Resolutions

I don't have any resolutions. I haven't really caught up with my life enough to feel in control enough to make changes. I can't remember the last time I felt caught up with my life. Maybe 1992? No, probably not.

No, wait! I do have a semi-resolution: I'm going to write some real letters this year, if I can remember how to write things by hand.

Cook and Dutch are sitting on the floor right now, drawing pictures and waiting for the New York New Year, which we will celebrate with sparkling cider and a round of memories of 2010/hopes for 2011. Then Dutch will be allowed to stay up as late as she wants. She's never yet made it to midnight, but Cook and I almost never do, either.

2010:

1) Cook got a job with benefits. BENEFITS!!!

2) I graduated with another useless degree that doesn't seem to increase my employability even an iota.

3) Dutch, started school, learned to read.

4) Skipper learned to talk, sort of. She said her longest sentence ever tonight - "Come help me take out." She learned a bunch of other skills that make her significantly more like a functioning member of society, like laughing at other people's jokes (and saying "FUNnnneee!" to really hammer it home).

5) People I love got married, had babies, moved, lost jobs, got jobs, were happy, were sad...

Oops - we took a break to watch New York New Year. Dutch told her first joke of New York 2011. It was absolutely awful.

6) Dutch's missing tooth finally grew back in, after four long years.

7) Skipper learned to love tofu.

2011 is shaping up to be the year in which we move to a new house, Dutch learns to ride a bike, and Skipper leaves diapers behind (oh, please).

Happy New Year! I hope it's a wonderful year for all of you.

This morning

This morning, Dutch was sitting on the couch reading, and Skipper took another book, sat down in a chair, and started "reading" - she was mumbling and repeating the name of one of the main characters in the terrible fairy books. I was too slow getting out the camera, though, so all you get to see is the aftermath.

Getting this off my chest

I think you (all of you!) know I have strong feelings about cars. Cook and I, over 12 years of cohabitation in cities (and 10 car-free years) and several years of work and education in transportation planning, have come to a shared position of disbelief and horror that we live in a world that is designed around cars. This feeling is always there, but when I stand at a bus stop watching a river of cars whiz by me at high speeds, or walk across an ocean of free parking,* or read yet another article about person killed by a car, it wells up in a bubble of anger. I hate it that cars get so much of our space and time and money. I hate it that they kill so many people, and yet we all just accept the huge risk of injury or death by car as part of everyday life. (While decrying transit and bicycling as dangerous.)

I want cars to be reassigned to a subordinate position as one of many transportation options, and demoted from their current place as the ONLY real transportation option. Think how lovely a world in which cars aren't the center of everything would be. No, really, think about it. It would be quieter, and there would be a lot more open space. People would walk more and bike more and not have to be afraid of being mashed. Stores and offices and whatnot would be located closer together. Car crashes wouldn't kill 35000 people a year* in the United States, and air pollution wouldn't take thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Healthcare costs would be lower. People would be less stressed and have more money.

Here's crankypants Todd Litman on the subject:

I am not suggesting that everybody must give up driving altogether. My research and my personal experience indicate that the best transport system is multi-modal: good walking and cycling conditions; good public transit, carsharing and taxi services; and mixed land use to minimize the distances people must travel to reach common services and activities. This is no more "anti-automobile" than a healthy diet is "anti-food," it lets users choose the best mode for each trip. I do not believe that people should be forced to live in such communities, but housing in such neighborhoods should be available to anybody who wants, including those with low incomes, and people who drive less than average should not be forced to subidize people who drive more than average.

There are two possible responses to the high costs of driving. We can continue to increase road, parking and fuel subsidies in an attempt to keep automobile travel affordable. However, this entails huge costs, is unfair to people who drive less than average, and exacerbates problems such as traffic congestion, accidents and pollution. Alternatively, we can create a more diverse and efficient transport system. This requires shifting some road space to alternative modes and increasing vehicle fees. By reducing the amount that people must drive to satisfy their needs this approach reduces total transport costs, reduces traffic problems, and provides other benefits to users and society.

It would be so great, wouldn't it?

*Parking! Ugh! Don't get me started!

**That's a lot of people, isn't it? Given that we started two wars over far fewer deaths, maybe we should have a War on Cars! I could definitely get behind that.

Phew.

This is not a restful holiday. Not only are we attempting to buy a house, which apparently isn't fun or easy at any time, but is particularly frustrating when key people in the process insist on taking vacation time, but we're trying to get many other elements of our life in order. The grownup kind of things, involving money and planning for the future* and other stuff we've been ignoring for a long time. Today I busted out a book I bought (cheap!) ten years ago - it's subtitled "Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties" and I'm running out of time to use it!

Also, it's raining a lot. I'm home with the girls this week, and we're kind of sick of eachother. I'm too ashamed to tell you how unpleasant I've been with both kids, as I scramble to get house-buying and adulthood-type chores done.However, this has given Dutch an opportunity to do some serious reading. She's picked up a ton of momentum suddenly, and spent this morning stretched out on the couch, devouring several of the terrible Rainbow Magic books. She reads out loud to herself still, and so I've been listening to a steady babble of fairy prattle. In spite of the tedious content, it's really fun to see her just take off into the world of books. ** Cook often marvels (sometimes balefully) at my ability to disappear into a book and totally ignore the world around me, and I hope Dutch has inherited it.

In other news, Skipper is chatting up a storm, and she counts ("Wun, Too, Six!"), expresses opinions ("Not LIKE el-vay-tah"), and joins in elaborate pretend games ("Over river. Dark pond!") orchestrated by her sister.

That's about it. We're busy. Should we buy a tankless water heater?

*Crap. That reminds me, we still have no will.

**I also suddenly realized that I need to start stashing my trashy books out of her reach, in order to avoid embarrassing conversations. It's bad enough that I've occasionally found her poring over the trashy covers of my bodice-rippers, trying to figure out what, exactly, this guy is doing to that lady. (Not that I can tell. I don't know who makes those covers, but in general their anatomical accuracy is seriously questionable.)

Merry Christmas!

Dutch's favorite present at the moment: long flannel nightgown with lace trim*

Skipper's favorite present at the moment: box of marbles**

We found out today that the seller of our house-to-be is absolutely not going to make half the repairs we suggested. So if you're looking around for a late holiday gift for us, please make it a quick course in chimney repair and roofing

.

*Because it looks like something Laura Ingalls would wear, of course.

**Merry Christmas, downstairs neighbors!

I don't know why this is so %&^(#$ complicated.

Buying a house is HARD. As with many things I have to do in my life, I'm completely boggled that so many other people do it all the time. Shouldn't this process be easier and more straightforward? Why is it so hard? Am I especially stupid and incompetent? DO I really want to know? How does one remove 30-year-old contact paper from shelves, anyway? Oh, you know, it just occurred to me that it's probably not contact paper. Is it wallpaper? How does one remove 30-year-old wallpaper? See what I'm saying? And how am I supposed to choose home insurance?

Maybe I just need more sleep.

Skipper bit one of her classmates today. Also, we just heard her pipe up from her crib, where she'd been sleeping for an hour, to say loudly "UTTER BUTTER!" (That's peanut butter to you.)

That's the news.

All I want for Christmas is a high walk score.

People who live in more walkable neighborhoods are happier! And their houses are more valuable.

What Christmas is all about.

Paper snowflakes.

And finding out your house-to-be has an abandoned oil tank buried under the driveway and a sewer line that's approximately six flushes from complete failure.

The paper snowflakes, though, are lovely. And our new movie of the sewer pipe is kind of terrific, too!

Boys

The babysitter who picks up Dutch and some other kids after school several days a week reported to me the other day that Dutch had been trying to kiss one of her playmates, Ernie. She said she hadn't known what she should do, so she just distracted the kids with another game. I asked Dutch about it later, and Dutch told me she had NOT been trying to kiss him, she had been "pretending to bite his nose off." This did not really clarify the situation for me, but whatever. Ernie hit her with a stick later on in the afternoon, so apparently there's a balance of power.

Dutch told me recently that she thought she might marry Mark, this kid in her class. I asked her why* and she said, "Well, we're almost always on the same team," which I think, all things considered, is a pretty damn good reason to want to marry somebody. And Mark, apparently, told his mom that Dutch was the only girl in his class like the character Hermione, in the Harry Potter books, which his mom indicated was high praise indeed.

Today I went by the school to drop off Dutch's lunch. I put it in the cafeteria and went to the classroom to put a scarf in her backpack, too (we left in a big hurry this morning), and when I returned to the cafeteria to say hi to Dutch, I found her class sitting in two groups, separated by a wide expanse of empty table. Dutch was sitting next to Mark, in the group made up of about eight boys, Dutch, and one other girl. As far as I can glean from her reports about school, she's been playing more and more with the boys. It reminds me of when she started daycare at age 2.5, and ended up playing in the rock pit with the boys all the time.

Anyway. Boys. Life. Growing up. I don't know what it all means.

*I KNOW why - he's a bright, sweet kid who's also goofy, energetic, silly and funny in a non-threatening, not-out-of-control way. I would have wanted to marry him when I was six, too.

Chippy's Revenge

Dutch and Skipper have been playing a game pretty often on these rainy days in which they make a corner of the living room into a restaurant. Dutch is an orphan girl who lives in and runs the restaurant with her pet chipmunk, Chippy (Skipper), and they wait patiently for customers when they're not repairing broken toys in their attic workshop or pretending to sleep. They both seem to have a great time, at least for a little while, and sometimes it goes on for a good half hour before deteriorating (though the deterioration usually happens very quickly, and often ends in violence before Cook or I can be bothered to intervene - Skipper's new favorite tactic is to seize Dutch's cheeks and squeeze really hard with her tiny talons*).

So if you're hungry for fake food cooked by a chipmunk in a garret, stop by!

*I kind of admire this, I have to say. As an older sister who tormented my little brother to violence many times, I am very sympathetic to Dutch's feelings, but because I know how she feels, I know exactly how pleased she is when she provokes Skipper into misbehaving (preferably with witnesses!), and I have to respect Skipper for standing up for herself the only way she really knows how.

Dancing alone on a pedestal

Pretending to be adults

We are buying a House. This is how it happened.

Tuesday: The House came on the market.

Wednesday: I went to another (foreclosed, forlorn) house with a contractor and our realtor to see what kind of money we'd have to sink into the house if we bought it. After that review, the realtor and I went over and met Cook to see The House. That night, we asked the realtor to put together a report.*

Thursday: The realtor sent us a report on the The House, recommending an offer amount, and we scheduled a meeting with her at the house the next day to walk through The House and put together an offer.

Friday: When we arrived at The House, the realtor told us that another offer had just been submitted. We walked through it briefly (and ascertained that the basement was dry, in the middle of a week of heavy rains) and sat down to write an offer. I spent the rest of the day scrambling to get officially pre-approved, and the realtor called us that evening to let us know that the offer had been accepted. Cook and I felt sort of like we did when we found out I was pregnant (both times) - happy and terrified and pretty much oh-shit-what-have-we-done!?

Weekend: Cook and I both feel like we should be acting more like adults, like we're responsible enough to own The House, and we approached this in different ways, appropriate to our personalities. I took ten minutes to sew new buttons on a pyjama shirt, a task I've been meaning to do for a year and a half or so, and Cook took several hours and cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom. We took turns researching the various things we'd like to do once we live in The House. Cook wants to disconnect the downspouts and to break up the driveway, tear down the shed and use the space for gardening, so he looked up code requirements. I want a dishwasher, so I looked up dishwashers. We did paperwork and tinkered with a money spreadsheet, and realized that we really won't have money left over to do any of the things we want to do, at least for some time.** We put down our earnest money.

Next Week: I don't know. There'll be some inspections, and more expenses, and more paperwork and stuff. Holy shit, we're buying a house!

* Throughout the house-hunting process, people keep saying "Oh, you'll know it's the house for you when you see it!" which I think is kind of bullshit. It's certainly not true for us. We can't afford "the house for us." But we have a list of what we want in a house, and this house meets all the required items and lots of the bonus criteria. So... we're buying it!

**We can, however, afford to install a retractable clothesline, something Cook has wanted for his whole adult life. Our dreams are coming true!

SADD

It's been raining a LOT here, steadily and heavily, which is unusual for Portland. (Usually it's just grey and rains frequently but gently). It's supposed to keep raining for the whole week. This morning, Skipper was playing in the corner of the living room, by the windows, and we heard her saying "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" and when Cook finally said "What?" she said "Sun! SUN!!"

Sure enough, the sun had come out for a minute, an event that's apparently dazzling for a Portland-raised toddler.

Not Like Doctor

I took Dutch to her well-child check-up today. Skipper was extremely displeased to hear we were going to the doctor again - she said "No. Not like doctor! Skipper! Not like doctor!" - but when I managed to get the message across that she would not be the one under assault, she said "Skipper. Not like doctor. Dutch. Her turn." and she said it over and over and over again, I think just to get the confirmation she needed. During the appointment, she cowered in my lap, and if I let my arms relax too far away from her body, she said frantically "Hug! HUG!! MAMA HUG!!!!!"

Dutch is 49 inches tall and 55 pounds heavy. That would be, in case you're wondering, the 96th percentile for height and 89th percentile for weight.* She's also extravagantly healthy, and is done with vaccinations for two more years, so she was very happy when we left.

*Or, in lay-person's terms, Absolutely Gigantic.

So which of you are running for president in 2012?

I'm too depressed about the tax cut extension to write anything.

Hacking

Skipper really likes to play with the computer. She has a gift for pushing just the right keys to screw things up.

Also, she says everything belongs to her. I let her and Dutch play in the toy aisle of the grocery store recently, and when it was time to go, she put everything back but refused to give up a little nerf football. She clutched it to her chest and said "Skipper. Take. Me. Take."

And it's ALWAYS her turn. "My. TURN!!!!"

Dear Diary

This morning Dutch hid under the table and wrote the following note:

"I am angry because I have a mean sister rat now. This is wat she dold she bit my tan."

Translation: I am angry because I have a mean sister right now. This is what she did. She bit my tongue.*

*No, I don't know how, exactly, one of my children came to bite my other child's tongue. It clearly wasn't a serious injury, though, so I don't really care.

Calculated to annoy

Dutch dug out two calculators we had in the back of a desk drawer. They date back to maybe 1992, when Cook and I did some math.* She and Skipper like to play with them - Dutch does very simple math and complains about the calculator's errors.** Skipper pretends it's a phone. This is how she thinks people talk on cellphones: she picks up the calculator, pushes some buttons, holds it to her ear, and yells "HeWOAH!!!!! HEEEEWWWWWOOOAW!!!!!" and then she pauses and says "TAWKING!!!!!"

Dutch and I entertained ourselves (while Cook put Skipper to sleep) imitating her.

*I think I did math. The state of my brain suggests that I might just be imagining that.

**"Mom! It says that 8 minus 8 is zero! That's wrong! 8 minus 8 is 8!"

Popular titles in our household

"Beeg Hongee Behr"

"Behr! Home!"*

"Go Doggo!"

Little House books

*The other books in this series are also very popular.

Sick kid

Dutch has been lying on the couch all day. She has a mild fever, but doesn't seem terribly sick. However, she has not been this limp due to illness since that time she had a fever when she was three and I stayed up all night watching "Charlotte's Web" with her. She's being very fainting-couch/Jane-Austen-character-who-got-caught-in-the-rain about it. It's kind of adorable.

This is how you know we're over-educated Portlanders.

Cook, Skipper and Dutch are doing a performance of The Tempest in our living room while I type this. Also, Skipper can identify sharrows.

A walk in the park

Today Dutch and Cook went to the science museum. (Science!) So I stole Dutch's camera, and took Skipper to the park. Sorry - Dutch's camera, while absolutely perfect for her, is not up to capturing Skipper in motion.

By the way, a waterproof suit is pretty much the most important thing you can have as a child under the age of 10 in the Pacific Northwest. Actually, everyone in the Pacific Northwest should have a waterproof suit.

Report card.

Yesterday I went to Dutch's parent-teacher conference. Dutch is apparently a model student, and the teacher had nothing but good things to say. "Whatever you're doing at home," she said "keep doing it."* She also presented us with a collection of "work samples" that included a fabulous drawing of a pegacorn, a "small moment" story about how happy Dutch was when Skipper was born - "I like my sister. She is fany. She is frenly."** - and an essay on trees - "I like trees. The tree ring shoes how old it is."

I knew she's doing well in school, but it was nice to hear the teacher telling me how pleased she is with Dutch as a student. We can worry about other stuff, instead.

*I consider that this gives me free license to continue doing things like yell "Stop singing that song! It's just pissing me off!"

**The teacher provided this as an example of how sophisticated Dutch is - apparently, a standard-issue AVERAGE kindergartener would just have said that he/she liked his/her sister, without any supporting explication. Of course, standard-issue kindergarteners apparently are not expected to be able to name all six basic shapes yet, and you have to admit that's a little bit sad.

Dutch got a camera for her birthday. Of the following pictures, I took the first two, and she took the rest.

Food

Dutch has always been pretty easy when it comes to food. She's been willing to try new things, and tolerant of a wide variety of tastes and textures. Skipper, however, won't try anything, unless it's virtually identical to something she eats.

This is what she eats at least somewhat reliably:

-milk

-almond and peanut butters

-butter

-bread

-grapes

-bananas

-cereal

-tortillas

-pasta

-cheese (but only cold, not melted)

-nori

-yogurt

-granola

-plain cooked kidney beans

That's it. Notice that there's nothing vegetable in that list, and barely any fruit. Also, notice that it's mostly breakfast. It's causing me some emotional pain; it's sad to try to feed your child food that IS GOOD FOR HER, and have her absolutely point-blank refuse. Yesterday I was so convinced that she would like the mashed sweet potatoes (baked with eggs and maple syrup - what's not to love?) if only she would taste them that I actually smooshed them on her mouth, much to her dismay (and Cook's). I have entirely lost my credibility as a food-provider now. She cried and said "Mama! Push! Mouth! Skipper! Sad!"

The years are just flying by

Last week I had lunch with a high-school classmate I hadn't seen in many, many, many years. Before I left my preceding engagement, I glimpsed myself in the bathroom mirror and thought "Wow, I look really old and tired." On my way to meet her, I briefly walked behind a cute family, and the dad was holding the maybe-3-year-old kid so he was looking back at me over his dad's shoulder. I smiled at him, because he was crazy cute, and he smiled back at me and then he said (and no, I'm NOT making this up) "Grandma, is that you?"

Last call for advent calendar!

If you've got a small thing to send Dutch/Skipper, pop it in the mail! Thanks for the things we've amassed so far! Don't worry about choking hazards - Skipper's pretty good about not eating things.*

Today Dutch acted in a scene in a (student) film! She was very excited. Also, this weekend Taekwondo Uncle notched another degree in his black belt, and we got to watch.** Dutch loved that, too - she got to spend time with some of her favorite grownups, watch TU break bricks and kick people in the head, and admire The Best Baby Ever, who continues to live up to her reputation. And Skipper started peeing in the potty again! It was a great weekend.

It's supposed to snow tonight! I'm preparing for city-wide paralysis.

*Unfortunately, that goes for food as well as inedible things. I'm not sure she's ever intentionally ingested a vegetable.

** My uncle can totally kick your uncle's ass.

Joining the Club

Dutch made a handprint turkey! I told her that she had now joined millions of other Americans in this ritual. We looked around at all the people (well, the ones aged 6 and older) around us on the sidewalk and in their cars and on their bikes and whatnot, as we were walking to school, and I told her that they had probably ALL made handprint turkeys.

I think that's kind of beautiful.

In other news, when asked by the librarian at Dutch's school* which child is mine, I said "Well, she's in Mrs. H's kindergarten class. The tall one? With the glasses? Who never stops talking?" and then at last she said "Ohhh, yes. NOW I know who you're talking about."

*I'm going to do a little volunteer work for her, organizing the books. I'm going to write that again, because it gives me so much pleasure. I'm going to get to organize books.

My Lucky Day

I very much enjoyed both The Poisoner's Handbook and At Home. I did have an awkward moment while I was waiting at a bus stop in a seedy part of town. A scruffy-looking guy sitting in the shelter said loudly "Ya planning to POISON somebody?!" to me, and I ignored him with my impassive, don't-fuck-with-me,-you-drunk-homeless-guy,-because-I-am-STREETWISE!!! expression* and there was a pause, and he said helpfully "because I saw your book..." and I looked at the book tucked under my arm and I said "Ohhh! I'm sorry! I thought you were crazy!" and he said "Yeah, there are a lot of crazy people around here!" and we shared a nice laugh. Ha ha ha!

*Strangely enough, this expression almost never works for me. I can't imagine why.

Moving along

This is how Dutch celebrated her birthday:

1) Enjoying a celebratory breakfast and presents-opening before school

2) Wearing a paper crown that said her name and "6" on it all day at school. I joined her for lunch, and it was like being in the entourage of a celebrity - kids were calling out "Happy birthday, Dutch!" everywhere we went.

3) Going out for dinner to a local fast food joint* and eating a cheeseburger, french fries, and root beer.**

4) Falling asleep with her new doll nestled in a cardboard box beside the bed.

This is how Skipper celebrated Dutch's birthday:

1) Spending much of the day trying to get her hands on the new doll, and pointing at it while saying "Doll. MINE. Doll!!! MEEEE!"

2) Discovering how much she loves fast food. "Good. GOOD. MORE. MEEEEE!"

* I was able to look up the nutrition information of all my options beforehand online, and judiciously choose food that represented only one day's worth of calories and saturated fat, rather than two or three.

**Dutch is blessedly inexperienced with soda, and when I walked her up to the soda dispenser, she was paralyzed by all the options, so I let her try a sip of every one. She declared Coke, Mr Pibb, root beer, and Sprite all to be far superior to Fanta. (I love orange sodea. I also love grape soda, and cherry cola.)

Six

I think I should probably be reflecting on time, and aging, and mortality. My baby girl (six!) is going to be grown and gone off to live her magical grownup life in about thirty seconds, I think. Or maybe on joy, because turning six is apparently pretty awesome.*

But instead I'm going to ask you to watch this clip. I know you're sick of hearing about how much I hate cars, and how nobody should call or text while you're driving. But if you take a second whenever you're about to make or take a call in the car, and think about a 13-year-old girl (who no doubt kicked off her sixth birthday with a face as purely delighted as my own girl's today) burning to death in a crumpled schoolbus, we'll all be better off.



*Even when your weary, cold-infested parents manage to muster up only an english muffin (with six candles jammed into it) for a celebratory breakfast.

Now We Are Five.

Tomorrow, We Will Be Six. We are Very, Very, Very Excited. We Might Explode.

Canines in motion.

Skipper's new favorite book is Go, Dog, Go. We have to read it over and over, and she chases us around with the book, yelling "Go, dog, go, go, go, doggie, go, go, dog, go!!!"

Holy shit, Harrison Ford is OLD!

Also strange and kind of mean.

But you know what made my day today? I went to the local branch of my awesome library system and I discovered that they have a new "Lucky Day" system in which you can check out NEW BOOKS!!!!! Only two at a time, and you can't renew them, but wow. What a wonderful day. I got The Poisoner's Handbook and At Home (note that the review reassures you that "it doesn't overtax our intellect"). Man, it's going to be a great weekend!

I really mean it.

You guys. Cars are so terrible. SO terrible.

not well-oiled at ALL

This morning Cook and Skipper got up at 5:45. Cook fed Skipper and himself, made coffee, and took a shower. Dutch and I got up at 6:15. Cook left for work at 6:35. I fed both kids* and myself, packed lunch for myself and Dutch, washed out Skipper's bucket (which we use to bring home her soiled training pants from daycare every night), washed dishes, took a shower, got dressed, brushed everyone's teeth, and did some other stuff I can't remember. We left the house at 8:15 and dropped Skipper off at daycare at 8:30. I dropped Dutch at her classroom at 8:45 (just as the late bell rang!) and went to my bus stop. I arrived at work at 9:30.

I worked until 4. I got off the bus at 4:52, and walked to the house of Dutch's friend Spruce, where the new babysitter was babysitting Dutch and Spruce. I cajoled Dutch into leaving (this took a while) and we walked home, arriving at about 5:30. When we got home, Skipper and Cook were already there - Cook had picked up Skipper from daycare at 4:30 and started cooking dinner (while toting Skipper on his hip most of the time, which is really pretty impressive) on arrival. I washed out today's training pants and rinsed out the bucket, got together a batch of laundry, took Dutch and Skipper to the basement to get the laundry going, emptied Dutch's backpack and sorted out all the random sad handouts for recycling and the information from the school for response or noting on the calendar. I entertained a very tired Skipper while Cook finished up dinner. We ate dinner (Skipper whining and crying and insisting on sitting in a lap instead of her chair) while Dutch told long confusing stories about her day. Cook and I managed to sneak in a few short conversations, often with long breaks in the middle. We finished dinner.

Cook took Skipper straight off to the bedroom to put her to sleep. I sat down to write this while Dutch sits on the couch reading to herself (and asking me to help her with a word about every 72 seconds). In a few minutes, I'll start ushering Dutch through her bedtime routine, and I expect to be done at about 7:30. Then I'll wash the lunch and dinner dishes, if Cook hasn't done them already. Cook and I will fetch and hang the laundry, wipe the counters, and tidy up as much junk as we can muster energy for. We should be done with all this by 8:30ish, and I will be so tired my eyeballs will be wobbling.

That's the news.

*Skipper likes to eat two breakfasts.

Nicknames

Skipper, who's getting better at talking all the time, has pretty much mastered the names of some of Dutch's friends and can say them so clearly that even non-family can understand them. However, she still calls Dutch the same thing - "Dee-deuh"* - that she's been calling her since the time when she couldn't articulate much of anything at all. The nickname has stuck. This is how people end up 25 years old with their families still calling them Ta-Ta.

Of course, Skipper refers to herself only as "Me" (usually accompanied with a chest thump and a defiant glare), so she's got a ways to go, generally, on names. She put together her first real sentence last night - she said "Help... ME!"

*The only way this nickname resembles Dutch's actual name is in the number of syllables. How she got started with it is a mystery.

Help me!

Dutch likes science. I have the impression that she's more interested in the learning of facts than in the doing of science, but I feel that I am failing to encourage her budding interest either way. I think I'm in danger of letting my verbal, performance-loving, narrative-oriented child roll along down the path of least resistance to become a person who does language but not math, fiction but not non-fiction, conversation but not scientific inquiry.

I have to push myself a little on this, because I think dance camp or Spanish immersion camp sound much cooler than Science Museum Camp. I like science, too, don't get me wrong. But I don't naturally lean toward it. So I need your help.

Anybody know any good movies and books about science for an almost-6-year-old?

And waves of Dutch

This week, Dutch spontaneously used the words "gender" and "successful" in conversation.* She also announced that she is bored at school because she already knows everything. We're not sure if she's saying that because she's overheard** us expressing our dismay with her academic situation, or because it's actually true.

Also, she made her first request for Silly Bandz. This created an excellent opportunity to talk about fads, and she listened very carefully, said thoughtful things that indicated she understood exactly what I was trying to say,*** and about 14 hours later, she bought herself a pack of Silly Bandz.

*As in "I guess it's just a gender thing," said with a world-weary sigh.

**Dutch is a champion eavesdropper.

***Fads are usually harmless, but you should think carefully if you want to spend your time and money on them.

Maelstroms of Skipper

I just googled "my 18-month-old is horrible"* and got lots of useful hits. You see, my 18-month-old is HORRIBLE. Adorable, but also really, really horrible.

This is a sample of adorable (translations provided):

Me: Skipper, how was your day?

Skipper: Goot. (Good.)

Me: Did you play with your friends?

Skipper: Joppah! Jaypee! Feeese! Sessee! (Gemma! Jamie! Felix! Cecily! Can you believe they were ALL there?!)

Me: What did you do today?

Skipper: Feese. Hat. Bear. (Felix wore a bear hat? Felix got eaten by a bear wearing a hat? Felix pulled a bear out of a hat? Something like that.)

Me: Hm. Did you go to the park?

Skipper: Park! Seeenhg! (We went to the park and I sat in the swing the entire time and insisted on being pushed, because I'm absolutely obsessed with the swing.)

These are other adorable things:

• The hugs
• The blowing of kisses
• The grins.
• The new words.
• The absorbed extended studying of weird things like a box of paper clips.

This is horrible:

• The screaming.
• The whining.
• The incomprehensible demands followed by screaming and whining.
• The insane sibling-rivalry jealousy, with biting.
• The waking up REALLY early and shrieking "Hongee! Poop!"
• The refusal to eat anything that isn't white or brown.
• The rageful loathing of baths.
• The wriggling, screaming, kicking loathing of diaper changes.

The horrible is exacerbated by the poor kid's eczema, which is currently flaring up and driving her nuts. More nuts.

Anyway, it's just normal 18-month-old misery (I hope) and she'll grow out of it, and then I'll miss her chubby little hands and her delighted pleasure in stomping around in rain boots. But at the moment, I'm very, very tired.

*I find it very satisfying to google exact phrases, like "how could anybody possibly vote for John Boehner for a position requiring any sort of competence or ethics?" and sometimes get relevant answers. It's like the world is answering my questions. Or not.

Dreaming

"Hey, Dutch," Cook said last week, when both kids were being ominously quiet in the corner, "what's Skipper doing?"

"Oh," Dutch said, "she's realizing the American dream."

She was. Actually, she was reading about it in our brand new book. We've signed up with a local non-profit that provides home-buying support for poor first-time home-buyers, and I attended an all-day class a few weeks ago. I brought home a giant tome that is actually called "Realizing the American Dream," a title that must have seemed perfect when it was first written, but now seems kind of ironic and cynical.

We are extremely fortunate to have relatives who have been much more successful than we have, and have recently come into Piles of Unearned Money. In spite of the fact that we have not very much income (and if I do stop working at the end of December, which seems increasingly certain, we'll have less), we are able to at least consider buying a house. In fact, we're going to go see a few this weekend.

I have many, complicated, fascinating thoughts and feelings about this process. I'm sure I will tell you all about them ad nauseam.

In the meantime, welcome to Baby P!

Halloween Report

It's been a busy weekend. On Saturday, Dutch and I went with friends to The Pumpkin Patch again (we try to go every year) on Sauvie Island.* Dutch rode the Cow Train again. I asked her if she wanted to go alone or have me come with, and she told me she'd probably enjoy it less if I came along.

And this is a random tickle session from yesterday...

Today Cook and Dutch carved the pumpkins and she wore her costume all day. She went through many costume ideas in the last few weeks, but finally settled securely on Laura Ingalls. She was thrilled with it, and even more thrilled that many people actually correctly guessed her identity. (Several people guessed that she was Little Bo Peep. One guy said "You must be an Old-Fashioned Girl From the Old Days!" and she just nodded. There's no point in setting people right when there's more candy to be hunted down.)

Dutch is a cautious trick-or-treater, not surprisingly, tiptoeing anxiously up to the doors while other kids sprint confidently past her and bang on the door for the loot they feel they deserve. She also had the bejeezus scared out of her by some spooky decorations and costumed adults - once she jumped about a foot in the air, making me laugh so hard I could barely hang onto my candy-laden bag. (The bag started the evening carrying just my keys and a warm hat, but it quickly became clear that it was going to have to be candy-toting backup for Dutch's small, costume-appropriate basket - I felt like some sort of terrible Halloween pimp, standing on the sidewalk like Fagin while Dutch poured candy into my bulging bag and then trotted off to add to my haul).

I love Halloween. I love that everybody's out on the street, and you can go up to people's houses and knock on their doors, and then they OPEN the door and you get to see a little glimpse of their lives, and they give you things. That's just awesome. Happy Halloween!

*Why, yes, we got our pumpkins the day before Halloween. So?

linky

A friend sent me a link to an old (but still relevant ) article that I liked. Here it is, for you. Warning: it'll probably annoy you, if you don't have kids. Sorry.

I am still here.

I seem to be running out of bloggy steam. Are you all still there?

Things are okay. My job situation is making me very tired, and the rainy season has begun. We refuse to turn the heat on until November, so we're using lots of blankets and sweaters (and slippers, thanks to Skipper's reminders). Dutch is blazing through her not-exactly-challenging academic benchmarks* and is getting much better at reading. She brings home very strange things from school - yesterday it was a photocopied picture of a crab, with a speech balloon in which Dutch had written "I am very popular!" - she explained that it had been the suggestion of the kid sitting next to her, and she had written that down instead of her own idea, which was "I am going to pinch you!"

Skipper is a HUGE pain in the ass right now, and incredibly cute, too. She and Dutch are thick as thieves about 30% of the time, and at loggerheads the rest of the time.** Cook is settling comfortably into his incredibly tedious job, and we have made all sorts of medical appointments so as to maximize his terrific benefits.

Skipper had a vaccine reaction Friday night, and was up all night with a fever, and cranky the next day. (Cook and I were cranky zombies, too.) Stupid public health.

Dutch is about to turn six. SIX. Can you believe it? I can't. I can't believe she's going to be sixteen, and twenty-six, and so on. We also just got her school photo, which is awesomely smirky...

That's all I've got for you today. I'll try to muster up some energy to write something more interesting!

*Last week she brought home the single most depressing piece of paper I had seen in her short academic career. It had a dotted outline of a rectangle for tracing, and, underneath that, the dotted outline of the word "rectangle" for tracing. That made me feel kind of broken-hearted, somehow. I know it's not a big deal, but REALLY? No child left behind in the great rectangle-tracing race with China? Couldn't they at least have asked her to try to spell the word by herself? Or even just copied the word freehand? Who learns this way? Does ANYBODY learn things by tracing them?

** They really like similes and metaphors.

Also, books.

Several books I had read about recently came to me through our library's hold system. (I love our library so much. I bought a library t-shirt.) I liked them. I recommend them: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and Black Swan Green. Also, I recently enjoyed a memoir I sort of stumbled across: Half-Baked.

God, I love the library.

Things I like

It's been a stressful month (3 years) for me, but as I am trying to model positive thinking and optimism for one pessimistic-tending almost-six-year-old, I am trying to concentrate on the things in my life that feel happy.

1) The Baby Bee Bird. Everybody loves it. (You should hear Cook do the animal noises.) When Skipper sees it, she cries "Babby Beebee!" and flings any other books on the floor. And look! It's been popular in our household for years!

2) Having Skipper's well-child checkup (this morning) behind us. Sheesh. You'd have thought the medical staff were trying to kill her, based on her response - she sobbed and writhed in terror from start to finish. As we were walking out, the nurse tried to hand her a sticker, and she shrieked and backed away, wailing. (And Skipper fell asleep on the bus home, totally exhausted from her Horrifying Ordeal.) But Skipper is healthy and hitting all her benchmarks on time (and she doesn't have a freakishly large head, after all, in spite of my secret fears), so we don't have to do THAT again for another six months.

3) The It Gets Better Project. I think that most of us, gay or straight, popular or not, would have liked to know at some point during adolescence that we were not alone, and it would get better.

4) My friend N getting her PhD after 10 years, 2 children, and one cross-country move. Congratulations!

5) Skipper's slipper obsession. She insists that all of us wear our slippers at all times while at home. (We are a no-shoes household, but it's not quite cold enough for slippers to be necessary.) Also, a cameo by Teeny Tiny Baby. (Hey, Grandma B, we didn't MEAN to kidnap TTB, but apparently he stowed away in our luggage... we'll bring him back for visits, but I think he wants to stay with us for a while.)

Morning lull

I'm sitting in my living room, in my pajamas, ALONE. Skipper and Cook got up at 5:30 (after Skipper and I discussed for about half an hour whether or not she might want to go back to sleep). I got up at 6:15. Cook left for work at 6:40* and Skipper fell asleep at 7:15. Dutch hasn't woken up at all. This is not normal (except for the Cook leaving at 6:40 part), and I feel a bit lost. We have to leave in 40 minutes, but I am reluctant to wake Dutch until I absolutely have to...

*In our new schedule, Cook works from 7-3:30 (and bikes to work in the dark). I thought it would be sucky to get all three of the rest of us ready and out the door by myself, but it's working really well. Most of the time. Dutch and I do yell at each other quite a bit, some days.

rele btufl

So...Dutch's school. It's school. It's public school. Dutch has 20 minutes for lunch (and that includes lining up, walking to the cafeteria, eating, lining up, and walking back to the classroom). She does a lot of worksheets. A LOT. Things seems to be looking up now that there are 20 kids in the classroom instead of 30 (that's a lot of kindergarteners), but they're not going to look up that much.

Dutch's complaints about her teacher so far are 1) she's the only kindergarten teacher who does not give candy to the kids as a reward for good behavior and 2) she won't assign any homework until after winter break. I told Dutch that I have no sympathy whatsoever on these complaints.

I don't know. It's not bad, and there are many, many schools that are much worse. But it's not so great, either. I'd kind of prefer that they just let the kids run around all day if they're not really going to teach them anything - currently poor Dutch isn't getting any playtime or really learning much. It's the worst of both worlds. I'd homeschool/unschool her, except that I'd go absolutely nuts, and it would probably permanently destroy our relationship. Last week I told her that she HAD to stop talking to me for a few minutes, that she wasn't doing anything wrong, but I just COULD NOT TAKE IT ANY MORE. She said cheerfully "Well, mom, I'm just a talkaroony!"

She's also a serious nerd in training.* Or maybe a popular girl in training, or a bully.** I'm not sure. She gets tapped to walk other kids to the office or the bathroom, and do other Teacher's-Pet-type jobs. She begs me to give her homework assignments. She complains about how poorly-behaved and inattentive the other kids are.

It's pretty amazing watching her learn, though, school or no school. Learning to read and write is really hard, and kind of like magic. Today I finally gave her a homework assignment to write a report on the ballet show she had attended with Cook, and this is what she wrote: "the shoe was cool I rele liket sleping beude wen she fell a slep" and "sleping beude was btufl"

*Dutch lives to be called on, by the way. When I say "How was your day?" she reports how many times she got called on that day - fewer than three means a bad day, and more than five means a good day.

**The other day she reported that she was very tired, because it's hard work making up all the games for the whole class at recess, and organizing everything.

Ego booster

I got a haircut. I like it, though I haven't yet seen how it performs in real life. (The woman who cut my hair IRONED it. I don't even own a hair dryer, and my idea of serious grooming is to brush my hair before leaving the house.) When I got home, Dutch said "Mom, I can tell you cut your hair! You look like a mop."

Thanks.

Forget the list of nouns- we're on to gerunds.

Apparently, kids develop in a non-linear way - a burst of getting taller, a period of brain growth, a period of just kind of resting up. I think that Skipper may be having some sort of crazy storm in whatever part of her brain is responsible for language - every day she's adding more words to her vocabulary, using words spontaneously that we didn't even know she knew. Today when I got home, Cook emerged from the kitchen with Skipper on his hip, and she said to me gleefully "Mama! Daddy! Cooking!" and before the evening was over, she was pointing out the window and saying "walking!" and pointing at Dutch (scuttling around on the floor) and saying "crawling!"

Brains. They're CAH-RAZY!

Skipper also says:

coffee
cereal
cracker
cheese
soup
sweep
shower
wash
bath
other
sticker
home
out
bicycle
bucket
stepstool
bed
crib
book
no
NO

where was I?

Quitting My Job: I may prolong my job a little - there's been a bunch of sudden upheaval at work and they're more or less bribing me to stay by offering me a big raise. I haven't agreed to anything yet, though.

Bike Commuting: Eh. I've only commuted (one-way) five times - it's a looooong way.* I did sell my old bike and get a new one, which is great. I think I'll end up biking for errands, mostly, until I get an awesome new job that's less than 5 miles from home. Today I rode over to the grocery store (less than a mile) with one of Cook's panniers, and it was lovely. It's 70 degrees today, and sunny, and just a perfect fall day to be riding down a bike boulevard with a load of groceries, the yellow leaves spinning down all along the street ahead of me.

*And I'm lazy.

Skipper says:

mat

hot

cook

ouch

drop

fall

sleep

blanket

mat

baby

cat

dog

crow

truck

airplane

shirt

pants

socks

shoes

stuck

top

bottle

cup

spoon

milk

water

puddle

beach

step

stick

draw

pen

open

help

up

kiss

hug

...

Oh, right.

Yes. Those drawers are 2"x 2" x 3". Inches, feet - whatever.

Heeeeeelium!

I'm pretty sure that it was one of my awesome cousins who introduced me to Strindberg and Helium. Here is Skipper last night, in our spectacularly messy apartment, finishing up her dinner (squash/tofu/spinach/coconut milk soup) and enjoying a showing.

Shameless Begging

We're not going anywhere this Christmas. Cook has no vacation for the first six months of his job, and we're ready to have a leisurely holiday at home.

Since we're not coming to your house, you're probably thinking "Oh, no! How will I celebrate the holiday with those adorable children if I can't be with them!"

Don't worry! I have your answer. I just bought two reusable advent calendars for The Adorable Children.* While I am more than happy to locate and create very small things to put into the little drawers (I love very small things), I'm angling for something that'll be more fun and, you know, meaningful. I would love for the girls to get messages from friends and family as part of their holiday season, rather than spend a month just anticipating a giant heap of LOOT.

So I am inviting you, over the next two months, to consider sending us a very small thing that will fit into one of these drawers (2x2x3' maximum size). I'm thinking a note (Dutch can READ, after all, and loves loves loves to be written to) or a drawing of a robot, or a coin from the country you just visited (you're so cool!) or the koala stickers some wildlife nonprofit sent you, or whatever.** If you want to send me a special note for Dutch*** by email, I'll even print it out and put it in a drawer for you. In exchange, I promise you a handwritten thank-you note. It may take until March (or next October) to get it sent, but it'll happen.

Happy intro to the very long holiday season!

*I've been coveting wooden advent calendars for the girls since we visited one of my most distant but beloved friends two years ago and saw hers. The ones I got for Dutch and Skipper are nowhere near as awesome, but they'll do.

**Or nothing - I'll be making this ask every fall for years, after all, so you have time.

***This year it's mostly just for Dutch. Skipper really only likes funny hats and permanent markers right now, and they don't fit in tiny drawers, so she'll probably get sticks and gum wrappers and bits of toast in her calendar, and be delighted.

Video catchup

It's been a while. Watching some of these older videos, Dutch and I realized that we can tell what Skipper was trying to say, even when we weren't able to figure it out at the time, because we have another month of Skipper-experience under our belts. Poor kid. We're always trying to catch up with her.

End of August:

First Day of School:

Some time in September:

Dutch has launched a cafe in her room. The prices of the menu items are a little erratic.

A houseguest, an electronic hamster, and the way Dutch feels about her sister about 25% of the time.

Earlier this evening:

Two vacation photos, courtesy of Uncle Kayak

Note all the relaxed feet in the second picture.

no more traveling for a little while

We're home! We went on a beach vacation (for two days) and it was lovely. I have no photos or movies, so you'll have to take my word for it that both girls had a wonderful time. Skipper learned how to take all her clothes off and ran around the beach mostly naked, screaming "Wadder! Wadder! More! Wadder! Beach! Beach! Wadder! Beach!" and attempting to sprint straight into the ocean. Once I foolishly let go of her hand so I could help Dutch with something, realized .45 seconds later that I'd made a big mistake, and had to plunge into the water to retrieve her. It was a good weekend, and nobody drowned.

updates are piling up!

I just quit my job. That is to say that I gave a month's notice, which I think is very generous of me, since I would like to just not go to work any more, starting tomorrow. I have no job prospects, but I'm just burned out on going to a job I don't really like that barely pays for the childcare required. I'm going to have to make a big effort to keep up my connections and apply for lots of jobs, but it feels like the right decision. Scary, but still right.

I guess that's really my only update. I only have 4.5 more hours of being uninsured, too!

Spelling

Yesterday Dutch brought home a piece of paper on which she had written, with no help whatsoever, a sentence about what she did this weekend: "I plade with my sesdr."

Dhtuhk

Skipper is talking a lot more. She says "stuck" and "blanket" and "water" and "bicycle" and others survival-related things like that. Yesterday she and Dutch were dancing to music, and Skipper's ragged thumbnail kept getting snagged in the cape Dutch had dressed her in. She would come over to me, showing me her dilemma, and say "Dhtuck" which of course means "stuck" and then I would laugh at her and she would get all mad and flap her free hand at me and say "Heppy! HEPPY!" which of course means "help me, goddamn it!"

This is Dutch with the Best Baby Ever,* the day of my brother's wedding this weekend. (The BBE, who is 2 weeks old and is freaking ADORABLE, is some sort of cousin. Best I can tell from wikipedia, the BBE is my first cousin once removed, and Dutch's second cousin. Or something.)

*The baby is sleeping, not dead. In case you were worried.

Two girls, each aged 17 months

Lactindependence

I forgot to mention another thing that happened recently - I stopped breastfeeding Skipper.

There are people who think 17 months is really old for weaning, and people who think it's young. For us, weaning was a compromise with both kids. They would both have been happy to keep nursing, but I wasn't enjoying it, especially this time around, and once the kids were eating a respectable volume and variety of foods, I was ready. Skipper took longer because she loved the boobs. Dutch weaned when she was about 15 months old, but she nursed only for sustenance and not for comfort.* Skipper weaned without too much protest, but she would happily have kept on nursing 20 times a day for the rest of her childhood, I think.

Last night, I lay down next to Skipper at bedtime (the time and position in which we were doing the only nursing of the day for about a month) and she asked to nurse. I said no. "We don't nurse any more, honey." She started to cry, and I hope it was only my sentimental tendency that made it sound like a deeply heartfelt wail of sorrow.

I miss the intimacy and cuddliness of breastfeeding, and I feel a little pang that I'll never nurse another baby, but I'm also very glad to have my body back to my own self.

* For comfort, she sucked on my neck. Seriously. Look:

Hooray!

It's World Car-Free Day! What are you doing to celebrate?

Umm...

Lots of things have happened, but I don't seem to have anything interesting to say about them.

My little brother got married. I will post pictures when I get my hands on some; we didn't bring our camera. The important point is that my little BROTHER got MARRIED. Dutch had a wonderful time, felt very, very important doing her flower-girling, and will be doing her weekly "sharing" at school tomorrow about her experience. At the end of the wedding evening, she sobbed (shortly after she told me, weeping a little into her salad plate, "I am falling APART!!!") "This was the best day of my WHOLE LIFE!"

I have joined the BTA and the PTA. I didn't think I'd ever join either of those organizations.

I have commuted about 50 miles by bike this month. My butt hurts less now, but jeez. I have a long commute.

I am currently uninsured (but only for nine more days). Don't hit me with your car, please.

Dutch has taken to throwing huge, horrible tantrums. I guess the school transition isn't going quite as smoothly as it seemed.

Skipper requests "soup" for all her meals, as of yesterday.

Our downstairs neighbors still hate us.

That's the news...

The little one.

Skipper is growing! I don't know how big she is, physically (though she still fits easily into 12-18-month-old clothing), but she is making big developmental jumps in language and emotional maturity, which is exciting. This is your un-edited report on what she's up to these days.

Last night she woke up at 2 AM and wanted to chat, and Cook heroically got up with her. She asked to use the potty, pooped, and then sat in her highchair and ate a rice cake. (I don't know what Cook was doing while she ate. Possibly napping on the floor.) She went back to sleep eventually, but she spent a lot of time talking happily to us while we tried to sleep.

She says some recognizable words now, and tells recognizable stories in words and sign (eg "Daddy. Bicycle. Bye-bye." or "Skipper. Eat. Cereal.").

She loves her menagerie of dolls and animals, and carries an armload of them around. She likes trucks and books. Especially books about trucks.

She's had three days at her fancy new daycare.* She cries at drop-off, but I can hear that's she's done crying before I leave the yard, and the teacher reports that she seems happy during the day.

These pictures were taken by the babysitter last week. I think they give you an idea of what Skipper's like right now.

*It's a Montessori daycare, and pretty hard-line on the whole Montessori cult/philosophy. I'll have more to say about that in the future. For now, imagine wood floors, wooden toys, three kids, a very young punk-styled teacher with an undergrad degree in wood-carving (plus a Montessori training certificate), gluten-free vegan meals, and kind of a lot of rules. It's both soothing and a little scary.

And that's all.

Now that I've posted two long posts whining about my issues with Dutch's school, I feel the need to say that the school seems perfectly fine, there seems to be quite a bit of parent engagement, and Dutch is very comfortable there already. Which is fantastic. Two thumbs up!

There's more.

So, my next problem with school: the food. Because we are relatively poor, Dutch gets school lunch at the reduced price of $.40, and breakfast for free. Because I'm lazy, and that's pretty freaking cheap, I'm inclined to have her eat school food every day. But... the food is kind of crap. Portland Public Schools is working REALLY hard to improve their food, but there's only so much you can do with a miniscule budget and limited kitchen capacity, so there's a lot of mystery meat and white processed starchy things. Dutch has eaten school lunch for both her lunches, and my impression is that she's one of only a handful of kids who do.* This doesn't bother her, and she likes the food.

We've also been browbeating her about what she eats. The kids are served an entree, and can choose between chocolate or regular milk and then select fruit and vegetable options from a salad bar. She has drunk chocolate milk two days in a row, despite having been told after day one that she could have it only once a week. She argued that the regular milk costs extra, which is not true, but she seemed to genuinely believe it. We've also been interrogating her about her fruit and veggie consumption - we want her to eat a fruit and a veggie. Day one, she ate strawberries and sugar snap peas (I told you they were working hard on their food!), but day two she ate a plum and fruit salad. Her ability to differentiate between fruits and vegetables is legitimately wobbly. We'll keep after her on that...

AND the teacher told her she couldn't bring her water bottle into the cafeteria, which I have to follow up on, if only to file a formal complaint at the district level. (I suspect it's USDA policy - at the kids' former daycare, no water could be served at the table at all, lest it undercut the dairy industry's stranglehold on kids who get USDA food. )

Anyway, I am very grateful for all the work of activist parents, administrators, teachers, and cafeteria staff across the nation and locally, because I know the lunch Dutch bellies up to every day is much, much better than it would have been ten years ago.

Lastly, Dutch informed us with wide eyes that the cafeteria workers are REALLY, REALLY OLD. "They're EVEN OLDER than you, mom!" Apparently the music teacher is also perilously close to the grave. I had no idea that the school staff was made up of nonagenarians.

*Washing me in a wave of insecurity - does it make me a terrible mommy that I'm too lazy and cheap to pack my child a lunch of homemade, nutritious, delicious food? Well, possibly. Also, now Dutch is in the habit of saying "goddamn" as in "Mom, I can't tie my goddamn shoes!" and that's definitely my fault, too.

So one of the many things that came home with Dutch this week was a blank report card basically showing what she is expected to learn during the year. She is one of the older kids in the class, she has had three years of high-quality preschool, and she has over-educated parents and an extended family that values education. So she can pretty much do all of the kindergarten stuff already, and could pick up the rest in a few days of one-on-one tutoring. So here's my concern, which is totally an upper-middle-class helicopter mommy concern: she's going to spend the year being really successful at everything they ask her to do. She's not going to learn about overcoming difficulties - she's going to learn that she gets approval by being good at stuff, not by getting better at stuff. I really want her to have a chance to be bad at something academic, and get better at it through work. I know she'll get a lot better at things like reading and writing over the year, but because she's already starting ahead of most of her classmates, she's just always going to be one of the best at doing most things.

So... I want her to have something to be bad at, and to be supported as she uses her mistakes to learn. I'm trying to figure out how to ask the teacher about this. "Excuse me? I know you have 29 kids in your class, and you have to get all of them to hit these standardized benchmarks, and you don't have enough time or resources to do even that, and you definitely don't get paid anywhere near enough, but hey, could you please figure out a way to also help my child learn to be happy and embrace challenges and not be a perfectionist, please?"

Anyway. As I was told by somebody to whom I expressed this concern, Dutch will have plenty of failures and challenges in school, in various forms.

12 years to go.

Dutch loves school. Her teacher is nice, the kids are nice (except The Annoying Kid), the food is good, she is proud of her reading/writing/shoe-tying skills, the bathroom stalls have doors on them,* and everything is just peachy. "Mom, I had a great day!" she said when I picked her up.

My thoughts on Dutch and school? I'll tell you later.


*Her daycare didn't have doors on the stalls, which was problematic for Dutch. After we visited the school on Tuesday, Dutch told me happily "Mom, I think I will be able to poop at school, because there are doors in the bathroom!"

personals for toddlers

SWF, aged 17 months, likes wearing hats, pinching her sister, creating artwork unfettered by tedious conventions, eating other people's food and not her own, and cuddling with Baby and Bubble and Bitey and Blabla and May, seeks friends who share these interests. No weirdos, please.

Here's your obligatory (but not very good) photo of Dutch almost ready for her first day of school.

Skipper woke up at 5, as usual, and as I escorted her into the living room, the light went on in Dutch's room. By 5:03, Dutch was in the kitchen, fully dressed, with her backpack. She spent the morning telling me how excited she was and how scared she was, complained of a stomach ache, cried, jumped around in excitement, etc. By 1 PM, she should be completely fried.

Growth

You guys! Dutch is starting school tomorrow! Her backpack is all ready, her clothes are set out... she met her teacher yesterday and got the thumbs up to wear her new, flashing shoes - I think we're ready.

Welcome!

Bikey

This year, I signed up for the Bike Commute Challenge, a free regional event which runs all September. It's free! There are prizes!

I'm completely on board with bike commuting, in theory. I actually used to commute by bike for part of the time we lived in Oakland. I think bikes are a fantastic form of transportation for trips under five miles long, and I think that cities that foster bike travel will thrive. However, I'm not interested in bikes, or in bike culture, at ALL. I care less about bike parts than I do about almost anything except car parts. I enjoy the good parts of biking, but I just don't really like it that much. I feel vulnerable when I bike, and I get pretty stressed out by conflicts with cars. One of the last straws for bike commuting, for me, was getting knocked off my bike by a bunch of children (8-11 years old, maybe) in the middle of the afternoon in Oakland.

But... I really, really need to get some exercise. There isn't really any good time in my life for exercise, and there's no money for it, either. Switching to bike commuting means I can build exercise into my daily life, and because my bike commute is, in theory, only a little more time-consuming than my bus commute, it makes sense. And starting this month, when there are free prizes, cool events, and generally more support, makes sense, too. My bike commute, in theory, is about 11.5 miles long (each way, thank you very much), and includes about 7 miles on a nice bike path that runs along an old trolley right-of-way. I have to go out of my way to use this path, but it's a huge part of my willingness to bike to work. I wouldn't do it if I had to use bike lanes on busy streets.

Also, it's my job to help people leave the car at home when the travel, and I felt that I needed to include bike commuting in my personal experience so I can be more persuasive about it.

So this morning I biked to work. Cook kindly dug my unused-for-7-years bike out of the basement, dusted it off, checked the brakes, and oiled the chain for me. I set off, leaving him to enjoy Labor Day all day at home with the girls. It was a beautiful morning, the streets were deserted (commuting on a holiday is an excellent idea), and it was fun to be back on a bike. My butt started hurting pretty soon after I set off, but I decided I could live with it.

But... there's a big repaving project going on on the bike trail. The detour is substantial, inconvenient, hilly, and car-trafficky. My commute took me an hour and a half, and my butt hurts a lot. As I was on the home stretch to work, the phone rang in my backpack. I stopped, got off the bike, got out the phone, and answered. "How did it go?" asked Cook, and I said grumpily "it's still GOING!"

I arrived at work sweaty, tired, and really hungry. I took the bus home. (I had planned on doing that, but it was clear when I got to work that I could not ride home, lest my butt be permanently damaged.) I'm going to sell my heavy bike, get a new (old) bike with a really comfortable seat, and kit it out with lights, fenders, and rack. I'm going to bike one leg of my commute every day I go in to the office (3 days a week) for a while, and maybe work up to biking both ways if I don't hate it. We'll see. I AM going to log 7 bike commute trips this month. I may need to stand up at the computer all day, though.