six... no, three!

I'm currently reading* this really cool book about the power of social networks. Dude, it's totally amazing. Apparently, our behavior is influenced by people we don't even know, through our networks. (Yes, even people with incredibly small social lives, like me, have a network.) Stuff like happiness, obesity, smoking, voting, etc. - contagious like crazy.

Interesting, eh? You should go see if your library system** has this book, and then you should read it! And tell your friends!

* Multnomah County Library system!!! You are THE BEST!!!! Have I told you lately how much I love you?

** Your library system totally sucks. MY library system is totally unstoppable!

Bikes, again.

This is (apparently) a video taken today at a Portland school (not ours). It's boring, and nothing happens, but the point is that there are a LOT of kids and grownups arriving at school by bike. And cars? Who needs 'em!

Cool, right?

Taste of my own medicine

Cook has always grumbled about my ability to disappear into a book, and marveled at my ability to read while doing things like brushing my teeth, or walking to the bus stop. I've always dismissed his grumbles as jealousy over my marvelous multi-tasking abilities.

However, now we have another disappearing reader in the house. Dutch sits down with a book, and she is gone. If I want her to do anything else, like put away her backpack, clean her room, put on her nightgown, join us for dinner, eat a cookie, go for a scooter ride, etc., I have to launch a campaign that involves either shouting in her ear, or repeated polite requests for her attention over a long period of time. Sometimes both. It drives me crazy.

Cook thinks this is hilarious.

more photos

Another nice day! Skipper rode her scooter (while wearing her helmet backward), ate fruit two-fistedly, and, yes, wore her favorite Summer Reading t-shirt yet again. And, yet again, there was some romping on the lawn. (Cook can pretty much set his own hours, because his work requires virtually no human contact, so he goes to work obscenely early, and gets home at 3 or 4, depending on whether and where he has to pick up a kid. This makes for hard mornings, but it's pretty great having him come home when the sun is still high enough to make for a relaxed pre-dinner period.)

With great power...

Today Dutch and I biked to her soccer practice. It took forever, and I found it exhausting (I find many things exhausting, but it turns out that watching my child's vulnerable little body wobbling on her bike as a car passes her is particularly exhausting for me), but she was exhilarated and tremendously proud of herself.

For Dutch, riding her bike on the street is like getting a driver's license as a teenager. It represents both freedom and a step toward adulthood. For most Americans, riding a bike is a Kid Thing - you do it until you can drive, and it's not cool or useful. For Dutch, and many other kids growing up in inner Portland neighborhoods, riding a bike is an Adult Thing - you do it to get to grown-up places like work, and the grocery store. Many of the households she knows the best use bikes for much of their utilitarian travel, and she sees many more grownups on bikes than kids on bikes in the course of her day. (She is, of course, most impressed by the pretty grownups on pretty bikes, of which we have a steady supply in our neighborhood due to the Extremely Hip Coffee Shop around the corner.)

Anyway, I think that's pretty neat. I'm proud and delighted to be raising a kid for whom biking represents freedom, responsibility, and power. Even if she leaves the bike behind the moment she leaves home and buys an enormous SUV with 18 cup-holders, she'll have learned (at the very least) how to be a better car driver around bikes.

Also, she's just awesome. You should see her bopping along on her sparkly pink bike, her bony knees still flopping slightly out as she pedals, earnestly scanning her surroundings for delightful sightings (rainbows, tree houses, classmates) and possible dangers (cars, gravel, dogs, glass, CARS!). It'll make you laugh, and cringe, and go "awww!" and then be slightly impressed. (Or maybe that's just me.)

Come and visit! We can go for a ride!

I still stay up too late.

But I just wanted to tell you that today we transplanted:

• cherry tomatoes
• zucchini
• cucumber
• sage
• oregano
• basils (three different kinds!)

Summer IS COMING!

Haircuts!

Did you notice them? There have been haircuts. Skipper's was mostly about cutting out dried vomit, but Dutch's was a response to her request for a haircut "like Kit Kittredge's."

I spend a lot of time with Skipper. She is my darling and my nemesis. Here are pictures of her.

This is one of her favorite places to sit. She cares for her dolls, and plays weird house games, and she'll do it for half an hour at a time, which I very much appreciate.

This is the aftermath of the sample slice of chocolate croissant she ate at the local bakery.

And this is just... Skipper.

This week started out a little hectic, but Thursday and Friday have been just lovely. The weather was gorgeous, and Skipper and I took it pretty easy. It was a little Portland-style idyll, with some walking and biking,* some gardening, and some cooking. Today my lunch was a sandwich of cheese, bread from the bakery around the corner (which is as cheap as the decent kind of grocery store bread), mustard, and kale from the front yard. It was delicious. I ate it sitting on the steps in the sunshine, watching my laundry dry and my kid get dirty, and I felt so lucky.

This weekend we're going to walk the Red Wagon over to the nursery a mile away, and bring home some summer vegetable starts. SO LUCKY.

Anyway. Enough gloating. Here are pictures. Skipper enjoyed the back yard, and a bucket of water.

Skipper and Dutch posed for photos. Dutch wore her new (to her) soccer cleats, which arrived in the mail today, plus her usual weird layered fashion stylings.

Cook came home.

Everyone played soccer.

*Dutch made her first ever utilitarian bike trip this evening, to the grocery store with Cook, for a round-trip total of 1.3 miles. She was pretty intimidated initially, but came home thrilled with her new powers.

Title 9

Our soccer experience yesterday made me think about the fact that Dutch is a girl playing organized sports who has a mother who played organized sports as a child and teenager. She's part of a pretty new phenomenon. It makes a difference in normalizing a behavior - even though I no longer play any organized sports at all, she knows that I used to, and I can tell her about my experience, and help teach her how to play.

When I started thinking about it, I realized that I was the only woman "coach"-type figure on the field at Dutch's soccer practice/thing. Not that I was actually demonstrating any skill or knowledge, but I was there on the field. And damnit, I think that's valuable for all the kids. (Of course, it would be nice if I was actually skilled, and could impress the kids with the lesson that Girls Can Be Good At Sports, Too, but you know, just the lesson that Girls Like To Play Sports, Too is an okay starting point.)

Anyway, I just wanted to say "Thanks, Title IX!"

I think I may have made a mistake.

I signed up to be a volunteer "coaching assistant" for the soccer program Dutch is doing. (50 6-year-olds, 8 sessions, some scrimmages, some drills, etc. - pretty low-key.) The recruitment email said you didn't have to have any particular soccer knowledge or skills, so it sounded like an easy thing to do. We went today, and Dutch had a fabulous time, but I, operating pretty much without guidance, and under the watchful eyes of about 100 parents who had NOT volunteered, found the whole thing a little daunting. And tiring. We schlepped there after a long day of schlepping,* and I was already kind of worn out, and then I had to run this drill? Which involved a lot of wrangling of children? And running around? And I wasn't really planning on that. I was exhausted, hoarse, and very thirsty by the time it was over. I'm getting old.

However, Dutch loved it. I mean LOVE loved it - she's really excited. She declared her intention to be a two-sport athlete (soccer and baseball), and generously said she'd play tennis with Skipper, who has declared that SHE will play tennis when she gets older.

*I picked Dutch up early, and took her to the dentist, and then we went to the grocery store, fetched Skipper from the nannyshare, got pizza, and went to the field. Between 2 and 6, I rode two buses and a train and waked about 3 miles. So did Dutch, I might add - sometimes I'm so proud of her. I bet no other kid arrived at soccer with 3 miles of walking under their belt, or left with another mile and a bus ride still ahead of them, and she didn't complain at all.

Pronouncements

There are some Skipper-isms that I will be sorry to see go:

1. "Playmobil" = "Peembeel"
2. "Thank you"= "Nankyoo"
3. "Granola bar" = "Nogabar"

And that's all I could think of. I thought there would be a very long list, but when I started thinking about it, I realized that most of them are gone. Apparently, kids grow up and stop cutely mispronouncing things.

Then they become teenagers. And then they grow up, and they come visit me once in a while and I tell them long boring stories about the adorable mispronunciations they used to perpetrate. Or I just MAKE THEM READ THIS BLOG! Ha HA! Nankyoo, nankyoo.

Nankyoo.

I love you, commenters!

I do. You're like little sparkles of light in a dark, dark void.

No, really. Thank you for commenting, and emailing, and calling, and posting on your own blogs. I like hearing from you.

Also, commenters, those are indeed azalea bushes - I google-imaged them (did you see what I did there, with the verbing?).

And Skipper DID like the penguins. (She only liked the penguins, and the goats at the little farm.) However, she was confused by the underwater-viewing concept. She stared at the swimming penguins for a while, and finally said "Dey flying?" I think I got her straightened out on that, and now she does an excellent penguin imitation that goes like this: "Me penguin! FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP! Me SWIM like DIS! Me FLYING!"

And it turned out in post-outing debriefing that she had not understood that the animals could not get out of their captivity. So she may have thought the tree shrew was seconds away from clawing her face off with its adorably tiny widdle claws, which makes her response seem a little more sensible. * Probably more sensible, when you consider it, than the people watching the polar bear play with a ball, who were making happy oohing noises and saying "That's so cute!" about an enormous predator practicing its killing skills.

Also, Dutch lost a tooth today, at school.** They gave her a little plastic treasure chest to store it in. (Clearly, our school is spending its scanty budget frivolously.) She was very happy.

* I gave Skipper short shrift in my last post. To be fair, to a person who's never been to zoo and has only been alive for two years, zoos are kind of a challenging thing to figure out. Maybe Skipper was the only child who seemed frightened and wary among the hundreds of children I saw at the zoo because she is extraordinarily thoughtful. Or maybe she had some concerns about the ethics of zoos (when she can talk better, we can discuss the ramifications of keeping our cousins the great apes locked up under display) that she was unable to express, and that was frustrating for her. Alternatively, she could be just utterly nuts.

**Her eighth! She's a dental prodigy.

Tree shrews are scary.

Some things that frighten Skipper:

• elevators
• dark places
• tunnels
• loud noises
• orangutans
• new experiences
• tree shrews

Skipper and I went to the zoo today, for the first time - we have a family membership now that we are all excited about. We took the train, which goes into a tunnel and stops at a station very deep underground.

Did we have fun? I'll leave that up to you to guess. Here are some photos, with captions. (I brought the camera with the vague expectation of capturing a few pictures of Skipper looking at animals, maybe with an appealing expression of childish wonder, or perhaps just romping around happily ignoring the animals...)

(On the train, just as we entered the tunnel) "Me not like dis tunnel!"

(At the station) "Me don't like dis tunnel! Dis dark! Me want to go home!"

(Eating a snack and glaring balefully at everybody, after about 30 minutes at the zoo) "Me not like the zoo. Me want to go home."

I am reminded not to have preconceived notions about how my child-accompanied outings will go, and to consider the problems that might arise, given my previous experiences with said child (see: Disneyland). I enjoyed the zoo, though. I'm sure Skipper will enjoy it when we take her again. However, next time I go, I'm taking Dutch, who is at exactly the perfect age for the zoo, and is not afraid of very small rodents.

American Girl

Dutch has been plowing through the American Girls books lately. She's now reading the series about a girl who is a slave during the Civil War. This has prompted many questions and triggered a wave of pretending-to-be-a-slave games. I feel squeamish about this, frankly. This evening, I was outside pinning strawberry runners after dinner, and the girls were playing nearby, and Dutch came running over to me and said "You're the slave owner! Here's your glass of warm milk!" and then ran away. And ... I don't know. My privileged white daughter, living a slightly precarious but really very comfortable middle-class life, pretending to be an African-American slave. And enjoying it, because it's fun to pretend that you're suffering (she often pretends she's in an orphanage where she is harshly treated, etc.) when you're not actually suffering and see no possibility that you might ever suffer anything worse than being made to stop playing and go to bed. When I was 9, I would pretend that I was a slave when I had to do the extremely arduous task of raking the grass clippings on the lawn.*

I try to remind her that slavery isn't a fun thing, and she says "I KNOW, Mom. I'm just PRETENDING." I thought maybe getting her some books would help her get a more grounded understanding of slavery, so I rummaged around at the library and picked up some books, including a not-very-riveting picture book about Frederick Douglass. She's interested, and has devoured quite of bit of reading on the topic. However, the other day, she said "Mom! I read about this guy, Something-Something-Box Brown! He escaped from slavery by being mailed in a box!" and I said "Yeah, isn't that an amazing story?" and she said "Isn't that funny! He was mailed in a package!" and I tried to talk about how uncomfortable and painful that must have been, and scary, etc., but she was too tickled about the idea of mailing yourself! In a BOX! to think beyond that.

Anyway. She's six. She's going to pretend stuff. There's nothing wrong with it, and I'm just going to overlook the ick factor and try not to drown her in tedious books that kill her interest (though that seems impossible; she's soaking up as much information as possible about absolutely EVERYTHING right now.). I have made it clear to her that I refuse to participate in the games, though. I do a pretty good evil witch, but there's absolutely no way I'm going to pretend to be a slave owner. Agh. Do I have to ask her not to play this game** at school? Why don't parenting books ever cover this kind of thing?

*And sometimes when I had cottage cheese, I would pretend I was very poor and I really lived in a cottage and this was all I got to eat ALL DAY, and I would spend an hour eating it extremely slowly. I didn't have very many friends.

** She's been reading a book of children's rhymes that includes several cruelty-to-teachers ditties, including the "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school" rhyme that I remember from my childhood. She thought it was completely hilarious, but I asked her not to repeat it at school, given the amount of school violence that has taken place since my ancient childhood.

Happy Mothers' Day! (Mother's Day?)

Dutch cleaned her room, made me popovers, picked flowers from the garden, gave me several gifts she had made at school, and we had a nice teatime together (while Skipper napped and Cook played frisbee). Now the girls are playing together, and I'm going to go plant some chard, quickly, before the rain starts again.

Happy day of mothers!

Spring, Portland-style

So it's not warm enough for tomatoes or beans or delicious stuff like that, but our lettuce and kale are very happy.

I'd like to know what that generic shrub (I see it in lots of yards) with the crazy fuschia flowers is. Anybody know?

Tomato, lettuce, strawberries, and alyssum.

Strawberries, blueberries, and shrubs.

Kale, lettuce, carrots, strawberries, flowers (Grape hyacinth? Lilies? Whatever) and shrubs.

Evergreen huckleberry (foreground), salmonberry, and the ancient grapevine.

Holiday

Today Dutch and Cook went to a Portland State University women's softball game. They walked 2.2 miles there, watched an abbreviated doubleheader in intermittent rain, and walked 2.2 miles home again. Let me repeat this. My six-year-old daughter spent five hours outside today, much of it in the rain, walked almost 4.5 miles, and watched 12 innings of softball. Cook suggested they leave after the first game (he was ready to go), and Dutch chose to stay. He reports that she was really nice and cheerful the whole time.

I'm not sure what this says about her, or what exactly it means to me. I don't know what the draw was. I'm not even clear that she has any particular interest in softball. She didn't have much to say about it, except that her favorite part was a home run. It could just be that she was spending time with a parent doing something different without the interfering toddler in tow. But there's something about the outing that really worked for her, and I think that's awesome. It's also one of the things I like about parenting; you never know what will click, and when things do click, it's a joy.

The Gastroenteritis That WOULD NOT GO AWAY

Skipper started barfing again this morning, almost two weeks after her first barfing episode, and ten days after her last barfing episode. We are not happy campers.

*****Squeamish people, stop reading RIGHT NOW.*****

Skipper hates barfing so much that she tries desperately not to, even up to the point of actually swallowing her vomit. While this generally means less cleanup, and I don't think it's harmful to her, it's completely appalling to witness, and I'd actually prefer the cleanup. I say "It's okay, honey, just let it out," and she screams "NOOOOOOOO!!!!!" and her whole body gets stiff with the conflict between the urge to barf and the urge not to barf, and... ew.

Anyway. Cook bought some bleach (something we've never used in this household, preferring to stick with dingy clothing and household cleaning with vinegar), but I feel like a virus that lasts two weeks and causes this much misery probably demands some bigger guns. I don't know what, though. Maybe we should leave the house for a week and have it steam-cleaned.

Money, verbing, pink things, and tomatoes

In light of our Austerity Budget, and my stay-at-home status three days a week, I've been poking around in the recesses of the part of the internet dedicated to saving money. I have learned a lot. I subscribed to a blog devoted to Frugal Living, which includes posts several times a day about deals you can get at Walgreens or Safeway or whatever. Many of these deals require something called "couponing" which is something I don't really think should be a verb. Couponing apparently requires not only obsessive pursuit of newspaper inserts and store flyers, but also making multiple small transactions (due to restrictions on the coupons). Couponers (is this language weirdness making you as uncomfortable as it makes me?) will go to a store, buy three things, then go back around and get in line again to buy four more things, then go to another store and buy two things, etc. The author has been posting a bit about how she manages the logistics of this, and it involves a LOT of time and driving* and stockpiling of random crap. And a lot of the things you can buy with these deals are kind of ... well... gross. There aren't a lot of coupons for fresh produce, for example, or bulk bulghur or stuff like that. There are a lot of great deals on Shampoo That's Full of Nasty Chemicals or on Snacks That Are Full of White Flour And Chemicals. I think the creepiest thing about it, though, is that it's not about saving money. It's about buying stuff, for cheap. You would save more money by replacing your shampoo with baking soda. It's not about thrift at all - it's about consumption, and the thrill of the consumption hunt.**

So... I'm not going to become a couponer. I have bought some things, though, like maple syrup, off tips from that blog. And I have signed up for Groupon. And Ebates. I am trying not to define myself by what I buy. I think I need a hobby (other than worrying about my tomato plants).

I am reading*** a book called Cinderella Ate My Daughter, which is about the whole girlie-girl/princess/pretty thing and how it's ... um... eating our daughters. It's a sort of a long-form blog, so it's not exactly introducing new research or ideas, but it's a nice mulling-over of some of the stuff that all the parents of girls I know are wrestling with. ****

My tomatoes are still alive! I am following a rigorous schedule of bringing the three mobile ones inside the garage and wrapping the three immobile ones in plastic in the evening, and liberating them all in the morning. Hopefully, my efforts will pay off with actual tomatoes, maybe in early September, but I have doubts. Portland is not prime tomato-growing territory, even when the spring isn't greyer, colder, and wetter than usual.

*Which, given my job and my personal feelings, is a little upsetting. I spend a lot of time myself trying to encourage people to consolidate their trips in order to reduce driving, and the idea of pursuing a behavior that makes you drive MORE just seems crazy to me.

** Also, all the couponing/frugality blogs I've come across have emphasized to a creepy extent the importance of making your husband happy. One thrifty lady specifically mentioned that she buys a specific snack for her husband that he likes, and NOBODY ELSE CAN HAVE ANY. She doesn't buy treats for the rest of the family. He gets privileges he is the man, and he is supporting the family, and it is her job to make him happy. Another one specifically identified that her housekeeping goal is to make her husband happy, because it is his home that she is making.

*** Dear Multnomah County Library, I love you SO MUCH!!! I want to MARRY YOU!!!!!!! OMG, I LOOOOOOOOVE YOU!!!!!!!

**** I signed Dutch up for the following activities over the next four months: T-ball, soccer, swimming, and "Outdoor Living" day camp. This is nice and gender-neutral, but after reading half of this book, I think I need to find a good engineering day camp for her, too.

me, again!

Hi!

Hey, it was sunny here today! It was SEVENTY DEGREES here! Eat that, Disneyland!

My tomatoes are still alive. I wrapped them in plastic tonight, though.

Also, I got up early this morning. Holy cow, am I tired.

So, to summarize: still tired, better weather, still worried.

Sleep tight!

keeping the ball rolling

I've fallen out of the habit of posting on this blog, for lots of reasons,* and I'm going to try to post more. No, not better. Just MORE. You're welcome.

So... here is your tedious tidbit for today!

Today: Dutch barfed her breakfast right back up immediately after its intake. That was a bummer. She stayed home from school, and she even threw up again in the early afternoon, but she otherwise felt totally fine, so we think what's happening is that her poor stomach is so ravaged by the Saturday barf-a-thon that it's still working on repopulating its flora and fauna in order to handle normal food. And I really, really hope she doesn't barf any more.

Also today: I picked up my PTA-fundraiser tomato seedlings from the school (yes, even though Dutch wasn't in attendance), and transplanted three of them, in spite of my serious skepticism that they'll survive. Now I have more things to worry about.

That's the news. We're all settled back into normal life, except Barf Girl, who really enjoyed her one day back at school yesterday, and yearns to get back to it. Keep your fingers crossed for warm nights here, and lots of sunshine! And no barfing.

*I am so tired. SO TIRED. That's a big one. And I don't seem to have anything to say that's interesting even to me.

I'm back.

This week has been hectic. Skipper got a stomach flu and barfed (and had diarrhea) erratically for a few days, and then we went to Disneyland. (Cook stayed here so he could work!) We spent two days there with another family, and then we went to my dad's house in L.A. to spend a day and a half there.

So, Disneyland. Disneyland was fun. People really want to be there, and everybody wants to be happy, and so they kind of just are. My dad also pointed out that he and Dutch have a shared childhood experience now, because he went to Disneyland when HE was a kid, and that's pretty cool. I assume Disneyland's awareness of this is why they keep old rides that now seem really hokey. Anyway, it really is just... fun.

I made a major tactical error, and took the kids on Mr Toad's Wild Ride, practically first thing. Of course, Skipper hated it,* and that was pretty much that for her willingness to even try rides. This is a typical sample of what it was like on rides that she DID go on.

(Also, you may have noticed that at the very end of that clip, Dutch is saying "Mom, I'm scared." and I'm ignoring her because I'm trying to make Skipper stop wailing.) I don't really have much in the way of decent movies because of this problem. And I didn't bring the camera because I was trying to pack light. So you'll just have to imagine the experience - mostly Dutch being blissful, and Skipper being confused,** sometimes pissed off, and occasionally completely terrified.

This is the only thing at Disneyland that Skipper really liked. (Note that Dutch was very bored by it.)

Anyway, it went well. Dutch had a wonderful time, I had a pretty good time, and Skipper was confused. Then we went to my dad's house. And then Dutch started throwing up. And she didn't stop. She threw up FIFTEEN times in nineteen hours.*** The poor kid. However, she didn't die of dehydration or sheer misery, finally stopped throwing up last night, and rallied enough to get to the beach this morning before our early-afternoon flight. (Skipper, it turns out, hates dry sand but LOVES the waves, and she briefly reversed her position on wanting to go home.)

And now we're home. Dutch was really great most of the time, and complained very little about anything. (She got extensively lectured in advance about how this was a Big Treat, and she'd better not goddamned whine about anything, and also about how I would need her help because Cook wasn't there.) When we first got to California, while I was wrangling Skipper and figuring out how to get from airport to hotel, she fetched all our baggage off the carousel, without being asked, all by herself. She was helpful and not obnoxious nearly the whole time, and I was proud of her. (Yes, I told her so.)

And now we're HOME! We are all very happy to have Cook back, and to be home, and I'm also happy that nobody in the household is barfing.

*I don't know why anybody thinks that a ride that takes place in the dark, with loud noises and flashing lights, is going to be fun for anyone. As soon as it started, I remembered that I had hated that ride as a kid.

** The first night we spent in the hotel, it took forever to get Skipper to sleep. She kept asking questions about where we were, where Daddy was, did we really have to get on a plane to get back home, etc., and finally she said "dere no animals in here?" and I realized that she really needed me to tell her that this was a safe place to sleep, a place where tigers were not going to eat her, where she could relax her vigilance. Vacations are hard when you're two.

*** We are AWESOME house guests. Doesn't this make you want to invite us over?