Ya'll. Hi. I kinda have nothing to blog about. I mean, a lot happened this weekend with my Denver buddy and her 4 1/2 mo. old daughter, but because of her visit I'm feeling a very pleasant lack of angst. I don't need to vent; I don't need to process. Instead of my usual psychic choppiness I'm feeling like a still pond after a cooling rain.
Like my PBS yoga show imagery? Good. Me too.
I'm even feeling the love for Anonyhubby again, even though he managed to get in a few digs about my tendency to micromanage Anonybabe's diet. To whit: "What!?" (He feigns shock to my buddy who is letting her daughter mouth food as she seems to become interested in it) "You're letting her mouth touch apple?" (and at this point he goes to the list that's posted on the refrigerator from this book, showing when certain foods can be introduced to her) "Why that's not on the list...you know, THE List?...for one...two...three! Three months! Heaven help you!" I think he found great relief in hamming it up for my friend, who had to giggle uncomfortably while he vented because really, she's on his side when it comes to chilling the fuck out, but she's on my side when it comes to husbands who want to mock and humiliate you.
But still, giving all of my attention to my friend and her awesome little one was like a little vacay from Anonyhub, and I "came back" all refreshed and ready to dig him again. Hell, hanging out with my friend was a little vacay, period. She's fun. We bundled up ourselves and our babies in the gawd awful subzero temperatures and sallied forth to a baby boutique, a vegetarian breakfast, the southside for a lunch with her in-laws, a sushi place, her sister's, a latin fusion restaurant, and my doula's where we finally cashed in on the massage my buddy was supposed to get the night I went into labor with Anonybabe.
On the way to the massage we fishtailed in the approximately 2 solid inches of ice covering all of the non-major roads of Evanston - we hear most of the suburbs are short on salt this winter - and ended up getting the nose of my Camry wedged against one car's wheel well and the tail end sitting about half an inch from a car directly across the street while we sat blocking traffic. It took a village to get us out of that one, with car owners and neighbors shuffling carefully out onto the ice to help direct moving the cars and our babies cooing in the car while one or the other of us got out to do damage control. I won't do the owner of the car I dinged justice here, but she was an 80 year-old Chinese woman who'd been drinking already (10am)! And would flap her arms violently at us when we would try to help walk her over the ice between her car and her house. "You people leave me alone!" Other than her aversion to being helped over slippery terrain, she was very accommodating, offering to let us come inside with the babies and telling us not to worry about the crack to her rear bumper. I'm still waiting to get a sober call from her asking for repair money.
All in all, it was a little sun, a lot of ice, a little laughing, a little relaxing, a lot of good eating...a lovely weekend.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Tabula Rasa
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Take Me to Your Leader
Yesterday I was feeling my usual inadequacy as a parent, in a very self-indulgent look-how-bad-I-suck-at-this way.
I told you how many more giggles Anonyhub has always been able to elicit from Anonybabe, and last night was no exception. I would ham it up and just get the same blank stares she gives strangers. I find these stares more than withering, precisely because they aren't meant to be. They don't say "you're stupid", they say "no really...what on earth could you possibly be doing? I'll just sit here and wait for you to calm down and see if you eventually manage to do something I can connect with."
And then there's a problem I've seen coming from a long way back and see stretching into my future with Anonybabe. I'm not an authoritarian person. At all. I hate being in charge; I back off from any confrontation, and I have a bit of a anarchist streak that says authority is not to be trusted or respected anyway and everyone should just tend to themselves. And here's what I think about that: do you know how much easier it is for a parent and their kid if the parent is unequivocably in charge? A lot. It doesn't mean the relationship is then happy or great by any means, but it at least eliminates these uneasy power struggles. This doesn't mean the parent has to be a hardass or an asshole about it, but I think it is the parent's job - like it or not - to fill the role of boss and then train the kid for it until the kid is able to take on that role themselves. I still haven't fully accepted that I have to be the boss of my baby. And I worry that she's going to turn out to be an out of control brat, at least around me. That, my friends, would make me, my daughter, and anybody around us unhappy.
So first I need to pep talk myself into taking on the role of parent. Pep point #1: it's just a role. A necessary role. I gotta pick it up with relish knowing I can lay it down as I train her to pick it up for herself, or when she turns 17ish, whichever is sooner. Pep point #2: I don't have to believe in my innate ability to be in charge but I do have to believe in my innate responsibility, and just do it. Pep point #3: if I do my best, I shouldn't worry overly about being a bad parent. I can try to introduce her to people who have what I haven't got, and give her what I do, and not burden myself unnecessarily with guilt about ways I don't measure up. Not helpful.
And pep point #4, which kind of slices through the gordian knot for me: one friend of mine with a 5 year-old passed on this advice from her mother -- the best way to have an enjoyable kid is to enjoy them. Have fun with them. Learn what you like about them and then whoop it up with them. The Who's-the-Boss matter is important, but not as important as this. If I can manage to really and truly enjoy Anonybabe for who she is, I feel I will have done right by my daughter, that she'll have a reference point for finding her inner core, and will more naturally slide into being the captain of her own soul.
The biggest thing I have to fear is fear itself in this department. As in last night, facing Anonybabe's blank stare, I fear I won't know how to enjoy her because I often don't know how to enjoy myself around others. I've had many many moments in my life where I conducted myself like an alien, so far in my own head that I don't know how to just be with people and hang out. Ach! Are my introverted tendencies going to rob me of a relationship with my daughter? For the first time this makes me want to leave them behind. To try to pick up connecting with people the way a kid tries to pick up smoking. Awkwardly, mimicking at first until she can get the hang of it.
I told you how many more giggles Anonyhub has always been able to elicit from Anonybabe, and last night was no exception. I would ham it up and just get the same blank stares she gives strangers. I find these stares more than withering, precisely because they aren't meant to be. They don't say "you're stupid", they say "no really...what on earth could you possibly be doing? I'll just sit here and wait for you to calm down and see if you eventually manage to do something I can connect with."
And then there's a problem I've seen coming from a long way back and see stretching into my future with Anonybabe. I'm not an authoritarian person. At all. I hate being in charge; I back off from any confrontation, and I have a bit of a anarchist streak that says authority is not to be trusted or respected anyway and everyone should just tend to themselves. And here's what I think about that: do you know how much easier it is for a parent and their kid if the parent is unequivocably in charge? A lot. It doesn't mean the relationship is then happy or great by any means, but it at least eliminates these uneasy power struggles. This doesn't mean the parent has to be a hardass or an asshole about it, but I think it is the parent's job - like it or not - to fill the role of boss and then train the kid for it until the kid is able to take on that role themselves. I still haven't fully accepted that I have to be the boss of my baby. And I worry that she's going to turn out to be an out of control brat, at least around me. That, my friends, would make me, my daughter, and anybody around us unhappy.
So first I need to pep talk myself into taking on the role of parent. Pep point #1: it's just a role. A necessary role. I gotta pick it up with relish knowing I can lay it down as I train her to pick it up for herself, or when she turns 17ish, whichever is sooner. Pep point #2: I don't have to believe in my innate ability to be in charge but I do have to believe in my innate responsibility, and just do it. Pep point #3: if I do my best, I shouldn't worry overly about being a bad parent. I can try to introduce her to people who have what I haven't got, and give her what I do, and not burden myself unnecessarily with guilt about ways I don't measure up. Not helpful.
And pep point #4, which kind of slices through the gordian knot for me: one friend of mine with a 5 year-old passed on this advice from her mother -- the best way to have an enjoyable kid is to enjoy them. Have fun with them. Learn what you like about them and then whoop it up with them. The Who's-the-Boss matter is important, but not as important as this. If I can manage to really and truly enjoy Anonybabe for who she is, I feel I will have done right by my daughter, that she'll have a reference point for finding her inner core, and will more naturally slide into being the captain of her own soul.
The biggest thing I have to fear is fear itself in this department. As in last night, facing Anonybabe's blank stare, I fear I won't know how to enjoy her because I often don't know how to enjoy myself around others. I've had many many moments in my life where I conducted myself like an alien, so far in my own head that I don't know how to just be with people and hang out. Ach! Are my introverted tendencies going to rob me of a relationship with my daughter? For the first time this makes me want to leave them behind. To try to pick up connecting with people the way a kid tries to pick up smoking. Awkwardly, mimicking at first until she can get the hang of it.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Play becomes work
Anonybabe got quite pissy last night when I didn't want to eat from her hand as often as she wanted to feed me. "Uunh!" she would bark, slapping her high chair tray, "UUUNGH!"
Anonyhubby said when he gave her a slice of apple yesterday, she took one look at him and shoved the whole thing in her mouth sideways, prompting him to fish it out so he could offer it back to her in bite sizes. She really lost her shit, crying and yelling, so he waited to give the apple back so she wouldn't associate temper tantrums with getting her way.
Let the power plays begin.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Unjun
For a long time - like, years and years, I could slice onions without tearing up. I remembered a time when onion fumes burned, back when I was a child, but hadn't really experienced the sting for eons. I didn't consciously congratulate myself for my dry eyes, but looking back, part of me thought crying over onions was for the weak of eye, and that I was pretty rad.
Cut through an onion-friendly youth and young adulthood to the present. I got an eye infection and was forced to wear glasses for 10 days. During that time I cut onions and holy-of-holies did it burn! I was confused for a long, weepy moment; my eyes don't burn when I cut onions...and then it dawned on me that in the daylight hours between the ages of 10 and 33, my eyes were pretty much constantly covered by contact lenses. I only took them out right before I went to bed, and had not yet found occasion to chop onions with my back resting against the headboard.
So for 20-odd years I thought I had this minor super power, when really I was just getting an unacknowledged assist from my contacts. I'm pretty amused by my easy assumption that I was somehow stronger and better than everybody else, even if it was just in the onion-cutting department. It makes me wonder how many other invisible assists I get that make my life great that I don't even realize.
I'm like the upper-middle classer who opposes welfare because I have never needed it; why should anyone? I also feels like this applies to my relationship with Anonyhub; I thought we got along more or less swimmingly before Anonybabe because of our incredible maturity, foresight, and levelheadedness. Not, as I'm coming to realize, because we'd never experienced a real challenge to our relationship until it tap-danced across our noses in the form of Anonybabe. Looks like I'm absolutely blind to my own priviledge and quick to take credit where it isn't due.
Monday, February 4, 2008
The More You Know
(Before I share this post with you, let me get something off my chest ahead of time in the interest of full disclosure: the website I've started trolling on a regular basis and that I mention below - mamasource.com - recently ran a survey of members asking if they had a parenting blog. When I clicked yes, I got an email asking if I would be interested in blogging about mamasource and then emailing a link of my entry in to them. In return they would possibly list my post on their site and open my blog up to a whole world of anonymoms. A breezy little I-scratch-yours-etc-etc, arrangement. I feel a little funny about this even though I honestly enjoy surfing the site. Okay, now that you're fully in the know, form your opinions as you may).
So I told the tale of Anonybabe hitting me to several friends and then submitted the question of what to do about it to Mamasource, a website that allows you to post any question and gather advice from mamas in your area. First of all, I love love love me some public forum action. It exists, in smaller ways on other parenting websites, like babycenter.com or in my Le Leche League chapter. But babycenter has annoying pop-up ads and a squeaky-clean commercial vibe, while Le Leche League is a small local base of moms who have a strong breast-feeding anti-medicine bias. (I happen to agree with it most of the time, but I like to hear a broader base of opinions). I'm sure there's a lot of this kind of thing out there, but mamasource seems to have streamlined the q&a between moms to just that.
I've been reading other mom's questions and answers for the past couple of weeks and it seems you are guaranteed at least one horribly bad answer to your query there, several mediocre ones, and at least one or two very helpful answers. And it's quick -- I got a string of 16 suggestions within 24 hours for curing Anonybabe of her violent tendencies, and this is with hundreds of much juicier questions whizzing around daily, from "My husband decided to relocate without consulting me" to "My 4 1/2 year old is acting out" to "My baby just pooped as I put him to sleep - do I really have to change him?".
I could find and dismiss the horrible answer fairly easily: ("Hit her back! Worked wonders for my son's hitting and biting!") and got the answer I needed from all the people who read the subtext to my question: Yes, she's no longer an infant, yes it's okay, nay necessary to make her responsible for her actions and start teaching what kindness and consideration mean. I needed to hear that. I was having an almost impossible time thinking of Anonybabe as anything but a big fat embryo who has developed some pretty cool party tricks. The hitting and the laying down of the no-hitting law have flipped a little switch in me that seems profound: Anonybabe is not just a baby - what she is in the present; she's a potential woman & fellow human being. All that she has, does & experiences will be carried with her into the future and it's time to start treating her as such.
I still need to hear it. It makes my brain want to explode when I look at a 2 year old and know that Anonybabe will be talking in sentences and throwing manipulative temper tantrums in such a short period of time, much less asking for a cell phone and wanting to spend the night with her girlfriends just a few short years later. I remember the inner life of a four-year old. It was dadgum complex. Yipe.
Can I make a little incindiary remark about mamasource commentators while I'm here? The professional advice that comes from people trained in psychology and child development typically sucks compared to the mama advice. Even the horrifically bad advice smacks of the been-there-done-that vibe you need to trust what someone is telling you.
So I told the tale of Anonybabe hitting me to several friends and then submitted the question of what to do about it to Mamasource, a website that allows you to post any question and gather advice from mamas in your area. First of all, I love love love me some public forum action. It exists, in smaller ways on other parenting websites, like babycenter.com or in my Le Leche League chapter. But babycenter has annoying pop-up ads and a squeaky-clean commercial vibe, while Le Leche League is a small local base of moms who have a strong breast-feeding anti-medicine bias. (I happen to agree with it most of the time, but I like to hear a broader base of opinions). I'm sure there's a lot of this kind of thing out there, but mamasource seems to have streamlined the q&a between moms to just that.
I've been reading other mom's questions and answers for the past couple of weeks and it seems you are guaranteed at least one horribly bad answer to your query there, several mediocre ones, and at least one or two very helpful answers. And it's quick -- I got a string of 16 suggestions within 24 hours for curing Anonybabe of her violent tendencies, and this is with hundreds of much juicier questions whizzing around daily, from "My husband decided to relocate without consulting me" to "My 4 1/2 year old is acting out" to "My baby just pooped as I put him to sleep - do I really have to change him?".
I could find and dismiss the horrible answer fairly easily: ("Hit her back! Worked wonders for my son's hitting and biting!") and got the answer I needed from all the people who read the subtext to my question: Yes, she's no longer an infant, yes it's okay, nay necessary to make her responsible for her actions and start teaching what kindness and consideration mean. I needed to hear that. I was having an almost impossible time thinking of Anonybabe as anything but a big fat embryo who has developed some pretty cool party tricks. The hitting and the laying down of the no-hitting law have flipped a little switch in me that seems profound: Anonybabe is not just a baby - what she is in the present; she's a potential woman & fellow human being. All that she has, does & experiences will be carried with her into the future and it's time to start treating her as such.
I still need to hear it. It makes my brain want to explode when I look at a 2 year old and know that Anonybabe will be talking in sentences and throwing manipulative temper tantrums in such a short period of time, much less asking for a cell phone and wanting to spend the night with her girlfriends just a few short years later. I remember the inner life of a four-year old. It was dadgum complex. Yipe.
Can I make a little incindiary remark about mamasource commentators while I'm here? The professional advice that comes from people trained in psychology and child development typically sucks compared to the mama advice. Even the horrifically bad advice smacks of the been-there-done-that vibe you need to trust what someone is telling you.
Awwww, or The More They are Amazing and Adorable the More They Are Like Everybody Else...Ain't it Grand?
Along with Anonybabe's new skill set comes the desire to feed Anonyhubby and I. She'll raise a pea-sized smidgen of toast high in the air, holding her mouth open while we lean forward and let her carefully place it in our mouths, and then lean back, pleased and smacking along with us as we chew and swallow. It's great fun, and gives me the opportunity to teach her "nooooo thank you" when I've had enough.
She's also experimenting with the art of stuffing more food than she can possibly swallow into her mouth at once.
Anonyhub is such a fun playmate for her. I try to take pages from his book and sorta roughhouse with her; we have fun and I can finally make her giggle, but Anonyhubby can just make her shreik with laughter. Last night he would "toss" her onto the bed with a dramatic count-off, and then tickle her belly with his scratchy face, or fall onto the bed while she was on it and make her bounce, or "chase" her around the bed while she crawled around on all fours cackling like a maniac. I wish people who have only seen her docile stare could see her enjoying herself. She loves playing peek-a-boo with him because he'll hide behind something like the armchair and then Houdini-like, crawl to another piece of furniture out of her sight and startle her by popping up behind the couch. Or he'll hold up a blanket and peek at her behind it a couple of time and then shimmy himself behind the changing table before dropping it like he's disappeared, then he'll pop out at her with a "boo!" She loves it.
She's also experimenting with the art of stuffing more food than she can possibly swallow into her mouth at once.
Anonyhub is such a fun playmate for her. I try to take pages from his book and sorta roughhouse with her; we have fun and I can finally make her giggle, but Anonyhubby can just make her shreik with laughter. Last night he would "toss" her onto the bed with a dramatic count-off, and then tickle her belly with his scratchy face, or fall onto the bed while she was on it and make her bounce, or "chase" her around the bed while she crawled around on all fours cackling like a maniac. I wish people who have only seen her docile stare could see her enjoying herself. She loves playing peek-a-boo with him because he'll hide behind something like the armchair and then Houdini-like, crawl to another piece of furniture out of her sight and startle her by popping up behind the couch. Or he'll hold up a blanket and peek at her behind it a couple of time and then shimmy himself behind the changing table before dropping it like he's disappeared, then he'll pop out at her with a "boo!" She loves it.
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