FYI

These are Dutch's top five dinners, in no particular order:

Pumpkin corn chowder
Nachos*
Pesto with potatoes, green beans, and hardboiled eggs
Pasta of almost any kind, as long as it has ABSOLUTELY NO SPICE
Broccoli-cheddar melt sandwiches

*What? Don't look at me like that! We put grated zucchini and corn in it! It's a balanced meal!

36/40 weeks

I've heard lots of ways to describe labor. One of my aunties compared it to going through rapids in a kayak. "Don't backpaddle!" she advised (the most useful advice I got for Dutch's birth). A friend of mine related a metaphor she heard used by a friend of hers - giving birth is like moving, because you get to a point where you feel like you just can't lift one more box, but you HAVE to, because half your stuff is out on the sidewalk, and you can't stop. And I read something somewhere describing birth as being like having a Mack truck drive right out of your body. All of these similes* seem like good ones, in my limited experience.

I've reported before on how quickly Dutch was born. We're expecting that this labor will be fairly speedy as well (because of my super-fit uterus!), but of course there's no way to really predict what it'll be like, and it could very well be longer than the first time around. However, Cook and Dutch have both reviewed some info on What To Do In Case The Baby Gets Born Really Really Quickly,** because there's a chance that one or both of them might be the only ones around when this kid emerges.

Anyway, we're ready. Bring on the trucks and the kayaks and the cardboard boxes.


*I have recently realized that I have a very limited grasp on the difference between similes, metaphors, figures of speech, analogies, etc. - stuff I surely learned in 5th grade English class. I just looked it up, and I still don't really understand. But I'm not going to bother. I don't have the spare brain space at the moment. NPR reported today a news-of-the-weird-type blurb about some guy somewhere who accidentally jammed a spear 6 inches into his head - the doctors say he's going to be just fine, because he "didn't hit anything important." I'm pretty sure that I could Phineas-Gage myself and not hit anything important, these days.

**Step one: "Remove the clothing on the lower part of your body." After that, just try to have a clean soft place for the baby to land, and then cover it with a blanket while you wait for the EMTs. Don't cut the cord!

Hurts

Lately I've been admiring Dutch's relationship with her body, and, really, just the straight-up beauty of kids' bodies. Dutch has stretched out a lot (a LOT - she's HUGE) over the last year, and she runs like a baby giraffe, gawky limbs flailing. She moves, like all her peers, with this nutso spontaneity and glee that I can't remember ever feeling, though I'm sure I did at some point. They move as a direct expression of how they're feeling, and they are just crazy beautiful.

So this article broke my heart. And this story.

mindful parenting in three days

My three days of zen parenting are over. It wasn't so zen. Dutch and I had several arguments, and I've ignored her a lot. We've also done some nice reading together, and had some nice conversations, and she's demonstrated some emotional maturity and perceptiveness that I thought was kind of impressive. It rained a lot, and we spent most of the time in the apartment together. We cleaned a whole herd of dustbunnies out of the big bedroom, and washed the walls and baseboards in there, too. Baby X is going to be sleeping with us, and I feel a certain responsibility to at least do the kind of basic cleaning that I suspect most people do weekly.* Dutch liked that a lot; she pretended to be Snow White laboring cheerfully away, dressed in rags, and I was the Evil Queen (yay!). I gave her a small piece of hardbread to carry around in a bag to nibble on and pretend it was her only food of the day.

We've also done a bunch of thrift shopping, which we both enjoy, but which also brings us to confrontations about how she wishes to spend her allowance money. She spent $6 this weekend, on a Barbie doll,** an ugly little purse, and two books of Disney movie stories. These are very unappealing things, in my opinion, but way better than some of the other things she wished to buy - shabby and grubby stuffed animals, a white polyester dress, a vinyl stuffed car, a Flintstones movie. I  spent some time dissuading her from buying awful things - my position is that she is allowed to buy what she wants, but I can express my disapproval, and I can also limit her purchases to, say two items. I'm also soon going to have to start enforcing some kind of "buy one item, dispose of another" rule, in order to keep our apartment from overflowing. We've been rearranging furniture, in an attempt to achieve a configuration that allows us to move freely from room to room. We're not there yet.

Anyway, all I wanted to say was that we're not zen yet, either. I think I achieved approximately 48 seconds of mindfulness this week with Dutch. I'll shoot for a minute and a half over the three months of summer.

*Luckily, we've got a few more weeks left to build up a healthy layer of dust to give the new immune system a work out. 

**She now owns two, and the only way I can reconcile myself to this turned out to be by leading her into a plotline in which Barbie One and Barbie Two are married to eachother (they live in Canada). Their names are Hanna Barbie Orange and White Flower Petal.

unwittingly duped by feminism

The other day, when Trapeze Girl and I were complaining to eachother about pregnancy, we mentioned how nice it is not to have to be pregnant 20 or so times and raise 18 children. This morning, Cook came into the kitchen, with an appalled look on his face, to tell me about hearing a radio piece about the Quiverfull movement. Being pregnant at the moment makes me even more fervently grateful than usual that I have been coopted by the feminist movement and therefore am not going to be pregnant for most of my life. 

I was thinking about this, as I washed dishes* and I considered that it must be a tremendous relief to subscribe to this sort of approach to life. You don't have to think at all, or make choices - you just have kids and try to keep them alive (and I don't know, pray a lot or whatever). You don't have to strive to find and do meaningful work, you don't have to navel-gaze. You just have to be pregnant and tending to children ALL THE TIME (plus housework), if you're a woman, and work all day (and fill out public assistance forms all night, probably) if you're a man.  It's all laid out for you - have kids, and raise them in some sort of Godly way, and you're all set. Not that I think this is easy - I can't think of many jobs harder and more exhausting than raising 20 kids - but it requires no consideration, no decisionmaking. You don't have to consider whether or not you're making the right decision with your life, because it just kind of unfolds automatically once you give up the birth control option, and you've already been told It's The Right Thing to Do. If you didn't have a lot of choices to start with, you can find satisfaction and pride in Doing The Right Thing just by having sex occasionally, and then dealing with the consequences. You can look at your children as righteous achievements of yours. Arrows in your quiver. If you had too many choices, you can find comfort in brushing them all aside and just Doing The Right Thing. You don't have to make any proactive choices at all.

My striving to find meaningful and useful (or at least not damaging) work in the world, which hasn't actually gotten me anywhere or made any change in the world, involves an awful lot of angst that I could just toss aside if I decided to Do The Right Thing and become a permanent baby-vessel.

However, I like this life much better, angst and all, even leaving aside the issue of spending my life gestating and nurturing and making huge vats of pasta.** I believe that we'd all be better off if we took a little more time for thinking. Absolute confidence that you're Doing The Right Thing is pretty dangerous.  Also, it's just creepy to think of your kids as your arrows. Dutch is so obviously not our arrow, and deserves to be considered as a person, not as a notch in Cook's Godly bedpost. To painfully mix metaphors. Anyway, I'm stereotyping and dismissing something I don't understand. But hey, so are the Quiverfull people. 

This morning I made a relatively solid start to my three days with Dutch. She woke up at 6 (because she didn't have to - she has an unerring instinct about this, and always wakes up at least half an hour earlier on weekends and holidays) and wanted to watch the sun rise with me. I crawled out of bed, knowing that if I didn't, she'd just drive me nuts and get really frustrated, and then I'd have to get out of bed anyway. And hey, a teachable moment! So we watched the sun rise, which this morning pretty much just meant watching the cloudcover get paler, and we talked about the solar system, eclipses, perspective, and anatomy. Then I made breakfast while she colored my old Anatomy Coloring Book for a long time and interrogated me about muscles, which nicely integrated science and art in the homeschool curriculum for the day. This kid is so freaking enriched! Really, even though we ignore her as much as possible, and let her watch videos and buy horrible plastic dolls at the thrift store, she's one of the luckiest kids with one of the most "enriching" environments in the history of human beings. All because I've bought into feminism and family planning.

*I've mentioned how much I hate washing dishes, right? At least I've only got three people in my family for whom to wash dishes!

** And washing a billion dishes!!!

This system is obviously a jury rig.

If I were a blind watchmaker, I'm sure I could come up with a better way for people to reproduce, blind or no.  This way is totally ridiculous. 

I finally went swimming today, after a 2-week hiatus. It was wonderful. Getting that baby off my organs was wonderful. Getting in and out of the pool was not so wonderful, but I can still do it. (Barely.)

I talked yesterday to Trapeze Girl, who's due to have her second kid in the summer. She trumped all my pregnancy complaints. I'm feeling tired and beat up? She's been barfing for 10 weeks. I've got some occasional back pain? She's wearing an attractive back brace. I'm thinking a lot more this time around about worst case scenarios? She works in a NICU, spending all her time with desperately ill newborns. I felt much better after talking to her. I've got it easy!

However, Trapeze Girl is petite and slender, and thus is not told on a regular basis that she must be expecting twins or be already far past her due date. I understand that being pregnant makes a person kind of public property,* but I think everybody should think twice before implying (or outright saying) that a pregnant woman is the size of OctoMom.**   Here's a tip: "You look great!" is a sure-fire winner. You really can't go wrong with that.***

I'm feeling a little besieged. I think it's partly because I've been working in a large office during this pregnancy, and all the people I pass in the hall automatically default to talking about the pregnancy, since it's the easy topic. I'm looking forward to returning to a life in which I'm not defined by my reproductive status. Not that I don't end up talking about kids a lot with my coworkers (easy topic!), but it's not the same.

Anyway, tomorrow is the first day of Dutch's spring break! We're kicking it off with a grocery-shopping trip.

*Though I do think people should avoid saying "What are you having?" because it's really difficult for me not to snark at them and say "A baby!" or "A hedgehog!" or "A heart attack because YOU'RE SO LAME!"

**Even if she is.

***Even if she doesn't.

We all love Alec Guiness.

Dutch has been talking about Star Wars quite a bit lately; some kids in her class have been talking about Darth Vader. So she says things out of the blue like "Mom, Darth Vader is part human, part robot, right?" I got tired of trying to explain the plot to her, so we started a family Star Wars installment viewing last night. We got through about a third of the first movie before she reached her bored/scared/tired threshold. She's required substantial debriefing ("Princess Leia is a good guy, right? And R2D2 is funny, that little guy!") ever since, and spent some time this morning painting scenes from the movie. These pictures are of Leia, in a space ship ("with an angry mouth because the bad guys blew up her home!"), and Luke and Obi Wan Kenobi (whom Dutch seems to really like). See if you can identify them...

She seems to feel that having watched the movie will give her social currency. "I will tell Alpha Girl about Princess Leia and I will tell Other Random Boy about R2D2!!!" 

I'm refusing to go beyond the three original movies, though. I don't think George Lucas should ever have been given the power of digital special effects.

1100 square feet of lawn down, millions to go.

This news makes me feel a little swoony. I think you blew it on the whole AIG bonus thing, guys, but nice job on the kale! And the bees! Fantastic.

Equine enthusiasm and body image

Dutch is officially an American girl. She loves horses and ballet.

I'm definitely for the horse thing, because she gallops everywhere, which both exercises her and makes our trips go much quicker. Also, she generates a lot of good will, because it's a pretty hard-hearted person who isn't moved to smile by the sight of a little girl (usually wearing an outfit along these lines: flowered dress, striped knee socks, and a polka-dotted long-sleeved shirt) galloping down the sidewalk with her arms extended in front of her, braids flopping behind. Actually, it's almost entirely women who smile, probably remembering their own galloping years.*

She's agitating to own a horse (which will live out in the courtyard), and to have riding lessons. She seems, however, to accept that she will never own a horse, and that riding lessons may materialize only in a distant theoretical future in which our income is much, much greater. So for now she's cool with just galloping herself everywhere.

The ballet thing skeeves me out a little, though. It's so... body-fixated. All the mirrors, and the rules, and the requirement for a perfect ballet body. For now, Dutch is having a lot of fun with it, but at some point she's going to realize either that she's not having fun any more, or that ballet won't tolerate her imperfections any more. I think I'd be much happier if she was interested really in any other kind of dancing - tap dancing? Modern dance? African dance? Square dancing? Belly dancing? Really, anything. Cook is even more skeeved than I am. Luckily, we can't really afford to keep the ballet lessons going after The Big Show in June, so hopefully this fad will fade soon.

Part of our icky feeling is enhanced by a recent unpleasant development in Dutch's daycare classroom, which is that some of the kids have started talking about how fat other kids are,** using it as a put-down. This is really hard to handle, from a parenting perspective. What are we supposed to say? My first response to her about this went more or less like this: "Kid X is not fat. And even if she is, it doesn't matter. And it can hurt people's feelings if you say they're fat. And even though it's not very good for your body to be very fat, it's not something you should talk about. And it doesn't matter what people's bodies look like. And AAAAAAGGGGHHH I can't handle this! Ask me about the economy or death or something!"

Dutch is not skinny. She's not fat, but she's got a potbelly and is by no means waifish. And she loves to eat fattening food. Given my genetic and behavioral legacy, plus the reality of modern life, she will probably never be skinny, and will struggle with her weight all her life.*** How on earth are we supposed to equip her to think about weight? How are we supposed to communicate the extremely difficult balance that it's not okay to use people's physical characteristics as a point of leverage to hurt their feelings, and Appearance Is Not Important, but that we should strive not to be fat ourselves? Since I don't think many (any?) adults are able to balance those ideas, how are we supposed to express that to a 4-year-old? Any ideas? Anyone?

This all goes along with parenting a modern American kid, I guess. But sheesh. It seems so complicated.



* I don't think men are hard-hearted, as a rule. Just not interested in galloping.
** There are a couple of kids in her class who are (very) slightly plump, but due to the demographics, it's really a very slim class, compared to the American average.
***Unless society collapses and she has to spend her days avoiding armed thugs and foraging for bugs to eat, in which case we won't have to worry about body image.

Woozy

Today we had the kind of afternoon and evening that makes me marvel over why I ever wish I was somewhere else.

Cook and I went to Dutch's daycare this afternoon for a parent-teacher "dialogue" that we were slightly dreading. Dutch has been pretty whiny and melodramatic lately, which we entirely understand - not only is she expecting a sibling, but I've been crazy busy and she's been pushing herself toward independence quite a bit, all of which would make any 4-year-old a little volatile, even 4-year-olds not already inclined toward the silent-movie-acting approach to life. So we had this dialogue... and the teacher twice used the word "easy-going" to describe Dutch. Easy-going. I often forget that kids are so much more evil with their families than with the rest of the world, which is weird, because I am fully aware of how much more evil I am with MY family... But really. Compliant, yes. Curious, yes. Imaginative, yes. Expressive, yes. There are lots of fabulous things about Dutch. But... EASY-GOING??? No. I'm pretty sure that what she meant was "Easy for us to handle" because Dutch really is a pretty good kid from a teacher's point of view, and always helps clean up. She did allow as how Dutch sometimes has difficulty compromising on what and how to play,* but said that she's improving a lot.

Then the three of us went out for sushi, while I was still feeling happy that Dutch's teachers thinks she's nice to have in the class. Dutch, who used to devour toasted sheets of seaweed as a toddler, hasn't really warmed to sushi the three previous times we've tried introducing her to it, but we've held out hope, since she likes all the components. Tonight she ate an enormous pile of sushi, carefully, deploying an unconventional but effective chopstick technique, and declared a number of times "I LOVE this food!" She finally gave up on the chopsticks, asked for a fork, and promptly scooped a huge forkful of wasabi off the platter (she thought it was avocado). We stopped her just in time, and after we wiped the fork, she immediately stabbed the giant hunk of creamcheese out of her Philly roll** and ate it in one bite. Anyway, she was both pleasantly weird and weirdly pleasant all evening. And then we came home and ate cake. So really - a lovely evening.

Also, it's spring! Flowers are appearing all over the place.

AND! The new light rail extension will be deploying in the fall, and today I saw a train on the new track! It wasn't carrying passengers, and was presumably doing some sort of test run, but I was excited! I LOVE this public transit!


*Last night, Dutch asked Cook to join her for a pretend picnic in the livingroom. He eventually came and sat down, and she told him he was in the wrong spot. He told her he was comfortable. She told him he had to move over to the correct spot. He suggested they work out a compromise. She said no, calmly packed up her picnic, went into her room, and looked at books for 45 minutes.
** Bleagh!

Catching Up

1) I'm finished with the winter term! Now I just have to get through four more days of work (spread out over nearly three weeks), and then I'll have my table cleared of everything except gestating and The Big School Project. (My Big Project teammates, incidentally, are cool with the whole giving-birth-in-the-middle thing. One of them has infant twins, and cheerfully expressed the opinion that "you can do anything with just ONE baby at a time!")

2) Things are changing in Uterus Land. I'm not going to give any grisly details, but I will tell you that I am aware that my body is moving into the home stretch. This does not at all mean that I will give birth any time soon (the kid needs to marinate a few more weeks), but Anaximander and I have turned a corner.

3) I fell down this morning, crossing the street at higher speed than was wise.* I scraped my hands and knees, gave Anaximander a good thump (on my jacket-filled bag, fortunately, rather than the asphalt), and generally scared the bejeezus out of myself, Dutch, and a whole lot of horrified bystanders.** We all seem to be fine - it wasn't at all a serious fall, and the impact to my torso was pretty gentle. If it had happened to somebody else, I would confidently reassure them that everything is surely perfectly fine. But I felt shaky and scared all morning. Thinking about it right now is giving me the cold sweats. The world is a dangerous place! Also, I remembered that I fell while crossing the street when I was more or less this pregnant with Dutch,*** and I had the exact same horrifying sensation of crashing down and forward in slow motion, my legs scrambling under me like Wiley Coyote's, unable to recover myself because of my ridiculous center of gravity, the pavement coming up toward me... ugh.

4) I realized that the three days I have coming up with Dutch next week (her daycare is briefly closed during my spring break) will be our last sibling-free time off together. I'm going to try to be as mindful as possible for at least SOME of that time - it sounds silly and new-age-y, but I'd like to spend some time just being with her, without any agenda, to see what she's all about. I'm looking forward to it. I'm sure I will spend lots of time trying to rush her along on my agenda, and being irritated, and trying to avoid playing unicorn games, but I'm going to do my best.

5) I've found a fabulous summer camp for Dutch! It's located very close to us, and involves lots of outdoor-in-nature time (though they have a slightly alarming warning on the website that you shouldn't send your kid to this camp unless s/he "can be a real kid" - I'm hoping Dutch doesn't turn out to be a fake kid, because I've invested a lot in her, and that would be a bummer), AND has camps for 4-5-year-olds with the sort of themes that could have been custom-tailored for Dutch. I mean, really - giving her a choice between "Big House in the Little Valley" (aka "Old Days Camp") and "Faeries, Elves, and Mostly Friendly Dragons" (aka "Mom, there aren't really fairies, right? Right? Camp") is basically like giving her a choice between pink glitter and silver glitter.**** I told her she could go to one session (mornings only!), as I'm desperately going to need some time off from at least the one kid this summer, and we can't afford more than one week. She has chosen the first option, in spite of the fact that I told her firmly that they will not have horses and wagons available,***** and decided she'll do dragon camp next summer.

6) Dutch has declared her ambition to be, when she grows up, "a mom who lives on a farm and rides horses a lot." My girl dreams big. (Though, in fairness, this ambition is probably temporary and fueled by the reading of this series.)



*In my defense, I was engaged in playing, at Dutch's behest, a newly-minted game called "The Wife and The Unicorn," which requires some frolicking. All the unicorn games do.
**Apparently the sight of a massively pregnant woman crashing to the ground in the middle of the street is not a happy one.
*** NOT playing unicorn games; just attempting to cross the street before the light went red...
**** There's no right answer here. We just love glitter.
***** I've requested Little House in the Big Woods from the library, and am expecting to spend the next six months playing homesteading games. Which I think I'll probably like better than princess and unicorn games.