Flush

I wrote this post two days ago, when the world seemed very slightly less dark, and then - as the moon moved directly in front of the sun and blocked its light - decided that I couldn't post it, because reflecting upon my daughter's tyrannical approach to love scraped all the wrong nerves on a day without light. But then she got sick, very sick, yesterday and I spent too many hours pacing the hospital floor, gripped with worry, waiting for her to lift her head and say anything, anything at all, anything to show us that she was fine, that she would be fine, and when she finally did lift her head she said this: WHERE IS DADDY I WANT DADDY NOT YOU MOMMY, DADDY.

And my heart leapt, happy to have her back with any measure of her imperious glory.

Which is why I post this now. In gratitude.

*****

I hear the thump-thump-thump of her little feet as she advances down the hallway toward the bathroom. I listen from my cocoon of bubbles as she stops outside the door, hesitating for the briefest moment before turning the handle and opening the door just wide enough to slip through, a wisp in pink flannel pajamas, squinting against the glare of the bathroom light.

Mommy? I have to go poo.

That's okay, sweetie. Can you manage on your own? I sit up in the tub and offer my hand to steady her. She ignores me. She yanks her pajama bottoms down with one hand and hoists her half-naked self up onto the toilet seat with the other. I slouch back into my bubbles.

She leans forward and rest her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, a thinker smaller than Rodin ever imagined. Mommy?

- Yes?

I don't love you.

- No?

No.

- Not at all?

Not all the time. Only when you do fun things.

- Did we do fun things today?

Yeah.

- Did we do fun things yesterday?

Yeah.

- When do you not love me?

Some of the other time.

- When do you love Daddy?

All of the time.

- And why do you not love me all of the time?

Because I only love you some of the time.

- That hurts my feelings.

Okay. Dramatic sigh. I love you most of the time.

I debate whether or not to press her on this. I know that if I ask for a more fulsome declaration of love, I'll get one. I also know that she'll try to extract a price.

I decide that I'm fine with that.

And if you ask me for something tonight - like maybe will I stay in your bedroom with you, and read you an extra story? - and I tell you that I don't want to, because I'm hurt that you only love me some of the time...?

Then I will tell you that I love you all of the time.

We sit - I in my bath, she on her porcelain throne - and think about this.

We have stop talking now, she says, because I'm going to do my poo.

And she did. While I sat in my rapidly cooling bath, watching the bubbles deflate around me and marveling at my little empress, setting her boundaries, defining her terms. Letting my heart feel its hurt, and then letting it go and watching it swirl down the drain in a little flush of pride.

*****

She's still very sick. We don't know what it is. Hopefully, it's only a virus and we can keep her hydrated until it works its way through. Until then, I sit on edge, waiting for little tyrannical demands, waiting for petty and imperious dismissals, waiting for my little dictator to resume power.

The Science Of Sleep

I think that I've said it here before, but I'll say it again: I'm exhausted. I'm going to say more about it right now, so if the topic of my slow spiral into sleep-deprived madness bores you, click away now.

When Emilia was a baby, I was pretty certain that I had the night-time sleep thing figured out. She refused, for the most part, to nap during the day, but was sleeping through the night from infancy and so I counted myself lucky. More than lucky: I was smart. I knew what I was doing, if only in this one area of motherhood. There were a lot of things that I couldn't figure out (like naps, which I bitched about heartily), but getting baby to sleep at night? I knew all about that. When I spoke to other moms who couldn't get their babies to sleep through the night, I shared my tactics - consistent bedtime routine, liberal use of loveys and binkies, a willingness to let baby fuss it out - and nodded sympathetically when they said that these tactics didn't work for them. I nodded sympathetically, but secretly, I wondered: were they doing it wrong? They must be doing something wrong. My formula worked like magic. Of course it was because it was exactly the right formula, and not because Emilia was simply disposed to sleep at night. I wasn't just lucky. I was doing something right.

I was wrong. I was lucky. Mostly. I mean, my tactics certainly helped - Emilia's bedtime routine was made all the more straightforward for its consistency and its props. She did need to fuss it out sometimes, and my willingness to allow that helped us through some difficult periods. But mostly? She was, and is, a good night sleeper.

Jasper is not. And nothing that I do seems able to change that.

I've tried everything - routine, props, fussing it out, crying it out, nursing before sleep, not nursing before sleep, swaddling, not swaddling, vodka (for me) - and then tried it all again, and none of it has worked. Sometimes he settles easily into his crib, sometimes he will only fall asleep in his car seat, but regardless of how he falls asleep, he does not stay asleep. He wakes up, always, a couple of hours after going down, and then he will not return to sleep unless he is tucked in at the breast, in bed, with me, and then he will wake up, invariably, every two hours or so to nurse or just to grab at me and make sure that I am still there. If I sneak away to another room - as I have been doing most nights, just to remove the temptation of boob and try to extend the minutes between wakings - he still wakes up, and yells Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma until I return.

And so it goes, night after night. The husband gets up with him in the mornings, when he can, which affords me a couple of hours of rest, but beyond that there is not much to be had. I stumble forward into each day, ever more tired, ever more slow, ever more blurred and bleary and dazed. I'm coping, in a way - there are worse things, certainly, than to be exhausted from caring for a beautiful, healthy, ever-happy baby - but still: I look ahead at the days and weeks and months of Jasper's babyhood and wonder whether I am fated to remain awake for the duration. And I wonder whether I will stay sane.

Of course I will stay sane. I'll be fine. Millions of mothers before me have endured sleeplessness. Many, indeed, have done it without the advantages of helpful husbands and king-sized beds and spare rooms and Ativan prescriptions. So I resist the urge to proclaim myself overwhelmed unto defeat. If my own mother could do it, so can I.

What I am having more trouble overcoming: the nagging worry that I am not just unlucky, that I am, in fact - against all evidence to the contrary - doing something wrong, that I am missing some vital resource, some work of science or art or magic that would change things, that would make my baby sleep at night. I think back to the nights of Emilia's babyhood, when I would stand outside her door and listen to her breathing and fight the urge to go in and - the mind boggles, it just boggles - wake her up to snuggle her, to have more time with her in her babyness, and I wonder whether that was a different woman, a different mother, a mother who knew things, things that I do not know, or have forgotten.

And then I wonder whether I am going crazy, and I shake the Ativan bottle to see how many pills are left and I calculate the odds of Jasper deciding to sleep through the night before they run out.

And I tell myself that I am very probably not that lucky.

Okay, maybe I'm a little bit lucky. It's just, you know, it'd be nice to look at them and not have them be blurry.

(I apologize - do I need to apologize? - for turning off comments so much recently. I've been doing it when a) I know that I need to back away from the computer - to, you know, maybe sleep a little bit - and won't be able to read comments, and b) when I'm just posting video of the babies, because that whole thing where you give way too much thought to whether people are going leave comments saying how cute they are and ohmigod what if no-one says they're cute? I don't like that. So I avoid the issue altogether. Feel free to tell me that you think that this is terrible of me. Because I worry about that, too.)

Rebel Angel

We have a discipline problem in our house, by which I mean to say: discipline, we have none.

We try, we really do. We bargain, we barter, we cajole, we threaten. We will bake cookies, Emilia, if you will just please listen to Mommy! We will bake cookies and have hot chocolate with marshmallows if you will please, please listen to Mommy! Mommy will take cookies away if you do not listen to Mommy! There will be no more cookies, ever, in this house, if you do not this instant start listening to Mommy! Mommy will destroy all the cookies in the world and angels will cry if you DO. NOT. LISTEN. TO. MOMMY. NOW!

But we never prevail. She is stronger than are we, and she knows it. She is patient: she knows that even if she does not get cookies today, there is always tomorrow. And she knows that if she does not get cookies tomorrow, there will be cookies some other day. And she knows that even if Mommy did try to destroy all the cookies and candy and treats in the world - which Mommy would not, because Mommy loves these things too, and she knows it - she would still have a stash, somewhere, to tide her over until the next solicitous neighbor or little old lady or shopping mall Santa slips her a gingerbread man or a candy cane or some other non-holiday-specific confection. Or she will just get the cookies herself, when we're not looking. She knows how the world works. And she knows that it works in her favor.

She is only just - just - three years old.

She is three years old, and a near-perfect angel when in the care of other authority figures (with the notable exception of my mother, whom she identified early on as possessing a spirit akin to her own and therefore as a potentially dangerous antagonist. Their relationship is loving, but fiery) and, for the most part, when in public. We spent three days at Disney World and Sea World and I - alone in charge of the girl and the infant boy - had very little trouble keeping care: he remained strapped to my chest, and she dutifully (if boisterously) remained within a shout's reach. But at home, when the only authority is my own and that of her father, and no witnesses are present, all hell regularly breaks loose, and we are helpless to stop it.

Every evening is the same: a battle over the when, where, how and why of dinner, and over the why, how, where and when of bedtime. I won't bore you with details; suffice to say that she uses her wits, her charm, sheer force of will and, sometimes, fists, to forestall sitting still, consuming food, bathing, changing for bed, and getting into and staying in bed. The morning is a variation of this struggle (reverse the order of obstacles), and afternoons, after preschool, are another. The weekends sometime erupt into epic battles, wherein she charges, naked, from room to room, cackling madly, slamming doors and diving under tables, evading our reach and our calls and our pleas for compliance. Please, sweetie, we must get dressed! We must eat lunch! We cannot see Santa/build a snowman/bake cookies unless we are dressed/have had lunch/have stopped pummeling our mother. Sometimes, it is not her physical will that she imposes upon us, it is her will-to-independence, her psychic will-to-power - her willingness to simply ignore whatever it is that we're saying and go, find a piece of furniture, push it into the kitchen and up next to the cupboards and go in search of cookies on her own, ignoring us as we stand, hands on hips, voices straining, hissing no, Emilia, we said NO. NO. Did you hear me? NO! Emilia, if you DO NOT CLIMB DOWN from that stool THIS INSTANT you are going into your buckle chair (the Stokke knock-off that functions as a naughty seat - which, yes, we strap her into because not even a team of SuperNannies could keep her in there with just a glare) and you will not have ANY cookies today, none at all, and WHERE ON EARTH ARE YOU GOING YOUNG LADY? and in the time that it takes to ask her to get down she's snatched her contraband and has done a base-slide under the dining room table to make fast work of it.

And we are left, scrambling, pursuing her into corners, sweating and shouting and stumbling gracelessly, two Yosemite Sams to her Bugs Bunny, helpless and ridiculous.

Children, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued, are tyrants from the first. Struggling against their natural helplessness, their natural, almost slavish, dependence upon us, they strain to exert their will. Thrust into our world, entirely dependent upon us, they must either dominate us or serve us; according to Rousseau, they invariably - they naturally - choose to dominate. Their every impulse, from their very first wail, is to dominate, and by dominating, compel us to become their servants in turn. Which in so many respects we do. This is why, for Rousseau, mothers are always and necessarily imperfect authoritarians - that is, at least, if they are what he understood to be good mothers, which is to say, unconditionally loving mothers - because they are always, in some important way, subservient to their love for their children, and so less capable of imposing the harshest boundaries and teaching the most difficult lessons.

I love Emilia's domineering spirit; I truly do. But it frightens and intimidates me and - in some strange, confusing respect - shames me. She is powerful. She is fearless. She looks at the world around her and, for the most part, sees a world that can and should and will be conquered. That is a wonderful and terrible thing. It is wonderful (and this is the part that shames me) because it it is a remarkable, empowering thing, to regard the world as conquerable. It is something that I struggle to recognize for myself - that most of the obstacles that I see, or imagine I see, before me are conquerable. How extraordinary, to view the world through a lens that remains very nearly entirely unfogged by fear! But it is terrible, because - as Rousseau well knew, as we all well know - our children cannot advance into the world in that way, convinced of their utter entitlement to whatever it is that they desire, convinced of their ability to obtain it for themselves, convinced of their invincibility. They need to understand limits, boundaries. They need to understand that they must bend, give way, let go, listen, obey.

Emilia knows these things, at least as they pertain to the public spaces of her world - the spaces of school and neighborhood and friends and family. She is a remarkably polite and courteous and considerate little girl in spaces where authority emanates from some broader sphere or principle or institution, where everybody is expected to bend and give way equally, where everybody gets cookies if they say please (such are the cafes in our town, full of cookies for small children) and where everybody must wait their turn and where everybody must obey the traffic lights regardless of whether they are three feet tall or six. But in the private space of her home, where her parents loom over her like dictators - loving dictators, but still - where rules are issued that it seems only she must follow (no candy before bedtime no cookies before bedtime no playing after bedtime bedtime bedtime bedtime turn out the light put down your toys time for bed time for school time for dinner are you listening?) (she does not see that we deny ourselves - usually - cookies at bedtime. She sees only that we stay up later, and can and do reach the forbidden cupboards whenever we please) she resists. She resists, like (sometimes literally) a tiny little sans-culottes, or a tiny little Robespierre, or some explosive revolutionary hybrid of the two. She resists, and we cave to her resistance, and like France of the late 18C, we go down in flames.

It is, I don't have to tell you, exhausting. I have, in recent weeks, invoked the coal-delivering incarnation of Santa too many times (a topic for another post, another time: Santa here replaces God, watching us all to see if we are bad or good so be good for goodness sakes) and in so doing broke one of my writ-pre-parenthood Rules Of Parenting (thou shalt not threaten thy children with retribution from Higher Powers, seasonal or otherwise); I also, just yesterday evening - OH THE SHAME - slapped her tiny hand - I did, I did - not at all hard, but still - after taking one too many punches from her wee flying fists (thereby breaking my hardest and fastest rules: thou shalt always endeavor to not react in anger, and thou shalt not ever, EVER hit thine children.)

I feel like the worst shit. But I also feel like a helpless shit, one who is fighting a losing battle.

What do I do? What do you do?

For what it's worth, and because some of you have asked - we do enforce our threats. Time-out in her buckle chair is time-out in her buckle-chair - no negotiations. But she almost invariably, after time-out is over, bounds out of the chair and back into whatever she was doing that warranted the buckle-chair in the first place. We do physically stop her when, for example, she is stealing cookies (after giving her the opportunity to cease theft on her own), and our bargaining efforts escalate because she always raises the stakes - no cookies? She doesn't care. No cookies tomorrow? Doesn't care. NO COOKIES EVER? Whatever. She knows that there's no such thing as a world devoid of cookies.

Help.

The Happiest Place On Earth

When I was seven years old, my family went to Disneyland. My father took a few weeks' holiday from work, and we set off in a camper van down the Pacific coast from Vancouver, stopping to see attractions like the Grand Coulee Dam ('the Eighth Wonder of the World!' exclaimed my mother, reading from a promotional pamphlet. 'Bigger than the pyramids!') and making detours into Nevada and Arizona to visit Death Valley and the Petrified Forest. We stayed at state parks and KOA Kampgrounds. It was awesome, at least until I got mumps on the way back and had to sit, fat-faced and forlorn and bundled in a blanket at the side of the campground pool while my sister and parents splashed and enjoyed the last days of our holiday.

Disneyland was the highlight of the trip, but in truth I remember very little of it. I remember the most notable attractions - Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion and the Peter Pan ride and the Country Bears Jamboree - and I remember making a wish in Snow White's wishing well, although for the life of me I can't remember what I wished for. I also remember some ride that made you think that you had been shrunk to smaller than a snowflake, and remember that my sister, then four, emerged from the ride in tears, devastated because, she imagined, her lollipop had shrunk along with the rest of us. Mostly, though, I remember my mother's childlike delight as we explored the park.

The rides amazed and thrilled her; she insisted that we visit the Pirates of the Caribbean again and again, exclaiming every time our little boat navigated its way between the battling pirate ships - cannons! exploding! - that it was so exciting! So real! The Mad Hatter's Tea Party with its spinning teacups made her dizzy, but the Haunted Mansion delighted her (ghosts! right there in the car with us!) and she clapped and cheered her heart out at the Country Bears Jamboree. I was, at seven years old, convinced that my thirty-something mother was having a much better time than I was, and I was almost certainly correct.

My mother insisted for years that the wonders of Disneyland were as potent for adults as they were for children, but I always doubted her. One of my mother's signature personality traits has always been her childlike enthusiasm for anything fantastical, and it seemed to me that Disneyland was very probably as close to a spiritual homeland for her as any other place in the world. So I was always doubtful when she insisted that Disneyland was as magical a place for grown-ups - even sensible, non-silly grown-ups, like the kind that I knew I would grow up to become - as it was for kids.

I was right to be doubtful. But, also, I was wrong.

My children and I spent this past weekend at Disney World. We could have gone anywhere in the US (thanks, Motorola), but I chose Disney World. I chose Disney World - against all of my pre-parenthood commitments to myself to do parenthood differently, to make unconventional choices in parenting, to not fall back on the convenience of sparkle and glitz and licensed characters - because it was just going to be me and the girl and the baby and that - combined with the fact that I don't drive - was just too much parenting to be managed anywhere where there weren't ample distractions ready-at-hand. Disney World, it seemed to me, was one big handy distraction. And if what my mother had said was true, then I would enjoy it too. It would be a vacation for my children, and for me. Win-win.

It wasn't, as it turned out, so much of a vacation for me. It was hard, hard work. Herding a jacked-up three-year old in a Buzz Lightyear costume with a baby strapped to one's chest from dawn 'til dusk at the Happiest Place On Earth is less conducive to happy-making than one might think. I didn't get enough sleep, I didn't eat enough food, and I spent at least one thirty-minute period locked, with the children sleeping in the double stroller, in a wheelchair-accessible restroom in Fantasyland fighting off an anxiety attack. The rides were, for the most part, exactly how I remembered them from Disneyland, but without the unfailing suspension of disbelief possessed by small children and my mother, and, also, with the strain of carrying a 22 lb baby on my chest, they were a touch less magical than memory served. (There were exceptions, of course: I found the Winnie-the-Pooh ride with its trippy voyage through Pooh's honey-soaked dreams completely fascinating. Also, the Escher stairs in the Haunted Mansion.) (Yes, I took the three-year old and the baby into the Haunted Mansion. She insisted. What of it?)

And yet, and yet... there was still magic to be found, and I found much of it. Emilia was delighted beyond measure. Not amazed, not dazzled - it seemed to her that of course there would be places like Disney World, where all the characters from her favorite movies live and where small children are given stickers and sparkles and smiles at every corner and allowed to race around without restriction, and so, really, what's the big deal? - just delighted. And I, of course, was delighted at her delight. Her delight filled my heart and made it swell to bursting and because it was just so full, so bouyant, it was impossible for me to not have a spring in my step, even with the jumbo baby strapped to my chest and the bag-laden stroller in front of me. I was uplifted.

(Don't even get me started on Sea World. DON'T. I will cry. I was completely and totally seduced by the heart-tuggy schmaltz that is the Shamu spectacle and I cried like a baby through the whole thing. Emilia now thinks that all swimming pools should have giant whales, and that we should all be allowed to play with them. We'll discuss Free Willy when she's a little older.)

Emilia would, of course, have been delighted with any number of holiday experiences. She would have been delighted if we had rented a camper van and parked ourselves by a beach and set her loose with a bucket. And we'll totally do that. But it was fun, this time, to indulge in a cheesy commercial fantasy, to let her romp in a world constructed entirely for children, one that makes no apologies for childishness and cheesiness and glitz, one that is specially designed to provoke giggles and squeals of delight.

So what if I could see the wires behind the animatronic Captain Hook, or see the creases in Cinderella's make-up? This vacation wasn't for me. It was for her.

And I loved every minute of it.

(Many, many thanks to Fidget, for coming to visit us at our hotel - which lacked a restaurant, and therefore room service, which meant that I might have starved Thursday night had she not brought hummus and crackers and - mercy, mercy - wine, and to Miss Britt and her delightful, delightful family, who spent the afternoon and evening with us at the park on Saturday.) (You can see Emilia and her daughter Emma driving a race car in the video that she put together of the weekend - her son's birthday weekend - here. Really, they were so awesome.)

Quick - what's your happiest family-vacation place on earth? I'm already plotting and lobbying the husband for a family vacation for the four of us next year. I'm thinking road trip. Should we retrace the path of my family's Disneyland trek? Or what? Where are some good places on the continent to go? Where would you go?

I have not yet figured out how I am going to pay this trip forward, but I'm going to try. Ideas are welcome, but they need to be richer in spirit than in dollars, because, you know: recession. Leave your thoughts below; whoever leaves the idea that I choose gets a Scrabble Diamond Anniversary Edition game...

UPDATE: Loonstruck came up with the pay-it-forward idea that I'm going to run with - offer my home to another blogger who wants to see this part of Canada. There are going to be some cool bloggy events here this year, and I will happily play host to someone who wants to attend. Stay tuned. (And as requested, the Scrabble game went to the library - youth section - where it was much appreciated!)

What Would Linus Do?

Emilia is three, and although this is her third Christmas, it is the first that she fully appreciates in all of its indulgent, commercial glory. Last year, when she had just turned two, it was a delightful but slightly baffling exercise in hooting at lights and puzzling over gifts (why there toy here Mama WHY?) and recoiling in terror from shopping mall Santas. This year - with the influence of Christmas-frenzied preschool cronies and her greater awareness of the holiday-saturated culture in general - she knows exactly what is going on, and it is all visions of sugar plums and fat men bearing gifts and candy canes and gingerbread and Dora Magic House dollhouses and remote-controlled race cars and can I have that Mommy will Santa bring me that Mommy can I have it Mommy CAN I???

She has embraced the holidays with all the desperate enthusiasm of an alcoholic at a whiskey fire sale, and although it is adorable, it also a little bit disconcerting.

We've been careful to not hype the holidays as a festival of presents and candy (we've been burned by celebratory excesses in candy before, and are concerned to not make the same mistakes twice). We limit her exposure to any medium that broadcasts holiday-fetishizing advertisements (TV commercials? Easy to eliminate. Shop windows and newspaper circulars? Not so easy.) We have made efforts to explain to her what Christmas really is supposed to be about - star in the east, baby in swaddling clothes, three wise men bearing gifts (what were the presents they were bringing Mommy what were they were they toys???), etc, etc - and talk about the importance of giving and of being grateful and of celebrating family and friends and everything that we are so fortunate to already have. But still, after all of this, she remains intoxicated by Christmas™, the Christmas that decks the halls with boughs of holly and Spongebob Squarepants Advent Calendars (a different crustacean for every day of the season!) and that celebrates, above everything else, the getting of stuff.

I have no principled objection to the Santa side of the holidays. I personally am a very great fan of presents. And I have the fondest memories of childhood Christmases spent huddled on the stairs, spying on the Christmas tree, waiting for Santa to appear and deposit bundles of Barbie and Lego and Eazy Bake Ovens beneath its branches. I don't want to deprive my children of those childish pleasures, nor do I want to teach them that wanting (desiring, coveting) is in itself bad. It is, after all, okay to want things. But I do want them to learn that wanting things for oneself must tempered by - and is most pleasurable in concert with - wanting things for others, and that Christmas is only incidentally about receiving material gifts. I want them to take to heart - when they're old enough to understand - the spirit (if not the letter) of the Christmas story with its tidings of great joy and message of hope and peace and good will. I want them to understand the lesson learned by Charlie Brown, that shiny pink Christmas trees with mounds of presents are kinda cool, but are really beside the point, and that the best feeling that one can have during the holidays is that heart-ful, love-smothered feeling that one gets when one embraces the spirit of good will and hope and love.

But in order for them to understand those things, I need to make sure that their parents are - that I am - demonstrating them. And as I stroll down the main street of our town, coveting shiny things in shop windows, or wander the virtual byways of the Internet, admiring giveaways and crossing fingers that maybe I'll win that laptop or that iPhone or that tin of pistachios, or prepare to post such giveaways myself, it has occurred to me that I sometimes get a little bit caught up in the holiday frenzy of want want want and that maybe I should do something that is more in the spirit of walking my talk.

So I asked myself: faced with an overabundance of gifts and giveaways and assorted virtual whatnots, WHAT WOULD LINUS DO? Besides read excerpts from the Gospel of Luke, that is, which, face it, is lovely but not all that interesting once you've heard it six bajillion times.

And I came up with this: I'm going to (with the permission of those who send stuff) give away a portion of everything that I receive for online giveaways, by which I mean, I'm going to give it to someone who needs it more than the Internets. Specifically, I'm going to take multiples of toy-type stuff to a toy drive, and with those giveaway or review materials that are not toy drive appropriate, I am going to purchase toys in lieu of those products and Emilia and I will take them, together, to the toy drive so that they can be passed on to other, needier children and families. So that she can see how wonderful it is to give.

And because it is also wonderful to receive, I'm giving away this, to you: an iPod shuffle (green). Just leave a comment below, between now and midnight December 17th. But there's a What Would Linus Do catch: in your comment, mention a charity or cause that you support, and (because I'm giving the iPod to the Internets, rather than to a charity drive) I'll make a donation to that charity - a tithe of my ad revenue this month - on behalf of the winning person.

(If you have a blog, and are running giveaways, I invite you to do something similar - set aside one of those giveaways to give to a local family that might appreciate the boost in these difficult times, or take it to a toy drive, or invite your readers to comment to win a donation to a charity of their choice. If you do this, let me know, and I'll compile the links.)

Linus would approve.



(Oh, hey - you can has buttonz! Feel free to lift the code here and post it to spread the word...

Just copy and paste this code to embed:

<a href="http://badladies.blogspot.com/2008/12/what-would-linus-do.html"><br /><img src="http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o274/mother_bumper/wwld_v1.png" /></a>

Thanks to the ever-awesome Motherbumper for pulling a Linus and making these sweet buttons to share.)

Sunday Morning Music Show

Because Sunday morning is always better with music, and, also, without pants:

Sunday Morning Music Show: Rock Out With Me from Catherine Connors on Vimeo.

Tried To Make Her Go To Rehab; She Said No, No, No

My child is a junkie.

It started innocently enough. A little hit now and then, at parties. It couldn't hurt, I reasoned, and besides, all the other kids were doing it. The buzz they enjoyed seemed harmless, and besides, I'm partial to that buzz myself, and it would be hypocritical to deny my children something that I don't deny myself. So I let her have some, just a little bit, now and then. I thought that I was being careful: never too much, and only on special occasions. But then summer came along and the temptation was everywhere: in the parks, on the beach, near the shops. And after summer, fall, and with fall, Hallowe'en, and after Hallowe'en, it became obvious.

We have a problem.

Emilia is an addict. She is addicted to candy and treats and desserts and any and all things that make good use of sugar, with the notable exception of any dessert-like creation that contains fruit or - god forbid - raisins. She (rightly) regards all fruit-based desserts and raisin-contaminated baked goods as corrupt treats - like bad acid or cheap ganja - that should be avoided at all costs. We're not sure when it started - I had always been vigilant about treats in the house, restricting her to 100% natural fruit bars and oatmeal biscuits and yogurt with honey, except for the occasional cupcake or ice cream on birthdays or holidays or outings - but we think that the addiction took root in her summer ice cream habit and blossomed into full junk-dependency with the candy windfall that came this past Hallowe'en (helped along, no doubt, by the Jellybean Potty Incentive Program that we were running this fall.)

Hallowe'en is a sugar junkie's dream, and I'm sure that it's responsible for creating more jacked-up sugar bingers than Christmas and Easter and birthdays combined. I could see it in her face, as she sped deliriously from house to house, clutching her bag to her wee chest, eyes flashing like highbeams, mad with longing and anticipation. Look, Mommy! she'd squeal gleefully. I have TOO MUCH CANDY! TOO MUCH! We tried to intervene, appropriating her smack bag and only allowing her to select a few choice pieces, but it was too late. She happily traded most of the contents of the bag for a new toy, but we discovered the next day, and over subsequent days, that she had performed some sleight of hand and purloined a sizable quantity of candy from the bag before it was removed, a stash that she then divided and tucked into Ziploc bags and squirreled away in hiding places (the oven of her toy kitchen, her sock drawer, a toy suitcase, her backpack) around the house. We would stumble across remnants of her stash while tidying, or discover her under the blankets at bedtime, furiously working the wrapper of a lollipop. Every Ziploc'ed baggy was appropriated, only to be replaced by another. How she had managed to loot and smuggle so much junk was a mystery to us, but there it was: she had an addiction that she needed to feed and feed it she did.


We think, now, that we've tracked down and re-appropriated all of the candy in the house, but she persists in her efforts to acquire a new supply. Can I have candy, Mommy? Can I have candy after dinner? Can I have candy after bedtime? Can I have candy for Christmas? Can I, Mommy? CAN I? We respond with wholegrain biscuits and no-sugar added fruit chews, and she freaks out. THAT'S NOT CANDY I WANT CANDY I WANT CANDEEEEEE! Or CAKE. We offer yogurt with honey and soy pudding (chocolate!) and coconut-date cookies; she throws herself on the floor and wails.

So we decided to compromise, and plotted a harm-reduction scheme: we stocked the cupboards with a better-quality candy substitute, with the idea that we'd ply her with that, the better to wean her from the hard stuff. We'd provide sugar-methadone to ease her candy detox; we'd supply some jungle juice to get her off the smack. We bought her Froot Loops and Corn Pops.

And now she's a sugar-cereal freak.


What do we do? We want to break her sugar habit, and rid our home of all candy and sugar-cereals (which I SWORE up and down I would never, ever allow into my house), but seriously: THE SCREAMING. Also, we don't want to be total buzzkills: what's Christmas without gingerbread and candy canes? I was a sugar freak as a kid myself, and I know that my obsession with sugar was made worse by my parents' attempts to keep me from it (some of my earliest memories are of climbing onto kitchen counters to raid the cupboards for brown sugar - straight up - and baker's chocolate.) Can a sugar obsession be tempered? Do we make it worse by cutting her off, or is cutting her off the only option? WHAT DO WE DO?

Because The Saying 'Where The Sun Don't Shine' Doesn't Apply When You're 3

Me: Why are you naked?

Her: Because I need to go to the potty.

Me: Why, then, are you just standing on the stairs?

Her: Because the toilet makes my bum cold...

(turns around to display cold bum)

... and there's a sunbeam here...

(bends over and waggles bare bum in the stream of sunlight pouring through the landing window)

... and it warms it up.

(pats her toasted bottom proudly, and then proceeds up the stairs to the bathroom.)

You just can't fault that logic.

Three

How did we get from here:


...to here:



...to here?


These three years have sped by so quickly. These three years have been an eternity. I miss the baby that she was. I long for the girl she will become.

I adore the amazing being that she is, and I am grateful for this day, for every day, with her.

Happy birthday, baby.

Minding One's Peens and Q's

The girl-child has impeccable manners. She's all please and thank you and may I and I'm sorry and oh, excuse me and it's entirely disarming. She can be in the middle of a nuclear-scale tantrum and she'll still stop to say excuse me and wait for you to step aside before she stomps past you shouting THANK YOU. It's kind of awesome.

She's also generous with the compliments. We think that it's something that they've been teaching at her preschool, because although my husband and I are unfailingly polite, we tend not to walk around praising each other's clothing choices and hair-brushing techniques. Emilia, on the other hand, is all about praising the finer details of the appearance and comportment of others: nice buttons on your shirt, Mommy! she'll say. And, I like your hair today, Daddy! Did you brush it? Or, are those new shoes, Mommy? I like the laces! (said of laceless Converse sneakers.)

And then, the other day, this:

(bursting into the bathroom and confronting her very surprised father, in flagrante urinato)

NICE PENIS, DADDY!

Which, you know, was kind of funny, but only in that embarrassing, not-for-sharing-at-dinner kinda way, like that time last year when she shouted, from the backseat of the car, excuse ME, mother-f***er! and we both looked at each in horror before exclaiming to each other she didn't get that from ME and then laughing, uncomfortably, out loud. That kind of funny.

The thing is, on the very rare occasion - very rare - that she says something that is obviously inappropriate - like, say, mother-f***er - we can console ourselves with the facts that a) she didn't get it from us (we save all of our cursing for after hours and, in any case, never refer to ourselves or anyone else as mother-f***ers) and b) it's easy to explain to her that some words simply aren't polite. But how do we respond to complimentary commentary on genitalia? I mean, she was trying to pay a compliment. She wanted to say something nice, and the obvious thing, when the person to whom one wants to say something nice has directed their attention to a specific part of themselves, is to direct one's compliment to that specific part. That's just basic etiquette.

But Emily Post didn't provide direction on how to compliment penises for a very good reason: one simply shouldn't go around complimenting penises in any circumstances other than those engaged in, in private, by consenting adults. Which is not something that we're not yet talking about with the girl, who is, after all, just two days shy of three years old and so some twenty-odd years off from dating. So how do we explain to her that although it is nice to say nice things to other people, there are just some things that we don't draw attention to? We do not, after all, want to suggest to her that there is anything shameful about the parts that she is complimenting; we do not want to suggest that those parts are anything other than 'nice'. And isn't there something potentially confusing and problematic about telling her that we simply shouldn't talk about those parts?

Obviously, the fast answer is lock the bathroom door. But that doesn't resolve the bigger issue: we're fairly modest people, inasmuch as we tend not to wander around naked, but we don't make a fuss about concealing ourselves from each other, because, again, we don't want to send the message that there's something shameful about bodies. We have talks about privacy, but we're not fascists about it. So, you know, occasionally there's going to be a glimpse of a penis or a boob and if the girl decides that those things are deserving of compliments, well, how are we to respond? Should we respond, in any manner other than simply saying thank you and moving on?

Because, you know, I don't get compliments on my boobs all that often, and so I'm kind of inclined to take them where I can get them.

(What do you/will you/would you do?)

(Thanks to Niksmom for the title suggestion via Twitter)

She

I do it every night now. When it's dark, when the rest of the house is asleep, or almost, I untangle my tiny newborn bundle from my arms and lay him down in his nest and ease my birth-battered body from our bed. I make my way - gingerly, gingerly - around the bed, supporting myself on furniture, against the walls, down the hallway, to her door.

I open it slowly, holding my breath against the creaks, and slip inside. There, in the dark, is she, my first baby. Rumpled and tangled in her blankets, her breathing slow and deep, strands of fluffy blonde hair stuck to her damp, pink cheeks, she is every inch the baby. A big baby, but still. A baby, my baby. In the quiet, in repose, she is no longer toddler, no longer little girl, no longer big sister - she is just she, my first born, my first baby, always a baby, always soft and vulnerable and in need of me, always in need of me.

I bend over the rail of her bed, and kiss her cheek, and stroke her hair and whisper nothing, everything, about how I love her so, how I adore her, how I miss her. How every nuzzle of her brother's cheek brings a memory of her; how every clutch and suck and moment of skin pressed against newborn skin makes my heart burst for him and yearn for her; how my love for him has made my love for her grow and stretch and strain and ache.

How I love her, how I love her.

In the morning she will wake, and run past me, blowing a kiss as she clambers into Daddy's arms, waving gaily as she embarks upon the great adventure of a new day, while I sit, constrained, restrained, by the injuries of childbirth and new motherhood (shredded nethers, ravaged nips), my new love in my arms, my new love demanding everything of me and yielding himself to me, pressing himself to me, in return. I will drink up his love, bathe in his love, as she speeds away, leaving me in her wake, grasping at droplets, holding back tears.

But it doesn't matter, because, always, she will stop again, however briefly, and rest, and she will allow me to bend over her bed, in the dark, and stroke her cheek and tell her how I love her, my first, my girl.

How I love her.

Birth Day

Miss Emilia would like to introduce you all to her baby brother, Mister Jasper, who arrived last night at 9:16pm.

After very narrowly escaping being born at the side of the road.

Their bad mother, who is happy but nonetheless shell-shocked from what was - no exaggeration - a somewhat traumatic birth experience, needs to recover for a day or two before sharing that story. In the meantime, accept this photo and a weakly blown virtual kiss as both birth announcement and thank-you (for your amazing support during this crazy pregnancy) card.

xo

Mommy Dearest

My child hates me.

Okay, maybe she doesn't hate me, but I am certainly not her Most Favorite Person Ever. That title goes to HBF, aka Daddy, who can do no wrong. (Last night, at bedtime: "I love Daddy" "Of course you do, sweetie. Do you love Mommy?" "Nope. I love Daddy. And medicine." Don't ask.)

Me, on the other hand - I'm persona non grata. On a good day, she tolerates my presence with a polite firmness that makes perfectly clear that she has boundaries and that I am to respect them (NO, Mommy, just me and Daddy gonna play outside. NOT YOU. THANK YOU.) On a bad day, she wants me as far away as possible, and tells me so in the fiercest of terms. (GO AWAY MOMMY. GO. A. WAAAAAY!) Sometimes, she pushes at me with her little fists and furrows her wee face into a scowl and issues her command that I retreat in a terrible little voice that is somehow at once deep-throated and high-pitched. More than once, she's thwacked me with her Toadstool (aka Phallic Lovey), as punctuation to her commands. More than once, she's thrown her entire little being into the effort of getting me away from her now. More than once, she's growled and scowled and faced me like an enemy.

GO. A. WAY.

MOMMY.

NOW!

And, you know, even though I know that toddlers go through these phases, and even though I know that her behavior is probably even more understandable now that I'm in the late stages of a pregnancy that has taken me away from her - in spirit if not in body - far more often than has been tolerable for me, even though I know that of course she still loves me, even though I know all of this, it hurts, and the pain of it cuts deep. She scowls at me and tells me to go, go, go away don't stay here go away I don't want you here BECUZ and throws her wee body against my legs in an effort to just get me away and it's like a million tiny knives cutting through my skin and into my bones and it takes every ounce of emotional energy that I have left to not burst into tears right in front of her.

Do you want to give Mommy a kiss?

NO.

Do you want to give Mommy a hug?

NO.

Can Mommy sit down next to you?

NO.

She's not like this all of the time, of course. She's been quite happy to go out for coffee with Mommy on occasion and go to the bakery with Mommy and go buy treats with Mommy (which, you getting the picture here? If Mommy shoves cookies or candy or mock lattes in her pockets, Wonderbaby is quite happy to have Mommy nearby. Otherwise, not so much). But these remain exceptions to the general rule, which is Mommy go away. And that breaks my heart.

It breaks my heart because now, more than ever, I want to just snuggle up with her and really revel in these last days of exclusive togetherness. I want her to be Mommy's girl for just a little while, so that when her baby brother comes (she now pats my tummy and refers to him by name, loving him, it seems, a lot more enthusiastically than she loves me) all I'll need to do is grab her hand and whisper Mommy's girl and she'll know that ours is a special love and that we'll always, always have it, just between us. But she doesn't want that right now. She wants her dad. And she wants Mommy - slow, belabored, distracted Mommy - out of her face.

And that hurts. It really, really, hurts.

I almost didn't write about this - because, in part, I've been something of a cranky-assed downer of late, and am getting sick of my own bitching, but more so because I feared hearing anything, from anyone, that might suggest that this is not normal, that I must be doing something wrong, something to make her justifiably angry with me, something to make her want to keep her distance. Something beyond just being pregnant and distracted (which, if it is the pregnancy? Is bad enough, because whither our mother-daughter relationship when the baby comes, and I'm even more distracted?) Something wrong with me, something bad about me, her bad mother. And I just didn't think that I was up for hearing that, even as the gentlest suggestion.

But if it is me, I need to hear it, because I need to change it. And if it's not me - if lots of children go through this - then I need to hear that even more. Because I need some peace.

Mommy fought the Law but the Law won.

Crazy Narcissistic Exploitative Zombie-Pimp Mom-Bloggers, Unite and Take Over

Nothing makes a mom-blogger prouder than to open the online editorial page of a major newspaper and see a picture of her daughter with a hyper-linked headline that asks "Is Blogging About Your Kid Exploitation?"

Of course it is, you say to yourself. And then you print the article and fold it neatly - you know, for the scrapbook, and also maybe for tax purposes - alongside the stacks and stacks of hundred-dollar bills you've collected from the enterprise of exploiting your daughter. The stacks that you make her wrap in wee elastic bands and load into the stroller basket to take to the bank. When she's not busy posing for the pictures that you post on your exploitative 'GET UR LIVE TODDLER SHOW RITE HEER" blog, that is. Or amusing herself in the corner with old vodka bottles while you spend the better part of each day telling the Internet stories about her. You know, for the cash.

I knew what that Globe and Mail story was about when I agreed to be interviewed for it. And I knew, too, that allowing them to photograph Wonderbaby and I would make us a focal point. I also knew that when I said, in the interview, this is going sound totally inappropriate, and probably needs a lot of explanation - it's just that I can't think of a better word - but in a way I think of her as my property, yanno? that the ambivalent preamble would be omitted when the quote was - inevitably - used. (Actual quote, minus preamble: "In a way I think of her as my property, my work of art... She's a work in progress that I'm involved in. To that extent, I have some licence to be public about having her as my muse.") I didn't have a problem with that. I was prepared to stand by that. I knew that I would have to stand by that, because I knew that I'd get shit for that.

And I did. But I wasn't quite prepared for the force of the shit being flung.

In the comments to the online article, this was the tenor of the response:

"Is it just me or is this poor little kid doomed from the get go?"

"Isn't this just another form of pimping?"

"At 6 her daughter will likely hire a lawyer and sue her for half."

"Parents that sit and blog are actually NOT paying attention to their children. You know the old saying 'where are the parents.' Well their (sic) right here in front of you honey, but they are zombified in front of a screen."

"If this is the way this woman views her child, I hope she saves up whatever money she's earning from her pathetic blog to pay for her kid's therapy later in life."

And my favorite (regarding a quote from Wonderbaby, cited in the title of the article) "Who would teach their child to speak like this?"

(Memo to 'Dennis sinneD from Calgary': if you know any two-year olds who can not only construct complete sentences, but articulate those sentences with perfect diction, then you live in some alternate parallel universe where said children quote EB White at five years of age, attend Oxford at seven, and publish their collected essays on the rise of the English novel at ten. Which is to say, NOT CALGARY.)

Anyway. OUCH.

The comments are stupid, I know. And, simply, wrong: I'm not some shameless mom-pimp, whoring out an online kiddy show for pennies from Google ads. I'm a writer. I make money from writing; it's my job, my contribution to the household income, the means by which we're going to send her to university and pay for her wedding and help her buy a house and just generally take care of her and her sibling. But it's also a labor of love - I didn't start writing to make money, I started because I love it. And I started writing about - mostly - being a mom because, in addition to loving the writing, I found solace and comfort and release and community in it. And so did others - readers, and other writers, who shared their stories with me. And so I kept writing, and so I keep on writing, and so I will keep on writing, until I have no words left. The money is nice, but it's incidental to my love for the practice of writing.

Most of what I write is not Wonderbaby anecdote. I'm not simply keeping a play-by-play (or, more accurately, asskick-by-asskick) record of her life. I'm writing what is, in part, a living memoir of my experience as a first-time (soon to be second-time) mother. She's a big part of that - the biggest part, in most obvious respects - but there's a lot about that experience that holds her at the periphery. A very, very close periphery, but still. My motherhood is a work in progress that involves her closely, but it is, also, a work that is more mine that hers. When I said in the article that she's my muse, that's probably as close to the truth of the writing matter as I could get. She is the source of my identity as a mother, and my primary inspiration as a writer - but the story that I tell about the experience of motherhood - the experience of womanhood after having children - is not, strictly speaking, her story. It's mine. Mostly. (The issue of public/private distinctions as these pertain to the quote-unquote institution of motherhood, and the idea of children as any sort of 'property,' are subjects for another post. Soon.) (I'll just say this: the word 'property' - from the Latin proprius, meaning one's own - doesn't necessarily refer to chattel. Rousseau and Mill took 'property' to refer to the broad spectrum of things - including happiness, self-respect, family - that one might hold dearly as 'one's own')

And in any case - even if one does regard my personal blog as simply one long exercise in narcissistic storytelling about life with Wonderbaby - what of it? As this blogger pointed out to me in a private conversation, why does so-called lifestyle writing in print not prompt people to generalize those writers as narcissistic nutbars or neglectful parents or - most pleasantly - pimps? Memoirs, autobiography, lifestyle op-ed columns - these have been around for a very long time, and while some such writers, I'm sure, are called narcissists, most of them have probably not had the unique pleasure of being called crazy, zombified pimps. (Most of them, however, have - from Rousseau to Sedaris - historically been men. There's something about so-called lifestyle writing or memoir by women - online or off - that inevitably provokes hysterical name-calling and foretellings of the decline of civilization. This has everything to do with the historical consignment of women and family to the private sphere, I think, but again, that's a subject for another post. I can only skim the surface here.)

There's something about mothers lifting back the veil of the family that upsets people, that leads people to accuse the mothers who dare do such a thing of neglecting their maternal duties, of exploiting their children, of exposing their children to the dangers of the public sphere, of being bad. But that's precisely what makes mom-blogging - to overuse a deservedly overused phrase - a radical act. We've always been told to not lift the veil. We've always been told to stay behind the veil, no matter what. We've always been told that the sanctity and well-being of our families depends upon the integrity of that veil - upon modesty and privacy and keeping our struggles and our victories to ourselves. Which has, over the course of the history of Western civilization (and that of other civilizations, of course, although I cannot speak to these with any authority), kept us isolated from one another. Kept us silent.

I choose not to be silent. I choose to tell my stories, tell - while she is young - her stories, tell the stories of she and I and our family and our place in this world and to pull meaning from those stories and to speculate on those meanings and to reflect, out loud, on what it means to be a mom in this day and age and other days and ages and all the days and ages to come. I choose to use my voice, my fingers, my keyboard to make myself heard. I choose to write. If that makes me appear, to some, a crazy, narcissistic, exploitative zombie-pimp who whores her child out for the sake of a few bucks and the self-indulgence of storytelling, then so be it.


It's worth it. It's so worth it.

******

Wee update: The writer of the article contacted me and asked if I wanted the offensive comments removed from the Globe and Mail site. I said no - apart from the name-calling, they're expressing an opinion that I chose to engage with (because I think that it's stupid and in some cases offensive, but still) and in any case, I'm not much on with censorship, unless it's me doing it on my own site. Still... was that the right decision? Letting comments that refer to me as 'vile' and 'zombified' and 'pimp' stand for eternity on the interwebs? Or does open discourse require a bit of personal discomfort - perhaps more than I'm used to - sometimes?

Ooooh, She's A Little Runaway...

The other day, Wonderbaby tried to run away from home. For the second time.

I fully expected that at some point in our family life, she would make a runaway attempt. I made my own first attempt when I was about eight years old. I can't for the life of me recall the reason, but I'm sure that it was a response to some grave household injustice, and I studied The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, closely, for days in planning my escape. I gave up my plans when I got to the end of my driveway and realized that I had no idea how to get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from the suburbs of Vancouver, Canada. But, yeah, I was eight years old. Wonderbaby is 28 months old. And she hasn't even read The Mixed-Up Files yet, so how'd she know to layer her clothes and be strategic about what she stuffed in her backpack?

And why has she done it twice?

The first time was week before last. She got tired, apparently, of being bossed by Her Bad Grandma - who was staying with her while I was off doing some jet-setty momblogger shiz (which is to say, learning how to braid hair and catch my prolapsed uterus in a bucket) - and so gave Grandma an ultimatum: you go Gamma. Or I go. And when Grandma informed her that, no, she would not go home, Wonderbaby said OKAY I GO GAMMA YOU NO STOP ME and went to her room where she retrieved her backpack and open her drawers and began emptying them of her gear. Once the backpack was filled with toys and clothing, she proceeded - according to HBG, in a fit of high temper - to layer clothing upon herself, beginning with a variety of pants and shirts and finishing with her full-body-SPF-protection swim-slash-sunsuit and a pair of tights that she couldn't quite get over her layers, much to her rage.

She then - backpack pulled firmly over shoulders - tromped down the stairs and put on her rain boots, all the while shouting YOU NO FOLLOW ME at Grandma. There was further hissy-fittage when she discovered that her coat wouldn't go on over her overstuffed backpack, until she settled upon throwing a sweater over her shoulders like a cape and pulling a fuzzy snow hat - complete with ear flaps - over her head. At which point she reportedly told Grandma, again, a voce alta: I GO FIND MAMA YOU DON'T FOLLOW ME GO AWAY.

And headed for the door.

My mother, bless her heart, fought the urge to just let her go, although it was more, she said, out of fear of what the neighbours would think of a shrieking, be-hoboed toddler marching down the road than out of any real fear for Wonderbaby's safety. And to Wonderbaby's credit, she did eventually calm down and, with Her Bad Grandma's patient help, put her things away.

Thus was averted a career of boxcar-riding and panhandling for Wonderbaby. Until a few days ago, when she tried it again, with me...

Wonderbaby, in full runaway regalia (multiple layers of clothing, mismatched boots, awkwardly tied, mittens, tiny suitcase in one hand, bag of diapers under one arm, Toadstool shoved in waistband of one of many layers of tights and pants): BYE MAMA. I GO NOW.

Me, exhausted and newly retired (in my own mind) from motherhood: Okay, sweetie. Bye.

WB: I GO NOW FIND BETTER HOME.

Me: Okay.

WB, turning and walking away: OKAY. YOU DON'T FOLLOW ME.

Me: I won't.

At which point she tromped down the stairs and rattled at the handle of the (locked - I know my daughter) front door. A few moments later, after much exasperated huffing and dragging of miniature luggage back up the stairs, she reappeared at the playroom door.

WB, putting down bags and affecting her most serious look: I no go find better home.

Me: Okay.

WB: Okay.

(Sweet, sweet silence for a few minutes.)

WB: YOU GET ME MILK AND HONEY NOW. AND TREAT.

(Pause)

TWO TREATS.

(Pause)

OR I GONNA GO FIND BETTER HOME.



What was it that I said at the end of my last post? Oh, right... AM F*CKED.

Sammich, With Bevvies, To Go (A Urinary Tale)

"I no go pottie"

"That's fine. If you don't have to go, that's fine."

"I fine. I no have to go."

There's a loud rip as the diaper is torn and yanked out from between her legs, and then a thud as it lands at my feet.

"I no need diaper."

"I would rather you wear a diaper."

"No."

"Then you need to wear your Dora pants."

"No. I fine. I put pee-pee in toilet."

Fine, I think. Whatever. I'm too far exhausted to wrestle her into a diaper, and far too mentally and emotionally spent to invite another tantrum. And isn't there some sort of toilet-training method that involves just letting your kid run around naked and piss on the floor and it's all like attachment-potty-training or some such shit? Whatever. I GIVE UP.

Five minutes later, I notice that she has a small plastic cup - a bath toy - clutched between her knees.

"What are you doing with the cup, sweetie?"

"I just HOLDING IT. I FINE. YOU DON'T TAKE IT AWAY."

Whatever.

Two minutes later, my attention - heretofore entirely occupied by the critical task of figuring out whether to hoist my massive, belly-heavy self to its feet and down to the kitchen for more chocolate, and risk distracting the hellion from her concentrated effort to balance wooden fried eggs between wooden slices of bread and create the perfect fake fried egg sandwich, or to just stay safely and comfortably put - is captured by the sound of a single stream of rain hitting an empty plastic bucket.

It's not raining. And we have no buckets.

Wonderbaby has abandoned her toy kitchen cum sandwich station and is standing with chubby naked legs spread, both of her little hands clutching the plastic cup directly beneath her nether regions, and is peeing into the cup. She waits for the stream to run its course, and then waits another moment to catch the drips, and then marches blithely past me, out of the playroom and into the bathroom, where - as I continue to watch, in stunned, immobile silence - she carefully pours the contents of the cup into the toilet and flushes.

"I PUT PEE-PEE IN TOILET MAMA. I ALL DONE."

Then she washes her hands, and leaves the cup in the bathroom sink. She returns to her post in the playroom, where she puts the wooden slices of bread stacked with wooden fried eggs on a little wooden plate, dashes some imaginary salt from the toy shaker over it all, and hands it to me.

"There you go Mama. You need my cup? For juice?"

Does one laugh, or cry? SERIOUSLY.

Am f*cked.

To Montessori, Or Not To Montessori

That is the question. Among others.

Wonderbaby - who is now, admittedly, more of a Wondergirl, even if I can't bring myself to call her that - is 28 months old. Soon, she'll be old enough to attend the well-regarded Montessori preschool that is just around the corner from our home. Which means that she would leave the lovely daycare to which we have all become well-attached in the three months that we have lived here, and move on to a more regimented, learning-focussed environment, when she is just shy of three years old.

She's been pretty happy in her daycare, which she attends three days a week. But she's a little ways beyond the other children her own age in speech and movement and general activity, and so - with our permission - she was moved into a higher age group where she could move beyond the things that she'd already mastered and not run circles around the other children in the room. And so far, it's been fine, but my heart does ache, just a little bit, when I see her in there with all the bigger children, her tiny self asserting her dominion in whatever corner she has staked out, defying anyone bigger to treat her as smaller, and I wonder, could we - should we - do better with this? Place her in an environment where she's not necessarily the smallest or the youngest (or, conversely, where she is not, by whomever's standards, the smartest or the fastest), but where activities are tailored more to her specific needs?

(There's a whole other post here, waiting to be written and filled with heartache and confusion, about how to do what is best by my spirited little dictator - how to adequately provide the stimulation and learning that she thrives upon while still allowing her to be the wee child that she is. I never, ever want to smother her with concerns about maximizing her potential or aspiring to whatever excellence I think she might attain or like nonsense - and I do think that it's nonsense for parents to pressure their children, especially their small children, toward such things - but neither do I want to close off opportunities for her, nor do I want her to become bored or enervated. All of which is to say - my questions here have far less to with 'what is best for her development' and everything to do with 'what is best for her soul?')

Her daycare is very good about early learning and engages children, within their respective age groups, in activities that are designed to stimulate their curiosity and facilitate interest in words and numbers and science and craft and whatnot. I think that it's more than adequate as a preparation for 'real' school later on. But then again, Wonderbaby's 'skipping a grade' - in freaking nursery school - concerns me. Is keeping her with older children the answer? Or do I need to be seeking out a program that is more suited to her, as she is, at her age? And might that program be Montessori?

We've visited the Montessori school around the corner. It was very impressive. But it was so markedly unlike her - noisy, chaotic, bright, messy, playful - daycare that it was almost disconcerting: quiet (although clearly happy and engaged) children busy with quiet activity, all in coded dress (nothing extreme, just variations on navy blue and white kiddy ensembles) and all seeming more mature than their three-plus years. More mature in many of the ways that Wonderbaby is herself already 'more mature' - studiedly reflective and tending toward extremely close engagement with tasks at hand - but also more, I don't know, mature in that mini-adult kind of way that spooks me when I see it in her, and makes me worry about the possibility of squashing, even just a little, the silly, free-spirited child that she is at her core.

And I just don't know enough about these things, and it's a lack of knowledge that weighs upon me as a lack that I cannot afford. Might Montessori be the right choice for her? Will her daycare suffice? Is 'sufficing' sufficient? How am I to know what's best for her, what's truly best for her, both the child that she is and the full person that she's in the process of becoming?

Anyone out there have some advice, personal perspective, personal experience with Montessori, personal experience with other early-education systems, general sympathies and/or - most importantly - reassurances that I am not the only mother out there who worries about not always knowing what is best for her child?

A Pull-Up Pant By Any Other Name Is Still A Hat

What does one do when one is almost exactly two years and four months old and is very, very excited about the birthday of one of one's most bestest friends, a birthday that is formally today, but which won't be celebrated until Sunday? Why, one starts partying in advance, of course. Which means, one needs a party hat. And if one does not have a party hat with which to party, well, then, one must simply improvise with whatever one has on hand. Or bottom, as it were:

It's clean, in case you were wondering. She's pretty fastidious that way: dirty pants are immediately deposited, by pant-wearer, in the bathroom, regardless of whether the potty has been involved. Clean pants, well. They can end up anywhere. On any number of dolls, stuffed Muppets or plush phallic symbols. Or on one's head. Which, really, is the most festive of all options, don't you think?

Happy Birthday, Mister H. We loves you lots.

*********

Have you taken THE DARE yet? Instead of issuing a Flashback writing prompt this Friday, Tracey and I are pimping the Dare of Truthiness: reveal your true, unmade-up self to the world! In a photo! On your blog! (Alternatively, you could write just something about the dare - you know, just go with truth, if you're skittish about photos - but you'd have to be descriptive. So that we could make-up our own mental picture. Which could be better or worse.) If you do it, link us up and/or let me know in a comment to my Self-Portrait post.

So far, participants include:

Moi
HRH Sweetney (she started it, so any and all cursing - or props for bravery - should be directed at her)
Dame OTJ
Mme. Breed 'Em And Weep
Missus Mamalogues
Mrs. Flinger
Madame Izzy
Ms. MotherBumper

How To Lose Your Confidence As A Parent In Twenty Minutes Or Less

Today's lesson: if you are not, always and every day, prepared for the demands that your child's school or daycare might make upon you, you will - I guarantee you - be made to feel like the most worthless, incompetent parent that ever bore or received spawn.

Last week, it was Valentine's Day. "She needs to bring Valentines to school tomorrow," Her Bad Father (who usually does most of the daycare pick-ups and so is more usually the recipient of this kind of information) informed me on the eve of Valentine's Day. "36 of them. Signed with her name but not addressed to anyone."

Which meant, of course, a late-night dash to the nearest all-hours last-minute things store, whereupon hideous Valentines imprinted with licensed characters were purchased and brought home to be forged in her name.

And then, later that night: "Also, she needs to wear something red to school tomorrow."

Which, fine. Nothing that two cups of espresso and a little pre-dawn laundry cycle couldn't take care of.

And then, yesterday: "She needs to bring a family picture to school tomorrow. It's Family Picture Day."

Which: STUMPED.

We do not have any current family pictures. That is, rather, we have upwards of 10,000 pictures featuring Wonderbaby and one or the other of us and/or friends and/or extended family members, but these are all a) entirely digital, b) tending toward individual portraiture and/or group portraiture that excludes one of the more significant members of the family (it is almost always me taking the picture, and so from the evidence of our digital photo archives one would presume that Wonderbaby does not have a mother), and c) representative of situations that tend more or less to the embarassing (Wonderbaby bewigged, Wonderbaby naked and bewigged, me naked and bewigged, etc, etc.)

So, we had nothing. No family picture for Wonderbaby to take to school and share with her friends. We were facing - I was facing - the prospect of sending my child, at age two, into the deeply disappointing experience of being the lone child in the group who doesn't have anything for show 'n' tell, or no cupcakes to contribute to the bake sale, or whatever, because her mother sucks ASS.

So I sent her to school with this:

Was that wrong?