The Small 'Stute Voice

State of the moi

2010-04-29T13:21:00.000-07:00

We took a mini-vacay this month, to Monterey, and it was amazing. It's only an hour or two away (we stayed in Santa Cruz and took day trips) and we were down there for less than two days, but just being away from my computer and to-do list, and getting to spend real time that was not chore- or errand-focused with my family was beyond wonderful, and so relaxing. Of course, I came home and did three loads of laundry, two loads of dishes, one grocery shopping run, and prepped meals for the week, but it's better to do that on the weekend than have to take care of it incrementally after work, so that was good too. Lesson learned: a mini-vacay, even to the next town over, is a wonderful thing. This was the last real "break" I expect to have before the baby comes, and who knows for how long after, so it was doubly precious. Speaking of which...

Update on the whole pre-term labor situation: I ended up back in the hospital Sunday night for four hours, after contracting more or less constantly - but painlessly - all afternoon. Thank god my partner is now home and could stay with the Squid. My cervix was closed, narrow, totally not showing signs of labor. They sent me home, and I took Monday and Tuesday off work to recover. The fetal fibronectin test results came back on Tuesday evening and there is a less than 1% chance that I will go into real, actual labor in the next two weeks. Awesome. No, really, it is awesome; it just also means that my partner will have to go on his business trip and I will have to go back to work and I am just really tired. And uncomfortable. And tired. But this too shall pass.

Pregnancy dreams, as I've noted before, are intense, as well as intensely fucked-up. Nor are they subtle. A few days after my dream in which the Squid had run off and I was having to look for him - up an endless steep hill, while towing a huge, heavy box of books - I had a horrible nightmare in which I worked for his preschool and was (rightly!) excoriated by the director for being a terrible, irresponsible employee and an awful, neglectful mother. O HAI MY INSECURITIES.

For those of you who have never been pregnant, I have a metaphor for the feeling. Imagine that your stomach contains one of those thick red rubber playground balls, like you had in grade school. A smallish one, fully inflated. Then imagine that it is chock-full of bouncy balls - the heavy, thuddy, really bouncy sort - in multiple different sizes. Fetal movement can feel like anything from those bouncy balls rolling around, to going off like popcorn (one or two at a time or all at once), or shifting, or being squished against the sides of the playground ball so you can see the bulge. Not usually painful, but thuddy and roily and distinctly awkward.

This is a very busy fetus, have I mentioned? The night after the second time I was sent to the hospital for monitoring, we had fetal activity of the full-on popcorn variety from midnight to four a.m. Since sudden increases in activity can be a sign of fetal distress, this freaked me right the fuck out, as you may imagine. Things seem more normal now, but it's like once one thing goes wrong, my worrying kicks into gear, and everything becomes a source of anxiety. I keep prodding my belly to wake her up and make her kick if she is quiet for long periods now.

Basically, I think all the pregnancy hormones have finally manifested in a way that they had refrained from doing previously. I am more anxious, more tired, and infinitely more spacey. My brain seriously has no ability to parse information of any complexity whatsoever, and even my good old autonomic functions are on the fritz. Over the last week, I have had some truly spectacular "pregnancy brain" moments, including calling to rearrange an appointment, getting it solved to my satisfaction, hanging up ... and then five minutes later looking at the phone and wondering, "What happened? Did I get disconnected on hold and I didn't notice?" and almost going through the whole process again before remembering that I had in fact already successfully completed the task. I also had about ten minutes of full-on "monkey bang thing with stick!" type frustration while attempting to open the latch on the garden's sprinkler controls (which pops out easily, it turns out, if monkey bang it the right way), lost or confused a myriad of basic household terms, and attempted to wash my hands with lotion instead of soap. I am a fucking genius these days.

I have also been nesting like a madwoman. In the last two weeks, I have:

Organized and cleaned out all our junk drawers & pen holders
Organized and cleaned out my closet & dresser drawers
Organized & cleaned out dishtowel/washcloth/baby supply cabinet
Organized & cleaned out freezer
Organized & cleaned out medicine cabinet in kitchen
Organized and cleaned out the Squid's toys
Silkscreened onesies and t-shirts for both children
Knit baby hoodie, baby hat, booties, scarf
Replaced glides on kitchen chairs
Packed hospital bags
Bought last of necessary baby supplies
Returned videos and library books and other borrowed items
Set automated backups in motion for computer
Scanned documents & some photos
Sorted family photos and sent more off to be scanned by a service
Weeded the garden
Bought and planted vegetables & herbs
Called potential childcare providers and mapped them and all their info on Google Maps
Paid all back bills and dealt with census and other outstanding mail items
Re-indexed my electronic address book and re-done my spice cabinet spreadsheets
Five million loads of laundry, three million loads of dishes, roomba, cooking, cleaning, sorting, etc.

...I would estimate, conservatively, that since becoming pregnant I have spent at least $300 on organizing containers and equipment of various sorts. This is only a ridiculous outlay if it does not result in the house getting and staying organized, so I don't feel bad about it - not even about the amount of plastics I bought to do it, because I keep rubbermaid and other plastic tubs forever. I measured all the spaces, envisioned the perfect containers, sought them out, indexed the contents where mere sorting was insufficient (my spice cabinet spreadsheets, let me show you them!), and sent bags and bags and bags of Stuff to friends, goodwill, freecycle, the local library, the preschool, and other places that might be able to use them.

Of course, as I then said to my friend I__, I am now nearly out of things to do that do not require brain power (see above re: how much of that I am packing these days) and left twiddling my thumbs, feeling miserable, and wondering when the baby will come. I'm ready! I'm done with my chores! Where is this damn baby already? ... Pregnancy is not for people with control issues.

Long version (5 a.m. insomniac remix)

2010-04-24T05:45:00.000-07:00

In retrospect, I wonder how much of the bad temper, poor sleep, and inability to cope of my past few days was brought on by the discomfort of un-noticed contractions. I didn't go into labor naturally last time, and I hadn't really had any Braxton-Hicks before, so I wasn't attuned to them and might have written them off as part of the general misery of being seven and a half months pregnant.

But I sure as fuck noticed Friday afternoon, when I crawled under my desk at two for a brief nap and was almost immediately hit with a series of painful (like, bad menstrual cramp painful), distinct contractions less than seven minutes apart. After about half an hour and a few position switches, they waned, but I dutifully googled up Braxton-Hicks, because I seemed to recall that they were supposed to be ... milder.

Sure enough, B-H are supposed to be "painless" for most women. And you're sure as fuck not supposed to have four or five in the space of half an hour. The internets said to call my doctor, so I did - even though I felt okay at that point and was sure I was just being overcautious.

The advice nurse took all my info and said she'd have the doctor call me back; by 4 pm they had sent me to labor and delivery at the local hospital. I was still contracting, but mildly and less frequently, and feeling like an idiot who was probably just imagining it all. Nevertheless, I called my partner (who was on vacation in Kentucky) and left a message on his phone, saying not to panic, but to develop a "plan B" on how he might get home earlier than planned.

A new acquaintance (seriously, I like her and we've been on the way to making friends, but this woman has been to my house once, and we hung out at a kids' birthday party once, and she had emailed me earlier in the day to say "how about pizza and playdate after preschool?") called to see when I would want to meet to hang out, and I had to explain what was going on. Without my having to even ask (and I had been desperately wracking my brains as to how I could make this work) she offered to pick the Squid up from preschool (all my other authorized picker-uppers were out of town) and take him for as long as I needed. At that point, I was still thinking it wouldn't be a big deal, but I thanked her profusely, called the school to arrange it, and continued on to the appointment.

4:15. Intake, waiting room, ugly gown, urine sample, monitors, blah blah blah. They gave me a button to push when I felt the contractions, which by then were much fainter and not registering on the monitors. The fetus's galloping heartbeat over the doppler machine was soothing and I knit a little while listening to Iron and Wine to calm my nerves. By 5:15 it was clear that they were not going to let me out in time to pick up the Squid - they had found a potential snag in the urine sample and had to send it up to the labs for further testing - so I called my ... acquaintance? friend? savior? Let's call her K ... I called K to tell her I would, in fact, need her to take the Squid, but not to tell him I was in the hospital.

And this is where I started to lose it.

Because, okay, it was no longer Not A Big Deal. And with my partner in Kentucky and my parents in LA, I had no backup that was familiar enough to the Squid to take him overnight. He's four - he's never had a sleepover except with family. He would be upset and scared and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. I was pretty sure I could have the baby on my own - that's what hospitals are for, and at 34.5 weeks, most of the major development has taken place; she'd be small and premature, and I could have wished for a little more time for the lungs to mature, but we would be fine. But even my village, the amazing network of friends and neighbors that keep me going when my family is out of town, would not be enough to take care of the Squid overnight. He's a very resilient little guy, social and adaptable (he had a great playdate, and never even blinked over the whole thing) but I think a night away from home and family would almost certainly have freaked him right out. I started to cry on the phone to K, and had to take deep breaths to hold my shit together.

My partner finally called; he hadn't even gotten my message, and was alarmed to hear I was in the hospital. There were, however, no flights that would get him back appreciably sooner than 3:30 the next afternoon, his current scheduled arrival time. Nurses continued to come and go. I continued to contract. They were stronger now, and more regular, and they were showing up on the monitor. I texted K, who reassured me that the Squid was having a great time and told me to take care of myself, and listened to music, and knitted (I had to rip out my knitting at least twice during this process, because I kept fucking up; knitting while contracting, lying on your side, and trying desperately not to freak out is not optimal.) Nurses came and went. At 7 p.m., the extended urinalysis still hadn't come back, and the shift changed.

7:30. The doctor showed up with the urinalysis results. I have never been so goddamn glad to have a urinary tract infection in my life. Apparently, they can contribute to pre-term labor. Fuck only knows how I got a UTI drinking gallons of water daily and peeing what feels like every five minutes, but the point is: treatable. They gave me an antibiotic and a prescription (which they apparently couldn't call in? Look, people, I have a four-year-old, I can't just wait around pharmacies in the middle of the night. I'll be taking the next dose an hour or two late, because there was no way in HELL I was going to drive to the next town (where the 24-hour pharmacy is), drop it off, wait to pick it up, and then go get my kid. I'll do it when he wakes up in the morning.) They also tried to tell me to take it easy and lie down. Fuck, no, I told them, I have a kid who needs me, and no backup. There is no way. So they offered me a shot of something that would make me shaky (thus delaying my discharge from the hospital another half hour) but would stop the contracting so that I could be more or less normally active without worrying. God, I love modern medicine.

At 8:20, they let me go.

I walked the quarter-mile to the parking garage, teeth chattering from the cold air, shaky from the shot and the whole ordeal, and drove straight to K's house, where I found the Squid cheerfully taking a bath with his friend, happy as a clam. K made me a cup of chamomile, fed me leftover pizza, and I endeavored not to have a nervous breakdown at her kitchen table. It took a long time for me to calm down enough to be sure that wasn't going to happen - by the time I headed home with an exhausted Squid, clad in borrowed pjs, it was 10:00, two full hours past his bedtime (and mine, for that matter). Thank goodness he was cooperative - I was so far beyond the end of my resources that I don't know how I could have dealt if he had been fussy - and I fell into bed soon after getting him down.

Everything is fine, now. The UTI is being treated, and the contractions are gone. I was reassured at the hospital that this does not markedly increase my chances of pre-term delivery once the underlying problem is dealt with. The Squid had a great time. I have a new friend. My partner will be home this afternoon, and in a few hours I will wake up (again) and drive to the next town to drop off the prescription and take the Squid out for breakfast.

But holy fuck, that was scary. I just wanted to cry on someone's shoulder the whole time, and there was nobody who could really be there for me in person, and I couldn't be there for the Squid, and it could have all gone so spectacularly downhill.

*deep, shaky breath*

Okay. It's 5:45, I've been up since 3:30, and I have to be functional tomorrow, so I guess I'd better try for a few more hours of sleep - though if the Squid gets up at 6 like he has been, I am once again spectacularly screwed on the sleep front. But I had to get it all down so I could stop rehashing it over and over in my head. And now I have.

...and literally two minutes later, Squid is up. Gah.

Dear Universe,

2010-04-23T22:41:00.001-07:00

I take it back, okay? I am not tired of being pregnant. Nope, not me. In fact, I hope I stay pregnant for at least another month, that would be great. I am sorry I ever said anything!

Sincerely yours,
Me

(Short version: Preterm labor alarm this afternoon/evening from two to eight thirty, with full-on hospitalization and monitoring. Everything is fine now, but it was scary as shit. Thank God for K, the Squid's friend's mom who picked him up from preschool and kept him for the world's longest playdate - all my backup is out of town, and I don't know what I would have done without her.)

Tantrum

2010-04-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

I have hit a wall. I am so fucking tired of being tired.

I am tired of using all my saved sick leave (which should have gone to pay for the first week of my maternity leave, which will now be entirely unpaid) on doctor's appointments and extra sleep and staying home with a sick kiddo.

I am tired of spending all my saved vacation (which other people get to use for, you know, vacation) curled up asleep under my desk at work and still being fatigued and useless all the time.

I am tired of being uncomfortable and huge and having trouble sleeping and bending over and breathing and eating and being kicked from the inside all the time.

I'm tired of being disappointed in my professional performance and disappointing others because I'm so fucking exhausted and I have to take so much time off and my higher-order thinking processes are halfway offline even when I am at my desk.

I'm tired of having to ask for help, and I'm tired of still not getting the help I need because I need more help than I feel I can ask for or than other people can provide.

I'm tired of being a shitty mother because I'm too overtaxed and overwhelmed to be patient and engaged.

I'm tired of being resentful that this process and all of the bullshit it entails necessarily falls on me. I am sick of having my biology determine pretty much all the major parameters of my life.

I'm tired of being constantly aware that I should be grateful to have such first-world, upper-class problems. I'm tired of knowing I'm essentially being a whiny little bitch about everything.

I'm just tired.

Here there be dragons

2010-04-09T14:01:00.000-07:00

So, no Squidbits. That's pretty much all this "blog" has been for years, and I'm a little at a loss for how to continue. Everything I can think of is probably the sort of stuff I should stop posting about. But I do have a whole sector of my life (work) that is not Squid-focused, and a whole series of biological events going on that are discrete from him as well.

Which are also not interacting with one another optimally at the moment, sadly.

I don't remember being this tired last time around. I have to nap in the afternoon more days than not, regardless of how much sleep I get at night. And even though I go to bed by ten at the latest (sometimes more like 8:30) and Himself and our wonderful Squid-wrangler T take most of the Squidmornings, I still manage 9-10 hours a night at best, which is sort of minimum maintenance level for me even when I'm not pregnant. I use a bite guard to keep from grinding my teeth and giving myself headaches. I use white noise and earplugs to keep various house noises from waking me. I read dull non-fiction before bed (currently working my way through 800-page recounting of the history of the American tobacco industry) or listen to a yoga meditation audiofile. I take hot showers, stretch, and do self-massage. But between the fetus merrily squirming on my bladder, the near-constant heartburn of third trimester pregnancy, and the various waves of anxiety brought on by god-knows-what, I am still not getting enough sleep to get me through the days.

So I nap at work, using the camping mat and blanket I keep under my desk. Which my work knows about and sanctions, but I still don't charge that time to any of my projects, naturally. Which means that I'm running out of vacation and sick leave at a rapid rate.

And even when I am awake, my attention span, focus, and general higher thought processes are not all I'd like them to be. It's not all me; I'm running into some issues at work that I don't want to talk about in detail, but which are exacerbating my feelings of being lost and confused, and a lot of that is beyond my control. But it's true that the sort of bizarrely bovine fog I find myself in these days isn't doing me any favors in a work environment that values me for my ability to think analytically, synthesize information and data, and keep multiple components of complex projects moving forward smoothly.

All of which has me kind of down about the eight hours a day I spend in the office. I love my job in general, my co-workers and the department and company administration are fantastic and supportive, and the work is interesting. But I'm frustrated with my own performance, and I'm the critic who gets the most air time in my head. And I'm frustrated with some of my team dynamics, and I'm pretty sure that the hormonal fluctuations of pregnancy aren't helping me handle those situations with the sort of graceful Zen aplomb I'd like. Er, not that graceful Zen aplomb has ever been a hallmark of my interactions with the world, but I feel like I'm on a shorter string than usual.

Lately, I'm also feeling scared that the sadness that's crept up on me in the past week is somehow a sign that my meds, which have made this pregnancy so much more bearable than the last, are no longer sufficing to keep the blues at bay. I made it through seven months without inexplicable misery and crying, and I even flatter myself that I handled February and March with some sort of panache, but the last five days have been very on-again-off-again iffy, exacerbating everything else.

But that's here and now. There have been so many other wonderful things in the past month that I am not talking about, because I am at a dip in the roller coaster and it's hard to see the big picture from here. But we did pretty well for the three weeks Himself was in Chicago and overseas, managing a trip to LA, outings almost every weekend morning (to toy train exhibits, parks with friends, events, museums, and the like) and relaxed afternoons in the sunshine, orderly get-to-preschool mornings (by dint of help from T and my careful night-before prep of lunches, etc.) and pleasant evenings of errands, swim lessons, cooking, and playtime. Neighbors and friends and T took good care of us, and we leaned on our village hard.

Himself came home three days early to surprise us - best surprise ever - just as I was starting to fray at the edges. It has been great to have him home, though the Squid's behavioral regressions that coincided with Himself's absence did not, as I had hoped, immediately revert to normal. And last weekend we went to brunch and the California Academy of Sciences with one of my dearest friends, in from out of town, and had the playgroup over for Easter egg hunting and bagel breakfast. I feel very blessed to have my life and the people around me.

So, good things too. The fetus continues to have a strong heartbeat and is measuring just about at the 50th percentile, 4.3 pounds and approximately 16" of person-to-be, hanging out upside-down in my uterus. We got to "visit" via ultrasound this week and see cheeks, and wee face, and paw-in-mouth, and yawning, and healthy kidneys and heart and amniotic fluid all normal and everything.

I can't believe I have two months to go, though. I'm as big as I was when I had the Squid, because of the low amniotic fluid problem we had with him, and I'm only going to get bigger. And apparently the placement of the placenta this time is different, too, as well as the resilience of my abdominal walls, which means I can feel every squirm and bonk and flail distinctly, and this is a very busy little proto-person indeed. The whole thing is so uncomfortable! Yuck! And this is an easy pregnancy, all systems more or less normal, and I have wide margins on my life to get the sleep and help I need. I seriously don't know how most people do this. Intelligent design, my ass.

Then again, it's probably good that we have two months to go. Not that we're not "ready" in a material sense - we have all the equipment and stuff we need to get started, thanks to loans from friends, leftovers from Squid, hand-me-downs, gifts, and things we lent out that have been returned. But I'm so totally unready in the larger sense. Not like last time, so much, where D-Day felt like the end of Life As I Knew It and I was terrified of everything that came after, but more like my whole calendar after June 3 is just a giant sepia ocean marked "HERE THERE BE DRAGONS," an unknown territory that I can't even begin to think about or plan for from here. I'm sure we'll be fine, and I'm sure it will be different from last time, and I'm sure things will change, but I have no idea what or how; the surety of unsurety is all I've got.

In the meantime, this weekend we're going to Monterey to see the aquarium and have some awesome family downtime. I'm really looking forward to it; with how much I sleep and how much Himself works and how busy we all are in general, we don't get a lot of time to just enjoy each others' company, and getting away from home and the computers and the loads of laundry and the endless beckoning lists of shit to do will be wonderful.

I can't wait.

Squidbits from FOUR

2010-03-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

Squid is four. And he is a very, very big boy. He can dress himself with minimal help, brush his own teeth and get most of them clean, sleeps in a big boy bed that Daddy made just for him, and helps me when I cook dinner (he can stir and sift like anything!)

He even helped make his own birthday cakes, though the more elaborate parts of that project were taken care of by Yours Truly. He wanted a “shark cake” – but last year, when I made him a shaped cake to his request, he cried when we cut it. So this year I made a small shark cake … and also some shark-fin cupcakes, to be et on the day of. The shark cake itself lasted 24 hours before meeting its demise at the ravenous jaws of a school of hungry preschoolers. Squid got the fins, as he had already licked them (ew!) and I’m sure, as they were made of pure marzipan, he floated through the remainder of his birthday on a sugar high unprecedented around these parts.

Of course, the next weekend he out-did himself at Grammy Vi’s 98th birthday party in LA. My Aunt K, who is not big on discipline, had put the gummi bears out in a large dish at child height. I tried to move them once (“If you keep eating those, you will feel sick,”), but he found them again. If you ask him what happened after that he will tell you, “I ate too many gummi bears. And then I got sick.” Score one for my psychic mommy powers of prediction! Poor little bug. But everyone has to learn that one through experience. Heck, I had hurt myself in an all-too-similar fashion with some Thin Mints just the week before, so who am I to judge?

He’s a little over three and a half feet tall, all energy and opinion and curiosity about his world. The mantra this month has been “Be careful of other people’s bodies!” because he is so excitable and distractible that he is prone to crashing into people or whacking them by accident out of sheer enthusiasm. Or pique, but you know, that’s a different issue. In any case, there’s some growing going on somewhere, though we’re not seeing noticeable height or weight increases recently, because his food intake has spiked (even as his pickiness as increased) and he is hungry all the time.

The battle of wills around eating and other things continues apace, and we are talking a lot about how we need to help each other make good decisions, because my patience doesn’t always hold up well to his testing. We get sequences that look, all too often, like [Bad Squid behavior] –> [correct and patient Mommy reaction] –> [Bad Squid behavior repeated as necessary until] –> [bad Mommy reaction] –> [upset Squid]. “I’m angry that you’re mad at me!” he will say. “Can you say sorry that you were angry?” It’s so hard to take responsibility for my own poor behavior while still pointing out that his actions have consequences as well. But personal responsibility is a central value in our family, and we’ll get it through by hook or by crook.

He’s been staying up later – he still has a nap at preschool daily, as well as on the weekends, and so while his bedtime has remained the same, he’s upped the delays (particularly as he is no longer in a crib so he can get up and come out if he needs something) and regularly stays up for an hour or so reading to himself (well, looking at pictures) or playing in bed. Both Himself and I frequently read in bed, so we’re not discouraging it, but I do wish the Squid would make up for it by sleeping a little later (even Daylight Savings has not helped in this regard). Like his mommy, he gets cranky when he’s short on sleep.

We’ve been solo parenting this month, and the Fan Club is out gallivanting around Southeast Asia, so we’ve been without our usual backup. I am glad to report that with careful planning and a lot of outside help (some paid, some from dear friends) we have been doing okay so far. I’m very tired, but instead of pushing through, I’ve made getting the sleep I need a priority – over my job, over my scruples about having a nanny in (someone has come to help twice a week in the mornings, which is a godsend), and over anything else I need to do that is not directly related to Squidcare. And it’s made me a better and more patient mommy, I hope and believe. Still, we will both be very glad when Daddy comes home. As will Himself, no doubt.

When the Squid sits on the potty he has started to say, “I want privacy! Shut the door!” And we do, because he asks. And similarly, Himself and I have talked, and we will now be drawing a curtain over this period of the Squid’s life. It is time that he should get the privacy that all persons, big and small, are entitled to, and I will no longer be writing detailed public updates about him every month. I am grateful on a regular basis that the Internets were not ubiquitously around prior to the more robust development of my own prefrontal cortex, and I will extend that blessing to young Squid as well as I can.

Of course, this is still my blog and I am still his mother; I won’t pretend I don’t have a wonderful son who delights and thwarts me on a regular basis. But the updates, when they come, will be primarily about me and the new small person (due June 3 or thereabouts), rather than about the Squid.

Speaking of which, pregnancy continues apace, now entering the third trimester. I am disappointed that we have made it to the 21st century without the ability to grow babies in vats, but “it is what it is” – my most recent life motto – and so we carry on. I’ve knocked all the major prenatal items off my to-do list, passed the glucose tests, passed the amnio, fetus is kicking and squirming like anything, we have all the baby clothes we need, I’m knitting up a storm (after 4 years of nothing on the needles), and I’m tired and uncomfortable as hell – in other words, all systems normal. The dreams are totally vivid and fucked-up, though, wow. You would not want to share my subconscious these days; it’s like all the abstract thought processes that escape me in my waking hours appear in surreal Technicolor during REM sleep.

I have no idea what my life – our life – will be like once this baby arrives. I have given up on catastrophizing or speculating or hoping about it, at least for the nonce. I have no idea how we will manage or if we will manage or what we will need or anything. And I’m feeling remarkably Zen about it; after all, it’s out of my control now. It is what it is, que será será, etc.

Squidbits

2010-02-02T21:48:00.000-08:00

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.

.

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

2010-01-19T16:39:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-05T19:34:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-12-18T19:56:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-10T10:24:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-26T11:32:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-18T11:58:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-28T21:20:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-13T02:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-10T07:54:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-08T09:28:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-20T20:37:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-11T12:31:00.001-07:00

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

2009-07-08T21:02:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-25T08:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-20T21:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-15T20:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-07T22:38:00.001-07:00

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

2009-04-22T17:05:00.000-07:00

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.