30 Lessons For My Daughters

I always knew I wanted to be a mother.  More than that, I always knew I wanted to have a daughter.  As I grew up, I made constant notes about what I would teach her.  When I was very small, I would commit to memory small events, moments that I thought were essential for when I was the mommy.  Things that seemed infinitely important, that held all of the weight of import that childhood is capable of placing.  The most crucial parts of my life as a new person.  I ferreted them away, cataloging them so that when I was the mommy, I could pass them along, make sure that my daughter was a bit better prepared for life than I had been.  By the time I was ten, I had a mental list of surprising specificity of my educational tasks for when I was a mother.

1. How to make cookies
2. How to sing (I thought my father the author of all James Taylor’s songs)
3. How to make quicksand in a pail, and to provide assorted dolls to slowly sink into said bucket
4. How to tie shoelaces (I myself never learned properly until I was in high school)
5. How to sew
6. How to remove a splinter
7. How to play the recorder, piano, and any other instrument that might fall into your hands
8. How to be brave when faced with such obstacles as gigantic freshly paved driveways
9. How to enjoy getting really dirty, even if it means there are bugs or thorns involved (my mother was an expert at this)
10. How to approach potentially terrifying wild or dead animals
11. How to build a snow fort
12. How to use the monkey bars

These weren’t always the most relevant things in my life, but they were the things I either got the most pleasure from or saw as important on some cosmic level.

During the next five years of my life, I became an avid reader of sci-fi and fantasy and began to live a very vivid private life.  I wrote constantly when I wasn’t reading, and at the same time began to develop a wide circle of friends for the first time in my life.  The whole while, in some small part of my brain, I was collecting a to-do list of things that I would have to teach my daughter whenever she was old enough… whoever she might be.

13. How to stand in the middle of a thunderstorm and feeling the electricity in your soul with your barefoot feet on the soil
14. How to cry until your chest is empty of the painful feelings you thought would never leave
15. How to wrap presents so that they look magical
16. How to paint
17. How to wear clothes that make you feel like yourself
18. How to tell your friends that you disagree with them
19. How to write what you really think and make it more eloquent than your own confused mind
20. How to deal with your crazy curly hair
21. How to find music, artists, and authors to devote your attention to
22. How to try every new food, within reason
23. How to always be willing to fall in love, despite how teenagers are complete idiots

Again, I never mastered some of those skills, but I had this gut feeling that someday I would, that someday I would be an adult and all of those things that were so difficult for me at thirteen would just somehow be better.  And unlike my own mother, I would find the way to teach some of these invaluable skills to my own daughter.

During the rest of my teen years, the list of things I must someday teach my daughter grew slowly.  I was busy thinking about things that were much more important- the present.  I was so focused on my friends and my boyfriends and my wild, youthful experimentation… the idea of being a mother took a back burner.  I was much more concerned with not becoming a mother in the foreseeable future.  Still, more items made my little list.

24. How to tell your parents if something horrible has happened to you
25. How to keep horrible things from happening to you
26. How to let go of the horrible things that happen to you, once it’s too late anyway
27. How to know the difference between a good idea and a bad idea

Then I went out into the world to seek my fortune.  For many years I felt I failed, wandered from place to place and thing to thing, and never finished anything.  Over the last decade only a few lessons were added to my list.

28. How to go somewhere, anywhere, with a purpose
29. How to stay connected to your roots, your faith, and yourself
30. How to lose with dignity

And then I fell in love, and I got married, and fate granted me not one, but two daughters.  So far I have taught them none of these things.  They are still too young to even begin to understand, and I must confess that I am afraid of trying to teach them so much of what I believed they must learn.

My granny once told me a story about her own childhood.  Her mother, my great-grandmother, grew up in a household where her own mother never cooked.  All her life she wanted to make fudge with her mother, and was determined that when she grew up and had little girls, they would make fudge together.  Well, she grew up and had two daughters, my granny and great-aunt, and they hated fudge.  It wasn’t until my own mother was born that she was finally able to live out that particular dream.  But with her granddaughter, not her own children.


I have never been able to imagine a life where I didn’t have a daughter, where she didn’t love playing in the dirt, baking cookies, making music, and learning about the world around her.  I have never been able to imagine a life where I didn’t create a child who was essentially like me.  Who had the same needs that I had, who had the same desires that I had, and who had the same pains that I had.  I never doubted that I would become a mother, and that I would have a little girl, and that I would teach her all the things that I wished I had learned, and that I had loved, and that I had treasured.

I worry that part of why these lessons were so important to me was that I had to learn many of them for myself.  I remember learning to make quicksand from a library book, and taking out that book week after week, to keep making buckets of quicksand in which to slowly sink my Barbie dolls, and from which to rescue them heroically.  I remember removing a splinter ALL BY MYSELF as my family was house hunting the year I was five, feeling so full of pride I could burst, and having an understanding that showing the splinter to my mother and boasting of my accomplishment would somehow diminish it.

So I maintain my list.  I secretly treasure it, waiting for the days that I can pull it out and pass on my very important knowledge to my infinitely more important daughters.  I know I will never be able to teach my children to use the monkey bars, I’ve always sucked at that.  I know I am incapable of teaching them to avoid the horribleness of being a teenaged girl.  I know that I may be unable to teach them to play piano or paint or sing if they have no interest, and I will not force them.  For the first time, I have doubts.  I have daughters and doubts, and I had always believed that so long as I had one, the other must simply not exist.

I see myself more in my daughters every day, but in different ways.  In one, I see my enthusiasm for learning and my constant need for approval and affection.  In the other I see my willingness to put aside my fear and just get dirty, and hints at something akin to my creative streak.  I have a hard time picturing one of them standing beside me in the rain, with our eyes closed and our feet bare, while the thunder shakes the air around us.  The other, I can’t imagine her sitting still at the piano day after day, learning to make beautiful music.

Perhaps I have been granted two daughters so that I might actually be able to pass along my full list, divided though it may be.  Perhaps we all come into the world with different needs, and different desires, and as completely different people.  Perhaps we are all essentially the same person, and me and my great-grandmother and our need to pass along what we see is an important part of being a daughter or mother.

Or perhaps we might all simply be cursed to live confused, single lives.  And our duty is to protect our children from all of our own memories of the confusion of being young, being a human being, and having endless faith that one day we will be exactly who we want to be.

The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of its Parts

Save 3 lives today!

I firmly believe that I am an example.  Perhaps the most important example my daughters will ever have.  We look to our parents to show what it means to be a human being, but also what it means to be whatever other modifiers we need to understand... What does it mean to be a female human being?  An  adult human being?  A Jewish human being?  A human being building relationships with other human beings?

In all of these things, we look to the person who most represents ourselves.  The source, as it were.

Our parents.

All of the building blocks of our understandings of human interaction come from watching the people who teach us to be human beings.

I believe there are some things that you can do to set a good example.  You can be polite, you can be forgiving and kind, you can smile easily and hug freely.  But some things go a little bit deeper than every day behavior.

I remember being very young and asking my father what happened when you died.  I think I had just killed a bug, a grasshopper or something.  I must have been about eight years old, standing in the back yard by the basement door.  Not making eye contact.  I already knew that dead was dead, and there was no coming back.  It had just occurred to me that that might not be the whole picture, though.

My father gave me a lecture about religion.  How there are many different religions, and they have different beliefs about what happens when you die, but nobody really knows for sure.  He told me about reincarnation, which he said he believed, and about Heaven and Hell, and about simply not being anything anymore.  He told me that it's up to each of us to individually decide what we believe is true.

I learned nothing about death, but I learned a lot about asking the right questions.  Critical questions.  I learned to truly doubt, and to truly consider my own feelings, to value them.  I learned not to judge other people's beliefs.

This was one of the most important lessons in my life.  I joke about it sometimes, an example of my hippie father providing the most inclusive world-view he possibly could to his children in his efforts to raise us as progressive thinkers and social activists.

Which worked, of course.

It wasn't just that he taught me the lessons he was trying to teach me.  I learned from his decision to speak to me as a person capable of critical thought, of my own decision making abilities.  I learned from him (and for those of you who know my father, this might strike you as a tad absurd) to be humble about my own beliefs.  I learned that sometimes what you feel or believe is less important than how you say things.

My parents- pre Godlike Example Era

He could have told me that when you died, your soul was reincarnated into a different body.  After all, it's what he believed.  But instead he told me that he didn't know for certain, and that it was up to me to make a choice.  Or not.

I am very conscious of setting these sorts of examples for my children.  Very conscious that, at least for the next five years or so, every action I take says something about what it means to be human, an adult, a woman... everything that I am, they learn from what I do and say.

I remember believing my parents were godlike.  They were the model against which all others were judged.  I remember being ten years old and starting to understand that they were really just people, like any other people (no matter how individually wonderful and brilliant), and I remember my heart breaking.  I remember being a teenager and desperate to relate to my parents as friends and equals.  I remember not so long ago realizing that it was ultimately impossible, because my expectations for them would always be unrealistic, and I would always crave their approval in a profoundly un-friend-like way.

Today, I donated blood.  The Chicago blood banks are in serious need, and there are always blood drives somewhere.  There are donation centers scattered throughout the city.  It saves lives, and it's easy to do.

But that's not why I did it.  I did it so that, in another few months when I donate again, and a few months after that, and on and on, when my daughters ask me what I'm doing I can tell them- "I'm donating more blood, to save more lives."

I will be able to tell them that for their whole lives I've been doing this, and that when they're old enough they can do it too.  I'll be able to tell them that human beings are all made of the same things, the same parts, and that we can share parts the way we share food and toys, and instead of just making people happy we can make them healthy.

I'll be able to tell them that on the inside, we're all pretty much the same, so if either of them ever need more blood or a kidney or a lung, somebody will be able to share that with them, to help them be healthy.

I'll be able to tell them that we don't get to keep our bodies forever, but that if we take care of them we can do wonderful things with them, and that giving blood to help people get better when they're hurt is one of those things.

I am setting an example.  If my kids take away the lessons I'm trying to teach, my big socialist message about all being in this together, that's fantastic.  But I hope they take something bigger away from it.  Something like my father's lesson about humility.  Because he's one of my examples of how to be a good parent, how to be a good person.  And I hope I learned every lesson he took the time to teach me.


Find a place to donate blood near you.
             Life Source
             The Red Cross

"Lego" from XKCD by Randall Munroe

Karmic Balance

Quiet Time

SI on a tricycle at the park

It's been a very difficult week.  As with any difficult time in our lives, we sometimes lose perspective.  Fortunately for us, we can always refer to our mantra of eternal levity, "At least it's not brain cancer!"

Also as with any difficult time in our lives, there is a balance of things that are wonderful and then things that ruin the wonderfulness.

My parents came into town for a visit!   We hadn't seen Grandmommy and Poppa for about three months, during which they've been jet-setting across Europe.  Because that's what they do.  We spent the week taking turns being very ill.  First, M with a nasty cold.  Then me with the same cold.  Then Poppa with food poisoning from the airplane.  Then DD with roseola.  Then Grandmommy with that same stupid cold.  We only had two nights out of about ten where we all got to enjoy each others company simultaneously.

DD LOVES the swings!

But the thing that made this week so difficult?  One of our cars is about to die, and through a series of unfortunate and unreasonable events, this means that after taking one of his two sick days for the year (yes, two for the year) in order to deal with keeping our car legal, the DMV actually slammed the door in M's face and locked it.
Ouch.

Then he came home, discovered that he'd somehow infected his computer with an extremely vicious and malicious virus, and it's looking like the recovery is beyond our scope of expertise.  Remember, this is while he still needs to use the very specific software on this computer to study for his finals... which start on Wednesday.

SI has decided that Poppa needs a shovel

But like I was saying... karmic balance.  Yeah, all of that stuff above sucks.  But there was something truly wonderful going on simultaneously.

Our kids.  SI and DD were on their best behavior, in the happiest of moods, and feeling entirely cooperative for the entire week.

Even while she was sick, DD was full of smiles and laughter and snuggles.  They LOVED having Grandmommy and Poppa around!  Every day was just one adventure after another.  DD learned a few new skills (Poppa showed her how to shovel sand into a bucket), SI learned a few new words... they were basically perfect.

SI climbing to the slide

Every time I'd say to my children, "Who's ready for a nap?" they would both go running off to their bedroom, grab their frog loveys, and patiently wait to be plopped into their cribs and tucked in.  Then, as the grownups would leave the quiet nursery and close the door, my father would look at me and say, "I hate you."  His kids didn't let him sleep through the night for about the first seven years, and they did not take naps.


Last night, after reading my daughters a few bedtime stories, after chasing them around in their silly towels, and after getting some hugs and kisses, we turned out the lights and watched a movie.  And the children, who could hear this activity, hung out in their beds and giggled a bit, and then peacefully went to sleep.  He joked that either me or M must have made some sort of deal with the Devil, and M laughed as he said that we did.  Brain cancer first, perfect children afterwords.

DD will never abandon her shovel

And I know it sounds ridiculous.  But I really think they pretty much are.  Perfect children, that is.  I know, I know the old Jewish proverb: "There is only one perfect child on earth, and every mother has it."  But I do think my kids are pretty much perfect.  They're just EASY.  They're mild tempered, they're cooperative, they're snuggly and loving and sort of clowns.  They're smart, and different, and they play adorable games with me.

The sand box is a big hit with my kids

DD turns nearly everything into a phone, which she wanders around talking into and occasionally passing off to me.  SI wants to read absolutely everything- from Grandmommy's pamphlets about her vaccinations (they're off to South Africa next) to every single book she can get her hands on.  A few nights ago she tried to get Poppa to read her Little House in the Big Woods for her bedtime story.  And when he explained to her that it was too long and that he'd read it to her in a few years instead, she simply sat in the rocking chair, flipping through the pages and pointing out the occasional phrase.  She did this for about fifteen minutes while DD played "Simon Says," perfectly happy to let her sister have all the attention.  After all, she was busy reading.

Today we had a really lovely moment.  I was sitting on the couch, reading a book to SI, with DD snuggled in next to me, pretending to talk to somebody on a mirrored rattle.  Roger's and Hammerstein's "Cinderella" (a life-long favorite of mine) was on the TV, and I kept pointing out the dancing to DD while SI tried to sing along a little bit.  They both just wanted to hang out, in a relaxed, stress free sort of way.  It was beautiful, and more than anything it was easy.

SI loves landscaping

My kids are easy.  Sure, they're still toddlers.  It's still impossible for me to get everything that I'd like to do DONE, it's still difficult to go new places and visit all our friends... but they are ridiculously easy children.

So of course school is awful for me and M.  Of course we keep rotating illnesses and car or computer related catastrophes.  Of course M only gets two sick days a year, and our finals correspond but our vacations don't.  Of course we don't get to go to all of our family baby showers, pre-deployment BBQs, holidays, and birthday parties.  Of course we don't get to do about seventy percent of the stuff we'd like to do.  Because we're already paying for it.  We have achieved some measure of karmic balance.

DD could live at the playground and be happy forever

So whenever we're feeling down, hard-done by, and generally angry at the universe, it's not just reminding ourselves that, "At least it's not brain cancer!"  It's also taking a deep breath, and re-reading a Dr. Seuss book.  And all the sweet laughter, the tiny little arms giving tight and sincere hugs, the endless adorable fist-bumps... all of that is an emotional refund.  The universe reminding us that parts of our life suck, but the absolute most important part that there is... our happy little family...

That's perfect.

Checking in with you, my lovely readers

Everyone in this house is constantly exhausted.

Hello, lovely readers!

I'd like to have a little chat with you about what you'd like to read.

You see, recently I've been doing a bit more explorations across the mommy-blogosphere, and what I've found surprised me somewhat.

Always the last one to get to sleep...

Like you (I imagine), my blog-reading is sort of focused on voyeurism.  I want to read about other people's children, other people's lives.  To feel connected in this increasingly isolated yet interconnected world.  And as parents, I know that a lot of us are VERY isolated.  No matter how much we love our kids, they're not exactly much for stimulating conversation (unless your kids are a LOT older than mine, in which case just ignore my assumptions, which as you know make an ass of me).  As you might remember from a few earlier mentions I don't have a lot of friends with kids.  And it's hard to get out and make more friends with kids.  So I spend a lot of my non-school time just on my own with the girls.  But I digress.

Much of the mommy-blogosphere is a money oriented enterprise.  And I had no idea.  I didn't realize that it was reviews, giveaways, coupons, contests and promotions.  Of course there's a place for that, but I really don't want it to be here.  I want this to continue to be my happy, vaguely zen space in which I ramble without any particular goal.

Possibly the last time I took a nap

I've always loathed the idea of being made into an advertisement.  Sure, if it's a product I believe in I'll promote it like it was my job, but I'm picky.  The only band t-shirts I've ever worn were a home-made Radiohead hoodie (I embroidered a Minotaur onto the back myself) and my Harry and the Potters, "This Guitar is a Horcrux" t-shirt.  Yes, I am a giant nerd.  Still, I kind of want to sell out.  I'd love to make money writing, especially something as close to my heart as this blog.

I've been joining up with a lot more blog-hops and whatnot recently, but I'm disheartened.  I don't want to sign up for endless giveaways, I want to read about people and their children and their lives.  People are so much more interesting than stuff.

Yup.  Totally jealous.

So here's what I'd love to know from you- do you actually read about my silly life?  Do you want to know about all the wonderful products that I adore and use on a daily basis?  Do you want me to stop writing about myself so much and get back to writing about the amazing little people I was supposed to focus on in the first place?

I'd love to get your feedback.  I write mostly for myself, but I am humbled and honored to have an audience, and I want to give you what you want.  I want you to be happy every time you stop by.  And nobody can tell me how to do that for you better than you.

I await your answers with bated breath.  Or I would, if I wasn't so exhausted.

I wish I was doing this right now.

All my best, lovely readers.

-L

Giving the People What They Want

Am I screwing up? 

Remember when I wrote about getting a thoughtful award from another blogger?  And how terrible of a person I am because I utterly fail at finishing things that don't immediately register as "essential?"  Or how remiss I've been in writing posts about things that don't involve my children's bodily functions?  Or that aren't prolonged complaints about my life in general?

No, I didn't exactly say that, did I... but at any rate, I'll get to my point quickly.

Not one, but TWO lovely blogging ladies have presented me with another thoughtful award:

To Janet of KY Klips and Annie of And We're Off To..., I thank you.  From the bottom of my heart.  I've put a lot of love into this little blog, and it's wonderful to hear that it's pretty.  Because, as it features prominently caricatures of yours truly, that means that you think that I'M pretty.  And that's enough to make a girl blush.

As is the modus operandi with this sort of thing, it is my duty upon accepting this prestigious award to provide you with seven random facts about myself, and then to pass it along to another ten stylish blogs.  Blogs that, regardless of what you like to read, are pretty freakin' awesome to look at.  So I'll start with those.  I must warn you, however, that I am going to break with tradition.  Most of these are not parenting related blogs.  These are just marvelous, beautiful places to waste a few moments of your time.  And here they are:

Daily Painter Amy Hautman, who paints truly lovely watercolors of her garden every day.
Post Secret, if you're not familiar with this project already, PLEASE go check it out!  Truly inspiring and always good food for thought.
Visually Inclined, my dear friend's photography blog.  She's a genius with a lens, and leads a glamorous and fascinating life.  And the pictures are always wonderful.
Paulo Coelho's Blog, one of my favorite contemporary authors, keeping up not only with his intellectual pursuits but his silly daily life as well.
The Fall of James, a father and photographer.  His pictures are beautiful, and frequently hilarious.
Momma Data: Debunking Children's Health News, with whom I may have briefly quarreled, but respect deeply.
Mila's Daydreams, who if you aren't already familiar with... again... check her out.  Her art (photograph of her baby daughter's dreams) is amazing, and I can't wait for he book.
Noa Green Photography, a New Jersey based baby photographer, her amazing pictures of newborns and their families, and her own family.  It's lovely.
Neil & His Magnificent Oracular Journal, yes, i saw him tonight and yes, I'm a total geek, but I think it's lovely and silly.  And I'm handing out the accolades.
Uptown Chicago Blog, a collection of photographs from more than the last century of this EXTREMELY interesting neighborhood of Chicago.  I could surf that blog forever.


And now, seven random facts about me.

1. I picked out my first tattoo when I was thirteen.  It's a blue flame, in the middle of my chest.  No, I had never seem Foxfire.  No, it has nothing to do with Angelina Jolie.  Actually, it was originally intended to be two tattoos- the flame on my chest, and a deep purple crescent moon just below my widow's peak on my forehead.  I never went through with the forehead tattoo.  I have no regrets.
2. My least favorite of my own personal parts are my pinkie toes.  I have a tendency to get really nasty blisters on them, blisters that rapidly become infected and need to be lanced.  The first time this happened, the infection began to spread to my foot, leading to a swift and alarming surgical procedure in my pediatrician's office, who then informed me who lucky I was that I was going to keep the foot.  Since then, I've built up an alarming amount of scar tissue on these toes, which makes the infections all the worse.  Shortly before meeting M, I decided that I was going to get rid of those pesky toes once and for all.  In an insomniatic fit, I took a cab to the closest 24 hour hardware store, and spend much of the night picking out the perfect toe-removal device.  I never actually cut them off, but I do have an extremely useful hedge trimmer that I purchased just for that purpose.  I was going to make sure I dropped the toes into some sort of preservative before going to the hospital, first of all to make sure that they couldn't be reattached, and second of all to allow me the glorious option of keeping a jar with toes floating in it in my medicine cabinet.  Just to freak out snoopy guests.  Again, no regrets.
3. My favorite flavors of ice-cream are Blue Moon, which is nearly impossible to get my hands on, and Mackinaw Island Fudge.  Which is almost as difficult to find.  That's the trouble with having all of your childhood nostalgia located in Michigan.  When you're not in Michigan, you can't wallow in your nostalgia. 
4. I'm a neurotic art collector.  As an artist, I could easily cover my walls in my own art.  Unfortunately, having so much of my own art ON the walls makes me feel like a self-obsessed weirdo.  So, I collect art by other people.  Yes, there's still some of my own art up, but it's significantly less than half.  And I'm constantly on the lookout for more fun prints, paintings, and found objects to adorn my home.  My kitchen, in particular, is becoming a gallery in its own right.  My favorite pieces in there are a framed and mounted 8-track of Disco Sesame Street, a print of a silk painting landscape that M and I picked up in New Zealand, A reproduction of a WWI era Cream of Wheat ad, and a painting of an elderly couple polka-ing painted on a keg lid.  If you make art, I would love to put it in my kitchen.
5. Since becoming a mother, I have managed to kill six house plants.  It makes me nervous about the girls' chances.
6. If I had a whole day, just to myself, just to do ANYTHING that I wanted, I would probably read.  And I would probably read comics.  And they would probably have zombies in them.  Back when Walking Dead was showing on AMC (I was already a longtime fan of the comic) the girls' nap time was also my zombie time.  I would torrent the latest episode and spend a nice, quiet hour of grown-up time watching horrific scenes of people being ripped apart by the departed and eating tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches (I refer to this sandwich as a "Tom Robbins," for reasons that I'm sure a savvy Google search could explain).  M had no interest in joining me for this macabre activity.  I am very much looking forward to reviving this routine when the new season starts.



Bonus fact: This mask terrifies M.  I love it.

7. As I decided when I was 15 and my chiropractor explained that I would have back pain forever because of my gigantic boobs, I will be getting a breast reduction as soon as I'm certain that I'm done breastfeeding forever.  I have absolutely no memory of what it's like to live without back pain.

And there you have it!  More about me!  Stay tuned for the future, wherein I will once again write about my children.  Which is why you're here, in the first place.

...and I apologize for the weirdness of this post.  It's been a long, long day, and it's not even close to over.  Cheers!

SuperMommy and the Potty

"The Afterbath"

I've been spending a ridiculous amount of time in the bathroom lately.

No, this isn't actually due to my ongoing battle with the disease I've dubbed "Mystery Dysentery" (which is actually, according to my team of doctors, more like "Mystery Gall Stone").  This is in fact due to two new developments in my life.

DD and SI in the bath

The first is the reinstatement of a routine that puts my children to sleep at night.  The nightly bath.  They LOVE the bath.  DD, having recently learned to use the word "no" conversationally, will now respond to the questions, "Are you ready to get into your pajamas?"  "Do you want to go to bed?" and "Ready to get into your towel?" with a resounding, "No."  SI is more than happy to follow suit and stay in the water until her lips are blue.  While splashing me, or DUMPING WATER OUT OF A TOY BOAT onto me, and laughing uproariously.

Add to this that they now take out ALLLLLLL the washcloths and "help" me clean the tub, that is, drop all the clean washcloths they can get their hands on into the water, or "scrub" the fixtures with them, or "clean" themselves with them...

Bath time, all by itself, generally takes about forty five minutes.  The clean-up takes substantially longer.

But it's not just my own illness and bathing that has me spending most of my days in the bathroom.  No, we've embarked (haphazardly and clumsily, but nonetheless we have embarked) upon the long awaited mission of potty training.

Yes, SI and DD are just over eighteen months old.  Yes, I know they're hardly too old to be using diapers.  I don't care.  YOU spend all day, every day, changing 15-18 diapers (our service gives us an inventory receipt that lets us know just how much of our children's feces they're cleaning up for us) (and that's roughly 2.25 diapers/hour of grubling consciousness) and then you tell me that they can take all the time they want before they poop in the potty.  Please, please do this for me.

Okay, so we've started potty training.  I did buy a book, but I never read it.  I've got so much reading for school, I've got a WONDERFUL book I'm reading with my family book club, and I just don't have that kind of time.  So, no potty training book.  Even if it is only sixty pages long.

I've been playing it by ear.  The first thing that I did was to buy a potty.  I installed it into the house, and every time the girls saw it I made a point of telling them, "This is a potty!  It's for pee and poo!"  The next step was to buy a few picture books to switch in with our regular bedtime reading.  "Once Upon A Potty" was an instant favorite with SI, but DD was terrified- THIS explained the mysterious potty!  She would sit stock still, eyes wide, turning pages with speed and vigor, breathlessly hanging on every word.  She began to treat the potty with reverence and terror.  While before the introduction of the book, she would sit on it like a chair, stand on it, or put her toys in it, now it was some sort of holy object.  Dangerous, powerful, and not to be trifled with.

SI's reaction to this book was, for the most part, the exact opposite.  Much to DD's dismay, SI wanted it read every night.  I had to start reading two books a night, because if I tried putting them to bed after "Once Upon A Potty," DD would have panic attacks.  Seriously, panic attacks.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the book, it has these charming illustrations of Prudence, a little girl (just like you!) using the potty.  On every page without elaborate pictures of Prudence and her mother, there are pretty flowers.

SI LOVES to smell the flowers.  And she LOVES the story of Prudence and her many nice and useful body parts, and she LOVES that this is a nice, small book, that she can manipulate with her clumsy little toddler hands.

So sniffing this book became very important.

In fact, it became very difficult for me to actually READ the book, as each page looked like the back of SI's head, as she frantically sniffed every inch of each page once it had been turned.

And when we got to the picture of Prudence bending over so you could see her nice useful bottom, with it's nice useful hole for making poo...

Yeah, that page has flowers to sniff.  Sniffing every piece of that page is a matter of life and death.  She will not be stopped.

And if you dare laugh, you're in for more trouble.  Anything that makes a grown-up laugh is something that DD has to get in on.  So then you've got two toddlers frantically sniffing Prudence's butt.

Every night.  It's practically a tradition.

Slowly but surely, DD lost her terror of the potty.  SI got more and more excited, demanding to sit on it whenever it was in sight.  I was sure SI would be first.

This child demands that I live in the bathroom

DD memorized my commentary on the book, still not too sure of actually sitting on the potty.  I'd read, "Was it a hat?" and DD would shake her head and say, "No!"  "Was it a milk bowl for the cat?"  "No!"  "Was it a flower pot?" (SI begins sniffing frantically) "No!"

In addition, DD began adding her own, ominous commentary.  Whenever I read, I would follow the line about Prudence peeing and pooping on the floor by saying, "And that's okay!"  DD started pointing at the little picture of a puddle and a pile and saying "No no no!"  I have no idea how she decided on that, but okay then.  I'm still telling her it's okay to make mistakes.  SI does it all the time, after all.

So about a week ago, DD started letting me know when she had gone to the bathroom.  No matter whether she had peed or pooped, she started pointing to her diaper and saying "Poo!"  And I started taking her at her word.  Before long, I had made the decision to start plopping her on the potty before changing her diaper, to give her a chance to associate pee and poo with going in the potty.

Almost instant success.  There was DD, lips pursed, straining to go in the potty.  And she managed to squeeze out a few drops for me.

SI practicing on the potty

I was elated!  I hugged her and exclaimed over her tiny drops of pee, dripped it into the toilet, and helped her flush the toilet.  Then, just like Prudence, we waved and said, "Bye bye pee!"

She didn't pee in the potty today, but yesterday AND the day before we had success!  And today- today SI managed to squeeze out a few drops into the potty for me.  And DD managed to tell me each time she peed or pooped (and differentiate between them) today.

While that's all well and good, it still doesn't explain all the time I've been spending in the bathroom.  No, DD has learned that she gets a lot of special attention and one-on-one mommy time if she announced that she needs to use the potty.  I'll take her in the bathroom, sit down next to the potty, help her get on the potty, and coach her to pee or poo in the potty.

This child is about to poop on the floor

And then this conversation begins:
"Are you going to use the potty?"
"No."
"Do you need to poo or pee?"
"No."
"Can you try to poo or pee for mommy?"
"No no no Mama!  No poo!"
"Let's wait.  Do you want to read a book?"
(nods) "Book!"
"Here's a book."
(holds up book) "Book!"
"Yes, that's a book."
(points at door) "Door!"
"Yes, that's a door."
(taps SuperMommy's knee) "Knee!"
"Yes, that's mommy's knee."
(points at bubble bath bottle) "Bubble!"
"Yes, those are the bubbles."
(points between her legs at the potty) "Potty!"
"Yes, that's the potty.  Can you poo in the potty for mommy?"
"No!"

And then she gets up, pantsless, and tries to give me a big, mostly naked hug.

And this happens every time she sees the bathroom door.

So if she pees or poops, I put her on the potty and we try to go a little more.  If she tells me she needs to poo or pee, I put her on the potty and we try a little more.  And if she sees the bathroom, I put her on the potty and she laughs at me.

And in the meantime, SI keeps peeing and pooping on the floor after she gets out of the tub.

And that is why I spend so much time in the bathroom.

 

The Mom Pledge

Setting an example

You'd probably be astounded to learn, but I'm pretty much a misanthrope.

Don't get me wrong, on an individual basis, people are great.  But when you give them the power of numbers, or even worse anonymity, they turn into a really despicable group.  This is a lesson that I learned very early on in life, when a friend of mine informed me that when people were making fun of me on the bus (I was at piano practice and not available to be taunted in person) she stood up for me on my behalf.  I think she expected me to be really grateful, but instead I was hurt.  Not hurt that they were making fun of me, I expected that, but hurt that first of all she couldn't have stood up for me when I was actually there, and second of all that this was such a big deal- that just telling a group of mean kids that they were being mean about a nice person was extremely noble.

You'd probably also be surprised to learn that I'm pretty much a misogynist.

As awful as people, as a group, can be- there is no group of people worse than women.  It's astounding.  Women are painfully competitive.  And from about the time that puberty hits until, so far as I can tell, death, women spend an amazing amount of their energy (again, as a group) completely DESTROYING each other.

Setting an example

Elaine once said on Seinfeld that girls don't beat each other up.  "We just pick on you until you develop an eating disorder."

And it's true.  And it doesn't stop there.

There's the rumor mongering, there's the back stabbing, and then there's the backward compliments really meant to prove that we are so much more in control and competent than the other women we call our friends.

That said, individually, we're all people.  People that other people, other individuals, can find common ground to share.  People with shared fears and dreams, and who under the herd mentality that makes us so abominable in groups or when nobody knows who we are, really just want everybody to like them.

And that is why mommy-bullying bugs me so much.  Not only is it behavior that should, at best, be reserved for children, but it's behavior that we pass along.  Parents are the template upon which children model themselves.  What does that mean for a child when they can hear and see their mother constantly asserting her superiority over other mothers?  How does that child not grow up to join in on the causing of eating disorders?

Setting an example

So I've taken The Mom Pledge.  When I first heard about this, I thought it was crazy.  Why on earth would mothers, particularly mothers who make a point of publicizing themselves, behave so horrendously?

And then I remembered.  Because they're still people.  Who, in large and anonymous groups, have given themselves a platform for asserting superiority and demeaning all those who might not comply.

And I will have nothing to do with that.

Perhaps it's because I'm so isolated from other mothers, but I have hardly ever experienced mommy-bullying first hand.  At worst, I've felt snubbed.  But I've never felt it in a mommy-specific way.  I always assumed it had more to do with the fact that I just tend not to get along with other women.  But after talking to one of my good friends, and one of my only other mommy friends, I've come to understand that it's more than that.  For some reason, there are mothers out there that genuinely want to tear other mothers down.  That want us all to believe that their way is the only way, and all other mothers are somehow criminal for adhering to a different philosophy, or a different lifestyle.  There is a breed of viciousness that only mothers share.

Setting an example

Is it an evolutionary necessity?  By asserting your dominance over other mothers, do you somehow gain an advantage for your child?

Maybe when we were hunters and gatherers, but not now.  Now we need to work together, constantly, to make this world a place where our children can live in peace.  Together.

So, other mothers, remember that we are not just anonymous, or conglomerated.  We are still individuals, we are still role models.  Every second of every day.  And we need to take pride in that, but more important we need to see it as a responsibility.  Go take the pledge yourself.

Because we're all in this together.

Parenting on Instinct

Baby wearing love

I'll admit it.  When I was pregnant, I was totally lost.  I had no idea what I was going to do with a baby- for those first six months I really couldn't think of anything that babies DID.  I figured it was a weird time of limbo where you just waited for your child to finally get... interesting.

I did a few of the standard pregnant and clueless things.  I bought a few books, I accepted sometimes completely contrary advice from anyone who would offer, and did what I do best.  I decided to wing it.

Now, I know that it might seem to you out that I officially subscribe to a few defined parenting techniques.  I never did that on purpose.  Everything that I've done as a mother has been done following a few basic guidelines.

Breastfeeding love

What's best for the babies?
What's best for ME?

Best for the babies?  Breast feeding.  Best for me?  Moving the girls to their own room.  Best for the girls?  Baby wearing.  Best for me?  Potty training.  Starting last week, sort of.

We use cloth diapers because of the environmental impact, but more importantly because I think it's best for the girls to be aware of their bodily functions and to avoid the nasty rashes that come from artificially dried poo.  We breast fed until the girls self-weaned, because the human breast milk is ideal baby food, and they were happy to eat as much of it as they could.  I made most of their solid baby food, because I knew every ingredient was natural, healthy, and delicious.  I was constantly shocked at what Gerber and the like will put gelatin into.  That said, we're keeping the girls on a vegetarian diet until they're old enough to make an informed decision on their own.  It all seems pretty crunchy, huh?

Solid food love

But I never let myself feel like I HAD to do (or not do) something because of some ideal of granola parenting.  I supplemented with formula without giving myself a guilt complex- hell, nursing twins at all was an accomplishment, I wasn't going to treat myself like a failure if I wasn't always able to produce enough milk for two hungry babies.  I got my kids vaccinated on the pediatric recommended schedule- I wouldn't know what the measles looked like if I saw it, and frankly the same goes for whooping cough and mumps.  I moved my kids into their own room when they were about four months old.  After all, they comforted each other better than I could, and we all slept better.

In short, I've been basing my entire parenting philosophy on instinct.  Does this feel like the right thing to do?   Do I feel like this is a good idea? 

I found as I was reading parenting books- ALL of them- that I found the authors at best irritating and at worst complete idiots.  The multiple specific books were no doubt the worst of the lot.  I constantly felt like I was being talked down to, and if there's one thing on this earth that is guaranteed to enrage me, it's condescension.  I stopped reading parenting books before half of the full shelf I'd acquired had even been opened.  I just couldn't be bothered.  I obviously knew best.

Sleep-in-your-own-room love

And I still felt like I didn't know anything.  It was all a matter of watching my children, listening, and trying to figure out what they were trying to tell me.  I introduced solid foods as soon as the girls started acting really interested.  I stopped breastfeeding when they made it clear that they were just plain done.  I started vaguely potty training when they started acting upset about being around their own feces.  (And I'm totally flying by the seat of my pants here, too.  Right now my version of potty-training is a lot of "see Mommy using the potty?" and reading potty-themed books.  They know what the potty is, and I think they're starting to get an idea of what it's for.  So far, we haven't even tried actually using it for its intended purpose.)

Book worm love

We human beings are bad at remembering that, fundamentally. we're ANIMALS.  We're mammals, primates, bipedal, social, verbal... those are the things that define most of our development.  The things that we do for babies are completely tied up in being those things.  Being a highly civilized creature just complicates matters.  Everything about having a baby is primal- from pregnancy until the child is functionally verbal.  So as far as the parenting of my own babies is concerned, I guess you could say that I've reverted to some kind of inner animal nature.

I think my kids are remarkably close to perfect.  So is it undignified that I tend to think of us as neanderthals in order to get through the immeasurably difficult years of baby- and toddler-hood?  Perhaps.  But it's working.  It makes me feel good about our lives and every milestone my children reach, and I have no regrets whatsoever.

The parenting choices that M and I have made have made all of us very happy animals.

More about Instinctual Mamas:
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In Which SuperMommy Challenges You To Be Silly or Sincere

If you read this blog in Google Reader or something like that, you probably can't tell when I've made changes to its appearance.  That said, I've finished the banner across the top.  It now pictures the whole family, caricatured by yours truly.

I had a lot of fun doing it, I'll admit.  I love to draw, and I don't spend nearly as much time drawing or painting as I'd like.  So sketching up these little pictures has been great.

And that makes me think... most of you out there who read my blog... I happen to know that you're clever and talented.  And so I challenge you- send me a sketch of your family!

Me and M- portrait from 2008

Whether or not you have kids, I know you have a family.  Or somebody that you love and consider family.  And honestly, didn't we all love drawing pictures of our families when we were little?  When was the last time you did that?

It doesn't have to be a drawing, it could be done on notepad, or it could be a written sketch, or it could be an interpretive dance.   Feel free to create a much more elaborate product than anything I might have the energy for right now.

I'll be accepting submissions for two weeks- post them to your blog and comment here with the link (and your first name), or send me an image or word file to:
becomingsupermommy@gmail.com

On March 11th I'll post links to all of your blog entries, all your descriptions and images, and anything else you can come up with that you'd like to share with the world.

I challenge you!  Show me your family!  I give you two weeks.

Being Weird

unt G

My Grandpa Stan

Olah Momma! prompts, and I answer...

For me, strangeness is a proud family tradition that has been passed down through generations.  My father's family, for example.  There were some weirdos.  My late grandfather was a man of epic bizarrity, he was known to carry around a rubber change purse that looked like a vagina.  His eyebrows melded seamlessly with his hair.  He was sure that he had a perfect solution to create peace in the Middle East- just open up an amusement park on the west bank.  My father joked that you could call it "Jihad Land."  And that just scratches the surface of his oddness.



I have some of his voicemail messages saved on my computer.  His messages were epic.  This one was odd, in that he didn't repeat, "This is Stan," at lest twice.

  PinkPussy by leargrover

My father graduating... in antennae.

My father and his brothers all went on to be very strange people.  My father in particular prided himself on it.

Then there's my mother's family.  To be frank, my father's family was out-weirded without even putting up a fight.  The joke is that my mother's family was the Addams Family, complete with a Lurch and a cousin It.  And they all had a bit of a knack for the macabre and unusual.  One of the things my parents bonded on when they met was that they had both convinced their classmates that they were actually aliens from another planet.  They were both vegetarians, and I believe that they met because my mother stood up for homosexual equality when another boy accused him of being gay.

My mother and her siblings

My granddaddy would have been an Olympic gymnast, if that had been a lucrative career in the 50's and 60's.  Instead, he got dual Ph.D.s in physics and math.  He had a grad student who would hang around, a tiny guy with a high pitched voice that nobody could get rid of.  He was cousin It.  One of her brothers went bald at 16, started wearing a cloak, and made a bit of a side business selling amulets to the other boys at his boarding school.  He was very much Lurch.  My aunt joined a band in Hawaii and followed the Grateful Dead.  She also painted some lovely (and fairly trippy) paintings that I had hanging in my bedroom for a while.  My favorite was a landscape of a hillside, overlooking the planet earth.  My granny is a fabulous lady.  I love her like crazy.  And she is a little bit mad.  She has no sense of modesty or awkwardness, spins a marvelous yarn.  My other uncle is a Filker.  His big hit is a lullabye called, "The Demons Underneath Your Bed."  Then there's my mother.  My mother who kept a tub full of pet worms named "Squiggly," who collects rocks and lizards, who we would give millipedes and tarantulas for Mother's Day.  My mother, who has filled her living room with mounted stuffed animal heads (moose, lion, walrus, hunter...) of her own creation.  My mother is a weird lady.

So it's no wonder that their kids turned out to be just plain weird.

Aunt Something Funny and Aunt Genocide as teenagers

First, there's my older sister.  While she was in jail (for walking in front of a police station in the nude on a bet) she would write me from jail about harnessing methane from cows to power my grandfather's amusement park.  Her letters were filled with sentiments that she was, "the only one in here for something funny."  When we were little, she created a Barbie sized guillotine to teach my younger sister and I about the French Revolution.  Several dolls were lost to The Terror.

My younger sister, well, she's a Master of Genocide.  She's a die-hard comic geek.  She knows every single word of Harry Potter (read by Jim Dale) backwards and forwards.  As a teenager, she covered her walls in polka dot fleece fabric and photographed protests for a local gay newspaper.

Yours truly at age 7

Then there's me.  I'm not even sure where to begin.  First of all, just being a vegetarian with gigantic glasses and big hair in suburban New Jersey made me pretty weird as a little kid.  I started writing horror stories in elementary school- while I was in third and fourth grade I spent a lot of my free time working on a novel called, "The Globe," about an eeeevil high school teacher who used a gigantic, ornate globe in his classroom to incite horrific natural disasters.  It had a lot of the teen-gore genre failings, including the murder of all characters who got too hormonal and sexual.  I printed a book of one ghost story about my classmates being haunted by a ghost Trick-Or-Treater on Halloween.  My horror poems started getting published when I was in 5th grade (although generally only locally) and I begin writing short horror stories (much better than "The Globe," I'm happy to say) when I was in middle school.  At the same time, I began covering my bedroom wall with eyes cut out of magazines.  This continued for five years, until the entire thing was one massive collage.

My Eye Wall (me age 16)

I was a goth teenager, but I didn't really know that at the time.  I had eschewed all color in my wardrobe, and would wear layer upon layer of black and white skirts, slips, and other assorted lacy garments.  I dyed my hair black, wore heavy black eyeliner, and would occasionally tell my classmates that if they kept pestering me, "The halls of the school would run with the blood of the wicked and the obnoxious."  I had up to eight rescued ferrets at a time, living in my increasingly schizophrenic bedroom with me.  For a year or so I made my bed on a big pile of pillows on the floor, before my mother helped me construct a loft bed with a hidden reading nook on the inside.  It was awesome.

My brands of weirdness changed drastically when I started going to college, which I did at 14.  I learned to embrace colors, ALL of them.  When I was 18, I transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the only transfer student on my floor, and definitely the only one my age.

I took a few master's level writing classes, and spent much of my tenure in the role of Kramer to a friend and neighbor's Seinfeld.  I even had my own Newman.

"Dream Interpretation" 2003

I started making both close friends and bitter enemies of my art teachers.  I was intentionally antagonistic at times.  When my collage professor insisted that a good collage was small by definition, I would turn in mural sized assignments.  I got in shouting matches with my portraiture professor for making all the model's breasts green (which I still insist is the best color for breasts).  I alienated other students by taking assignments far too literally- in a mixed media class we had the homework of creating a box that visually represented what was inside.  People brought in shoeboxes covered in shells (with shells inside) and ceramic boxes in the shape of a butterfly (with a dead butterfly inside).  I made a vaguely boat-shaped contraption out of broken guitar strings, blank manuscript paper, and a shattered violin.  It was filled with silence.  Nobody but the professor got it

Now I'm essentially an adult.  Once again, I find that I'm weird by different definitions.  I'm a new mom in my mid-20s who's working on their degree.  I don't meet very many of those.  I'm pretty much a crunchy mama, but I vaccinate and I don't do the family bed thing.  I try to recycle and garden and use cloth diapers, but throw away a full trash bag nearly every day.  I'm a vegetarian chef, but I cook meat (very well, I'm told) for my husband and guests.  I sew as much of my own clothes as I can, but I'm a total fashion snob.  I'm an artist and a free thinker, and I'm in school to become a career bureaucrat.  I cultivate a love of horror films and musicals, that somehow manage to come together in such works of genius as, "Cannibal! The Musical."

I have a neurological disorder that causes synesthesia and phantom sensations.  My favorite foods are kik alicha and marzipan.  I'm Jewish and married to a Lutheran.  I often fantasize about cutting off my toes (even bought the tools once) but cultivate my toe hair.  I hate most things that might be considered girly, but I never wear pants.

I sometimes muse that the thing that I like least about being a mom is that I won't get to ride on any roller coasters for a few years.

I'm allergic to Swiss cheese and pretty much nothing else.

I'm afraid of butterflies.  Seriously.

My Droogies on their first Halloween

And M is pretty much weird, too.  He's a sci-fi and fantasy geek, he's a brain cancer survivor, and he's got a crazy sense of humor.  His family also has their share of weirdness in it, but that's not my story to tell.

Suffice to say, my daughters stand to inherit the family tradition of being strange.  Good thing, too.  I'm not sure I'd know how to relate to them if they weren't weirdos.

So there you have it.  That's my weirdness, mostly laid out for you.

Take it as you will.