First Day

Tomorrow Dutch starts at a new daycare. The university daycare, at which we've wanted her all along (it has an excellent reputation, is overflowing with eager student teachers, and is supercheap for students). The catch is that she's going to be part-time - mornings only. We can manage it for now, and hopefully we can patch together some kind of aftercare. We accepted the opening partly because part-timers get first whack at full-time openings, so it puts us at the top of the waitlist, and gives us a chance of getting her into a full-time slot sometime before fall 2009, which is when we were expecting to get in. At any rate, tomorrow's her first day. She doesn't seem to really have grasped that she's left the old place forever, though I did make her say goodbye to teachers and friends. Cook and I haven't really grasped it ourselves - they called to offer the spot on Friday, and we made the decision Monday. I'm not sure what to expect with the transition. The teachers seem really nice, and the place is lovely, and I expect that they will handle her better than the other teachers, so it could go smoothly. Or not...

In other news, Dutch and I attended a Halloween party at the last day of her old daycare. She is currently sitting in the livingroom with our three pumpkins, eating her loot from the party. Lots of firsts - first M&Ms, first Milky Way, first Hershey Bar, first Milk Duds, first Halloween binge. I stole one minicandy when she wasn't looking (and slipped it into my own bag to eat tomorrow!), but she scored those 4 minicandies, a little box of raisins, a little bag of animal crackers, and an apple. I agreed that she could eat all of it, as long as she shared with me. My first vicarious Halloween.

Halloween

Amendment

I should clarify that I didn't actually mean in my last post that I'm tempted to drown my child. (Given Cook's feelings about water conservation, there's rarely enough water in the bath for that purpose, anyway.) I just sometimes am tempted to wash her hair by force.

I just waved to Dutch and Cook as they trotted off to the bus stop, heading to the zoo for Howl-O-Ween. Dutch is wearing her construction worker costume, minus the helmet (it's waiting at the postoffice for pickup). She's proudly carrying her lunchbox/toolbox, which is full of impressively realistic cardboard-and-duct-tape tools made for her by her handy uncle and his girlfriend, who visited last weekend and thrilled Dutch by playing crazy chase games and taking her tools appropriately seriously. She also learned to make all the appropriate sound effects for each tool, and she knows how to use all the tools correctly. (Antarctic Uncle is a stickler for the proper care and use of tools.) She's ready for Halloween.

A side note: one of the crazy Antarctic Uncle chase games transmogrified weirdly into The Flesh-Eating-Seal Game, in which one person brandishes a cardboard seal at the other person and yells "I'm going to eat your flesh!" - except that Dutch keeps saying "flush," which makes her sound like a demented plumber. Yesterday she yelled "mama, the seal is going to crack you open and drink your flush!" which made me feel both appalled and totally amused. A combination of emotions I'm pretty familiar with when it comes to Dutch.

Nobody Wins

Okay, first of all - PEOPLE!!! DON'T CALL US BEFORE 8 AM ON A WEEKEND!!!

Though I guess I should be grateful to whomever called us and then hung up, because now I'm awake and Cook and Dutch are still asleep, which means I have a few moments of sweet, sweet Personal Time. Which I'm going to spend blogging.

On to my topic!

I am ashamed to admit that I often have a hard time remembering that Dutch and I are actually on the same side. When she wants to do something, and I want her to do something else, it's way too easy for me to get locked into the notion that I have to win the battle.

If I want to go out, and she wants to stay home, pretending to be a drummer playing "grasshopper music" (lingering confusion from my attempt to explain about the music of the Beatles), I frequently feel like I have to grit my teeth and grimly drag her out the door, goddamnit, regardless of how important it actually is. Part of this, I think, is the unconscious desire to follow the parenting advice to not spoil your child or let her manipulate you. But I think that's pretty silly advice. It's her job to figure out how to manipulate the world around her, and it's my job to identify what I think are the important unbendable rules, and then decide what's worth battling over. She has so little power, and I think it's fine for her to know that she has some power over me. My policy is that I pick carefully what issues to take a stand on, and then stand firm on those issues. If I say no, I have to maintain the no. In theory, this makes perfect sense to me. If she wants to go three days without washing her hair, that's okay with me, as long as the rest of her gets washed. In real life, because I'm not really a nice person, when I tell her cheerfully that it's time for bath and she defiantly (and whinily!) yells "I won't wash my hair!!" I look at her matted little head, and I kind of want to dunk it in the bathwater by force. I haven't done anything that awful, but I frequently get into ridiculous pissing matches with her, in which we're both refusing to back down. Realizing that I'm more or less at the same emotional and social level as a grubby-haired 3-year-old is pretty humbling.

Scrambling

I haven't had time to think, let alone post. Which rules out any faint hope of a thoughtful post. Also I should be washing dishes right now, or working on the presentation I'm supposed to give tomorrow. Not writing randomly just because I feel the need to post SOMETHING.

Anyway, we're hanging in there. Dutch and I have major battles every morning due to the conflict between my desire to get out the door at a reasonable hour and her desire to stay in her room all day and play with her stuff. There has been a miserable amount of yelling and crying on both sides.

Magical Thinking

Tonight Dutch told me that her stuffed cow, Tillie, protects her from foxes and owls, just in case. Also, Tillie "gives me instructions about how to not cry and be scared when I hear a noise. Like an ambillyance."

Oh Yeah

I have reached an exciting new level of busy-ness. Today I bought myself some chocolate and I was so busy that I FORGOT TO EAT IT. I think this is unprecedented. Perhaps I'll get so busy that I'll get thin. Though I very much doubt it'd be worth it.

I came into Dutch's room to find that she had laid out an imaginary friend on the floor, ready to sit down to a teaparty. We really need to get some friends. Though probably a kid wearing that expression and brandishing a plastic butter knife should be expected to have only imaginary friends.

Tired!!!!!!!!

Wooooeeee! I'm tired! So tired! Wow! This is what I did last Thursday:

Woke up. Prepared for day. Wrestled child out of the apartment, under protest. Bussed and walked child to daycare. Walked and bussed to a meeting. Met. Bussed to the office. Worked frantically for an hour. Walked and trolleyed to a meeting with a professor at school. Met. Trolleyed and walked back to the office. Worked frantically for 20 minutes. Walked to a lobbying meeting with legislative staff. Lobbied. Left early in order to walk and trolley back to school for class. Got a ride home from a classmate (yay!). Ate dinner (prepared by exhausted husband). Wrestled child into bed. Did homework. Went to sleep.

I used FOUR forms of transit! Trolley, bus, car, and feet. I am disappointed that I did not fit in any biking or at least light rail. This week, I will try to do better...

But my point is that I'm tired. Perhaps I should not have signed up for 35 hours of work (in which I must do my own 30-hour-a-week job, the ED's fulltime job, and hire a new ED) plus 8 credits. We'll make it through the quarter, but my relationships are being compromised.

Tomorrow I have a work meeting, two school meetings, and five hours of class. So tired!!

Milestone!

Dutch has claimed that her art was representational before ("this is a person wearing stilts!"), but suddenly she is producing actual pictures of things that are vaguely recognizable as the things she says they are.

This is an octopus:

Apparently it's got some major mutation problems, and is hanging out with some pretty spooky creatures. But look! It has eyes! She's a genius! (She also draws spiders. I'm impressed - I think it's a smart move at this developmental stage to specialize in things that can be drawn as blobs with sticks attached.)

Also, note that the octopus has been given pride of place on our fridge, using the very best magnets.

Time to Do Some Chores

I took this picture to show to a friend who sent the shirt (a new favorite) from Newfoundland (hi KP!), but then I opened it up in Photoshop, and realized that the notable thing about it (other than the way that Dutch looks oddly like a frat boy with very strange taste in clothes) is the profound mess in her room. The place is an utter disaster, every which way. This is our fault, as decorating, cleaning and tidying are not high on our priority list, and we've never put any kind of cleaning chore system in place. I guess it's time.

Babies

A friend of mine became a father this week. I got pictures of the kid (let's call him Tiger) and they thrilled me. The new daddy has been a staunch and beloved friend of mine since we were kids ourselves, and I'm very happy for him (and Tiger's mother, who is a lovely and astoundingly competent person - somebody who I expect will be entirely undaunted by the upside-down-inside-outy-ness of having a new baby on hand). But mostly I'm just thrilled to see Tiger himself, brand new (and sometimes yelling). Babies are so spooky and exciting - here he is! He's here! We know NOTHING about him! (Except that being bathed apparently pisses him off. ) He's all in there, and his personality will slowly be revealed and developed over the next two decades or more, and we get to see it unfold! We are so lucky to have him in the world!

Anyway, Tiger, congratulations, and welcome! I look forward to meeting you someday, and I hope and wish all the best for you.

An addendum to my musings on boys. I was doing my homework in the dining room while Cook got Dutch ready for bed. I could hear that she was sad, and I listened to this:

Dutch: Daddy, Q and J said they were going to tell my mama!
Cook: Oh?
D: Q and J said they were going to tell MY OWN MAMA!
C: What were they going to tell her?
D: They said they were going to tell her... (an ascending wail of misery) that I WAS A BAD GIRL!!! They said I was a BAD GIRL!!!

I cried. MY OWN GIRL! Those little monsters! I feel like storming into the daycare and shaking the snot out of Q and J.

I know that Q and J are actually perfectly nice normal kids. I know that perfectly nice normal kids are mean and weird and scheming and that Dutch will get her little heart bruised and broken many times over (and do some bruising and breaking of her own) before she even reaches the terrible shoals of adolescence. But I really don't know how I'm going to weather it. I can tell her she's the best girl in the world, and that she should just leave Q and J alone when they're cruel, but it doesn't really help. She wants to play with them, and she likes them, and they know it, which is why they're testing their power over her by being cruel. They have a lot of power, like all loved ones do.

Before we put Dutch into daycare, we thought Dutch was really wishing for interaction with other little girls who like to play ornate pretend games with dolls. In the last few weeks, it's become increasingly clear that she actually much prefers the company of the roughhousing boys. The teachers (and Dutch herself) tell us that she spends most of her time running around with J and Q (the adorable biter). Dutch says that when J and Q hit her too much, she plays instead with R, a little girl who likes to play ornate pretend games with dolls.

In spite of all my lip service to the notion of not wanting to trap Dutch in any fixed idea of her, I repeatedly get ideas about Dutch, and they get fixed very quickly. She is not, however, always the same. She does like to play ornate pretend games with dolls, but she likes to play them by herself, at home, where she has complete control over the scenarios. At daycare, she apparently prefers to play in the rockpit with the boys, where the subtle arts of social negotiation are somewhat less subtle, and easier to master. (Also, she's learning to say "shut up" and say that things and people are "stupid" and "stinky." Not that pottymouthing is the exclusive province of boys.) Must...unfix...convictions...

Fall Weekend

We are winding up a crazy weekend that was unusually social and strangely thematic. We made and canned applesauce on Saturday, and on Sunday we went to one of those bizarro, sprawling places where they sell pumpkins and hayrides and tours of the corn maze and whatnot.

Dutch threw some fantastic whining fits in the vast pumpkin field (she was ticked off that we didn't spring for a ride on the Cow Train, which we totally would have sprung for had it actually been as cool as it sounds), but cheered up when we got back to the "farm" and she got to climb on a hay-bale mountain. (Also crawl through the 20-feet-long parent-freakout-inducing culvert pipes placed under the haybale-mountain.) And see the animals in the "Animal Barn," which featured a dead goat. (Seriously. They removed it in a cardboard box while we were there. Dutch didn't notice, fortunately.) It was all both creepy and delightful, and I felt like I was getting to fill some sort of gap in my childhood that I hadn't even realized existed. Picking pumpkins out of a HUGE field, with lots of other people! Cool! We got ourselves $5 worth of pumpkins and some pictures of Dutch ogling squash.

And stepping on rotten pumpkins.

And admiring the peculiar photo op. Aren't these usually supposed to involve bodies for your face? Or is the kid supposed to be a worm in the pumpkin?

Also, we got to ride the tractor hayride, which was very exciting for Dutch, and almost made up for missing out on the Cow Train.

My Brain

Our Saturday Autumnal Adventure in Applesauce took place courtesy of our friend the Wordsmith, who is smart and funny, cooks gorgeously, and does not suffer fools. She also loves to play games like Scrabble, and we played a wordy game with her while we waited for the applesauce to simmer down. I was expecting that the Wordsmith would win, but I really had no idea how very badly I was going to lose. At the end of the game, this is how the points fell out:
Wordsmith - 465
Cook - 263
Me - 212
This was utterly humiliating. I used to pride myself on being good at word games. Cook beats me more often than not, but I have still managed to maintain my self-image as a wordy sort of person. Either my brain has rotted due to senility and disuse, or I am not a wordy sort of person at all. More of a grunty and pointy sort of person, apparently.

Anticipating Spooky

Dutch is excited for Halloween. She wasn't really on top of it last year, but what with daycare and being 50% older, she's ready for it this year. She's seen the decorations that are already out, and she tried on some costumes at the thrift store a few weeks ago. I asked her yesterday what she wanted to dress up as for Halloween, and she answered without hesitation "a construction worker!" and proceeded to list all the things she would wear. Boots are the key to the outfit, it seems. Also a helmet.

I don't know where she got this idea, since the costumes she tried on were more along the lines of cute little animals, but I'm pleased, since it'll be relatively easy to assemble, as long as I can convince her that construction workers frequently wear pink cowboy boots on the job. (This may be true, for all I know.) I'm not sure how one makes a hardhat out of cardboard, but I'll do my best.