That’s what he calls himself when he does this.
Minutes passed as he ever so slowly crept closer to a group of deer. One remained, and they just stared at each other.
Nature is so different to me now with him around.
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The Creature-Adventurer
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007Bribery, Deceit, and Manipulation
Monday, October 22nd, 2007A miserable, tired, almost-two-year-old with a cold. A disappointed-not-to-be-at-the Children’s-Museum-as-promised three-year-old with a cough. A cold, foggy morning. A mother with no coffee. No food in the house. The happy angel on my shoulder said: Sure, go to the grocery store! You can do it! The mean angel on my other shoulder said: Yes, do go. The misery and destruction will be high entertainment. I went.
When the little one shrieked with fury instead of joy at being put in the car attached to the front of the shopping cart, the happy angel said: Oooo, very bad sign. Guess I was wrong. Grab a cup of coffee and leave now with your dignity intact. No worries. The mean angel said: Stay. This is gonna be good. I stayed.
The little one would neither walk, ride, or be carried; instead, he sprinted full-speed away. The mean angel laughed . . . and so did the store manager, but in a nicer way.
When the sprinting turned into falling on the floor and sniffling pathetically, I finally decided to leave. But heading toward the exit, I saw them: little packets of animal crackers hanging on the end of the aisle. I grabbed two bags and dangled them in front of their faces. I chirped, “Oh, look, I almost forgot that it’s snack time. Luckily, I found a great snack right here!” The mean angel was thrilled: A bribe, a lie, and a manipulation all in one bag of crackers. The happy angel said: At least they’re organic.
It worked. We shopped at a rate of speed hitherto unseen in this country. We got out, loaded the bags, and buckled in. As we were able to pull out of the parking space, the guys realized that the bags near their feet sounded like thunderous drums when kicked. They kicked and flailed and bobbed their heads. The mean angel was thrilled that the eggs were all getting broken. I opened my mouth to say, “Guys! The eggs and the bread and the fruit will all get . . .” The happy angel said: Shut the hell up and dance with them. So I did.
A Shut-Up Day
Sunday, October 14th, 2007Don’t do that. Stop it. Don’t touch. No, no. Stop. Don’t. Please stop. Hurry up. I said, please don’t do that.
Imagine that the world is approximately three million times more interesting than it even is now. You’re fascinated by everything you see, but you have a loudspeaker attached to your shoulder saying don’t touch don’t touch don’t touch all day long. Sometimes I feel like Martin and Chris must feel like that sometimes.
I detest hearing the don’t-touch-stop-it-put-that-down stuff coming out of my mouth. As much as it has got to be said sometimes, I try to have a Shut-Up Day once in a while to keep the unnecessary ones from becoming a habit. If I feel a don’t-touch-it coming on, and if I don’t have a damned good reason for it, I shut up.
If it’s not about safety or rudeness or another valid concern, why can’t he touch it? Why quell the instinct Martin had the other day to explore every button and attachment on the vacuum cleaner, then use them for magic wands, then catch crocodiles with them. So it’s a mess–big deal. When Chris squeals with shock at seeing an ant with a crumb on the sidewalk, do I really need to rush him past it to get to the grocery store quicker?
But sometimes I’m late, or tired, or, worst of all, just too accustomed to the wonder and magic they see everywhere. If I feel a twinge of that, it’s time for me to shut up for a while and let them talk to an ant.
Good Riddance
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007“Now, what I’m about to say is a really big deal coming from me, because I really don’t like boys. They’re too vigorous and frightening for me. So when I tell you how much I just love Martin, and how we just think the world of him, that means an awful lot. He’s such a nice boy, and so well-behaved. I never have to worry that my little girl is going to get run over or scared. And I can’t stress enough to you what this means coming from me, because I just don’t like little boys. I never have.”
-Parting words from a mother who is moving from my area to me, a mother of two little boys, who, fortunately, doesn’t make a practice of public brawling at children’s play areas
My Cooking Scares Two-Year-Olds
Monday, October 8th, 2007I’m making scrambled eggs. It’s not easy (for me).
Chris runs into the kitchen, stops short, stares, and retreats. I hear him in the next room: “Martin! Help! Smoky! Help! Help!”
He’s right. The smoke alarm blares, the children sprint around, screaming and laughing.
Toad-Friends
Sunday, October 7th, 2007Martin, from the beginning, has been fascinated by creatures. Sea and land, wiggly and slimy.
I wasn’t sure how much of nature he was ready for though, and when. Lions chasing down a baby elephant on a nature show? A snake grabbing and swallowing a frog? Is that violence and death that a child should be much older to see and understand, or is it nature and his world?
I didn’t need to wonder–Martin lets me know. If I startle at a, to me, somewhat gruesome image in the nature books he likes, Martin explains, yet again, always patiently, “That’s just the way nature works, Mom.” I wasn’t sure if he was just repeating a line from one of his favorite creature-adventurers, or if he really got it. I think he gets it. Yesterday, he elaborated on the death theme: “Mom, all creatures have to die someday. Even people die. You, me, Dad, Chris, Grammy, Gramps . . .” After he listed most of our family, I asked him, “But what will happen when we die?” I thought he’d guess that we woke up the next morning . . . but he paused and replied, “Well, then we become carcasses for vultures.”
Yikes. But his point was made. Death is just the way nature works.
My other worry was that the chasing and killing and fighting that is a part of the natural world would result in more aggressive behavior. Wrong again. Martin will catch grasshoppers and frogs, name them (usually “Dengy”), call them “toad-friend” or “grasshopper-friend,” give them water and grass. Then he tells me, “I am going to put my toad-friend back in his natural habitat.” And then, so gently, and with soft words of encouragement, he does.
(Reading this great post in My Fairbanks Life about childhood wisdom regarding nature and life cycles got me thinking about this subject…)
Love is Coming Out of My Toes
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007The little one didn’t nap, fussed all day, wouldn’t take a bath, wouldn’t eat, and now wouldn’t go to sleep, and as I was trying with all my might to get him to change his mind, the older one sat down next to me and put his head on my shoulder. I thought, I swear, if he riles up this damn baby, or makes him wake up, or . . .” when he said, “Mom, my heart has a lot of love for you and it’s floating up to my ears and coming out my mouth and my toes. Look.” And he opened his mouth and raised his toes in the air.
Thank you, little Martin.
Let me get out of my head when things seem overwhelming; seeing two little boys with love dripping from their toes makes it better.
How a Broken Knee Led to My Baby Sleeping
Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007After coming home with my first baby, every night I would settle down watching television or listening to a book on tape and just sit there. Martin would sleep in my arms, and only in my arms. Every well-meaning person who heard this had a new solution: put him down drowsy, play wave sounds, take a ride in the car . . . you probably know all of them already. But, I swear, no matter what, he would remain asleep only in my arms. I gave up, and just stayed up and held him. He nursed and slept, slept and nursed.
Until that wonderful day when my husband came home with a broken knee.
I guess it wasn’t a broken knee, but something bad happened to it, and I’m not his doctor so I’m not responsible for knowing the details. I was woozy from having a baby three weeks earlier and not sleeping since. At some point, I do remember a surgery, and then some guy carrying a big knee machine into our house, hooking my husband up to it, and instructing him to stay on the couch downstairs. I also remember looking at the empty king-sized bed, and realized that since this little bundle of baby couldn’t go anywhere, maybe he could sleep there. Maybe he would sleep for just a few minutes next to me instead of in my arms if I got really close to him . . . and then it was 6:00 am.
And that’s how I invented co-sleeping. I thought I sort of did, actually, because I had yet to realize, from friends or the internet or books, that people actually did it. Let alone that it was being done for untold years around the world. I just hadn’t thought about it. Why didn’t someone suggest that to me along with the hair dryer and vacuum cleaner sounds?
I figured it out once I found myself lying about doing it. Co-sleeping can be as unpopular with some as it can be life-saving for others. You’ll never get him out of your bed . . . he’ll never wean . . . he’ll never learn to sleep by himself . . . when I heard that enough from some people, I just stopped talking about it–unless I was talking to someone who might have cause to try it or if I was in the mood to really discuss it.
It was an early lesson in doing what feels right, despite what others say (even the pediatrician sometimes) and in looking beyond my circle to trusted sources elsewhere. I needed to find my own parenting advice and support niche. (Thank you, Dr. Sears–this is when I found you.)
I think that even my husband will agree: the broken knee thing was worth the sleeping baby.
“That’s the Difference Between Girls and Boys.”
Sunday, September 30th, 2007We were walking through a wooded park the other day, Martin covered in mud from his waist down, Chris from his neck up…and in his mouth…oh, and in his nose. They tore around in circles, careened down hills, clambered up trees, and toppled into the creek. I pushed an empty double stroller for when they got tired. That’s never yet happened, but I’m ready.
Another woman passed. Walking serenely next to her was a girl, about 3 like Martin, but spotless and wearing a lovely mint-green skirt. The child pushed a stroller where her little sister sat with her own fluttery skirt and hair bow. A friend walking next to me nodded from the little girls then to Martin and Chris battling through a bush to get to a caterpillar and commented, “That’s the difference between girls and boys.”
No.
It’s the difference between two sets of siblings at one moment in time.
My perspective on whether gender differences are innate or cultural or what those differences might be changed when I looked at my first newborn baby boy. I did not want him told, outright or furtively through advertising and other cultural and social pressures, that he was supposed to play with trucks or throw baseballs unless he wanted to. Just as much, I did not want him to think that his girl friends or siblings (should one arrive) should not be up in tree. I certainly want to stay informed and analytical about the pressures of gender roles and stereotyping to maintain my vigilance and do my best to keep it out of my home and my parenting, but these are two individual boys I’m mothering, not a gender. Studies cannot convince me to accept that they are supposed to do anything because they are boys.
I am guessing that the fluttery skirts that those sisters were wearing ended up spotted with mud by the end of their walk–they, after all, were just getting started and the woods were filled with puddles.
(By the way, the point of this post is communicated in a much more fun way by blue milk in her account of playing at the park with a friend and her daughter: “The better the day, the dirtier the child.” The children in that post happen to be girls . . .)
$138,095
Wednesday, September 26th, 2007I just got yet another “mommy joke” e-mail. Complete with lots of pink and animated gifs. I admit, sometimes particularly saccharine ones bring a tear to my eye–even when they annoy me, but I’m like that: easily teary-eyed.
But this one, which I’ve seen in various forms, just irritates me. It tells of a woman who is asked what she “does” and gives this long, complicated job description, social-engineer-human-development-research-director type thing, when she is actually a mother. It’s just not funny to me to have to think of cute and clever ways to say I’m a mother. Why isn’t that enough?
It reminds me of the lists of paying jobs that a parent may do in the course of a day to determine what salary ($138,095) he or she might earn. I suppose these lists illustrate certain facets of parenting that may not be obvious, but it defines motherhood (and parenthood, but these types of articles seem focused on mothers) by forcing it into other categories. Am I supposed to crow about articles like this: I really am worth a whole bunch of money! See, this list proves you have to respect me now! I may as well be a part-time laundry machine operator!
I get the reasoning behind trying to figure out a mother’s financial worth, and I get why a bunch of mother-friends e-mail these articles out when they are published, but I’m discouraged it has to be done at all.