2012

2012 is going to be Dutch's lucky year. She announced that tonight after beating me at Carcassonne. She got the green light to stay up as late as she wants tonight, as she has every New Year's Eve since she turned 3. I think the first year she actually fell asleep before her normal bedtime, and she's never made it past 10:30, but tonight she's going strong, and I suspect she'll make it. I probably won't, however.

I feel a little wary of 2012. I'm really tired of being in limbo. I'm getting too old to be in limbo. Even if this isn't a fabulous year for me personally, I'd really like to see some positive social changes out there, lest I become a terrible, terrified, cynical shadow of a person, crouching in a cave waiting for everything to come crumbling down. However, there are plenty of anti-cave forces in my life, and plenty of reasons to hold out hope and enthusiasm for 2012. I'll focus on those.

My New Year's Resolutions:
1) Whittle down and organize my various communication and media electronic files - email, photos, movies, etc. I know that sounds petty (and I should be whittling down other things), but it makes me feel weirdly out of control to have all this stuff piled up in virtual heaps. And I'm going to get my email inbox down to empty this year. Take THAT, 2012!
2) Be nicer. I'm not setting out any metrics for that; we'll see how it goes in a qualitative sort of way. Maybe I could at least avoid yelling at my kids for a few days, to kick things off.

***

Now it's 11:15 and Dutch is asleep on the couch in an elaborate nest of pillows and blankets that took a half hour to construct. I think I'll wake her up for the turn of the year, for the first time. Rituals and ceremonies are important to this kid. She offered some very solemn toasts at dinner, raising her teacup of sparkling cider to say big important words.

I wish you all a joyful, rich 2012. No caves!

I hope they're at least not laundering their fleece jackets...

While these tweets make me squeamish, I can see as how this could be Dutch in ten years.

Oh, shit.

This society is not going well.*

*This is what happens when I look at my Google+ feed after a long hiatus. Jeez, S & T. 

Another picture I forgot to include yesterday

Christmas

Christmas Eve morning

Cook took the kids to play kickball with friends. They came back tired.

Christmas Eve dinner: Skipper ate none of it. But it was delicious. 

Stockings. I don't know why Skipper took her clothes off for the event.

Skipper was pretty confused about the whole thing. Early on in the Big Present Opening Frenzy, she opened a set of playdough tools, and promptly retired into another room to play with them. I asked her if she wanted to open more gifts and she said "Just save them for me." (She changed her mind later, and plunged into the Frenzy to a terrifying extent.)

Dutch received several gifts that fit into her Old-Fashioned persona. Actually, we have no idea where the apron came from, or which of us it was intended for. There were some technical problems during the Frenzy that resulted in an alarmingly large number of orphaned gifts. Does anybody want to take credit for the apron? We'd like to know who to thank.

I think Laura Ingalls would have liked the snap circuit kit, too.

And this was one of my favorite gifts, annotated by the giver.

Then Cook took the kids outside again and ran them around. (Dutch is wearing maybe her fourth outfit of the day.)

That's the story here.  I hope you all had/are having wonderful holidays!

I pray the Lord my soul to keep...

Dutch is reading the Bible, for fun. And she's been wearing her new (to her) dark plaid dress with the puffed short sleeves and fake velvet collar every day. She's been watching "Colonial House," and is really sad that Cook and I are not going to put any effort into applying to be contestants on the next historical-themed reality show.

We have baked/cooked up 6 sticks of butter so far (please note this does not mean that we have actually CONSUMED 6 sticks of butter in the last three days - some of this is going in the freezer for another year).

Now I lay me down to sleep...

A few days ago, Dutch looked up and memorized a prayer to say every night before bed. We are a completely atheist family, but religion fits nicely into her passion for Old-Fashioned Stuff,  and her interest in Stuff That Is Important, so she's pursuing it in her own weird way. (And we're not stopping her, though we have explained carefully why we are atheist, and I did stop her from trying to teach a prayer to Skipper.) I really have no idea who this kid is going to grow up to be.

In unrelated news, I finished the first season of Downton Abbey. Dangit. Now what? Anybody know any TV shows with Maggie Smith in them? That are good for watching while washing dishes?

The big question for this week:

How many sticks of butter can we use?

Don't worry.

Skipper's eye seems to be fine. We'll take more care with table-setting from now on.

File under "Things People Commonly Say That Are Funny to Say But Not Actually Very Funny to Experience."

Tonight Dutch accidentally* stabbed Skipper in the eye with a fork. This is something I actually say as an ironically exaggerated figure of speech,** as in "I would rather be stabbed in the eye with a fork than vote for Newt Gingrich" or "OMG watching that preschool talent show was so like stabbing myself in the eye with a fork," and I really never, ever thought that I would experience an actual fork-to-eye-stabbing.**

I think Skipper's okay. She can still see. However, it seems to really hurt. I will be sure to let you know, if it comes to it, what the doctor says when I explain that Skipper was stabbed in the eye with a fork. (Cook's betting on complete composure, because in his experience, doctors have already heard just about every insane injury explanation even the most elaborate episode of Mythbusters could ever devise.)


*Really accidentally. We're pretty sure there wasn't even any subconscious desire to maim - it was a table-setting accident.
** Because I am so witty!
*** Unless society crumbles in the next few decades, which really seems less and less unlikely.

Two Things I've Learned Lately (What is a Weekend?)

1) Gluten-free baked goods do not age well.
2) There should be a role for Maggie Smith in every TV show. I really mean it.

Some photos

Skipper likes to supervise all baking and cooking activities.

She fell asleep on the couch at 10:30 AM last week.
That's Punghy lying behind her.

I swear this is the last thing I'm writing about Skipper and Punghy.

Skipper: I want somebody to play hide and seek with me.
Me: Maybe you should play with Punghy.
S: Punghy doesn't know HOW to play hide and seek. I need to play with somebody who's, like, REAL.

Holidays

Today is the beginning of two weeks of holiday for Dutch and Skipper. Dutch is really, really excited. I'm excited to not have to deal with drop-off/pick-up for two weeks (the kids have a babysitter three days and are going to The Blonds' house* for one day so I can keep up my normal work schedule).

Given how well I"m parenting my kids lately, I think I'm going to need to schedule some (or many) playdates, to save on future therapy bills. Both kids have been pushing my buttons frequently and enthusiastically lately. Skipper is much more defiant than Dutch ever was, and she seems to be deeply invested in pissing me off, probably at least in part as a way to gain my attention. This morning one of the very first things I said to Skipper was "I don't want to be with you. You're awful." I'm pretty sure this isn't the worst thing anybody's ever said to their child, but it violated even my not-very-rigorous parenting code.**

So we've got to line up a bunch of activities this week. We're kicking off the week with a dentist appointment for Dutch, so that will set the entertainment bar nice and low.



*The Blonds are the family I've mentioned before who live a few blocks away - two parents, one first-grade boy, two 3-year-old girls - they're all tall and thin and blond and bike-y. We swap childcare and hand-me-down clothing, and it's pretty great. This is O Blond in the photo below, doing chemistry with Dutch. 

** One pillar of my code is to try to differentiate the kid from the behavior, so it would have been (more) acceptable for me to say something like "The way you're behaving right now is making me feel really bad, and I don't want to be with you when you're acting that way."

Further investigations into Skipper's complicated and sometimes prickly relationship with her favorite stuffed animal.

Today Skipper told me "When I'm feeling sad, I have to hold Punghy upside down so he can't talk to me. I don't like him to talk to me when I'm feeling sad."

I've been reading a book about social structures in high school. And I've been watching a movie about public schools. I'm feeling... oh, a LITTLE DISHEARTENED.

Reality shows

Skipper and I were setting up for her nap this afternoon when she started making frustrated noises. I looked over at her, lying in her bed, and she said angrily "There isn't enough room! Punghy didn't scoot over!" After a moment's contemplation, I said "Honey... Punghy can't scoot over." and she said "Why NOT!?" and I said "Because he's a stuffed animal. He's not alive. He can't move by himself."

There was a very long pause, in which all the indignation and irritation drained out of her expression, to be replaced by bafflement and then a kind of dawning revelation, as if suddenly some things made a lot more sense. "Oh." she said.

We're saturated!

The wife of an acquaintance of Cook's is starting a business taking pictures of kids, and she came over a few weeks ago (on the day of Dutch's birthday party, which is why Cook is wearing a tie) to bulk up her portfolio a bit. We weren't very photogenic, but here are some of her shots, post-production.

Oh, and also...

...we still have squash all over the house.

Six things about my week.

I haven't been writing because I've got very little to say. Here, in no particular order and with no attempt to stitch it all together, are your random updates:

1) I crashed my bike today. No cars or kids were involved - it was just me, my bike with its slick tires, and a frost-rimed intersection on which I was turning left. I went down pretty hard, but not very fast, and neither my bike nor I suffered any serious damage (though yikes, ouch). Several bicyclists stopped to make sure I was okay and one of them said helpfully "It's pretty slick out today."

2) Dutch had her first piano lesson with her very cheerful hipster 25-year-old teacher. She loved it. I'm not sure if it's the music, her expectation of immediate great success, or just getting undiluted attention from an adult for 45 minutes, but she's thrilled. I overheard her singing a song to herself this morning that went something like this: "I can't wait for Thursdays! Thursdays are my faaaaaaavorite day of the WEEK! Thursday is when I have piaaaaaaaaano lessons!"

3) Skipper's rash is getting uglier lately. She has a new, sandpapery kind of rash (the internets think she has scarlet fever, but I'm confident that's not the case) on her belly and back, plus the regular eczema on her arms and legs. Nothing seems particularly itchy, and she's not uncomfortable, but it's pretty gruesome. We're cutting back on both gluten and dairy in the hopes that it'll reduce the flareups, if not the base-level rash. Poor kid. In related news, I'm going to launch my first gluten-free baking project this afternoon.

4) I've been doing a little data entry for a short-term project, bringing in enough cash for a few days' worth of groceries. Woohoo!

5) We decorated for the holidays tonight. It was totally hilarious, in a way that I do not have the writing chops to capture in text. You're just going to have to imagine it. These are some of the elements: both kids loudly singing what they think are tuneful holiday songs (Skipper: " HAAAAPPPPEEEEEE KrissssMUSSSSSSS! HAAAAAAPPPPEEEEEE... HAPPPPPEEEEEE!!") completely regardless of the actual music playing on the stereo, Skipper cavorting (rashily) in her underpants around the heat vent saying things like "It's WARM inside my pants!", Dutch reading all of "A Visit From St Nicholas" out loud (unsolicited), the kids fighting like drunk raccoons over possession of a bell ornament, Dutch announcing excitedly "Mom, I think I know what my Gift is! I think it's SINGING!", Skipper running out of the room, shouting "Christmas, goodbye!" and then returning and yelling "Christmas, I'm back!" and I don't know, a hundred more obnoxious, funny, cacophonous, adorable, bratty moments. Cook said later "That was definitely not what I imagined holiday decorating with my family would be like," which he meant in a good way. (I'm pretty sure.)

6) I got an email from somebody named Galadriel, and it wasn't spam.

What We're Reading

Skipper (obsessively): One Morning in Maine
Me: The Titan's Curse*
Cook: Oblivion
Dutch: This and this and this and this and probably some others I'm not aware of. (Has she finished a book in the last three months? Not that I'm aware of.)

*Yes, I am aware that it is a kids' book. Several friends have recently steered me toward kids' books that I have very much enjoyed. Adulthood isn't exactly all that it's cracked up to be, so I feel okay about avoiding it in my reading, since I can't avoid it in the rest of my life.

Growth

We just got a new tree planted in our parking strip, courtesy of the wonderful Friends of Trees - it's a cascara tree* and this is what it looks like.**

 And here is a bonus photo of the scene in our backyard a few hours later.

* It was not as pretty as many of our other options from the list of city-approved trees for purchase, but it was our only native option, and it apparently provides fabulous attraction for pollinators, and food and shelter for birds. So we really had to choose it, and we're going to learn to appreciate its understated elegance.


** Notice Dutch's "Laura Ingalls boots" - I think that in her mind she's living in 1880 most of the time.

Trip to the Science Museum

Waiting for the bus with Baby Baby, after dropping off Dutch at school

Skipper loves play dough.

Obsessively pouring sand with a family friend.

There's this crazy contraption with blowing air...

Are you having pan-fried shredded brussels sprouts for lunch tomorrow?

This is Skipper's preschool menu:

Wednesday, 11/30

Breakfast: Banana Bread
Snack: Apples with Pumpkin Seeds
Lunch: Red Lentil Dip with Flour Tortillas, Pan-fried Shredded Brussels Sprouts with Shallots, Pickled Beets
Snack: Granola with Oranges

Friday, 12/2

Breakfast: Rice Pudding with Cranberries
Snack: Bananas with Pumpkin Seeds
Lunch: Gigante Lima Beans with Tomatoes, Kale and Quinoa
Snack: Cranberry Orange Bread

Monday, 12/5

Breakfast: Oatmeal with Raisins
Snack: Pita Chips with Pumpkin Seeds
Lunch: Pasta with Chickpeas, Tomatoes and Peas
Snack: Rice Pudding

Anxious

A few months ago, I went to the doctor because I'd been having chest pains and shortness of breath. I was pretty sure it was anxiety, because I am an anxious person, and I have some legitimate things to be anxious about, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't terribly ill. The doctor said, after verifying that I am, in fact, quite healthy for a fat lazy person, "Is there a chance it could be anxiety?" and I said "Yes, there's a good chance," and she said "What are you feeling anxious about?" and I burst into tears. This was surprising to both of us.

I AM feeling pretty damn anxious these days. Not depressed, just afraid - I think the lack of sadness made me underestimate how much of a toll the fear was taking on me. I'm afraid that Cook will lose his job. I'm afraid I will never get another job (this is the big one, really). I'm afraid my family members or I will get sick or badly injured. I'm afraid of natural disasters. I'm afraid of people being mean to me.

If you're not naturally an anxious person, it's probably hard for you to understand how afraid it's possible to be. For me, life is a series of Almost/If-Only Moments. You know how when something bad happens, you often think about how if you had just chosen to do or not do something, the bad thing wouldn't have happened? Like "If I had just been paying attention when I stepped down that last stair!" or "If I had just chosen not to say that one thing!" or "If I had just gone to check on the baby one more time!" You hear stories all the time about people who missed a plane that then crashed, or who walked out the door a minute before the building collapsed or whatever. Those are Almost/If-Only Moments.

I think about Almost/If-Only Moments all the time. For me, life is a series of escapes from disaster. I did not say the incredibly stupid thing that would somehow have gotten me fired. Skipper did not fall down the concrete steps. Dutch did not hit her head jumping into the pool. I did not drop the pot of boiling pasta water on my feet. Cook did not get hit by a car on his way home from work. This way of seeing the world might sound awful to some of you, and it certainly makes me more conservative in my life choices, but in a way it's also an opportunity to celebrate. Every day, I am grateful that we are whole and healthy (for NOW).

So - anxiety sucks. But I can see as how it serves an important purpose when it doesn't run totally out of control. It's certainly worse when I'm feeling anxious about something I can't really do anything to fix.* Don't worry about me, though - I'm trying to take better care of myself and practice normal-people breathing,** and I feel better!

* Like the economy. I seem unable to do anything about it.

**Apparently I'd been doing a lot of the Oh-shit-I'm-about-to-be-eaten-by-a-tiger-so-my-body-needs-to-get-ready-to-run kind of breathing, which makes me feel even worse. A quick survey of the internet indicates that I'm the only person on the planet who didn't know the difference.

Thanks have been given.

And they were delicious!

What we've been doing:

• Shopping locally (and not locally, but we feel bad about that)
• Eating our huge pile of squash (mostly from our CSA). I really loathe peeling and cutting squash, but we have to eat at least one squash a day in order to avoid being buried. I've already cut my finger once, and I anticipate more injuries as the battle continues. But the food is delicious.
• Anticipating the holidays
• Volunteering (I'm planning to average six hours a week at various places from 11/21 through Christmas)
• Wishing for sunshine

That's about it. How was your Thanksgiving?

Some reading material for Thanksgiving

You're welcome.

Seven!

So, Dutch. My girl. Dutch is a lot of things, and when I start listing adjectives to describe her, the list gets long and very contradictory. Today I went to her parent-teacher conference. Her teacher has nothing but good things to say about her - she's on track to exceed benchmarks in reading and writing, and meet them in math. She's nice to her classmates and doesn't brag. She comes to class ready to learn every day.

Dutch is interested in everything, but only shallowly. She often picks up books, declares she loves them. reads 100 pages, and ditches them.* She's interested in things that are Important - today Cook came home to find her and the babysitter setting up a "church" in the living room, and she asked him to be the priest. She loves knowing stuff, and condescending to people who she believes are less knowledgeable.

Dutch hates being wrong, and making mistakes. She's been brainwashed a little that Practice Makes Improvement (all the teachers I've met at her school are totally on board with the praising-of-effort-rather-than-achievement, which is excellent), and Everybody Makes Mistakes, and Mistakes Help You Learn What You Need To Work On, etc., and that helps, but she still hates it.

Dutch's social life is deeply important to her, in a way that is unfamiliar to me and to Cook. She has no best friend, and she plays with a lot of different kids. She is admirably open to playing with every single kid in her school and seems to see everybody as a potential playmate; she never dismisses anybody based on their appearance, past behavior, or reputation. This can be bad, as she seems to continue playing with kids who have treated her badly in the past, but we're not really sure what the real story is on those episodes anyway. But I think it's probably overall a good thing. The other kids seem to like her, because she likes them, and she's up for anything (again, possibly a bad thing in some ways), and enthusiastic about lots of different activities.**

But what I really wanted to say is that Dutch is really different than I thought she was. Some of you gave me flak about my conviction that she was introverted way back when she was two, and you were right.  Maybe she was, but she sure as hell isn't now - she's a classic extravert. She needs down time, like most anybody, and she's not super-high energy, but she is definitely energized by social interactions, and thrives on new experiences and situations that require quick responses. (Skipper shows a lot more signs of introversion, but I've learned my lesson, and I'm not going to categorize her any time soon.)

So, Dutch. I love that kid.


*"Pride and Prejudice is a dumb book," she announced the other day. "So this guy needs to get married?"


**I have some fear about what adolescence holds for a kid who cares deeply about social cues and likes trying new things. Hopefully the desire to please authority and not to make mistakes will mitigate any potentially dangerous impulses...

Whoa.

This is pretty cool.

Not bored.

Two weeks ago, I took Skipper to a library story time for 2-year-olds. The room was packed with excited kids, all running around, dancing, pushing up to the librarian to get her attention and see the books up close. Skipper sat in my lap, scowling, the whole time.* There were a lot of parents there, too, of course, and I suddenly became aware of my total disinterest in engaging with them or paying any attention to their kids. When Dutch was little, I would have been all over something like this. I would have been chatting with people and comparing parenting strategies, checking out their kids... but no. Not now. I just wanted to get out of there. I was bored.

Parenting small Dutch was a nice period of blissful ignorance- there was a lot of stuff about it that was hard,**  but for the most part we were able to trust our instincts and feel pretty good about the way things were going. When she got old enough to talk and be independent, a whole new world unfolded to us, a world in which we were parenting an actual human being, her own ineffable self, whose problems were increasingly hard to solve, and often seemed to be really not our job to fix anyway. I think we've come around to embracing that. Dutch is a person, with flaws and strengths, and she lives with us, and our relationships with her are fluid and challenging. What we're supposed to be doing to "parent" her is rarely clear, and there's a lot of seat-of-the-pants "parenting" going on around here.*** And that's good. I'm usually not bored. I'm often annoyed, frustrated, or tired, but almost never bored by this job.

Today a baby came to our house, and I really enjoyed seeing him and chatting with him. He was absolutely adorable - exactly in that adorable window of adorableness at 5 months when babies are eager to interact but really can't screw anything up yet and are interested in and entertained by stuff like jar lids. Adorable, I tell you. I got to hold and play with him for a few minutes while his parents were busy, and I loved holding his dense, interested little body. But it felt weird, like I had never held a baby before. And I had no idea what he wanted to do. And while he was adorable, I didn't want to hang out with him any more than that 5 minutes.

I'm done, you guys. No more babies, no more toddlers. Give me the gap-toothed 7-year-olds with their weird conversational leaps and their endless questions. Give me the arguing preschoolers raging against the unfair rules. Babies and toddlers are so last year.

Postscript: I don't mean to imply that babies and toddlers are boring, because they're not, or that parenting babies and toddlers isn't hard, because it is. For me, though, parenting babies and toddlers felt a lot simpler than parenting older kids feels. Still challenging, but more straightforward. (Though sometimes the straight way forward felt like it was up a really steep hill.)



*Though she later wanted to talk about it a lot (no, really, a LOT), and she wants to go back. Her general pattern is that she has to do things two or three times before she can actually enjoy the activity.
** If you want to talk about parenting a baby who hates sleeping, give me a call.
***There's also a LOT of acquisition of knowledge going on around here, on both kids' part, and that's super-fun. I know babies are learning an incredible volume of stuff, but they just don't share much of it with you. Dutch, on the other hand, tells us EVERYTHING she's learned, and, better yet, tells us about it as she's learning it. "Oh, Mom! So! 20 times 5 is 100, and also 5 times 20 is 100! Wow!!!!"

It'll take a year to recover.

We did it! We survived Dutch's party! 

Cook honored the festive occasion by dressing up. The tie, FYI, has his clan plaid on it.

It was fun. It was, however, faster-moving than I'd expected, so I didn't get as many pictures as I'd have liked. The main activity was a scavenger hunt involving invisible ink pens (when Dutch and I were shopping for party favors, she saw those pens, and she Had To Have Them) and clues written in invisible ink on "old" paper (aged by Cook, using coffee grounds and the oven) and then cut into five pieces.  

The idea was that the kids had to put the pieces together like a puzzle and read the clues using the magic lights in the caps of their pens. In practice, it was a lot more chaotic than that.

Dutch and Best Friend (remember her? Still invited to birthday parties after going to separate schools for a whole year) were by far the most engaged of all the kids in actually puzzling things out.

They had to get the shovel out of the shed so they could dig up the treasure...

Regrettably, I have no photos of them discovering the X that Cook had made over the treasure spot, or of them digging it up. There was a lot of yelling, squealing, jumping up and down, and flailing of shovels. They were then fairly disappointed to discover that all they got was a package containing five Mad Libs books. (Another thing Dutch discovered at the toy store and Had To Have.) They recovered, however, and the conversation over lunch went sort of like this (really, really loudly):
"Can I have another piece of pizza?"
"Can you give me a noun?"
"I need an adjective!"

It was tiring. Even though it pretty very low-key by kid birthday standards,* there was a fair amount of food and activity prep required. There was some weird kid chemistry. Several of the kids refused to eat any of the food, including the ridiculously sugary and buttery cupcakes I served up. One of the kids threw a fit because we have bar soap instead of liquid soap. There was a bit of a fracas over whose gift would get opened first.**  Skipper was tired and grumpy and insisted on being carried the entire time (except when she ate all the frosting off a cupcake). We were all so worn-out afterward that we just ate leftover pizza and cupcakes for dinner while watching TV, and put the kids to bed early.



* No balloons. No decorations. No bouncy house. Home-made food. Boring.
**Gift-giving and parties - it's a disaster. We've tried to do no-gift parties, or hand-me-downs-or-home-made-only gift parties, or open-presents-after-the-party parties, and this year we just gave up. Now they're old enough that they actually WANT to see the birthday kid open the present they brought. And I guess it's worthwhile to practice giving and receiving gifts. Dutch and I talked a lot about her responsibility as hostess and as the receiver of gifts. Luckily, she didn't have to suppress any disappointment in her gifts, because she loved them all. 

Got some stickers.

Escape

Everybody has some preferred ways to escape reality. Some people choose healthy, constructive tools, like exercise, meditation, sewing, painting, music, etc. I go for food, trashy books, and mindless surfing of the internet. Cook likes frisbee and cheap video games, and Dutch reads fairy books. Skipper, apparently, sleeps.

I had to work on a Tuesday this week, a day when Skipper normally stays home with me, and so our new babysitter took care of Skipper all day. Skipper doesn't like being babysat, and when I left at 8:30 AM, she asked me (sobbing) to leave her in her bed. I did. At 12:30, the babysitter texted me that Skipper had been sleeping the entire time, and should she maybe wake her up?

Skipper has a long history of sleeping a LOT when she starts a new childcare situation. Every time, actually, except for one nannyshare with what I now think may have been an unusually gifted nanny. She definitely uses sleep as a way to avoid real life. It's like a weird sort of stress-induced narcolepsy, though it seems to be willed rather than inadvertent. I hope that she retains the ability to do this. When other teenagers are doing drugs and developing eating disorders, I want to see Skipper taking long, long naps.

Seven

 Dutch had a good birthday. We did the traditional wake-up with singing and (this year) apple muffins with candles in them. Skipper refused to wake up for it, so the waking and present-opening were all about Dutch, which was nice. She loved her presents, and just the sheer gleeful Dutch-centric-ness of it all.

Then Skipper finally woke up, and we ate breakfast. 

Then Dutch spilled Skipper's celebratory juice on the floor, and this is her expression just after it happened. Apparently, anticipation of my spill-related wrath is terrifying. Also, I think this may be a preview of what Dutch will look like when she's 90.

I went to Dutch's school to have lunch with her, which was fun, and we all went out to eat for dinner tonight. Dutch had an orange soda with whipped cream in it, and a plate of french fries covered in bacon, sour cream, scallions, and cheddar cheese. She knows how to live it up, that kid. But now her birthday is over, and it's back to leafy dark greens.

Oh, and it POURED rain all morning - we had our rainiest bike commute yet, and it was cold, too. Dutch was a trooper, though, as befits a seven-year-old.

And THIS is the only photo I have from our houseguests' visit. Next time I must do better.

There's not much point in trying to get anything done at this time of year.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned the altered state Dutch enters every year about a week before Halloween, and sustains until New Year's Day. Because her birthday is in November, she spends the last two months of every year receiving and giving gifts, attending and hosting parties, and taking time off from school at such high frequency that it pretty much feels like a non-stop celebration. 

This means highs and lows. Very high. Very low.  This weekend she was great, because hey, playmates! and today she was great because OMG this is her last Monday as a 6-year-old!!!!!!! And OMG another box arrived for her!!! I expect this crazy-happy state will last through her birthday, with a brief crash and then another lift anticipating her birthday party this weekend. Then a week off from school! Thanksgiving! And then a few weeks of let-down, ramping back up for The Big Event. Should be pretty crazy. Also, she has three weeks off of school in the next six weeks, so even if she was emotionally stable, I think I'd find it a little trying.* 

We've been piling up her presents in the dining room to be opened on the birthday morning, and I allowed her to touch and smell them but not pick up, shake, or poke them.** She sniffed the first box and turned to me with her eyes alight with excitement. "Mom, I know what it is! It smells musty, like spell books! It's Hermione's spell books!" So she might be momentarily disappointed when it turns out that she won't get to learn real magic when she's seven.

*Luckily, I love holidays, too. Food! This year, no traveling! Days off! Anticipation! Food! Awesome. 

** These are basically totally arbitrary rules, because parenthood is all about power trips and I can get away with it. Ha!

Hello!

No lecturing today. I'm just writing to say hi! We're having a lovely but hectic weekend. We had house guests  for a breezy 30 hours, then went over to another family's house for dinner. Dutch had a wonderful time with two successive playmates. She swore eternal friendship to one of our guests (a gorgeous, fearless ball of mischief aged just a wee bit less than 5) when she left (the two girls held hands and gazed meaningfully into each other's eyes).

Skipper's day? She ate a hamburger and chocolate fondue. She had a good day.

oh, the fear

Today I was riding the bus home, thinking about life,* and the bus passed Dutch's school. She was at school still for her after-school Spanish class (I was heading further west to pick up Skipper at preschool), and I craned my neck, hoping to catch a glimpse of her in the classroom. I didn't see her, but I started thinking about her, particularly her crazy-ass moods, and her near-total lack of self-censorship. As much as her blabber-mouth approach to life drives me crazy, it's going to be a sad day when the endless river of words dries up. It's sad to think of Dutch putting herself in hiding, holding back from the judgmental world of adolescence. I wonder when it'll happen - four years? Less? Maybe never, and my kid will always be loud and crazy. Part of me wishes for that.

I have a friend here whose daughter is a few months older than Dutch, and she's Dutch's opposite in many ways - totally disinterested in pleasing people other than herself. This has cons, obviously, and I expect will make things hard for her in school and other social environments for a while. But I can see that she is going to do really well in life, this kid - she's not afraid to take what she wants (but she's not a sociopath or anything - just kind of impervious to criticism). People like that seem to thrive. I am afraid that Dutch is getting too indoctrinated into the idea that she must be a Good Girl. At school, she likes to volunteer to help out, and clean up messes she didn't make. It makes me nervous - girls always have to be Good Girls, and being a Good Girl never got anybody anywhere that I know of. This is an old story in my parenting of Dutch. I want her to be well-behaved and sensitive to other people, but I'm deeply divided over the fact that I'm teaching her to be compliant, careful of other people's feelings, and generous. It's pretty easy to go from there into self-sacrifice and being seriously taken advantage of. So... anyway. Her adolescence is going to be scary for me. (Do I have to remind you that my children's lives are ALL ABOUT ME?! Isn't everything?)

In semi-related news, Dutch is having her birthday party soon.** She's decided to invite four kids, and two of them are boys, including the boy who's become pretty much her best friend this year. He's loud and nerdy. Dutch seems to have a type, because all the boys she likes best are loud, bossy, self-important nerds. I'm beginning to consider my future as a mother-in-law, and I have some concerns.


* I do that on the bus. Today I looked out the window a lot, and I noticed, for the first time, a  strip club called "The Pitiful Princess." Isn't that the saddest strip club name ever?
** Seven. SEVEN!!!!!

How To Be Car-less With Kids: Sanctimonious Tedium Ahead!

Here's the question I always want to be asked, and never am: "How do you get around with kids with no car?" I want to be asked this question because I could answer it for HOURS, and I do love to talk about me. And what's a blog FOR but boring unsolicited monologues, after all? (With that said, you should all feel free to not read this post... you've all heard it all before, anyway!)

So here you go. This is how to be carless with kids, according to me. 

1) Locate yourself appropriately. Choose a home with access to bike and transit infrastructure, and a nice array of convenient destinations within walking distance. Choose all your activities, work, school, childcare, etc., based on accessibility. Don't overschedule.

2) Get yourself the right array of equipment, whatever works for you. Being car-free requires that you have options, and it's one of the great joys of escaping the car - when you walk out the door every morning, you have real choices in how to get where you're going. I love that. Here's my array.*

The Ergo. Now on its last legs, it's served us well. I now use it only when I want to take Skipper on trips involving the bus (no transit system is convenient with a stroller) and also more walking than I think she's up for. 

Trusty rusty stroller, also on its second kid. Skipper and I use this for longer home-based walking trips. Dutch, by this age, was both an excellent walker and so enormous she couldn't actually fit in the thing comfortably anymore, but Skipper is neither of those things.

Skipper's wagon, which we use for short trips or carrying large flat things home, like a bunch of tomato seedlings or a pile of wood chips we found in the street with a "free" sign on top. Notice Dutch's bike in the background. She would like me to mention that it is a very good bike. 

Our go-to Skipper-transportation mode. It fits two kids very snugly, or one very comfortably, with room for a giant package of toilet paper rolls, plus several bags of other groceries in the back. (Sometimes Cook or I take the trailer with no kid in it, if we need to fetch something really big.) Cook's bike and my bike both have trailer hitches, so we can easily switch the trailer between our bikes.

My bike. I love it. It's almost as old as me, it's this awesome shade of blue, and check out those brand-new full fenders, baby! Now I have no excuse not to bike in the rain...

This is a bonus piece of equipment. I got it super-cheap at a yard sale, and it's kind of falling apart, but excellent for kid-free walks to the grocery store to buy a gallon of milk, a gallon of vinegar, ten boxes of pasta, a giant package of toilet paper, and, you know, whatever else tickles your fancy.

3) There's no 3. That's it.

We bike for most trips.We walk for trips under a mile unless speed or cargo necessitate biking. I take transit for trips downtown, trips longer than 5 to 8 miles (depending on weather and the pleasantness of the route), trips when I really can't be at all sweaty or disheveled when I arrive,**and trips when I feel like it's too cold and wet for biking. Cook doesn't take transit at all unless his bike is totally out of commission or he's going somewhere with me and I feel like it's too cold and wet for biking. We get a zipcar occasionally, mostly to pick somebody up at the airport. We rent cars for longer trips. We get rides from friends and coworkers sometimes.

So, car-free with kids. Is it sometimes a hassle? Yes. Does it take more time? Yes. Does it put limitations on your life? Yes. Does it require more planning? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes, totally. I used to say that I expected we'd have to buy a car eventually. But I don't say that anymore; I really hope we can get away without being forced to get another car. It feels good to be car-free as a family. It is fun, it is easy, it is convenient, it is healthy, and it enriches us both literally*** and figuratively. We live in a wonderful place, and the activities and destinations to which we're "limited" seem pretty darn varied and terrific to me.**** The extra time that it takes to get around by transit and my own physical effort is not in any way wasted. We spend it getting exercise, seeing the world around us, talking to each other, reading a book, and doing all sorts of other valuable things. All the cheesy aphorisms about travel being part of the experience (The Journey Is The Destination!) feel a lot more true when you're out of the car, and I really value sharing that with my kids.

That is the end of my sermon. Thank you.


*When we get rich, I'm going to get one of these to add to our stable. We have friends who have one, and Dutch loves getting rides on it. I think it'll solve a number of our remaining  transportation dilemmas - giving a ride to a friend, getting Dutch somewhere when she really doesn't feel like riding her own bike, giving Skipper a good option during the awkward period when she'll be too big to comfortably ride in the trailer, but still too small to ride her own bike, etc. 


** I go to a lot of job interviews, after all. 


***Living without a car for over a decade has saved us  probably somewhere between $5 and $10K per year. That's a lot of money. The entire fleet in the photos above, plus Cook's and Dutch's bikes, cost us a little under $1000 total to buy originally. I get a free monthly transit pass through my job (the only benefit I get), and Cook gets a parking-cash-out benefit for not driving to work (his employer takes an enlightened capitalist approach to employee parking), so between those things, we spend very little additional cash on our transportation.  Cook does some basic maintenance stuff himself, and keeping his bike running well costs about $400/year (and that includes investment in decent raingear, lights, panniers, etc.). He rides about 50 miles a week. I ride only about 20, and Dutch about 15, so we have cheaper gear and maintenance needs. If we had none of the employer benefits that now cover almost all of our expenses, I think we could keep our whole fleet running very well, including replacement as needed, for $1000 a year, and meet all our transit needs for $800. Can a car-dependent household get by spending less than $2000/year on transportation? I'm thinking not. 


**** The one thing that I wish we could do more easily is get out of town for day hikes and camping. When we get rich, though, we'll be happy to rent cars more often to do that!

Advanced learning

Dutch's teacher is a rabid University of Oregon booster. Because of this, Dutch has begun thinking about college, and actually considering what college she might want to go to. I really had not expected that my child's introduction to the idea of post-secondary education would come from the classic Oregon Ducks vs. Beavers conflict. Today Dutch and I talked about college a little bit - what it is, what options Dutch might have, how much it will cost,* etc. Dutch decided that she will be a Duck, and study owls. That seems confusing to me, but whatever.


*I didn't tell her that I suspect that by the time she's ready for college, being a Duck (or anything other mascot) will be prohibitively expensive. I figure we can wait at least until she's in third grade to inform her that her collegiate future isn't a given. 

Apparently, exercise and volunteerism are mood-lifters. Who knew?

I'm feeling pretty down these days. Today I find myself with childcare and without work, and  I made myself a to-do list (actually a teux deux list, because I completely love the app) in an attempt to keep myself from just dropping off the kids and then spending the day lying on the couch listening to The Swell Season and feeling sorry for myself.

One of the items on the teuxdeux/prevent-plummeting-into-despair list was to volunteer at the Friday Running Club at recess at Dutch's school. I'd done it once before - volunteers stand at one corner of the playground while the kids run laps, and each time the kids come around, they stop and present their laminated cards for you to check off another box. I loved it. I love seeing them coming toward me, with their wide-open faces, every single thing they feel written all over them.* Some of them are running socially, with friends, and some of them are running alone, and some of them are sprinting, and some are trotting, and they're all just intoxicated with it - with whatever it is about it that works for them, and maybe just with the pleasure of being out of the classroom for 20 minutes. They RUN, some of these kids, like no adult ever runs, like they're both running for their lives and running for sheer joy, at the same time.  You should see them. They look like hope and joy and everything that's good about people, in the shape of small, sweaty, snotty, red-faced, screaming banshees.  It's pretty amazing to me that so many of them participate; many of them run for the entire recess period. And I get to see Dutch, who loves loves loves it that I'm there,*** and her friends, so it's just all good.

So I did that. I left later than I'd planned, so I biked there at top speed,**** standing up on my pedals like I was a first-grader myself, and got there all sweaty and windblown, with freezing red cheeks, and it felt really good. The recess was just as fun as it had been before. Then I biked home, downhill, swooping around corners at daringly high speeds, and that was also excellent.

Anyway, now I'm home, with a cup of tea, listening to The Swell Season, blogging. But I put blogging on my teuxdeux, so it's okay! The take-home message of this post is this: If you're feeling depressed and hopeless, you should go ride your bike and cheer on some sprinting 7-year-olds. That'll fix you right up!


*I only volunteer at the first recess, before lunch,** which is only K-2. I expect the older kids are more jaded, having reached the advanced age of 9.
** This is a really welcome change from last year - the K-2 kids get recess before lunch, so they've burned off a fair amount of steam by the time they sit down to eat.
*** When I told her that my job had evaporated, she said "That's too bad. So can you volunteer at Friday Running Club now?"
**** That is to say, MY top speed, which is very slow. Grandmas out for constitutionals breeze past me. Damn you, grandmas!

It's pledge drive time!

Yeah, actually it's not.  BUT. It is the time when I invite you to submit your contributions to the Great Dutch-and-Skipper Advent Calendars Adventure. If you have small (maximum 2" by 2" by 3") items in your house that you wish to dispose of,* please mail them to me.Anything is fair game - notes to Dutch, a cool rock, three jelly beans in a film canister, whatever.

And okay, I know I promised you all handwritten thankyou notes for your contributions last year. And that didn't happen. But this year, definitely. For sure.


*that are not trash, not disgusting, and seem like they might be at least somewhat interesting to a 2-year-old or a 7-year-old...

In case you were wondering what adulthood is all about.

Yesterday Skipper told me about what she will do when she becomes a grown-up. Here is the complete list:
1) Go to work and go to school and go to Gresham.
2) Sleep alone in a really big bed.
3) Wash dishes.
4) Do stuff on the computer.

First world problems, indeed.

This morning at 5:45, Cook and I were talking about our fears* over coffee (the kids were asleep! it was a miracle) and he pointed out cheerfully that at least he didn't have to wake up Dutch and take her off to work in the mine. So, you know, feeling sad because you can't afford to give your kid piano lessons, while a legitimate feeling and all, needs to be put into perspective.

Perspective really isn't enough, either. We don't have enough in this world for everybody to have the kind of stuff that I want and can't have (traveling! a smartphone! expensive new shoes!), and if somebody has it, that means somebody else can't have something. This week, Portland started a city-wide food-waste composting system for residential properties, which is great.** Sometimes I feel good about the way things have changed just in the last ten years (food waste composting, bike infrastructure, the availability of local and fair trade food, the legality of gay marriage, etc), and then I think about resource use and distribution and I feel sick to my stomach. We try, in our Portlandy way, to use less than The Average American, and we do. We don't drive, we eat seasonal produce, we compost (and now we compost EVERYTHING!***), we don't buy new electronic gadgets every year (even though we want to), we turn the thermostat down, we try not to buy stuff with lots of packaging... but we still use way more resources than almost anybody else in the world. But I don't seem to have the courage or energy to do more. And I don't seem to have enough money to buy a politician,**** so we're making pretty much no difference in the world. But... I guess we just do what we can at the time. And keep in mind that other people are heading off to the mine with their children every morning.


* Due to the same budget issues that erased my prospective job, we're worried about Cook's employment. It's stable for now, but things could get hairy next summer.


** But apparently EXTREMELY upsetting for many people, who are appalled by the prospect of having to change ANY of their behavior, ever. Change is so scary!


*** Leftover oatmeal and milk? Composted! Pizza crusts? Composted! Cheese rind? Composted!!! I think I'll invite a carnivore to bring some food over, just so we can put the bones in the bin and say "COMPOST IT!!!!" I love it. Thanks, Portland. 

**** If I had a spare million bucks or so, I would totally buy some politicians.