Blue Moon Mama

Peace

2011-05-09T11:08:00.003-04:00

I have a dark shirt with a large white peace sign on it. The peace sign is made up of a collection of words. When I pulled the pipsqueak out of the tub over the weekend and was drying him off, he said is a puzzled voice, "Mama, is that a face on your shirt?"

"No," I told him. "It has a circle, but then it has three lines. See? It's called a peace sign."

"Oh. Peace. You mean like the toilet?"

"Um....the toilet? I don't know what you mean."

"You know...'leave me in peace!'"

When it dawned on me what he meant, I could not stop laughing. If he didn't spend so much time banging on the bathroom door when someone else was in there, he wouldn't know that phrase so well! I'm thinking I might just put a peace sign poster on the bathroom door as shorthand now, as my brother suggested when I told him this story.

As for me, how will I ever NOT think of a toilet when I see a peace sign??

The squeaker only has 5 weeks of school left, and I actually think he's going to make it. Watch out next year, second-grade teachers!! We attended the May Day fair for his school this weekend. It was quite small, but the boys had a reasonably good time. It is odd to see how my kid is an integral part of a community that I have very little to do with.

Also, the pipsqueak starts swim lessons this week, which his brother has been doing for several years now. I am really looking forward to it, both because I want the pipsqueak to enjoy it and because it will be a lovely kid-free half-hour every single week!!

Poems and Aminals

2011-04-14T07:09:00.003-04:00

The squeaker was excited to tell me a few weeks ago that his first-grade class is studying poetry. We don't have a lot of poetry for kids on our bookshelves, but we do have some -- a collection of poems about beasties by Roald Dahl, a few books of poems about fantastical creatures, some Shel Silverstein. The squeaker does like poetry quite a bit, which doesn't surprise me because he really pays attention to language.

Anyway, among our books of poetry is an anthology for kids that my mom picked up at the Good Will. It has a section of poems about myths and legends, and one of the squeaker's favorites is a poem called Where Goblins Dwell. Two weeks ago, the squeaker asked if he could take the book to school to show his teacher and classmates. He finally brought it back home again on Monday and I asked if his teacher had liked it. He said yes, but, as is so often the case with school, he said little else. For a kid who likes to talk, he sure is tight-lipped about what goes on at school.

But last night as he was getting ready for bed, he spied the book in the piles of books I needed to put away, and he said he loved the goblin poem. He told me that he had read it to his class. "I sat up front in the teacher's chair," he said. "And I read the poem to everyone. I needed help with a few words, though." I opened the book to the goblin poem and took a look. It included words like "cavort," "poltergeist," and "phantom," so I was not surprised he needed some help. But it amused me to no end to think of his sitting in front of his classmates, reading this strange little poem from an anthology of poetry. It is just so much like him to want to share, of all the things in the world, a poem about goblins.

To my surprise, after I put the book on the shelf and started getting the pipsqueak into his pajamas, the squeaker began reciting the poem from memory. He did not recite the entire poem, and I am sure he does not have the whole thing memorized. But he recited a good bit of it. The thing is, I have probably read it to him maybe twice. The squeaker's grandma has probably also read it to him only a few times. And of course, the squeaker had read it to his class. For whatever reason, language just sticks in his mind. I was amazed that he knew so much of the poem. When I told him so, he shrugged and said simply, "It's one of my special powers, mama!"

I laughed, but when I thought about it, it occurred to me that his knack for language really IS one of his special powers. He is such a quirky little boy!

Little brother seems to be just as quirky. When we got Chinese carry-out last week, the boys' papa ordered peking duck. He asked the boys if they wanted some duck, and the pipsqueak was quite horrified. "But papa," he said, "Ducks are so cute! We should not eat them!" Then he paused for a moment; a look of alarm suddenly crossed his face. "And they have fur!" he cried. "If that is a duck, where is the fur? How can we eat them if they have fur?"

"Well, they don't have fur, right?" I said. "They have feathers. And chickens have feathers, too, and you eat them all the time without seeing any feathers."

The pipsqueak looked skeptical, but he did agree. He always asks so many questions about our food: Where does milk come from? Are we eating dead animals? Did an animal have to die for us to have its milk? Do we eat baby animals? Why do we eat cute animals?

I'd bet that the pipsqueak is on track for a definite flirtation with and maybe a serious commitment to vegetarianism, except that he likes food so very much. Of course, the foods he likes best are grapes, butter, bread, butter, chocolate, butter, cookies, spagehetti, and his very favorite, butter. I'm not sure he really would miss steak and chicken (though he does like chick-fil-a an awful lot). Still, I suspect he could continue his love affair with food while skipping all foods that started out as a cute "aminal," especially if everything he eats is buttered.

Ears and Pets

2011-04-04T07:08:00.004-04:00

It is still not warm. Today is actually supposed to reach 70+ degrees, but the day is an anomaly, and the cooler weather returns tomorrow. I know that you can't expect consistent warm weather in spring, but I feel like previous years have given us a few days here and there of consecutive warmish weather. This year just feels so endlessly cold.

The squeaker has a terrible cough, but worse than that, his illness seems to have left his ears filled with fluid and he cannot hear much at all. If we talk at the dinner table in normal conversational voices, he cannot hear any of the conversation. When we address him, he can be looking straight at us and know we are talking but still be unable to make sense of what we are saying. He had this same problem two years ago, also in April, so it seems that it might just be a rough time of year for him. His ears are tiny and the typical illnesses of late winter and spring just overwhelm his small ear canals.

It's very frustrating for all of us, and I worry about him going to school. His teacher knows that he cannot hear well, and we let the administration know, but he will inevitably come into contact with people who don't know, from bus drivers to cafeteria aides. I don't want him to get in trouble for not listening, and I also hate to see him so disengaged. Since he cannot hear, he is completely in his own little world. It's disappointing, too, to know that he'll fall behind in math again, just when he was feeling more confident. They've been doing some simple geometry and fractions, and he's found that he's quite good at that kind of math. My dad says that kind of thinking is entirely different from the kind of thinking that underpins arithmetic and algebra, which makes sense to me. Anyway, in the last day or so his hearing has been so compromised that we are wondering if he should see a doctor. We are not sure what the point of that would be since we are very reluctant to do tubes and since there is substantial research showing that summertime consistently relieves fluid in the ears in the vast majority of cases. I don't know what the doctor could really do to help at this point; there are no drugs or other treatments for fluid in the ears.

The pipsqueak also has a cough, but he is not as sick as the squeaker was. Mostly, he's been his usual happy little self. Or maybe I should say intense little self -- when he is happy, he is very happy, but when he is mad or sad or whatever, his entire self embodies that particular emotion. Recently, he's been heavily lobbying us for a dog. He has explained that they are very cute and that he would be able to pet it. He had this conversation with his uncle while he was playing with his Star Wars AT-AT, and his uncle pointed out that he hardly needed a dog since he has an AT-AT. This frustrated the pipsqueak and he picked up the AT-AT to explain that it wasn't like a dog because it had FOUR FEET. Maybe we need to work on counting, or dog identification. He did also explain that AT-ATs are METAL. I do feel very sad that there is no way for the boys to have a pet. The goats were a failed effort to resolve that problem, and since then, we've been offered many suggestions. But there really is nothing quite like a dog for companionship. Rabbits, gerbils, fish, snakes, lizards, ferrets...nothing really can substitute for a dog that can tag along with you, snuggle with you, and play with you. It is too bad that there is no way to make it happen. The squeaker's allergies are just too severe, and his dad would suffer, too.

That is all for today.

Marathoning

2011-03-24T07:33:00.005-04:00

The squeaker has been home from school all week. Over the weekend, he came down with a cold, and then he had symptoms of pink eye. His dad just got over the dreaded viral version of pink eye that lasts two to three weeks, so we (well, I) was sure the squeaker had it too. But his dad took him to see a doctor, and it turns out that he has the bacterial kind. His eyes are red and swollen and he has a wicked cough.

But he does like being home from school. I asked him last night if he missed school, and he replied in a very off-hand way, "Mama, I really don't think about school much at all." Later in the evening, though, he did muse about whether his teacher missed him. I stopped by his school yesterday to pick up his school work. The cool thing about the squeaker's very unusual name is that he's a bit like Madonna or Bono -- he needs only one name. That's especially good since our last names are different. It always amuses me that he is very well known at school.

Also amusing was his enthusiasm about doing the math classwork I brought home. He was so eager to work on it that he hurried through his dinner. No longer are the kids doing arithmetic, which he still absolutely hates. Now they are working with shapes -- finding lines of symmetry and working with fractional parts. He really loves this kind of math, though I am worried that it's going to become too abstract for him if they focus on more complicated fractions (last night's work was just 1/2 of the shapes). Still, it's nice to see him get excited about something math-related.

The pipsqueak missed storytime at the library yesterday because of the squeaker's illness. As of last night, the pipsqueak was still healthy, but the squeaker does cough all over the place (he seems unable to cover his mouth no matter how many times we say it) and I did hear the pipsqueak coughing this morning, so he might have the illness now too.

The pipsqueak has been very insistent about doing everything himself lately. He likes, for instance, to rinse his own hair in the tub. It's funny to me that he has no interest in choosing his clothes or in dressing or undressing himself (though he will inevitably strip off shoes and socks -- and sometimes more -- when he is playing outside).

Working full time is definitely proving to be a challenge for me. I've been doing it for about 8 months now, and my position is still half contractual. I had really hoped it would be full-time permanent by now. There are some advantages to the split position -- I have to do a lot less travel than my colleagues, and my writing workload is much, much lighter. But there are also disadvantages -- they get telework days and can work at home before and after a docket. I am not yet permitted to telework or work at home. And I only earn leave at half the rate of a full-time permanent person, and I lose pay on holidays. Still, I am very happy with the work I do on a daily basis. I feel very lucky to have a job that I think is important and good, and I am glad that I mostly feel competent at what I do (though some days are better than others).

Sometimes I'm still seized by this awful feeling that I've done the calculation all wrong, and that maybe we should sell the house and downsize, and try to shift our lives away from material pleasures, which would allow me to work half-time again. I worry that the boys have learned to focus too much on things, and that our busy work lives only fuel that kind of thinking. But my mom always reminds me -- though she doesn't put it quite this way -- that my boys are not my personal project or an extension of myself. They are their own people, and they don't need me hovering next to them all the time, constantly directing their thoughts, values, and actions. Room to grow is as important as the sense of love and safety that I give them. So while in an ideal world things might have worked out a little differently (I would have liked to work part-time until the pipsqueak started all-day kindergarten), what we've got is hardly a disaster.

I think the biggest thing I miss about working part-time is that now I feel that I am constantly running just to keep up with everything. My brain is full of lists of things I mst remember to fill out and send in, to pay by X date, to pack in someone's lunchbox or backpack, to draft and issue by X date, and so on. It sounds like a juggling act, but it feels more like a relentless marathon. When I was part-time, I felt so much less pressure to keep it all going. I think as the kids get older, the pressure will lessen. Already, the squeaker helps me keep things straight. If I forget that it's spirit week and he is supposed to wear his pajamas to school, he probably remembers. He's gotten more independent about doing his homework. And we never have to change diapers, nurse, or remember baby food anymore. In the last few weeks, even naptime has begun to fade away. A luxury while I was a part-time worker, naptime is just a complication for short weekends when we have lots to do, so I am happy to see it go.

Elphenant

2011-03-08T07:21:00.003-05:00

The pipsqueak sleeps with two stuffed animals. One is a stuffed dog made in Germany given to the squeaker by one of my husband's childhood friends when the squeaker was born. The squeaker liked the dog, but he never adopted him as his special favorite. The pipsqueak, however, adores Dog. He carries Dog around, is concerned about whether Dog wants to be dressed in his little overalls or would prefer to be naked at that moment, and must have Dog when it is time to sleep.

The other is Elphenant (I'll be sad when the pipsqueak learns how to say "elephant.")

This morning, in the pre-dawn darkness, the pipsqueak whispered to me, "Do you know why Elphenant is green and doesn't have tusks?"

Mostly illogical thoughts that went through my head: Because he's some indistinguishable animal, probably a mouse or a bear, not an elephant, but we don't want to tell you that. Because he was a random prize from a game your grandfather played at Dutch Wonderland when we all went two summers ago. Because he is a cheaply made carnival toy who has already required multiple sewing repairs.

"No, why?"

"Because he's just a baby elphenant!"

Thinking

2011-03-07T12:55:00.006-05:00

The pipsqueak has decided that cows are too cute to eat. I think he doesn't realize that he continues to eat them whenever he has some steak. When I asked him which animals would NOT be too cute to eat, he thought for a bit and then suggested sharks. He thinks he has logic on his side. He told me yesterday that we don't eat cows, and I replied that indeed we did, though he didn't have to if he didn't want to. He insisted that we don't eat them, explaining that if we did, we wouldn't have any milk, and we DO have milk -- ergo, we must not be eating cows. I told him that we eat SOME cows and use other cows for milk. He said no, we don't. So to make it clearer, I told him that we could, for example, keep girl cows for milk and eat boy cows. (Yes, I know "boy cows" is an oxymoron, but I was trying to keep it simple!) He said, "No, we couldn't do that." "Why not?" "Because the mama cows wouldn't let us eat the boy cows. The mamas would protect the boy cows." I felt like he had outwitted me. He is extremely logical for a 3-year old, and it really surprises me. The squeaker was not like that. The squeaker is a sponge for information. I can remember that at age 3, he had several different collections of felt animals -- little squares or ovals of felt, with an animal printed in ink on the fabric. He had a rainforest set, an arctic set, and so on. He loved these animals dearly, and he could identify all of them, even though many of the animals were exotic and very unusual. He liked knowing what they all were, and he liked the orderliness of having a category to which each animal belonged. He would carefully set them out on the floor, arranging them on a huge piece of felt that served as the background, and then smoothing them out. The squeaker was also interested in categories in general. Which animals were mammals? Which were from Africa and which were from Australia? Which were herbivores and which were carnivores? He liked all the categorical associations he could make from a single animal. The pipsqueak has no such desire for information. He doesn't really care about knowing stuff, and in fact he knows only a fraction of the animals his brother knew at this age. He couldn't care less about categories. He just doesn't think that way. But he has an uncanny knack for realizing when the logic offered by a grown-up just doesn't quite add up. He pays enormous attention to language; when we listened to Molly Malone in the car yesterday, he wanted to know what mussels are. He's always asking questions about what words or song lyrics mean, and he notices when a story, song, or explanation has some inconsistency in it. The squeaker has always amazed me with his ability to connect disparate ideas and to see the interconnectedness of things. He notices, for example, when characters in different books or movies have similar motivations, or are meant to represent the same metaphorical idea. The pipsqueak doesn't do that at all -- but he may draw different principles out of different experiences, and then ask questions about the lack of consistency. He notices when stories stand for different ideas, or an explanation seems internally inconsistent. It's surprising to me that my boys have such completely different intellectual approaches to the world.

Chinese New Year

2011-02-10T08:29:00.003-05:00

This past weekend, we went to one of our favorite local museums for their Chinese New Year celebration. It was great!!! The kids got excited as soon as the loud, rhythmic music started, and when the two dragons danced into the atrium, I thought the squeaker was going to jump out of his skin with delight. Both boys were mesmerized, as were their same-age cousins. Afterwards, all four patted the dragons, which hung around in the crowd for a bit. The squeaker found a small tuft of yellow dragon hair on the floor, and he tucked it into his pocket like some kind of talisman.

We spent a brief time exploring the Asian art section of the museum afterwards, and naturally there were plenty of dragons for the squeaker there, too. The pipsqueak got excited every time he saw another fancy, centuries-old Asian vase: "Another honey pot!" he'd shout. No idea why he thought they were all honey pots. Too much Winnie-the-Pooh, maybe?? Many were shaped much like the honey pots in the illustrations that accompany Pooh's tales. Anyway, it made me laugh every time.

Yesterday, the squeaker had to complete an art project with 100 items in it, so the night before, we made a 100-eyed monster. I think maybe the final product had more than 100 eyes because the pipsqueak was determined to help with gluing on the eyes, and he didn't always draw from the already-counted pile. But we figured no one at school was going to count the eyes!!

The weather is very cold today, but apparently warmer weather is on the way. I wonder if that might mean the really cold weather is almost behind us. There is still plenty of winter left, but I think this is the time of year when the average temperature finally begins to climb a bit. Plus, I've noticed that it is no longer dark outside when we're eating dinner!!! I am so excited about warm weather. Winter is so long and dull, and my lively boys are definitely going stir crazy.

Lonely Pipsqueak

2011-02-01T08:13:00.003-05:00

The squeaker is often grouchy when he comes home from school. The pipsqueak is usually happily absorbed in a game when big brother comes barging in. Sometimes, the boys settle down and play nicely; the pipsqueak is so glad to see his big brother after a long, lonely day. Other times, the boys try to play together, but they bicker about everything and the game falls apart. Then both boys end up crying and shouting.

But the worst are those days when the squeaker just wants to be left alone. The eager pipsqueak will beg him to play, but the squeaker stalks off saying that he doesn't want to play and to leave him alone. The pipsqueak will follow him tearfully, wringing his little hands and suggesting lots of things they could play. And the squeaker, desperate for a little peace after a long day of school, will push him away and shut the door in his face if he tries to follow. It makes me sad.

Yesterday, the boys were both upstairs, and I could see one of those "worst days" unfolding. The squeaker told the pipsqueak to go away, and the pipsqueak cried and said it was his room too, and I had to lure the pipsqueak downstairs with some chocolate to give the squeaker a little space. But once the pipsqueak had finished his chocolate, he was very sad and begged to go back upstairs. I wouldn't let him; through the baby monitor, I could hear the squeaker jumping about, probably whacking his bed with his sword, and talking loudly to himself about how he needed some time alone.

The pipsqueak could hear him too, of course. So he went over to the desk where I keep the baby monitor speaker, climbed up on the chair, and leaned over to shout directly into the speaker: "Brother, I love you! I love you! I'm downstairs! But I love you!"

As a big sister, I can relate to the squeaker's need for space. But the pipsqueak's lonely cries broke my heart.

Weaned

2011-01-18T07:11:00.003-05:00

Since June 2003, I have been either pregnant or nursing -- or both. But no longer. The pipsqueak has officially been weaned. No more nee nees. For a long time now, nursing has been a very very small part of his life. He very rarely asked to nurse. By the end, nursing was a maybe one-minute routine at bedtime. But it was clear to me that this ritual was such a deeply ingrained habit that he probably wouldn't stop on his own, and because I am done with it, I told him it is time to stop. He was sad and fussed a bit, but really, the reason he likes that time at this point is for the snuggling. So now we snuggle instead, and he seems happy with that. In a few more days, we probably won't even need to have the conversation about nursing. Memory of the habit will have faded away.

I feel a little sad about it because it marks in a very distinct way the end of a chapter of my life -- no more babies. No more nursing and no more diapers. No more crib or high chair. No more stroller. Most of these things have vanished from our lives already, and nursing was one of the holdouts. The pipsqueak is a big kid, even if he tells me every day, "I'm your BABY, mama!" The very last remnant of babyhood is naptime, which I think the pipsqueak will give up in the next few months.

The boys are doing well and are as energetic as ever. Every night, I am asked to tell a bedtime story. It is a challenge to come up with a new story every single night! Two nights ago, my story involved some cotton candy. The pipsqueak wrinkled his nose and said, "Mama, is that the hairy candy?" Right on, pipsqueak.

The squeaker is also doing well. His reading is amazing, but math continues to be a struggle. Numbers are essentially a jumble of lines without meaning to him. OK, maybe that's an overstatement, but math is a huge challenge for him. We keep working on it, but I think it's way more painful for us than it is for him.

Many months ago, at the start of the school year, I struggled to find a way to ease the squeaker's misery about school. He would cry each day, and his grandma hated putting him on the bus while he sobbed. In kindergarten, he called me each day just before he went to school. But I knew that wouldn't work this year, as I am not available every day. So instead, I decided to leave him a little note each day. I ordered some cute dragon stickers, and each day I place one on half an index card, draw a speech bubble, and write a little message. I leave it on the kitchen table for him to find in the morning.

He absolutely loves these cards. He tucks them in his pocket and carries them around all day, and at the end of the day, he places his card in a special box in his room. He now has a huge collection of these cards. Sometimes, he'll forget to put his card in the box, and when he's falling asleep in the dark, he'll suddenly remember and get upset that his dragon must be sad and lonely, abandoned in his pants pocket. He'll get up and search for his dragon card until the dragon is tucked into the box, safe with the others.

So this past Friday, he forget about his card. And I washed his school clothes on Saturday. Late Sunday night, he suddenly remembered and he got out of bed to ask me if I had washed his pants. I said I had, but that I had put his card in his box first. This was a lie, and I felt bad about it, but I also knew he wouldn't go to bed if he was not assured that his dragon was safe. In truth, I didn't know where it was. I figured he must have left it in his coat pocket because I hadn't seen it in the load of clothes (I thought it would remain relatively intact, like a dollar bill does in the wash). The next day, when I pulled the laundry out of the dryer and cleaned the lint screen, I noticed a few small, round hard white balls of paper. I thought that was odd; sometimes tissues go through the wash, but they don't end up like that. Then it dawned on me: it was the dragon card. Ugh.

I unrolled a few of the balls, but all I could see were some gray smudges of ink. A lost cause. Later that afternoon, I was vacuuming the living room when I came upon some similar balls of paper. I remembered that I had brought the basket of laundry upstairs and folded it in the living room, so the balls must have been tangled up in the load of clothes. I picked one up and peeled it open. To my surprise, it was the dragon sticker. It was faded and creased, but surprisingly intact. I showed it to my husband and asked if he thought I should give it to the squeaker. He said no; the squeaker hadn't asked about it since Sunday night, and my husband feared the sight of the bedraggled dragon would upset him.

So I tucked it in my pocket, but I kept thinking about what the squeaker says about his dragons: that a dragon left all alone will be sad and lonely, and how his dragons want to be together in his box. All day long, that dragon practically burned a hole in my pocket. I wanted the squeaker to have his complete set of dragons as badly as he did (now I suppose I know where he gets that obsessive personality trait). So I finally taped it to a new index card and wrote a new message, where the dragon explained he had gone through the wash and said he hoped the squeaker would still love him even though he wasn't shiny and perfect anymore.

After his bath, I told the squeaker that his dragon card had indeed gone through the wash. His little face crumpled and he started to cry. "Wait," I told him. "I rescued it. But it doesn't look quite it did." The squeaker stopped crying and sniffed a bit. "Will you still love him if he doesn't look quite the same?" I asked him. The squeaker nodded, so I handed him the card and read it to him. He smiled and clutched it to his chest.

"Do you still love him?" I asked.

"Yes!" said the squeaker. "And now he's famous. He's the only one who went through the wash." And he tucked the dragon in his box.

Peanut Anxiety

2010-12-29T12:07:00.003-05:00

Since the squeaker was first diagnosed with food allergies at age 2, we have worked hard to minimize the impact of those allergies on his life. First, we disregarded the allergist's admonition that he should not eat wheat, eggs, shellfish, tree nuts, milk, or soy. He eats all of these things, though we do avoid concentrated soy and soy protein (I don't believe soy is all that good for little boys anyway). Second, we are not terribly cautious about contamination issues, because that would involve avoiding huge numbers of foods based on very low risk. So if a food says something like "processed in a facility that also processes products containing peanuts," we don't avoid it. We've explained to him what it might feel like if he accidentally ingested peanuts, and we carry the epipen at all times.

Until recently, the squeaker seemed cool with all this. But for some reason, his anxiety has increased in recent weeks. Just before Christmas, his class had a party where the kids exchanged cards, and some kids included treats with their cards. One girl distributed peanut butter cookies, which really surprised me in this day and age. But we did not make a big deal of it; we just threw them away and assured him that he did the right thing in bringing them home, and that he should not eat anything someone gives him without checking with us. The next day, a boy on his bus gave him two candy canes, and when the squeaker asked if they had peanuts, the boys said one did and he took it back. (Never heard of a candy cane with peanuts, but who knows. Maybe he just had a change of heart.)

The day after that, my husband and I were both home, but the squeaker had a half day of school since the winter break was about to begin. We got a call from the school nurse in the morning; she said that the squeaker was upset because they'd had a snack in class and he feared it had peanuts in it. He apparently had been crying, but when my husband asked to speak with him, he had calmed down enough to talk. He was quite panicky that the muffin he'd had in class had peanuts in it. We suggested a dose of benadryl, mostly to set his own mind at ease, and the nurse agreed that was a good idea. When he got home, we asked him about it, and he said that after he had a bite, his throat felt funny and itchy. The school double-checked with the mom who'd brought the muffins, though, and they had no peanuts.

Yesterday, we had a similar incident. The boys had gotten chocolate penguins when they were out and about with their papa, and when the squeaker ate some, he got upset and said his throat felt funny. He asked in a panic whether he was stumbling around the way he did when he first had peanuts, at age 2. But of course he wasn't, and his anxiety about it baffled me. After some reassurance from us, he settled down and finished the chocolate.

This has never been an issue for him before. Perhaps it has something to do with recent realizations about mortality. The squeaker knows his allergy can be deadly, though we have downplayed that. Or maybe the peanut butter cookies distributed by his classmate really upset him; I don't know that he's ever been given peanuts like that. Maybe it shook his own sense of safety and made all food seem suspect. I don't know, but I hope his anxiety about this is short-lived!!

I am thinking I need to get both boys tested for the allergy anyway. I'd like to know if the squeaker may have outgrown, and I'd like to get some confirmation about whether the pipsqueak has it. While the tests aren't all that reliable, I think the big issue is false positives, not false negatives. Thus, I'd feel very reassured if I got a negative result for either boy. We shall see, I guess.

In other pipsqueak news, the pipsqueak has decided that he will not wear sweaters because....they are hairy. He does not like hair. It is very funny, but it does limit his wardrobe a bit!

Ack! Mortality!

2010-12-20T07:35:00.007-05:00

My boys are having a bit of a mortality crisis.

Earlier this month, my grandmother died. It wasn't exactly unexpected -- she'd been diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cancer a month earlier, and though we were told she might have six months left, we all agreed it was likely to be shorter. We didn't expect her remaining time to be quite so short, but that was not a bad outcome, given the alternative -- a long, slow, painful decline. She was 79 years old.

I heard this author on NPR talking about how losing our own parents is like losing a piece of our own lives, because they knew us back before we have any memories. They cared for us as babies and watched us grow into our adult selves. They know things about us that we do not know. I think losing a grandparents is similar in some ways. We visited with her a week or so before she died, and I was struck by how very old she looked. When I was born, she was about 40. We saw my grandparents often when I was growing up. They joined us in Ocean City, and then, in later years, in Bethany Beach in the summer. When I was very small, I didn't really like my grandmother. Her chin was prickly, and I did not like to be kissed by her. When we walked the few blocks from our beach house to the ocean, I would not walk on the same side of the street with my grandmother. But I remember the blue and white bathing suit she always wore (she must have worn that one or a similar one for years) and I remember that she and my granddad would get up so early and go collect seashells on the beach in the early morning light.

Perhaps my grandmother was overshadowed in some ways by her mother, my great-grandmother, a force to be reckoned with. My great-grandmother was as assertive as my grandmother was meek. The more determined and independent my great-grandmother was, the more resigned and helpless my grandmother seemed to be.

I did eventually become a more loving granddaughter, and I have fond memories of staying at my grandparents' house in western Maryland in the summer. We were only permitted to watch PBS at home, but they let us watch Gilligan's Island and Star Trek. We each got our own box of Trix cereal, labeled with our names. I can remember accompanying my granddad on his errands and loving the friendly, easy way he talked to everyone, from store clerks to friends he met on the street. I shared a bedroom with my sister there, and I can remember just how that room smelled, how the floorboards creaked, how the white curtains at the front windows fluttered in the breeze. I can remember the shiny floor in the back bedroom, where my great-grandmother slept. In the bathroom, my grandmother kept a basket of extra toothbrushes, which we always found peculiar, though we liked picking out a fresh new toothbrush in our favorite color. The layout of the bathroom was small and crowded, and we marveled that there was no shower, only a tub with a spray attachment that was great fun to play with. Even odder to us was the downstairs toilet, which was on a small landing two or three stairs down the basement steps. There was no door to the steps going further down into the basement, so the toilet was only useful if the basement was unoccupied.

Anyway, we liked staying there, and our grandparents were very much part of our lives. Back then, we were the only grandkids (neither of my mom's two sisters had any children until I was in my teens), and my grandparents adored us. In later years, my grandmother became increasingly religious, even investing in the ill-fated Heritage USA, a religious theme park founded by Jim Bakker of the PTL club. My mom didn't say anything when my grandmother gave us a children's Bible or told us Bible stories. But as my grandmother became more evangelical, my mother couldn't really ignore the issue any longer. My mother did not want us visiting Heritage USA, and we saw less of my grandparents in later years. My younger siblings did not stay at their house the way us older kids did. And my five much younger cousins were born beginning in the early late 80s, when my grandparents were nearing 60, and since my cousins lived in western Maryland, close to my grandparents, so the grandparents did not make the trip to Baltimore nearly as often.

Many of these memories came flooding back with my grandmother's death. It is always sad to say goodbye, but we were relieved that she did not suffer long. I took my boys to her funeral and they viewed her body. They had a few questions at the time, but did not say all that much about it. Mostly, the pipsqueak wondered about permanence ("Is Grandma June always going to be dead now?") while the squeaker wondered about logistics ("Will she be buried in that box?" "Did she die with her eyes closed?"). But that was about it.

It seems, however, that they've been thinking about it. Last night, the pipsqueak said to me, "Are you going to be an old lady? Are you going to die?" And I told him, "Yes, someday."

"But who will take care of me?" he asked.

"I hope you'll have your own family then."

"But I'll miss you."

"Yes."

"Will you be in my heart?" (This is what we told him about Grandma June.)

"Yes."

"Will I be able to talk to you there?"

"Um....yes."

"Will you be able to hear me?"

"Um...er....yes, yes, I will." (A rare moment where I decided to sacrifice a little truth for the sake of comfort.)

"Will I die, too?"

"Yes, someday."

"But I don't want to."

"I know. But I hope you'll be very old, and you'll be ready."

"Will Papa die?"

"Yes."

"But what if I go in your room and look in your bed and you and Papa are not there?"

"We won't be old for a long, long time."

"But you'll die someday."

"Yes."

"And I'll be all alone."

"No, you won't be. You might have children and grandchildren, a wife who loves you, and your brother and cousins."

"Will my brother die too?"

"Someday."

"Who will live in our house?"

"You can live in it as long as you want."

"When you die, will you be in a casket?"

"Maybe."

Hs eyes were huge and round. Then he buried his face in the blankets next to me and wouldn't come out.

The squeaker listened to all of this thoughtfully. Then he had his own questions.

"What will happen to my things when I die?"

"You can leave them with your family."

"Can I be buried with them?"

"If you want to."

"I want to be buried with my special box." (Each day, I make a little card with a dragon sticker on it, and a little speech bubble where the dragon says something encouraging. I started doing this when the squeaker cried about school, and now at the end of each day, he places his dragon card in a cigar box that he uses as a treasure box.)

"Did Grandma June die with her eyes closed?"

"I don't know."

"How did they close her eyes?"

"I don't know. I guess they just close them. I don't know. I didn't touch her."

"Did I?"

"No. You could have, but we didn't."

"I wish I did. I think people are limp when they die, and you can just close their eyes."

"Maybe."

"Who will live in our house when we are all dead?"

"Maybe your children or grandchildren."

"Will we always live here?"

"Yes. Well, maybe. I don't know. But wherever we live, we can be together. You can live with me for as long as you'd like."

That seemed to satisfy him, though the pipsqueak still looked troubled and anxious. I can remember being worried about what would happen to my favorite stuffed toy after I died. I think it is good they have questions, but I do hate leading them out of the Garden of Eden. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.

In the Mind of the Squeaker

2010-12-03T16:23:00.003-05:00

The squeaker has seen two versions of A Christmas Carol, the most recent film and the older Muppets version. (The latter led to a funny exchange between the squeaker and his papa: "What are Muppets?" "Little puppets." "But you said 'Muppets.'" "Yes, they are Muppets." "But are they puppets?" and so on....)

Anyway, the squeaker said to me at breakfast: "The ghosts in A Christmas Carol are like the Three Fates."

"How so?" I asked.

"Well, there are three of them, and they are the past, present, and future."

I was surprised he knew that about the Fates. Not sure where he comes up with this stuff!

Squeaker in Space

2010-12-01T07:44:00.004-05:00

Two posts in two days!!! Amazing, I know. ;-)

I was thinking about quirky things the squeaker has said, and I thought this little story would be a good one to share. Sometimes my boy can be very frustrating -- he's very smart in some ways, but struggles mightily with basic academic skills. Watching him do math makes us tear our hair out. Trying to read his handwriting is like trying to decipher an ancient and scrawly language. Tasks that require attention to detail frustrate him and usually have poor results. But when it comes to big-picture stuff, he amazes us. His ability to analyze information, to synthesize disparate ideas, seems almost prodigal, and I do not use that word lightly. In fact, I cringe a bit in using it because parental boasting is not my style. You'll never catch me bragging about my kid's grades or being on the honor roll or dean's list. I think parents who insist their child is just the brightest kid in his or her class are tedious at best and delusional at worst.

That being said, the squeaker sometimes throws out these observations that leave us stunned. Earlier this week, we were all in the car early in the morning. I was heading to work and the boys were going to spend the day with their grandmother. In the pre-dawn sky, Venus was shining above us.

As we drove, I explained that Venus was another planet and that like Earth, it circles our sun. I told the boys about our solar system and how there are other solar systems too, maybe with life. The squeaker gazed at Venus and commented that it was funny to think that if we were standing on Venus instead, Earth would just be a little dot in the sky, just like Venus was to us at that moment.

This is the same kid who cannot add 5 plus 7.

Very Bad Blogger

2010-11-30T19:42:00.004-05:00

OK, so I am well aware that I am the worst blogger ever. Sorry!!! I don't know how this happened to me. Well, actually I do. It's the full time working gig. The problem isn't so much that I don't have time to post. Posting only takes a few minutes, and I am sure I could find the time. However, I don't have time to think about anything worth posting. And yes, I know this didn't stop me before, but I do like to spend time musing about something worth preserving in my blog. Now my thoughts are so frantic and fragmented that I never come up with anything worthwhile -- or even coherent. Today I decided I would just post something anyway.

The boys have done so many funny things that I have failed to capture here. I am sure I won't remember them now. :-(

The pipsqueak has decided that he is done with diapers. He just decided that on this own, and now he insists on wearing underwear. He hasn't had an accident in a full week, but since I am saying that out loud, an accident is now imminent. He's actually been pooping in the toilet since July. I remember the date because he had one accident at the beach (in a diaper) and one sometime in the fall, but those are the only poopy diapers I've changed since early July. He was still peeing in his diaper though, and he was resistant to my gentle efforts to get him to use the toilet. And then last week, he said he wanted to wear underwear, and that's all he's worn since, at least in the daytime. I was putting a diaper on him at night but he's actually been dry at night for a long time now. So it's nice to be done with diapers, even if I do have two large, unopened boxes of them. Sigh.

The pipsqueak is heavily into dressing up these days. He runs around in his Buzz Lightyear pajamas or his skeleton pajamas with a pirate cape, batman mask, and pink cowgirl boots. (Sorry, took the pic below before he added the usual boots.) Sometimes he adds a jaunty sash. He sits and peruses the Target catalog, carefully examining the Lego toys and the Star Wars toys. He's also obsessed with being a baby and he insists on holding my hand constantly. Not sure how this fits in with the decision to abandon diapers, but I am not saying a word about that!

The squeaker has decided to be a dragonologist, rather than a paleontologist, because he has concluded that the former would not require college and he'd like to shorten his academic career. He seems quite pleased about this decision.

He seems happier about school. We had a conference with his teacher last week and she went on and on about how much she adores him. She said he is so creative and lively, and that when he is not in school she misses him very much. She said his progress as a reader has been excellent and that even his handwriting has improved. However, math seems to be a lost cause. He has so much trouble focusing on it that she has him sit at her desk with her during math time!! I don't think it helps, though. He brings home classwork that reflects a total disregard for anything math-ish. It is clear that he has zero interest in it, so perhaps dragonology is a wise career choice.

The boys have been listening to the soundtrack for The Nightmare Before Christmas over and over and over again. They sing along and the pipsqueak in particular likes the funny lines ("scare you right out of your pants!" gets a giggle every time). Because the boys are so anxious to decorate our house for Christmas, I'm thinking of using the CD as a bargaining chip because I don't think I can listen to the OOGIE BOOGIE SONG one...more...time....without losing my mind.

Now I need to load the dishwasher and run the bathtub and bath the boys and get them to bed, which requires reading books, telling a Daisy the Dragon story, and then singing a song (I notice my husband always turns off the baby monitor receiver in the kitchen sometime during my little singing effort). Whew. And tomorrow it starts all over!! At least I don't have to travel anywhere tomorrow. Not til Thursday!

November Crept In

2010-11-04T07:16:00.004-04:00

So that night of the disastrous bedtime routine was an anomaly, apparently. It has been pretty smooth sailing since then, I am glad to say. I don't know what was up that night; maybe the pipsqueak did not feel well? I suppose I will never know.

How did it get to be November? I feel like October flew by. And October did not feel as warm as it sometimes does, which is too bad, because I love a balmy fall! But now there is turkey and stuffing and pie to look forward to. It seems that my brothers and sisters and I are fairly ritualistic; we love anticipating the beach all year long, and we love love love Thanksgiving. I think we could take or leave Christmas, with all its stress and high expectations. Thanksgiving is just food, wonderful glorious food, and it is having mom and dad cook for us, which we all love. I think we all take great pleasure in getting to feel like kids again.

My boys have been listening to the sountrack for The Nightmare Before Christmas nearly nonstop. They adore the movie and the pipsqueak will sing the songs with vigor. He is surprising attuned to the way the music and the visual story interact. When he hears only the music, he'll ask, "Is this the part when Jack steps through the door?" Or "Is this when Oogy Boogy tilts Santa Clause??" He phrases it as a question, but the truth is that he knows better than we do. He definitely has a musical sense that is far superior to the squeaker's. Whether that's just because he is more interested in it or whether it suggests some kind of facility with music, I do not know. He does have musicians in his family tree on both sides! If he does have some kind of natural ability, I would like to help him cultivate it. However, I am not interested in being pushy about it.

The squeaker seems to have warmed up to the idea of school a bit. He has a friend now, and they play together every day. It's hard to tell how mutual the friendship is (the squeaker does have a way of latching onto kids who are perhaps less enthusiastic about him than he is about them), but he seems much happier. I am still somewhat concerned about his level of focus, though. His work in math is absolutely dismal. I can see his utter disdain for addition and subtraction problems; they clearly strike him as entirely pointless. At least I can appreciate his perspective. But his writing is also a concern. It is frustrating that such a smart child produces nearly illegible scribbles when he writes. Though he knows how to spell many words correctly or nearly correctly, the writing he does in school suggests otherwise. He'll spell words he knows completely wrong. It's almost as if he hasn't connected the idea of those words with the notion of writing them, as if he doesn't understand the application of his knowledge of spelling and word families. If you ask him to spell "car," he's likely to spell it right. But ask him to write the sentence "The car drove fast," and he's quite likely to write "cr" or "cir." It's very frustrating, not because I'm afraid that he'll always be a poor speller but because his underperformance is going to be an issue at school. I don't need him to be the star student in the class; I would just like him to meet the basic expectations.

The boys had a good Halloween, though the pipsqueak really doesn't like dressing up. We had to be very minimalist with his costume. For trick-or-treating he wore his skeleton pajamas, a batman cape, and a batman mask. My brother called him a "skele-bat." The squeaker wore his dinosaur costume. We also went to three parties, and the boys dressed as pirates for two of them. For the third, the squeaker was a vampire and the pipsqueak was a skeleton pirate (the skeleton pajamas got a lot of wear).

I have been doing a fair amount of travel for work, and it definitely wears me out! Because DC area traffic is so intense, I leave very early in the morning when I have to be anywhere near DC. It seems that I need to do that about once a week, which is a little more often than I had hoped. But I am doing a huge number of mediations, and I do think I am (slowly) becoming more skilled at them. And now I need to get to work...

Kidded Out

2010-10-18T09:20:00.003-04:00

As I wrote previously, bedtime has been prolonged lately, but at least it's been successful. Last night, on the other hand, was an utter disaster.

Things went smoothly until I had to kiss the pipsqueak good night and then leave the room. He clung to me, sobbing and crying that he wanted me to stay, that he was scared of the dark and that he wanted to sleep in my bed. He cried that I'd told him before that if he was scared, he could sleep with me. I told him I said no such thing, and I tucked him back in. I practically had to wrench my arm from him, and he was very upset when I left the room.

When I got downstairs, I could hear him crying, "Mama, mama, I have to go to the bathroom!" So I went back upstairs, stripped off his pjs and diaper, and put him on the toilet. He peed and then I dressed him again and put him back to bed. Five minutes after I got downstairs, I could hear him calling me again: "Mama, mama, I have to go to the bathroom AGAIN!" Went back upstairs and did the same routine. When he called out that he had to use the bathroom a THIRD time, I sent papa up. He told the boys firmly that I was not coming, that I was in bed, and that it was time for them to go to sleep.

After 10 or 15 minutes, I could still hear quiet sobbing coming from the room, so I crept in quietly to see what was up. (I know, I know, this was a big mistake.) The pipsqueak, who had been sobbing, sat up immediately and begged for a hug and kiss. When I leaned down to hug him, he clung to me and screamed. I picked him up and rocked him for a minute while he cried and pleaded to sleep with me ("I don't want to sleep in my big boy bed anymore! I am scared! I miss you! I want to snuggle and nurse and nurse..."), and then I tucked him back in and left. He screamed and cried some more. By this time, it had gotten late enough that I had no time to read or relax (hadn't even been able to turn on my Kindle), so I turned off the light and crawled in bed. I could hear him screaming and crying: "Mama, I need you! I need you! I need a hug! Please! Pleeeaasse!!! Mama, mama, mama! I need you!"

He was screaming so loudly that he would periodically cough and choke and gag (which is what both my boys did as babies anytime we tried anything remotely resembling "cry-it-out"). I ignored him at first, but then I called out that I couldn't come hug him because he was screaming too much and only if he stopped would I be able to come in and hug him. He screamed for a while longer and then started saying, "Mama, I've stopped. I'm not crying. I stopped." He said this with a little sob, but most of the hysteria had subsided. So I went in and hugged him one more time, promised him we'd snuggle when it was light out, and left the room. He seemed exhausted and miserable, but he did not cry again.

Then both boys were up at 6:30 AM this morning, and BOTH were sobbing. The squeaker was upset that his papa had not hugged him before he left for work (usually, we move both boys to the downstairs bed when their grandma gets to our house, and that's when they get hugs from us, but today I left for work later than usual so there was no need to move them). The pipsqueak just wanted to cling to me and insisted that I do everything for him (like make his breakfast) though I was trying to get out the door. I had wanted to leave before their grandma started breakfast because I hate to witness someone else cooking in my kitchen, but it was not to be. Then the squeaker cried more because his grandma had told him that while he didn't get a hug from papa, he'd be able to eat breakfast with mama, but I was trying to inhale my toast and get out the door as fast as possible, while she was cooking pancakes for the squeaker. So I had to wait, and that was painful, and then both boys clung to me and cried when I tried to leave and it was EXCRUCIATING.

But now I feel better. :-)

Emotional Week

2010-10-14T08:19:00.003-04:00

The last week or so has been difficult. Every day I wake up so tired. One of the things I miss most about my pre-kid life was that feeling that once you swept away all your obligations -- the 20-page paper you have to write, the work project you have to finish, paying the bills that are due -- you could climb into bed, read as long as you'd like, and then sleep until you were ready to get up. Now the time of getting up is never of my choosing. The boys are my alarm clock, each and every day. Every now and then, they sleep unexpectedly late -- 8:30 AM, or maybe even 9:30 AM, very rarely. But the waking moment is always chosen by them, never by me, and I miss the feeling of relaxation and indulgence that flows from a self-determined schedule. I do remind myself, though, that someday I will be able to sleep as late as I'd like again, and then I am sure I will deeply miss having my tiny, sleepy pajama-clad boys padding into my bedroom in the early morning hours.

That it has been an emotionally exhausting week or so hasn't helped, either. Last Tuesday, my colleague at work had a stroke. She is not even 40. She was late to work (which never happens) and then complained that she'd had a headache and neck pain since the night before, and that she was feeling nauseated. I told her to go home, but she was going to stick it out. And then at 11 AM, while we were talking, she got stuck on a word: "all right," she kept saying. At first it made sense. Then it no longer did, and when she turned to look at me her face was contorted; I thought she was going to vomit. And then, in one of those horrible moments where your skin prickles and your hair stands on end, I knew -- she was having a stroke. I called 911, paramedics came, and she has been hospitalized. The part of her brain involved in expressive language has been damaged. I've ben reading updates on the web site her family set up, and I am hopeful that she will make a full recovery, but also very discouraged. I just can't believe her life has been derailed in this way, and having been there at the very moment it happened, having witnessed it, was deeply disturbing to me. I don't think anything less than a full recovery would allow her to come back to work because of the nature of what we do, and I don't know how likely a full recovery really is. I miss her as a colleague but have been surprised by how much I miss her as a friend. Her office is right next to mine, and because we are the same age, we talk all the time. We are very different, but get along very well. I suppose it is lucky that it happened at work; she lives alone and could have gone several hours without help if it had happened there. But that is a small comfort.

Anyway, her situation has been very difficult for me emotionally. I just feel so sad for her and her family. But it is nice to read about her progress, and I am trying to remain optimistic; what else is there?

In more ordinary happenings, the squeaker has a mild case of swimmer's ear, so we visited the doctor last night. We still visit the pediatrician in our old neighborhood, which is an hour from our house. I'm always thinking that we should find a new one closer to home, and then we go and I am reminded of why we drive so far. He is just an excellent person and is exactly what I want in a doctor. He listens and never, ever preaches or tells a parent how to do things. I think that bugs some of his patients' parents -- some parents really want a clear recommendation from their pediatrician, but ours is likely to outline the pros and cons. If you push him, he will give his opinion on some issues (vaccines), but his approach just doesn't include thinking of most parenting dilemmas as a big deal. You get the feeling that he thinks the kids will be alright, and that you can't really screw them up too much even if you nurse forever or not at all, co-sleep or cry-it-out, follow the vaccine schedule or tweak it. I like that he isn't preachy or authoritative about these things, and I also like knowing that the choices he made for his own kids were very much like the choices we have made (he had long-nursing co-sleepers, too).

But we did get home late, and the boys were very tired at bedtime. But at 4 AM, I heard little footsteps in our bedroom, and then the squeaker whispered miserably, "My dream ended! It's over!" He sounded so sad.

"Well, go back to bed and have another one!" I said. So he did. Hope it involved lots of dragons.

The pipsqueak had a birthday party this past weekend. Can't believe he is three!! It seems like just yesterday that I was holding him in the delivery room, chiding him for making me wait so long to snuggle with him! I miss his lovely baby-ness, but he is such an engaging, quirky toddler that I wouldn't roll back the clock even if I could. He makes me laugh every day. And he has this wonderful, contagious laugh that we all love. On the long car ride yesterday, his big brother was acting silly to make him laugh, and the pipsqueak just could not stop. When he finally did, he gasped, "Oh, it's so funny!!" and that made all of us chuckle.

We found little truck and loader candles for his birthday cake, and he really liked that. My sisters have teased that my boys are such boys, probably because they like weapons and monsters and, in the pipsqueak's case, trucks and cars (which the squeaker regards with disdain). I don't think of my boys as so gendered (probably because they have no interest in sports) but it's true that they aren't generally gentle and nurturing (though both have great empathy). I do think it would be nice to get them a pet so that they learn to care for a little living thing, but after the failed goat episode, I don't see many good choices. Wish a dog was an option, but I don't think the squeaker would be able to breathe.

Oh well. Enough rambling for today.

Bedtime

2010-10-05T07:39:00.004-04:00

The bedtime routine has become very protracted. After bath, the squeaker goes into our bedroom to snuggle with his papa and hear a big-kid book, while the pipsqueak and I snuggle in his bed to read his books. Favorites are In the Night Kitchen, The Runaway Bunny, Mo Willems' pigeon books, Hippos Go Berserk, and Eight Silly Monkeys. By the time the squeaker comes into the room, the pipsqueak has had his two minutes of nursing and is snuggling into the bed with me.

Then they beg for a story, so I tell one in which the boys alter-egos (hobbits) go on adventures, sometimes with Daisy the Dragon, often involving jungles or trips to the moon or encounters with witches (or robots, Lightning McQueen, or motorcycle riders, if the pipsqueak gets his way). Usually, I tell two stories, the second one very very brief. Then they want a song, so we might sing You Are My Sunshine, Molly Malone, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Puff the Magic Dragon, or some other song.

Then another round of hugs and kisses, especially for the pipsqueak, who demands a kiss for his forehead, chin, lips, and each cheek. More hugs and kisses then. Maybe a sip of water (each boy has his own sippy cup by his bed, but the pipsqueak hates the sweat on the outside of the cup and begs for assistance). And then I leave the room.

After only a few minutes, I am likely to hear, "Mama! Mama! I have to go to the bathroom!" So I'll go in the bedroom, get the pipsqueak, and put him on the toilet while the squeaker sighs loudly about little brothers who keep him awake. The pipsqueak will pee and then I'll get his diaper and pajama bottoms back on him, tuck him back into bed, and give yet another round of hugs and kisses.

Then I'll leave the room again. Only a minute or two later, the squeaker may appear looking sleepy and disgruntled. "There's a weird noise. I'm scared. There's something in my room."

So I'll go in and listen, and indeed there is a click click click noise from the fan. I'll explain what it is, kiss each boy one more time, and leave the room.

Then: "Mama, mama! I have to go to the bathroom again!!"

This time I am very grouchy, and the pipsqueak knows it. "Mama, are you angry at me? Don't be angry." And I'll tell him, "But you just peed! You can't possibly have to go again!" But I'll strip off his jammies and diaper and set him on the toilet again, wait while he tries to pee, and then dress him again when he's discovered that he does not in fact have to pee again.

When I take him back to bed, I'll discover that the squeaker is sleepy and grouchy, but that he also has a bloody nose. So I tend to that, and then kiss everyone ONE LAST TIME.

Further calls for mama are met with "Go to sleep! Now! I'm not coming back in!!" Sometimes, though, the pipsqueak will say to me the next morning, "You made me sad, mama. When you yelled. I was sad after that."

Sometimes, mama cannot win.

Anyway, last night, there was an interesting variation. Between the pipsqueak's two bathroom trips, the pipsqueak talked the squeaker into telling him a story. As requested, it included Lightning McQueen. When he finished, the squeaker said, "There, I told you a story. Now I am going to sleep!"

But the pipsqueak said, "Now I'll tell YOU a story."

"OK."

"Once upon a time, we were walking in the forest, and...and...then a MONSTER. Rrroooaaar!!!"

The squeaker was clearly unimpressed with the pipsqueak's story-telling techniques. "But where did the monster come from?" (I expected him to continue: "What motivates the monster??" but he didn't.)

"From under the bed!" whispered the pipsqueak in gleeful dread.

Then there was a very long silence.

Finally: "Mama, I have to go to the bathroom!!"

Faerie Alert

2010-09-29T13:15:00.003-04:00

The squeaker believes fervently in faeries. He searches the yard for faerie huts. He looks for faeries at home. When something peculiar happens, he blames the faeries. He doesn't do this to cover up his own naughty behavior; for example, if he does something he shouldn't and we discover the evidence, he doesn't claim that it was "faeries." He isn't pretending that there are faeries; he really, truly believes that there are. He also believes the faeries favor him because he believes in them, so when good but mysterious things happen to him, he sees evidence of faeries.

His papa encourages a belief in faeries and magic and all things mystical. It's not so much that his papa actually believes in these things, but he loves the possibility that these things could exist, and he loves celebrating that possibility. I enjoy playing the rational foil to this. The squeaker knows that I don't believe in gods, faeries, dragons, vampires, or witches. He knows I am a materialist. He thinks I'm wrong and tells me so, but he also longs to prove me wrong with the only thing that would accomplish that: real evidence.

So this past weekend, the squeaker and the pipsqueak were playing with their toy airport and planes in the playroom on the first floor while I put clothes away upstairs and my husband organized his closet. Suddenly, the squeaker came running upstairs, pink-cheeked and short of breath with excitement.

"We heard a faerie, we heard a faerie!" he exclaimed.

Without a trace of skepticism, my husband enthusiastically asked, "Where??"

"Downstairs!" replied the squeaker. "Near the playroom." He was so excited he could barely talk. Then:

"It said, 'Alert, Low Battery!'"

I had to cover my mouth to avoid laughing too loudly.

"So we pushed all the buttons on the airport stuff, and none of the toys said that! None of them even sounded like that! It was a faerie!"

My husband very quietly changed the battery in the smoke detector in the hall later that evening, with the boys none the wiser!

Fall

2010-09-24T06:55:00.010-04:00

So three years ago today, I was very pregnant and thinking that I'd have a baby any day now. Except that I didn't. The pipsqueak had other ideas, and he kept us waiting two more weeks. He's done things his own way from the beginning.

He and I had an unexpected day off together this week. His grandma was sick, so I had to call in to work. The pipsqueak and I hung out together, and most of the day was quite pleasant. We went to storytime at the library, where he kept interrupting the librarian who was reading to made loud proclamations like, "I can read by myself" and "My brother goes to school." When the librarian asked questions, the other kids shyly offered answers, or they stayed silent, but the pipsqueak cried, "I don't know!!!" each and every time in a tone that suggested that such questions were simply ridiculous -- how could anyone know such a thing as what happens to leaves in the fall??? The other mothers offered indulgent smiles with a trace of smugness behind them; I am quite sure they were pleased that their own children were sitting so quietly and listening so attentively. But I was amused at the pipsqueak's verbal boldness, especially since he wouldn't actually stray from my lap; he appears to be all bark, as it were, and no bite.

Afterwards, we made a stop at the playground, where he climbed and jumped, telling other kids that only he could do these things because he's a grown-up. Clearly, the pipsqueak has delusions of grandeur, and the fibs continue to flow from him effortlessly. We stayed for about half an hour, and my effort to steer us towards home prompted a mega-meltdown. I had to drag him to the car, where he insisted that he wanted to climb into his seat himself. So I stood him in the car and waited. Except that he wouldn't cooperate. He just glared at me sullenly until I scooped him up and strapped him in, while he shrieked and kicked and struggled and I hoped no one thought I was kidnapping him. Then he screamed the whole way home. I figured he was probably pretty hungry and tired, so we hurried inside and I started a grilled cheese for him. But he was laying on the floor, his head on my feet, begging for a hug. When I reached down to pat him, the butter-covered knife slid off the counter and streaked my favorite jeans with a huge blob of soft butter.

At that point, I was thinking how lovely and peaceful my office would be.

But we managed to get through lunch, and then we snuggled in together for a lovely nap, and there weren't any more tantrums that day. Plus, I did manage to get the butter stain out, so it is all good.

The squeaker is still in deep mourning about school, though yesterday was the first day that no tears were shed. He seems astonished that we continue to send him off to school. In addition, he is doing math sheets for the first time, and because he often does not finish them in school, he ends up having to do them at home. True to his verbal nature, math is absolute agony for him. He cries, he throws things, he proclaims that it's the most frustrating experience he has ever had, and pointless to boot. All this about first-grade math. I'm already feeling queasy about the fractions in his future.

Now that the boys go to bed on their own each night, I have an hour or so of lovely reading time each night. I just finished The Pregnant Widow, by Martin Amis, which I found so painful that I could barely get through it. It's about a group of 20-year olds hanging out at a castle in Italy in the 1970s, having lots of sex and spending a lot of time talking about it against the backdrop of feminism and the sexual revolution. The protagonist is a young man, and most of the other characters are young women, and much time is spent analyzing the women's physical features and opining about their sex appeal. The women are enigmatic caricatures meant to say something about the negative impact of feminism, and yet the overall tone is one of such misogyny that it is hard to take the comments about feminism seriously. The characters were a tedious bore; I didn't like any of them. And the sex wasn't even sexy. It was bland, passionless, and awkward, and not helped at all by some really terrible writing. There was supposed to be an undercurrent of some kind of bizarre or taboo activities, but it just came across as strangely immature and unsexy. (It seemed to be semen on the young woman's face. Huh?!?) So I am relieved to put this book behind me.

And now it is fall, as of yesterday, though the thermometer seems unaware. Today is supposed to be 92 degrees.

Lonely Squeaker

2010-09-15T12:08:00.006-04:00

The squeaker cries a little every morning before school. We are three weeks into the school year, so I am hoping he'll stop soon. I am not sure why he cries. He says that he feels sad and that he is shy because he is new. I've told him he isn't new; it's a new school year for every one, and he went to the same school last year. He remains unconvinced, though, and he is very sad every morning. It is painful for me. Most days, his grandmother takes him to the before-care place, but he's weepy in the morning before I leave for work, and she tells me he is weepy when she leaves him there.

I keep thinking that one good friend could change everything. Maybe he just needs a friendly face, a buddy he is excited to see every day and who eases his loneliness with companionship and mutual silliness. But so far, it hasn't happened. The squeaker is a lot like me; we are both shy and reserved, and very slow to make friends. We want to connect with people, but that feeling is at odds with our intense privacy and need for space -- both physical and emotional space for thinking, relaxing, being ourselves. Despite my quirkiness, I usually did have a few good friends (I was not a person who could have cultivated -- or would have wanted -- a large circle of friends) during most of my childhood. I had close friends in elementary school. I had a brief friendless period, as many kids do, in middle school, when girls start to turn on one another. But then I was lucky to find friends in a group of girls who welcomed me. In high school, I lost some old friends but gained some new ones; generally, I was not lonely, though I felt more connected to some girlfriends, and more distant from others.

Navigating friendships with girls can be so difficult. I lost my very best friend from elementary school in one of those dramatic middle school moments -- her friend called me the night before 7th grade was to start and told me that my friend no longer wanted to have anything to do with me, and I was not to talk to her or stand near her at the bus stop the next morning -- or ever again. We'd been best friends since first grade, but that was it -- she made a clean break. Our moms talked in an effort to see if reconciliation was possible, but there was no way. She made a few cruel overtures to ensure that I knew where I stood, and after that, it was as if our friendship had never been. I remember being stunned for several months at just how lonely life could be. In high school, I had another falling out with a good friend that even now makes me sad to recall. At least then I had a slightly larger circle of friends -- and a boyfriend -- so I felt that loss less keenly.

Boys relationships, I thought, can't possibly be that difficult. Boys bond differently, and their social status is not so dependent on savaging other kids. Well, that may be true. But it seems there is another obstacle: boys are apparently taught fairly rigid notions of masculinity. The squeaker does not seem to be adequately boyish for his peers. His interests are not their interests. His personality quirks seem like peculiarities. The squeaker is not exactly a sweet, gentle little boy. His favorite pasttime is a spirited swordfight with foam swords. He doesn't want to watch movies unless they contain a good battle. He collects dragons, knights, and bones. He loves predators in all shapes and sizes. He's fascinated by monsters and creepy things in general.

But he doesn't play sports, and we don't watch sports of any kind in our home. He doesn't know a basketball from a baseball, or a hockey stick from a lacrosse stick. He cannot identify any sport and doesn't have even the vaguest desire to play a sport. It's an entirely foreign world to him. And while "sweet" is too saccharine a word for him, he is good-hearted and kind, which is not a trait particularly valued by little boys.

Maybe the sports thing doesn't matter so much. We can't be the only people in our county who aren't interested in sports. But somehow, his entire bearing seems different from other little boys. Maybe it is because he is not only very small, but also has such delicate features. He has porcelain skin, the clearest blue eyes, wispy blond hair. His frame is so very slight. When I see other little boys his age, they seem so much bigger than he is, but not just literally bigger -- they have a presence, a confidence, almost a macho-ness that the squeaker lacks entirely. He is without pretense of any kind. He has no public self that he assumes when he interacts with other people, the way many kids do; he is simply his quirky, eccentric self all the time, just as he was when he was a three-year-old boy running around on the playground introducing himself to other boys as "Daisy the Dragon."

It's hard for me to imagine the kind of little boy who would want to be his friend. He would need to be a boy without self-consciousness -- maybe without too much self-awareness. He'd need to be more interested in imagination and elaborate role-playing than in sports or TV. Sometimes I think a little girl might be better suited for a friendship with the squeaker. But girls have social expectations at this age that little boys seem to lack. Friendship means something more to them than just hanging around together; they want declarations of friendships, emotional intimacy, and conversation about real life. The squeaker has no interest in the mundane details of real life; he's entirely absorbed by the imaginary world that he conjures up.

I think there must be someone out there for him, a little boy or girl as quirky as he is who'd like a companion. But I don't know how to held him find that little boy or girl.

Fevers and Boogers

2010-09-09T08:22:00.003-04:00

Both boys have been sick, a scenario I dreaded when my husband and I both took on new jobs. Fortunately, it's a relatively mild illness -- a 24-hour bug that causes a fever, listlessness, and loss of appetite. The squeaker got it first, coming off the bus from school on Tuesday barely able to walk. He spent the evening on the couch.

Overnight, the pipsqueak came down with it, too. He cried out for me at 2 AM, and though I don't usually allow him to come to our bed until dawn, I made an exception. His skin was so hot and he looked miserable.

I had hoped the squeaker would be OK for school on Wednesday, but he wasn't. And I HAD to go to work -- it was one of those days when I had a mediation scheduled, and missing it was not an option. I felt really miserable about it. Being their mom should be my #1 job, and yet it must sometimes take a backseat to my work responsibilities. I never wanted to end up in that position! But here we are -- it is the reality, and I know I should consider myself very lucky that their grandmother watches them. If we had some other day care provider, our only options might have been having one of us miss work. Probably it would have been my husband, and as he does not have leave just yet, he would have lost a day of pay.

But they were able to stay with grandma, who probably takes better care of them than I do. When I got home from work on Wednesday, the pipsqueak was still in bad shape, but the squeaker seemed to be back to normal. I held the pipsqueak all evening, and even after I tucked him into his bed, I could hear him whimpering miserably. When I finally checked on him an hour after bedtime, he was curled up in a sweaty little ball and was shaking all over. I scooped him up and took him to bed with me, where he spent a very restless night. But around 4 AM, his fever broke, and he was much better this morning.

Then I heard the squeaker start to sob around 5 AM. "What now?!?!?!?" I thought, hoping we weren't in for some other virus (it's quite unlike him to cry). My husband went in to check on him and did not come back for a very long time (almost an hour).

So this morning, I asked him what was up. My husband snickered and said that apparently, the squeaker had been picking his nose.

"A nosebleed?" I asked, thinking in dismay about the likelihood of stained sheets to wash.

"No," my husband chuckled. "He was upset because he picked his nose...and dropped the booger somewhere in the bed."

"And you didn't come back because??"

"I snuggled with him in his bed for a bit to show him the booger wouldn't hurt him."

Brave, brave man!

Zooisms

2010-09-06T16:55:00.002-04:00

So on the way to the zoo, I'm trying to get the kids excited about the animals. We're in the car and it's been a long ride.

"What kind of animals do you think we'll see???" I ask.

Long pause.

So, a hint from me: "How about a GREAT BIG creature that lives in a cold, snowy place??"

The pipsqueak's answer is immediate: "An AT-AT!!"

Um, no. That would be a polar bear. My boys definitely live in a reality all their own.

Hrumph

2010-09-01T21:39:00.004-04:00

I have a four-day weekend coming up!!!!!!!! It is overwhelming. I am so excited!!!!!!!

How pathetic is that?

And why the heck do we have a 5-day work week normally anyway? Why not 4 days? 3 days? I know I should be glad I don't live in an era where 7-day work weeks were the norm, or on a farm, or in a 3rd world country where I would labor around the clock for pennies. But shouldn't living in a rich, first-world country mean that I get a decent amount of leisure time? Sigh.

So I am happy, but being happy about such a pathetic little crumb being tossed my way also makes me grouchy.

And that is all.

First Grade Notes

2010-08-31T21:11:00.003-04:00

A new school year has started. We attended the squeaker's orientation night last week. His teacher is a young, sexy blonde who wore a short skirt and towering high heels in a sparkly green. She was adorable. This is only her second year, so she is practically bursting with enthusiasm. I was delighted that she seems extremely aware that these kids are only 6 years old, and that they only have so much focus and concentration. She also seemed to appreciate that little kids make a lot of mistakes, and stern discipline did not seem to be a priority in her mind. I think her youth and enthusiasm are perfect for first grade, and I think the squeaker will love her. His class only has 20 kids, which I am very pleased about. Also, she said first grade will be very light on homework, which I very much approve of.

Yesterday was his first day. We've had a few minor bumps on the road. He's attending a before and after school program, and on the first day of school, I went to meet him as he got off the bus. The bus showed up quite late, and then when it did arrive, lots of kids got off -- but no squeaker. I finally went over and talked to the bus driver, who called his name. Very very slowly, he gathered his stuff and got off the bus. He said he hadn't recognized the bus stop. I was very glad that I had decided to meet him! However, in his hurry, he left behind his necklace. He'd worn a purple stone that his grandfather got him, and even though I've warned him that taking treasures to school is a bad idea, he insisted. So now it seems to be lost. He told me today that he even asked the principal about it, but no luck.

Overall, he has not said much about school. He did tell me that he likes lunch and recess. His writing seems to have regressed a bit over the summer, and I feel a little concerned about that. I had meant for him to practice, but the summer slipped away. I tried a few times, but when I did, I just got the feeling that he really needed a break from it. I hope that proves to have been a good decision.

While the squeaker is adjusting well, the pipsqueak is a mess. He falls apart when big brother leaves, and he seems very lonely to me. I had been so focused on the squeaker that I did not give much thought to the pipsqueak's transition. So I am going to try to find some playgroups or story hours for him to attend. He really likes other kids, and while I am sure he will learn to enjoy having all his grandma's attention to himself, I do think he will also be quite lonely.

Work has been going well, though I still feel pangs of sadness about the full-time gig, and I feel kind of pathetic and guilty about that. I know so many moms get so little time, and I had a lot. I've been doing a lot of special education mediations, and I enjoy them as long as the child's situation isn't too tragic (and a few have been). I found today's quite interesting. While the concerns the parent raised are confidential, I think it is safe to say that what surprised me most was the school's input. The school is in a very wealthy area of Maryland -- it is probably one of the wealthiest in the country. The principal said that the school has 3 first-grade classes, and two of them are at a second-grade level in reading and math. I couldn't help but wonder how the squeaker will ever compete with kids like that. I like his little school so much, and I like that the expectations are reasonable. I would hate for my kid to feel pressured to achieve, achieve, achieve. How can a kid have a healthy childhood if achievement is being pushed like that in the early grades? But someday, he will need to compete with those kids in college admission and performance, and then in seeking a job. I suppose it makes me understand why some parents seek out the stellar school districts for their kids.

Anyway, that is how things are right now. The boys are in bed and fast asleep; we've been aiming for 8:30, and no later than 9 PM, every night, which is a new thing for us. It's hard because the evenings feel so brief. But both boys seem deeply relieved to snuggle in their beds, and they fall asleep quickly.

Now I had better go make the squeaker's lunch for tomorrow.

Be Verwy Verwy Quiet....

2010-08-20T08:15:00.003-04:00

The boys' uncle, my brother, joined us for Chinese food last night. While we were eating, the pipsqueak was his usual talkative self.

"My brother has a tree," he said to his uncle. "Have you seen my brother's tree?"

The squeaker had gotten a tiny pine tree from school last year for some event (Arbor Day? Earth Day? I don't remember.) He had been very excited about planting it, so we did so right away...and then we promptly forgot about it. When we remembered many weeks later, it was a sad-looking, dried out little twig of a tree. The squeaker tried valiantly to save it, hauling buckets of water down the hill and begging it to survive. And when it was clear that it was a lost cause, he cried many tears for his poor little tree.

For some reason, the pipsqueak had this tree on his mind. "My brother's tree is at the bottom of the hill. It's dead now. Do you want to see it? Let's go see the dead tree. I'll show you."

His uncle nodded, but the pipsqueak continued without missing a beat, his tone deeply serious. "We have to be very, very quiet though. Because there are werewolves in the trees."

Sheesh. No wonder the kid gets nervous outside after nightfall. Of course, my brother thought this was great and he had no inclination to convince the pipsqueak otherwise.

Damn You, Blogger

2010-08-19T14:49:00.002-04:00

OK, so the problem is that I can no longer write a post in Word and then cut and paste it into blogger. WTF? That means that the posts I have written have to be re-typed into blogger, I guess, which is something I don't have the patience to do. Sigh.

Anyway, that is why I have not posted. From now on, I will just do my drafting on blogger, which I do not like to do.

Life Upside Down

2010-08-16T13:07:00.003-04:00

It is Monday. This working-full-time thing is for the birds!!! Normally, I'd be snuggled in next to the pipsqueak right now, both of us snoring away. But instead, I am here at work. Sigh.

I have tried to post over the last few weeks. Sometimes, I just couldn't think of anything interesting to write (though I've decided not to let that stop me now, LOL). Once, I wrote a post and then could not get it to paste into blogger (never figured out why). Most of the time, I thought about it and then decided I was just too tired.

I am still very tired, and I still don't have anything very interesting to say. I have been doing a lot of driving for work, though most days it isn't too bad. I do miss the simplicity of working part time in a position with less responsibility, though. Everything feels harder now; maybe that is why I am so tired.

I have been doing lots of mediations in my new position. At first, I was terrified, and I tried to say as little as possible. But now I have a better sense of how to mediate effectively, so it is not so stressful. I had never even observed someone doing it when I did my first one, so I was very anxious about a misstep that would show I was a total novice. Now I worry about that a lot less and I am more comfortable.

But I miss my routines at home horribly, and I miss the down time with my little boys. When I am home, I have a zillion things to do -- making dinner, washing laundry, cleaning up toys. I don't feel that I ever have time to color with them, read books, or just relax together. It is a sad feeling and a painful adjustment. Part of it, I think, is that I don't yet have a rhythm, so every minute feels frantic. I hope that feeling will go away as I get used to my schedule, and the boys get used to less mama-time.

The pipsqueak has been doing great with sleeping in his own bed. It has been a month! He does call to me a lot at bedtime at some nights. I'll hear him through the monitor: "mama, mama!" and then when I go upstairs and poke my head in his room, he'll say, "Why do crabs live in the ocean?" or "Why do I have bones?" or "Where are the bed bugs, and how do I not let them bite?" Even his big brother just sighs and rolls over. But it does not seem to have occurred to the pipsqueak that he could actually climb out of bed. He just stays there, which is great.

The squeaker is doing well, too. He starts first grade two weeks from today. His dad also starts a new job today, and we are not sure how it is going to impact child care. So the squeaker will be going to before- and after-school care, hopefully for just a very brief time each day. The bus will pick him up and drop him off there.

We just got the card from the school bus company stating the pickup and drop-off times for the bus that serves our street, and it made me kind of sad. It feels like such a compromise to need before- and after-care. I know lots of people do it and that the squeaker will be just fine, but somehow it just seems kind of sad to me. I want his life to be simple and innocent and uncomplicated, with his mom right there waiting for him when he gets off the school bus tired and hungry. Instead, he will need to wait and wait for me, and when I get there I will be cranky and tired from work, and we'll need to rush home so that I can start dinner. I hate that I will always be running.

But I keep trying to remind myself that this is all new, and that it might not be so bad once we all get used to it. Sigh.

Incoherence

2010-07-28T22:12:00.003-04:00

I'm feeling very fragmented lately. My new job responsibilities have changed the tenor of my daily life, and it's going to take some getting used to. I am not sure how I will find time to blog, or if it is an important thing to do anymore (is anyone reading?). I don't have the mental time to muse about how I will structure my posts, what I want to say, what is on my mind. So my apologies for my incoherence, but I hate to let my blog languish just because I can't come up with something to say and an adequately artful way to say it.

Last week we went to the beach for a week. The boys had a great time. When we loaded everything into the car and started home, the pipsqueak was a little slow to catch on. "Where are we going?" he asked.

"Home," we replied.

"But...the beach house is home."

"No, sweetie. We're going home to Pennsylvania. Our real home."

"No, no! The beach house is home!" And then he cried. I loved that he loved the beach so much, and that he so enjoyed a week in a house with his cousins and aunties and uncles and grandparents.

Sleeping in the big boy bed is going amazingly well. The pipsqueak seems to like it, generally. Sometimes he squeaks a bit, but he stays in his bed and sleeps there all night long. He is still nursing at bedtime, but I think the milk is mostly gone, so that will be ending soon, too. First time in 7 years I won't be pregnant, nursing, or both!

The squeaker is doing well, but he's in an interesting phase. Recently, he's gotten very upset about things he thinks or feels, even if he hasn't expressed them. For example, at the beach, he couldn't find his shoes. He asked me where they were, and I told him I tossed them outside and that he could go get them from the deck himself. He kind of stomped off, and a while, he came to me in the kitchen with a troubled expression and tears in his eyes. He explained that he had thought to himself, "I want to kill you for throwing my shoes on the deck!" and that he was very sorry, and he didn't really want to kill me, and as he explained he cried harder and harder.

I tried to explain that everyone thinks terrible things sometimes, and that our thoughts are private and entirely our own, and that sometimes we feel things that are upsetting or scary, but that it is normal and OK to do so. He seemed to understand, but since then, we've had several similar incidents. He cried one day because he had used the word "hate" (a forbidden word in our house) in a game he was playing by himself. It surprises me to see him get so upset. He definitely feels things very intensely, though, and I suppose that intensity scares him. I hope it is something he works through quickly because it really does upset him.

This morning the pipsqueak heard a news person on the radio refer to someone who shares his first name (founder of wikileaks), and he was thunderstruck ("The radio said Julian!!"). It was pretty funny.

On another note, I had all the child care issues for fall worked out...until my husband took a new job. He has been very happy in his job and is sad to leave, but changes in the district meant his job functions were changing significantly, and he was not happy about that. He is excited about the new job, which is great, but we are not sure how child care will work out now. His hours will be longer and the commute longer as well, and we don't know what kind of schedule he will have or if flex time is an option. Time will tell, I suppose.

Happy Bedtime

2010-07-15T08:19:00.001-04:00

Time is very short right now, but a brief note: shifting the pipsqueak into his own bed is going fabulously!!! I’m actually extremely surprised.

We started Friday night. The pipsqueak’s grandma gave him some Lightning McQueen sheets, and we figured that was a sign. So we removed the box springs from the bed so that the pipsqueak would not be too high up, and we put a side rail on the bed. Then we put matching dinosaur comforters on the boys’ beds so that the pipsqueak would identify this as being like big brother, rather than just a separation from mama.

That Friday night, I slept in his little twin bed with him. I didn’t want him to wake up and feel disoriented or upset. But he was fine. I don’t think he ever really stirred. Saturday night, I slept on a mattress on the floor in the boys’ room. The pipsqueak was a little anxious about this. He kept asking me to stay and he told me a few times that he missed me. But I reassured him (from the floor) and eventually, he snuggled on into his own little bed and went to sleep.

By Sunday night, I was feeling really tired because I had not slept well in two nights. So I curled up on the mattress until the pipsqueak went to sleep, and then I hopped in my own bed in the next room. It was great to be back in my own bed! Normally, I sleep with the door closed and the room very dark, but Sunday night I kept the door open so that I could hear the boys. Sometime around 2 AM, the pipsqueak sat up and cried out. I went in and patted him back to sleep, and that is the only time he has gotten upset in the night.

Every night since then, we follow the same pattern. The pipsqueak does seem pretty sad right at bedtime, and he’ll beg me to stay. But I have tried to be firm and brisk in saying no, that he sleeps in his bed and I sleep in mine. (I do allow him to come to my bed once it is light outside. The squeaker, too.) At first, I did not sleep well at all with this pattern. I anxiously listened for his little cry, even though that has only happened once. But more than being anxious about him, I think I MISSED him. Over nearly three years, he and I developed a particular way of sleeping, and I am used to having his warm little body next to me. So I think part of my wakefulness has just been my own adjustment to sleeping without him. Each night, we all seem to sleep a little more soundly.

It is great to have the boys sleeping in their own room, and I do like the time I have away from them. It’s quite nice to miss them. Though I love the co-sleeping and think it was the best choice for our family, there were times that I felt overwhelmed by having a child presently absolutely around the clock. It’s very nice to have some time to myself.

Meandering July Friday

2010-07-02T06:51:00.002-04:00

A few random thoughts for today...

I’ve been reading the Twilight series. At first, I was curious. Then I got sucked in by the will-she-or-won’t-she drama. And now, halfway through the last book, I am bored and a little disgusted. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the earlier books. After I got used to the painful, repetitive writing at the start of the first book, I began to enjoy the story. And I think the writing even improved a bit in the next two books. I liked the quick, light dialogue, the simplicity of the story, and the heartfelt emotions Stephenie Meyer often expressed quite well. The characters seemed almost dreamlike, drawn in this vague way that made me feel attached to them without being able to pin down exactly what they looked like and who they were.

I also enjoyed the way Meyer captured the intensity and passion of teenage love, which for all its superficiality still feels as deep and powerful as an ocean. Bella’s obsessiveness seemed normal and even kind of beautiful, and it made me feel a little nostalgic for my own days of first love.

But it wore on me, especially when everyone around her kept indulging it in various ways (married and pregnant at 18?). And the characters that I initially found appealing began to grate on me. Couldn’t anyone make choices that weren’t driven by their own selfish interests? Wasn’t Bella’s own sense of self-identity and self-determination ever going to emerge? As I progressed through the series, I got tired of the characters and their shallowness. And now, as the story winds down, I’d like them all to just go away before I start to really hate them. Jacob’s easy-going warmth now seems like immature, insecure posturing. Edward’s gravity and devotion (which I always found pretty creepy but admittedly compelling) now seems unmoored and irrelevant, since Bella has joined his family. And Bella has lost all her charms. Her emptiness and lack of definition irritated me from the start, but I liked her ordinariness, her wry sense of humor about her clumsiness, her cheerful acceptance of her limitations in areas that implied (correctly, I thought) those areas were just superficial anyway. Though she’s supposed to have achieved immortal beauty now, she seems a lot duller. Uglier, even. I’ve gone from feeling fairly warm towards her to not liking her at all.

Still, I hate to leave anything unfinished, so I am slogging through to the end. And I did enjoy the story up until Breaking Dawn. But I am definitely looking forward to moving beyond these books.

Anyway, we are deep into summer now. The squeaker wears nothing but cut-offs (which he calls “cut halfs”) and t-shirts. It was really hot until a day or two ago, and I haven’t minded being at work on the really hot days. But today is supposed to be sunny and 78 degrees, so I really wish I could be outside!

The boys have amused me in many small ways. They had a picnic with their plastic food, and I could hear the pipsqueak asking the squeaker if they had enough beer. That made me laugh. Each night, the pipsqueak begs for a story or two, usually directing me to include the usual favorite elements (his granddad, a tractor, the elf who loves blueberry pie, and of course the immortal Daisy the Dragon).

The squeaker is an intense child and he is at an age when emotions run particularly strong, so we’ve struggled with him to find ways to help him express anger or frustration in a healthy way. He will scratch his face or bite himself sometimes, and he’s talked in an odd way about hurting himself. I can’t say it genuinely concerns me, because I do think it’s just an expression of this intensity that he feels, and I don’t think he’d really hurt himself (he doesn’t scratch or bite hard enough to break the skin), or that he even really wants to. But I hate to see him battle with how to express his fury, and I haven’t come up with any good ideas to help him. Then the other night, I lost my temper and threw something, and I was surprised when he advised me to try instead making a tight fist and squeezing as if I were squeezing a lemon. He was so matter-of-fact about it, so determined to offer a solution, that I wondered why he never thought of it in all the times we had talked about expressing anger. He told me the school counselor had come to his kindergarten classroom and suggested the lemon idea.

When I watch the squeaker going at the world in his intense little way, I always wonder how easy it really is to screw your kids up. Has my own inability to rein in anger, frustration, or anxiety set such a poor example that he’ll always struggle with the same thing? Does he know how much I love him? Does he love himself? Does he like himself? How do I make sure that he feels good about who he is? How do I make sure he is happy? How much unhappiness is OK? I try not to stress too much about these issues because I think our inner lives are so complex and dynamic, and that it is a mistake to draw broad conclusions about personality or mental health from a single childhood stage. But as a parent, it’s hard to resist scrutinizing the implications of every choice you make, every mistake, every time you do something that you cannot erase.

Deep down, I suppose I know it’s all right, that I can only do my best, and that my best is most likely perfectly adequate. But still, the little doubting voice is always there, wondering how much it all matters. Sometimes it would be nice to get a glimpse of the future. I think it would quiet my anxiety about all the little choices that come up every day.

Last random thought: the squeaker is on Team Jacob. No, he hasn't read the books nor seen any of the movies. But I told him a little about the books, and he thinks werewolves are way cooler than vampires.

Sleeping Through the Night

2010-06-18T07:42:00.004-04:00

I remember that when I was first initiated into motherhood with the birth of the squeaker, the first thing other chatty moms would say was, "Is your baby sleeping through the night yet?" Usually, it was a desperate question from an exhausted-looking mother who clearly hoped that her baby was just a smidgen younger than mine, and then she'd get reassurance from me that her own sleepless nights were almost over.

But I could not oblige, because sleeping through the night wasn't a priority in my household. Because we are co-sleepers, a baby stirring in the night did not mean that mom or dad had to climb out of the warm bed, pad down the hall, and then sooth a crying baby. Instead, a quick touch from one of us seemed to be all the baby sought, and without even a squeak the baby would snuggle back down into the bed and drift right back to sleep. Sometimes, the baby wanted to nurse, and that meant pulling him close and nursing a little first, a process that we both learned to do without waking much at all.

Because long-term, exclusive nursing was such a priority for me, I didn't mind the night nursing at all. And because it was so easy to sooth a co-sleeping baby, there was no real incentive to change the arrangement. Of course it would be nice for the bed to become adults-only of course, but we knew the co-sleeping was really a short-term arrangement in the whole scheme of things and we were OK with it.

However, that short-term timeframe is coming to an end, and I'd like both boys to be in their own beds by the start of school in the fall. This meant that my goal for June was to end the night-nursing and get the pipsqueak to sleep through the night at last. And this morning, I realized he is now doing just that. He knows that the new rule is that he cannot nurse until it is light out. Because he knows this, he sleeps more deeply and soundly at night at last. He stirs a little, as we all do, but he does not wake at all.

No one asks me anymore if my baby is sleeping through the night because I am sure they assume that a two-year old must be. But in truth, I think it's quite normal to be achieving it only now. Parents who cannot believe we co-sleep and go on and on about how inconvenient it must be will then talk about how they were up half the night rocking a young baby or caring for a restless toddler. They never seem to see the irony.

The next step will be moving the pipsqueak into the room the boys will share so that he goes to sleep there. I think I will probably spend a few weeks helping him make that transition by snuggling with him in his bed and then moving to a mattress on the floor in the room. And then, hopfully by mid-August, the boys will both sleep in their own room all night long.

I am excited but a little sad too. Once fall comes, it will likely be time to completely wean the pipsqueak, which I am not looking forward to. He absolutely loves nursing, so it will be a hard transition.

The Pipsqueak's Tall Tales

2010-06-17T06:32:00.003-04:00

The pipsqueak is a teller of tall tales. His brother has always been highly imaginative and often pretends to be a dragon or a knight or a sea serpent (the last occurs most often during swimming lessons, though I don't know if his instructor realizes it...). But it is clearly always a game to the squeaker. He knows he is just pretending, imagining, telling stories. Reality and fantasy blend a little bit for him -- he really does believe in faeries and other magical creatures. (Just last week, he saw a dragonfly in the yard and shrieked, "Is that a FAERIE??? It is, it is!" with absolute conviction.) But his beliefs are sincere and honest, even if they are influenced by his faith in the fantastical. If he says something, he really believes it with all his heart, unless it is explictly a game of his imagination.

Not so with the pipsqueak. The pipsqueak does sometimes pretend. ("I'm a little monkey, mama!") He takes many of his cues from his brother's rich imagination. But the pipsqueak will also tell you, with apparent sincerity, things that are absolutely not true, and that he knows are not true. For example, if you ask him his age, he'll lie every time. "I'm four," he'll say firmly. It doesn't matter how many times you tell him he is two; the next time you ask, you'll hear any answer except the correct one.

He also tells elaborate tall tales. "When I was a baby," he'll tell a stranger, "I went to Florida with Dah (his grandfather) and caught an alligator, and then it bit me and I had to get a new arm." Or if he overhears someone talking about something that happened to them, he'll join in, amicably agreeing that such a thing also happened to him, except when it happened to him it was bigger, faster, more dramatic. "I drive a motorcycle," he'll tell other kids with a look of utmost seriousness. "I went to China a long time ago." "When I went to school, my teacher said 'Read me a book,' and I did. I read it." "I used to eat crab all the time." "Once I went to the moon with nana, and she said to use my GPS on my boo boo." (I really loved that last one.)

So I'm wondering if the pipsqueak will write the screenplays, and the squeaker will produce them. :-)

Squeaker on Stage

2010-06-10T06:50:00.003-04:00

We attended the squeaker's end-of-year kindergarten event yesterday. It was a "weather play" -- the kids dressed up for different kinds of weather and sang a bunch of little songs about the weather. Naturally, since it is June, the squeaker was one of the kids who had to dress for "snowy weather." So there he was, in his winter coat, hat, gloves, scarf, and snow boots, standing with the kids in their sunglasses and beach towels. Actually, about 10 kids dressed for each kind of weather, so it least he wasn't alone.

I was surprised at how reflective the little event made me feel. He is one of the smallest kids in kindergarten -- maybe the very smallest -- so they put him at the end of one of the rows ("So you could see him," they explained to us). This meant he was first in line, which is not a great place for a kid who tends to rely on watching what the other kids are doing to ensure that he is doing the right thing. So there he was, with his pale, pointed little face and big blue eyes, buried in layers of clothing and relying on the gentle (and obvious) guidance from the teachers to get where he was supposed to go. When they would lean down to direct him, the people around us chuckled warmly. He was so very small and obviously clueless.

Well, that's an overstatement, perhaps. He knew most of the words to the little songs and sang along with vigor. His attention wandered while the three other groups of kids modeled their sunny outfits, rain gear, and clothes for a windy day, and we wondered if he might topple off the bleachers (he was in the top row, on the end, and he had to have been awfully hot in his winter gear even though the day was relatively cool). But he did seem to do all the things he was supposed to do. It was cute to watch him search the audience for us when the program first began.

Anyway, I felt kind of reflective because I think he is at such an odd stage in life. He's still quite little and dependent on his parents, but he has this community of friends and acquaintances and teachers at school. Right now, he's sort of at the mercy of the forces at school, but in the coming years, he will learn how to be their architect. It is his world, his separate identity, his childhood experience. I am his mother, but I am really only a spectator. I can help him and guide him a bit, but he will be finding the path. Or maybe making it himself. I thought about the first moment when I held him and he was red and squalling and I just couldn't believe that he had really arrived, and how he and I have worked hard to find our footing since then. As the first-born, he was stuck with the clumsiest, most anxiety-ridden version of mama.

And he is such a good little kid. He wants to be good. Not compliant, necessarily, though he can be eager to please. But I'm thinking more about his perspective on the world. He aspires to be good and kind and generous. He wants to rescue animals, to punish people who do bad things, to see things be fair for everyone (except maybe little brother -- I noticed he swapped the cups of animal cookies that I set before the two of them yesterday afternoon before little brother made it to the table). It's such a funny process, the growth of a person from an enigmatic baby to a little person with fierce passions, original thoughts, and his or her own strong little personality. It's exciting and beautiful and joyous and sad all at once.

School Year Winding Down

2010-06-09T08:55:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow is the squeaker's last day of school. I am way more excited than he is. He just doesn't get it yet -- one of the great glories of childhood is almost upon him, and he has no framework from which to appreciate it. But I am super-excited for him. He will love summertime!!

Today he has a weather play at school, which I gather involves the kids dressing for different kinds of weather and then singing songs on the school stage. I am leaving work early to go and watch. The pipsqueak will be napping, so he is not going, though I bet he would enjoy it.

Yesterday, we met with school staff about the squeaker. They didn't really say anything else other than what was said on the phone. So he'll be moving on to first grade, and hopefully concerns about his attention and focus will just fade into the background as he matures. The teacher who met with us said they don't really have serious concerns about a child's attention and focus until he is about 7; then, they might start looking into whether there is an attention disorder of some kind. So far, we have been very happy with how the school has handled everything.

On the pipsqueak front, we fear he may have had a peanut reaction, but we are not sure. To me, the uncertainty is the most maddening bit!!! He had a bite of his papa's peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He did not like it and immediately wiped at his mouth with his hand (which made me think of the fuzzy mouth sensation the allergy causes). Then he complained of a stomach ache for the next half hour or so, and he made some weird gagging/choking noises (which was the scariest moment -- I kept thinking, what if his throat is closing? What moment do we give the epipen injection?). But actually, the coughing sounds were mild, and there was nothing more alarming associated with them, such as gasping, wheezing, or shortness of breath. I was really puzzled by the whole thing.

Then his left eye swelled, and his cheek on that side was quite puffy. Sounds like an obvious reaction...and yet, he'd had some kind of altercation with the squeaker right around this time, and he got hit in the face by something (a hand? A toy sword? The boys couldn't explain it clearly to me, but they do often have sword fights). He did end up with a bloody lip from the incident with his brother. The same incident could very well have caused a minor eye injury. We gave him benadryl, but the next morning, the area around his eye was still dark red and bruised looking. I wouldn't think an allergic reaction would linger so much. And if it was an allergy, why wouldn't both eyes have swelled?

So I can't make sense of it. Since I don't trust allergy tests, I can't rely on them to clear up the uncertainty. I don't know what to do exactly.

Squeaker Tales

2010-06-03T06:22:00.005-04:00

Sometime over the last few weeks (and I'm not sure if it was a one-time thing or a process of several observations), the occupational therapist at the squeaker's school has been evaluating him. His teacher asked us many months ago if we would agree to such an evaluation, and we couldn't see any reason not to have the information.

So yesterday, the OT called me at home to set up an appointment for us to come in to meet with her. She told me point blank that they usually only request a meeting when they are seeking to have a kid held back (or "retained," in edu-lingo). But, she said, they are NOT seeking to have the squeaker retained; they are recommending that he continue on to first grade.

However, the OT explained that she wanted to meet anyway to discuss her findings. I'm guessing that the squeaker has puzzled her in much the same way he's puzzled the other adults (outside the family) who have worked with him. His vocabulary is "astounding," the OT commented. In some ways, he is "well above and beyond the other kids" in kindergarten. BUT, she said (and unfortunately it is a very big BUT), he struggles to focus, is inattentive, and has trouble staying on task. He watches the other kids to keep on track, and the teacher's aide often has to help him re-focus. There will be no teacher's aide in first grade, warned the OT somewhat ominously.

She repeatedly said that she wanted to be sure to let us know about her concerns so that they didn't surprise us in first grade and so that we could discuss strategies to help him succeed. And she said more than once that the school did not want to retain him; kids at this age are retained, she said, not because of academics but because of maturity, and a number of kids are being retained this year.

I thought this was interesting information, and also that it was very unfortunate. I'd bet that every one of the kids to be retained is a boy. And I hate to think of kids being stuck in high school until age 19 because they were less mature than the other kids as a six-year old. Kids grow at different rates. Shouldn't the early grades be able to accommodate a variety of maturity levels in the early grades? Doesn't it tell us something about the expectations in these early grades if they really are beyond a number of the little boys?

It's lucky that the school isn't recommending retention, because I highly doubt I would have agreed to it, and I'd hate to find myself at odds with the school so very early in the squeaker's schooling. I like the school very much and have had only positive interactions with the school staff so far. But if I can exert any control over the process at all, I WILL NOT let the squeaker end up graduating from high school at 19 years old. I think that's just ridiculous.

It's true that he is indeed a puzzle. His verbal ability really is extraordinary and has been since he was very small. He has a knack for language. His cognitive and analytical skills frankly stun us. Sometimes he says things that leave us reeling. We do not know how he can formulate such sophisticated ideas at such a young age. His memory is remarkable; when I asked him to summarize a book the other day as part of a school assignment, he instead recalled his favorite passage -- word for word. And yet his coordination is dismal. He falls constantly when he runs. His handwriting looks tortured. He has only recently learned to catch a ball and pedal a bike.

Worst of all, he simply cannot stay focused on a task that does not interest him. He wiggles and squirms in his seat. He falls off his chair. He talks quietly to himself. He plays with the pencil and the paper until he drops one or both onto the floor. He forgets what he is supposed to be doing. It isn't a simple inability to pay attention; he can spend 30 minutes immersed in putting together a 100 piece puzzle on his own. But if it's something he finds dull, pointless, or irrelevant, he cannot focus on it.

That the strengths he exhibits co-exist with these weaknesses is peculiar and deeply challenging for the adults who interact with him. He is at once very bright and very deficient (or at least he's deficient in ways that matter to the educational institution; I admit to some skepticism about whether these are "real" deficiencies). I don't necessarily think the squeaker is some kind of unappreciated genius. (He might be, but I don't know that we'd even know that yet, and I think it's far more likely that he's just a bright kid.) But I do think he is smart in ways that are hard to quantify and measure in an academic environment, while his weaknesses happen to be in areas key to academic success. This is why I periodically think to myself that home-schooling or even unschooling would be such a great option for him. But I am not comfortable with those choices for other (non-academic) reasons, so I think we are unlikely to take that path.

One other thing the OT said: we need to broaden his interests so that he can talk about more than dragons and dinosaurs. I wanted to laugh when she said this because I have a feeling his interests are far more wide-ranging than the vast majority of kindergartners. The squeaker loves dragons and dinosaurs, but he also loves animals in general, as well as fantasy and mythological creatures. He asks tons of questions about the Middle Ages, the Civil War, and ancient Egypt and Greece. He loves pirates and mummies. He watches movies from Pixar to traditional Disney to Miyazaki. He loves The Lord of the Rings, The Secret of NIMH, the Spiderwick Chronicles, and the Prydain Chronicles. He loves playing outside and riding his bike. he collects bones and rocks and beautiful leaves. He loves to visit the zoo, the aquarium, the Science Center, the Smithsonian, the NCR trail, and the beach. I'm not sure what we really could do to broaden his interests!

Making Frans

2010-05-28T11:05:00.005-04:00

The squeaker had to write about what he finds very difficult.

He wrote at the bottom of the page that he works hard to "mak frans." (Make friends.)

Broke my heart a little.

Principal on the Roof

2010-05-27T06:12:00.004-04:00

The squeaker's school had a reading challenge earlier this year. Each child was encouraged to read for at least one hour over a week long period. It didn't need to be all at once, and for the youngest kids, being read to counted. If a certain percentage of kids met the challenge, the principal promised to dress like a king for a day. If a larger percentage met the challenge, he promised to dress like a king and ride a scooter around the school all day. And if an even larger percentage met the challenge -- 95% -- he promised to spend the night in a tent on the roof of the school, dressed like a king, near the end of May.

Since 99% of the kids met the challenge, last night was the big night. I sort of had mixed feelings about the whole thing. I tend to be skeptical of gimmicky things, and I like to think reading is enough of a pleasure that kids don't need incentives to do it. However, my skepticism waned in the face of the squeaker's enthusiasm. When he got off the school bus in the afternoon, he was dying to have me come to the school to see his principal. He thought it was funny and clever, and he was very excited.

So after dinner, we drove over to the school. There were four people on the roof, all dressed in medieval costume. Two were the principal and the assistant principal, but I wasn't sure who the other two were. But I was surprised and amused to hear them all greet the squeaker by name, waving to him enthusiastically. He waved back. Maybe it shouldn't surprise me, but the school has well over 600 students, and as a kindergartner, the squeaker is one of the newest. I get the sense he is quite well-known, perhaps because he is the tiniest kid in the school, he has an unusual name, and he is so passionate and vocal about his love of dragons. Everyone knows all about his dragon obsession. Everyone seems to know the squeaker.

Anyway, the whole thing made me feel good about public school in general and our school in particular. I love that the squeaker has this community of people who know him and greet him affectionately, outside of the circle of mom and dad. It's his world; he is king. He knows his way around and has to guide me; he knows the people and has to introduce me. Some aspects of school have really been difficult for him, and I can't say that he has loved the experience of kindergarten. But it's clear to me that he has really benefitted from having a place to grow a bit away from home.

The pipsqueak, on the other hand, was quite nonchalant about the people on the roof. He stared, but he would not wave, and running around the flag pole outside the school quickly attracted his attention away from the people on the roof.

On the way home, we stooped at the playground and the boys ran around like mad. We've all been sick, and it felt like ages since the boys have been out and about having fun. The squeaker in particular has missed many fun events in the last week or so because of his illness. Hopefully, we are through the worst of it.

Poor Octopus

2010-05-21T06:47:00.003-04:00

This little octopus is from an ad for the "Happy Aquarium" game on Facebook. The pipsqueak can't stand it. When he watches me on Facebook, he has a zillion questions about it.

"Why is the octopus sad?"

"Where is his mama?"

"Is he crying?"

"Can I make him feel better?"

Meanwhile, the squeaker is trying to KISS the octopus on my computer screen. I have been surprised and pleased to hear both my boys express empathy so young. Certainly we try to teach it, but young kids act so often on impulse and ego; it is how they seem to be wired. I so enjoy getting a little glimpse of the pipsqueak's gentle heart.

The night weaning was going extremely well -- two nights of no nursing and no fussing! -- and then the boys got sick. Wednesday night, the pipsqueak had a fever of about 102 and was absolutely miserable. When I tucked him in my bed and then went to help the squeaker get his pajamas on, the pipsqueak fell asleep. The squeaker had a slight fever but didn't seem too bad. So I stayed home from work yesterday mostly because of the pipsqueak, but he turned out to be on the upswing while the squeaker was getting the worst of this virus.

I had planned to send the squeaker to school; he had a field trip to a nearby farm, and he was excited about it. At noon, when he would normally be getting on the bus, he had a temperature of 100.5 but didn't seem too bad. I was torn; I hated for him to miss the field trip, but tromping around a farm when you feel awful did not sound very enjoyable, either. So I kept him home, and I'm glad I did because an hour later his fever shot up to 102.2, and he was pretty miserable. he slept the afternoon away in front of a series of movies, which was kind of sad since it was an incredibly beautiful day.

By bedtime, the pipsqueak seemed much better (though still a little feverish) and we had given the squeaker a dose of tylenol. Today, he has another field trip. I am at work and hope the boys won't need me today. I did let the pipsqueak nurse last night, though, so now I need to start all over...

Bye Bye Night Nee Nees

2010-05-19T06:24:00.004-04:00

In preparation for shifting the pipsqueak to his own bed early this summer, I've decided that it is time to stop the night-nursing. Some readers may be astonished that the night-nursing is still going on with the pipsqueak, but those would likely be the readers who have never nursed a toddler. Night-nursing a newborn or infant means waking up every three or four hours all night long to painstakingly position yourself and your baby for a feeding and then dealing with subsequent leahage, spit up, and wet diapers.

Not so with a toddler. The pipsqueak may, at some time in the night, murmur, "Mama, I wanna nurse." Then he finds the "nee nee" and we both snuggle in and drift back to sleep. It usually happens once or maybe twice a night, though on days when we sleep a little later he may nurse a bit more in the hour or so before we get up. That's actually his favorite time to nurse.

But hunting in the night for nees nees that are not even in the room will surely wake him if he is in his own little bed without his mama, so it is a habit we must break to transition him to his own bed. Two nights ago, I decided that it is time. Really, there has been no particular reason to continue it this long; I had stopped with the squeaker much earlier. But the truth is, I really like my sleep, and in the short term ending the night-nursing means sleep disruption for both of us. Continuing is definitely the path of least resistance. But of course, good sleep for the long term means no more night nursing, as well as getting everyone to their proper beds.

I figured it would be a hard transition because the pipsqueak LOVES nursing. With the squeaker, I remember three or four nights of some fussy protests when he was told no, but it wasn't nearly as bad with him as I had feared. But my fears are worse with the pipsqueak because he loves it so much. But so far, so good. For the last two nights, he hasn't even asked to nurse. I did explain at bedtime that there would be no more nursing until it was light outside, and he nodded agreeably. But I don't know if that's why he hasn't asked. I can't imagine that he really remembers that in the middle of the night. But even so, there has been no request to nurse, and thus no refusal. So I am very happy about this, though I can't imagine that the habit will really be entirely broken this easily. Still, it's a great start.

The squeaker, on the other hand, is driving me bonkers. Up until now, I've always thought that his current age was my favorite age. Loved the squeaker at age 2, and 3, and 4, and 5. Each new stage brought its own delights. But age 6??? It's awful. His moods are super intense, and every small disappointment brings sulking or fury. He always seems sad or angry -- or manic. His tantrums are far worse than they ever were at age 2. He's become slightly sassy, which his father hasn't overheard yet, but for which the consequences will likely be dire when he does. He's physically resistant and has started doing an awful high-pitched shriek when he does not get his way. He is as loving and affectionate as ever when he is happy, but more often, he is very unhappy and quite vocal about it. I am hoping that the end of the school year will lift his mood. I think school has been a very intense experience for him and perhaps the summer will help him re-center himself. I hope so, or his mother may be buying a plane ticket.

Rainy Friday

2010-05-14T13:01:00.001-04:00

I had a terrible headache last night, and the pipsqueak tried to take care of me. He snuggled next to me in bed and patted me gently. After his papa brought me aspirin, he kept saying, “But mama, papa gave you medicine!” He couldn’t understand why I was still whimpering.

I am a super pathetic sick person, and I think headaches are particularly evil. And vomiting. And fevers. Heck, I can’t stand any sick symptoms! But last night I only had a headache, and today I can still feel it a bit.

It isn’t really helping my mood. I am feeling a little down, I suppose. Part of that is the weather – I need a warm sunny day!! But also I now know I really will be full time in just a matter of weeks (early July) and it feels like such a loss. I am excited that our financial pain will end and that I won’t have to fret about the bills every month, but I hate that I’ll spend so much more time away from my boys. I feel a kind of dull grief over it.

I know I am lucky to have spent four years working part time. I know many moms have not had such a great option. But the pipsqueak still feels so little. He needs me. I hate to be away from him. I’ll miss the squeaker, too, but he will be in school all day in the fall.

Sometimes I wonder if I am doing it all wrong. I start thinking about how if we lived in a cheaper house and I could stay home full time or even part time, and I could home school so that my boys wouldn’t have to be away all day at a place where the teachers don’t really know or understand them like I do. But I know that that scenario isn’t as ideal as it sounds. I would go crazy without anything else in my life but motherhood. I know some moms are really good at that – mine was. But I don’t think I am cut out for it. Sometimes I just need to get away. And while I am often tempted by home schooling or even unschooling, I don’t think either would equip my boys to function well in our culture. I want them to have the experience of making their own way, without mom or dad as cheerleader/guardian/teacher all the time. So I don’t actually think I am doing it all wrong, and I know my grief is making me feel overdramatic about the whole thing.

But I do feel very sad.

The squeaker is almost finished school. We’ve been thinking a lot lately about some kind of activity into which to channel his energy. We want it to be something that requires some skill and coordination, but that doesn’t have too much structure or wait time. Maybe gymnastics or free-form swimming (rather than just swim lessons). I want something like a soccer club – a group of kids who get together informally to kick the ball around. I don’t know. Trying to figure out something.

Other than that, just looking forward to some fun late spring and summer events. Crabs! Parties! Beach!!!

Mama and Papa Working

2010-05-12T12:40:00.001-04:00

The pipsqueak says: My papa is a teacher and my mama is a dudge.

Glad to know he has promoted me. Little pitchers really DO have big ears!

Faeries and other Happenings

2010-05-05T06:17:00.004-04:00

The last thing the pipsqueak said to me the other night, well after I thought he'd drifted off to sleep: "Why do Mater and Lightning McQueen drive on the grass? They shouldn't do that." And then he was asleep. That part of the Cars movie must really nag at him if it was his last thought of the day!

Yesterday, he kept asking us, "Why do cows have fuzz?" It sounded like he was setting up the punchline for a joke, but no joke ever came. He kept asking over and over and over and over and over again, so I finally said, "To keep them warm?" So then when he'd ask, we'd say, "Well, what do YOU think?" and he'd say, in a DUH kind of voice, "Because they're cold! It's like coats!"

He spent the afternoon outside while I was vacuuming, and every few minutes he would bring in the head of a dandelion flower, which he wanted to put in water. I explained that for them to drink water, he needed to pick them so that they'd have stems. So he went back outside and then came in again to announce that he couldn't find any stems. I told him we'd find some together, but by the time I finished vacuuming, he was melting down and begging for a nap. It felt like a lost opportunity, and that made me sad.

He's been very difficult at bedtime lately, which is a change. He's always been very easy to get to sleep, but this week, he has rolled around, sung songs, and talked talked talked at bedtime. I've always thought the squeaker was chatty, but he has nothing on the pipsqueak. The pipsqueak finally drifted off last night and the night before around 11 PM. That meant that yesterday, he slept in until 9:30 AM, but I don't know if he'll do that today when he has his grandma.

The squeaker attended a play yesterday for the first time with the kindergarten classes at his school. It was a dramatic version of the kids' book "Are You My Mother?" performed at a theatre in York, PA. He seemed to enjoy it, but he had some critical comments. "I really did like it," he'd say, "BUT...." I think he felt bad about his criticisms, so I explained that his papa and I always had both good and bad things to say about movies, books, and plays, even if we really love them. Part of the fun, I explained, is thinking about what could have been done differently or better. I think he found the minimalistic costumes in the play to be less than impressive.

When I was giving the boys a bath in the evening, I noticed the squeaker had a bug bite on his chin, and I told him so. As soon as he got out of the bath, he climbed onto the sink and looked into the mirror. "It's funny," he said, "I'm me, but I can't see my face, and you can. But you can't see your own face, but I can." Funny indeed. He is such a quirky little thing.

The weather has been great lately, nice and hot, which I love. I don't love the humidity so much, but I'll take it over cold weather any day. This past weekend, we went to the Faerie Festival at Spoutwood Farm. It's kind of like a rougher-around-the-edges Renaissance festival, except that people wear faerie wings and other such clothing. I'm always amused by how unsanitized it is. People smoke cigarettes and children wade in the creek, and no one is saying they can't or putting up signs to prevent them from doing so. It has a lovely unregulated feel. Some people go all day every day for the 3-day event, but I think we'd get bored. We go for just a few hours to see the sights and the people and to check out the cool faerie wares. We live just a few miles from Spoutwood Farm, so this year we had a post-festival party. We did a lot of planning and it was a huge success. We had almost 20 kids running around in the grass, and the grown-ups enjoyed relaxing with some beers. When it got dark, there were glowsticks and s'mores for the kids, and more beer for the grown-ups. For my boys, just being out after dark was a delight since it is quite rare.

It was such a beautiful warm weekend. Though our driveway and Pennsylvania back roads give me stomach ulcers in the winter, I just love where we live once the weather turns warm. Once the trees have leaves, our little space is so private. You cannot see any other houses, and the woods are so lovely and alive. I cannot imagine moving back into a place where the neighbors practically live on top of you, you can't hang out clothes on the clothesline in your underwear, and you have to close the blinds to have privacy indoors. We don't even have blinds on some windows because there just isn't anyone who can see in. I love it!

Almost May

2010-04-29T11:27:00.002-04:00

I was telling the squeaker how much I like his name yesterday. I told him that it's Irish and that we picked it out just for him after much thought and deliberation.

"Isn't it cool?" I asked him. "Do you like your name?"

"Yes," he replied. "But I'd like it even better if you had named me 'Dragon.'"

Ah ha. At least he didn't say "Daisy the Dragon."

Speaking of which, the pipsqueak has become as hooked on bedtime stories about hobbits and dragons (starring himself and his big brother as the hobbits) as the squeaker was at this age. So every night, I have to think up another story or two! Wish I'd written them all down when I made them up for the squeaker.

The pipsqueak also has the squeaker's habit of narrating things. So if I call him "my lovebug," he might say: "'I'd like a drink,' said the lovebug to mama." It's hilarious and bizarre all at once.

This weekend, we'll be going to the annual May Day Faerie Festival at Spoutwood Farm, which is in our neck of the woods. I'm thinking that I'll dress the boys as hobbits, though I wonder if they'd prefer to be dragons. Actually, I am quite sure they WOULD prefer to be dragons. But then they'd be chasing and trying to eat the faeries the whole time....

Feed Me

2010-04-21T07:48:00.000-04:00

The pipsqueak took a long bath by himself last night, which is unusual because he and the squeaker usually bathe together. But the squeaker was occupied, so the pipsqueak had the tub to himself.

I could hear him playing with the toys and talking in a squeaky little baby voice, and it sounded so sweet that I stopped putting clothes away to listen. Here is what I heard:

“Oh, said the liopleurodon, I am so hungry. I need to eat. Ju Ju, please feed me.

OK, said Ju Ju. I will feed you. Here is some food on these tableclofs.”

So I had to peer in. In one hand, the pipsqueak had a plastic liopleurodon. With the other, he had carefully arranged two small washcloths on the flat edge of the tub; these were the “tableclofs.” And on the tableclofs were all the little action figures, four little men laid flat for the lipleurodon’s dinner. And the lipleurodon kept asking for more and saying thank you in this sweet little baby voice, while the pipsqueak cheerfully stuffed action figures in his mouth and asked (in his regular voice) if he’d had enough to eat yet.

It was mesmerizing and kind of creepy all at once.

Monday, we took the squeaker to the pediatrician for his six-year physical. He checked out just fine and was relieved that he didn’t need any more shots, and that he doesn’t need any until age 11. The only bad news was that he is still super teeny tiny – at the first percentile. This is consistent with his growth since birth. Heck, even before birth he was tiny – they sent us for an urgent ultrasound at about 33 weeks because he was measuring so small. The sonographer took one look at my 5 foot 4 inch husband and told us, “This baby won’t be a basketball player you know!” The squeaker was only 6 pounds 5 ounces at birth, despite being full term.

Our pediatrician has never been concerned, but we did ask about his height. The doctor said that at his current rate, he’d be about 5 foot 2 inches or so, maybe a tad taller. My husband had really been hoping for about 5’ 6”; I would have been happy with 5’4”. So we are not sure what to make of the situation. My biggest concern is that I want the squeaker to be able to find a partner someday, and I think that could be very difficult for such a short man. My husband’s motivation is a little different; he’s always hated shopping for pants because of his height, and he hoped the squeaker would avoid that frustration. The experience always leaves my husband feeling very abnormal, since many places carry nothing even close to his size. We know the statistics about short men earning less and blah blah blah, but neither of us comes from the kind of family that advocates growing up to be a big-shot CEO or something. Obviously, I’d like my boys to be financially successful, but I am not so sure that being 5 foot 2 would prove fatal to that endeavor.

I suppose it’s worth spending some time researching what options we may have. The pediatrician said he didn’t see an urgent need for doing anything about it, but he acknowledged with a smile that he himself is only 5 foot 4. The obvious choice would be hormone treatments, and I believe that is something he would start around age 9 or 10. But I have to say that I absolutely hate the idea. Beyond my moral sense that such treatments condones the idea that short people with no medical issues are “abnormal,” that it’s best to look like everybody else as much as possible, that being taller is “better,” I worry about the long-term implications of medical treatment for a perfectly healthy kid who just happens to be small. There is some indication that hormone treatments may raise the cancer risk, but more than that, there is simply no good data on long-term effects; the treatment was only approved for use in healthy boys in 2003.

I know that short kids are picked on for their height, but I don’t think that’s a very good reason for medical treatment. I was picked on for wearing glasses, other kids were targeted because of their clothes, or because they had pimples, or because they were clumsy, or because they spoke English with a foreign accent, or because they had a funny name, or because they hit puberty early. The squeaker is a peculiar kid -- I say that with great love and affection -- and I doubt that being taller would really affect his social ranking at school.

Still, I hate to think of him trying to navigate the teenage dating world with such a height deficit, and I hate to think of lots of girls writing him off before he’s said a word just because of his height. And yet I can’t say that the kinds of girls who would do that strike me as kind, sensitive people, so maybe that wouldn’t really matter for him anyway.

I don’t know. It’s something to think about. I am not too worried about it because deep down, I believe he will be just fine. He is funny and smart and charming, and I am not troubled that he might find it difficult to become a CEO. And I do believe there are many women who don’t get caught up in superficial assessments of others, so I am not convinced the tiny squeaker will be lonely for life.

Monsters Outside

2010-04-15T06:31:00.005-04:00

Both boys like to be outside, but I think the pipsqueak could pitch a tent and happily live outdoors. I've heard of children who will go outside on their own, sometimes wandering off and ending up in the news as lost or worse, and before the pipsqueak, I really wondered how it happened. Wasn't anyone WATCHING the kid? How did they get the door open? And WHY? After all, the squeaker showed no inclination to open the door or to wander outside.

But now I get it. I might be doing the dishes in the evening when I catch sight of a half-naked two-year old streaking through the backyard. We have a set of French doors in the living room, and when the weather is warm, we open them up wide. The pipsqueak apparently sees this as an opportunity, because he'll slide open the screen door and let himself out. There is no lock on the screen door, so we're going to have to figure out something. Because yes, I AM watching him, but he is quick and stealthy, and somehow he ends up outside, where he then strips off his clothing (no idea why) and runs around the yard.

Apparently, sneaking outside to play leaves him feeling a little lonely for the big brother he has left indoors. Yesterday afternoon, the pipsqueak slipped out (with me watching this time) and then played for a bit on the patio by himself. But then he began to pine for some company, and he pressed his face to the screen and called to his brother, "Come outside and play with me!" But the squeaker would have none of it; just as he does every day after coming home from school, which involves being pent up for FOUR WHOLE HOURS, he was leaping around the living room with his sword, fighting monsters and doing the periodic cartwheel. It's a burst of energy that usually lasts for an hour or so, during which he is an absolute whirlwind of noise and motion. But he likes to do it inside, probably because it involves a lot of jumping on the furniture.

So the squeaker replied, "Not right now! I'm busy slaying monsters."

The pipsqueak stood quietly and thought about this for a while, watching his brother through the screen. Then he had an idea, apparently: "Hey, will you do me a big favor???" he called out.

"What do you want?" asked big brother.

"There are a lot of monsters out here," replied the pipsqueak. "Can you slay them for me?"

The pipsqueak was trying to trick the squeaker into coming outside. I thought this was remarkably clever, though I was a little surprised at how easily this fib came to the pipsqueak. Alas, it didn't work. The squeaker replied that he was MUCH too busy slaying indoor monsters, and the lonely pipsqueak finally slid the door back open and came back inside.

NOT Sad

2010-04-09T08:23:00.002-04:00

My husband told me this story this morning, and it is very pipsqueakish.

The boys got up early and promptly began bickering over a book, which the squeaker had first. The pipsqueak cried and fussed, but their papa said he couldn't have it because the squeaker was using it. Then he told the pipsqueak it was OK to be sad about it, but he still couldn't have it.

"I'm not SAD!" roared the pipsqueak, stamping his little foot. "I'm MAD. And ANGRY. And FRUSTRATED."

At least he is not afraid to express himself!

Zzzzzzzz

2010-04-08T06:53:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about the Big Bedtime Shift -- moving the pipsqueak from my bed into the little boys' room, so that his papa can return to his own bed on a full-time, every night basis instead of an irregular basis. I'm anxious to do this shift for a number of reasons. One, it seems more "normal" to have the kids in their own room, with adults in THEIR own room. Maybe it really is more normal, I don't know. I'm a little embarrassed that this is a factor in my mind at all because I've never thought the the "normal" way of doing things was remotely relevant. I believe families need to do what they want and what works. For us, co-sleeping has worked beautifully. Sleep has never been a struggle or a battleground in our house. We all get plenty of sleep, and restless nights are extremely rare.

I also think that there isn't really one typical arrangement -- many parents who criticize co-sleeping as a practice have no problem with their kids coming to their bed sometime in the night. But I still have this nagging sense that there is a way that we OUGHT to be doing things.

While I try to minimize that sense of "ought to" (because I really do recognize that such reasoning is silly), I am also genuinely excited about having a little more separation from the boys. For us, co-sleeping has meant that baby and I go to sleep together, and I've been doing this for over 6 years. At a certain point (age 2 or so), I can just get baby to sleep and then get up again myself, but this is harder in practice than in principle. Once we're snuggled in the dark, half-asleep, I don't really WANT to get back up. This isn't as burdensome as it probably sounds; we've never put our boys to bed at 6:30 or 7 PM, as some parents do. Usually, we go to bed sometime around 9 PM or a bit later, which works well for me since I get up at 5 AM on work days. I've never been the kind of person who really enjoyed staying up late, so it hasn't been much of a sacrifice for me. I actually LIKE going to bed early. But I do miss the quiet time with my husband. And sometimes I really long for some quiet time to myself, and I know many moms use the late-night hours for some me-time.

So I am kind of excited about drawing some lines between kids and adults, about putting the boys to bed in their own room together, snuggled in their matching twin beds, while the adults have a few quiet hours before retiring to the bedroom that's just for grown-ups. The logistics of the shift trouble me a bit -- how will I get the pipsqueak to stay in his own bed? How do I keep him from wandering the house, but still ensure that big brother can get to the bathroom at night when he needs to? When is the pipsqueak ready to sleep in a twin bed without falling out in the night? The bed is pretty high up. I have thought about removing the box spring temporarily to lower the height.

But more than the logistics, there is a part of me that is really sad about the shift. And then I wonder if it's premature. The truth is that I love my quiet nighttime hours with my baby. I love putting our pajamas on together and snuggling in. I love the way he says, "Can I nurse, mama?" and then I stroke his soft hair and cheek while he nurses, his whole body relaxing. I love that in the night, when he suddenly sits up, I can quietly soothe him with soft words and a little back rub, and then he settles back down next to me to sleep some more. I love to watch him sleep in the waning nighttime hours, his breathing slow and deep, his face so smooth and beautiful in the moonlight. And I love to watch him dream, his funny little mouth twitching. Sometimes, he talks in his sleep; he woke his papa the other morning by shouting, "It's MINES!" in his sleep -- but he never woke up. Some nights, he falls asleep holding my hand.

More than anything, our nighttime rhythm has kept us connected even when I had to work, or when we felt really busy as a family, or when the pipsqueak was sick. No matter how much I am away during the day, at nighttime we snuggle and nurse and just breathe each other in, mama and baby. I know it's important and inevitable for him to move on and be a big kid in a big boy bed, and I am excited about being a grown-up with my own space. But a part of me is really grieving over this coming change.

I know it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. There will still be lots of snuggles with both boys in the grown-up bed. But it's the beautiful rhythm and interconnectedness with my baby, my youngest and last baby, that will be lost. I know this from making the shift when we moved the squeaker to his room. It seems like so long ago that he would weave his little hand into my hair to snuggle in at night, something the pipsqueak, who relishes his own space, has never done. Once the squeaker and I no longer snuggled at night, there was a different rhythm between us. Not bad, just more separate. And while I know that separation from the pipsqueak is inevitable, I am still sad about it.

Busy Busy Busy

2010-04-07T06:14:00.003-04:00

Things have been rather chaotic lately. I don't know why. Somehow, we ended up with stuff going on every day over the Easter weekend. The weather has been lovely, unseasonably warm with lots of sunshine. Usually, I hate April almost as much as March. The month feels like such a tease -- springtime according to the calendar, and yet so much like the chilly wet days of winter. But this April has been fabulous.

The boys were pleased to get their Easter baskets, though the squeaker wondered why the bunny didn't hide them the way he did last year. (Unfortunately, the bunny doesn't have as good a memory as the squeaker does and had no idea that the baskets were hidden last year.)

They are loving this warm weather. Each day ends with a serious scrubbing in the bathtub just to locate the boy under all that dirt. Both of them like to run around outside half-dressed, though the pipsqueak has a particular tendency to remove his clothes and shoes. Yesterday, the pipsqueak spent about 20 minutes dressing himself for the first time. He was adamant in rejecting any help, though his struggle was painful to watch. First he ended up with both legs in one pant leg, and then he couldn't figure out how to get the shirt on. But he did do it eventually.

The pipsqueak had to be stripped naked before coming into the house at bathtime, and I put my arms out for his little naked self and said, "Come here, my hunka hunka burnin' love." He liked that. He often pretends to be a baby kitty or a baby penguin or some other animal, and then I have to be Mama Kitty and his papa is Papa Kitty. So this time he spent the evening calling me Mama Hunka Hunka and his father Papa Hunka Hunka, which made me laugh every time. There's something hilarious about him adopting phrases he is clueless about, such as when he enthusiastically sings "Mexican Radio." Neither word must mean the slightest thing to him, but he loves to sing along (and dance. And drink beer. He really does like beer and will beg for it. How weird is that??)

The squeaker has been making lots of little art projects, which is notable because he seems to actually have gained some competence with scissors and glue and markers. What was once such a struggle seems to be much easier for him now. He can cut out small pieces, decorate them, and then glue them together to make little animals or monsters or cars. He's also reading very well, though fluency is still a long way off. But I do think he's beginning to enjoy it more.

There is some possibility that my part time gig will become a full time one in the near future, and I am having a lot of mixed feelings about that. I have loved working part time so much. However, I have NOT loved paying the bills at the end of the month so much. Solvency is good. But still, these beautiful April weekdays feel a bit like a swan song. Working full time will mean that a much greater portion of my life is spent at work, and I will see my little boys a little less. Not much I know, and I have been so lucky to have this time with them, but it still makes me a little sad.

So I've been thinking a lot about how to structure my life in the fall. The squeaker will be in school full time, and the pipsqueak could do preschool. I think he'd like it. But I can't quite figure out how it would work, or how I would pay for it, so I think I'll put it off for another year. He'd still have two full school years for preschool before he starts kindergarten. I just have some regrets about doing only one year of preschool for the squeaker since I think it was a hard adjustment for him and that he would really have benefitted from two years. So I want to be sure to do everything I can to make school easier for the pipsqueak. However, he is a more physically competent kid all around, so maybe it is nothing to worry about.

Full time school might mean the end of my super early schedule. I have been working from 6 AM to 2:30 PM, or something close to that, for years now. But in the fall, someone will have to get the squeaker on the school bus in the morning. My husband has to leave for work too early to do that, but I have flex time. Still, that would mean a 9 AM to 5:30 PM schedule for me, which sounds dreadful. Certainly I'm glad to have flex time, but I'm hoping some other solution presents itself.

My penis is crying

2010-03-31T10:56:00.001-04:00

The pipsqueak and the squeaker spent some time with their grandparents this past weekend so that my husband and I could catch a movie. The grandparents love to indulge the boys, and I do mean indulge: filet mignon, king crab legs, and hot-tubbing.

The pipsqueak particularly loves the crab legs; he ate three of them (and the squeaker ate the fourth). He didn't ask for beer with his crabs (though he did ask for beer when he had pizza earlier this week). The boys colored some Easter eggs and generally had a great time.

However, I think the hot tub may have caused a problem. The grandparents usually reduce the temperature so that it won't be too hot for the boys, and I am sure they did that this time. But the next day, the pipsqueak complained that his penis hurt, and the tip was very red and inflamed looking. When he peed, he cried. It was obviously hurting him a lot.

"Mama," he said. "My penis is crying." I wonder if maybe the chemicals in the hut tub irritated his delicate skin.

He was very anxious for me NOT to call the doctor ("Just use some medicine, mama"). I figured I'd give it a day or two just to see if it looks better, and by last night, it had improved a lot. But I'm thinking he shouldn't go hot-tubbing again anytime soon.

Naughty Words

2010-03-24T07:22:00.001-04:00

We went to a little backyard barbeque over the weekend at the home of one of my husband’s co-workers. One other co-worker was there with his family, so there were seven children present, five little girls and my two boys. The kids all played fairly nicely together, and my husband seemed to have a nice time chatting with his co-workers.

I busied myself with keeping an eye on the pipsqueak, in part because he’s an expert at finding trouble and in part because I just find socializing with people I don’t know to be exceedingly awkward and uncomfortable. The wives of my husband’s co-workers are nice enough, but I never really know what to say to people, and the two of them know each other well enough from previous get-togethers to have plenty to say.

Anyway, one thing I found amusing was that my husband’s co-workers teased him about how much he “swore,” and about how he does it in front of the kids. My husband was surprised and maybe very slightly dismayed. Bad language is just something we don’t think very much about. We know we do it – I’m much more likely even than my husband to say “Oh, fuck!” – but it frankly doesn’t seem like a very big deal to us. I think there are only three reasons to limit “bad” language, and the fact that the words are “naughty” isn’t one of them. First, I think overusing such language risks sounding like an idiot. You don’t want anyone to think cuss words constitute half of your very limited vocabulary. Second, you don’t want to invite negative consequences, such as discipline at school. (And this one persists beyond K-12 schooling; my office interviewed candidates for a position in January, and management was surprised that one candidate cussed throughout his interview. It did not impress the interviewers.) And third, you don’t want to make people uncomfortable needlessly. In some circumstances, it just sounds inappropriate; there’s a casualness to using such language that can be jarring in some situations.

That being said, I think there are plenty of circumstances in which it is perfectly appropriate and no big deal, and I trust that my boys are capable of distinguishing such circumstances from those in which the use of such language is ill-advised. It’s just not in my nature to say that certain words are forbidden because they are “bad.” I also don’t think that avoiding such words means that your kid won’t know them or use them. I guess I don’t see much point to sanitizing my language around my kids, but perhaps that is a minority view. I think my husband and I will be more conscious about it now, in any case.

Leprechaun Gold

2010-03-18T06:13:00.004-04:00

Last night at bathtime, the squeaker asked me, "Did you leave out my note for the leprechaun?"

"Note?"

"Yes," he explained. "I wrote a note for him asking for some gold."

"Yes, I saw that, but I didn't know you were really going to leave the note for the leprechaun," I said carefully, trying to hint that maybe doing so wasn't really a great idea anyway.

"Well, that's why I wrote it." He had indeed painstakingly written a note saying, "May I plees hav sum of yor gold?"

"Do you think that's the right way of asking a leprechaun for some of his gold?" he wondered.

"Um, I guess so," I said, trying to figure out the best way to break the news to him that I thought receiving gold was unlikely. In my head, I'm thinking WHERE DID THIS KID EVER GET THE IDEA THAT A LEPRECHAUN MIGHT ACTUALLY LEAVE HIM GOLD?!?!? WTF!??!?

But I didn't say that. Instead, I said, "You know, I don't think I ever, EVER had a leprechaun leave me gold. Either did your papa."

"Did you ever write him a note asking for some?"

"Well . . . no."

"Did Papa?"

"No . . ."

"Maybe that's why. Maybe you just have to ask."

"Um. Maybe. Or maybe he just doesn't leave kids gold. Gold is hard to find. And leprechauns are tricky and don't like to give it up. I can't imagine a leprechaun just giving up some of his gold. They just don't do that."

"Maybe this one will."

"Actually," his papa broke in, "Leprechauns are so tricky that they'll leave fool's gold."

"What's that?" he asked suspiciously.

"It looks just like gold, but it just disappears later. It's magic!"

The whole time we're having this discussion, I'm searching the squeaker's expression and tone for the barest hint that he knows this is all just pretend. He has to know that, right? We've talked about fiction and myth and story-telling, and he knows that fantasy is rich and wonderful but not real. And yet he doesn't betray even the slightest tremor of doubt. He believes, wholly and truly, that there are leprechauns, real, mischieveous little leprechauns. I like to think of myself as always the truth-teller, a mother who doesn't and wouldn't lie to him, who trusts that my kids can handle the truth. But I like for the squeaker to lead the way; I don't like to push him down the path of skepticism. And yet all our hints and obvious skepticism are met only with his shining-eyed enthusiasm, his unshakable belief in the magical and unpredictable, his faith that to get leprechaun gold, you only need to ask a leprechaun.

I say to his papa, "So? What are we going to do? I don't HAVE any gold 'for the leprechaun' to leave him."

Happily, it dawned on his papa that we might have a few of those Sacawagea coins around, which are gold-colored. With the squeaker trailing along behind us, we empty the coin jar onto the bed in the spare bedroom and sift through it. That the squeaker trails along behind us chattering away about the leprechaun underscores the firmness of his belief in the magical; he doesn't absorb what we are doing and doesn't inquire about it. He doesn't notice what coins we find in the pile or that his papa slips the gold ones into his pocket.

So after his bath, he hurries down the stairs for one last check and is ecstatic to find two shiny gold pieces by his note. Though I anticipated his joy, it's still astonishing to see. Such a small thing -- a couple of dollar coins that have probably been sitting around in our change jar for years -- but to him, they are affirmation of all the secret magic that he knows exists. You just have to ask, right?

Quarter, Nickel, Dime, Penny...

2010-03-17T08:45:00.004-04:00

The squeaker is learning about coins at school. And let me tell you how much this dragon-loving, tree-climbing, sword-wielding six-year old cares about coins and their values: NOT AT ALL. Shocking, I know.

We've gone over it and over it. The kid who at age two could identify the species of his five toy sharks, who knows ten zillion different kinds of dinosaurs, who can quote vast sections of The Hobbit from memory, cannot tell a nickel from a dime. He cannot remember that a quarter is the biggest. He cannot remember that the penny looks different. We haven't even started on learning the values!!

The truth is that he doesn't care. Nothing about the coins interests him (though he does like the cool eagle on the quarter, and he periodically muses about what the money might buy him). The flip side of his many intense interests is that when it comes to things he's NOT interested in, nothing sticks.

So we weren't surprised to get a call last week from his teacher expressing some concern about him. She emphasized that the academics concern her not at all -- he is doing just fine. But he cannot sit still. His gross and fine motor control are very poor. And he has great difficulty focusing on things at times. She was not recommending that he repeat kindergarten, but she wanted to express these concerns now so that he doesn't end up struggling in first grade.

For better or for worse, I don't think repeating kindergarten is an option. He already struggles to relate to his peers, not because he is some kind of genius but because he's quirky and immersed in his imagination. I don't think being in a class with younger kids would help that at all. He and his classmates each had to make a list at school, and he chose to do "fantasy creatures." I'm guessing the other kids did "animals" or "colors" or "superheros." My kid listed Pegasus, Medusa, Basilisk, the World Gobbler... I am sure this did not endear him to his teacher.

When the squeaker's dad picked him up on Friday, the classroom aide, who likes the squeaker very much, alluded to a difference of opinion with his teacher. The squeaker is, she said, a six year old boy. So yes, he struggles to write his letters and he cannot sit still. That's what six-year old boys are like.

I agree with her, but what to do with him until he can achieve what is expected of him? I don't know.

Sexy Slippers and the Pipsqueak Birded

2010-03-10T06:14:00.003-05:00

The squeaker put on his little dragon slippers earlier this week and then said to me, "Aren't they sexy?!?"

Ack!

It was tough to explain to him why he shouldn't use that word.

The pipsqueak has been ill, and his misery seems to know no bounds. But yesterday, when we walked the squeaker to the bus, the pipsqueak was enjoying the warm weather and the sunshine so much he didn't want to go back inside the house. While I waited with the squeaker by the road, the pipsqueak wandered up the driveway hunting for rocks and sticks. He found a good stick and thwacked the melting snow a few times. Then he threw some small rocks into the snow. He was having a good time with the rocks when a bird trilled very loudly in the tree next to him. He jumped back in alarm and called to me, "Mama, what was that?!?"

"Just a bird," I said.

"That bird. It...it...it birded me!" he said anxiously. Then he added, "Because I was throwing rocks."

Lesson learned, I think; the pipsqueak did not like being "birded."

Dreamy Pipsqueak

2010-03-03T10:47:00.001-05:00

The pipsqueak has been having some vivid dreams lately. A few days ago, I peeped into the room where he was napping, and to my surprise, his eyes were wide open, and he was looking very thoughtful.

“Everything OK?” I asked him.

“The wind,” he replied softly. “I was holding my special things – my doggie and my elephant – and the wind blew them away. And I was sad.” His eyes are always big and expressive, but as he was saying this, they looked particularly round and sad.

I went in and hugged him. “It was a dream,” I said. “Your special things are just fine. Just a dream. I wouldn’t let the wind blow away your doggie and your elephant.” And we checked on them together, just to be sure.

Sometimes, when we wait for the squeaker to get off the bus, we stand at the bottom of our hill and the wind sweeps across the fields and makes us cold and miserable. He’ll hide under my coat to get away from the wind. No wonder he imagined it as something almost predatory.

Then yesterday, the very first sentence he uttered was, “‘There are monsters in the playroom,’ said Julian to Dah.” He said it in a loud, strong voice even though he had just woken up.

“Monsters? In our playroom?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “Dah’s playroom. But I’ll fight ‘em!”

Andrew's Mom

2010-02-25T06:46:00.001-05:00

Last night, I snuggled into bed with the boys and a whole pile of bedtime books. Each of them got to pick two, and then I picked three of my favorites. The pipsqueak particularly loves books about Franklin the turtle, so he chose two of those. One of them was Franklin Says I Love You, which is about Franklin’s effort to find the perfect gift for his mother on her birthday.

So we’re reading along, and Franklin is troubled about not being able to find the right gift because his mother is so very wonderful when the Squeaker interjects “Not as great as Andrew’s mom.” (Andrew is a kid in his class and on his bus.)

“Does Andrew have a great mom?” I asked.

“Yes, he has an amazing mom.”

“Well, I wish I were as great as Andrew’s mom!” I teased.

“I wish you were, too,” replied the Squeaker seriously.

Ouch. I know kids say things inartfully at time, but that stung. Worst of all, I felt needled and defensive, and yet all too aware of the absurdity of being defensive about my 5-year old’s comparison to a mom he’d never met.

I tried to keep reading, but I couldn’t let it go.

“What’s so great about Andrew’s mom, anyway?” I asked.

“She does activities with him,” he said.

“Don’t I do activities with you?”

“Not really. I do them by myself. They do them together.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling deflated. I kept reading, but I couldn’t keep my mind on the book; instead I was thinking doesn’t Andrew’s mother have to clean and do dishes and laundry? Maybe he doesn’t have a younger sibling so she can spend more time with him...or maybe she doesn’t have to work...But I tried to let it go and focus on the book.

Finally, feeling really foolish that I couldn’t shrug off the conversation, I said, “I bet Andrew’s mom doesn’t read him seven books at bedtime.”

“That’s probably true,” agreed the Squeaker grudgingly.

“I think I’m a good mom,” I added peevishly.

But he didn’t say anything, so I finally did let it go. Every rational cell in my brain was trying to dismiss the conversation as silliness: he’s only five. A mom who fed her kid cotton candy every night for dinner would probably rank as a great mom is his mind, but obviously not in mine. But it still left me feeling sad and inadequate. What if I don’t play with him enough? Why don’t I do more activities with him? Why doesn’t he have the same enthusiasm for me that Andrew has for his mom? Aren’t little kids supposed to adore their own moms? Do I yell too much? Am I too distracted?

Do I try to draw some kind of lesson from this – something that would alter my behavior? Or do I shrug it off because he’s just a little kid who says things impulsively? I don’t know. But I don’t think I can just not feel sad about it.

BAM

2010-02-24T07:25:00.003-05:00

Every Tuesday is Downstairs Cleaning Day. This means that I pick up the random stuff that's all over the place, run the vacuum, mop the kitchen floor, and scrub the bathroom. Nothing fancy, and no deep cleaning. But it keeps the house nice. The boys are pretty good at entertaining themselves while I clean, but by the end of the two hours or so that it takes me, they are restless.

The last room that I do is the sunroom, and it's a tiled porch that is as cold as the outside. It has no heat and there are lots of windows. So when I do that room, I usually pull the front door shut and leave the boys inside. It only takes me about 3 minutes to vacuum out there.

So yesterday, I pull the door shut and am just finishing up when I hear screaming from inside the house. At first I think it's just them fighting, but I can't hear any shouting, just wordless wailing, and it's both of them. So I open the door, bellowing "What is going on in here?!?!?!" and they are both standing there, the squeaker clutching his face and the pipsqueak rubbing his head, and they are shrieking, "We ran into each other, Mama! We ran into each other!"

The squeaker has blood on his face and I can see that his lip is split. Then I see that his nose is starting to bleed and his lip is swelling. The pipsqueak had no visible injuries, and I think he was more upset about his brother's hysterics than about the collision itself.

So once I get them calmed down (no easy feat: "I'm bleeding, Mama. My nose is bleeding!!!!!), I ask them how they ran into each other. Why were they running? Where? Why didn't they see each other before they collided? And HADN'T I TOLD THEM NOT TO RUN AROUND LIKE THAT? I'm afraid tears rarely bring out my gentle, tender side.

Anyway, it seems that the squeaker, who must have an IQ of 140 or something, was RUNNING WITH HIS EYES CLOSED. Full tilt, through the living room, probably while giggling maniacally with the pipsqueak until BAM, the pipsqueak's hard head hit the squeaker's face. Ouch.

So now the squeaker has a red nose, split lip, and bruised face. His upper lip, clear up to his nose, is red and swollen. And today is picture day at school, of course. Guess we'll be memorializing the collision forever.

Friday

2010-02-19T06:26:00.002-05:00

On days that I work, I get up at 5 AM. I have flex time at my job (one of the many great things about it), and while I could go in later, I love being able to head home at 2:30 PM. It's great in the summer because I still have a long day left, and it's nice in the winter because even though the days are short, I don't leave for home in the dark. Sometimes, though, it's hard to get out of my cozy bed into the early morning darkness. I would never use the snooze button -- that is so not me, LOL -- so at 4:55 AM, I climb out of bed.

This morning when I got up, my husband (who doesn't have to get up until 6:30 AM) said, "What's up? Are you alright?"

"Um...it's time for me to get up. For work."

Long pause, and then his voice again: "Oh. I thought it was Saturday." Another pause. "But it's not."

"No," I said. "It's not. Sorry!"

Is anything worse than that?!?!? I felt bad for him. At least it is Friday.

The squeaker loves Fridays because we pick him up from school. This means he doesn't have to wait for the bus, which is always a low point for him. Picking him up works for me, too, as waiting for him to get off the bus on these cold days is a low point for me. This morning my ears STILL hurt from waiting for him while the chill winds blew across the neighboring fields yesterday afternoon. (Forgot my hat...)

So last night in the bathtub the boys were playing while I sat and read Neil Gaiman's book American Gods, and though I was reading, I heard the squeaker say to his brother, "I'm sorry, I inadvertently left that toy out of my game. Can I have it back?"

"Did you say 'inadvertently'?" I asked him.

"Yes. Why?"

"I don't know. It's just a big word. Do your classmates always understand what you're saying at school?"

"I think so. Usually. Why?"

"I just think you probably use words they don't know sometimes. Maybe even words your teacher doesn't know," I told him.

"Well," he said, "she did like when I used the word 'bask.'"

"She did? Why did you use that word? And what did she say?"

"I was telling her about how alligators bask. And she said she liked that word. Bask. She liked it."

It's funny because I am not exactly sure why he does have such a large vocabulary. I do think he's pretty smart, but I am not sure how much that has to do with it. Plus, I don't like to give much weight to my belief that he's smart because I am, after all, his very biased mother. Of course I think he's smart! (Which reminds me that I must always keep my bragging in check; the other day I visited a facebook profile where the person described their kids as INCREDIBLE and AMAZING and HIGHLY VERBAL, and it just made me think of Lake Wobegone, and how important I think it is to celebrate kids not for their extraordinariness but just because you love them. There's something kind of depressing in a parent's need to brag about a child. I don't mean celebrating of milestones, or sharing one's pleasure at a child's accomplishments or growth with friends or family -- I mean the need to trumpet to the WHOLE WORLD ALL THE TIME about how GREAT and SPECIAL your kid is. Of course we think that as parents, but I don't think it's so great for the kids to hear a parent go on that way.)

Anyway, I don't know where the squeaker gets these words, but it makes him enormously entertaining.

Amateur

2010-02-15T18:34:00.004-05:00

Now and then I have an experience that reminds me of what an amateur I really am at this motherhood thing. The pipsqueak knocked over a small chair, and it landed on his big toe. He was howling in pain, and I could see a black bruise creeping up from the cuticle of the toe. The side of his foot was red and the toe looked swollen and painful. He was really angry at the chair and threatened it with a trip to the Goodwill. How he conceived of that as punishment for a wayward chair, I do not know.

But he was inconsolable. First, I tried downplaying it. When that didn't work at all and the howling continued unabated, I picked him up and kissed it, held him while I made dinner, massaged it, rubbed "medicine" (sunscreen) on it, and tucked the tender foot into a soft warm sock. Still, the screaming continued. I began to worry that he had really injured it, and that we were dealing with more than a bruise. So I tried some ice to reduce the swelling. There was a brief pause in the wailing while he watched what I was doing with some fascination, but then the crying began anew, with shrieks of "No ice! No ice!"

At a loss, I called my mom. She thought for a minute and then said, "Let him sit with his foot in a container of warm water."

"But mom, that won't help it."

"Sure it will. It'll make it feel better, and he'll feel like he's doing something."

So we did. I filled a small container with warm water, set it on a towel in the bathroom, sat him on a stool, and told him to put his feet in. He had stopped crying while I set this up, and once his feet were in, he said in a voice full of wonder, "It feels better, mama!"

Ten minutes later, both boys had turned the container of water into some kind of watering hole in their game with African animals on the savannah:

No more tears.

Endless Winter

2010-02-12T10:33:00.006-05:00

It is endlessly cold and snowy, and I can't say that puts me in the mood for writing much. Here in southern PA, we've been socked with the two big storms that hit the mid-Atlantic. I think we probably have about three feet in many places out there, with drifts up to 4 or 5 feet. I don't really mind being stuck at home, but I just hate the winter landscape -- the bare trees, the windswept white fields, the soggy mud in the few places where the sun reaches the ground. I try to focus on the good things about winter, like the bright stars in the dark sky, the deep quiet, the warm cozy fire. But winter just leaves me feeling fatigued, like my solar-powered batteries have run down and I'm just creeping along each day with just enough energy to get through the daylight hours. Bedtime is always a relief. Maybe it would be easier if I just hibernated.

The boys don't really seem all that keen on winter, either. There is so much snow that they really can't play in it. It is over the pipsqueak's head, and while the squeaker likes climbing the mountains of snow, he gets cold and miserable fairly quickly. It hasn't helped that both boys have been ill. Just a cold, but a nasty one. The squeaker got sick first, coughing so much that I kept him home from school for two days. Then the pipsqueak got it, and he really hates having a stuffy nose. So we really didn't even go outside after the first snowfall. I didn't think it would be much fun for two sick kids. I did send the squeaker to school one day this week (Monday), but waiting for the school bus was an agonizing 20 minutes, with both boys sobbing that they were cold. Usually I use the van on super cold days -- we just park at the bottom of the driveway. But I was afraid that with the snow, we wouldn't be able to get the van back up the driveway. Winter makes everything feel like so much work.

BUT, the boys are endless entertainment systems. The pipsqueak amused me last week by stomping around and then saying he was "making music by stomping." I don't know if he has a particular interest in music or not. The squeaker has always been completely disinterested. He did enjoy the Grateful Dead as a baby -- we could always count on it to soothe him -- but he's never said much about liking or not liking particular music, and he's never shown interest in playing it. So maybe the pipsqueak just seems particularly interested, compared with the squeaker. But I wonder, because the pipsqueak seems more attentive to the subtleties of music than I would expect a two-year old to be. I'm surprised, for example, that he recognized the rhythm of stomping as a kind of music. And then when he and I watched a time-lapse video of the snow set to music in a minor key, I was even more surprised to hear him observe that the music "sounded sad." When we were out shoveling, he cheerfully sang the Capital I song. I hope that he does really have an interest in music; both sides of his family tree have musical talent, even if neither of his own parents benefited from it.

His nickname is Ju Ju (short for Julian), and he told me a few weeks ago that he is "Captain Ju Ju." Sometimes, he won't let us call him Ju Ju, insisting on Julian. Other times, it is the other way around. When I asked him last night if he is Ju Ju the Handsome, Ju Ju the Adorable, Ju Ju the Super Cute, he replied emphatically that NO, he was "Ju Ju the Thomas," his middle name. So silly.

The squeaker and his papa have been reading Roald Dahl's The BFG for the second time. When his papa read about the bones of little children left behind after the giant's snacked on them, the squeaker asked, "Where was Bone-Cruncher that night?", one of his favorite giants. "What do you mean?" his papa asked.

"Well, where was Bone-Cruncher? He wasn't there."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because if it was Bone-Cruncher, he would have eaten the bones."

His papa had to think about that for a minute. Little monster doesn't miss a (gruesome) detail.

Status Quo

2010-02-04T06:40:00.004-05:00

I am no longer waiting, though I have to say that the result left me without much enthusiasm for writing. I did not get the job, which was disappointing. More of an issue is that the two people who were chosen (there were two positions) have crackerjack credentials. This makes me a little proud, since I must have been considered somewhat competitive with them to have made it to the second round of interviews, but it also worries me a bit, because I'd like the apply again when another position opens up but am not sure if there is much point if the applicants are going to be so remarkable. These applicants had experience on their resumes that I simply cannot compete with, no matter how much time I spend in my present position. I am hoping that this time, with the poor economy, we just got more stellar applicants than usual. I did get some very positive feedback even when the bad news was delivered, and I felt that the whole process was handled very professionally, which I appreciated.

None of this matters in the short term. I love my job and my colleagues, and I feel extremely lucky to have been able to work only half time over the last three and a half years. I'd really like to do it for another three or four years, but I don't know that our budget can handle that. Actually, I'm pretty sure that it can't. But full time in my current position isn't presently an option, and I don't have any other options in front on me at this moment, so I will have to make the best of what I have.

The squeaker was very comforting when I told him. "Don't be sad, mama!" he said. "Now you get to spend more time with us!" Which is very true. I had not been looking forward at all to the changes the new position would have entailed; I don't see how I could have been nearly as involved with mothering my little boys. My hope was that I would have adjusted in time. But as it is, the squeaker is right, and for now I get to continue the wonderful schedule I have had, where work stays on the margins of my life and my main job is to love and care for my little boys. My job is so easy, so stress-free, so simple, and so few hours each week -- and yet I get all the benefits of staying in the job market, I get some time to do work that I think is good and important and yet separate from my identity as a mother, and I get enough pay to make it feel worth it. Really, it's an ideal situation -- if I can pay the bills at the end of the month.

I used to think that I had to stay home full time, that anything less than that would be a compromise I'd never make. I remember telling my mother I simply wouldn't have children if I had to put them in day care. I thought she'd agree with me; she was, after all, a stay-at-home mother with seven children. But instead, she told me that was foolish, and that I needed to do what I could to make having a family work without setting out absolute parameters. Sure, staying home might be ideal, but does that mean anything short of that negates the whole experience of having children? Of course not, I now know. And in fact, I don't know that I'd say staying home seems like the ideal anymore, at least for me.

I do think it is important that a child under two spend as much time as possible with his or her parents, or, as a next best option, family members. When the squeaker was born, I stayed home for six months, and returning to work full time was wrenching. But my husband was able to work part time, and when we were both at work, the squeaker was in the care of my sister and, later, the squeaker's grandma. When the squeaker was two, I found my current part time job. When the pipsqueak was born, I stayed home for five months, and returning to work was not nearly so wrenching because of the kind of work I do now and because it is only part time. And again, the pipsqueak and squeaker spend the time when I work with their adoring grandma, so it works out extremely well.

Even now, all these years after that conversation with my mother, I cannot imagine leaving my boys in the care of strangers for 8 or 9 hours each day. I don't know that I could have ever reconciled myself to that; if I had felt forced to choose that, I think I would have struggled a lot with the situation. But I have also learned that the choices are not nearly as simple as full time stay-at-home mom and full-time working-away-from-home mom. One thing I didn't properly appreciate until relatively recently (though my mother had told me so) is that at around three, kids really like to spend time with other kids. A few hours in a preschool is something they LIKE and ENJOY. And the experience is valuable for them in many ways.

Also, while I believe strongly in child-centered parenting, I also think there is a danger in letting your kids be everything to you. Some stay-at-home moms, I think, risk allowing an intense kind of mothering to be what they do, and who they are. Every decision about every small parenting thing becomes fraught with heavy meaning because it is the whole of the parent's identity. This doesn't happen to every stay-at-home parent; I think my own mother was great at caring for us and yet leaving us lots of room to grow in our own ways. But part of the reason for this may have been that there were so many of us. She was able to direct her intense mothering towards the newest baby (and there was always a new baby around the house...), leaving us older kids to develop our independence and individuality. Had I been an only child, or one of only two children, I'm not sure it would have been beneficial for my mom to stay at home with us for the long term. There would have been, I think, the distinct possibility that we would have felt constantly managed, and I don't think that is a good thing for kids. Maybe it wouldn't have turned out that way; some stay-at-home moms have so many hobbies and interests of their own -- cooking, art, music, writing, gardening, sewing -- that they are able to strike a balance that is good for them and good for their kids (my mom had many of these interests, so maybe it would have worked out OK even if she did have fewer children). But I do think stay-at-home moms need to be cautious about making their children the whole fabric of their own lives. Most, I think are all too aware of that and look for other things to engage them.

Of course, the flip side is probably even worse: career women who essentially leave the task of raising their children to stranger-caregivers because they define themselves primarily by their career success. I think this category is pretty extreme; I don't even know anybody who really does this. Most of the women I know are muddling through the gray in-between areas, trying to figure out how to provide the best parenting for their kids but also to find meaning outside of their role as a parent, whether that is an outside profession, a patchwork of hobbies, or a single passion they can focus on. I feel pretty good about my own balance, and maybe it's not such a bad thing that my present situation will not be changing.

Waiting

2010-01-21T12:18:00.002-05:00

Feeling kind of jumbled today.

The pix from Haiti are so very sad. 200,000 people? At least they are finally getting aid. It seems to me that the world needs to improve its disaster relief coordination. It seems that we need a single body, with good representation of many nations, that coordinates relief efforts. I am not sure that the U.N. seems able to fill this role. It does not seem right that it took a week for aid to really flow in. The continued suffering is just awful, and there is no end in sight even though food and water and other supplies are finally getting distributed.

Today I had a second interview for a job. Very nervous about the whole thing. If I get it, things will change drastically. If I don't, things will also have to change because the economy has really hit us hard. No, that's not exactly true -- we haven't lost our jobs or anything like that. But things are much tighter than they were, and I don't think we can stay in the black much longer if we can't find a way to increase our income or get rid of some expenses. This job is a great opportunity, but it would bring many hugely stressful changes. I applied for this job nearly 5 months ago, and the waiting has been interminable. Now I will finally know my fate by the middle of next week.

Today I am wearing a purple suit. I did both my interviews in purple. I know the conventional wisdom is a very traditional color -- black or navy. But I decided it was OK to stand out a little, and to be my quirky self. Purple makes me happy.

Some days, I really miss being at home, with the pipsqueak asking me to 'nuggle, nurse, and nap. Such a lovely way to spend the afternoon.

I think we are going to give away the goats. They are kind of cute, but the whole experiment didn't really achieve what we had hoped. For longs stretches of the year, the boys cannot really be with them. The goat pen is a swamp of mud and goat poo, inches thick. If the pipsqueak falls flat, as he so often does, he ends up covered. Or the ground is frozen into a rock solid slab, which means it's too cold for us to linger. Or it's summer, and the mosquitoes are awful because the goats attract the bugs. When the boys do visit the goats, I worry about their horns near the kids' faces. The goats are not at all aggressive, but they are skittish, and that makes them jump around a bit.

The goats did give the boys an opportunity to be around animals, just in a much more limited way than I had hoped. And for such a limited benefit, the goats are a ton of work, some of which is really just beyond our ability. Hoof-trimming every 12 weeks? You've got to be kidding me. We can't even pet the goats, much less pin them down and trim their hooves. I am afraid that our incompetence means continued neglect for the goats, so while I feel kind of guilty for getting rid of them (I think pet owners should follow through on caring for pets they adopt), I think they'd be better off with someone who has the time and ability to care for them properly. And a barn! That would help, too.

So I put them on craigslist for free and got something like 20 responses in 36 hours.

Thanks for all the comments on my last post. It was very nice to know that there are people who read and enjoy the nonsense I post here.

And that is all. For today, anyway.

Seeing Red

2010-01-20T09:43:00.002-05:00

Today, the squeaker is wearing red sweatpants to school. Bright red, with a small hole in the leg.

I have a rule about sweatpants: they are not school clothes. Pants with holes are also not school clothes. Thus, these pants should be in the HOUSE WEAR ONLY pile for multiple reasons.

HOWEVER, today is "Rainbow Day" at school. Each grade is supposed to wear a different color. Had kindergarten been assigned BLUE, I would have been golden. Blue jeans, plenty of blue shirts in the closet. GREEN? Would have been OK with that, too. YELLOW, we could have managed.

But no, we got RED.

I had thought maybe we'd ignore these "school spirit days" because the squeaker is pretty oblivious and I didn't think he'd notice. But then on the last one -- 80s day -- he cried on the bus because he realized he was not "dressed like an 80."

I kid you not! I should have drawn a big "80" on his shirt. Instead, I read the notice about 80s day thinking, "What the heck??? Why would I have any size 4/5 clothes that look remotely like 1980s stuff?" I couldn't think of a single thing in his closet that would look like the 1980s. Now, the 1990s I could have managed -- a tee shirt with a flannel shirt over it and some rolled jeans -- but 1980s????

So I sent him off in his ordinary clothes, and he cried on the bus and was so pathetic that the school bullies comforted him, and then when he got home I tried to explain that it wasn't dressing like an 80 but rather dressing like the 1980s, and he just looked miserable.

SO, today he is wearing red. All red. And that means bright red, holey sweatpants and hopefully no tears! Ugh.

Leave me a comment!!

2010-01-15T07:58:00.004-05:00

So there is a little ripple going through the blogosphere that tells me that this is de-lurking week. And while I normally take pains to ignore the issue of whether I actually have any readers (because I really just like an excuse to write something even if no one reads it), I do sometimes wonder if anyone actually reads the silliness that I post. Yes, yes, there are comments now and then, and I do know that a few of you read regularly (mostly people who know me IRL). But maybe I have legions of fans just lurking in the shadows!! You never know, as the squeaker would say.

So want to leave me a comment today? Pretty please? Yes, you!!

BI-CYCLE

2010-01-14T06:29:00.003-05:00

The pipsqueak: "BI-CYCLE, BI-CYCLE..."

His auntie: "Um, is that Queen he's singing??"

Why, yes it is.

Why he loves that song, I do not know. Not that it isn't a great song, but what two-year old sings Queen?

Still, it's welcome relief from hearing the boys sing the Decemberists' Mariner's Revenge Song: "Find him, bind him, tie him to a pole and break his fingers to splinters. Drag him to a hole until he wakes up, naked, clawing at the ceiling of his grave..."

No Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star around here.

Mom is Definitely Not a Warrior

2010-01-13T06:36:00.002-05:00

So the boys and I were talking about what I do for a living earlier this week. The pipsqueak seems fairly intrigued by the idea that one is a doctor or a teacher (or Elmo). And he is curious about what I do at work.

I told them I was a lawyer, which I'm sure I have mentioned plenty of times before.

Long pause.

"You fight monsters?" the pipsqueak asked.

"What? Monsters? No, I don't fight monsters." I couldn't figure out what he meant at first.

Then -- "A lawyer, not a warrior. I read and write stuff. I don't fight monsters. Or bad guys."

"It's an 'L,' not a 'W,'" added the squeaker helpfully.

The pipsqueak looked pretty disappointed.

There and Back Again

2010-01-06T07:41:00.000-05:00

So Christmas was a whirlwind. I am not sure I have completely recovered.

I always feel like Xmas eve has me boarding a speeding train that I’ll be stuck on until the day after Xmas. This year, we were leaving for a vacation early the day after Xmas, so I knew I’d be on the train a bit longer than usual. In fact, I still feel that I just got off of it!!

We spent Xmas eve at my in-laws, as usual. The boys had a nice time with their cousins, and my in-laws always have their family friends over. Not so exciting for me, but not bad, either. Then we zipped home in the evening, and the boys threw reindeer food out the bedroom window onto the roof beyond so that Santa would stop. The squeaker was very excited, and the pipsqueak was a little puzzled but excited too.

Both boys slept until their usual time on Xmas day, which surprised me. Then we all went downstairs and the boys opened their gifts. The pipsqueak is still at an age where the first gift is so glorious and distracting that it’s hard to get him to open his other items. Not so for the squeaker. He ripped through everything quickly and seemed very pleased. They played with their toys all morning while I packed for our trip. We planned to leave for Florida at 4 AM the day after Xmas. Not my idea, but my mother-in-law’s. She’s been dying to take the boys to Disney World, a place I have never been to and frankly, that I’ve never had the slightest bit of interest in. But she was excited, and so we agreed to go.

Plane tickets turned out to be expensive, so we looked into the train. When we discovered the train was also pricey and quite slow (20 hours), we decided to drive. I was dreading the trip, sure that we were going to be trapped in the car for hours with fussy, fighting little boys.

In the darkness of the morning after Xmas day, we slipped out of the house and into the car. We’d hoped the boys would stay asleep, but they were too excited. We stopped to pick up my MIL (FIL was flying) and headed south.

The boys were amazing for the trip. For the first few hours, they looked out the window and dozed. We stopped for a late breakfast and then continued on. We’d borrowed a portable DVD player, which I am normally very opposed to in cars, but I figured an exception was appropriate for a trip that looked to be about 16 hours. So we spaced things out as best we could – breaks, meals, movies, books, music. After about 10 hours, we were close to Savannah, GA, but the traffic on I-95 had slowed to a crawl. The final hour took about twice that, and then we were very glad to get out of the car in Savannah. We spent the night there; my mother-in-law had lived there for years, and that was where she’d met my FIL, so we went on a quick driving tour of the city afterwards, including the Pirates’ House.

Then it was on to Orlando, a few hours further away. We got there around 4 PM, with just enough time to get oriented, have dinner, and get the boys to bed. I was amazed at how great they were on the long drive.

We got up the next day and headed to SeaWorld. There was a huge crush of people at the gates, and I didn’t like that. Just getting in felt like an ordeal, with the security checks and finger-printing device for the tickets. But once we were in, it wasn’t all that crowded. The boys got to feed dolphins (the pipsqueak was pretty horrified at the idea of handling dead fish at first, but when he saw that the dolphins would flock to him, he thought it was pretty cool). We saw the manatees and some alligators and walked through some nice aquarium displays. We also went through the penguin area. I am very fond of penguins.

In the early afternoon, we went to the orca show, “Believe,” which I thought was pretty silly. They did some very cool stuff – surfing through the water on the orcas, and orchestrating a kind of complex dance with them. But there was some pretty maudlin stuff about “bringing together two species,” which I thought was ridiculous in the context of a stadium built by people and filled with 6,000 people, where people rode on captive orcas they had trained to perform for their entertainment. Seemed like the usual human dominance over everything to me. But the tricks were admittedly impressive. We had to sit in the splash zone because we could not find dry seats, so my husband bought some ponchos to drape over us like plastic blankets. We could see the orca headed our way at one point, so we pulled up the ponchos. Somehow, though, the pipsqueak got soaked. I wondered if he’d pulled the poncho down. With his hair and little nose dripping, he said in his usual dry little way, “That whale splashed me. But I’m alright.” It was pretty funny.

Last, we fed the stingrays, which was cool. The boys were pretty impressed by that. By about 3 PM, everyone was wiped out, especially the grandparents. So we headed back to the hotel, cleaned up, had dinner, and went to bed.

The next day was Universal Studios. It was a cold morning – in the 30s – and I hadn’t brought heavy coats or hats or gloves. So we were all a bit cold. Just getting in was a half-hour walk over conveyor belts and through gates and crowds. Visually, the park was pretty interesting. The Dr. Seuss area was arresting, and the boys seemed entertained. We took them on the Cat in the Hat ride and the carousel. But things were pretty crowded, and the boys were overwhelmed. We went to the area designed to look like ancient ruins, and we went through the Poseidon show/ride – after waiting in line over an hour. The pipsqueak was pretty terrified. The show is meant to be a little scary (“We’re locked in this temple and can’t escape! The doors are sealed!”), but it’s campy enough that even the squeaker knew it was just play-acting. But the pipsqueak was worried (“We can’t get out? Open doors! Out!”), and the show, with the booming voices and fire with heat you could feel, did not put his mind at ease. He was relieved when it was all over. And that was about all we did there.

The third of our four days, we headed to the Magic Kingdom. We had decided to go in the afternoon, after the pipsqueak’s nap, so that we could stay late into the evening for the parade and fireworks. But when we got there at 2 PM, the park was closed because it had reached capacity. So we had to head to Animal Kingdom, which my MIL had previously crossed off the itinerary because of the expense of so many parks.

While my FIL got in line for tickets, the boys went to visit Turk, the gorilla from Tarzan. They were so excited that they ran right up to her, and then we reprimanded for not waiting in line by an employee with a camera. He was not mean or rude – he just told them they had to get in line and wait their turn – but it took some of the wind out of their sails.

We got in by 3 PM and headed straight for the safari – where we waited in line for over an hour. Once we got into the jeep and saw some animals, the boys were happy. It was cool, but not so different from a good zoo. Afterwards, we had some dinner (where there were ducks that the pipsqueak was delighted to chase) and headed towards Dino Land. There was a scary ride there that the squeaker was just barely tall enough for, so we did it, though the wait in line was quite long. By the time we got off the ride, it was dark, so we headed home.

The fourth day, we got up early and headed for the Magic Kingdom. The crowds were crazy. The park reached capacity by 11 AM, but this time, we were in. We went straight to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which both boys enjoyed (though the pipsqueak said “Off! Off!” at first). I loved the way each ride ended in the gift shop. Ugh. We waited an hour in line for the haunted house, and then the squeaker and his dad headed for the Buzz Lightyear ride, since two girls ahead of us in line for the haunted house had given us their fast passes. We also went through the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse. The park was getting very crowded – by 1 PM or so, there were incredibly long lines in the bathrooms, full of little girls in princess dresses crying because they could not wait that long to use the bathroom. So we called it a day by 2 PM.

I had thought that maybe I’d become s secret Disney convert once I actually experienced Disney World. Since so many people want to go there and it is so hugely popular, I thought there must be something really special about it. But it didn’t seem all that different from any other theme park. It had the same kitschy theme park stuff – face painting, stilt-walkers, souvenirs, overpriced food, carnival games and cheap stuffed toys as prizes – but with intense crowds, long long lines, and a hefty price tag. There were a few very cool things, especially at SeaWorld, which I definitely liked best, but I had thought the place must really be extraordinary.

Still, it was an interesting experience, and my boys enjoyed themselves. And it was great to be warm! While the first two days were chilly, the last two days were in the 70s, and we were able to swim in the heated outdoor pool. I will post some pix later.

We had planned to stop in Savannah, GA again on the way home, but my husband was eager to get home, so we did the 16 hours straight, with stops only for lunch and dinner. We left Orlando around 8 AM and were home by midnight. The squeaker cried because he wanted a bath, but then he fell asleep quickly. It was great to be home!

Bus Philosophers

2009-12-18T07:00:00.004-05:00

When the squeaker started school, we were surprised to see that his bus would pick him up almost an hour before school was supposed to start. Maybe we should drive him, said my husband. How will he ever sit still that long, my mother-in-law wondered anxiously.

I was a little anxious about it, too, but I insisted that he must do it. Time on the bus seems as important to me as time in the classroom -- maybe even more important. The classroom is about following directions, working cooperatively, and understanding the routines and procedures that institutions expect. But the bus is unscripted time -- time to interact with other kids without a hovering adult, and time to exercise judgment on your own. And it requires a kind of initiative and awareness that classroom time does not, because you are jumbled together briefly with other kids who will go their separate ways once the bus stops at school; you must know where you are supposed to go. You can't just follow the crowd. I thought it would be good for the squeaker to have this kind of responsibility, and to rise to the challenge.

And he has. He really likes the time he spends on the bus on the way to school. (He's less keen on the bus ride that brings him home.) While he hasn't really connected with any of his classmates, he has a little group of friends on the bus. They exchange small gifts. And they talk about death, God, pets, siblings, and school.

Yesterday, he told me that his friend on the bus, Brooke, believes that people and their pets go to heaven to be together after they die.

"I didn't argue or anything," he confided to me.

"What did you think about what she said?" I asked him. "What do you think happens after you die?"

"I really don't know," he replied. "But I figure there are three things it could be: you go to heaven like Brooke says, you become a zombie, or you're just dead and that's it."

"What about reincarnation?" I asked. "Remember when we talked about that?"

"Yes," he said.

"Some people believe that if you live a good life, you'll be re-born as something like an elephant or a cheetah or a whale. But live a bad life, and you'll be something less desirable. Maybe Hitler was re-born as a mosquito!"

"Maybe," he said. "But I think I'll be bad so that I get to be re-born as a dragon."

"Are dragons bad?"

"I guess so."

"But the Chinese believed dragons are good luck."

"That's true," he agreed. "Maybe I'll be a Chinese dragon."

I'm glad that he'd rather be a dragon than a zombie.

Bah Humbug

2009-12-17T07:48:00.002-05:00

One of the great things about nursing a baby forever is having no monthly cycle – and no PMS! But alas, in the past few months, that happy circumstance has ended, and now I have rejoined the ranks of my suffering sisters.

This means that every few weeks, I find myself moved to tears by things that normally would not have this effect. Some of them are stupid, like advertisements. But some of them are things that I would find moving under normal circumstances, too – it’s just that with the extra dose of estrogen, a moment of sadness because a torrent of tears. First thing this morning I cried over this story about a "survivor" of Hiroshima and her paper cranes.

So NPR’s story this morning on children suffering from deformities in developing countries that would easily and routinely be corrected in this country really got to me. Some of the parents can’t even afford bus fare to get to the hospital to have their children evaluated, much less treated. And these conditions, so minor here, negatively impact the child for life. The children are ostracized and often don’t go to school, making it nearly impossible for them to break the cycle of poverty that has so limited their choices in the first place.

So peculiar to imagine that time and place so firmly rules the lives of these children, and that chance has given them a life of poverty when my children don’t know what it feels like to miss a single meal, or to spend an afternoon without a closet bulging with toys, or to suffer from a medical condition because mom and dad can’t even afford the trip to the doctor.

It leaves me feeling lucky but also kind of disgusted because our material indulgence seems to reflect such indifference to the suffering of people whose situation is really just a quirk of fate. My boy could have been born in Honduras, or Laos, or Mali. And his life would have been so different just because of where he was born. Instead of knowing constant indulgence, he could have known deprivation.

And it just kills me to know that people are wrapping iPods and net books and video game consoles and countless plastic junky toys to give to people who already have way too much stuff while parents in another part of the world watch their child struggle because they don’t have the few dollars for bus fare. And I don’t claim to take the moral high road on this; I, too, like to get stuff. I always got a nice little pile of goodies on Christmas morning, and I loved it. My husband has lovingly chosen wonderful little gifts for our boys on Christmas morning, and I am excited about seeing their little faces. But it still nags at me: we have so much. And I wonder what having so much while others have so little means for my boys’ moral compass, for their construction of what really matters in the world and what it means to live a good and significant life.

I know that we can collect gifts for a family in need, or adopt an animal, or work in a soup kitchen, or donate gifts to various programs for poor children, but even these efforts feel merely symbolic in the shadow of out excessive indulgence and the depth of poverty elsewhere. They seem like pathetic little tokens intended mostly to assuage our guilt rather than to face the true level of need. Because as long as we continue to pour the bulk of our resources into our own goodies, it feels like we turn our backs on those born into less fortunate circumstances.

A writer for Slate puts it this way, when evaluating international giving vs. local giving:

[I]f you subscribe to the belief that all lives are created equally—and your giving is aimed at saving human lives or reducing suffering—your donations will almost always yield greater returns when given (to reputable organizations) internationally. Some philosophers argue that having money to spend on nonessentials and not putting it toward saving a preventable human death, no matter how far away, is morally equivalent to seeing a life you can save in front of you and not intervening.

While I wouldn't go that far, I would say that understanding just how little can save a life might make you reconsider your charitable giving. NYU philosophy professor Peter Unger ends his 1996 book, Living High and Letting Die, with a calculation that a $200 donation could help ensure a child lives through its most vulnerable years, from age 2 to 6, in the developing world. Much more recently, the folks at GiveWell, an independent charity evaluator, estimated that their top-rated international charity averts a child death for every donation of $200 to $600. You would be hard-pressed to find a local charity that could actually save a life with a similarly sized gift. (But if you know of one, tell me about it!)

UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, says that 9.2 million children under age 5 died from largely preventable causes in 2007. The causes are things that we treat with a mere doctor's visit in the United States, like diarrhea and pneumonia. Two-thirds of these deaths are preventable with existing low-cost interventions.

I know that death and suffering are part of life, and that you can’t bleed for everyone. I know that depriving myself isn’t really going to save the world. I know that human beings are complicated creatures, so generous and selfish, connected and isolated all at once. And I’m not trying to cancel Christmas or lay on the guilt.

But I can’t shake the feeling that exchanging lots of stuff isn’t the best moral choice, and that nags at me. Maybe it’s just because I’m feeling a little teary about things that usually don’t affect me quite so much. I don’t know.

Pixar's Lightning McQueen (CARS)

2009-12-15T14:50:00.004-05:00

Lightning McQueen (psyching himself up for the race): I AM SPEED.

The Pipsqueak (who has trouble with the letter "s"): I AM PEED.

And that's all I have to say about that.

A LITTLE BIT ANGRY

2009-12-09T06:37:00.002-05:00

The squeaker always likes to chat when he is in the bathtub, and especially when I am drying him off. Earlier this week, he said to me, “I told a fib at school today. I hope it was a good fib.” We’ve previously talked before about “good fibs,” which we sometimes tell to avoid hurting someone else’s feelings.

“I hope it was a good fib, too,” I replied. “Tell me about it.”

“Well,” he said, “when I got to school today, my teacher asked me if I was sad. And I was, but I said no.”

“Why did you say no, if you really were sad?” I asked.

“Because I just didn’t want her to know.”

“Were you sad about being at school?”

“Yes.”

I told him that it sounded like a “good fib” to me, because he wanted to protect his privacy. “If you fibbed to keep your feelings private, I think that’s OK. But remember that people can’t try to make you feel better if you keep your feelings to yourself.”

So reserved, my squeaker. And so unlike his little brother.

Last night, as the boys bathed together and I put clothes away, I could hear the pipsqueak yell, “GRRRR!!! I’M A LITTLE BIT ANGRY ABOUT THAT!!” (There is a strong possibility that the squeaker's crocodiles were eating the pipsqueak's fishermen.) And then, a minute or so later: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I love you. I love you so much.” And then again: “I’M A LITTLE BIT ANGRY!!!”

Not subtle, that little one.

Naked

2009-11-25T14:29:00.001-05:00

Pipsqueak at naptime: (patting his belly) "I want to sleep naked."

Me: "OK, I'll take your jeans off." (Jeans are removed.)

Pipsqueak: "Shirt, too. Naked."

Me: "OK. I'll take that off, too." (Shirt is removed.)

Pipsqueak: "And diaper." (Pipsqueak pulls at the tabs.)

Me: "Uh, no. You can't really be naked. You have to wear a diaper."

Luckily, he was satisfied with that.

Thursday Morning, 7 AM

2009-11-19T06:51:00.003-05:00

The pipsqueak is still an enthusiastic nursling though he is past his second birthday. As I've written here before, people who think nursing a two-year old must be a huge burden know little about the reality of it. He very, very rarely asks to nurse during the day. Sometimes he asks when I get home from work, and that's about it. He does nurse at bedtime, and he may stir once or twice in the night, looking for the "nee nee."

Every night, we climb into bed together and snuggle in under the blankets. We read a few books and then he says, "I want to nurse." Recently, he's added this, in a very solemn voice: "And I won't bite. I won't bite the nee nee."

Um, OK. Please don't! I'm not sure how this idea even got into his head, but I have to say that it makes me a little nervous. I've warned him that any biting means NO MORE NEE NEES, and this seems to have made an impression. I don't know if the nursing will last 3 years, as it did for the squeaker. I suppose there is more incentive to end it since then I'll have my body (and my bed) back for good. But it's so cozy and snuggly that I am not eager to end it; I'd like the end to come on our mutual terms, and not because I decide that it's time.

I was looking at some of the pipsqueak's newborn pix yesterday and was struck by how much the squeaker has changed in the last two years. Holding his new baby brother, he still has a bit of a rounded baby face; that roundedness has since vanished. He's still a tiny little thing, but the shape of his body has changed so much as he leaves toddlerhood further and further behind. Sometimes I just want him and the pipsqueak to hurry up and get bigger so that we can do all kinds of fun things together. Other times, I feel the fleetingness of their childhood so acutely that it's like being punched in the stomach; it nearly takes my breath away, and all I can think about is how in just a few short years, I won't even remember the moments that make up my days now. I won't remember how the pipsqueak sings Jimmy Buffet's Jolly Mon song, or that the squeaker set his giant T-rex up at the end of the train track so that it could consume little brother's carefully placed train in one quick gulp (while little brother shrieked in dismay), or how the pipsqueak whispered, "Pat me, mama, pat my knee," each night as we fall asleep. These moments are so vivid at the time that it seems unfathomable that I would forget them, but even now, I sometimes realize that I can't remember exactly what the squeaker was like when he was the pipsqueak's age. Or I read about the squeaker on my early blog postings and think, "Really? I don't remember that."

I think about how my mom had these kinds of moments with each of her seven children, and now we are all grown up. It must be kind of surreal.

I saw this quote on someone's Facebook page, and it has haunted me since:

"The years go by as quickly as you wink, enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think." - The Specials

Later than I think. It is, isn't it?

Yellow Squeaker

2009-11-13T07:46:00.001-05:00

The squeaker has had TWO “yellows” this week. (Each child in his class has a “stoplight” with red, yellow, and green. Kids are “on green” unless they break a rule, in which case they have to move their name to “yellow.” Breaking another rule moves them to “red.” Each day, he brings home a sheet that indicates what color his name ended up on at the end of the school day.) We are not exactly sure how to handle this.

He is generally a pretty well-behaved kid, but like many five-year old boys, he is very impulsive and sometimes a little wild. When I first saw the list of classroom rules, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. Being quiet and orderly, no running, following directions...of course I knew these things would be expected in the classroom, but I also knew he would struggle at times to follow the rules. I was unsure how much to make of the “yellows” and “reds” at home. I want him to do his best, but I also don’t want to be unrealistic about what he can achieve, or to act like breaking a rule now and then is some huge transgression.

The first time he got a “yellow” he was mortified. He cried at school and looked very small and defeated when he got off the school bus that afternoon. We were stern with him about it because we had some notion about this being an important moment – weren’t we establishing a precedent for long-term respect for school rules? – and he was cowed.

Very cowed, in fact. Each day before school, he was a mess. “What if I get a yellow today?” he fretted anxiously. Some days he would cry while waiting for the school bus, and I wasn’t sure if it was just his general anxiety about school emerging, or if getting a “yellow” really was such an awful experience for him. Once it was clear to me that he was very traumatized by “yellows” and that they were making him worry about school, we backed off about it, first a little and then a lot. I assured him that while we wanted him to do his best, a yellow now and then was not a big deal. When his anxiety persisted, I told him that his favorite characters, from Frodo to Taran to Jared, would probably have gotten a yellow now and then. Eventually, I was almost entirely nonchalant about it. I did not ask about his behavior, though I did quietly check the sheet in his folder. If he was “green,” I might say, “I’m glad to see that you stayed green today” or something like that, but I did not reward greens, and yellows only resulted in a gentle reminder that he needed to do his best to follow the rules, and that while a yellow now and then did not concern me, I didn’t want to see them frequently.

He still cries miserably in the classroom when he gets one (which worries me a little – I’d hate for my kid to be picked on for being a “crier,” and I can still remember which kids tended to cry when I was a very young student). His little shoulders are slumped and his expression very sad on afternoons when he has gotten a yellow. And yet this week, he’s had two – one for talking too loudly and one for not following directions. He also had one last week, also for not following directions (he did not relinquish the water fountain to the next child immediately when told to do so). As I’ve said, I am really not worried about the squeaker breaking the rules now and then. But I also don’t want his teacher to perceive him as a troublemaker – or for him to feel that way about himself. Complicating my response is that he is already not thrilled about school in general. He goes off on the bus without tears most days now, and he seems to really enjoy some aspects of school. But he often says that he does not feel that he belongs there, and that he is lonely and has no friends. (And yet when his dad picks the squeaker up on Fridays, he often sees other kids being friendly to him, and the squeaker responding with his typical oblivion, so we are not sure why he professes to be so lonely.)

So we are struggling with how to treat the “yellows.” Ignoring them seems like a bad idea, because I do want him to know that it’s important to respect the rules at school for lots of reasons. But I also think it is inevitable that he will get yellows now and then, even when he does his best to behave, because he is not capable of checking his impulsiveness entirely, and I don’t want to be so heavy-handed that he becomes very upset when he gets a yellow. I’m thinking that being fairly nonchalant about infrequent yellows is probably best, and that a simple reminder that he needs to respect the rules is adequate. But what about weeks like this one, where he seemed to have a real problem following the rules? Would disciplining him just be piling on more feelings of defeat and misery? Is failing to discipline him encouraging him to treat the rules cavalierly? I just don’t know.

Halloween and More

2009-11-05T06:18:00.013-05:00

These are not their Halloween costumes; the boys just like to dress up ALL THE TIME.

The pipsqueak, upon trying some potatoes for dinner that were baked in butter, milk, salt, and pepper: "Not bad. Not bad, mama. Yummy!" I think he ate about half of the potatoes in the casserole dish!

The pipsqueak has decided that he will no longer be called by his baby nickname. If you call him that, he shakes his head vigorously and says, "I'm not. No." Then he states his own name, using his given name (but never his middle name -- try to add that and you'll get, "No, no. I'm not.") I am surprised he is rejecting his baby nickname. I don't know why it would even occur to him to say that's not his name.

But his doing so is consistent with his sense of independence and individuality. Unlike big brother, little brother is fiercely independent. He will not let you remove his shoes or his coat; he says, "I do it myself." He'll stagger out the front door and down the cement steps on his own, resisting my efforts to hold his hand: "Myself. Myself." It makes me cringe to watch him try to regain his balance on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps. He actually has very good balance, but he insists on handling the steps by alternating feet, rather than climbing down each step completely before tackling the next one. It's terrifying to watch. Of course, only big brother has met disaster on the porch -- he managed to get smacked by the door, which knocked him head first off the porch and into the shrubberies. When we looked for him, we saw only his little kicking feet in the bushes. The poor squeaker. The pipsqueak looks precarious, but he doesn't actually fall very often.

Yesterday, he fussed when his papa left for work: "With you! With you!" When his papa asked in a stern voice, "Are you fussing at me??" the pipsqueak hastily replied, "I'm not angry. I'm irritated. Just irritated!" I am not sure what he thinks the distinction is.

Both boys had an excellent Halloween. The squeaker was a mummy, with an elaborate costume created by his papa.

The pipsqueak was a giraffe, and he seemed pretty pleased about it.

I love the sweet innocence of his face in the one picture, with the skeleton emerging from the grave in the background!

Since our own neighborhood is too rural for trick-or-treating, we went to a party at the house of some long-time friends with a daughter who is the pipsqueak's age. Attendance at the party was pretty light, perhaps because many other invited guests opted instead to trick-or-treat in their own areas. But our party hosts arranged a little hayride -- an ATV with a small cart attached, lined with bales of hay -- that about 10 or 12 people could ride in together. A week before the party, our friends had warned neighbors that they might actually have some trick-or-treaters, so they were mostly prepared when the little cart pulled up.

We were a little late to the party, so we missed the first hayride. But we went on the second, and my boys each collected some candy at the 5 or so houses the group visited. When my sister came to the party with her kids later in the evening, the kids went one more time, this time in the darkness. Riding through the dark, misty fields had my sister pretty anxious, but her kids had a great time. I was amused at my sister's trepidation (the fields didn't scare me, but the rural road we drove on briefly during the second hayride did!), and at the pipsqueak's helpful observations throughout: "There are monsters hiding in the trees, mama" and "Look at the spooky stuff!"

After the fun Halloween events of the weekend, the squeaker is back to school this week. He seems to have a little group of friends on the bus, which is good. But he also has this little girl that he talks about at school.

"Do you play with her?" I asked.

"No, not really. We don't really talk or play. We just love each other."

"You do? What do you mean? How do you love each other if you don't talk or play?"

"Well," he said slowly, "she smiles at me every day when I get to school. It makes me feel welcome. It warms my heart." The squeaker always finds some little girl to warm up to. I like that he feels so much love despite being so little.

Naughty, Naughty Pipsqueak

2009-10-29T14:14:00.002-04:00

The pipsqueak told his grandma that having his diaper changed was "fucking annoying."

I suppose he is right; it probably is.

On the plus side, I hope this means that it will be easy to transition him to using the toilet. Sigh.

Shark!!

2009-10-26T09:46:00.002-04:00

I had already told the squeaker to settle down three times this morning when he screamed "Shark!!" in his bedroom.

"Didn't I ask you to settle down??" I shouted, very irritated.

"Yes, mama," he replied. "But I had to say it like that! I was reading the title of this shark book, and it has an examation point. See? I had to say it in an excited way." He was very earnest. And he was right, too.

Don't Let the Bugs Bite!

2009-10-23T06:17:00.002-04:00

Most nights, I say to the pipsqueak, "Good night," to which he replies, "Sleep tight."

Then I say, "Don't let the bugs bite!"

But this causes him to squirm around in the bed looking for the bugs: "Where?? Where is 'em?" I can't tell if his reaction is excitement or concern about the possibility of bugs in the bed, but I thought it might be best to drop the last bit just in case.

So for the last two nights, when he says "sleep tight," I have not said anything at all. However, after he's waited a minute for me to say my line, he's filled in for me: "Don't let the bugs eat me!"

I think perhaps he was concerned after all!

Boys in October

2009-10-21T08:55:00.001-04:00

The weather has been so cold and rainy. I know it is fall, but I like October for its golden afternoons of sunshine and its cool edge, not its temperatures of 40 degrees and endless rain. We even had some SNOW on the ground last week, though it must have melted before we got up in the morning. Still, I HEARD about it, and that’s bad enough!

Today it will be warmer – low 70s. We have a Halloween party to attend on the 31st, so I am hoping that the cool weather will stay away. I am sure it will be an outdoor party. I was a little hesitant to give up trick-or-treating for a party, but trick-or-treating isn’t easy for us anyway since we do not live in a neighborhood. Last year, the squeaker and the pipsqueak trick-or-treated in my sister’s neighborhood with their cousins, and a lovely time was had by all. I hate to give that up this year, but I think I’d feel more attached to the tradition if it was our own neighborhood. Plus, our friends seemed very eager for us to come to their party, and they have been guests at several at our recent parties. So we shall see how it works out.

The squeaker’s papa has made him a very elaborate mummy costume, complete with an Egyptian headdress. The squeaker had said he wanted to be a mummy, and his papa thought it was a great idea. With lots of glue and gemstones (on the headdress), I’m thinking that weight of the costume might mean that the squeaker won’t be able to move as speedily as usual, which would be nice for a change. We have not done much for the pipsqueak because he doesn’t get the whole Halloween thing yet. We have plenty of ready-made costumes – giraffe, pirate, frog. However, when I asked if he’d rather be a giraffe or a pirate, he said, “Hippo.” We will see about that. He does like hippos quite a lot.

The squeaker has been going off to school each day without a problem, though sometimes he still gets anxious at the last minute. He’s bringing home a lot of little projects, and I am a little concerned that he isn’t taking them very seriously. His drawing skills are definitely not his strong point, and that’s OK with me, but he seems to be doing a lot of scribbling, and that seems a bit worrisome. I’m not actually worried about him, but rather about how he might be perceived at school. The truth is that he’s much more verbal than visual, and he doesn’t really care about this little drawing projects (drawing his family, for example – I think he drew one big orange circle with two orange circles inside it). I don’t think this matters a whit with regard to his long-term success, or anything else that really matters. However, I think it does make him look as though he might have cognitive developmental delays (which he doesn’t -- he can draw reasonably well at home), and I don’t want this to affect his relationships and success in school. My instinct is to encourage him to do better but not to take it very seriously at this point, but I am a little concerned about how disengaged he is from these assignments.

I think that there is a type of student – earnest, engaged, eager -- who does well in school because teachers respond well to that personality type. But the squeaker is none of these things. He is usually caught up in his own world, and he is not very eager to do work that doesn’t particularly appeal to him. Any earnest effort is disrupted by a lack of focus. To me, this all seems very normal in a kid his age, but the demands of kindergarten are more intense than that.

The pipsqueak has been saying many hilarious things. Though he has near-perfect grammar, his cutest sentences are the ones he doesn’t get quite right. He’ll run around the house looking for someone and saying, “Where is ‘em?” Cracks me up every time. There really isn’t anything he can’t say now; he’s become very conversational. The other day he paused in his nursing to say to me, “My baby. Pat.” It took me a minute to realize that I was being instructed to pat him and say “my baby” in a loving tone. He definitely knows what he wants in life, that kiddo.

Second Birthday

2009-10-08T07:28:00.001-04:00

Today the pipsqueak is two years old. What a funny little thing he is. Last night, while I got him ready for his bath, he was singing, “Coke, Coke, Coke.” Skeptical that he really knew what he was saying, I asked him, “What is Coke, you silly?”

He just grinned back at me. “Coke is...?” I prompted, thinking that he might say, “Soda.”

“Tasty!” he finished instead. I guess he did know what he was talking about.

Oh, pipsqueak, my pipsqueak. How you wear your emotions on your sleeve. When everyone sang happy birthday to you over the weekend, I thought your smile couldn’t get any bigger. “I’m happy,” you say. Or sad, or mad, or scared, or funny. You are a little bundle of visible, raw emotion. And just in case I can’t tell what you are feeling, you tell me, your blue, blue eyes wide with joy or your lower lip emerging in a little baby-pout.

While big brother relishes the lyrics of a song, you cannot help but move to its beat. To you, music means dancing – vigorous, whole-body dancing. The kind of dancing that works up an appetite, and luckily you enjoy food as much as music. I think the vast majority of your first words were food-related – pizza, chocolate, cookies, cake, tea. You remind me of the joys of decadent eating, beaming in your high chair. You are even enthusiastic for broccoli and tomatoes. I think you just celebrate the pleasure of eating, the sensual experience of taste and texture. Plus, you like to rub food in your hair. Oh my.

To big brother’s sense of order, you impishly introduce chaos, knocking over his carefully built block tower or sneaking over and snatching his favorite toy from the elaborate game he has set up. And then you run, shrieking with the thrill of the chase. How is it that little siblings know how to drive the older ones nuts from the very start? But even when you are naughty, you are full of empathy. “Sorry, sorry, T,” you tell the squeaker, your big blue eyes wide and sincere. But then you do it again...and again.

It seems that I was just toting you around in that infant car seat. How can it be that you are a walking, talking little person already? How is it that you are already zooming around the house in your toy car, narrowly missing walls and furniture with a last-minute spin of the steering wheel? I cannot slip downstairs to do laundry without you running behind me, your arms out: “With you! With you!” you say.

Pipsqueak, my pipsqueak, I’ve tried to hold you close at night to breathe you in, to feel your baby warmth, to get as many “mooches” as you will give me. (“Kiss you. Kiss you. Mooch?”) You are so little – only two! – and yet I cannot believe how fast you have become the little you that is so very busy, so funny, so naughty. Love you, pipsqueak. Happy, happy birthday.

Being Gretchen

2009-10-01T08:01:00.002-04:00

Last night, I dreamed that I was being pursued by five lionesses. I was walking through some kind of animal exhibit, with door after door, and they shadowed me from the first moment that I stepped inside. I walked faster, and they stayed behind me as I slipped through one door after another. Each time I made it through a door with their hot breath on my heels, I shivered and wondered how I made it. When I woke up, I didn’t exactly feel the terror of having had a nightmare, but I did feel anxious and curiously hurried. It took a few minutes of quiet for my mind to settle down again. It was 4:50 a.m., and since I get up at 5 a.m., I did not go back to sleep.

The pipsqueak was snoozing happily near me, his body at an angle on top of the blankets. He was a reluctant sleeper last night. First, he patted me (“I’m patting you, mama”). Then he scratched my back, just like I sometimes scratch his. When he said, “I’m scratching you, mama,” I didn’t quite catch what he said. “Patting?” I asked. “Nooooo,” he said.

“Rubbing?”

“Nooo....”

I thought for a long time before it dawned on me. “Scratching. You said scratching.”

“Yes, mama,” he said softly, as if he thought perhaps I was a little slow. “I’m scratching you.”

I also dreamed that when I looked out the window of the nursery into the darkness, I saw a little blond head. The squeaker was crouched there, just outside the window on the roof of the sunroom. He was watching some motorcycles through the darkness as they zipped around our driveway. I tried to pull him through the window and into the house, but he shrugged me off and jumped noiselessly from the roof into the yard below. I could see him, so very small and shining white in the darkness as he ran around the yard.

I’ve related my dreams in reverse order here; the lionesses were the last. In the first, I got lost inside a building – a school? – with the lawyer-priest with whom I job share, and we wandered around empty cinderblock stairwells looking for unlocked doors. I have dreamed this before (though my colleague has never been there), and I knew while I was dreaming that it would pass.

I don’t know that I think dreams really tell us anything about ourselves. In recent days I’ve been wrestling with a decision that seemed to have at its core the mantra “Know thyself”; I have been trying to decide if I should try to make a change that appeals to the secret seed of ambition and adventure in me but that may require tasks that are so at odds with my fundamental, unchangeable nature that the change might fill each day with hurdles that unrelentingly feed my sense of anxiety. I am far more Piglet than Pooh, and while I might prefer to be Pooh-like, I know I am not.

In thinking about my dilemma, I stumbled across Gretchen Rubin’s excellent “Being Gretchen” post on The Happiness Project about accepting herself, including her limitations, but knowing that there is some loss in such acceptance. I agree very much about the importance of self-acceptance, and I appreciate the sense of loss. But how do you know when to challenge the part of you that has perhaps become too comfortable, the habituated self who sidesteps change just because it is different from the familiar self you have become accustomed to? Certainly being true to oneself does not require rejecting new experiences, but does it create the risk of steering clear of experiences that challenge our habits and our engrained perspectives? Does growth sometimes require consciously stepping beyond the comfortable and familiar – or is such action irreconcilable with the philosophy of “know thyself”? Surely scale matters: changing how you spend the afternoon will have lesser consequences that making a major life change that involves shedding some of what is familiar and comfortable.

Even in framing the issue that way, though, I am not sure if that’s what is at stake. It is hard to tell if I might be overdramatizing. In any case, I made a decision yesterday to pursue this change, though I do not know the likelihood that it will come to pass. We shall see.

In the meantime, the weather has turned cool and windy, and, to the pipsqueak’s delight, the cornfields around us have been full of large and noisy farm machines. The squeaker has doggedly been going off to school each day on the school bus, though he has a litany of concerns about school: he does not have friends. He is lonely. Other kids can read better than he can. He does not like waiting for the bus that brings him home because he waits all alone; it is the last bus. I’ve shrugged off all these worries (“You’ll make friends. I’m sorry you are lonely. You will learn to read just as well as anyone else, it just takes time. I’m sorry you have to wait for the bus, but that’s the way it is.”) But the complaint that gives me pause is his feeling that he is left out of things. He says he does not feel part of the group.

I feel that I know very much what he means, as I have always stayed on the margins, too. I like to think that I stay on the edges because I prefer it there. I am an observer, not a joiner. When everyone wants to do a particular thing, that alone makes me want to do something different. Something in me makes me resist being part of the group, even if a part of me feels vaguely sad about being on the edge. I feel like I belong on the edge, though sometimes I wish I wanted to be in the middle of things.

My husband questions the genuineness of what the squeaker is expressing; he thinks perhaps he is just echoing things he has heard in movies and in books to justify his general trepidation about school. But something about the simple words he chose to describe the feeling – and the way the feeling resonated with me – makes me think that he does feel that he is not exactly part of the group in the classroom. And that leaves me wondering: do I try to teach him how to join them, how to participate? Or do I try to help him see the beauty of being an observer? Is it his essential nature as an observer that he is discovering? Or is it just that he doesn’t know how to be engaged with the other kids, a skill he will learn with some practical experience? Is it again a question about “Being Gretchen”?

Rub

2009-09-24T12:00:00.000-04:00

Last night I could not get the pipsqueak to go to sleep. He nursed for a while, and then wanted to nurse some more (“Other side, please”). Then I told him that it was time to sleep. He was still and quiet for a long time, and I thought he must have drifted off to sleep. I curled up, and then I heard this little voice in the darkness: “Rub. Rub feet.”

So I took his little feet and rubbed them and rubbed them. I could see his long lashes resting against his cheek in the darkened room, so I figured he’d closed his eyes and fallen asleep at last. But no....”Rub. Rub.” I rubbed his smooth little back, his round little stomach, his pudgy little knees, his sweet little feet.

The squeaker used to curl up right next to me, nose to nose, with his little hand woven into my hair and his tiny toes against my leg. Cute, but it drove me nuts sometimes. I could hardly move. And if I did manage to move, he scooted after me – even in his sleep! It used to amaze us that he could do this. I think he was drawn to the warmth of another body. Now, he goes to sleep in his own bed in his own room (by himself even!), though he doesn’t usually stay in his own bed all night.

The pipsqueak seems less dependent than the squeaker was at this age. The pipsqueak usually nurses until I make him stop, and then he rolls away from me, his little round arms clutching his stuffed dog. Sometimes he sits up and looks for me in the night, but he does not seem to have the same need that the squeaker did for constant physical contact. We used to kid that the squeaker would “track” us at night so that he could stay close, but the pipsqueak does not do that. He seems to like his own space.

Part of me is very excited about the night that we will move the pipsqueak to his own bed in the room that he will share with big brother. It will be cool to tuck them in at bedtime and then have time to ourselves without kids around. I like the thought of the two of them snuggled into their beds, each boy confident of his brotherly ally if a monster slithers from the closet. I like to think of them having quiet time together, and waking up ready to play...while mama and papa get a little extra sleep.

But I do not regret the co-sleeping. It is so cozy to hear that tiny little voice in the dark: “Rub. Rub feet.” Someday there will be no more baby feet to rub in my household, so I’ll take all that I can get.

Excited!

2009-09-23T06:44:00.001-04:00

The pipsqueak is ready to burst with excitement about his upcoming birthday party. You would think we talk about it all the time, but we’ve actually said very little. He does catch on to the key phrases quickly though. Last night at dinner, he says, “Party. My party. Couple of weeks.”

“Yes, and that’s a good while,” we told him.

“A good while,” he repeated. Then: “One minute, one minute!” (Complete with little urgently pointing finger.)

“No, no. Not one minute. A couple of weeks.”

“A couple of weeks,” he repeated again, very solemnly. Then, “Excited! Excited! Birthday cake. Where is it?” And he squirms around in his high chair, looking around for the birthday cake. I wish I had had a video camera.

The squeaker spent yesterday assembling a book. Over the last week or so, he drew the pictures. Then yesterday, we stapled the pages together, and he narrated the story while I wrote it down as fast as I could (though it was nearly impossible to keep up with him. It did help that he kept getting stuck on particular phrases.). Perhaps I will share a few of the best drawings here later this week. But the book is definitely classic squeaker: it is all about various monsters, and how they are destroyed (and sometimes dismembered) by the book’s heroine.

The squeaker is still very meek when it’s time to get on the bus. Yesterday was a rough day for him. The little girl who usually sits next to him on the bus sat with someone else, and then he got in trouble at school for talking when he shouldn’t have. Both mama and papa were short and impatient with him, probably because we are stressed about other things going on in our lives. Yesterday at bedtime, when I hugged and kissed him good night I told him I knew he’d had a rough day. He seemed so very small and sad. I hope today is better.

Yellow Light Yesterday...But No Tears Today

2009-09-17T14:11:00.001-04:00

So the squeaker had a pretty bad day yesterday. By noon, his grandma had called me three times. One of those times, I talked with him, but he was crying so hard that I couldn’t understand him. But it was clear that he did not want to go to school, and he was sad and upset about it. I told his grandma that she had to put him on the bus no matter how much he was crying. I could tell she hated doing it, but she did it.

When he got off the bus later that afternoon, he seemed pretty cheerful. We went inside and I checked his folder, where there is a little “traffic light” that tells me if he was good (“green light”), a little naughty (“yellow light”), or VERY naughty (“red light”). Every day so far, green has been marked.

But not yesterday. This time, yellow was marked, and the teacher had checked “called out.” When I asked him about it, he got kind of upset. He told me he cried about it at school (which made me sad). When I asked him what happened, he said that he had seen a beaver or a hedgehog from the bus, and he was very excited about it. He said that he got in trouble for talking about it in class. That made me even sadder. I hated to think of him being all excited and then getting reprimanded for it, even though I figured the teacher probably did what she had to do to quiet him (he does sometimes talk over people, and trying to stop him just makes him talk louder). My husband asked him if the teacher had warned him multiple times, and the squeaker said that she had. He seemed very sad about it, so my husband reminded him that he needs to remember not to call out and we let it go at that. Later in the evening, he told me he hated school. But I think he was still smarting about the yellow light. I do wish it hadn’t happened since he is already struggling with school, but I suppose it’s also valuable to learn that even when he makes a mistake, it isn’t the end of the world. It won’t just be shrugged off, but it’s also not a great big deal.

He also said that lots of kids got in trouble yesterday. Some kids were apparently reprimanded for playing rock, paper, scissors (which the squeaker described as some strange game that you do with your hands that he didn’t really understand, LOL. He was very baffled by it.).

Today went better, apparently. No tears, though I did get an anxious phone call from him just before he got on the bus. But no tears is an accomplishment.

The pipsqueak, on the other hand, had a GREAT day yesterday, even though he is still jealous when big brother gets on the school bus. Apparently, he told his grandma all about his PARTY. He told her it was “in a few days,” and he named a bunch of the people we invited. I have no idea how he knows this stuff. He must absorb a lot more than I realize.

Get Your Goat

2009-09-16T07:15:00.001-04:00

So let’s see, what are the latest exciting things going on?

First, we have a goat on the lam (ha ha). One of the goats (Tom) simply will not stay in the goat pen. I’ll look out the window and see him wandering around the pen, happily munching on poison ivy and other delicious treats that are unavailable to a penned goat. You can almost see him making little sidelong glances at the other three goats who are stuck in the pen, and they oblige him by being practically beside themselves with indignation. But here’s the kicker – when I hurry outside to put Tom back in the pen, by the time I get out there, he’s already back inside, blinking innocently at me like he has no idea why I’m huffing and puffing through the yard in such a rush. So not only does he slip out – he slips back in when he decides that it’s a good idea (i.e., lunch may be on the way because that human is coming out of the house now!).

BUT, yesterday I caught him red-hoofed as he tried to escape, so now I know how he’s doing it. Our goat pen is cattle mesh nailed to a three-tiered split rail fence. Below the bottom rail is a fairly large expanse of untethered mesh, and in some places, there is more slack than there probably should be. By working it with his head (and horns, I suspect), Tom can get the mesh to curl inward a bit. Then he drops to his boney little goat knees, slips his nose under the curling mesh fence, and shimmies out. I guess he probably gets back in the same way. I have no idea why the other goats don’t follow him to freedom. He’s definitely not any smaller than they are – in fact, he’s a bit bigger, probably because he spends so much of his time snacking outside the goat pen. But I have noticed that when I try to slip in the pen to give the goats food and water, they are much more anxious to push their way out than they used to be. Clearly, Tom’s advantage is driving them nuts and they want some outside snacks, too. I wish we could let them because it would be great to clear our land of poison ivy, but I have serious doubts about them coming back into the goat pen once they are all out. On his own, Tom is unlikely to travel far because he likes to stick close to the (penned in) herd. But if they all got out, I think we’d be in trouble. So my husband bought some stakes (not “steaks,” as we explained to the hopeful squeaker) to secure the loose mesh. We shall see if it works. Now that Tom has tasted freedom, he may be a very determined escapee.

Second, the squeaker’s quiet passivity about school seems to have evaporated. Now, school days consist of much crying and complaining of a stomach ache. Yesterday when I put him on the bus, he was sobbing. The bus driver looked skeptically at me, and when I started back up the driveway, she called out the window, “He’s still crying. Is that OK?” And I said yes, because what else is there? I can’t keep him home just because he doesn’t like change. I’ve talked with him to be sure there isn’t some good reason for his resistance to school, like a mean teacher or a bully. And when he comes home, it seems that he didn’t really mind the reality of the school day. But in the morning, when the prospect of school looms, it seems to take on larger proportions than it ought, and he is left feeling very sad but unable to explain why.

It doesn’t help that he does seem to struggle a bit with making friends. I assured him that many, many people find it difficult to make friends, including me. And I told him that it can take a while to get to know people well enough to feel that you are friends with them. He does talk about a little girl who sits with him on the bus, and he also talks about a classmate named Jade. (In preschool, his first little friend was Skye, so I am wondering if he is drawn to little girls with exotic names. Oh my.) Interestingly enough, Jade is the only child in school who the squeaker has told me had to move her name from “green” to “yellow,” meaning that she must have gotten in trouble for breaking some rule. He has also said that she is kind of mean, or at least he said that at first. But yesterday he said he thinks they might be becoming friends. It’s all very curious.

But as for the crying, I do recall a week or so of tears after it sunk in that school was the new reality, so maybe we are in for the same thing with kindergarten. He does talk positively (when he talks at all) about the activities he does there, so I am not too worried yet.

We are preparing for the pipsqueak’s second birthday party. The pipsqueak LOVES birthdays. Not his own so much; since he’s only had one, and as it was half a lifetime ago, I am sure he doesn’t remember it. But he loves other people’s parties, especially the cake and the singing. His interest in books continues to grow. He utters these funny little sentences, like “I like cars” and “I want a brownie.” It just amuses me to hear this little bitty person talk so perfectly. It’s funny that some people, including strangers, understand his speech perfectly, while other people may not even recognize it as speech. Usually the latter are impatient types who aren’t all that keen on toddlers. The best thing is to ask him to tell a story. Then he runs around, hopping or spinning a bit here or there, and babbling a constant stream of words periodically punctuated by “Like that!! And like that!” I’m afraid he also has a very full arsenal of naughty words, and he uses them freely. (“Oh, fuck. Car broken.”) I need to do something about that. When it comes to words, I’m kind of fuzzy on that good/bad stuff, I suppose.

And that is all for today. There is more on my mind, but not yet, not yet.

Talk Talk

2009-09-09T12:01:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, when we took the squeaker to see Ponyo (a great film!) at the movie theatre, I overheard the father of a very young child talking to the girl in baby talk. I think she was probably two or three years old (a surprising number of very young children filled the theatre, and though I was admittedly skeptical of their ability to sit still, most did amazingly well and were quieter than the squeaker). “Come to da da,” said the girl’s dad, trying to get her to move through the row of seats. His tone, his inflection, his vocabulary were entirely different from his normal speech when he talked to his little girl.

Anyway, it struck me because we have never done “baby talk” in our house. It’s not that I find it objectionable or anything like that; in fact, I’ve read some theories about a positive role it might play in both language development and baby-mom bonding. But for whatever reason, we just don’t do it. We use regular words to refer to things, not baby-ized versions. We eschew “potty,” for example, in favor of “toilet” or “bathroom.” We use the actual words for body parts. We try to avoid referring to ourselves in the third person, Elmo-style.

Both of my boys have been pretty early talkers, for which I am very grateful. I don’t know that anything I did encouraged early talking, but we do talk a lot in our household. Sometimes I realize that I’m narrating pretty much everything I’m doing when the kids are around (and even when they’re not). In the grocery store, I talked to the boys even when they were tiny newborns (“So what do you think, should we have tacos or spaghetti? I’d rather have tacos, but your papa would probably prefer spaghetti....”) So maybe this encouraged early speech, or maybe my boys are just wired that way. Rarely do they make grammatical mistakes like “Me do it,” which I hear from many other little kids.

The pipsqueak’s speech has been very amusing lately. He’s got this new thing about “helping” all the time. If he sees something that needs done (groceries to be put away, toys to be cleaned up), he’ll exclaim “I’ll do it!” or “I’ll help!” (an attitude I hope is a very long term one). He will not be dissuaded no matter how much you try to intervene. So we get treated to the sight of this very small person huffing and puffing while he tries to do some impossible task, such as lifting a overloaded laundry basket or moving a piece of furniture. It’s obvious that it has not occurred to him that he might be hindered by his small size. Eventually, he’ll gasp, “I can’t! I can’t!” He’s become so very talkative!

And he loves talking. When I'm on the phone, he follows me around begging: "Talk! Talk!" Of course, if I put him on the phone, he beams but won't say a word!

Scary Songs and the Ju Ju Monster

2009-09-03T11:26:00.002-04:00

The squeaker told me the other day that things had gone "awry" for the pirates sailing across the sea in his game. Where does he get these words??

Recently he's been excited about the Mariner's Revenge song by the Decemberists. He loves when the whale eats up the ships, and he's intrigued by the whole story of betrayal and revenge. Earlier this week, I found a Lego movie version of the song on You Tube, and he thought that was great. The song is definitely not tulips-and-butterflies ("tie him to a pole and break his fingers..."), but maybe the squeaker just has sophisticated (pathological??) taste. He loves songs that tell a story; otherwise, I don't think he has all that much interest in music.

The pipsqueak loves the song, too, though I doubt it makes a bit of sense to him. He made me laugh so hard yesterday that I had to wipe tears away. Unfortunately, it was a moment better suited to video than prose, but I'll record it here because I want to remember. :-)

We often call the pipsqueak "Ju Ju" -- a nickname he also uses when he refers to himself. So his papa was saying, "Ju Ju" in this deep, scary voice, just to be silly. The pipsqueak shook his head vigorously, saying 'Like it! Like it!", which (due to the head shake) means he doesn't like something.

"What don't you like?" asked his papa.

And the pipsqueak intoned in a similarly deep scary voice: "Ju Ju!!"

Now, of course, we want to tease him by doing it because it is so funny to hear him adopt the scary voice.

Big Yellow School Bus

2009-08-28T07:15:00.004-04:00

I was more worried about the squeaker's first day on the bus than about the first day of school. I knew that on the first day of school, the squeaker was aware that I was in the building, nearby, and that I'd take him home since we had come to school together. There was a sense of togetherness about the day that was cozy and comfortable. But I thought he might find the moment of separation at the end of our driveway more unsettling -- getting on that big yellow bus all by himself to head off into the great unknown.

It didn't help that I scared him with some warnings about staying away from the bus when it was moving and never, ever fooling around near the bus wheels. I've been haunted by some bad accidents that I've read about in the past involving school busses. So I've told him to be very careful, and I made him anxious about it without meaning to.

Still, yesterday afternoon, we stood at the end of the driveway and waited, and he was very calm and happy. When the bus finally arrived (quite late, though the driver assured me she'd be on time on future school days), I barely got to say goodbye to the squeaker in the bustle of getting him across the street and on the bus. But he never hesitated or looked back. He climbed the steps and chatted with the driver a minute, and then he sat down. He looked very small to me.

I thought maybe I would feel very emotional about it, but I didn't. He seemed ready for an adventure on his own. And I have only good memories of climbing on the school bus to head off to kindergarten, so I don't see it as something traumatic. I don't even really feel a sense of loss. He's only gone for a short time each day, and I work on some of those days anyway. And when I don't work, that's the pipsqueak's naptime, and since I curl up with the co-sleeping pipsqueak, the squeaker is usually left to his own devices anway.

I guess I am actually pretty excited for him. New friends, a nice teacher, a great school, developing as a reader, field trips. When he was in preschool, he was teary a few times during the first week, but then he was fine -- for me. It was harder for his grandma. He has more fun with her than he does with me (which is kind of painful to admit), so sometimes he resisted school on the days when she had to take him.

Today is the first day she will have to help him onto the school bus. I hope it goes as smoothly as the past two days of "firsts" have. She is feeling much more emotional about him starting school, which makes me wonder what is wrong with me. Should I be feeling all upset about it? Why don't I? I know he is "growing up," but that doesn't really make me sad. He is an awesome kid, and I love the little person he is growing into. I do feel a little wistful when I recall the best moments of his babyhood and toddlerhood, but I suppose I don't feel all that sentimental about it. I am too excited about the future. His future.

Earlier in the day yesterday, before I went home to help him onto the bus, I stopped by the school to drop off some paperwork for the epi-pen to the school nurse. When I stepped into the nurses's office, I could hear a child sobbing. It was a little girl, maybe a first or second grader, and she was trying hard not to cry. But every few seconds, her shoulders jumped with a suppressed sob, and a sad little sound escaped her lips. She was sniffling miserably. The nurse was on the phone with her mom, explaining that the girl was having a bit of a meltdown, and that the guidance counselor was on the way but the girl wanted to speak to her mother first. The girl did apparently have a slight fever, but it was hard to tell if she was really sick or just upset about school.

Listening to her sadness, I thought I was going to cry. She sounded so lost and forlorn, and she was trying hard to be brave. I so hoped that I would not get such a call about the squeaker. I hated to think of him feeling lost and afraid or getting so upset without the reassuring hand of a familiar family member.

If he had trembled or shed a tear as he got on the bus, maybe I would have felt more emotional. But his little brave determined face, his quiet excitement, made saying goodbye easier. It didn't feel like we were saying goodbye as he reached some huge milestone, with childhood behind and a whole new life ahead, or anything so melodramatic. It felt like saying goodbye so that he could go off for a little while and have an adventure -- and then come home, still my same little squeaker. And so he did.

First Day of Kindergarten

2009-08-27T06:27:00.002-04:00

Well, I survived. So did the squeaker.

He was his usual understated little self. I left work early to get home to take him to the 1 PM session. He is an afternoon kindergartner, and usually he'll take the bus. But yesterday, they had a shortened session for the kids while the parents met the reading specialists in the cafeteria. The kids learned about bus safety and took a short ride, and then that was it for the day.

We got there a little early and waited in the health unit to hand over our epi-pen and benadryl, along with all the other allergic and asthmatic kids. And there were a lot of them! It made me feel less self-conscious about the squeaker's peanut allergy. More importantly, it reminded me that the school nurse deals with these issues all the time. She didn't seem at all unsure of herself, and that was good.

Then we went to the lobby to wait until the squeaker's class was called to line up. His teacher had said that the kids could bring a favorite stuffed toy or doll, so the squeaker took baby dragon. (I told him that baby dragon MUST be a vegetarian for the day -- no eating the other kids' stuffed dogs and bears and dolls. The squeaker replied that baby dragon is ALWAYS a vegetarian, which was news to me.) We had previously been told that parents had to stay in the lobby while the kids went to their classrooms. But now the assistant principal said it would be OK for parents to walk to the classroom, too.

It was interesting to observe the different demeanors of the kids around us. Some were in their mothers' laps, looking sad and forlorn. Some were a little clingy. Some were excited to be wearing new clothes and shoes, and they didn't seem fazed at all. The squeaker just stood quietly, holding baby dragon and looking around. He was neither clingy nor excited. He was OK holding my hand, but he also didn't mind standing by himself. When his class was called, he went right up and stood in line. I did not go with him, but then other parents did, so I trailed along behind. He didn't look back, though, and he didn't seem anxious at all. When he got to the classroom, I could hear him explaining to his teacher that baby dragon was his special thing, and that baby dragon was ready for school. And that was it.

I went to the cafeteria and talked with some other parents. And an hour and a half later, the squeaker's class showed up in the cafeteria, and we headed home. He told me that he'd had a good day. I asked how the bus ride was, and he said that baby dragon had told him to stand up. "Uh oh," I said. "Does that mean you got in trouble for standing on the bus?"

"Oh, no," the squeaker replied. "I didn't listen to him. Baby dragon just wanted me to do that because he doesn't know any better, but I knew not to do it." Whew.

Today is the first REAL day -- picked up by the bus, arriving at school alone, staying for the full amount of time, and then coming home on the bus. We'll see how it goes!

Smooth Operator

2009-08-21T13:01:00.001-04:00

The pipsqueak has provided a lot of entertainment lately. This morning, I think I got a little peek into his dreams. He has this little glass heron that he really loves for some reason. He calls it his “ducky,” and he carries it around. I am sure that I shouldn’t let him do so because it could break quite easily, but he adores it, and it’s hard to come between a toddler and a beloved toy. Lately, he’s wanted to sleep with it, but I tell him it must sleep on the nightstand. I’ve explained that it is breakable and that he must be gentle.

My warnings must have stuck with him because he was still dreaming this morning when I changed him, and he talked in his sleep. “Ducky. Throw it. Broken. Sad. Ducky. Broken.” I kept patting him and telling him that Ducky was OK, but this was mostly because it made ME feel better to comfort him. He really was too asleep to hear me. He didn’t actually seem all that upset, although he did keep saying “Sad.”

Last night, before bed, he told me he loved me. This is a trick that he’s picked up from his brother: when mama seems mad, disarm her with a little love. Since we co-sleep, it’s important to me that the pipsqueak has a perfectly dry diaper at bedtime. I thought it was wet after we’d read the loader book three consecutive times (!!), so I got up to change him (“Like it, like it,” he complained – he means “Don’t like it.”) But when I took off his diaper, I discovered it was still dry.

At least until that moment it was dry, anyway. Then he peed. While I frantically tried to contain the damage (remember, the diaper was off!), shouting “No, stop, no no, wait!!” he looked a little anxious (“Peeing. Peeing.”). I suppose he was afraid I was mad, because he pulled out the big guns, just like the squeaker does when he knows I’m about to begin shouting: “I love you.”

Except that this was the first time he’d ever said that. I was so startled that I stopped and stared at him (while he continued peeing). And then he put his arms out and said, “Kiss?”

What was I getting mad about again? A little pee?? It was all good. These little boys are very smooth.

Germs Everywhere

2009-08-20T13:05:00.000-04:00

The pipsqueak has an ear infection, and he’s taking an antibiotic. I think this is the first ear infection for either boy, and I confess to a vague sense of failure about it. His right eye was looking kind of red and swollen, and goop was accumulating in the corner of his eye. I thought maybe he had pink eye. We waited to see if it would go away, but instead it seemed to get worse, and he became increasingly cranky.

So Friday afternoon, we took him to see the doctor. He must have very bad memories of vaccinations, because he is wary the moment we set foot in the doctor’s office. Then he falls apart completely when he has to get on the scale; maybe that confirms to him that we are at That Evil Place. The assistant tried to do a few things, but he was shrieking, “All done!! All done!!” the whole time, so I’m not sure what she was able to ascertain. But then the nurse came in, listened to our explanation, and looked in his ears (while he sobbed “No! No!”), and she said he did not have pink eye, and that the problems in his eye were due to an ear infection on that side. She said he needed antibiotics, and when I asked if it might be better to wait and see, she said the eye symptoms meant we were already past that point.

Still, he seemed so much better in the hours afterwards that we did wait a little. When it became clear that it was not going away easily, we started the antibiotic. It smells awful – kind of a sickly sweet cherry smell – and he absolutely hates it. It’s a 10-day course, and every dose is painful. It seems to bother his stomach because afterwards, he puts his hand on his fat little stomach and says sadly, “Belly hurts.” But the stomachache seems to go away quickly. His eyes are looking much better, but he still seems a little cranky to me. Maybe that is to be expected, as it seems likely that the antibiotic itself could be making him feel a little off.

I don’t know. I’m feeling a little anxious about the swine flu. It’s not so much that I think it’s particularly dangerous. But it does sound like it will be everywhere this fall, and with the squeaker starting school, he seems bound to get it. And every illness like that means complications for his fluid-filled ears and his apparently vulnerable lungs. Ugh. He always seems like such a healthy kid...and then some relatively minor bug leaves him coughing for weeks.

I have been sick this week, though so far the boys don’t seem to have gotten the virus (unless the pipsqueak already had a subtle version of it, leading to the ear infection). When I told the pipsqueak I was sick, he said, “Band aid?” At first I just laughed because I thought it was cute, but when I thought about it later, I wondered how he made the connection between sickness and an injury meriting a band-aid. Certainly we’ve never offered a band-aid to him for sickness.

Anyway, we saw Ponyo over the weekend, and even though I felt so chilled that I had to wrap myself in a sweatshirt on a 90-degree day, I enjoyed the movie. There were lots of very young children there, but they were all very good. The loudest kid was probably my own – “Is that the bad guy???” “What is she doing?” “Will he be able to find the fish again?” “Where is his mama???” We kept shushing him, but he is so used to watching movies at home that it doesn’t seem to occur to him to whisper. We’ll have to work on that.

A Giant Problem

2009-08-14T07:47:00.002-04:00

That's the title of the new "Beyond Spiderwick" book that the squeaker's papa is reading to him.

Says the squeaker to his papa: "What does that mean? Does it mean that there is a problem with giants, or that there is a really big problem?"

Papa, realizing for the first time that the title is a play on words: "Um...both."

That kid surprises me every day.

Dutch Wonderland

2009-08-13T07:57:00.001-04:00

Our Pennsylvania home is near Amish country; in the next county (Lancaster), across the Susquehanna River, it is common to see the horse-drawn buggies and the traditional Amish dress. There are some Amish people in the eastern part of our county, but there are much larger Amish communities across the river.

One of the peculiarities of Lancaster is Dutch Wonderland, a theme park for young children with lots of rides and a small water park. Despite its name, not much about it is Dutch. There are, however, a few odd displays of “traditional” Amish scenes, with creepy robotic figures behind glass moving around while a recording provides voices and sound. I never visited it as a child; my very left-of-center parents recoiled at the idea of a theme park. But Dutch Wonderland is often recommended to parents of young children in this area, and my in-laws think theme parks are a delight. So last year we visited with the grandparents, and the squeaker had a great time. So we went again this year, this time accompanied by both the grandparents and the cousins.

I tried to take pictures, but most of them were blurry shots of the squeaker flying by on various rides. Because the squeaker is very small, he could not go on all the rides. There were some rides that his cousin could go on but the squeaker could not, even though his cousin is only three months older. This grated on the squeaker’s dad. He wanted to take him on some rides even though the squeaker was really a tad too small (maybe an inch), but I insisted that I thought it was a bad idea. I assume that the seat belts and safety latches are meant for people of a certain size, and I was afraid the squeaker would slip out and fall if he was too small for the ride. Probably not a real concern, but I just didn’t see the value of taking such a risk just for a few minutes of being spun around on a ride.

Plus, the squeaker didn’t really care. If there had been a lot of rides that his cousin could do but he couldn’t, it might have been an issue. But there were only a few. Generally, the squeaker was pretty fearless (though I did see some intense negotiating going on at the top of the slide, which probably looked pretty innocuous until the squeaker found himself standing on the platform). I think he had a great time.

The pipsqueak, on the other hand, found the experience to be something of an emotional roller coaster. The first ride he went on consisted of these little round cars, which go around in an oval; at the small ends of the oval, they whip around in a way that throws the rider around a little. The pipsqueak was not impressed. He started crying even before the ride started because I don’t think he liked being belted in. Then they had to stop the ride to get him and another sobbing toddler off. I was disinclined to put him on any more rides after that. But while we waited for the other kids to ride the log flume, the pipsqueak saw this airplane ride that went around in a relatively slow moving circle. It went fairly high up and then moved around, but it wasn’t very fast, and it wasn’t terribly high. He enjoyed watching it, and then he started waving to the people riding it. Finally, he said, “Ride it.” So we did. He looked pretty horrified when they lowered the safety bar onto his lap, and he clung to me. And as the ride circled around, he looked slightly alarmed. But when it stopped, all he could say was, “Again! Again!” Interestingly enough, repeated rides prompted the same sequence of emotions: excitement, trepidation, alarm, and then enthusiasm for another go-round.

However, his enthusiasm for the airplane ride was nothing compared to his love of the Turnpike ride. On the Turnpike ride, he got to drive – not ride in – his very own car, and he will never be the same. His papa accompanied him as a passenger, but the pipsqueak did all the steering. When I asked his papa if he enjoyed it, his papa replied that the pipsqueak was a study in concentration. He gripped the wheel and stared ahead. The cars were quite large and they had noisy engines (which I’m sure the pipsqueak liked). A single rubber rail in the center of the “roadway” kept them from being steered too far to the left or the right, so as long as they continued to be propelled (via a pedal, which the pipsqueak’s papa pressed throughout the ride), they would advance in the right direction regardless of the skill of the driver. I rode with the squeaker, who also concentrated fiercely. He enjoyed it, but not like the pipsqueak. When the pipsqueak’s turn ended, I could hear him shrieking “More! More!” even though our car was a distance behind his.

He sobbed as his papa carried him back to our wagon, and when his papa set him down, the pipsqueak collapsed in misery, crying “More car...mine...more car. Drive! Drive!” Eventually he sat up and looked around, big fat tears still streaming down his face.

And then Lo!, a car pulled up right next to his wagon. It was a park employee, riding around to keep an eye on things. His car was not quite like the car that the pipsqueak had driven, but he didn’t care. His face lit up; they had listened and brought him a car after all. “Mine. Car. Now,” he said firmly. And then the employee drove away.

The pipsqueak was inconsolable.

Into August

2009-08-05T07:15:00.001-04:00

I can’t believe that it’s already August. How does summer fly by so fast? Spring creeps along so slowly, and winter is endless. But June and July always feel like the blink of an eye.

The squeaker has yet another kindergarten assessment next week, this time to provide the teachers with information about where the students are in their learning. In April, the kids were evaluated for kindergarten readiness, but this evaluation focuses on the skills of those kids who were deemed ready. Two weeks after the assessment, the squeaker will start school. I’m supposed to go with him on the first day. Then, I’m to put him on the bus to attend his second day alone. That’s going to be a very odd moment. It’s hard for me to imagine him functioning without the guiding hand of a parent. Will he stay in his seat on the bus? What will he do when the bus gets to school and it’s time to get off? Will he know what to do? How much help will he need to get to his classroom? He does still seem so immature to me in some ways. He wanders in an unfocused way, often more engaged in his imaginary world than in the reality around him. I keep wondering: what if this school thing doesn’t really work? What if it’s a disaster?

But I guess it won’t be. It’s funny that I used to think boarding school sounded almost cruel – why would a mother send her kids away? While I still think it would be too much separation for me, parenthood has given me a new perspective on it. It can be so hard to step back and let your kids find their own way. There is this very hard-to-shake tendency to take their hands, to point them the right direction, to guide them with a very firm hand. I can see how it would be extremely beneficial for a child to have a chance to develop into his or her own person without mom or dad hovering nearby, always controlling. There seems to me to be great value in the chance for failure, and sometimes that chance only comes if mom and dad are unable to intervene.

As for the pipsqueak, he is talking like crazy. In the last few days, he’s started saying, “Mama, where are you??” when he wanders around looking for me. It’s really the only sentence he says, but he is also pairing words together. Last night, I gave him steak and pasta for dinner, but he was having none of it. “Bread. Please,” he insisted throughout dinner. So I made him eat a few little bit of steak for each small piece of a buttermilk biscuit. The kid really loves bread, from pita bread to tortillas to rolls. Even with the bread to bribe him, I couldn’t get him to eat much. So when I was ready to carry him upstairs for bath time at 7:30, I was amused but not really surprised when he gave me this very earnest look and said, “Goldfish. Please.” I told him no, he couldn’t have goldfish crackers, and I explained that it was because he hadn’t eaten his dinner. He thought about this for a moment and then tried again: “Cookies?” No, I said. He looked crestfallen. I didn’t even know he knew what Goldfish were!

The pipsqueak loves food, but he is not as good an eater as the squeaker. The squeaker loves salmon, shrimp, broccoli, steak, tomatoes, most soups, and cherries. He’ll eat most things that are put in front of him, though he does have preferences. He’s not a big fan of pizza, and he doesn’t like spicy things like chili or tacos. He also doesn’t like foods that involve too many different things mixed together, which is his other objection to chili and tacos, and also lasagna. He’s happy to eat the components separately, though, and I think he’ll grow into eating “mixed” food.

The pipsqueak has great enthusiasm for food, but he has an amazing sweet tooth. The squeaker likes candy and cookies and cake; the pipsqueak adores those things and wants little else. He does like bread and cheese, and he will eat broccoli and carrots. Sometimes, he’ll eat fruits like grapes or cherries. He’ll eat chicken only in breaded nugget form. And he loves bread very, very much. Most of the words he learned early on were food words. I think he is going to be a hedonist. Give the pipsqueak some music, dancing, and food, and he is happy. Add a motorcycle, and he is super happy. (Every car trip involves him peering hopefully out the window, looking for motorcycles which he points out with glee.) I have a feeling that he is going to cause his parents a lot of stress. Back to that boarding school idea...

Back From the Beach

2009-07-28T08:48:00.008-04:00

We've been on vacation with my family. The squeaker and the pipsqueak had a blast with their three cousins, two of whom are close in age, and one of whom is older (which inspires much awe in the little ones).

I wondered what my boys would think of the ocean. After the car wash incident, I thought the pipsqueak might be fearful. But no, no, no -- the pipsqueak was as fearless as the squeaker. Maybe more so. While their little cousins stayed far, far away from that noisy, crashing ocean (which meant my sister was able to relax in a beach chair!) my boys made a beeline for it. The squeaker ran in the surf, throwing handfuls of sand in the water and shouting, "Good one, Poseidon!" when a wave knocked him down. The pipsqueak simply ran full tilt at the ocean, and when we held his arms in the water and let the waves wash over him, he shrieked, "Again! Again!" while giggling like mad. Every morning he woke up saying "Ocean. Fun."

We tried to show them how to build sand castles and other cool things, but the squeaker was far more interested in destruction than construction. He'd rather be the dragon, swooping in to level a village and its castle than a king constructing a castle. This caused some consternation (the girl cousins were determined builders with a dark view of wild dragons), but it all seemed to work out OK.

The beach house was crowded and full of ants, but it was a short walk from the beach. At the end of the week I was pretty worn out and ready to go home, but when I woke in my own bed the next morning, I felt so sad that we have to wait another whole year. The pipsqueak seemed to feel the same way; when he awoke saying "Ocean. Fun." and I told him it was all over, his little face fell. "Sad," he said. Sad indeed.

Reading!

2009-07-17T07:19:00.001-04:00

The newest, most exciting news is that the squeaker can READ. He is not very proficient yet, and it is still more burdensome than fun for him. It may take a good, long while before reading feels like leisure to him. But in the last week or so, I’ve noticed that he GETS it. He understands the concept of sounding out words, and when he tries, it’s clear that the words are no longer just a jumble of letters to him. He knows, theoretically, how to make sense of them, though his efforts are still very nascent, and thus quite clumsy. But I am excited for him. I really got chills down my spine when I realized something had clicked for him!

Books have always been such an important part of my life. I can remember so many long summer nights when I would read in bed all night long, or winter days of snuggling in a chair with a book, or long rides in the car while reading (I was always lucky to be able to read in the car!). I was an early reader; my mom says I started reading with proficiency at age 3. She remembers the first book I read. My husband and I spent many, many hours when we were dating driving around and talking about our favorite books. I majored in English, and the main appeal of law school for me was that modern law is all about the written word. I hope that he will love reading. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a child as enthusiastic about books as he is, but it is being read to that he loves. He has long resisted our gentle efforts to encourage him to read. In fact, he has told us flat out that he doesn’t want to read. I’ve been able to appreciate that, to some extent – it is lovely to relax while someone reads to you, and I know he has worried that if he can read himself, we will no longer read to him. Plus, he perceives being read to as pleasure and reading to himself as work, and that certainly seems true of reading in early stages.

But he just loves books. His father orders him many books from Amazon, and he checks the porch nearly every day to see if there is a package. When there is, he opens it with enthusiasm. Yesterday, two new Spiderwick books arrived – “Beyond Spiderwick” books, actually – and he was beside himself about them. He paged through them carefully from beginning to end, even though most of the pages have no pictures. It’s as if he just loves the way the words on the pages look, and loves knowing there is a new, untold story embedded there. I cannot wait to share all my books with him. I am going to try to be patient so that he develops reading skills at his own pace -- he is still reluctant. But I am delighted to know that when he looks at a written word, it no longer is a meaningless jumble to him. He knows how to decode it, and that seems like an enormous step to me.

Time Marches On

2009-07-15T13:15:00.003-04:00

Lately, the pipsqueak has seemed so very big. He and the squeaker played in the playroom yesterday while I made dinner, and when I checked on him, he was sitting on the floor with this puzzle we have where the wooden pieces have a metal button on them, and you use a fishing pole with a magnet to lift the pieces. He was ever so carefully using the pole to lift the pieces, and he just looked like such a little kid, and not a baby anymore.

Yesterday, he also said "chocolate milk" very clearly, and then he looked extremely pleased with himself.

He is 21 months old now, and his second birthday is on the horizon. Last year when we went to the beach, he crawled around a bit but was mostly happy to sit on my lap. This year, he'll be running after the seagulls with big brother. Just one year. It's amazing what a difference that year makes in babyhood.

We've been getting rid of baby things that we have recently realized have not been used in months. Time to get rid of the crib, the glider, the playpen, the breastpump, the bjorn...I guess we'll be hanging onto the stroller, but that's about it. We use the wagon more often than the stroller, but it seems premature to get rid of the latter.

It is definitely bittersweet.

All the World's A Stage

2009-07-09T07:18:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, the squeaker caught a frog. It was a teeny, tiny brown frog, and he was holding it when I got home from work. The pipsqueak did not like it one bit (“Scared!”), but the squeaker was ecstatic. I told him to release it into the woods, and I hoped it wasn’t too squashed. It’s important to me that my boys both love and respect the natural world and the living things in it, but I also don’t want to be draconian about that when good intentions are present.

The squeaker spent the rest of the afternoon as a frog, leaping around and looking for bugs to eat. The pipsqueak enjoyed telling the tale of the frog (“Froggie. Awww!”) but he left out the part about being scared.

We’ve been thinking a lot about things the squeaker can do – music lessons, foreign language classes, art classes, martial arts classes, and so on. He takes swim lessons and enjoys them, and swimming seems like a good activity for a child as uncoordinated as he is. His papa also got him a bike recently and we’ve been pleased to see that he can actually pedal it. Steering while pedaling still seems to be a challenge (we spend a lot of time watching him and yelling “Turn! Turn!”, and he did run over the pipsqueak once), but he is working on it.

I don’t really want to enroll my kids in a gazillion activities, but as long as whatever he does is meant to be fun and not too serious, I think some activities would be a good idea. However, he has absolutely no interest in music lessons (and virtually no interest in music, despite a family pedigree that would suggest otherwise). He is mildly interested in painting or drawing monsters, but art holds little appeal outside of that. I don’t think he’s quite ready for martial arts, though we will probably eventually do that because he is so very tiny (only 30 pounds) and some physical confidence would be a very good thing.

So lately we’ve been musing about enrolling him in some kind of drama program. It would seem to be a good fit for a child who is always pretending to be something or somebody else. I just don’t want to spoil his games of the imagination with too much structure...or self-consciousness. But I think he might like acting, and it would be nice for him to meet some other kids whose imaginations are such a prominent part of their lives. There is a little theatre program in the city near us, so I’m thinking that I might look into it.

Literary Pipsqueak and his Swashbuckler Brother

2009-07-08T06:47:00.000-04:00

The pipsqueak is warming up to books. Last night, he wanted to read Does a Kangaroo have a Mother Too? over and over and over again....I think we read it six times. But he points to the cover and says “Kangeroo again?” in the cutest voice, so I could not possibly say no. Then we read Goodnight Moon, which we read most nights. Sometimes he really enjoys it, but other times he’s anxious for us to finish up so that we can snuggle and nurse. When he’s in a hurry, he’ll say, “Close it, close it,” to which I’ll say, “But we’re not finished yet!” Then he’ll whisper, “Everywhere!” This is because the last line of the book is “Good night noises everywhere,” the last word of which I deliver in a whisper, or so I realized after he started whispering the word while we were reading. I guess he figures that if he gets the last word in, we’ll be done reading, and he can nurse.

When he’s more patient, he’ll offer some commentary throughout the book. The cow jumping over the moon is “kicking,” so we pause while the pipsqueak kicks his own feet. The pipsqueak notices that the little toyhouse has a light on, and that is always worthy of comment. And he corrects me every time I refer to the kittens – “Cats,” he’ll say firmly. I am not sure why he is so resistant to having them called kittens, but he never misses a reference to them. He also likes the clocks in the books and will point them out, and I always pause for him to fill in what the old lady is whispering – “Hush!”

The squeaker has been reading the Spiderwick Chronicles with his papa. This means that there is a lot of discussion in our household about hobgoblins and griffins and swordfighting. He says he’s not scared, but I’ve noticed that he does routinely take his foam sword with him when he has to go upstairs alone for something.

Thinking about Loss

2009-07-02T08:35:00.006-04:00

When I returned to work after the squeaker was born, I remember feeling heartbroken. I missed the warm, snuggly feel of the squeaker, his little round limbs, his smooth baby skin. My arms felt so empty – and my breasts uncomfortably full in a way that reminded me all day long of my baby. I worked with many women who had young children, and quite a few of them stopped by my office to see how I was doing and to let me know that while returning to work was so hard, it would get easier. I pumped milk three times a day, sometimes crying the whole time, and I rushed home every afternoon to hold my tiny baby boy close. I left for work in the darkness of early morning, desperate to return home by mid-afternoon.

One day, I remember sitting in the office of one of my colleagues; she was a few years older than I, and she had two daughters, the younger of whom was three years older than the squeaker. I told her that I found it wrenching to leave my baby every day and that I missed him so very much, and a funny look crossed her face. She seemed surprised that I felt such sadness and loss, and then she said, “I think having a baby feels a lot like falling in love. It’s so intense. But that feeling does go away.” And she said that last part as if it was a good thing, and I remember thinking how awful that sounded. How could I lose this love for my baby? What kind of mother would say such a thing?

But now I know what she meant, and I understand that it wasn’t a terrible thing to say at all. Once, I ached when I was separated from the squeaker all day. Now I miss him, and I am glad to be at home at the end of the day, but I don’t feel that acute, even painful longing for him. There’s a kind of synergy between a young baby and his mother that creates a feeling of oneness between the two of them; with the pipsqueak, I sometimes find it hard to remember where his pudgy little limbs end and mine begin. At night, his warm little feet brush against me, his fingertips rest against my arm, and sometimes in the middle of the night I wake to find his little nose nearly touching mine. I can stroke his soft dark hair, rub his tiny little feet, place a hand on his chest to feel it rise and fall.

The squeaker was even more snuggly. For the first four months of his life, he slept every single night on my chest. He was so small. I would hold him all night long. When he got bigger, I would roll him off so that he curled up right next to me instead. I remember how the squeaker would weave his tiny little hands in my hair, his little elbows and knees pressed against me, his tiny feet touching my knees even as we both slept.

Even in the daytime, mom and baby have a constant and interdependent rhythm, as meals are fed and diapers changed, with lots of hugs and kisses all day long and frequent breaks to nurse. A mother knows every inch of that baby’s skin, every curl of his hair, every quirk of motion. The pipsqueak is me and I am the pipsqueak, and when I pick him up and he rests his head on my chest, I feel complete.

I imagine that this is how it was for Maddie and her mom, and every day I read her mom Heather’s blog and I think about loss in the middle of that intensity between mom and baby. I look at my own baby’s smooth arms and round blue eyes, touch his warm soft skin, squeeze his little toes, and I think about that dark, unbearable, unfathomable grief.

I don’t think the pain of losing a child varies with that child’s age; each age must present its own unique kind of loss, its own special pain. I remember when one of my mother’s friends lost her teenage son to an allergic reaction to peanuts. He died in her arms, gasping for breath, while she frantically tried to open the packaging of his epinephrine shot. At his funeral, people whispered about when his mother might “get over it,” and they tried to comfort her by telling her she shouldn’t be sad because he was in heaven. I remember that such sentiments made my mother angry. “There is no other such sadness,” she said. “She’ll never be the same. It will hurt every day forever.” I had never thought before about how there are some losses from which we do not heal, and some hurts that we must somehow live with forever. We do not get over them, and they do not go away, though the nature of the pain may change over time.

Because the pipsqueak and Maddie were so close in age, I read about Heather’s grief and think about my own boy, my love for him, and the unique way that mom and baby are woven together at that stage of life. Because my colleague was right. A mother’s love for a baby has the intensity of a brand new relationship, the obsessiveness of infatuation, the delight and discovery of new love. As a mother, you see the future stretching out before your baby, full of possibilities and potential as this new person, this unknown personality, blossoms right in front of you. As the baby becomes mobile and language develops, each day you learn a little more about this new person. And as time passes, your baby begins to feel less like a part of you, and more like a separate person, an individual in his or her own right. Obsessive infatuation becomes the more comfortable love of knowing and appreciating this little person, this separate being. You can stand back and look at each other, and you both know and love deeply, but more quietly and evenly. More peacefully. That shift feels like a loss, because the intense love felt so good, but also a gain and a relief, because you discover the boundaries of yourself again and you learn to appreciate your little child’s own separate identity and personality which has been emerging all along, of course, but really takes off in the toddler years. It’s a revelation that underneath that intensity is a deep, steady love for your child that persists and grows even as the synergy that mom and baby have is changed by a toddler’s growing sense of independence and self-authorship.

Loss of a child at any stage would cause a unique kind of pain; when my mom’s friend lost her teenage son, I remember my mom feeling particularly sad for her because he’d been going through a rebellious phase and he’d been at odds with both his mom and his dad. If they’d had a little more time, said my mother, they would likely have worked through that, but because they hadn’t, the grief was compounded by a sense of unfinished business, the absence of reconciliation, the guilt of reprimands and hard line discipline in the midst of teenage angst. But a different stage of the parent/child relationship would only have presented its own unique grief, I think.

Thinking about loss – which I think must lurk in the back of every mother’s mind – throws the best parts of motherhood into high relief, and it makes the most mundane moments sublime. Life could be so different next year, next week, 10 minutes from now. There is a last day of your life, and most of us won’t know when that is. A last morning that you wake up. A last time that you get the mail. A last hot shower. A last time that you make love. A last time that you kiss the top of your child’s head. A last time that you see a fabulous sunset. It comes for all of us, sooner or later. And I don’t think keeping that in mind is necessarily depressing or morbid or dark. It just is. Knowing that gives the good moments a special sweetness. And I like to think that keeping that in mind gives the dark moments their place, which they will take regardless of our willingness. Somehow, acknowledging the dark moments seems to make them a little less scary.