, particularly not with #2 on the way. We have always said he doesn't have to sleep as long as he does quiet time, but right now, he sleeps every day. And then stays up an hour or two after bedtime, punctuated by requests for water, better lighting, trips to the potty, and other delaying tactics.

Or maybe it's just almost-fourness; it doesn't seem developmentally out of line with what his peers are doing, not really. But whatever it is, we have gotten several bad reports from preschool lately about not listening to teachers, negative talk-back, and calling other kids names, so we are addressing it directly at home on a regular basis.

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We're also seeing more separation anxiety, possibly exacerbated by the imminence of the proto-sibling. "I might miss you," he says when we drop him at preschool, or even when we leave the room at his bedtime. "What if I miss you?" He's also asked a few times if the baby will take his toys away like the next-door neighbor's little sister does (though my observation says that that goes the other way 'round far more often.) I assured him that it would take a year at least before the baby had the coordination and speed to even try, and he seemed relieved.

We've had to crack down on the food front in part because he started requesting ice cream and cookies for dinner and refusing any and all protein- or nutrient-rich foods. If it were up to him, he'd eat nothing but snack food or cereal day in and day out. And after I had to take him to the doctor one day for his GI issues and the doctor said he wasn't getting enough fiber, well.

At first we told him that his body needed food to give it energy. But then that backfired, because he started telling me that his body needed cookies to give it energy, and it might be sad if I gave it broccoli instead. Um. So one night, he was telling me his body wanted ice cream, that it is good for his bones. And I told him yes, it is, but there is a lot of sugar in it. And then he tried to tell me sugar was good for his body.

How do you explain "empty calorie" to a three-year-old? I was super proud of what I came up with, so I brag here. It is so rare that I feel I actually get it right as a parent in any kind of substantive way, so I feel okay about rejoicing in those few golden moments.

I told him there are two kinds of things in food:
There is the caloric value, which is what makes you bigger and gives you energy.
And there is the nutritional value, which makes you strong and healthy.

Most foods, I explained, have a little of both. But it is easy to eat too much of the kind that just make you big and give you energy, and forget about how important it is to get enough of the kind that make you healthy and strong. Because different foods have different parts of what your body needs, you need to eat a lot of different kinds of food every day to stay healthy and strong and get the energy you need to grow.

Ice cream, I said, has some things that make you healthy and strong, but it has way more of the other things, so we eat it only sometimes, after we have more healthy food, as a treat. And he got it! He still doesn't like it, no, but he understood the concept, and I kept it pro-food and moderation-focused. Whew.

Himself did not like the explanation either - he is afraid I feed the Squid too many facts and too much science and impede his own, organic interpretation of the world. But my Dad was, like, the king of facts and info, and there was no shortage of imagination or wonder going on in my childhood, let me tell you.



And I swear he's just sort of that way inclined. We've been to four or five museums in the last month, and he inevitably gravitates toward the lab simulations, the pulleys, and the gears. Oh, he likes the otters, and the pin walls, and the snakes, and the cave crawls. But gears! And pulleys! And faux dinosaur digs! And lab experiments with sand! He is enthralled. I love watching him play at these places, and discover new things, and engage...though, to be honest, part of what I value is that it lets me disengage for a little while. I am becoming less interactive than ever these days, and I don't always have the patience or brain to keep up with all his needs for attention and information.



I am sunk deep in being an animal, people. Biology consumes me. All I do is eat, and sleep, and try new things to improve the quality of the eating and sleeping. Well, and work, and spend time with family and friends, but I don't even have words to talk about that, I just do it. It's not like the second trimester of pregnancy is particularly physically taxing, unlike the first or third (or fourth oh my god la la la la ostrich). I've just disappeared into myself.

Which is not to say that everything has been bovine contentment around here. On the contrary, I am experiencing increased restlessness and anxiety, familiar from my last pregnancy and now recognizable as such. I obsess over to-do lists. I occupy myself with busywork. Larger, more complex or creative projects are unappealing, but let me tell you, I am knocking the little shit off my list like nobody's business.I'm about to run out of busywork, once the taxes are done.

Any suggestions? Those of you who have two kids, what do you wish you'd gotten out of the way before the chaos of the second one arrived? I'm not talking like, quality time with the Squid or self-pampering, I'm talking about tasks, chores, concrete shit around the house. What do you now look back on and say, "Crap, I wish I'd taken care of that before, when I had more time"?



Look at that little guy. I love him so much.

No, no, the OTHER left

I think, often, of that scene in Pi where the guy takes a drill to his temple. Seriously, if that worked to take away the muscle tension and the jaw clenching and the pernicious headaches, I'd give it a go. But I don't think you can lance anxiety and muscle tension the way you can infections. More's the pity.

In the absence of alcohol, my muscle relaxant of choice, and reliable painkillers (acetaminophen, when you are used to ibuprofen, is little more than a placebo), I am left with an almost total absence of solutions to this type of tension. I do self-massage, using the methods I have been shown. I take my showers extra hot, right before bed. I get a massage as often as I can afford to, which is quarterly at most. I swim once a week, which is all I can fit in with work and childcare. I don't drink coffee after noon, I nap when I need it, I go to bed early and sleep as late as I can, and I try not to take on additional stressors outside my current minimal commitments. There has to be something else, but I feel that the usual suspects (self-pampering, meditation) are unsuited to me at some fundamental level.

I have been spending my free time over the past month or so streamlining my life. It's not hard, and it takes away a lot of the little stressors that I suspect contribute to the anxiety, though the clear truth is that the anxiety doesn't have a source I can eliminate; it's physical/chemical, the pregnancy makes it worse, and there's not a lot that cognitive-behavioral approaches can do. But there's not a lot anything can do, so working on chaos reduction is as good an approach as any. At least I reap spillover benefits. Thus far I have:

• Completely re-done the storage area in the garage, including major purge
  
• Completely re-done the spice cabinet and oil/vinegar cabinet organization, including purge
  
• Completely re-done the bathroom cabinet and drawer organization, including purge
  
• Completely re-done the under-sink kitchen organization, including purge
  
• Sent another huge load of things to goodwill and various new homes
  
• Created a binder of local area kid activities, organized by indoor/outdoor and when they are open

I'm going to run out of stuff soon, though. I've got the pantry, the taxes, and the Life.doc binder to go, and then ... well, there's always my ongoing "teach self to cook" project.

Most people don't start nesting frenzies until the month before birth. I'm just proactive that way, I guess.

I never thought that as an adult, my biggest challenges would be things as basic as sleep and getting my brain to turn off. When I was a kid, I was such a space case that my parents used to refer to me as "the Poet from Mars." I spent all my time off in some dream world of my own in my head, and always had trouble catching up with reality. Give me another thirty-odd years and I'll be ... oh, I dunno, what's the most unlikely outcome from here? A touchy-feely New-Age Earth mother type?

You ever feel like you took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in a different life than the one you meant to live?

Hot and Sour Soup

I've wanted a good recipe for this for ages, and tonight I cobbled together one that is just how I like it. Disclaimer: This may or may not be how YOU like it. But everything in it (except white pepper powder) can be got from Safeway and it was relatively easy. I took out the mushrooms, not being a mushroom fan, and stuck in some cabbage and water chestnuts because I thought they were tasty.

Hot and Sour Soup

3 cups chicken stock
1.5 cups water

Heat to a boil. Add:

1/2 can bamboo shoots, rinsed and thinly julienned
1/2 can water chestnuts, finely diced
1 C green cabbage, thinly sliced and chopped
1/2 package tofu - all my local Safeway had was firm, but I'd recommend something a little softer.

Boil 3 min. Add:

3 T white vinegar
1 t salt
1/2 t sugar
1 t white pepper powder

In little bowls, mix together:

1 egg and I T water. Set aside.

2 T cornstarch and 2 T water.

Add the cornstarch mixture to the soup and stir to thicken. Once the soup is the desired consistency (you may wish to add more, depending on how thick you like your Chinese soups) and has come to a rolling boil, beat the egg and water mixture well and pour in the thinnest possible stream into the hot soup.

Add:

1/2 t sesame oil
1 T white vinegar.

Stir and serve. This quantity would do dinner (with rice) for several people or starters for 6-8.

If you like the darker (Southern Chinese) hot and sour soups, add a tablespoon of Sichuan hot bean sauce and reduce the white pepper powder by half. If you like mushrooms, you can get yours from a restaurant.

Squidbits. And news.

A lady at the store where we got hot chocolate in Chicago was enamored of the Squid. "He's so busy!" she kept saying. And if I had to pick one word to describe him these days, "busy" would probably be it. He leaps out of bed in the morning (having figured out how to get out of his crib on his own) and comes in already bouncing. "It's time to wake up!" he says. "Mommy, come on! The sun is up!" He is into everything - by the time I have put away the last thing he had out, he has his paws on something new and inappropriate. As soon as he is distracted, the current object is dropped to the floor and he moves on to the next, despite our recent efforts to talk to him about how big boys clean up after themselves. It's a whirlwind I can't keep up with.



Nor can anyone else. On Thanksgiving we had two older girls watching him – not babysitter-older, just old-enough-to-know-what's-what older. And despite their warnings (and they did tell him not to!), the young man managed to find a sharp knife, play with it, and cut himself. Thank God he didn't put out an eye or lose a finger, just sliced up the base of one fingernail, but it was terrifying to run downstairs at his howl and find him gushing blood, sobbing, saying, "Why is red stuff coming out of my hand?" We handled it calmly, with much admonishment about Not Playing With Sharp Things and Listening When People Tell You Not To Do Things, and all's well that ends well, but it was scary.

It was a huge relief to have all four grandparents present for the Thanksgiving vacation, because it provided both of us with a much-needed rest. My parents and Himself's parents fielded almost half of the Squid's early mornings and some of his nap wakeups. They also did playtime activities, question answering, and general Squidwatch, all of which was particularly crucial for me as I spent the two-week vacation transitioning out of the exhaustion and nausea of the first trimester of pregnancy.

Yup, we have another one on the way. Due in early June, and thus far shaping up just fine. Six months feels like forever, but I am just glad to be over the first, worst part and feeling vaguely human again. Amniocentesis preliminary results are back and looking clear, and I am looking visibly pregnant, so we are finally telling everyone.



The Squid took the news about the baby surprisingly well. We'd done a lot of talking about how babies grow, because he was skeptical that I had really grown him in my tummy, and he had asked if I could grow him a baby. I told him maybe, if he asked nicely (knowing it was already in progress)… so after we told the grandparents, I was in the shower with him, belly poking out, and I said, "I want to tell you a secret!"

"Whisper it in my ear," he commanded.

Obediently, I bent down and whispered, "I'm growing a baby in my tummy."

"No, in THIS ear," he said, pointing to his other ear.

I whispered it again.

There was a long pause.

"See what I can do with my squeegee?" he said.

…and that's the sum total of the angst we've seen thus far. It will probably look a little different once the baby gets here and starts taking more of our time and attention, but right now, he's cool with it. See what he can do with his squeegee?



Today, after poking my boobs and informing me that he was "just checking to see how they're fatter because of the baby," (his observation! I didn't tell him that!) he volunteered, "I'm going to take good care of the baby." He has also stated his unequivocal preference for a sister. Well, actually, he wanted two big sisters, but he will take one little sister if that is all that is on offer. We told him we couldn't guarantee, but that we would do our best. And, apparently, our best has sufficed - the ultrasound technician assured me this week that the fetus was very clearly female.

In rottener news, Uncle E, whom we have not seen for several years and whose visit we were really looking forward to, will not be able to make it for the holidays after all. This also means Grammy and Grandpa will be flying out of town and unable to celebrate with us. Woe all around. Still, our tree looks wonderful, we're having the neighborhood over for potluck on Christmas Eve like we usually do, and the Squid and I are even hoping to make it down to LA for New Years to see Grammy Vi. Still, we will miss Uncle E! I'd looked forward to having him get to know the Squid - I remember E at this age, and I think he and the Squid would get along.

The Squid continues to be a very talkative young man. "Why" is in full effect. He's not just using it the way he was, to ask questions, though he still does that too. He uses it to ask the same question we've already answered several times. And sometimes he uses it to ask a question that contains its own answer, like, "Why do I have to wear my coat because it's cold?" It seems less of an information gathering tool and more of a communication strategy, much like the way "how are you?" and "what are you up to?" work for adults. If we don't respond, he repeats the query over and over and over. If we ask him why, he says, "That's enough why!" He also has some funny new expressions, like "Stop it this!" for asking us to knock it off.

My mother says that he is forthright in a way unusual for this age. At 3.75 years, he still confesses misdeeds if asked directly. Or even volunteer the information, sometimes, if it is relevant to the situation. He'll tell me if he has a potty accident (a rarer and rarer occurrence - we're down to once a week or so) almost as soon as it happens, and he's frank about his misbehaviors at preschool as well. For those of you who have had kids this age, is this unusual?



He's learned a lot of songs from preschool and is fairly tuneful about them. I've even heard him vary the tune a bit now and then intentionally, and he's gone past remembering the words to the songs to changing them to be about himself and whatever he's interested in singing about at the moment. I am totally floored by how well he usually makes his substitute words scan with the usual rhythm and tune of the originals. At the preschool Christmas program he sang his little heart out, and it's not unusual to hear him singing himself to sleep at night, either.

We went to a couple of museums on vacation – a Mississippi river museum, where they had a great lizard exhibit (he likes the way chameleons can see in two directions at once) and the Shedd aquarium in Chicago, where he said his favorites were the frogfish but also enjoyed rays, jellyfish, sharks, lionfish, and many other critters, and correctly identified leafy sea dragons without any prompting from us, just from repeated viewing of his Blue Planet movies. He was quite disappointed in the dearth of anglerfish, gulper eels, and bioluminescent deep sea critters, as his current fascination is the deep ocean, but there were enough otters and dolphins and corals and frogs to keep him running for almost three hours, so it was a great experience.



I get him one ornament every year that will be his to take when he starts having his own tree, and this year we got it from the Shedd, which had the best collection of blown-glass jellyfish, octopi, starfish, sand dollar, and seahorse ornaments I have ever seen. Christmas is my favorite holiday (followed closely by Thanksgiving, now that I have married into this wonderful warm family of cooks and eaters and togetherness) and I am very excited for it this year, though I have done no baking or shopping, thanks to, you know, growing a person and stuff. Indeed, I forgave myself in advance for late cards, incomplete shopping, not hanging the lights, and a myriad of other guilt-inducing holiday sins, and it's really helping with peace of mind.

May you all have wonderful holidays, and know that we are thinking of you. Who knows, you might even get a card from us for New Year's ... or Chinese New Year's ... or next year. I could have my act together by then, right? Right?

Hi, anxiety

Things my brain decided it needed to discuss with itself right now between 1 and 2 a.m. last night:

• How I used to wrap gifts and never do anymore
  
• The lyrics to Lady Gaga's "Poker Face"
  
• Whether or not I knew where everything was for the office White Elephant exchange next Monday
  
• How Calvino uses semiotic squares in If on a winter's night a traveler

The longer I deal with anxiety the more I am convinced that it is a brute physiological force, not anything contextually explicable. Seriously, I was giving myself chest pains over ... what? I used to think it was stress, but sometimes I wake with a racing pulse, sweating, reciting Dr. Seuss to myself frantically.

Of course, in better news, the dentist agreed to replace my bite guard (which they said would last five years, and I cracked within two weeks) at cost. "I've only met three people in twenty years who have ever cracked one of those," the dentist said admiringly. "You must be serious!"

Gratitude

Today I am grateful for family - by birth, by marriage, and by choice - that I not only love, but also like. I am grateful for my health and the health of my loved ones. I am grateful for my privilege - not as a social construct but as my personal, lived reality - and for my medication, which allows me to truly enjoy what I have. I am grateful for my partner, who challenges and supports me in a million ways. I am grateful for my son, who amazes me daily with his huge heart, iron will, and enormous vocabulary. And for our neighbors, who have created a community of parents and friends and welcomed my family in with open arms.

I am grateful for friends who love me enough to forgive me when I need it, call me out when I need to be called out, and who make the extra effort to be part of my life. I am grateful for my job, where I am treated like a valuable co-worker and a worthwhile human being, and for my online community, which gives me so much joy and inspires me to do so many things.

I am grateful, particularly in these trying times, for enough food to eat and clean water to drink. I am grateful for the Obama administration, who are daily inching this country closer to what it can and should become. I am grateful for all the people who give their time and energy and money to improve the world. I am grateful for my civil liberties, my reproductive freedom, and my health and dental insurance.

I am grateful for no-knead bread, domestic appliances, and central heating. I am grateful for the internet, and for the various technological gadgetry that enriches my life. I'm grateful for books, for music, for fanfiction, and for big-budget movies in which lots of stuff blows up. I'm grateful for sleep, and caffeinated beverages, and butter, and salt.

There is a gathering of friends and family in the barn. More friends are on the road, on their way to see us. The air is clear and crisp, and the house is full of the smell of baking bread and the warmth of a cozy fire. May you all be so blessed.

Squidbits

Sort of a rough month. I was under the weather for most of it, and the Squid, well. He's in one of those phases. I have to repeat anything multiple times to get him to tune in, flat contradiction is a favorite conversational gambit, and his inside voice seems to have gone away, to be replaced by piercing shrieks and excited announcements.

Which is not to say there is no awesome to be had. Halloween was awesome. He went from house to house saying, "Here comes Robin Hood!" and often saying "trick or treat" before the door even opened and instead chirping, "Hi, I'm Robin Hood! Can I have some candy?" at indulgent neighbors. It worked pretty well; for a four-block area he hauled home half a bag of loot. I only let him eat it after he finishes meals, though, so he hasn't made much in the way of inroads. Daddy and I, on the other hand, have helped a bit. What?! We are just taking the sugar hit for him. It is defensive parenting; don't judge.

The circus was sort of awesome; it would have been more awesome if we had had comfortable seats, which was my fault for buying right before the final performances. Next year we go earlier, and bring snacks and juice. I love small family circuses, though, and he had never been to one, so it was all very new and exciting.

We did a lot of visiting with friends and family, too, which the Squid (being a social beast) always enjoys. He was the only kid at my office Halloween party and at a friend's housewarming, and mingled and played totally undaunted by the lack of same-age peers. We visited Grammy at her house, in an experiment to see how well he would nap away from home (verdict: eh) and had a great time at the park near her house with replica fire trucks and trains and teapots that you can crawl inside. Grandpa got back from Malaysia, where he was counting fish for reef conservation programs, and Grandpa is, as always, the most awesome thing ever to awesome.

Potty training is what it is. He knows how, but we have the same struggles with it that we do with anything else we want him to do at the moment that is our priority and not his. He seems to have the liquid stuff down, knock on wood, except for nighttime, and we're working on the rest of it. On the whole, I think he's doing really well. Such a big guy!

Himself and I have been a little under the weather for a while - seems like one or the other (sometimes both) of us is exhausted or achy or sick. The Squid has picked up on this and now complains at random moments that his back hurts, or that his tummy doesn't feel good. I remember being young and spry, kiddo. Your back does not hurt. Just you wait.

We are also seeing the fallout of our own behavioral modeling (mostly mine) in his pacing. This morning was classic. "Come on, time to go to preschool!" I said, standing at the door. "I'm just making sure this dinosaur is in top condition!" he yelled back, not moving. In the six yards between there and the car, he also stopped to rifle through the coats on the rack, kick a pumpkin then sit on it for a bit, stand still and complain, and swing the gate back and forth over and over and over. Everything takes forever.

This is probably me reaping the rewards of my own, "Just a second, I'm making dinner/need to finish this/have to clean up first" style of meandering toward doing things that are requested of me. Which does not make it any less frustrating. "Hop out!" I said to him the other day, opening the car door and unbuckling his carseat. And then, a full minute later, as the heavy bags I carried started to bite into my arms and he continued to noodle, "I said hop, not ooze!"

He's increasingly articulate - which for a kid who was already incredibly articulate is saying a lot. He's figured out basic narrative structures and is getting better and better at telling stories and explaining things. He's also figuring out how to use words to get out of things - preschool reports that he sometimes makes bad choices with his hands and then says "sorry," and expects to get away with it because he apologized. I have definitely seen some weaselly bargaining and some outright untruth at home, too, but it's age-appropriate, and we are discouraging.

Age-appropriate rough play is here, too, so we have a lot of talks about not hitting, not pushing, not kicking, not talking about shooting and killing, not fighting. "How was your day at preschool?" we ask. "Good," he says, then solemn and a little confidential, "I had a little kicking problem." It's hard to be a kid; the other kids have the same level of social skills he does, so you can't rely on natural social de-escalation. We talk about things he can do instead (say "no thank you," walk away, negotiate turns) but they are hard to remember in the heat of the moment.

I didn't take pictures this month. I had enough energy to keep the family fed (thank God for takeout) and fulfil my responsibilities at work (though there are odd lacunae in my time cards marked as "sick" that really translate to "curled up under desk for a desperate nap") and take care of the odd load of laundry or dishes. Pictures are way further up in Maslow's hierarchy of motherhood than where I have been operating lately. Maybe next time.

Contentment and happiness

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between contentment and happiness, lately. I think about it on and off, probably more than your average bear, as part of monitoring my own mental well-being and the way I react to the world around me, and I have a long-standing interest in what is now, cheesily enough, becoming known as "positivity studies" - essentially, the study of happiness.

The latest bout was brought on by my realization that I still feel, on a more or less daily basis, that having Obama rather than Bush in the White House is improving my quality of life and personal happiness. I'd read a report on a study, published months before the election, that argued that this was one of those human fallacies where we think something will make us happier/unhappier, but the "hedonic effect" (the impact on our happiness) is far more ephemeral than predicted.

To which I say, bullshit.

Dan Gilbert, who is a very funny author and happiness scholar, and whose work and observations I am a great fan of, in the main, perpetrates something similar when he writes about how parents are generally happier watching TV or doing housework than interacting with their children. Much as I love well-done pop psychology, I have to say that it's things like this - where the catchy "kids don't make us happy!" or "you don't care as much as you think you do about this election!" press line triumphs over close examination of the methodology - that gives the genre such a bad name.

I found (and I can't remember where) a piece that talked about the methodology of one of these studies. And it was very revealing. They'd gone to a group of women (only women, and I'm sure you can see the problem with this sample right away) and basically popped in on them at random points in their day and asked them to rate, presumably on a simple scale of some sort, how happy they felt right then. Changing the nappies (how happy are you?), reading a book (how happy are you?), on hold with the phone company (how happy are you?), doing the laundry (how happy are you?) - and then they looked at how happiness corresponded to various activities. And found that interacting with children (small children and teenagers particularly) received the lowest happiness ratings.

So kids make you miserable, right? "Happiness Plummets With Kids' Arrival," was the headline one online newspaper attached to Gilbert's work. Quick, to the IUD and the diaphragm, lest we become sad shadows of our former jolly selves!

But seriously, is it not clear what is wrong with this approach?

There is a huge (HUGE) difference between asking someone, "How happy are you right now?" and asking them "How happy are you with your life?" or "How happy are you with the direction your life choices are taking you?" or "How happy are you generally?"

Like, I love my job. It's exactly what I want to be doing, it's close to home, it has the potential to help people, I get to learn and grow and do new things, they pay me, and I'm fairly good at it. If you ask me, "do you like your job?" the answer will invariably be "yes, I love it." But if you ask me "How was your day at work?" the answer is unlikely to be as positive. And if you pop your head into my office while I'm on yet another interminable conference call with a client and ask me how happy I am at that moment, the answer (after I hit the mute button on the speaker) is likely to be unprintable.

Happiness is a tricky word with a lot of meanings. I, personally, prefer to think of it in terms of two factors - contentment and happiness. Contentment, in my schema, is how happy you are with your life. Are you going where you want to go? Are you with the people you want to be with? Do you have a sense of purpose? Do you feel safe? Are you acting sufficiently in accordance with your beliefs? Happiness is the ephemeral "hit," the hedonic high. Are you at a great party? Did your child or partner just say something sweet and loving to you? Do you have a perfect cuppa and a well-loved book, and time to read it? Are you out for a bracing hike on a perfect day in a place you love?

If you break it down like this, the results of these happiness studies (if not the way the researchers chose to conduct them)* start to make more sense. They're asking about major contentment factors in the context of happiness. It's like trying to measure thirst by asking people how hungry they are; it's just not the same. Oh, I still get a moment of happiness here and there when I hear of something awesome Obama has done. And there are more happy moments in parenting than I ever knew, though they are outnumbered (not outweighed, just outnumbered) by the moments of frustration or routine. But I didn't have a kid because I thought it was going to be all joy all day - I don't think anyone does. And I didn't vote for Obama because I thought, "Hey, that dude will make me happy if I elect him."

I made those choices because they spoke to the things in me - my values, my deeper needs, my sense of the way the world should be - that directly affect my contentment. It's how I try to make most of my choices. And I am, on the whole, a deeply contented person. Not a happy one - I am rarely really happy in a how happy are you right now? sense - but a content one, which I think I much prefer. (Though, can you be happy and not content? I think you can - I think I spent a lot of my twenties that way, and it involved large quantities of alcohol - but it's an interesting question to ponder).

Gilbert posits a lot of potential reasons for his outcomes - social conditioning, memory errors, attributing happiness value to things in order to justify investment in them, etc. But he never seems to wonder if he's asking the right question.

How about you? How happy are you right now? How happy are you with your life in general? Are they the same?



* Yes, I get that you can only get this information through self-report, and that self-report is necessarily less reliable the further back (or, I suppose, more general) the information that the subject is trying to report. I still maintain that different question wording might have elicited some very different answers.

Sadie Mae
1994ish - October 12, 2009
I don't know how to write about this.

It is humbling, and not a little heartbreaking, to be loved the way Sadie loved me. I rarely lived up to it; I'm not sure that it's possible for a person, greedy and scattered with a brainpan full of human stuff, to ever live up to that kind of devotion. But I don't think she noticed much, or cared, about all the ways in which I failed.

I don't think I will ever know if I did the right thing, in the end.

The Name of The Air

It could be like that then the beloved
old dog finding it harder and harder
to breathe and understanding but coming
to ask whether there is something that can
be done about it coming again to
ask and then standing there without asking

— W.S. Merwin

Squidbits

I am awakened each morning by the Squid, buried beneath his blankets, yelling through the door. "Excuuuuuuse me. Excuuuuuuuuuse me! Mooooommmmyyyyy! Mommy! Excuuuuuuse me!" Very polite, but it doesn't change the part where I have to wake up to go get him. Ugh. I am not a morning person.

"I'm hungry!" he says, when I try to haul him into the big bed for a few more moments of blissful, warm horizontality.

"Oh yeah? Well, I'm hungry too. I'm hungry for snuggles!" I say.

"I'm not hungry for snuggles! I'm hungry for breakfast!" he says, kicking me and squirming until I tell him to get out of the bed, then running for the kitchen. "Come on, Mommy!"


DONNIT DONNIT

He talks about bad guys and fighting a lot. It's that age. "An' then he FIGHTS the bad guy an' he WHACKS him an' they FIGHT each other!" is a typical excited recounting of a story or movie or imaginary play sequence at school. He's also interested in dying - not in any existential sense, just in a "thing people do" way, and he talks about it a lot. "I'm dead," he says, lolling in his carseat with eyes closed. "I died." I try to not make a big deal about it by telling him dryly that that's too bad, and pointing out that most people don't keep talking after they expire.


We had our backyard re-done and this is the new fountain. Essentially, we got it just so he could have a water feature to play with. He loves it.

Potty training is going remarkably well, knock on wood. We're down to an accident every other day or so. It was a rough start - a very rough start - but he caught on quickly. He gets a star for his "good job" card every time he walks to the potty on his own big boy feet without fussing, and a gummi bear every time he uses it successfully. Twenty stars gets him a model car - he saves them up until he has enough, and then "pays" the clerk with the card of stars at the store, while I slip them my credit card under the guise of paying for something else. Economics and potty training, an integrated process!

For a while, I had him on a kitchen timer, and just made him go every half-hour. That worked fine for a few weeks, until he started refusing to go (even if he had to) because "the timer didn't go off yet." I told him that the timer was just a reminder and he needed to listen to his body. "Your body is the real timer," I told him. I weaned him off the kitchen timer, then, unless we were out and about or doing something especially exciting (he ignores his body when what he's doing is more fun than potty). And it more or less works! "My real timer is telling me I have to go pee," he said last night, and ran for the potty. Hurray! Some days are still better than others, and I don't anticipate having him out of diapers at night for quite some time yet, but on the whole I am very pleased and proud.


With the tower crane he got with "good job" potty stars!

I was solo parenting for the bulk of the last month, and we did something we've just started recently for when one of us is away. Himself wrote (email) letters to the Squid that I could then read to him at night. He attached photos, too, and the Squid was fascinated. One was of a German sandbox with toys, and every night, when I read him that letter (because of course he wanted all the letters each night, not just one) he would ask, "What is that toy? Can I go to Germany and play with it in that sandbox?" There you have it - the joys of international travel from the 3-year-old perspective. Going new and exciting places and ... doing more or less what you do at home, only with new toys. Actually, I know a lot of adults who travel like that too.


The sandbox is still a big hit.

I'm trying to wean him off movies, but it's hard when I'm solo parenting. Sometimes a movie is the only way I can get a shower, make dinner, or take care of other tasks. I ended up going out to eat with him a lot and spending evenings at the library, the park, swimming lessons, anywhere that wasn't home with the potential of a movie, because he always asked to watch one, and he started this thing where he would either burst into tears when I denied him - real tears - or if I gave him a movie, burst into tears and throw himself on the ground when it ended and I refused him another.

I tried getting promises of good behavior, but he is just too young for it. He can do it the other way around, for short-term things - behave in order to get a treat - but he can't promise future good behavior for a treat now. "Movies make you fussy," I told him. "If I give you a movie, can you promise no fussing afterward, when I turn it off and it's time for bed?"

"Movies don't make me fussy any more," he said (contradicting very recent evidence). "I promise, no fussing."

Later, grimly hauling a yowling, tear-stained young man off to brush his teeth, I reminded him. "Remember how you said movies didn't make you fussy, and you promised no fuss when it ended?"

Sniffle, sniffle. "Yeah."

"So I gave you a movie, but what happened after?"

Sniffle. "I threw a fit."

Oh, well. Now I know better than to try the "If I X, will you Y" construction with him. Maybe someday.


He likes it when we draw aminals in the condensation on the shower doors. He plays artistic director. This is "A lion! With a BIIIIG SHARK eating it up!"

We've had a lot of concern about other people's behavior lately. "Katie said I'm not a big boy anymore." "Ellison's not eating his breakfast." I tell him, "I don't care what Katie says. You know you're a big boy," and "Ellison's behavior is not your problem. Eat your own breakfast and stop paying attention to him." But tattling is here, I'm afraid, for the predictable future. "I'm telling on ya!" he says to me, when I do something he doesn't like. "I'm telling Daddy!" He and the other kids at school tattle on one another to the teachers all the time. I don't think I ever want to tell him, "just ignore them and they'll go away," because I don't believe it's true. But I feel myself skirting around the edges of it, as I tell him to walk away from conflict rather than engaging or escalating, and to discount Katie's mean words.

It's a hard one, and I wrestle with it myself still. When someone behaves in a way I don't like, how do I respond? Or is it better to remove myself? How can I hold other people accountable for their actions without letting them impact me negatively? Honestly, if someone is rude to me, I gauge how much I care about their opinion and how much I need their future goodwill and either ignore, deflect, or strike back. But I don't think that's a good strategy to teach a preschooler when you're trying to tell him that it's not okay to hit someone just because they took the toy you were playing with.


I didn't do this; he totally had the idea all on his own. But as you can see, I am raising him up right.

He has asked for his first pet. A hamster? No. A puppy? No. A kitten? No.

"Can we have a cow at our house?" he said one day.

"No, cows take a lot of space. Our yard isn't big enough for a cow."

"Yes it is. It could nibble on the grass!"

And again yesterday, driving past a house on our way to preschool that keeps a horse trailer parked outside: "Their house is too small for a horse. Maybe our house is not too small?"

Dream on, kiddo.

Squidbits

When the Squid wants something, he says, "Please oh please oh please?" and gives me big pleading brown eyes. It's very cute, which means it has much higher odds of working. I appear to have promised him dance lessons in a fit of weakness the other night. And then I started looking at how I might make that happen. Holy crap, are they expensive. I think I might wait until he is at least four and can go to the cheaper, friendlier studio in town; $65 an hour for group lessons - for a three year old - is so ridiculous I can't even begin to comprehend it. I miss his dancing, though - he'll chair-dance now, but he doesn't boogie like he used to, and I'd be thrilled if he got into it again. We went to the local cafe where he used to dance this morning, with a friend from out of town, and all the staff still recognize him and call him "the Little Dancer."


Squid and my mother read a book.

He does something that my brother used to do that drives me nutso, which is to start sentences with the word "no." Do I do that? Did he get it from me? It's so knee-jerk negative and it feels like being corrected all the time, so he probably did - those are the icky sorts of personality traits that totally show up in unconscious speech patterns. So now I'm watching both of us on that, trying to eradicate it. But the Squid (who probably needs a different Internet Name one of these days, but I can't think of a good one) has been more negative in general, lately. Doing what he is told if he doesn't wish to has really come to a fairly comprehensive end, and everything must involve a carrot, a stick, or a distraction. Good news is that we are getting better at that sort of parenting. Bad news is that he's fast and wily and getting heavier by the day, and so the "good old days" of being able to bodily schlep him to where he needed to be and keep him there are almost gone.

We had a ten-minute standoff in the grocery store the other day, in which he fell on the ground and refused to move another inch. The irony of it all being, of course, that if he'd come with me, the errand he was protesting would have taken approximately two minutes, rather than the fifteen that it ended up taking, but there is no arguing with a three-year-old. In a safer environment I would have left him sulking on the floor and done what I needed to do, but the store was very busy, so I went a few aisles on and waited. And waited. And waited. At one point I disappeared around the corner of an aisle and watched him through the cans, to see if he'd freak out and come running to find me, but no luck. Of the dozens of shoppers who stepped over and around him, not one asked him where his parents were, and very few even checked for me visually. Only one teenager, who happened to be next to me, did ask her mother if she should find a store person, because maybe he was lost. I praised her instincts after letting her know that no, we were just in a standoff and I was right there watching. Bright girl! Soon after, he scooted over to me, and after just a tiny bit more jollying he was ready to finish our errand and leave, cheerful and cooperative like nothing had happened.

It feels like he's on fast-forward again, into everything, brain and body buzzing and humming with new ideas and impulses. Yesterday we had our first Fun With Poison Control moment, after I sent him to the bathroom to wash his hands for dinner, and checked up after a suspicious silence to find him eating the watermelon-flavored toothpaste we'd bought him a few days before. As I suspected, you have to eat a lot more than that for it to be a problem, and he was fine, but grrrrr. To be fair, nobody had ever specifically told him not to eat the toothpaste. I never know if it's better to tell him not to - and plant the seed of the idea where it might not have otherwise come up - or to remain silent and hope it doesn't occur to him. Unfortunately in this case, he is a very creative little dude. Many things occur to him.

The up side of that is awesome fun with Legos. We are building many many things - we don't really have kits (we have a few, but he's not really old enough to follow directions, so we're saving them mostly) so we make shit up, which I think is way better for learning play anyway, and he builds excavators and planes and helicopters and all kinds of stuff. Legos are awesome, and they've only gotten more awesome since I was a kid. I surf eBay and drool over the lots of special colors (pink! orange! lime! light blue! purple! teal!) that we didn't have back then, and that you still can't get in most standard kits, and over extendible fire ladders and scoops and lots of windshields and wheels and rotating pieces that let you make all kinds of cool vehicles. We got all his Legos secondhand, so we don't have the prettiest, most newfangled bits in our collection, and I covet. I am turning into a Lego geek. My partner says, "He doesn't need any more Legos" but I secretly think that there is not really any such thing as too many Legos. They are kind of the best toy ever.


Squid crashes the flight simulator under the supervision of friendly museum staff.

He is still trying to parse families. He told me this month "I have two fathers! Uncle Mark is my father, and Daddy is my father, too!" I told him I thought I would know who his father was, and that he only had one. He did not believe me. He also has been telling people a lot about his brothers and how they are coming to visit. Except for how he doesn't have any brothers. So I asked him what his brothers' names were. "Their names are little teeny guys who swim in the pool like fish with arms swim in the ocean with they tails and they fins," he informed me. Well, that clears things up. How many brothers do you have, I asked him. "Oh, LOTS," he said, confident and cheerful. Perhaps best of all was the pronouncement, "When I grow up I will be a Daddy and you can be the Mommy, Mommy!" Ooookay, Oedipus. Time to finish that "family tree" project, I think, as a visual aid for how all this stuff works.

Though maybe it's just a larger part of working out how your family is still your family when you grow up. I wrote that up and then he told me in the car yesterday, "When you grow up to be an aminal, I will be a farmer!" I asked if he would take good care of me, and he assured me that he would. Well, there's the retirement plan sorted, I guess. Less reassuring, when I asked him what kind of aminal I would grow up to be, he said, "A cricket! And a conductor!" Um, what?

His focus on sadness continues. He sees sadness in his books, in other people, in himself, and notes it where he doesn't call out other emotions. Lots of kids' books contain some sadness - it's the narrative precursor to the "lesson" of whatever the book is about - but his attention seems to sort of stop there, not really moving on to the part where it gets better after. I thought the move to the older class at preschool might help, because it's more developmentally appropriate and his friends are there, but our dropoffs have been even worse and more dramatic since the switch. "I miss you!" he sobs to me, clinging to my leg. "Don't leave! I'm so sad!" I try not to encourage the sadness, and to do more talking about happiness and other emotions, but I'm not as consistent about that as I should be. I don't know how to help myself with this stuff, so how can I help my kid?

He's still making up lots of words - "Stickoff!" he cries, running around the Aviation Museum. "Spack!" he says, when asked what he wants for breakfast. He's also picked up the noise I make when I'm frustrated (imagine "augh" sort of roared out of the back of the throat) and his usual smattering of odd vocabulary; "hoist," "stubble," "cantaloupe," "tentacles," "detect," and "demolition," among other words not usually in common usage among the preschool set.

I made a friend this month, I hope. I always thought it would be easier to make friends once I had kids, but not really; other moms who seem cool have kids too old or to young to play with the Squid, or I'm too shy to go up to them (seriously, I can be shy) or when I do and I hand them my contact info they don't call, or they live too far away to see regularly (with a kid who still naps, this is pretty much anywhere over half an hour's drive). I tried so hard when he started preschool, giving my info to the moms of his favorite play friends, asking for play dates, inviting them to birthday parties, but they never called/came and I eventually either gave up or took the hint, depending on how you want to look at it. But anyhow, we went to the Aviation Museum, and after a casual comment or two during sign-up for the preschool tour, another mom introduced herself to me, and we shook hands, and then I looked over and the Squid was shaking hands with her son, introducing themselves to each other just like we were! The boys are roughly the same age and get along like gangbusters, and she and I work in similar fields, and I really liked talking to her. We had them over this weekend and then had another playdate, and next weekend we'll go to the zoo. Making friends is hard; wish me luck!


Squid and his swim teacher in a lesson.

We started potty training this weekend, too. Thus far, disastrous. In a four-hour period yesterday, he did not manage to listen to his body once. I said to Himself, "I'm not sure he's ready for this," and Himself said, quite accurately, "I'm not sure you're ready for this." I'm not! I get so frustrated when I ask the Squid repeatedly if he is listening to his body and he says, "Yes, it is saying I don't have to go pee" and then wets himself the next minute. Unfortunately, only one of us is going to manage any leaps in maturation any time soon, and it isn't me. So I'm trying to be patient and not show my frustration and be positive and encouraging. But if he's still having accidents by next weekend, I'll be taking more drastic measures; my friend K emailed me a program for recalcitrant potty-trainers that is sort of the "next step up" in potty-training strictness.

...I'll let you know how it goes.

Squidbits

If you ask the Squid what a shark says, he says, "Donnit. Donnit donnit." He means the "Jaws" dun-un, dun-un noise. Our little shark can swim three whole feet now with his nose mostly above water, and he likes to play in the pool in the shallows "looking at coral," he says. I got him a shark towel with a hood so he can dress up as a shark after pool time and chase me. DONNIT DONNIT.

He is a preschooler now, properly. He graduated from the "Bumble" group at preschool and is now in the "Caterpillar" class. He is the only Caterpillar in diapers but he is a Caterpillar nonetheless. A big boy! I think it will be good for him to be with kids who are a little closer to his developmental level. And maybe it will inspire him on the potty front, too, because God knows I've had no luck, which is all I really want to say about that. He's gotten taller and lankier, and while he is still in the adorable stage of childhood, he's starting to transition into "kidhood," the part where strangers will no longer coo and flirt as though they cannot help themselves. Little rock star that he is, this will be terribly disappointing to him. Enjoy the attention while it lasts, bucko.



He says, "You're not kidding!" when he means "you're kidding!" and likes to declare things silly. He apparently informed a large, tattooed biker at the airport that his suitcase (the biker's) was very pretty and "probably full of silly bees." Other interactions with people outside the family have included, "Stacy, hey Stacy! Look at my butt!" to his swim teacher in the shower, and "Hey guy! I have poo in my pants!" to a random stranger as we went into the bathroom for a diaper change. I am slowly but surely developing a list of "things we only talk about with family," but it's a slow concept to sink in. One might also note that the idea of me teaching someone else to filter appropriately is truly laughable, which is true, but I'm what he's got so I'm doing my best.



Imagination is taking off exponentially – he makes up names for all his toys and has them interact and have conversations and narrate their actions. He talks to his puppets and to "Duck" and "Twin," the little shadow-alligators I make out of my hands when there is no puppet handy. He told his Daddy to squeeze him like a yoghurt tube, from the bottom, and "the flavor will come out my hair!" I don't know where he comes up with this stuff, I really don't, but it's awesome.

He also had lots of visit time with the Fan Club. My parents were home in between bouts of globetrotting, and they came down every weekend for three or four weekends in a row. He was ecstatic. "Grandpa, c'mere! You want to see something really cool?" Poor Grandpa is pretty much commandeered for play and audience purposes from the moment he walks in the door, but he loves it. And I love to see the Squid with my parents. They were (and are) great parents to me, and it's wonderful to be a parent in turn and see them with my kidlet.



We have had many adventures this month (month and a half, really, but I haven't seen him for two weeks, so it doesn't count). We went to the transfer station (stinky!) and to the landfill (dusty!) and to the model train exhibition (shiny!) and then he and his Daddy flew on a plane to Chicago and had a few weeks with Lolo and Lola while I stayed back and worked overtime and visited my grandmother and Got Stuff Done. Last time they took off, I got nothing done – I had anxiety attacks and spent most of my "self-time" doing breathing exercises to calm myself down – but this time I'm properly medicated – I've been stable! Functional, even! For two whole months! And so I was able to do my work (and well), knock off some other things on my "need-to-do" list (get the car cleaned up to sell, do my financial stuff, help a friend move, etc.) It's like a miracle.

I miss him like crazy, though. Even as I am watching a table of three 2-5 year-old boys misbehave with one another and their poor, long-suffering mother, I miss him. I am newly resolved to figure out how to be more of a mindful parent, to really enjoy the time that I spend with him, because it is awfully important to both of us, all-too-fleeting, and housework and other B.S. should not distract me from it.



This weekend is the planes and books preschool activity at the aviation museum, and I think we might take a train trip somewhere if he's not too jet lagged. Maybe we will go to the library. Maybe we will go to the park. It doesn't really matter; I'll just be thrilled to see him after so long apart.

Tattoo, by Ted Kooser

What once was meant to be a statement --
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart -- is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.

Squidbits

It was bound to happen. The Squid has discovered whining.

Most of his friends figured out whining at two, and a lot of them have it more or less out of their systems now. But for the Squid, it is still a fresh new communication device! Handed a toy telephone or a cell phone with a dead battery, he will figure out within moments that it does not work and lose interest. I am still waiting for this to happen with the whine. All kids pick it up at some point, but it seems to be entirely counterproductive. I mean, does whining work? Not in our family. And yet it persists.

Maybe because it gets a reaction - irritation and the injunction to stop whining. We've had a lot more hitting, throwing things, complaining that he feels sick, and moaning that he is sad, too - all attention-getting devices (though yes, we are being careful and taking him to a pediatric allergist next month in case there is something to his daily claim that his tummy hurts. Just because he only seems to notice when he has to go to school or to bed doesn't mean it's not worth checking out.) I've been trying to talk to him about the difference between the attention he wants and "negative attention" and to teach him to ask for attention straight up, but that's pretty advanced stuff, and I don't expect him to get it any time soon. So, whining. We spent probably five minutes of the drive to school today with him kicking the back of my seat and repeating, "I don't waaant to go to schooool." Over and over, joy.


Less than merry on the merry-go-round.

Maybe it's just that cause and effect are still tough for him if they are not instantaneously obviously related. He doesn't really understand about the consequences of actions; when I am stern with him or put him in time out for one transgression or another, after he has calmed down and when we are talking about what happened, he says, "Can you say sorry to me that you were angry?" "It doesn't make me fair that I had a time out." And I'm trying to come up with some ways to address it that might make sense to him. After all, he has to say sorry when he does something mean to me. If I then do something mean to him, like a time out, I should say sorry too, right? Fairness is an especially tough one - all I've managed is that no, the world in general is not very fair, but people try their very best to make it as fair as they can.

To which statement I invariably get: "Why?"

Yes, he has also moved into the "why" stage. Before we got here, I thought I would keep up pretty well. And it's true, I have enough random knowledge that I can at least tell him general answers to factual questions. I have enough savvy about human nature to guess at a lot of other things. But sometimes he just stumps me.

Squid: Do you have a trunk on your car like Daddy's?
Me: Yes; they look a little different, but they serve the same function.
Squid: Why?
Me: Because sometimes we bring home more things than the rest of the car can carry, and we want to have room for them.
Squid: Why do we bring them?
Me: Because we need groceries and sometimes lumber or other things that need a lot of space.
Squid: Why do we need them?
Me: Well, to eat or to make things out of. Or to play with, you remember the toys we got at the treasure store?* We put those in the trunk.
Squid: Why do we need them?
Me: I just answered that.
Squid: Why?
Me: Because you asked me.
Squid: Why?
Me: I don't know, honey, maybe because you were interested.
Squid: Why?
Me: You're going to have to look within yourself for the answer to that one.
Squid: ...
Me: In your trunk, perhaps. Do you have a trunk?
Squid: No, that's silly.
Me: Why?
Squid: I'm not an elephant!

He learned to pedal his tricycle (finally!) though he is still neither swift nor confident on it; we still use the handle to push it for most of our trips to the park. He no longer uses his high chair, and he wants to do a great many things "my own self" though he is still easily frustrated when he runs into difficulties. In some ways, he is getting to be a very big boy! In others, not so much. Still not an iota of budge on the potty training, despite promises of a "big boy bed" and no more diaper changes if he will cooperate. And fine motor control is still not up to tasks like brushing his teeth well. He will brush them, but I can tell he's not actually getting all the surfaces, so I usually brush them first and then let him do it. He can spit now, though, and he couldn't last month. And he finally likes the shower more, though that may have more to do with the way it's not chilly when he gets out during the summertime. Either that or his swimming lessons, which are coming along nicely, have increased his comfort level with water. He can paddle himself around if he holds on to a pool noodle, and they are working on having him put his face in the water.


Squid's room before and after a playdate.

I made him a little calendar out of magnets and coasters, with images for each home activity that he can move from one side of the fridge to the other as he completes them. It seems to help him know what to expect and has helped out a little with our morning and evening routines. And we give him warnings that transitions are coming and set the kitchen timer to let him know when time is up, that sort of thing, though the main effect that seems to have had is to give him "two more minutes" for his repetoire when trying to prolong an activity. I see a lifetime of bargaining and haggling ahead of me. "That's the deal," he tells me authoritatively, and I quail a little. Someday our negotiation skills will employ almost the exact same vocabularies, and then they will sell tickets to the fun.

Preschool drop-off is heartbreaking these days. He cries and clings to my legs. "I don't want you to leave me!" he wails. I pry him off and explain that I will come back in the afternoon, that he is safe and with friends and will probably have a lot of fun. I tell him I always come back. And I leave, trying to make as little fuss about it as possible. But hearing him say, "I'm worried you'll leave," and "I don't want you to leave me" and having his sobs follow me out the door is just heartrending. It's a phase, of course; he was okay before, and he'll be okay again, and he tells me when I pick him up that he had a good time, but ow.


Eating homemade watermelon popsicles in the backyard.

We had some real low points this month. Squid's asthma put him in various clinics, the ER, and finally the hospital for a full weekend, which was scary as hell. One of our beloved old dogs died, after a long life lived to the fullest, and we miss her horribly. Explaining her passing to the Squid, and hearing him try to make sense of it, is heartbreaking. "She had to go to the doctor but the doctor couldn't fix her. Sometimes they do and sometimes they can't. So she is in Dog Heaven** and the doctor there can fix her," he told me yesterday. My Grammy fell and broke her leg, which is a bigger deal at 97 than it is for younger folks, and we had to cancel our planned 4th of July visit down to see her.

But we had some really wonderful things happen too. We spent a weekend in Sonoma with our good friends M & K, relaxing, eating amazing food, and catching up. My medication finally (finally!) seems to have stabilized me, and I have spent three weeks and counting of being relatively okay, which is a record for the recent past. My Grammy got through the surgery and is recovering well. My parents had a fabulous time biking through Australia and have made it safely home. I turned 35. We had our 5th wedding anniversary. We saw UP, which is the most enjoyable movie I have seen in years. My work projects finally moved out of their endless "process" phase and into the part I am actually good at. I got the tattoo I had been planning for the last two years. And we are all, always, enjoying our time with the Squid - whining and all - and marveling at his ongoing progression into personhood. Being a parent is awesome.

* Thrift store. I hate buying plastic toys; it makes me feel like I am a one-person landfill machine - so we go "treasure hunting" and I buy them secondhand and then when he outgrows them we donate them back. This last weekend we found a big yellow bulldozer, a full toy toolbox (complete with clamp and table saw as well as power drill and other tools), and a marble maze for about $10 total. I cleaned them up and ran the pieces I could through the dishwasher and et voila - new toys!)

** A neighbor gave us a book when she heard our dog had passed away called "Dog Heaven." I line-edited it heavily as I read to take out the more egregious monotheism, as Himself and I do not share a religion, but the Squid was fascinated and asked for it repeatedly. It gave him a concept of "heaven" and "angels" that he didn't have before, but it worked fine - he's come up with an explanation that makes sense to him and jives with our other explanations of where she is, and that's good for now. And it was incredibly sweet of our neighbors to think of us.

35

I've always wanted to be 35. It's a great age, and I'm looking forward to it. Old enough not to do the stupid shit I did in my teens and twenties, young enough to still have health and energy and a whole lifetime of growth and change potential ahead of me. I'm thrilled.

This is a picture of what I got myself for my birthday:



The quote is the last seven words of James Joyce's Ulysses (I got it done on Bloomsday) and the font is Berling Roman, which my internet research turned up as a reasonable electronic analogue for the typeface (Elsevier) in which Ulysses was originally printed.