Not practicing

This is Dutch, in the closet, with a small portion of her Stuff. She ONLY wears dresses and tights now, and won't even wear pajamas, only nightgowns.

Yes, it's a bull.

One of the Things Dutch recently really really wanted (and bought, for $6 at the thrift store) was a bull stick toy.*



















She loves it. She gallops it around the apartment, and tends to it lovingly when it gets sick. (It gets sick a lot.) It's a "girl bull" and her name is Alice.**

*Apparently that's what it's called, though when you google that, you get some really unpleasant results.

** Incidentally, AZ, this is YOUR fault for sending her $4 for her birthday. Please come visit soon, so you can spend hours helping her tend to the sick bull.

Also, too much NPR

Portland is trying to decide right now whether to give a giant heap of cash to finance a sports stadium. The lovely ironic twist to this is that the guy who wants the stadium (for a major league soccer team) is actually Henry Paulson's son. This makes for lots of jokes about father and son asking for taxpayer money.

But the whole thing drives me nuts. I keep thinking that the data on this issue is pretty obvious - public financing for sports facilities is a Bad Idea - and it keeps coming back. Rich people always get what they want, seems like, even when it's obviously a Bad Idea. If you're not rich, you have to pay for your mistakes, but if you're rich, you can screw up whenever you like, and walk away with a big old cash payout.

This morning I was listening (of course) to NPR, and heard a story about nonprofits struggling for money right now. The need for social services is skyrocketing, and the public and private capacity available to help those in need is plummeting. They highlighted a shelter in DC for abused families that's scrambling for financing. Then they moved on to a story about the impact of the economic collapse on PROFESSIONAL SPORTS. Apparently, GM is not going to sponsor Tiger Woods anymore.

Poor Tiger. Poor professional athletes everywhere.

The Springiest Guy in Spain.

Obviously I'm reading the New York Times too much these days, but this article is just awesome.

Ugh

Okay, this article is driving me nuts. Go read it, or at least look at the picture and the caption, and then come back.

So what do you think? Is McKenna lucky to have a mommy who forgoes her designer jeans to give her what looks to me like hundreds of dollars worth of toys?

These are the things that annoy me about this article:

1. Kids are part of the family.

“I want her to be able to look back,” Ms. Hunt declared, "and say, ‘Even though they were tough times, my mom was still able to give me stuff.’ "

Lots of stuff. I know I'm a miserly and misanthropic Luddite, but sheesh. Cutting back on Stuff for yourself so you can give them (excessive) piles of unnecessary Stuff is silly. I'm not talking about parents giving their children all of the 14 corn kernels they have managed to forage to eat that day, which is seriously not silly. I'm talking about making your kids part of your family experience. Giving your kids tons of useless Stuff when the whole family budget is reduced is silly. Making your kid believe she is the center of the world, not a part of a family and a society, is silly.*

2. Designer jeans are silly.

3. It is NOT A BAD THING TO NOT SPEND MONEY!!!!!!!! It is a GOOD IDEA!!!!!!!!

4. Shopping kills people.


* I'm not sure I practice what I preach. Dutch definitely thinks she's the center of the universe. Dutch is a tremendously lucky kid, with wonderfully generous family and friends, and she has a ridiculously large amount of Stuff. But she knows we can't afford most of what she wants (or we want), and she knows that if she wants something, she can buy it with her allowance... we'll see if she turns out a miser or a spendthrift.

Ambivalence

When we were expecting Dutch (not that we were really expecting HER, exactly), everyone around us was delighted and supportive.* I quit my job to be home with her fulltime, and Cook was working at a fulltime job with benefits. While we were on a pretty tight budget, at least we had some stability. This time around, we have a much tighter budget, no stability, no benefits, and not exactly terrific financial prospects. Plus, we're older, and have been living in a post-collegiate, starting-up-a-career limbo state for 11 years, so we're starting to look like the irresponsible, never-grows-up characters in a family drama, not the go-getter young family. Not to mention that the whole economy is blowing away like a sand dune. So the responses we get to the statement "We're having a baby!" are less effusive, and frequently fall into the category of "On purpose?!"

This is probably also affected by the way we present it. While this is (really) a planned pregnancy, both Cook and I were taken aback when the "plan" actually came to fruition, before we'd really thought it through carefully. It was a pretty reckless decision. There are two issues here - whether to have a second kid at all, and if so, when to have it. There are actually pretty good reasons to have a second kid now rather than later (aging eggs, flexible schedule, availability of cheap and excellent childcare, etc.), but there aren't really any good reasons for us to have a second kid, except that Dutch will need help hunting and gathering enough food and bartering materials to support her aging parents in the post-apocalyptic world we're anticipating. Our philosophy on this can be more or less summed up as "what the heck - why not?" but we're definitely feeling a lot more ambivalent than with Dutch.

Anyway, yes, we are thrilled about the impending arrival of our offspring. It's going to be a pain in the ass, and I don't have a clue how our future will pan out. But having a kid is an investment in the future, and while that's a scary thing to invest in right now, it feels like the right thing to do. Plus, I really can't wait to meet our new person.

However, anything you can do over the next year or so to fix the economy and create new jobs for planners and cartographers would be greatly appreciated.

* Though I was a mere 28 years old when Dutch was born, which is more or less the equivalancy of a teen pregnancy in my peer group, so many people were surprised.

Daddy was a history major.

The scene: Dutch and I are riding a bus, as usual.

Me: Good thinking, Lincoln!*
Dutch: Lincoln, like the Lincoln sisters!
Me: Well, there was a famous president named Lincoln.
Dutch: Yes. Boof killed him.
Me: What?
Dutch: Boof killed him!
Me: Yeeesss... how did you know that?
Dutch: Daddy told me!
Me: Oh.
Dutch: Also, Lincoln made there be no more slaves anymore.
Me: Uh, yes. Sort of.
Dutch: What show was Lincoln going to see when Boof killed him?
Me: The limits of my historical knowledge have been reached.


* Something my parents always said to me. I have no idea where it comes from.

It's a...

???

The fetus kept its legs demurely crossed for the ultrasound, making it impossible to see if I should be investing in pink lacy wraps or plain navy-colored ones. The tech and the doctor both leaned toward girl, but cautioned me not to "invest any emotional or financial resources" in its femininity. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and all that.

So it could be a girl, could be a boy, could be... something in between! Fortunately, even Dutch doesn't have a preference, though we would have liked to know. Also, we don't mind dressing a boy baby in pink. Most importantly, s/he appears to have all the important body parts, and is exactly the right size. And hey, look, isn't s/he adorable?

What a kid.

Today was kind of a marathon. First, there was Dutch's last circus class, which included a 10-minute "performance" at the end for parents to watch. Dutch, in a sparkly leotard,* with her hair in pigtails, like a small, very very unathletic Nadia Comaneci, followed all the directions scrupulously, beaming. Other kids tumbled around chaotically, or were distracted by their parents in the audience, but not my girl. She had a fantastic time, and she worked really hard. I was pretty proud of her.

Then she and I went to the library, the bakery, and the grocery store. Then we went home, ate a quick lunch, and went to a birthday party. Then we went straight downtown, where I handed the kid over to Cook so they could go to a play together. I came home, made dinner, and am now sitting down for what feels like the first time all day. I rode seven buses and waited an hour and half at bus stops. Which brings me to my second point of pride. That kid can WAIT. Due to some combination of personality and 4-years-and-one-week of waiting for buses, she's really great about waiting. She plays weird games (today she was, among other things, a robot, Velvet Brown, and a kid in desperate need of surgery [as would you be, if your liver was IN YOUR HEAD]) and she sings tuneless songs that surely drive the other waiters nuts. I don't mean that she's terribly well-behaved or that she's always so patient; she often whines and complains and demands attention. But if you've got to wait in the rain for half an hour for a bus with any 4-year-old in the world, I think this one's a great candidate.


































And, wait! There's more! There was a pinata at the party, and Dutch whaled the bejeezus out of that thing! I was so proud! The other kids her age tentatively tapped the thing, but not my girl. Screw ballet lessons; this kid is ready for baseball!













Anyway, she's a great kid. That's all I wanted to say.


* We inherited a box of gymnastics and ballet clothes from a classmate of mine who has three daughters, and Dutch loves them. They make for a hilarious contrast between Dutch's appearance of competence and her ACTUAL competence.

Exhausting company.

At Dutch's party, we were reminded of how ruthlessly forthright 4-year-olds are. I was in Dutch's room with one of the girls, and she turned to me and said accusingly "you guys don't have very many toys." A while later, another kid said something pointless (as 4-year-olds also do) and I said something like "that sounds nice," and she looked at me witheringly and said "I wasn't talking to you."

It's kind of refreshing, for a little while, but it only took about half an hour of five 4-year-olds in my apartment before I got to wishing for some nice adult white lies.

REM

This morning Dutch told me, for the first time ever, about a dream she had had. She dreamed that she went to watch Cook play frisbee, and the "coach"* told her that the police were looking for her, because she had gone to the game without her parents. Then she ran away and hid from the police. Age four seems like a good time to launch a life of hiding from the police.**


*There is no coach in pickup ultimate frisbee. It would dampen the free spirits and merry companionship.

** Actually, this whole dream was probably prompted by a weird experience she had a week ago. She and Cook were sitting on a log by a trail in the wildlife refuge, eating crackers and drawing pictures of leaves, when two police officers approached them and said something along the lines of "We have a call in for you." Cook says his blood ran cold, in spite of his completely square and legal lifestyle. The officers said they were looking for a man and a missing child. Cook explained that this was not, in fact, a missing child. The officers called their dispatcher, and determined that what they were looking for was a man in his early twenties in the company of an 8-year-old boy wearing a white sweater, not a man in his early thirties in the company of a 3-year-old girl wearing a blue dress. Close, though.