Sunshine, and Complaints

It's summer. It's official! It's hot and muggy here, and I'm getting antsy. This is the time of year when I really wish we had a car. (With the caveat that I don't like driving. I wish we had a chauffeur, too, but that's at least slightly less likely than us ever having a car.) I want to get out of town, or at least out of our neighborhood, without a long public transit ordeal required. Now that Dutch is in underwear (hello, kitty!), public transit is even more painful. The other day when we were on the bus to daycare, she announced that she had to pee, so we had to get off, run around looking for a bathroom, and then wait for another bus. Cars are SO EASY. Whenever we get a ride, I'm amazed by how quickly we arrive at our destination.

Anyway, now it's summer, and I see listings in the paper for lovely events like free early evening concerts at the park, or even just the hours for the community pools, and it makes me cranky. We are just not emotionally equipped, as a family, to schlep off to a fun outing that will take two buses and 80 minutes each way. Anything we do outside the neighborhood on the weekend (like, say, grocery shopping!) requires a full-day commitment, pretty much, and anything "extra" to do is kind of overwhelming. A free concert that starts at 6:30 at the closest location this summer would mean leaving the apartment at 5:15, staying for 45 minutes, and getting home at 8:15, getting the weevil to bed around 9, leaving her cranky the following day. Which is fine, and if we were zestier, more energetic people, I'm sure we'd be dashing off for all sorts of fun festivities by public transit. But we're not, so we need the car that would cut the trip to 10-15 minutes. (Though there's a distinct possibility that we'd STILL not get out the door. I'll keep blaming public transit for now, though.)

We were thinking of buying a car a while back, but then we got off the daycare waitlist, and decided to spend money we don't have on that, instead. Someday, we might have daycare AND a car!

I should also mention, to remind myself as well as clarify for my vast readership, that I don't like cars. I think they're evil, generally speaking, polluting and dangerous and isolating and overall promoting of a depressingly self-centered approach to life. I hate that everything is set up to accommodate them. I yell daily at people in big cars who accidentally almost run me over in the middle of their cellphone conversations. I believe that everyone should regularly take public transit. I really hope that we can continue to live in a place where I can do all my commuting by public transit. If we had a car, we'd try to use it as little as possible. But gosh, I'd love to have a car (and oh, yes, a driver) in reserve, for those summer moments when I'd love to pile everything (hello, potty!) into the car and go to a park just outside town to put our feet in a creek. That's all. Oh, and for grocery shopping.

Kung Fu Baby

I really think this video speaks for itself.

Traveling, and Coming Home

We survived our Beach Family Vacation. Family Beach Vacation. Whatever. We survived! We even had fun! We are totally pooped. Literally, in the case of poor Dutch, who insisted on shutting herself in her room as soon as we got home (at 10:30 PM), to "play with my toys" which turned out to be a euphemism for "getting some freaking privacy for evacuating my bowels which are full of all the waste I was too stressed out to excrete while you were dragging me all over the place and abandoning me with my various loony but lovable relatives."

We did have a good time, in spite of a few glitches.
Glitch #1: The ocean was brimming with sewage from Mexico, and signs were posted warning us all not to swim, lest we be sickened by unspeakable bacteria.
Glitch #2: Turns out Dutch is afraid of the ocean, and not just because it was full of shit. She kept insisting on relocating our sand excavation site further up the beach to get away from the apparently terrifying tide. My marine biologist/surfer dad was awfully disappointed, but he bore it manfully, without expressing any regret or making her feel bad in the least.
Glitch #3: I failed to listen to my own lectures about sun safety, and managed to get myself a painful and embarassing sunburn. I tried to turn it into a teachable moment to instruct Dutch about the foolishness of getting sunburned, but she ignored me and repeatedly scratched and squeezed all my scorched parts.
Glitch #4: I forgot (as I always do!) that my family is totally bonkers, and I AM TOO.

But those were minor problems. Dutch had a marvelous time showing off for the family, I loved catching up with the family, Cook loved the breakfast buffet, and we all enjoyed the break from reality. I'm finding re-entry a little bumpy, but surely worth it.

Relaxation

I apparently clench my jaw muscles pretty much all the time. I grind (and snap!) my teeth at night, and now they're cracking all over the place. (I believe that pregnancy totally ruined my teeth - there isn't much scientific evidence behind my theory, but I'm convinced of it. That darn kid sucked all the calcium right out of me.) I have decent health insurance at the moment, for once, so I went to see a doctor about it. I'm getting a mouthguard thingy to wear at night, and last week I had an appointment with a retired dentist who teaches self-hypnosis techniques to jaw-clenchers. My boss promised to keep an eye on me, lest I suddenly start clucking like a chicken, but I'm still a little wary.

I remind myself to relax about a hundred times a day, but I clench right up again (all over myself - shoulders and neck and jaw). I feel embarassed about my failure to be sufficiently zen; maybe the hypnosis will make me into a cheerful and calm person. Even if that means I have to make animal noises.

Anyway, I'm on vacation. I'm relaxing! Dutch is outside torturing her Gramma, and I'm off duty. I will relax. I will.

Sunscreen

Environmental Working Group has added sunscreens to their Skin Deep database (a handy place to find out how toxic your makeup, lotion, and shampoo brands are) - check it out before you buy sunscreen this summer!

http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/special/sunscreens/

SquintJune2007

SquintJune2007
Originally uploaded by Sara & Kirk & Sophie

We love self-portraits.

Audiovisual

Dutch loooooves TV. She watched very little in her first year of life (ummm... not counting all the movies we watched while holding her when she was very very small), but now she watches maybe an hour or two a week. So far, she's watched The Snowman, Babe, The Tigger Movie, all the Wallace and Gromit movies, Chicken Run, Finding Nemo, some Baby Einstein, some Sesame Street, The General, My Neighbor Totoro... and lots more. This weekend, she sat raptly through about 2/3rds of Singin' in the Rain, after which Cook found her dancing in her bedroom. I'm totally biased about her TV consumption - I feel like it's okay as long as it's something I like (My Neighbor Totoro, for example, which is a fabulous movie, and has the added attraction of being cool and arty), but I'm pretty sure The Tigger Movie is melting her brain (since I can't watch more than 2 minutes at a time without feeling an urge to put an icepack to my head). We have frequent YouTube sessions, too, that inevitably degenerate into Dutch demanding to watch some kind of bizarro scenario - "I want to see a hippo and a rhino iceskating!" - and us being startled to find something very close to what she was looking for (though, okay, not with the hippo and rhino thing, though I did find a video of a crocodile eating a zebra, which I really don't recommend for toddlers). We found the Belgian farting pig during one of these sessions, though I can't remember the exact search terms that landed us there. There are some wonderful things on YouTube, though Dutch's appreciation seems to be kind of eccentric, since this is her favorite video, and is requested at least five times a week.

But really, as long as whatever she watches doesn't have commercials and isn't hideously violent or offensive, AND as long as we don't let her watch more than a few hours a week, I've decided to give us a free pass. She does learn about some weird stuff that she'd never get, otherwise - parkour and doubledutch, Japanese home life, fish behavior, types of cheese, the brevity of life. It's such a lovely break - an hour of no whining, no screaming, no arguments, no nothing. Just one small child staring blankly at the boob tube, melting her brain... while I make dinner, or lie on the couch blissfully staring blankly at the ceiling. I know how the AAP feels about it, and I'm sure she'd be better off, brainwise, if she watched no TV at all. But without that guaranteed distraction every once in a while, I'd probably kill her, and then the AAP would definitely be upset.

Anyway, I'd like to take a tangential moment to celebrate the late, great Donald O'Connor, Gene Kelly's sidekick in Singin' in the Rain (one of my all-time favorite movies). I appreciate him more every time I watch that movie, and I always have to dance around my bedroom after I watch it, too. Dutch and I will have to make a date to watch a Francis the Talking Mule movie sometime soon...

Crazy Farting Pig from Belgian TV Show!

Dutch thinks this is the funniest thing she's ever seen.

The Bathroom Quest

I've been posting pictures lately, for lack of a thousand words, and somehow it only seems right that I should dedicate the next thousand words or so to the topic of the moment, which is Potty Training. It's happening. Dutch figured out the peeing-on-the-potty thing quite a while ago, but she's been totally disinterested (and revoltingly happy to sit in her own waste for hours), and we've been too lazy to push it. Plus, my exboss warned me years ago to avoid rushing into pottytraining, as you go from having to change diapers once in a while to spending all your time outside the house looking for a bathroom.

But last weekend we babysat a friend's pottytrained kid, and something about that experience catalyzed a transformation in Dutch. And now we have a kid in the middle of pottytraining, and I see what my exboss was talking about - I just spent most of a four-hour outing scouting bathrooms everywhere we went. The outing was dedicated to buying underwear (Dutch picked out some very fetching Hello Kitty undies - underwear for children with "Hello Kitty" printed on them seemed really creepy to me, but at least she didn't pick the Barbie undies), which added a nice undertone of irony to my desperate, near-continual search for toilets.

Fashion

She goes out in public like this.

More on love

That's Birthday Bear, in case you were wondering, a few months ago. And Donner.

The truth about love

Tonight, while eating dinner off My Special Plate (which I've had since I was barely older than Dutch - it has my name on it!), I said "I love my plate!" and Dutch said dismissively but kindly "No, you don't. It doesn't have a mouth to talk."

When we tried to suggest that it was possible to love even nontalking things/animals/etc., she listened politely, but clearly wasn't buying it. When Cook pointed out that she loves Birthday Bear, and Birthday Bear does not talk (being a stuffed animal and all), she informed us (in the same, condescending little voice) that he does talk.

Tea Party!

Mmm! Delicious plastic vegetables and rubber sushi!

We went to the zoo last weekend, and Dutch liked the naked mole rats a LOT.

Produce

Today was the second week of the Harvesting of The CSA Share. The principle of CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture), in case you've missed my food lecture, is that you give the farmer a whole bunch of money upfront, when they need it to buy seed and equipment and get things started, and then you get a share of the harvest all season, however large or small it turns out to be - risk-sharing. It's a great system, guaranteeing the farmer some income, eliminating the middleman, and cutting out a substantial amount of packaging, processing, and transportation from the food chain. The farmer drives a whole bunch of produce to a local dropoff spot once a week and we go fetch our vegetables. This week we got fava beans, spinach, mixed sauteeing greens, lettuce, carrots, and something called "garlic chives" that is surely destined to get increasingly flaccid in the fridge hydrator until we eventually clean it out. ("Eventually" in this case meaning probably three months from now, by which time it will actually have become integrated into the matrix of the plastic drawer. )

I had to schlep a bunch of work stuff (plus some new trashy books from the library) by train to Dutch's daycare, take her and my stuff on a train and then a bus, then walk 7 blocks to the pickup site, pack up all our veggies, walk 6 blocks, and catch another bus home. Dutch and I were both pretty grumpy and tired, but my burden was lightened by the sight of her, seriously grimy from a long day of daycare, sitting on a busstop bench in her pink cowboy boots, gnawing on a carrot. We self-satisfied yuppie mommies are always raving about the joys of sharing gardening and fresh produce with our delightful children, and IT'S TRUE. She loves the farm carrots so much that she can't wait for me to get the rest of the produce - I must prepare a carrot for her as soon as I start picking them out of the box. (Preparing entails rubbing the carrot on my jeans to get some dirt off, then sloshing some backwashy water from her bottle over it. I hope the farmer isn't having any trouble with E. coli...) And it's not even that they taste fabulous, though they're perfectly nice carrots. She's excited about eating that carrot because the farmer brought it in the truck! And the farmer's dog licked her! And the carrot still had its top on, but we took the tops off all the carrots and put them in the bucket to be given to another farm-sharer's pet rabbit! And there's some dirt on the carrot! And you can't eat the green part, only the orange part! Apparently the produce from the grocery store is too tame for Dutch. She walks on the wild side.

Whining

Today I'm whining about Dutch, and her whining. She WHINES! I posted a request for advice on a parenting website a few months ago, and the responses were all along the lines of "well, in our house nobody whines, because we never give in to whining," implying that Cook and I must be spinelessly capitulating to all whiny requests. We don't. The problem is actually not whining while asking for things, it's just whining ALL THE DAMN TIME. She whines when she's just plain talking. She whines about problems instead of asking for help. She whines when she wants something that we'd be perfectly happy to give her, like a healthy snack. ("IIIIIIIIIIII want to eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat an aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaappppuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhllllllllllllll!")

She doesn't hit, she doesn't bite, she doesn't kick. Whining, apparently, is her big Toddler Personality Flaw. It drives me completely nuts. I find myself saying "Stoooooooooooooooopp whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnng!"

10-minute Increments of Everything

Our apartment is always grubby. Neither Cook nor I seem to have the natural interest/aptitude or the training for decent house-keeping. (We also seem to have more or less no taste - not really bad taste, I don't think, but no taste at all - we have no knack for interior decoration.) I would like to improve myself in this, so I've signed up for housekeeping prompts from a really weird website. I'm not going to cite it, even, because it's kind of embarrassing, and eerily cultlike. The tips for taking control of your life and home include things like "shine your sink - it'll make you smile!" (the very first thing you should do to take control of your life, apparently) and "get up 15 minutes before the rest of your household so you can get dressed and get your face and hair ready." But I'm kind of excited about some of it (so far as anyone can GET excited about housekeeping tips, which isn't very far), and most of all I like the advice that "you can do anything for 15 minutes." I don't think that's quite true, and I prefer not to test it to extremes (can I REALLY hold my breath for 15 minutes?), but I' ve cut it down to 10 for application in my own lazy life. So now I set the timer twice a day for 10 minutes. I battle the Vast Encroaching Clutter for one 10-minute session, and I do something else cleaningish for 10 minutes. The creepy website emails me "missions" to do every day, and sometimes I do those, or something else that seems more relevant to my life. Today I wiped all the cabinet and drawer fronts in the kitchen. Yesterday I dusted part of the livingroom.

Next, I shall conquer the world!

Keeping house is so hard! Even to my slovenly standards, it's hard. I also can't imagine keeping house in a HOUSE. If keeping an apartment you only live in for a few years seems horribly daunting, keeping a house that you live in for decades seems impossible. I'd have to do things like wash the ceiling! We did finally clean the walls in the bathroom of our current apartment (which was not... exactly... clean when we moved in), but only because I'd made the mistake of wiping a particularly icky spot, creating a small, irregularly shaped, radiantly white area surrounded by dark grey. Then we had to carry on and clean the walls of the whole damn room, because it was obvious that the walls were coated in a thick layer of grime. We decided not to brighten the painfully dim lighting in the bathroom, in the interest of shadowing all the other housekeeping deficiencies in that room, but the disgusting-wall problem was evident even in near-darkness.

Anyway, I don't know how people keep their homes clean, be they studio apartments or giant mansions. Presumably those people spend time actually cleaning, rather than complaining about cleaning.

(Also, in the interest of appeasing my parents, who actually read this, I have to make clear that I was raised properly, in a clean house. And Cook was raised properly in a VERY clean house. So it's not your fault, parents!)