DanceParty

DanceParty
Originally uploaded by Sticky Tiny

Yup. Dance party.

Difficulty With Bubbles

DifficultyWithBubbles
Originally uploaded by Sticky Tiny

This is apparently really hard.

Old Dogs

I thought all my blog energy was tapped out; I was wrong.

I have just wrapped my brain around the concept of lolcats. All you young whippersnappers out there may laugh at my innocence, but I am still working on this whole internets thing.

For you old people (and no, I STILL don't understand what it's supposed to mean when somebody "pokes" me on Facebook), go to this website. (One of the many things I don't understand about these internet tubes is how to credit photos, so I don't dare post pictures that aren't mine, lest I be apprehended by THE INTERNETS POLICE! I'm pretty sure they actually come out of the computer and wear black rubber suits.)

Anyway, it's weird. People are weird.

Updates

My creative wells are running pretty dry at the moment, so I'm dedicating this post to an update on past posts.
1. There is little to no lead in our tap water. Hooray! I can cross that off the long list of things to worry about.
2. I bought two books ($1.69 total, but STILL) a few days after writing that I don't buy books anymore.
3. I still like my job.
4. Dutch seems a little happier at daycare. We're still not thrilled with it, but it's fine. And last week she came home with a funny pigtail hairdo. We're not sure what the circumstances of the grooming were, but Dutch LOVED her pigtails. They were immaculate - two tight pigtails and two plumb-straight parts dividing her head into three (probably geometrically exactly equal in some way) sections. Dutch demanded that I give her pigtails the next day, and I tried. I delivered her back to daycare in sloppy, uneven, already-disintegrating pigtails, with ragged, meandering parts. I felt pretty self-conscious about it. She keeps asking for them, though, so I guess she's never seen the back of her head.
5. It's not hot right now. Muggy. Today it rained unexpectedly and quite heavily, but I had serendipitously received a raincoat for Dutch in a package delivered to my office from an omniscient friend, so she stayed reasonably dry during the hike from daycare to the bus stop.
6. I just got my Magical Nighttime Mouthguard today - now I will be grinding a plastic boomerang all night instead of my tooth enamel.

That's pretty much all I've got to say. I'm feeling too low-energy even to blog. That seems ominous, actually - how can one run out of energy for narcissism?

What a family is.

"It never takes longer than a few minutes, whenever they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That's what a family is. Also the storm at sea, the ship, and the unknown shore. And the hats and the whiskey stills that you make out of bamboo and coconuts. And the fire that you light to keep away the beasts."

from The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon

Providing for the Family

When I was at home fulltime, I realized pretty quickly that I was channeling my frustration and need for self-definition into shopping. I'm not a shopper in the Manolo Blahnik chick-lit sense, as anybody checking out my wardrobe would realize in about 1.2 seconds. I have paid for two professional haircuts in 10 years. But I LOVE shopping. I particularly love researching and planning to buy something to meet a family need I've identified, like the Perfect Stroller. I don't like spending a lot of money, and I have major ethical qualms about buying anything new, but I love the hunt and the thrill of making the kill. I leave the thrift store or the grocery store riding a wonderful high that feels like winning, somehow. It meets some powerful, primal need - I am bringing home provisions for my family! I am hunting and gathering!

I was talking to a parent- friend recently who shares this problem (lots of stay-at-home moms I know have it to some degree), and we commiserated over the fact that all those purchases add up. They're never exactly frivolous, but they're often unnecessary. Buying satisfaction never seems to work out.

I'm ashamed to say that I still do it, even now that I have a little more going on in my life, and a budget that doesn't allow unnecessary spending. The other day I stopped at a yardsale and bought Dutch some sticker books and a box of colored pencils. I paid $1. What a deal! But she has crayons, she has paints, she has stickers. She doesn't need any of those things, by any reckoning. So it was a waste. And I went to another yardsale (Hi, Mom! Remember the yardsale I dragged you to?) in a swanky neighborhood a few weeks ago, and bought a bunch of kids' clothes, to give to friends and to Dutch. Most egregiously, I bought and kept a pair of sandals that are TOO SMALL for Dutch, on the premise that I really liked them, they're brandnew and expensive, they cost $2, and if we have another kid, it can wear them. If it happens to be wearing the right size in a season warm enough for sandals. And it felt so good, and so bad. It's like drug-addiction, except less physically damaging.

Anyway, I'm working on the problem, but it's pretty hard to fight. I HAVE managed over the last year or so to stop buying books, even $.25 paperbacks. One step at a time, and many trips to the library.

If you need nursing in Alameda County...

A friend of mine just got her official nursing license, after an intense two years of juggling school, clinic, a husband who was also in school and working, a social life, and a kid. She's smart and lovely and resourceful, and she worked crazy hard for this, and I am amazed by her! Congratulations, Trapeze Girl!

Nice Parenting Things In The Last Month Or So

1. Dutch has started coming into our room in the early morning to get in bed with us. This is actually a positive change, as until about a month ago, she would just scream until somebody came and fetched her back to our bed. Now she comes in and wakes me up by patting my shoulder, and when I turn and look at her, she smiles delightedly at me and says "hi!", and then I hoist her up and over me and install her in the middle of the bed and we both go back to sleep. It's lovely.

2. Potty training.

3. Dutch has started appropriately saying "thankyou" about half the time, unprompted. (I hesitated to put this one up, because it seems like so little to be pleased with, but whatever! I'm pleased!)

4. Dutch's bare legs, dirty and bruised and scabby. Hooray for summertime! Yesterday after dinner she finished the day liberally coated with sweat, snot, smoothie, dirt, blood, sunscreen, beet juice, and who knows what else. We were so proud. (She did get a bath, in case you're wondering.)

Hot!

It has been HOT here. Our apartment windows face south and west, and we dressed them (actually, the wonderfully efficient and high-energy Big Cooks dressed them) when we moved in during the winter, so they are wearing white gauzy curtains designed to let as much sunlight in as possible. In the late afternoon, the apartment is ablaze with sunshine, and the temperature reaches what feels like a good 20 degrees above the temperature outside. We've been preparing food in advance, in order to avoid cooking in the kitchen during the Hot Zone, and we had one picnic dinner in the park, with fountain-romping. Portland has lots of fantastic interactive-type fountains, and Dutch loves them. She was wearing swimtrunks and sandals, and I was amazed by how powerful gender conventions are - whenever I saw her, I had to remind myself that she's not a boy. She has longish hair, and of course I am the world expert on her nether regions (a title I will be happy to relinquish) and am pretty clear on her gender, but the fact that she was wearing swimshorts and not a girl swimsuit nearly counterbalanced that knowledge.

Anyway, it's been hot. Horribly, can't-sleep, wish-I-had-air-conditioning-screw-global-warming hot. But it's getting better - today was in the mid-90s and we all felt cool and relaxed. And just now we had a mini-thunder-storm with actual rain!

Currency Conversion Dinnertime Conversation:

Me: Dutch, do you know how much I love you?
Dutch: Yeah.
M: How much?
D: Six pounds.
M: Oh. Okay. How much does daddy love you?
D: Three.
Cook: Only three?
M: Three what? Pounds or tons?
D: Three tons.
C: Oh.
M: Dutch, how much do you love me?
D: Six books.
M: How much do you love daddy?
D: Six pounds.

Oh, right.

Dutch, naked except for a too-small skirt (she had to take her clothes off because she was "too hot" in the 65-degree apartment), hopping joyfully around the living room while listening to music. (Cook tried to get a picture, but she was moving too fast.)

More About Art

Cook is the one who does art with the kid. It's funny, since I would have said I was more artistically oriented than Cook, but I'm not. He loves it. He paints and paints and paints and is enormously patient with her crazy demands ("draw a little tiny baby sitting in a tree sucking on a pacifier!"). They do fingerpainting and tempera and watercolors and watercolor pencils. I always try to con her into just crayons, since it's easier. (I'm LAZY!)

We were very fortunate to pick up a cheesy free coloring book at Bonneville Dam, courtesy of the (eeeeviiiiiiiil) Army Corps of Engineers. The book features Bobber the Water Safety Dog, and the hapless Sinker, who fails to wear a lifejacket. There are also some foolish cats who drink beer while boating. (The weirdness of seeing a cartoon character drinking beer in a coloring book is somehow counteracted by the fact that it's a cat.) This kicked off the Coloring Book Era in Dutch's life, and we have to take one with us everywhere. We've since picked up a few more free ones, including (at the Pride Festival) some fantastic copies of pages from The Gender Coloring Book, featuring captions like "sometimes the princess gets rescued by the girl next door" and "don't let gender box you in!" which hopefully won't get conflated with Bobber the Water Safety Dog and screw up Dutch's future species identity.

Fingerpaint

Fingerpaint
Originally uploaded by Sticky Tiny

Yes, she's advertising Tillamook cheese on her arm - she fell in love with Tillie the Cow at the Rose Festival, and danced with her until the other kids demanded a turn.

Pancakes

Pancakes
Originally uploaded by Sticky Tiny

Dutch announced Tuesday night that she wanted to make honey pancakes for breakfast. (Honey pancakes are a delicacy enjoyed by the Bearenstain Bears.) So we did. It was terribly domestic, which meant we had to record it for posterity.

Fireworks! We had our first ever experience of the Fourth of July in a city close to a source of readily available fireworks (in this case, Washington state), and it was pretty amazing. A neighbor of ours pointed out that this was a strange way to celebrate during a war, but it seemed kind of apt to me. Apparently, every Fourth here is this demented orgy of fireworks - SERIOUS fireworks, like you'd expect to see in a real, official, city-run fireworks display - being set off in the streets every few blocks or so, for hours. It felt like we were under siege, in a non-deathy kind of way, with continual flashing explosions all around us. Cook said it gave him a tiny glimpse of what it would be like to try to get your child to sleep in Baghdad. I know that the comparison is cringe-making, because the only casualties of our evening under fire are a handful of idiots blowing up their hands. But it was so disruptive and alarming and stressful even in the non-deathy version, that it gave us an opportunity to imagine a little more vividly what it might be like to try to cling to some semblance of normality when you're actually living in a war. So it was, in a way, an appropriate way to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Socializing

I'm feeling depressed about Dutch's daycare situation. The teachers in her new room ("Juniors"!) seem awfully listless. They don't seem to be working very hard to help her engage with the other kids. She's had a rough month. She's only been in daycare 2 or 3 days each week for the last three weeks, so she hasn't had a chance to get in a groove, and we've been traveling and had a grandmother visit, plus the pottytraining, all of which means a lot of transitions and stress. It seems that she's been really whiny and tearful at daycare, and spends lots of time watching other kids, or being actually hostile to them, telling them to "go away". I feel so sad for her, and it's hard to say how much is just life, and how much the teachers could affect. They're both kind of reserved, and I think that a more proactive approach would help Dutch engage positively with the other kids. But I don't know what happens during the day. I also don't know that it won't be good for her, in the end, to have to do the work herself. Assuming she does, and doesn't spend the next year as a mini-hermit.

I also recognize that spending the day with eight 3-year-olds is a heroic endeavor, and if I was doing it, I'd be lying exhausted on the floor by lunchtime. Making sure that one whiny insomniac kid has a satisfying social life would certainly not be my priority, particularly if I was paid the standard wage for a daycare employee. What I'm facing is the deep dilemma of childcare - few of us can afford to pay the salary that a person should earn for nurturing and teaching a child, and so we get less than we want for our children.

I'm also struggling with the fact that the teachers aren't raving over my lovely child. She was much happier in the Toddlers room, in spite of being much older and bigger than the other kids, and the teachers loved her for being so cooperative and helpful (relative to the 19-month-olds, which is not a very high standard). In her new class, she's not winning any hearts. (Her 20-minute nap habit is not helping with this, since it cuts seriously into the teachers' precious downtime.) It's not easy realizing that other people don't like your wonderful kid as much as you do. I am keenly aware of most of the things about her that are not very attractive, but I'm still shocked that the rest of the world doesn't think she's fabulous.

The cost of a fall birthday

Dutch has a November birthday, which means that she can't go to kindergarten until she's almost 6. (The cutoff date here is in September.) I'm not particularly worried about her social/academic experience at this point, though I imagine I will worry plenty about that when the day rolls around. (Not to mention the fact that she'll be a foot taller than any of her classmates, at the rate she's going.) What I'm worried about is the fact that we will have to pay for A WHOLE EXTRA YEAR OF DAYCARE! If I was in charge, there would be free preschool for kids who turn 5 in the school year. Actually, if I was in charge, there would be free preschool and daycare for all kids, so this wouldn't be a problem. (Also, there would be a mandatory parade in every town on 4th of July. All there is around here today are lots of fireworks shows. What's up with that? Where's the classic parade with the antique tractors and nervous horses and goofy highschool bands?)

Anyway, if we ever find the resources to have another kid, we'll schedule it better, for a summer birthday.