Even though Evan is in preschool now, he's only there three mornings a week, so we're still going to one of the community play classes for preschoolers on one of his off days. The main reason I decided to continue with this class in addition to preschool is because of how much Evan loves his teacher.
She's not a real teacher; she's a Parks Department employee who leads the kids in some activities and supervises them while they play, makes sure they're using the equipment and toys properly, that sort of thing. It's a really unstructured environment, held in a school cafeteria covered with big mats and active toys. The teacher really enjoys the kids, though, and she spends a lot of time just playing with them, for which they all love her too.
I'm about to tell more snobby parenting stories here, by the way. Because these classes are free or really cheap, you get a lot of different types of people attending. Let's just say that my bleeding-heart granola sensibilities are even more unusual here than they are at Suburban Preschool. I frequently find myself boggling over some of the things I overhear from other parents there.
There was the grandmother who told her grandson to be nice to Evan or Evan's mommy would get mad at him and yell at him. Then she looked at me and whispered, "Really, yell at him." Whuh? Sorry, Grandma, but it's not my job to discipline your grandson for you!
Then there was the father complaining that his daughter wouldn't go to sleep before 10 or 11 pm. They'd tried everything, he said, but it was no use, because his two-and-a-half year old daughter knew how to turn on the television in her bedroom and put on a DVD by herself, so despite their best efforts she still stayed up late watching DVDs. (The other parents listening to his complaint, by the way, responded with variations of, "Kids these days! They're so smart and technologically advanced!")
This morning there was another grandmother, playing with her grandson on the mats. Five-year-old grandson picks up a block and Grandma says, "You can pretend it's a gun." Five-year-old points his "gun" at the teacher and starts yelling, "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!" Teacher keels over, groaning. Little boy laughs: "Ha ha! I killed you!" Grandma suddenly gets very sharp with grandson: "That's not nice! We don't say that!" Little boy asks, "What?" all innocent-like. Grandma says, "We don't use the word 'kill'. That's not nice." Oh, okay, gotcha -- pretending to shoot a teacher with a gun is fine and dandy, but don't call it killing! We wouldn't want to be inappropriate!
There are a lot of cute kids and normal people who attend these things, but some of these people are just so very different from me in their basic fundamental values and principles that I can't even comprehend what's happening inside their heads. Evan and I get along really well with the teacher, but some of these people make me wonder how she stands it sometimes. She was telling stories this morning too, of some of the more colorful kids saying things to her that just make her jaw drop at the rudeness of them.
I worry, sometimes, about whether my kids are going to grow up to be good people (and these worries are based more in my own paranoia and lack of parenting confidence than they are in any signs from my kids that they're becoming sociopaths or something) but then sometimes, when I spend time with my kids' peers, I figure, even if my kids aren't Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., at least they'll be better than the obnoxious jerks these kids' parents are setting them up to be.
And then I feel guilty for thinking kids are jerks, and this is when I start to feel like a judgy snob. But I guess... I'm not really sure what my point is here. I'm not even sure I have one, really, so I suppose this is a good place to end the rambling.
01 October 2009
stories of preschoolers
23 April 2009
propaganda
Hayao Miyazaki is one of my favorite filmmakers. He makes beautiful, rich animated Japanese children's movies, but I'd watch them even if I didn't have kids, they're so wonderful. One of my favorites of his films is Nausicaa, the story of a young princess who is a warrior, pilot, pacifist, environmentalist heroine. The futuristic world she lives in is one where a toxic jungle flourishes, and enormous insects roam the earth, and Nausicaa attempts to bring harmony between people and their surroundings while trying to prevent a war in her peaceful valley. It's one of my favorite movies of all time (and one of Evan's favorites too).
A few years ago I loaned our DVD to a friend of mine to share with her children, as an alternative to the standard princess movies made in the US. She returned it after a week or two, and told me she thought it was okay, but she thought the environmental messages felt like propaganda and that really bothered her. I always thought the messages were obvious but not over-the-top -- they fit in with the context of the story and the passion of the main character. I wouldn't call them propaganda at all. (Bear in mind that I'm a dirty tree-hugger, though.)
But it occurred to me today that that's how I feel about most mainstream children's movies: propaganda, of the gendered variety. Most kids' movies completely reinforce traditional gender roles, and the narrative of Boy Saves Girl and Boys Have Adventures and Girls Want Romance. And most people, I think, don't question this at all.
Example: My kids and I recently watched Madagascar 2. Not the worst kids' movie I've ever seen -- it was mostly entertaining, not too gross or inappropriate, not objectionable in most ways. Even funny at times, and I don't usually find kids' movies very funny. (Those penguins, though! And the chimps!)
Of the four main characters in the Madagascar movies, there are three males and one female (That ratio is my first problem). The three male characters' storylines involved 1) a zebra's quest for individuality, 2) a lion's quest to prove himself to his father, and 3) a giraffe's quest to become a witch doctor. The female character's storyline? Dating. That's it. It's true that in the end (spoilers!) the female hippo ends up with the male giraffe after he confesses his love and attempts to sacrifice himself to save the other animals, so there is a male with a romance storyline -- but the romance is only a part of his storyline, whereas with the female hippo, it's basically all she gets.
There are so many children's movies where the only female characters function as love interests for the males without really contributing anything of substance to the plot, and it really is starting to seem like propaganda to me. Cultural propaganda that serves to convince little girls (and boys) that girls are there for decoration, ornaments, instead of being actual people who can solve problems and rescue people.
Luckily in the age of the internet it's pretty easy to find films that don't conform to this mold, and there are the occasional big-studio children's films that don't either -- the Pixar movies are generally pretty good about gender, and the recent film Coraline was completely wonderful (as is the book it's based on). And we're currently watching on DVD a television series that's the best kids' media I've ever seen in terms of gender stereotypes and roles (which I'm planning to write about in its own post once we're through the whole series).
It's hard to avoid the propaganda altogether, but I feel like my eyes have been opened to a new way of contradicting those messages now that I've identified them as a form of propaganda.
23 March 2009
girl stuff
This morning Evan was, as usual, leafing through the Lego catalog, since he's apparently hoping to become some kind of human Lego encyclopedia. Usually his remarks are predictable: "Cool!" and "Look at this!" and "I want this one for my birthday!" Today, though, I overheard him exclaim, "Yuck! Girl stuff!"
I flipped through the catalog when he was finished, and I found that in the 65-page Lego catalog (which might be longer, actually, but ours battered copy is missing a few pages), two pages are drenched in pink with the proclamation "Just for Girls!" at the top of the page. This pink girly stuff? Horses, puppies, and a house with a family.
By singling out two pages that are "Just for Girls!", the implications are that 1) the "girl" toys are not for boys to play with and 2) the rest of the catalog is not for girls to play with. You may think that's too narrow an interpretation of the subtext, but take a lesson from my three-year-old son. This little boy, who's heard over and over in his young life that there are no "girl toys" and "boy toys", that anyone can play with anything no matter what gender they are, firmly told me that those two pages in the Lego catalog are "girl stuff" and "me and James will definitely never play with girl stuff!" And when I asked him if girls could play with the Star Wars Legos and Bionicles and Indiana Jones, he did not hesitate for a moment to tell me no. So even if that's not the message toy companies are intending to send, that's the message that's being absorbed by young minds.
A similar thing happened a couple of months ago when I took Evan shopping with me for a birthday present for my nephew. We wandered the toy aisles, looking for something good, trying to remember what 1-year-olds play with, when we turned a corner and were visually accosted with a sea of pink and glitter. "No way!" Evan cried. "These are the girl toys!" Girl toys, such as kitchens and horses and dress up clothes.
And, to digress for a moment, what is it with horses being designated as girly? First of all, horses are most often associated with cowboys, who are usually not only men, but like the total masculine ideal, all macho and rugged. And then there's the reality that riding horses and caring for horses is really dirty work, which is typically the exact opposite of what society encourages little girls to do! I've always found that really odd.
Anyway, this is not a new phenomenon by any means -- toys have always been gendered, in some ways -- but it's new to me, trying to teach my sons how to interpret and navigate all of this division. My instinct is to say that there shouldn't even be any division in the first place -- I mean, the Supreme Court decided decades ago that "separate but equal" is never equal. But focusing on the ideal doesn't address the problem that exists in reality.
So I keep on trying. I tell my sons again and again that they can play with anything they want to play with, they can like anything they want to like, that their choices are not limited by manufacturers' colors, and neither should girls' choices be limited that way. I do think they understand that, and believe it -- after all, they play with their toy kitchen all the time, they like to have their nails painted, they play nearly every day with Neighbor Girl, with whom they play everything from Star Wars to hopscotch to soccer to, yes, horses. I do think they both get it.
But there is still something disheartening about hearing your preschool cry, with as much disdain as a three-year-old's voice can carry, "Yuck! Girl stuff!" It's just another reminder that no matter how attentive a parent you are, no matter how progressive or idealistic you are, there is still a whole culture out there that is insidiously trying to undermine every effort you make that falls outside the mainstream.
18 March 2009
an open letter to a fellow mother
Dear K's Mother,
It's so nice that our sons have befriended each other at the preschool play class, and I'm glad to have someone to talk to about our children, the town we live in, and other mundane small-talk sorts of things.
But what I don't enjoy is your sporadic gender commentary on our kids. I find it odd that you proclaim Evan and your son, K, to be "all boy" as they are tumbling and climbing and jumping on the mats, when our friend's daughter, A, is right alongside them. I find it puzzling that you marvel at how "dainty" A is: "She even walks differently than the boys!" And when A's mother explains that A's style of walking is something she's had physical therapy to try to correct, and you recall that actually, your oldest son walked that way for a while as a toddler but grew out of it, you still have no problem finding another way to differentiate the sexes, zeroing in on the one moment when A lies down on a mat and pretends to go to sleep, cooing that "the princess is sleeping!" Oh, those boys are wild, but the little girl, she is a calm and docile princess. In this minute and this minute only, but that's apparently enough evidence for you.
I find it strange, too, that you and N's mom exchanged laughter over how rowdy Evan, K, and N were being, "such boys!", with their jumping and tumbling, commenting that all of the little girls were staying far away from the mats where our sons were being so rambunctious. It seemed that you two had forgotten the previous half hour in which little girls were climbing right there on the same mats with our boys, and you must not have noticed in the next half hour when girls were again playing with the boys.
I wonder if you would still call Evan "all boy" if you saw the way he likes to snuggle up to me, sucking his thumb? I wonder if you'd hold fast to your notions of how different boys and girls are if you saw my son's bright red toenails? I wonder if you've ever considered that part of the reason boys and girls do behave differently might be because people like you label little girls "princesses" simply for existing? I wonder if your head would have exploded had you known Evan during the phase where he liked to pretend to be Princess Leia?
K's mom, you seem like a pretty nice woman. Maybe if you can stop your gender editorializing, or if I can learn to ignore it, we could be friends. I'm not sure how likely either of those options are, though. It's too bad, because I could use a friend who understands what it's like to raise boys surrounded by so many hyper-masculine cultural stereotypes.
Hugs,
Evan's mom
20 December 2008
hahaha, did i say hiatus?
...because the Fates had other plans for us. Or maybe I should say Northwest Airlines had other plans. Alternate post title: air travel sucks, especially when there's no travel involved.
Today finds me at home with two wide-open days to fill, so I thought I'd use my new-found wealth of free time to blog about how I got all this extra time. Any of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook may have read my disgruntled updates yesterday, so now you can get the full story. I'll try to keep it brief, but no promises, because I might get ranty. Read the whole saga below the fold:
Friday, Dec. 19
3:30am: Alarm clock jolts us out of sleep
3:55am: Taxi arrives to take us to the airport
4:05am: Standing in line at Northwest check-in counter
4:20am: NW employees begin to arrive
4:30am: Check-in counter opens and we proceed to check in and check 3 large suitcases
5:00am: Checked in and through security, waiting at the gate
5:30am: Boarding begins for 6am flight to Detroit
6:00am: Airplane backs out of the gate to prepare for flight
Around this time, our pilot makes an announcement: the weather in Detroit isn't looking so good, and we may have to reroute to either Pittsburgh or Minneapolis. We cross our fingers for Minneapolis, since that's our layover between Detroit and Seattle. They are adding extra fuel to the plane in case we are rerouted.
5-10 minutes later, our pilot makes another announcement: the extra fuel has pushed our airplane over the weight limit and they are looking for nine volunteers to get off the plane. No one moves. Plane returns to the gate.
5 or so minutes later, flight crew makes an announcement: NW has another plane headed directly to Minneapolis, and anyone who gets off our plane can be rebooked on the Minneapolis flight. Greg goes to the front of the plane to speak to the NW representative.
Greg returns to me and the kids and says we can get off and go straight to Minneapolis on another flight instead of going through Detroit. We exit the plane with 5 other passengers who have the same plan.
7:00am: We are told at the ticket counter that the NW flight to Minneapolis that was used to lure us off the plane has no extra seats. We are issued travel vouchers and meal vouchers and rebooked on a 12:15pm flight to Detroit.
7:30am: Muffins, bagels and coffee at Dunkin' Donuts, courtesy of NW meal vouchers.
8:30am - 11am: We set up camp next to the children's play area. Kids run and jump and play while Greg and I amuse ourselves with the laptop and the Nintendo DS.
11am-ish: Head back to gate to check status of our new flight. Flight is delayed. Snow has started falling in earnest.
12pm-ish: Find a quiet, unoccupied gate to settle in and wait for flight status updates.
1pm-ish: Lunch at Subway courtesy of NW meal vouchers.
2pm - 5pm: Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Repeated flight delays. We are told that a flight headed to Rochester was rerouted to Syracuse, and our flight is dependent on that plane getting to Rochester from Syracuse. We also learn during this time period that our luggage has arrived in Seattle. Thankfully our toothbrushes are in our carry-on bags.
5:00pm: Another Detroit flight begins boarding. There are extra seats on this flight but the line of standby passengers is too long for us to get on board. At this point our 12:15pm flight is expected to leave at 7pm.
5:30pm: Detroit flight that has just boarded is now deboarding. I mention this because for the second time in one day, a NW flight is over the weight limit and passengers are asked to leave. This time, however, all passengers must exit the plane because one of the random passengers who was asked to get off refused and argued, and caused this flight to miss its window of opportunity to take off.
6:00pm: The same flight to Detroit begins reboarding.
6:30pm: The flight to Detroit is boarded, but by this time, so many passengers have missed their connecting flights and rebooked new flights for other days that there are 8 available seats.
Around this time, the flight crew is trying to determine how many more people they can take while staying within the weight limits. A pilot approaches us and asks if we are headed to Detroit; when we say yes he tells us he'd like to get us on the plane because our children would help keep the plane under the weight limit.
Then this pilot disappears and is never seen again.
The NW agent at the check-in counter begins letting standby passengers onto the flight. Greg inquires at the counter and we are told we can't get on this flight. The woman tells us that there is some feature of their computer system that won't allow her to change us to this flight, despite the fact that it's going to our destination and there are seats available, because we are still booked on the 12:15pm flight.
7:00pm: Flight to Detroit that we were not allowed to change to takes off. We are told that the plane we are waiting for from Syracuse is on its way and is expected to arrive at 7:30pm. We buy snacks to wait, still using vouchers. At least they were generous about that.
7:30pm: NW agent tells us that the plane from Syracuse is no longer listed as in the air, and our flight time has been moved back to 8:30pm. The kids are starting to get stir-crazy and continually ask when we're getting on the plane to go see Grandma and Papa.
8:00pm: At this point there are eight people left waiting: the four of us, a college student, and a couple with a 17-month old baby. We are all trying to get to Detroit to transfer on to other locations. I send NW a complaint through their website, detailing our saga.
8:30pm: We are informed that the plane we've been waiting for for over 8 hours has had a mechanical issue and our flight is canceled. We are all in tears of exhaustion, frustration and disappointment by this point.
9:00pm: We are rebooked for a Monday morning flight, 6am. We are told that there are no flights available on Saturday, and there is only one flight on Sunday, but it is already overbooked by 15 people, and there is another winter storm due on Sunday anyway. We are given additional travel vouchers. Evan asks if we're getting on the airplane now and I laugh and cry at the same time.
9:30pm: A friend picks us up at the airport to take us home.
10:00pm: We watch A Muppet Family Christmas while I make pasta for my starving children, who are too tired to eat more than a few bites despite how hungry they have been for the last couple of hours.
10:45pm: My children fall asleep, one on the couch and the other on the floor, and I carry them to bed.
11:00pm: Greg phones NW's Baggage Services to find out what is going to happen to our luggage. The employee he speaks with at first argues that our luggage can't be in Seattle, because it should have been taken off the flight when we got off the plane, despite the fact that more than one NW agent told us over the course of the day that our luggage was in Seattle. Then the customer service rep tells Greg that he will have to return to our airport to file a claim with the NW baggage office there. Greg, bless his little heart, argues with the woman for 5 minutes before she relents and checks the damn computer to find that yes, our bags are in Seattle and we can pick them up when we arrive there. Which will hopefully be on Monday.
Today we woke up late to a beautiful day, sunny, with fluffy white snow everywhere. We were dismayed to remember that our kids' boots and snow clothes are in our luggage, but luckily I found some slightly outgrown and some slightly too big items in the basement that will suffice for going sledding today. We have enough canned and frozen food to save us from having to go grocery shopping. We are planning to enjoy our extra two days of vacation even if we're not where we wish we were. We're just hoping that the snow that's expected on Sunday both here and in Seattle will be over by Monday morning so we can just get to our family for Christmas, damn it.
If you've made it to the end of this, thanks for indulging my self-pitying rant. I would advise you to steer clear of Northwest Airlines, but honestly, I don't trust that the others are that much better. The quality of our experiences with air travel has been steadily worsening over the last few years, regardless of which airline we're on. And they don't have to care, because we don't really have any choice.
Sigh. Hope everyone out there is having a better time than we are. And hopefully I won't have anything to blog about any time soon.
20 October 2008
the political post
I don't write much about politics on my blog. I don't keep my views a secret -- I have my tagline and my "Obama Mama" button (thanks, Jessica!) in plain view on the front page -- but I don't often write about it, in part because most people who read my blog already know or can guess my views, in part because I get really worked up about certain political issues and, for the sake of my mental health, it's best to avoid getting into them too frequently, and in part because I would mostly be preaching to the choir here.
But I can't refrain from doing just one political post this year. There are a lot of things I could complain about, in regards to both presidential candidates, but there is one issue that's been coming up a lot recently, in the debates, in speeches, in election ads, that is driving me crazy: taxes, especially as they relate to economic class.
McCain and Palin have spent a lot of time criticizing Obama's tax plan, arguing (falsely) that it will hurt Joe Sixpack and Joe the Plumber and anyone else named Joe in the middle class. Palin has mocked Biden for saying in his campaign speeches that it is an act of patriotism to pay taxes. McCain has, since the last debate, spent a lot of time deriding Obama's plan to "spread the wealth around." They're hinting that an Obama/Biden administration is the first step on the path that will lead the US to socialism.** Under a McCain/Palin administration, however, good old free-market capitalism will ensure that everyone will make as much money as they possibly can, and hold on to every last cent. No need to share your hard-earned money with any free-loading poor people, or those soulless bloodsuckers in Congress! Sounds nice in theory, doesn't it?
My opinion on taxes is pretty well summed up by former Supreme Court judge Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr: "I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization." Republicans seem to have forgotten what taxes are actually used for. Presently, I'm not a fan of the large percentage of taxes which are being used to fund an ill-conceived and mismanaged war, but I would happily pay more taxes if it would ensure that every person in America had access to health care, that every child in America had access to a solid, well-funded, free education (including college), that the war would be ended, that more money would be invested in funding alternative energy sources and scientific research, and that failing infrastructure would be improved -- to name just a few.
The problem with arguing that your money should be yours to keep because you've earned it, is that you're ignoring all of the taxpayer-funded factors that contributed to you being able to earn that money. Were you educated in public schools? Do you drive a car that meets safety standards down a paved road equipped with traffic lights? Have you ever taken antibiotics that were tested for safety and approved by a federal agency? Can you call 911 and expect that police, fire, or ambulance will be dispatched to your home or the scene of an accident? Do you have mail delivered to your house and business almost every day of the year, free of charge? Heck, do you eat food or drink clean water?
Without taxes funding all of these aspects so necessary to daily life and to help our society flourish, you might be making more money, but you'd be spending more from your own pocket to make up for the shortfall. It is in the best interest of a society -- it is essential to the growth and prosperity of a society -- to protect public health and safety, to promote law and order, and to educate its citizens. Taxes may fund some things you don't personally approve of, but they fund many more things that we, as a society, require for our continued improvement.
What about Biden's patriotism angle? I guess that depends on your definition of patriotism. Personally, my patriotic relationship to my country resembles my relationship to my children. I love them, I am grateful for the things (both tangible and intangible) that they give me, I am proud of their accomplishments, I am occasionally disappointed in their bad behavior, but ultimately I want to see them succeed, and I will, to the best of my ability, help them achieve success. Part of that necessarily involves spending money to help support them. It is because I love America that I am happy to pay taxes to support all of the things that make this such a nice place to live.
I mentioned economic class above, and here's where that comes in: so far, all I've heard any politician talking about is the middle class. How do we help the middle class keep their homes, how do we help the middle class send their kids to college, how do we help the middle class afford rising gas prices? It seems like such a long time ago that I was a supporter of John Edwards, but before the primaries he was my top choice, in part because he was willing to talk about poverty, and how to help eliminate it. When he dropped out of the race he was congratulated on making poverty a priority for the Democrats, and Clinton and Obama both promised to keep talking about how to reduce poverty. And now... when is the last time you heard any politician mention poverty? The problem with focusing on housing, or college tuition, or gas prices, is that you're ignoring the people who don't even have homes and cars, and whose children will not be going to college no matter how cheap it is.
I wrote above about all of the societal benefits that are funded by taxes. We pay taxes collectively in order that all citizens might share in what these taxes pay for. That some people have managed to enjoy these benefits while building a great deal of wealth is incredibly fortunate. It doesn't happen that way for most people, and not because of laziness or stupidity, but because there is a lot of arbitrary unfairness built into our economic system. Personally I believe that the work I do raising my children to be educated, responsible citizens is, in the long run, a greater benefit to society as a whole than the work that a professional baseball player does. Yet somehow our free market has decided that a man who gets to play games for a living should be compensated more in one year than I will probably make in my entire life. I'm not asking for pity -- certainly I've made a choice here -- but it's a good example of how skewed our values as a society are. I can obviously see that some jobs require more skill, more training, more education, more time, more physical effort than others, and should be compensated accordingly, but in general the disparity in income between social classes is far larger than is reasonable, and I'm all for Obama's plan to "spread the wealth around" and make things a little more equitable.
McCain has also criticized Obama's proposed tax credits for people who don't pay income tax. Something I never hear mentioned in discussion of these tax credits is that these people who are not paying income tax are not paying because they don't even make enough money to live on, let alone be taxed on. Right now, we are one of those families. We pay no income tax because a graduate student's salary is not enough for a family of four to live on. Without tax refunds and credits, we would be bankrupt by now. Maybe this will sound hard to believe, but I actually look forward to being able to pay taxes, because it will mean 1) that we have enough money to live on with some to spare and 2) that we will be able to repay the government for the benefits they've given us over the last few years.
My family is on the threshold of becoming middle class, and if we ever do get up above Obama's proposed $250,000 cut-off (which was not chosen randomly or arbitrarily, but because the people who earn more than that in a year make up the top 5% in the US), I really will be happy to pay taxes to help the 95% of Americans who are not so fortunate. Especially those closest to the bottom. I don't have any complaints about paying taxes. I might disagree on how those taxes should be spent, but if I have some extra money that could be used to teach a child to read, to clean up environmental waste so that people have clean drinking water, to give someone a new kidney, to rebuild a bridge that collapsed, well, why wouldn't I give that money? Why wouldn't anyone want to contribute to making our neighborhoods and cities and states and our country clean and safe and healthy?
_________________________________________________
** There's a good article in today's New York Times that explains just how hypocritical it is for McCain to accuse Obama of socialism.
15 October 2008
i was a girl scout, but i wasn't prepared for this.
James came home yesterday waving a flier for Cub Scouts sign-ups. I was really hoping to avoid this scenario altogether, but since this is the second flier we've had sent home, in addition to seeing a sign-up booth at his school's open house a few weeks ago, apparently they've been advertising it so much that it's finally wormed its way into my son's consciousness, and he's decided that he wants to be a Cub Scout.
I'm conflicted. Greg and I are not fans of the larger Boy Scout organization because of their discrimination against gay people and atheists, not to mention the gender exclusivity. Yet the idea of James being able to socialize with other boys while participating in the kinds of outdoorsy, crafty, practical activities that we try to promote for our boys anyway is appealing to me. And it's very appealing to him.
I just spent some time with the Google trying to find alternatives to Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts that are open to anyone, regardless of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or whatever else, and such groups do exist (the Spiral Scouts and Campfire USA are two that looked good to me) but unfortunately there don't seem to be any chapters in our area.
So what to do? I guess I've already decided that despite its good qualities, Boy Scouting just doesn't measure up to all of my values. I just wish there were something to offer James in its place. I shouldn't worry, though; Greg was never a Boy Scout and he's the best outdoorsman I know. And he's already well on his way to teaching the boys how to enjoy and appreciate nature and the earth. So James may be disappointed by our refusal of Cub Scouting, but he won't be deprived. And, I suppose, with the additional things he'll learn from us about inclusion and acceptance, he'll be even better off.
10 July 2008
i knew i would jinx it somehow
We've started potty training Evan, and I've been holding off on writing about it here, because I knew that as soon as I proclaimed to the Internet that Evan was really doing well at potty training, he would stop doing well, because that's the way things go in my life.
It turns out I was wrong. He hit a speed bump in the potty training today, after all I did was think about writing about it. I don't know what I did in my last life to end up with such ridiculously bad luck in this one, but if we're at the point where my thoughts are jinxing things, I'm in trouble.
Anyway, he had been doing well. Really, really well. Greg and I had a big argument a week or two ago in which I firmly insisted that Evan was not ready for potty training, and then about five minutes after yelling at Greg and bursting into tears I realized that it was really me who was not ready. So I decided to suck it up and move forward with the potty training. It couldn't possibly increase the amount of bodily fluids in my life, and might actually reduce them a little bit, so what did I have to lose?
And he was good at it! And so very different from James. James didn't care what it felt like, what it smelled like, he was not going to interrupt his precious playtime to pee on the potty. Thankfully, with James, poo was a different story -- I'm pretty sure he never had a poopy accident after we started potty training. After the last three years, I shouldn't have been surprised that Evan would be the exact opposite.
He's good with the peeing. We let him run naked a lot, now that it's so hot, and he has no hesitations about running upstairs to pee in the potty. A few days ago we even attempted an outing in underpants -- I didn't even bring any diapers with us -- and we returned home from the library clean and dry. We've had a couple of minor accidents, but mostly he's been willing and even enthusiastic about peeing in the potty.
But. There is a but. We are having poo issues. One issue, really, and that is issue is this: my kid would rather poo in his pants -- underwear or diaper, doesn't matter -- than go on the potty. Today he was playing naked and started asking for a diaper. We both knew why. So I had him sit on the potty, and he peed, and then said he was done.
"Don't you need to poop?" I asked.
"No."
"Don't you want to try?"
More emphatically: "No."
"Please, can you try? Just try for a minute?"
"I don't want toooooo!"
"What's the matter? Why don't you want to try?"
"I don't want you to see it."
"Do you want me to leave? So you can do it by yourself?"
"Yes."
I start to walk out of the bathroom and notice I have an extra shadow. Before I can stop him he streaks into my bedroom and hops up on my bed.
"No! Don't poop on my bed!"
"Mom, I think I'm ready for a nap."
The little sneak. Since he naps in my bed, I don't let him nap diaperless.
I tried to push it a little longer. I said it wasn't time for a nap, so we went and played for a while, me hoping the whole time that he would give in and use the potty, and Evan determinedly holding it in.
Eventually it was nap time, and I diapered him and we snuggled together and he quickly fell asleep. And an hour and a half later from downstairs I heard little footsteps running out of my bedroom, and heard a door slam. Oh, but it's not what you think; he was not going to use the potty. My little sneak likes to fill his diaper in the privacy of his bedroom, which is exactly what he did.
So I brought him downstairs and changed him and tried to stay positive! And encouraging! And enthusiastic! About how next time he can use the potty! Then, as I do after most diaper changes, I asked him to throw the diaper away. All of a sudden we had a tantrum on our hands.
As an aside, Evan appears to have been taking tantrum lessons from a 12-year-old girl lately. More than once, after putting him in time out, we have heard him sob melodramatically, "No one wants me around!" and today's time out had him wailing about how he never gets to go anywhere. "Why exactly do you think you're in time out?" I asked him. He knew, but I guess he likes to throw dramatic non-sequiturs into his tantrums these days.
Anyway, back to the problem at hand, this poop thing. Anyone with some potty experience have any advice about this? He's so stubborn, I don't want to push it and make a huge issue out of it, but I would just like him to, you know, go in the potty. I'm ready to be done with the diapers already, and he's not helping! What's worse is that he has pooped in the potty, several times. He just seemed to suddenly develop this aversion and I don't have any ideas on what to do. Suggestions?
10 June 2008
a tiny misunderstanding
James came to the back door to complain about Evan splashing mud on him. I looked at James, already spattered with plenty of mud.
I said: "Ask him to stop, but if he does get more mud on you, it doesn't really matter, because you're already muddy."
James heard: "It doesn't matter how muddy you get! In fact, why don't you go ahead and cover yourself in mud, because I don't think you're muddy enough already. You can never be too muddy! ... And don't forget about your brother; make sure you coat him in mud too!"Evan Batman was very sad about having to come inside and get into the bathtub:
By the way, I know he doesn't look terribly muddy in that photo, but bear in mind that most of the mud on his body had by that time dried to a much lighter color.
James had literally painted his legs with mud. This photo was taken after he'd already started washing off:
The bathtub was filled with muddy water:
I was too busy at the time to think about taking a similar photo of the laundry sink while I was rinsing out the boys' clothes. Let's not even talk about James' sandals, which were about five pounds heavier with all the caked-on mud.
You know, after six and a half years of mess, dirt, sand, mud, muck, and bodily fluids, you start to think you've seen it all, that they've exhausted their capacity to disgust you, but kids always find a way to surprise you.
19 May 2008
and on and on and on and on
I've been in kind of a funk lately, so I probably won't be posting much this week.
I'm in a rut right now where I'm looking to the future and seeing nothing but miles of monotony. Mostly I'm fine with the way my life is, but the past few days, the past week or so, it's feeling incredibly useless and depressing. My life is a broken record.
I cook and cook and cook, which takes as much mental energy as physical, what with planning menus and making things nutritious and even just trying to have each element of a meal on the table at once, and then we eat all of the food and my hard work has disappeared and I have to do it all over again.
I wash our dishes and wash our clothes over and over, every day, and yet we're always dirtying more dishes, dirtying more clothes, and I have to wash and wash again and again.
I pick up puzzles and blocks and Legos and trains and videos and yo-yos and board games, but the boys always need something to play with, so as soon as one thing is put away, something else comes out and I'm always picking up, putting away, picking up, putting away.
Let's not even get into other people's bodily fluids, because those never stop coming, either, and those things fall squarely into a mama's job description.
It is work that I do, this domestic stuff, this mothering stuff. Yet it's a curious kind of work, in which all of my efforts are continuously negated by other people, and there is never anything to show for all this work that I do. Everyone has housework, everyone has responsibilities, of course, but to take your own burden and multiply it by four (and with children, it often feels like even more than that), it just gets tiring.
No matter what else I do with my time -- taking the kids to the park, going to the grocery store, reading a book, going camping, sewing, playing board games -- those things are just tiny breaks in the never-ending monotony of domestic responsibility, and I am tired. I never envisioned that this was what my life would be. Most of the time it's okay. But once in a while it just makes me very, very sad that this is all there is right now.
21 February 2008
*cough cough*
Wouldn't it figure that it's on James' week off from school that I get sick? James is spending his winter break watching a lot of movies and playing a lot of video games, and I'm spending it mostly on the couch, napping, drinking tea or water at all times, coughing, and trying not to let the drugs wear off.
Also, I can barely speak. Fun times!
01 February 2008
odds and ends
I have not been on the ball lately for getting interesting photos. Or, really, any photos. Sorry -- someday you'll see my kiddos' beautiful faces again. Just not today.
We've had some weird weather this week. Windstorm on Wednesday, and freezing rain today, during which we had to drive -- or should I say crawl, through slush and heavy traffic -- to the other side of the city to the insurance company-approved auto shop, to have our bumper checked out, only to find out that the cost to repair the bumper is greater than the value of our car. I guess 14 years really lowers the resale value of a vehicle, despite having awesome mileage and being in otherwise fine condition. So this place will not fix our bumper, but instead the insurance company is cutting us a check. So... I guess that works out for us? I'm so over this car business by now; I don't really care.
We've had intermittent power outages over the last 15 hours. No idea why. All I really have to say about that is 1) I'm so grateful we didn't lose power before the season premiere of Lost was finished, and 2) I'm also grateful that our Nintendo DS has an alarm function. Not that the kids ever let us sleep too late, but it's always good to be certain.
So now it's February, and tomorrow that famous little groundhog in Pennsylvania will tell us what to expect from the rest of winter. I'm hoping he tells us that at least once before spring, we will have enough snow to go sledding. Other than that, I'm pretty well over winter too.
Happy weekend, everyone.
15 January 2008
i can't write a post today
We were beginning to think that Evan was starting to outgrow the terrible twos. The tantrums were becoming fewer, or at least they were getting easier to handle. He was learning to share, and play nicely with his brother. He was growing up a little, in subtle ways. Or so we thought.
It turns out that the terrible twos are like a resilient virus or bacteria. We thought we were eradicating the problem, but instead, it simply mutated into another form, and we now have to deal with it all over again. The tantrums are disappearing, yes, but in their place are the stubborn, obstinant protestations of a toddler who wants everything to be his way.
His newest thing is, "I can't." "I can't say please," whenever he is told to ask nicely. "I can't go to bed," whenever we catch him running around upstairs after bedtime. "I can't eat," when faced with food he doesn't like, though sometimes this is said as he eats whatever it is anyway. "I can't talk" is pretty self-explanatory. "I can't wear pants." That's the one I hear the most. And I am channelling Inigo Montoya as I tell him, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
In fact, a perfect example of this phenomenon happened just now, while I was trying to write. Evan threw a video game of James' on the floor. Twenty minutes later, after two time-outs, lots of tears, and plenty of motherly coaxing, Evan blurted out, in a pained voice, "I'm sorry for throwing your video game!" And in a burst of tears, ran to me, crying, "I can't say it anymore! I can't say it!"
So you see, I can't write a post today -- I have too much to do with managing a stubborn toddler; I'm afraid it will be utterly impossible.
13 December 2007
'tis the season: rampant consumerism
Okay, this is not strictly a holiday post per se, but I figured that Christmas is the perfect time to write a bit about consumer culture and marketing. Everyone, at this time of year, feels the pressure to buy. If you're a parent, you're feeling it even more, because in addition to the ordinary media pressure to spend a lot of money on your family and friends, you have small children begging you for every cool new thing they lay eyes on, because they know that presents are coming. Lots of parents can shift the responsibility to Santa, but since we don't do Santa, we're stuck looking like Scrooges when we don't come through with the cool gifts. And this is the first year where either of our children has really cared about particular presents. I guess I should be glad they waited this long.
Yesterday I read this piece by Barbara Ehrenreich in The Nation about the ubiquity of the Disney princesses. The popularity of Disney princesses for little girls is the flip side of Star Wars and superheroes for little boys, with a slight difference -- little boys' loyalties and affections are divided between Star Wars and Transformers and Superman and Spiderman, while for little girls, the Disney princesses are it. There aren't any competitors in the same league, at least not for a particular age group. Ehrenreich covers the problems inherent with having princesses as role models, but she doesn't get into why they are so popular, so desired by little girls everywhere. I can answer that, at least in part.
This topic is really interesting to me, especially in light of the book I'm currently reading, Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds, by Susan Gregory Thomas. Thomas writes about how consumer culture has evolved over the last few decades, and the ways in which toy companies market to children and prey on the fears and insecurities of parents in order to generate huge profits. It's been a really interesting read so far, in many ways. Where do the Disney princesses come into this? Thomas devotes a whole chapter to the Disney princess phenomenon and its financial success. It's a perfect example of a product being relentlessly marketed to young children (you can find Disney princesses on merchandise ranging from toothbrushes to bedroom decor to clothing to board games). It also falls into the category of appealing to parental nostalgia. Have you noticed the comeback of '80s characters like the Care Bears, Transformers, Strawberry Shortcake? It's not a coincidence that the children who grew up on these toys are now beginning to have kids of their own.
Thomas cites studies that show that the only measurable thing toddlers and babies learn from watching TV is character recognition. So it's not that little girls inherently want to be beautiful princesses, it's that from the time they are very small, they are saturated in a consumer culture where corporations deliberately target children as consumers. Children begin to form an emotional attachment, through repeated exposure, to a character. Children are incredibly succeptible to marketing, because until the age of 7 or 8, they are unable to understand the idea of persuasion, and at younger ages, can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. They love Cinderella because they've watched her videos and they have her nightgowns and sleeping bags -- they think of her as a friend because of her presence in their lives -- and so naturally they will want the Cinderella tent and the Cinderella DVD player.
This is true not just of Disney princesses, of course, but all kinds of characters. For my own boys it's Pokemon and Star Wars. Star Wars Monopoly is superior to regular Monopoly because it has Star Wars characters and pictures. I have noticed that my kids are affected not only by media directed at them, but even by media that's not aimed at children. Greg and I were recently having a conversation about diamonds (and nothing positive, because I am not a fan of diamonds) and James, just overhearing the key word, pipes up, "Diamonds? Go to Zales. They're the diamond store," in his most helpful tone. (Also, as a side note: James heard me telling Greg a statistic from the book -- that over a quarter of kids under two have a television in their bedrooms, which I think is appalling -- and said incredulously, "A TV in their BEDROOM? Can I have one??")
I'm pretty anti-consumerism in general, but reading this book makes me want to sell my television and never set foot in a mall again. But it is really helpful to be reading it right now, at this time of year, because I'm able to realize that the overwhelming urge for holiday consumerism I'm feeling, and the ridiculous gift lists my son is composing, are products of the capitalist marketing machine. We are feeling this way because there are people out there whose job it is to make us feel this way, and they are good at what they do. They are getting rich because they are skilled at manipulating consumers. It's casting a new light on the Christmas season for me. I'm not even finished with the book but I'd recommend it to anyone, especially parents.
14 November 2007
advice requested
Evan has been slowly but surely moving out of the terrible twos (knock on wood). His temper tantrums are a lot more manageable these days, and he is learning important skills like sharing and apologizing. He plays nicely with James most of the time, he uses silverware some of the time, and only occasionally spits food out at the dinner table. He has improved in so many ways over the last several months that it's hard to understate the achievement. He is a lot more Dr. Jekyll these days and much less Mr. Hyde.
But if I've learned anything during my almost-six years of parenting, it's that as soon as you solve one issue, another crops up. Now my little blonde bundle of joy, when frustrated or upset, instead of throwing things or biting or screaming, lets loose with "stupid" or "poopy". Everything lately is stupid this or poopy that, or stupid and poopy. Heck, he doesn't even have to be upset. "Poopy" is probably his favorite word at the moment; I often hear him substituting "poopy" for other words in songs. Almost every day, instead of the familiar Pokemon theme song lyrics ("It's a whole new world we live in"), I hear, "It's a whole new poop, it's a whole new poop!" sung gleefully throughout the house. This morning I was trying to sing the alphabet with him, and Evan's version is now "A B C D E F POOP! H I J K L M N O POOP!" Etcetera.
Needless to say, these are not things he's heard from Greg or me, and I've never heard James do this, so it doesn't come from him. I suspect "stupid" comes from Pokemon or maybe other older shows he sees while James is watching something. Poopy, I have no idea where that came from. I inwardly think it's kind of hilarious and very clever of him to be substituting song lyrics, but it's also annoying, after the thousandth time.
So, my question is, what do we do? James has been instructed to ignore Evan when he talks this way, and usually succeeds. We give him time-outs for calling people stupid or poopy, though that hardly seems to dissuade him. We don't make a big deal out of it, we don't laugh at it, but we don't really know how to stop it. And it needs to stop. It was funny at first, but this little game is now a couple of weeks running, and I'm getting so tired of stupid and poopy. SO TIRED.
Any ideas?
31 August 2007
maybe not too soon after all
There are days like yesterday, when I lament the passage of time and mourn the fact that my baby boy is heading off to kindergarten, and then there are days like today, when I try to give my children a bath and am bombarded with screaming: one shouting in his angry voice that he does not want toys in the bathtub, along with throwing said toys and hitting me because evidently the shouting is not enough to make me understand his fury at the idea that I would try to give him something to play with, while at the same time the other is howling in exaggerated pain from the merest drops of water coming in contact with the places on his elbow and knee where he fell and scraped himself yesterday.
Today is the sort of day where I find myself wishing that life had a remote control, because this morning I would have fast-forwarded to the year 2023 in the hopes that maybe by then my children would have learned to chill out once in a while. Or even if they hadn't figured it out by then, they'd both be out of the house and screaming and whining at their friends or employers or strangers on the street, just so long as it wasn't me anymore.
19 June 2007
the moving situation
Notes from Melissa and Samay about my last post made me realize that I never actually explained our moving situation on the blog (or to my friends, for that matter. Sorry!). So here it is:
Greg is finishing the sixth year of his PhD work. We have lived in student housing for those six years. There is a six year time limit for student housing. Greg expects that he has another six months or so until he completes his PhD. We applied for an extension to remain in student housing for those six months. We were denied because they don't really care about our inconveniences, not when there's a waiting list a mile long for student housing. Therefore we have to look for a new apartment for our last six months here.
Then, Greg will be a doctor (not in the medical sense, of course, but I fully intend to refer to him as such) and he will score a sweet job in some idyllic place and we will move far away and live happily ever after. That's the plan, anyway.
So yeah, it sucks, getting kicked out of our wonderful apartment that we've loved pretty much without reservation for six years. To move into somewhere else where it won't even make sense to unpack everything because soon enough we'll be out again. And have I mentioned how ridiculously difficult it is to find a six-month lease? We have found ONE place that will give us a six-month lease, for $100 more per month. Sweeeet. Greg thinks subletting is a good idea; I'm skeptical.
Nevertheless, we will figure this out, because we have two months and one week until we have to be out of here. I'm just hoping we figure this out sooner rather than later.
18 June 2007
in which i use Too Many Capital Letters
So have I mentioned how much I hate apartment hunting? Because I do. I really, really hate it. I don't think I can possibly stress enough how tired I am of this. Would you like to hear all about it? I thought you might.
You may have noticed my lack of blogging lately. I'm spending a lot of time on Craigslist these days, and on pretty much any other local rental website I can find. I also scour the rental ads in the papers, and pick up the free real estate booklets from teh grocery store. I am getting to be a pro at scanning the ads; however, there's not much out there that meets our criteria. Here are our criteria:
- 2-3 bedrooms
- storage space
- within our budget (i.e., pretty frickin' cheap)
- in a semi-decent neighborhood
- near a semi-decent school
- willing to give a short-term lease
Does that sound impossible to you? It didn't sound impossible to me when we started looking, but apparently I'm pretty naive. The one thing we really can't compromise at all is the price we can afford to pay, so we're being forced to revise all of the rest of our standards. Like, it goes without saying that we won't be living in the Beautiful Amazing Pricey Suburb, which means that James will not be going to kindergarten in one of the best school districts in the country, but instead will be going to whichever underfunded city school still has room. We won't even be living in one of the Cool Urban-by-Choice Artsy Neighborhoods. No, we'll probably end up in the Pretty Decent Neighborhood, But Don't Go Too Far North (Or East, Or West) Or It Gets Sketchy Neighborhood.
I'm pretty sure that last sentence didn't make sense, but I think you get my drift. We will be settling.
We've looked at a few places so far, and they have universally been either Too Expensive, or Too Small. Sometimes both. Correction: there was one place that's neither Too Expensive nor Too Small, but Very Far Away, which kind of equates to Too Expensive in time and transportation costs. Given all of that, we will probably end up with Too Small. That should be fun. You know, with the two growing, energetic, rambunctious boys and all.
I just keep telling myself that this will only be for six months. No matter where we end up living, no matter which school James ends up in, no matter whether I have to drive Greg to school every day, no matter what kind of freaky neighbors we end up with, no matter how small the apartment, it's only for six months. Six months. We can live with anything for just six months, right?
And then we start the apartment hunting all over again.
28 March 2007
what does it take to get fired from this job?
The events of this morning have made it clear to me that, if this were a paying job, I'd have either quit or been fired by now, because I am really not that good at this stay-at-home parenting thing.
This morning, I'm babysitting for a friend's son while James is at school. Currently my baby is on the floor screaming for orange juice, because he's not interested in the water I'm offering him. The only reason that the boy I'm sitting for is no longer crying is because I turned on the TV to shut the kids up. I make children cry! I make children cry because I will not give them orange juice when they turn up their noses at the drink I've already gotten them, and because I will not return them to their mothers an hour before the scheduled time. I have never heard so much crying! The kid I'm sitting for has a pair of lungs to rival Evan's, and that's saying something.
Who let me be a stay-at-home parent, anyway? I'm not qualified. My house is constantly a mess; my five-year-old is still not registered for kindergarten (I got the paperwork in December); I cannot for the life of me convince my toddler to eat a single vegetable, even those he once loved; I bribe children with video games and television; and now, this morning, I had two children, one of whom is not even mine, screaming at me for different reasons, while the other mothers on the playground looked on with pitying smiles.
It has been a rough morning.
27 March 2007
randomness
I think I forgot to mention that I survived as a single parent last week while Greg was out of town. I mean, obviously I survived. But it actually went a lot more smoothly than it ever has before. I can't decide if it's because my kids are getting better, or I'm getting better. Probably a little bit of both. I think some of the credit should also be given to the video games I rented just for the occasion. I don't like my kids to play a lot of video or computer games -- I think I'm more permissive about it than other parents we know, but less permissive than Greg -- but sometimes, when you know you have four full days ahead of you of full-time, solo parenting, letting your Star Wars-obsessed kids geek out to a Star Wars Legos video game (which is the second-cutest video game ever made, right behind Viva Pinatas) seems like a necessary thing to do. Besides, the games are going back to the store this afternoon, so I can return to my stinginess about child gaming and not feel so guilty.
In other news, yesterday the friendly UPS man delivered the bridesmaid's dress I'll be wearing in my sister's wedding in May. I was excited to get the package, but then dismayed and disappointed to take it out of the box and try it on, because it's at least two sizes too big. I wasn't expecting it to be perfect, because we ordered the dresses online without being fitted for them, and I am relieved that it doesn't make me look fat, as I had feared it would, but according to the sizing of this dress, someone with my waist size (which nearly fits) should have breasts each the size of her own head (and to say that I don't is probably the biggest understatement I've ever written). Ah, but now I have alterations to look forward to. Although, maybe I should just forget about continuing to lose my baby weight (I know he's almost two. I'm lazy!) and just try to grow into this monstrosity of a dress! Or... not. Not really.
My boys were excited about the dress delivery as well, not because they care about bridesmaid's dresses, but because it came in a box! Can you believe it?!?! A BOX! A box that's big enough for only one of them to sit in at a time and thus has provoked several screaming matches about whose turn it is! To sit! In the BOX! Oh, sorry, did I say box? I meant spaceship.
Okay, I didn't really have much to say today, but I thought that I've been neglecting the blog enough lately, so a short and mostly pointless update will have to do.
