Performance anxiety

One of the girls in Dutch's ballet class dropped out just before the Big Show. I suspect it was due to stage fright; that kid was stricken with terror after each class when she had to do her farewell curtsy to the teacher in front of the waiting parents in the lobby. Cook expressed his sympathy, opining that some people, such as himself, "would rather crawl over a floor covered in broken glass then perform to an audience." However, Cook acted* in plays as a kid, and enjoys playing the clown for people with whom he is close.** So he's not exactly a non-performer. I like to perform, personally - I liked being in plays as a kid, and I like presenting to audiences now, even when I haven't got anything worthwhile to say. Dutch seems to have inherited every scrap of ham from both sides of the family, and I foresee years of dutifully volunteering backstage at various sorts of shows.

*and sang, dreadful as that is to contemplate.
**His comic timing is excellent, and his accents lovably atrocious.

pictures

First, an almost-smile from Skipper. She's been smiling a bit this week, but we haven't yet caught it on film; this is the best we've got.
This is what we more typically see. These photos show what it's like in our household these days. This is the invasion of the Bad Robot.
And this is this morning's adventures in Ballet-Painting.

This one's for you, Grandad! Dutch has been pretending to surf, in anticipation of our beach trip this summer.

Phew

I've perfected the "ballet bun." I'm a ballet bun genius! All it takes, after all, is 45 bobby pins and about half a pound of gel.

I forgot to bring the camera, so you'll never know how ridiculously cute Dutch looked in her ridiculous "frog princess" costume, and the video camera is out of batteries, so you'll never get to see the utterly hilarious frog princess dance, and you'll just have to take my word for all of it.

Cook watched the whole show, but he was too far away to be able to see much, and reported that he spent much of the time contemplating the poignance of little kids doing ballet. When I asked what he meant, he said "you know, birth, death, the innocence of youth, that sort of thing." Weirdly enough, I do kind of know, because watching the kids from the wings actually brought tears to my eyes. Something about their eager little faces and hoppity little bodies, and, you know, their lives ahead of them. That sort of thing.

Of course, I also had the much-less-poignant experience of spending about five hours out of the last 30 stuck in a room with a whole bunch of revved-up "ballet-ers," ranging in age from 4 to 7, all dressed in rented costumes, with their hair falling out of their perfect buns, and FORBIDDEN TO EAT ANYTHING. It was getting kind of scary by the end of each performance- they were all hyper and starving and the situation was rapidly devolving to a let's-get-Piggy point. We all survived, though, even The Totally Loony Kid who stole food, screeched backstage, and ordered me to "watch!" and then picked her nose and ate the booger. Dutch was a star, of course, well-behaved, cheerful, charmingly excited, non-nose-picking, and attentive to all instructions. (You'd never guess she's a horrible brat at home, if you met her out in the world.) She was very proud of herself. And I'm SO glad it's over for the summer. Dutch has the option of starting ballet again in the fall, if she wants and our budget permits, but I'm hoping she just sort of forgets about it.

Birth and death

First, here's an opinion by Judith Warner, from the Times (of course) about abortion and Dr. George Tiller.* People like babies (and pregnant women) because of their clean-slate-y-ness. Brand-new babies haven't yet shown us their human-ness. They haven't been petty or mean or cruel or stupid or boring yet. It's easy to forget that babies will grow up to be ordinary people, and it's easy to assign them all the good qualities they probably won't have. I think this irrational perspective is kind of necessary, from an evolutionary point of view, so we as a society will take care of babies as well as possible. But in the pro-life world, most of the time it translates into a sort of deification of unborn babies, and total neglect of babies/children/teenagers/adults after that clean-slate thing wears off. Which is totally crappy.

Second, on a semi-related depressing note, here's something I've been thinking about a bit. Near where I live in Portland, a woman recently threw her two small children off a bridge into the Willamette River in the middle of the night. The younger child, who was Dutch's age, died, and his 7-year-old sister was rescued. The comments on online articles about this mostly fall into the category of "she is evil, torture her and throw her in the river." We can have no idea what happened, really. The story is that she did it as revenge on her husband over a custody struggle. My personal narrative about it is about the power that parents have over our children. We are stronger than they are, they are dependent on us, and we are the center of their worlds. We can throw them off real and emotional bridges any time we like. But mostly... we don't. Even parents under terrible stress, with very limited resources, take this responsibility seriously. I think that's pretty amazing.

Last, here's a video Trapeze Girl sent me. I love the magic word the mother says!

Yet another picture of a confused-looking baby.

What a difference a day makes

Today, by 8:30 I was clothed and somewhat groomed, Cook and Dutch had been gone for half an hour, the breakfast dishes were washed, the ballet bag (the BIG SHOW is tonight and tomorrow morning, and I'm totally dreading it) was packed, and the laundry put away. There are two differences between yesterday morning and this morning - first, Skipper and I woke up an hour earlier, and second, Dutch now has a Chart.

Last night Cook put it together* for her, with her 6 key morning tasks. If she does all of them properly and promptly, she gets a sticker for the day. Once she's got 10 stickers, she gets to choose a movie to rent from Blockbuster. This is a big deal because we always rent our movies from the library, which means we have to wait (sometimes a very long time) for them. Instant gratification is a big deal for preschoolers.**

This morning we explained it to her, and she had tasks 1 and 2 done before Cook and I even crawled out of bed. She was standing by the door wearing her shoes (all tasks done) before Cook finished his coffee. The novelty and motivation will no doubt wear off soon, but it was a great morning.

Fun note for my vast reading audience of Swedes - our Picasa is still operating entirely in Swedish, and I just spent about 15 minutes trying to copy photos from my camera onto the harddrive - I kept clicking "avbryt," because my other option was "slutfor" which sounded like "stop" to me. Then I googled it, and when you google "slutfor," you get awful results. But I figured it out.

* He did it on the computer, using Illustrator, because he's like that - I would have done it on cardboard with crayons.

**And adults. Well, for me at least.

This week's movies

Skipper, sleeping in the Chair of Doom yesterday. This was a random and brief occurrence - I put her down awake right after nursing her, and she slipped into her usual post-nursing three-minute coma. But look at her in her brightly-colored onesie, twitching adorably as she dreams happily of the boob! Also, note the freaky Cook-family-open-eyed-sleeping thing.



And here's Skipper* deploying just a few of her vast arsenal of facial expressions, most of which seem to be designed to communicate one of five basic messages:
1) Hey, lady, bring those breasts over here RIGHT NOW!
2) Who ARE you people, anyway, and why are you making those weird noises?
3) AAAAAAAHHHHHH! WHY CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!!!
4) Well, I guess this is okay.
5) Uh-oh. I feel that something bad is about to happen.

*And yes, that is Shakira playing in the background of the video. Whenever, wherever! I'm trying to ensure that Skipper grows up listening to more than just jazz (Cook), musicals (Dutch) and ballet scores (um... Dutch). 

Cranky

Cranky is a great word. Just look at it! It looks just like it ought.

And I am cranky today. (Again.) Bear with me (or stop reading right now, because I am very whiny - perhaps it's contagious).

About one out of four mornings, Skipper goes back to sleep after her 6-AM-ish nursing session, and Cook and I have a tacit agreement that I get to sleep in with her. * This morning was one of those, so I woke up at 8, 15 minutes before the arrival of the bus that Cook likes to catch. I was, of course, still tired, and would have been happy for about 10 hours more of sleep, but things needed to be done.

Skipper wanted to nurse again (because when she's not sleeping like an angel overnight, she wants to nurse at least once every 90 minutes). We had no clean diaper covers, so Skipper was wearing only a cloth diaper, which soaks through instantly. Dutch was being awful, refusing to dress and complaining of every possible ache or illness she could think of (her nose really really hurt, and her heart really hurt too, and she couldn't feel it pumping!), and finally throwing a knock-down-drag-out tantrum over the fact that her vast shoe collection did not contain ANY SHOES SHE LIKED. Skipper peed on Cook's freshly-ironed shirt. Skipper cried a lot. We remembered a load of wet laundry, including diaper covers, left in the washer overnight.

They finally left, half an hour late, Dutch in tears, but at least dressed and shod and walking of her own volition. I looked around the apartment, which was littered with detritus - rejected (nonsparkly) shoes, granola from Dutch's breakfast, dustbunnies, blankets from fort-making, clean and soiled washcloths for the mopping of baby barf, drafts of my BSP report, crayons, a bag of wet laundry...

I changed Skipper, put a wet diaper cover on her, wrapped her to me , walked around till she fell asleep, drank a cup of coffee, hung the wet laundry on the rack, ate a bowl of granola and yogurt, checked my email for BSP emergencies, and looked at the New York Times website. And here I am. I'm still wearing my pajamas, and haven't brushed my teeth or hair. Skipper's sleeping uneasily. I am feeling dismayed by how horribly Dutch behaves AND how horribly I behave when she does it. I am feeling peevish about carrying a 10-pound baby on my body all the time. I am feeling guilty for writing whiny blog posts and not just getting up and cleaning the apartment. Ugh.

Also, I'm feeling a little crushed by the Times articles I've been reading.

This article doesn't tell us anything new, but is deeply depressing. After reading it, I opened the three pieces of mail we got yesterday from various parties involved in Skipper's and my health insurance. During the last six months, I've gotten probably a hundred "This is Not a Bill" notices about my prenatal care and Skipper's postnatal care. We've only gotten a few actual bills so far, but the flood of information about how much we're going to have to pay is scary. The cost of a healthy pregnancy and an uncomplicated birth is three or four months of rent. The cost of having a baby spend three days in the hospital is even more. Skipper has nearly reached her individual maximum for the year. I have no maximum, because I have crap insurance** through school.*** We can pay the bills, and we're not yet at the point in our health or finances where we have to decide which health-maintaining prescription we're going to fill this month. But it is just so astonishingly wrong. The whole system is just SO WRONG. As Dutch would say, it's totally poop-head poopy. With pee on top.

Speaking of things that are wrong, how on earth have we gotten to the point where we need legislatures to ensure our right to dry?

Anyway. I've got to turn off the computer and wash some dishes. I think I've reached my self-pity threshold for the day, and possibly the whole week. But first, things to cheer me up:

1. Skipper has grown into a wardrobe of festive and brightly-colored onesies!
2. We have fresh strawberries!
3. Big School Project is almost done!
4. Obama gave a speech about Islam and didn't use the word "terrorism" once!

*We haven't actually discussed it, but in my mind it's fair because I'm the one nursing her all night long.
** Because Kaiser won't insure me because I grind my teeth at night
*** Which means I have to take at least five credits a quarter so I won't lose it. If I got really sick and had to drop out of school (or, say, skip a quarter in order to have a baby), I would lose my health insurance. This is a bad way to care for people.

Mitigating

I think I may have been just a wee bit negative in my last post. Just a little. So I want to say that even though Dutch frequently behaves horribly, she also frequently is hilariously funny, delightfully loving, and surprisingly interesting. Apparently, these things come in a package. Actually, if only she would spontaneously stop with the potty talk,* I'd say she's pretty awesome.

Also, Skipper, while not the cheerful, calm, peacefully-sleeping baby of my dreams, is starting to be a bit of a person. She's still not truly smiling, perhaps because she thinks potty talk is not amusing, but she occasionally busts out a sort of proto-smile that even looks a little cynical to me, like maybe she's laughing AT me and not with me. Being cynical myself, I find that pretty charming. And she is still an easier baby than her predecessor, more willing to sit around and watch things happening, and more prone to staying asleep once convinced to go there. I am very grateful for the nighttime sleeping; we're still massively sleep-deprived, and I'm sure things will deteriorate, but she's been pretty easy at night during this crucial period when I'm in school. Anyway, she's been working hard - she's gained 1.5 inches and 3 pounds since birth. This is not to be sneered at; increasing your weight by 40% in six weeks (five, actually, since she didn't get back up to her birthweight until a week later) is a spectacular achievement. We really don't recognize very often how much WORK babies have to do, what with all the growing and learning and pooping. She also now spends a lot of time staring at our faces, looking confused. It's not easy.

Also, this week I have re-discovered (again) my fondness for Terry Pratchett. He's probably where I get my footnoting habits from.

And BSG is almost done!

Hooray!

* We decided to not pick this particular battle. She's not allowed to talk potty at daycare, except in the bathroom, and she is just bursting (so to speak) with the subversive joy of fecal chat, so it has to come out (so to speak) somewhere. We don't laugh at it, and we've made it clear that we're not interested in it, but we let her talk about poop and pee in an endless tedious loop. She makes up songs... hopefully it'll be over soon.

Yesterday I walked out the door wearing a nursing undershirt, pants, and Skipper. It only occurred to me on the way to the bus stop that I should probably go back and get a shirt to wear for my meeting with faculty advisers.

Today, Dutch left the apartment in Cook's arms, struggling and screaming, because she didn't want to daycare because she was wearing a green dress, in which she COULD NOT BE A UNICORN. She could ONLY be a FLOWER, and she wanted to be A UNICORN. She was also not pretty enough. And if we made her go to daycare, she was going to POOP on us. (I checked with Cook after he got to work; she didn't carry out the threat.)

Skipper will now only stay asleep in the crib for 5-10 minutes at a time during the daytime,* so I am spending an awful lot of time with her attached to me.

I have been very angry at Dutch. I have not been very nice to her.

Two nights ago, I attempted to cut Cook's hair. I was able to do this only in two 5-minute periods while Skipper slept. His hair looks very odd.

My Big School Project is rapidly approaching deadline.

I'm really looking forward to summer.



*She is still sleeping beautifully at night, though. Good girl!

Someday.

I dream about this. Is that bad, that I have a 6-week-old and a 4-year-old (and gosh they're so precious and I treasure every minute with them) and am already fantasizing about how fabulous it'll be when they're grownups? Dutch and I have talked about it, how she and Skipper will come over and have dinner at my house* and she will get things down off tall shelves for me (because we all expect she'll be at least three inches taller than me) and we will watch grown-up movies together. We're both really looking forward to it.

*For some reason we think I'm going to live in a house at some point.