updates are piling up!

I just quit my job. That is to say that I gave a month's notice, which I think is very generous of me, since I would like to just not go to work any more, starting tomorrow. I have no job prospects, but I'm just burned out on going to a job I don't really like that barely pays for the childcare required. I'm going to have to make a big effort to keep up my connections and apply for lots of jobs, but it feels like the right decision. Scary, but still right.

I guess that's really my only update. I only have 4.5 more hours of being uninsured, too!

Spelling

Yesterday Dutch brought home a piece of paper on which she had written, with no help whatsoever, a sentence about what she did this weekend: "I plade with my sesdr."

Dhtuhk

Skipper is talking a lot more. She says "stuck" and "blanket" and "water" and "bicycle" and others survival-related things like that. Yesterday she and Dutch were dancing to music, and Skipper's ragged thumbnail kept getting snagged in the cape Dutch had dressed her in. She would come over to me, showing me her dilemma, and say "Dhtuck" which of course means "stuck" and then I would laugh at her and she would get all mad and flap her free hand at me and say "Heppy! HEPPY!" which of course means "help me, goddamn it!"

This is Dutch with the Best Baby Ever,* the day of my brother's wedding this weekend. (The BBE, who is 2 weeks old and is freaking ADORABLE, is some sort of cousin. Best I can tell from wikipedia, the BBE is my first cousin once removed, and Dutch's second cousin. Or something.)

*The baby is sleeping, not dead. In case you were worried.

Two girls, each aged 17 months

Lactindependence

I forgot to mention another thing that happened recently - I stopped breastfeeding Skipper.

There are people who think 17 months is really old for weaning, and people who think it's young. For us, weaning was a compromise with both kids. They would both have been happy to keep nursing, but I wasn't enjoying it, especially this time around, and once the kids were eating a respectable volume and variety of foods, I was ready. Skipper took longer because she loved the boobs. Dutch weaned when she was about 15 months old, but she nursed only for sustenance and not for comfort.* Skipper weaned without too much protest, but she would happily have kept on nursing 20 times a day for the rest of her childhood, I think.

Last night, I lay down next to Skipper at bedtime (the time and position in which we were doing the only nursing of the day for about a month) and she asked to nurse. I said no. "We don't nurse any more, honey." She started to cry, and I hope it was only my sentimental tendency that made it sound like a deeply heartfelt wail of sorrow.

I miss the intimacy and cuddliness of breastfeeding, and I feel a little pang that I'll never nurse another baby, but I'm also very glad to have my body back to my own self.

* For comfort, she sucked on my neck. Seriously. Look:

Hooray!

It's World Car-Free Day! What are you doing to celebrate?

Umm...

Lots of things have happened, but I don't seem to have anything interesting to say about them.

My little brother got married. I will post pictures when I get my hands on some; we didn't bring our camera. The important point is that my little BROTHER got MARRIED. Dutch had a wonderful time, felt very, very important doing her flower-girling, and will be doing her weekly "sharing" at school tomorrow about her experience. At the end of the wedding evening, she sobbed (shortly after she told me, weeping a little into her salad plate, "I am falling APART!!!") "This was the best day of my WHOLE LIFE!"

I have joined the BTA and the PTA. I didn't think I'd ever join either of those organizations.

I have commuted about 50 miles by bike this month. My butt hurts less now, but jeez. I have a long commute.

I am currently uninsured (but only for nine more days). Don't hit me with your car, please.

Dutch has taken to throwing huge, horrible tantrums. I guess the school transition isn't going quite as smoothly as it seemed.

Skipper requests "soup" for all her meals, as of yesterday.

Our downstairs neighbors still hate us.

That's the news...

The little one.

Skipper is growing! I don't know how big she is, physically (though she still fits easily into 12-18-month-old clothing), but she is making big developmental jumps in language and emotional maturity, which is exciting. This is your un-edited report on what she's up to these days.

Last night she woke up at 2 AM and wanted to chat, and Cook heroically got up with her. She asked to use the potty, pooped, and then sat in her highchair and ate a rice cake. (I don't know what Cook was doing while she ate. Possibly napping on the floor.) She went back to sleep eventually, but she spent a lot of time talking happily to us while we tried to sleep.

She says some recognizable words now, and tells recognizable stories in words and sign (eg "Daddy. Bicycle. Bye-bye." or "Skipper. Eat. Cereal.").

She loves her menagerie of dolls and animals, and carries an armload of them around. She likes trucks and books. Especially books about trucks.

She's had three days at her fancy new daycare.* She cries at drop-off, but I can hear that's she's done crying before I leave the yard, and the teacher reports that she seems happy during the day.

These pictures were taken by the babysitter last week. I think they give you an idea of what Skipper's like right now.

*It's a Montessori daycare, and pretty hard-line on the whole Montessori cult/philosophy. I'll have more to say about that in the future. For now, imagine wood floors, wooden toys, three kids, a very young punk-styled teacher with an undergrad degree in wood-carving (plus a Montessori training certificate), gluten-free vegan meals, and kind of a lot of rules. It's both soothing and a little scary.

And that's all.

Now that I've posted two long posts whining about my issues with Dutch's school, I feel the need to say that the school seems perfectly fine, there seems to be quite a bit of parent engagement, and Dutch is very comfortable there already. Which is fantastic. Two thumbs up!

There's more.

So, my next problem with school: the food. Because we are relatively poor, Dutch gets school lunch at the reduced price of $.40, and breakfast for free. Because I'm lazy, and that's pretty freaking cheap, I'm inclined to have her eat school food every day. But... the food is kind of crap. Portland Public Schools is working REALLY hard to improve their food, but there's only so much you can do with a miniscule budget and limited kitchen capacity, so there's a lot of mystery meat and white processed starchy things. Dutch has eaten school lunch for both her lunches, and my impression is that she's one of only a handful of kids who do.* This doesn't bother her, and she likes the food.

We've also been browbeating her about what she eats. The kids are served an entree, and can choose between chocolate or regular milk and then select fruit and vegetable options from a salad bar. She has drunk chocolate milk two days in a row, despite having been told after day one that she could have it only once a week. She argued that the regular milk costs extra, which is not true, but she seemed to genuinely believe it. We've also been interrogating her about her fruit and veggie consumption - we want her to eat a fruit and a veggie. Day one, she ate strawberries and sugar snap peas (I told you they were working hard on their food!), but day two she ate a plum and fruit salad. Her ability to differentiate between fruits and vegetables is legitimately wobbly. We'll keep after her on that...

AND the teacher told her she couldn't bring her water bottle into the cafeteria, which I have to follow up on, if only to file a formal complaint at the district level. (I suspect it's USDA policy - at the kids' former daycare, no water could be served at the table at all, lest it undercut the dairy industry's stranglehold on kids who get USDA food. )

Anyway, I am very grateful for all the work of activist parents, administrators, teachers, and cafeteria staff across the nation and locally, because I know the lunch Dutch bellies up to every day is much, much better than it would have been ten years ago.

Lastly, Dutch informed us with wide eyes that the cafeteria workers are REALLY, REALLY OLD. "They're EVEN OLDER than you, mom!" Apparently the music teacher is also perilously close to the grave. I had no idea that the school staff was made up of nonagenarians.

*Washing me in a wave of insecurity - does it make me a terrible mommy that I'm too lazy and cheap to pack my child a lunch of homemade, nutritious, delicious food? Well, possibly. Also, now Dutch is in the habit of saying "goddamn" as in "Mom, I can't tie my goddamn shoes!" and that's definitely my fault, too.