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.

Browning

I'm working on making sure my kid has more books about kids who look like him.  No, this is not a useful list of kids' books with protagonists of color. It's a craft project.

What I am armed with:

• Some cheap brushes.
• Tombow ABT Dual Brush pens in sand (992) and saddle brown (977). I also have wine red (837), pale cherry (912), and dark ochre (027) but I wouldn't recommend them; I will be ordering brown (879), redwood (899), chocolate (969), burnt sienna (947), and black (N15) soon, as I think they will better suit my purposes. If you've never used pens like these before (I hadn't), there's a handy tutorial on YouTube; I used the cheap brushes instead of their fancy blender pen, but maybe I will buy the fancy blender pen (N00) as well, while I am on a spree; it might help me get a more even look than I'm managing right now.
• Some softback paper versions of children's books. There are two key aspects to these books:
  1. The paper is at most only slightly glossy, which means that the ink of the pens will stay on the pages. 
  2. All the main characters and all/most of the secondary characters are White.

I've only done a few so far, but I'm very happy with the results, so I thought I'd share.

When I'm Big, done with the Tombow pens (this book is especially recommended for lesbian couples, as the two parents appear to both be female, though it's not An Issue, and the book is cute.)

BEFORE:

AFTER:


Danny and the Dinosaur, done with Crayola Washable Markers and watercolor paints (before I found the Tombow pens; this worked pretty well, too)

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE:

AFTER:


My Dad is Awesome, by Nick Butterworth, done with the Tombow pens:

BEFORE (the cover, which is too glossy to change):

AFTER: (the same image, inside the book and colored):


Thanks to my friend Lee for doing dorky crafty stuff with me; if we hadn't had an awesome day of play and crafting and hanging out with her and the Squid a few weekends ago, I might never have gotten around to sitting down and trying this out. Crafts are always more fun with friends! 

The process itself is a little time-consuming, but the results are not bad, and getting better. It's not only letting me give the books protagonists and other characters of different skin colors, it's letting me choose to color them like our family, which has different colors within it as well. It's about $20 for all the supplies to do it (plus the books, but I already had those; I am guiltily considering going all guerilla re-racination on a few library books, too). 

I still have to change words when I read the books - within the first two pages of Danny and the Dinosaur, which is an otherwise sweet book, Danny goes to the museum and sees "Indians, bears, and Eskimos" (all clearly statues) and "guns and swords." In our version, he sees Native Americans, Inuit, and rifles, but this still doesn't address the WTF of seeing people as exhibits in museums to be lumped in with bears...augh! Not all fail can be cured with a trip to the art store, more's the pity.

all their 20 pockets aren't enough for their lies

Happy Bloomsday, everyone!

I know I'm posting this a wee bit early, but I don't know if I'll get the chance tomorrow and I don't want it to go uncelebrated. I haven't the time or inclination to go to a 24-hour reading, but I do what I can, which in this case involved compiling an exhaustive list of all the things which Leopold Bloom puts in his many pockets on June 16, 1904. Just what you always wanted, I know.

Items we never see Leopold Bloom put into his pockets, but which are produced from them in any case:

• Potato
  
• Handkerchief
  
• Pocketbook (containing picture of Molly)
  
• Coin purse
  
• Watch fob

Calypso

• The kidney goes into Bloom's sidepocket, but is (removed) cooked and eaten in the same episode.
  
• The Freeman’s Journal is, I assume, the "cut page" he acquires at the butchers' - that is, I don't see him pick up a paper at any other point, and by the time he gets to the Lotus Eaters he definitely has it with him, in his sidepocket.
  
• He also puts Molly's book (Ruby: The Pride of the Ring) in his inside pocket in this episode, but I have no idea if it just stays there all day; I saw no later reference to it.

Lotus eaters

• He takes his (Henry Flower's) card from his hatband, transfers it to his waistcoat pocket, and then replaces it later in the same episode.
  
• The letter (to Henry Flower from Martha) goes in his sidepocket; the yellow flower inside it goes in his heartpocket, and the pin is discarded.
  
• He removes the envelope from his pocket later in the episode and shreds it under the railway arch.
  
• A cake of lemon-scented soap, unpaid-for. This goes in his hip pocket; it gets shifted around a bit, but eventually ends up back in the same pocket.

Aeolus

• He gets the Keyes ad in this episode, and it stays stowed in his pocket for the remainder of the day after he is unsuccessful at getting it placed in the paper.

Wandering Rocks

• He acquires the book Sweets of Sin, by Paul DeKock.

Nausicaa

• Both Bloom's hand and his watch go in and out of pockets in this episode. The watch is stopped. The hand rather less so.

Circe

• He acquires chocolate in this episode, which he then gives to Zoe the whore (she gives some back.) He stuffs it in his pockets with bread, but the provenance of either bread or chocolate is unclear.
  
• He buys a pig's crubeen & trotter at a butcher's and feeds them to a stray dog.
  
• Zoe takes the potato from him in this episode as well, but Bloom takes it back.
  
• He also takes Stephen's money for safekeeping, but returns it later.

Additions, clarifications, and corrections welcome!

Squidbits from May

I don't know what to say about this month. I've been changing my meds, sleeping poorly, and it's been kind of a rough time Squidwise, too, as he navigates the confusing waters of threeness. We had a good weekend aside from the part where I closed the car trunk on his fingers and we had to have x-rays at the Urgent Care clinic, but on the whole, May was kind of for the birds. He's picked up a bunch of language I'm not happy to see, including "I don't like you," "gun," "shoot," "leave me alone," "that's not fair," and "kill." Sigh. There was no way we were going to get out of that, of course, but I can't say I'm overjoyed.

I really don't know what to say, overall, so I'll just leave you with photos and a few conversational snippets and hope I do better next month.

Squid, piping up from the backseat, after getting in trouble: Mommy, it makes me sad when the angry comes out your mouth.



Squid: Aaaaah-CHOO!
Me: Cover when you sneeze! Come on. You know better.
Squid, scowling: I don't know better. I don't trust you.



Me to Squid: What do birds eat?
Squid: They eats little aminals!
Me: They do?
Squid: Yeah! The robins eats the worms!
Me: That's right, they do, and hawks and owls eat squirrels, too.
Squid: They eats squirls?
Me: Sometimes, yes.
Squid: No.
Me: Oh, they don't? What do they do, then?
Squid: They fly and the tweets come out of they mouf!



Me: What did you do at preschool today?
Squid, solemn: I was having bad decisions. I hit my Bumbles and the Bumbles cried.



Me, checking out books at the library: Here's your garbage truck book, and your book about dinosaurs, and here's Mommy's book about how to be a better Mommy, and...
Squid, upset: I don't want you to be a better Mommy!
Me: But wouldn't you like it if I were more patient and understanding?
Squid: No!
Me: You don't want me to change?
Squid: No! I want this Mommy!
Me: Awwww.



Me, showing Himself Squid's new wind-up toys: See, the bunny does backflips and the chicken runs around in circles.
Himself: It's kind of like our parenting styles.
Me: ...
Me: Which one are you?
Himself, wry: Does it matter?

We flew a kite this month, and had swimming lessons, and went to the Maker Faire, and we planned to go to LA but he got sick, and did many more things that are of little interest to people who are not us. Some months are just a blur like that. Maybe I will get more sleep now that it is June.

Squidbits from March and April

We went to the doctor this morning for the Year 3 checkup. This time, Squid did have an ear infection, but after earlier cries of wolf! "I have a boo-boo in my ear!" (when he did not) I hadn't been sure. The doctor listened to his chest (the nasty cough is not in the lungs, thank God), weighed and measured (50th percentile all around), checked his eyes (20/40 vision; I think he got bored toward the end and stopped paying attention) and did a few developmental checks. Can he copy a circle? Yes. Draw a cross? No. Identify the primary colors? Yes. Understand opposites? Yes. Fill in the blank in simple sentences? Yes. There was a brief pause after the final series of basic questions, while the doctor wrote things down. The Squid piped up into the silence, "The compressor squishes the air into the fan an' it goes to the combustion chamber!"

The doctor's eyebrows almost hit his hairline. Heh. I think the Squid's probably okay developmentally, don't you?

Nutritionally, I'm surprised he hasn't wasted away, considering that the most veg we can get him to actually swallow is a raw carrot or two. He has segued into the food preference set that eschews anything green and likes only those foods that he has seen other kids eat at preschool. Chicken nuggets are a delicacy. Fruit is (thank God) still acceptable, though not kiwis (green). White carbohydrates with butter on top are his favorite food group. Sigh. We've taken to making him eat at least a few bites of whatever we are having in the evenings, which can be an hour-long negotiation process complete with tears, throwing things, and surreptitious dog-feeding. But gummi bear vitamins are not going to make up for a total lack of nutrients in his diet, so what else are we to do?



I have not been the mother I want to be these last few months. I haven't been a bad mother, but I've done better. As I wrestle with my own mental medical issues, I have been withdrawn, flat, and tired. I have accomplished the cleaning and feeding and care of the Squid, but I have also snapped at him (once totally unfairly, which made him cry), been short on patience, been distracted from his needs by my own, and generally not been there for him the way I want to be. We've had good times - gone to parks, the library, and on visits to friends, played in the sand, hung out in the backyard, done Lego sculptures, etc. We've had visits from Grammy and Grandpa, and traveled to Los Angeles to celebrate Grammy Vi's 97th birthday. It's not all me being disastrous. But I know if I were well I could do better. And I'm afraid he's somehow picking up on my depression.

He's been really emotionally labile for the past month, which is developmentally appropriate but still has me worried. The smallest disappointment will send him into pouting, slumped-shoulder misery, or even real tears. "I'm sad," he says. "Can you ask me if I'm okay?" I try to talk to him about why he is sad, and to be matter-of-fact about it if it is just a not-getting-his way thing, like, "Yes, I know you don't want to eat your carrot, but that is what we are having for dinner," and to provide hugs and sympathy but not cater to it overmuch. It's a fine line, and I feel totally hypocritical trying to deal with his sadness in a cognitive-behavioral way while I treat my own emotional breakdown chemically. I don't want to deny what he feels - it is sad not to get everything you want - but I don't want to create incentives for him to be sad, either. 

 

Still, it leads to some sort of adorkable conversations. 

Squid: I'm really sad.
Me: Why?
Squid (exasperated): Because I just not happy!

or

Squid: I'm sad.
Me: Why?
Squid: Because I not taking off.
Me: You mean like a rocket ship?
Squid: Yeah.
Me: Oh, so you don't have booster rockets?
Squid (dejected): No. Just shoes.

We're consciously trying to teach him a few things now, instead of just letting him pick up whatever he picks up. Himself is working on his safety information (his full name, parents' names, address, etc.), I'm working on teaching him to ask for attention when he wants it instead of acting out, and we are both encouraging a little more thinking about the potty. He has little to no interest in potty training to date, but as his Bumble classmates start to graduate into "Caterpillars" and younger kids come in to his group, I am afraid he will be isolated. Potty training will be a big factor in when he is allowed to advance. I'd like him to know our cell phone numbers, too, but I think it's a bit early for seven-digit strings. 

 

We are reading lots of big kid books now, from "Take It Apart Plane" (whence his knowledge of gas turbine engines) to "Bread and Jam for Frances." He will reference whole chunks of them in conversation, often out of context, and sometimes I am sure that I am the only person who could possibly parse everything he says. And then he'll come up with something even I can't parse, and there goes that illusion. "I want clover by clover!" he insisted the other night. How could anyone who didn't do all his reading with him possibly know that that means "Horton Hears A Who," in which Horton searches "clover by clover" for his friends the Whos? I asked him what he was digging a few days ago. "Nomes and bones!" he chirped. It took me two repetitions before I realized he was referencing a line in Margaret Wise Brown's "The Diggers." I'm starting to do letter sounds with him, and to talk about how words are put together; Himself and I both learned to read around this age, and I'd love it if the Squid took to it early as well. He already "reads" some of his books from memory, turning the pages and reciting the story, even doing the voices. It's just a matter of putting it all together.

Speaking of which, do any of you remember the name of a book about a cranky, misanthropic cat named Carl, whose human family pleaded with him, "Oh, Carl, please, Carl, please come to our picnic"? I can't find it and it is making me crazy. 

When I skip a month there is so much to tell that I can't remember it all - like how he made up this word, "cack," that meant whatever he wanted it to mean at any given point, and used it all the time for weeks and weeks, and expected that we would just know what he meant. Like how he asked to wear my pink wig and then put his face adorably in his hands and announced, "I'm a lady!" Like how he has us place each of his stuffed animals carefully at a very specific place in his crib - a different one each night - before he goes to sleep. He is growing and changing so fast, and each day brings so many new things that I am constantly delighted.



Himself and the Squid leave Friday for a trip to visit my in-laws, and I stay home to work, so I will be missing a great deal over the next month. I hope I can find my center again, and be a better mommy and partner on their return. Cross your fingers for me that between the time and the meds something turns this one around; my family and my work - and I - deserve better than this.

The important part

I am worried over things that are likely of no interest to anyone but myself. My grandmother is not doing well. I am struggling with my work/life balance. I am tired and discouraged.

And then I went to pick the Squid up from preschool and saw this:

.

I love that little guy so much it is overwhelming sometimes, you know? ♥.

Squidbits from three years old

Squid is THREE. Like, officially, totally, cake-and-presents three. Kiddo!

I was gone for a week this month, and it seems to have cured him entirely of the most recent Mommy-only phase. He is letting Daddy read to him and put him to bed and everything. The tradeoff appears to have been a phase of bad behavior, mostly directed toward me, involving throwing, spitting, and hitting. But even that is well within normal toddler bounds - most of the time, he's his usual sunny self. The evenings have been really nice - one of us reading to him or playing while the other cleans or cooks dinner.

He's so articulate. The Bumble teacher at preschool says he's the only kid in his age group she can actually have a conversation with. He charmed the doctor by knowing what her stethoscope was and learning the name of the odoscope and remembering it. There are dangers to this - we have to watch our language around him more than ever, because he isn't just repeating, he's remembering things and incorporating them into his vocabulary. He looked at the pasta water last night - "Is it boiling?" he asked. I don't even know where he learned "boiling." I can't remember ever discussing it with him. He's not in the "why" stage yet; most of his queries involve reaffirming his sense of reality. "Is it boiling?" "Is it called a fire truck?" "Did you say 'argh?'" "Is Grandpa not here?" But there are still a lot of queries, and if they don't get answered, they get repeated, over and over and over. I can't tell you how many times today he asked me if it was raining - while looking out the window at the rain.

He looks a lot like his Daddy, and early personality traits were closer to Himself, in terms of focus and independence. But some of me is definitely starting to come out. This is a conversation we had a few weekends ago that is not atypical:

Me (going stir-crazy): Let's go out! Do you want to go to the park?
Squid: I don't like to go to the park!
Me: Well, then, what do you want to do?
Squid: Stay home.
Me: And do what?
Squid (exasperated): Just stay at home!

He likes to veg on the couch and read books and watch TV. It's kind of sad, to see your less-delightful personality traits passed on; I wanted him to get only the good stuff - my curiosity, my pragmatism, my caring for others, my sense of place in the world, my physical health, my craftiness. Not my sloth, my mental health, my risk aversion, my soft tooth enamel, or my dilettantism. If I had to pick one of us, I'd rather the Squid take after Himself, who is very competent, self-contained, active, and focused. I hope his recent homebody couch-potatoing and crankiness are just a phase, and not a genetic legacy.


This is the only photo I have of him this month other than the cakespam. Now that I have to take my own photos, it's harder to get good ones! This was taken at the bird preserve near my aunt's in Huntington Beach - we went out for a walk, and my irrepressible relatives insisted in encouraging the Squid in throwing rocks. Thank God, not at the birds. The outing ended in pouting and throwing himself to the ground and refusing to go any further - as most of our outings do these days - but it was fun while it lasted.

I, like all parents of toddlers, am Cassandra, predicting doom unheard and unheeded by those who press on to meet their fate. "If you throw that, you will lose it." "Hitting me will get you a time out." "If you don't let me change your diaper, you will get a rash." "There will be no dessert if you don't eat the carrots." I can say it all I want, but he needs to discover it for himself, apparently. And then he is sad, but it is too late. We've started instituting instant consequences for the more egregious infractions - hitting and spitting get a time out on the spot - and to throw a toy is to lose it for a full day. Legos left on the floor are instantly lost. I feel sad for him - it is hard to behave well, especially when you're frustrated, and three-year-olds have so little impulse control - but everyone's got to learn it sometime.

He dreams now. Several times in the last month, he's woken in the middle of the night screaming in terror. "I thought I lost you!" he sobbed into my neck, the first time it happened. After a really bad dream, it takes him forever to calm down, so we'll go read a book and cuddle and sometimes watch a movie until he starts to droop again. We've tried just a cuddle in the dark and back in bed - doesn't work. We've tried bringing him into bed with us - doesn't work. We've tried letting him cry it out (not for the really bad dreams, but for middle-of-the-night-wahs that are less serious) and that works sometimes. If anyone has any other suggestions, I would welcome them, because our current approach has drawbacks of its own.

Namely, he now expects that if he gets up in the middle of the night he will be able to read books and watch movies and hang out in the living room. A few weeks ago, he woke up at 1:30 a.m. and would not go back down. First he said it was a bad dream, that he lost Mommy's car and it drove off without him. So I soothed him and took him out to see that my car was still in the driveway. Then he needed milk. Then he wanted a book...at which point, I realized he was stalling, and put him back down. He yowled until his Daddy got up with him, and repeated a similar series of complaints - his ear hurt, he was too sad, he needed to watch a movie, etc. Back down. More screaming. He worked himself up into snotty, gasping hysterics, and by the time I went in to get him again he was crying and could barely even speak through his tears. "I need to go to the doctor!" he told me tearfully. "I have a boo boo in my ear! It hurts!" I had taken him to the doctor to check for ear infection a few days before and she had cleared him, but they can develop fast. I instantly felt horribly guilty. Had we been misunderstanding? Was something really wrong? Was he in pain? I got him up and fed him Tylenol and let him watch YouTube.

In retrospect, I think I got gamed. He said he felt "all better" way before the medication should have kicked in, and didn't complain about his ear again even long after it should have worn off. He played cheerfully while I zombied around the house, and after I took him to pre-school (where he had a fine day and did not complain about his ear). But there was no way to tell. I had to sleep for another three and a half hours and call in sick to work. Between him and the elderly spaniel, who has developed a fixation with the bathroom door in the master bedroom, and gets up several times a night to bang on it until I wake up, there is just not enough sleep to be had. And I need a lot of sleep.

Speaking of which...good night!

Cakespam from Squid's 3rd birthday party

Some of you may remember last year's cake, which was shaped like a train from the Squid's favorite book.

This year he is into garbage trucks, so I (because I am crazy) decided to do a cake replica of his favorite toy, a 1:16 scale Bruder garbage truck. It turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.







There were only two hitches: One, I needed not to use fondant as an underlayer for the cab, as the frosting didn't adhere well to it, and it's too sweet anyway; it also succumbed to gravity when I tried to use "skirts" of it to duplicate the lower-hanging pieces of truck. Next year, I mold any large pieces ahead of time and let them harden. I also need to figure out a better way of getting the fondant pieces to stick to the vertical surfaces of the cake than toothpicks. Maybe if I make them paper-thin...

And two, he was so excited about the cake, and when I asked him what piece he wanted, he pointed to the cab, so I cut him off the front for a slice - and he cried and cried. He didn't want me to cut it! He was so sad he didn't eat any at the party, though he got to have some today. Poor bug. He had a great time for the rest of the party, though, as did we (though holy shit, the neighborhood kids trashed our house.) He loved the company, he loved the presents, and (aside from the trauma at the moment of cutting) he loved the cake.



Happy third birthday, Squidlet mine!

Squidbits

His comprehension grows by leaps and bounds. He understands so many things - the cycle of trash from our kitchen to the landfill, the way lizards run, what a hydraulic ram looks like, how engines work, and how to negotiate for what he wants.

Due to the garbage truck obsession, he's very interested in squishing and mashing things. He crawled between his Daddy's legs when Himself was standing in the kitchen. "Can you compact my head?" he asked. His Aunt Kathy gave him a model tractor with a bulldozer blade attachment, and it has smashed his blanky, his plastic animals, and his cars. I want to give him something better to scoop and push and play with - I tried rice, but then spent the next three days cleaning rice off the floor. I'm thinking maybe navy beans, and dye them some bright color so I can find them.


Squid pretends to be asleep (this photo is mid-"snore")

Birthday comes next month. I'm thinking I'll invite his special friend Alejandro and his parents to a morning at the Aviation Museum and have some cake with them and the neighbors and the Fan Club. No big fuss, though I will challenge myself with the cake; I'm going to try to shape/decorate it like a garbage truck this year. \o/ Birthday parties proper just seem like...I don't know. The politics of who to invite and how best to entertain them have fifteen more years to be difficult. We can take it easy this year.

His sniffles kept him from coming with me to LA to visit my grandmother, the Grammy we call "the little Grammy," even though she is the same size as my mother, because that is what we called my great-grandmother (who was quite petite) when I was small. 96-year-olds with fragile immune systems do not mix well with snotty, wheezy toddlers. But he did get to see the fan club on the way back, and they stepped in to "sit" him when I had to be in meetings and Himself was taking a woodworking course. Squid was ecstatic! He was so excited when they first came in the door he couldn't get a whole sentence out. Grandpa is the best thing on earth. Luckily, the admiration is mutual.


Squid and Grandpa play tractors

We finally have causal links, which means incentives can work! \o/ There has been regular toothbrushing with minimal fuss for weeks because we give him his gummi bear vitamins after his teeth are clean. We got him to eat the rest of his dinner last night by eating dessert in front of him and refusing him any until he ate his dinner. He snarfed it right up, even telling the other kid who was protesting the same trade-off, "Don't be sad! It taste good!" Bribery is awesome.

He's picked up a few more cute linguistic tics - when he wants a lot of something, he'll say he wants a "big" one. "I want a wewwy big milk!" he informed me this morning. "Wewwy" or "Vewwy" is also in constant use, with a drawn-out pronunciation that mimics the import of the word itself. "I vewwy sad." "Bwanky vewwy cold." I don't think he has trouble with his"l"s or "r"s - not that I've noticed, anyway - "garbage truck" and "hydraulic ram" come out fine. But "sandwich" is "swammich," "wheelie-wheelie" (the family name for the ATV on his grandparents' farm) is the "weewy-weevilly," and "granola," for some reason, is "granana." Tricksy phonemes and how they go together, I tell you.

He went through a miserable anti-Daddy phase, in which he said things like, "I don't like Daddy" and "Go away, Daddy" and refused to let Daddy hold him or read to him. This both saddens me and perplexes me, as Himself is certainly an easier parent to spend time with than I am. I am the parent of structure and toothbrushing and scheduling and rules and multitasking and lack of patience. Himself is the parent of fun games and careful listening and adventures and yummy foods out at restaurants. I am the parent of exasperation. Himself is the parent of patience. I have no idea why Squid goes through these phases; thank God, the latest one seems to have faded.

Mostly, though, he's been a sunny, awesome, fun little guy, lately, and I'm enjoying being his mom so very much. I am very, very lucky to have such a great kid, and I am grateful for him every day.


Squid enjoys the Asian Art Museum

Squid is done with the museum

Resolve

Things I have done in the last month, in line with my NYR to push myself a little more:

• Met up with an old friend I hadn't seen in more than a decade.
  
• Exercised all of twice. Um. But hey, that's twice more than I do most months...
  
• Tried seven new recipes (bok choy with cashews, pasta with chard ribs in cream sauce, collard greens/beet greens with bacon and apple cider vinegar, tomato vodka sauce, sauteed chard, kale with smoked paprika).
  
• Learned to love four new food items I had never really liked before (chard, beet greens, bok choy, kale.)
  
• Taken public transportation to work (for a meeting in SF - there's no public transport to my regular office).
  
• Flown to Los Angeles instead of driving, and took the bus to the airport.
  
• Gone to a protest in the city with the Squid (against Israel's actions in Gaza).
  
• Put down the genre fiction and picked up the Joyce again.

Put all together, not so bad for a start. I've been chiding myself for not doing enough and thinking about how I wrote so much more in 2007 than 2008, and thinking I was making poor use of my time. But then I realized that I started my medication in late 2007. Which means that 2008 was a much better year - I cried less, was more stable, was a better mom, enjoyed my work more - but also means that I now need 9-10 hours of sleep a night.

Oh, everyone says to me, how delightful to get so much sleep! That must be so nice! Er, no. That's how much sleep I need, now. So, for example, if I get a solid 8 hours (more than plenty for most people) - I'm tired like I'm running on a 1.5 hour sleep deficit. If I get 9 I'm fairly functional. If I get 10 I'm really functional. Basically, when I started these meds, I lost 1-2 hours of my day. That's ten and a half waking hours a week - two-thirds of a day. 45 waking hours a month - three full days. 547 waking hours a year - more than a full month of time lost. It's worth it, on balance, but adding it up makes me realize what a loss it truly has been. I'm going to need to forgive myself for not doing everything.

So, I'm not giving up my resolve to push. But I'm realizing that pushing is probably not going to involve taking night classes (I can't stay awake past 9:30!) or doing a lot of time-intensive volunteering, or writing a novel. I don't know when I'll be able to do those things, if ever. I'll have to push in more quotidian ways, and I look forward to discovering them. The line between healthy pushing to expand boundaries and a healthy understanding of personal limitations is one that still confuses me, and I do a lot of thinking about it. I hope you don't mind the updates; they'll help me remember what I've done and think about what I might do in the future, and I'm going to try to remember to do them.

Things that were said, in all seriousness, in a meeting I attended today (a selection).

"Let's start with the purpose and ramify down."

"I don't think we need to get super-formalistic."

"We need to language this."

"There will be two baskets of operationalization of it."

...who talks like that?!

HOPE

Yesterday I was driving along when I noticed a man in the car next to me gesticulating wildly. He held up a finger, and then a thumb, and nodded at me and grinned. I thought over my bumper stickers - Obama, Creative Commons, ACLU...what did he mean with the gesticulating?

And then, of course, I got it. One more day.

I rolled down my window at the next light. "I can't wait!" I yelled over to him, with a big grin.

"One more and out the door!" he replied, and drove off smiling.

I love that since Obama was elected, I have had many of these moments. Strangers, stopping to comment or smile. The day after the election, a man outside the grocery store asked me, "How ya doing?" and I told him, "Better than I've been for the last eight years," and we smiled at each other.

Despite Rev. Warren giving the invocation, this is a great day. My heart is full.

Global citizenry

Squid and I went to the San Francisco protest against Israel's actions in Gaza today. We didn't make signs or chant, just added to the throng, but it was good to go. I have been feeling very helpless about the whole thing - and I am, I mean, what can I do, but this was something, so I did.



Squid enjoyed it all from his backpack, chatting with the people handing out socialist literature about airplanes and charming the ambulance drivers parked nearby into flashing the lights for him and giving us a tour of the back of the ambulance. We talked a little bit about how the people were angry and sad, and how we were there to tell people who were hurting other people that we didn't like that and we wanted them to stop. There were counter-protesters across the street, and we talked about how not all people agree about what is right.

We hit the playground at the park where the rally was being held for fifteen minutes or so near the end, when he'd burnt out on walking around. There were some parents there teaching their three-year-old to chant, "Free! Free Palestine!" But I don't teach the Squid to chant or make him carry signs. He can make up his own mind about the issues when he gets older, though of course I won't be shy about sharing my opinions with him. I bring him with me because I want to model engagement for him, to show him that it's important to be informed and active in causes you care about. It's part of being a global citizen.

I'd like to model something more meaningful than rallies for him, but I'm still trying to figure out where and what volunteering and/or activism fits in to my life. And he's young enough that I have time to figure it out. In the meantime, this was good.

New Year resolve

This year I made a nice amorphous resolution - I know, against all the conventional wisdom about what makes them effective, but I had my reasons - to push myself a little more. I imagined that this would take a million small forms - writing more, exercising more, volunteering more, taking small risks, stepping outside of my bubble a little. And yesterday I met up with a long-lost friend (thanks, Facebook!) and had a really nice time reconnecting. We told each other our narratives of the last fifteen-odd years, and laughed, and found that we still like each other. It was good to reach out like that - that's one kind of push.

But David had a lot of great things to say about what he's doing with his life and how he's seeing things that made me realize - out is not the only kind of push. More is not the only kind of push. Maybe pushing can also be to slow down. To pay attention to what I'm already doing. I'm not sure how I might do that yet - there is so much more I want to do, after all, and I am not good at seeing stillness as progress - but it's a thought that I hadn't quite had in quite that way before, and a good one to take into the coming year, as I navigate all the ways I can manifest my resolution.

Squidbits from two years, ten months

The initial shock of the threeness is wearing off, and we are all enjoying one another again. The challenges are challenging, natch, but there's so much growth going on too that it can't help but be exciting.

Christmas was a blast - we had the whole neighborhood over on Christmas Eve, and he rioted with the other kids in a way he's never quite managed before. Sometime in the last two months, since he saw them at Halloween, he tipped over that "big kid" line, and now the three and four year olds accept him as one of them. The amount of destruction four kids can cause to a home is stupendous, can I just say? I cleaned up after them, and I swear they managed to dismantle and scatter every single multi-part toy in the house. I'm just glad we left the Legos until next year.

He made a beeline for the tree on the morning of, but only managed a few presents before deciding he needed to play with his new cars. That's fine. We all had a lovely Christmas - and then I woke up the next day so cranky nobody in the family could stand to be around me and have been recuperating ever since. No, I don't know why. It just happens sometimes. And the holidays - with their chain of multiple days spent in the house with everyone - create a cabin fever that doesn't help. We've been trying to get out to museums, the library, parks, train rides, gyms, or whatever we can to help with the stir-craziness, mine as well as his.


Squid at the Children's Museum

I can't remember what he was doing the other day - something during a diaper change, kicking or wiggling or something, and I told him to cut it out. He looked at me solemnly and asked, "Does it make you nuts?" Which is both hilarious and shaming, because that's totally what I say to him when he is driving me crazy - "Stop that, it's making me nuts!" Things that make me nuts: clinging to my legs when I am trying to walk; asking for food and then not eating it; shoving things in my face repeatedly; breaking down in whiny sobs at the very mention of some disfavored thing, regardless of whether or not it will actually be foist upon one, collapsing bonelessly in public when we need to go somewhere and refusing to move...oh, toddler.

I was apologizing to him in the library for having been so crabby, and I said to him, "Mommy's having a hard time today." "No, Mommy," he said. "You not having a hard time. You want to read the garbage truck book again. You happy, Mommy." If only flat contradiction of reality actually worked. That would be awesome.

His bossypants is in full swing, too. I get told what to do a lot. As do the dogs. As does Himself. As do all our houseguests. We were in the bedroom sorting laundry a few days ago and Himself was, for reasons known only to him, entertaining himself by poking me in the butt every time I turned around. "Cut it out!" I said to him.

"It's okay, he can't see," Himself said. (The Squid was playing in the bathroom, just out of sight.)

"I don't care if he can see," I said. "I care that you are poking my butt."

There was a brief moment of total silence, and then a curly brown head popped out from behind the bathroom door. "You poke Mommy's butt, Daddy? That not good, alright? You have a time out!"


Squid explains the inner workings of a combine harvester

He's getting good at fiction and pretend. He turns random items into spaceships that go "up up up into spaaaace! Blast off!" and then go to the garage and...do something with compost, I don't know. There was a story about a fish, a yellow fish, driving an airplane. He tells me about long dreams about combine harvesters and balers that go fast and go into space. He sings songs about rice, and astronauts, and driving in the car. He has enough narrative ability to be able to tell me stories about what happened at preschool, now with some causal links, though the veracity of the stories is always in question. ("Poppy hit me an' Samantha frustrated. I have a time out." may be something that happened weeks earlier that he's still working through, or a reverse story in which he hit Poppy, or a combination of the two, or something else entirely.)

He also knows what rebar is for ("it make concrete fwexible an' strong"), which is my favorite piece of information to make him recite for other adults. I mean, I didn't teach it to him as a party trick - he picked it up from reading one of our books - but I think it's fascinating that he remembers. I've been doing more and more explaining to him at a high level, because so much of it sticks that I am constantly amazed. I explained to him yesterday on the train that the Doppler effect is the name for what a constant sound does as it moves closer and further away from the listener (okay, slightly inaccurate, but I do simplify somewhat). He didn't pick up on that, precisely, but he can now make the noise of a train passing by - nyoowwww! - and identify it as the Doppler effect. Smart little dude. He likes to read books that have big chunks of text now, and he really listens and understands what is being said.

Like I said, an exciting time.


Squid in the cockpit of a 747 at the Aviation Museum

And now for some only tangentially related observations I wrote down a few months ago and never posted:

I think I kind of horrified another mother at the Squid's preschool when he was first starting. He was in tears as I walked out the door (Nooo, Mommy! Don' wanna go preschool!) and she looked at me sympathetically and said, "That's so hard. The first few weeks I used to drop mine off and then go cry in the car!"

I shrugged. "Well, you know, we're used to it. We have dogs."

She looked at me like I was insane.

"I mean, my dog has separation anxiety, too." I tried to explain, but she started to sort of edge away from me and got in her car quickly. Apparently Good Mothers do not equate their children with their dogs in polite conversation.

But it's true! Dogs really do prepare you for kids.

You learn, for example, that if you come back in and soothe and cuddle and reassure your small being when they are distraught about you leaving that this will actually encourage the behavior and that it will get worse over time. If you say goodbye to them firmly and leave like it's no big deal, after a while, they will learn to be more matter-of-fact about your departures and arrivals. You learn about regular mealtimes, arranging for caretaking ahead of time, and getting up in the middle of the night. You learn that it's more important to be consistent than almost anything, because nothing trains faster than random reinforcement, so giving in "every once in a while" is the worst thing you can do. You learn that physical attention is just as important as mental attention.

And let me tell you, our house? Halfway kid-proofed way before we had a kid. All of our furniture is leather or wood, easy to clean up after spills. All of our floors are wood, because pet hair and stains ruin carpet faster than anything. All of our garbage cans are tall and have tight-fitting lids to prevent rummaging. Almost everything we own is machine-washable because of the pet hair. We stopped leaving the toilet seat up years ago. Sure, we had to put in electrical socket covers, cabinet locks, and doorknob covers once he started crawling, but that was it.

People told me before I had a kid, "oh, kids are nothing like dogs." Which is true! Dogs are smarter than kids, for the first couple of years, at least. And then kids grow up, and dogs don't, and the balance shifts. The differences are legion. This doesn't mean that dogs aren't great prep for the advent of a kid. Because after years of dealing with dogs, a little spit-up and some newborn diapers are like, nothing. I would tell you about the things I've had to deal with with my dogs over the years, but you might be eating as you read this, and I don't want to put you off your food.

Cats don't really prepare you for kids. Too self-sufficient. Fish, rodents, and most birds neither, though some of the larger parrots would be good prep. Horses, no, goats and sheep and rabbits, no. But dogs - dogs are the closest thing you can get to kids before actually, you know, having kids yourself. I'm trying to find the article I'm remembering that said that the best predictor of the childcare labor split in couples with pets was the petcare labor split - which has certainly been true in our case - but I can't find it, so it may have just been one of my crackpot theories.

Of course, this is just me. We did not do attachment parenting, or anything like that, and I am a more boring and rules-oriented parent than I had thought or hoped I would be (I had to give up on drawing with him this morning because I got all freaked out about how he was losing the pens and caps, instead of just letting him, you know, make a mess and create stuff). And maybe if we have another kid that kid will react horribly to all the parenting techniques we've used on the Squid, and I will have to scrap this whole idea altogether. This is just how it looks from here, right now, though that disclaimer could go on pretty much anything I write, pretty much anytime.


The many faces of Squid