Category Archives: Child Wrangling

Toys and household on a budget

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Okay, so I have a new obsession–building with corrugated cardboard. I haven’t actually built anything yet, but I have grand plans. And more important, I have grand plans to buy totally awesome stuff if my homemade stuff turns out as poorly as my previous projects.

(This post is full of links, but the otherwise brilliant person who coded this blog theme made links a soft grey color you can barely see–sorry, and here’s hoping you can find the links in the too-light text.)

I was looking into buying a kitchen for Peanut–he needs something special when we get to the new house, and he loves, loves, loves play kitchens. Well I’m not doing plastic or made in China, for obvious reasons, which got me to some gorgeous wood masterpieces that cost more than most things in my house. Even if we had that kind of money, that’s not where I’d spend it. A savings account would be nice, for starters. (That’s why I’ll never get picked to be on a gameshow. Aside from the not applying thing, that is. I would tell them, when they asked “what would you do with xx dollars if you won?” and I’d say, “pay down my mortgage, give at least 10% to charity, and put the rest in savings.” Bye, bye weird lady. Middle America doesn’t want to hear that. Of course they do, but Hollywood doesn’t think they do. Hollywood thinks Middle America is considerably more shallow and pathetic than we actually are. Mostly because Hollywood is shallow and pathetic. But I digress.)

So Meems sent me this link for a diy cardboard kitchen. Are you kidding me? Freaking genius. We had a dio (did it ourselves) cardboard house for a while after we bought a big ol’ wagon for Peanut, and he played in that box (which we turned on its end, and into which we cut a door flap and window flaps) every day for months.

A cursory webby-web search found that you can buy and make tons of affordable stuff out of this sturdy, recyclable, eco-friendly material. Bonus points when we take boxes from friendly local retailers and make stuff out of that which would have been trash.

Want some? How about:

a playhouse and a teepee

a freaking bed for your kid (are you kidding me? makes me want to have another Peanut just to put it in this bed and tell people we make it sleep in a cardboard box. artists are freaking awesome.)

a rocketship

toddler chairs

a slew of cardboard kitchen appliances and a whole multi-tiered parking garage.

You can also build pretty much anything you can imagine out of FREE cardboard that you recycle yourself. Paint it or cover it in paper as though it was a fourth-grade history textbook. Yay, yay, yay.

We’re gonna make the kitchen and a dollhouse. Hear that Spouse? Your days of living without a to-do list while we live down here and try to sell the house are over. Over. Start collecting the cardboard, and start gluing.

I’ve planned a hutch for my computer, storage bins for Peanut’s room, a coffee table, chairs, a dollhouse, and a huge fort. ‘Cuz Peanut’s been awfully good about this whole “I have no control over my world and considerably less control over my motor skills than I’d like” two-year-old who has dozens of strangers tromping through his house threatening to make him move from his vbfitwww summer, and he deserves a little something special. But I’ll be damned before I buy stuff to make him feel special. Making, yes. Buying, no. You call it an anti-capitalist agenda, I call it a budget.

Yee haw!

War on terror clarification

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Last week or so I alleged that the U.S.’s broadly named war on terror is a religious war, and I want to clarify.
Our declared war on terror is not just a fight with extremist muslims–it’s with anyone who might in some way threaten our way of life. A noble cause, I guess, but the killing that has ensued, and decimation of American civil liberties that followed sort of erode the nobility a bit.

I agree with stopping terrorists. Let me get that right out there. I believe we have the right and duty to protect our citizens. But not from pretend attacks or attacks that are not physically threatening. Anyone who hurts, maims, or kills other people because of some twisted interpretation of what god is and what it wants from them is an insane, horrible animal and I don’t think it’s wrong to stop them using any means necessary. (This applies to extreme, violent Muslim extremists who want to kill people and identically to people and governments who engage in genocide of “sectarian” others just because those people worship in a different way [e.g., Bosnia, Armenia, Rwanda, and Christian Nazi Germany). People who kill other people for their beliefs rather than their actions are bad people. And that’s where we get in trouble in the whole war on terror thing, and where some argue the U.S. government is acting like a terrorist. We’re bombing people who believe something different than we do, particularly Iraqis who want us out of their country.)

This war on terror, when it protects real Americans from real physical harm, is a justified, acceptable use of power. But when this war’s broad scope reaches beyond people who represent imminent harm to Americans to people who want us to leave them alone, it is a religious war, just as every other war fought in the name of a god has been. We are killing people who worship a different idea than we do. Our god, in this war, just happens to be Democracy (and demogoguery).
Our so-called war on terror is a religious war in that we are killing people during our demand that they believe what we believe. Just because we believe in democracy does not make it inherently right or supreme, and the rhetoric surrounding our insistence that everyone in the world worship our idea of democracy is, to me, the same as killing people to believe in our god.

(That doesn’t mean Russia needs to murder people in Georgia just to show us that they resent our heavy-handed “support” of democracy. And it doesn’t mean we can’t think democracy is the absolute best system going. I think it is. But I wouldn’t foster a civil war so that the like-minded could stay in power against national dissent just to get them to agree with me.)
The war on terror is much bigger than the world versus violent extremists (including 44 groups from half the major religions in various countries around the world we’ve declared terrorist organizations). This sweeping and cleverly encompassing war on terror deifies The Oval Office, because in declaring an undefined and interminable war, it gives Presidential powers an exponential boost. In time of war our President reigns supreme. And it’s smacking an awful lot of the divine right of kings, wherein, to modify a line from Real Genius, “it goes from God to Cheney to me.” The powers this Administration has grabbed for itself are Constitution-rending and society-threatening. The balance of powers on which our government functions has been eroded to the point that we have one branch of government and a bunch of bicameral and judicial ants scurrying around trying to build one iota of check-and-balance authority. We have allowed one part of our government to hijack the whole country for the belief that one President should get to do whatever he wants since we are, according to him, at war with ideas. That is a kind of deification that seeks to make worship of The White House into a religion to rival the six major world religions. And The National Standard, a politically conservative publication, made the point years ago that the right-wing of this country would be horrified if they stopped to think that all the powers Bush has decreed for himself could be transferred to President Hillary Clinton (this was well before the primaries began).

That’s what I meant by saying, as it is currently, broadly defined, the war on terror is a religious war. We’re killing some people who are terrorists, we’re killing LOTS people who live near terrorists, and we’re killing people because they don’t believe in democracy at the behest of our self-deified Leader.

Thank goodness it’s almost election time, and we can elect a President instead of a God.

Groceries and building blocks

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While we were at Trader Joe’s, Peanut dictated his grocery list. He usually draws it at home before we go, but we forgot. So he proclaimed, loudly, while ticking off on his fingers, and with a great sing-song rhythm:

“Blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, soy, water, blender juice, bread, little bread, pizza.”

When we were building with blocks, he told me he was making a new house. I asked what he wanted his house to have.

P: “Garden. Flowers. Blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blueberries, pick, eat eat eat. ‘Matoes. No like ‘matoes. Pick throw.”

M: “Sounds like a nice garden, with flowers and lots of berries. Do you want to have a kitchen inside for cooking?”

P: “No. No kitchen no bathroom no dining room. Pick eat pee poop garden.”

Well. sounds like we’ll be a big hit once we move.

On another note about building blocks and toddlers, I’m kind of sick of the build-it-just-to-knock-it-down thing. I’ve tried casually suggesting he build his own stuff. That works until he sees what I’m compiling, and he knocks it down. I’ve tried getting him to collaborate with me. He just knocks down what little I’ve built. Seriously, dude, it would be nice to maybe get this thing more than two blocks high, or maybe get some structure to it. No offense or anything, but you’re not much fun when it comes to playing blocks. Sure, watching you have fun is pleasurable for a while and all that, but this gig is getting boring. Mommy used to have a job where people liked what she did and didn’t instantly knock it down. In fact, when mommy did work at a place like that, she quit. She prefers work environments where lots of people collaborate to build things, or work independently then show everyone the fruits of our labors. Mommy kind of wants a job like that again. Whadya say?

Toddler or Anarchist?

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With whom would you rather share your home—-a toddler or an anarchist?

Hmmm. Tougher choice than it seems. Unless you have (or have had) a toddler. In that case, you know pretty much where this is going.

Two-year-olds can be loving, can be interesting, can be wonderful companions. They also, though, often strive for independence and control over their own ideas and bodies, usually in wildly disproportionate episodes of writhing, screaming, and sobbing. In short, they are trying on independence without any of the skills it takes to button the cuffs of social diplomacy.

Anarchists, on the other hand, just want coercive government to go away. They have social skills, and their tactics are often in direct response to the perceived threat to their independence. You don’t have to baby-proof a house for an anarchist. They have better things to do than chase your cats, break your favorite coffee mug, or pee on your phone.

Like toddlers, anarchists come with all manner of agendas and methodologies. Like toddlers, anarchists can be loving, interesting, and wonderful companions. Unlike toddlers, anarchists aren’t out of their illogical, irrational, freaking minds.

Two-year-old evidence from yesterday: Peanut kissed me at least 45 times each hour, for all 14 hours he was awake. Big, full, lip-on-lip, sweet Peanut kisses. Most of the kisses accompanied by my favorite sentence from 19 months on: “Peanut…Like…Mommy.” Score one for toddlers. It was a good, good day.

Further two-year-old evidence from yesterday: Peanut walked into sporting good store, after agreeing that, yes, this store has some no-touches, so please ask mommy before you touch. He asked, then defied, on four items, each time looking right at me as he touched. I said, “no, thank you. No touch.” He said, “Please” as he touched again. I said, “No. No touch. Please listen to my words.” He touched again and repeated “please.” I shook my head and gently removed his hand. He cried “No Mommy move Peanut hand!” On the fourth item (sunglasses…why, oh why do they put those at waist-level instead of up by our eyes, where they should be?!) he threw a fit. Reaching for it…”I said no touch. If you touch that, we will leave the store.” Touch. Scoop up and take outside. Screaming, crying. Sobbing really, with tears streaming down his face. “One minnow!” (see the one minnow post. priceless. for all other toddler moments, there’s MasterCard.)

“Nope. We’re all done.” Cried on the sidewalk in my arms for, no joke, ten minutes. My biceps were on fire. I tried silence. I tried gentle talk, offering different options. I did not offer (or acquiesce to) a return trip into the store. Crying, crying, crying. Cried a few times as people walked by, I’m sure, just to inform them of my bad parenting. His words, not mine.

Anyway, toddler loses that one. (It was still a good day, btw.)

No specific anarchist data for same day, but passed several pedestrians in San Luis Obispo who were undoubtedly familiar with the tenets of at least one anarchist, and they seemed a welcome, quiet change from a two-and-a-half-year-old. Anarchists do not frequently scream or cry or try to grab things that society asked them not to touch. Anarchists break things and destroy property to reject the notion of property. They are rebelling. I can get on board with at least the idea, if not the reality, of this sort of rebellion. Two-year-old rebellion I do not support, as it makes absolutely no sense. (Yes, I know it does. Yes, I know why they try power battles over everything at bedtime and whenever you really, really need to get somewhere. Yes, I know why very gentle and well-behaved children turn into screaming banshees when you’re on the phone. Yes, they make sense. But not in a grown-up logical way. In a animal kingdom kind of way. But seriously. Let me have my little diatribe here. I need an outlet. Heaven knows I need an outlet.) Where anarchists may destroy property to protest capitalism, toddlers touch stuff that’s not even interesting. They don’t try to possess, or refuse to think in terms of possession. They just touch stuff to touch it. And especially if told no.

Give me an anarchist any day. I understand how infuriating and terrifying it must be to control so little of your world (unless you’re Peanut, of course, who controls more of his world than 99.8% of other two-and-a-half-year-olds do, and therefore should really cut me some freaking slack. We don’t use coercion in his world. He doesn’t even have a right to anarchy. Peanut protesting coercion is like white, middle class kids complaining about how hard their lives are, and turning to drugs because they’re bored. Get a job. Volunteer. Shut up. Go work for Amnesty International for a while.) I do not understand the battles pre-preschoolers choose. Don’t get it. Score one for anarchists.

Two-year-old evidence from today: walks through the kitchen and 1)opens the trash can for no other reason than to peer inside. Thrice. 2) Reaches on tiptoes into the sink to grab the sponge, wet, and throw it on the floor. 3) Grabs a fistful of straws from the choosing cup (I know, I know–my fault for leaving it on the table) and drags them along the wall. 4)Unwinds the whole paper towel roll. Again. 5) Screams bloody murder everytime one of Parker and Skylar’s horses fall over, even though they fall over because he accidentally knocks them down. His fault, but gravity’s response is physically painful to him. When I empathize and tell him that, yes, it’s frustrating when you work hard to stand up a horse just to have it fall down, and that maybe we should try again, he hits me.

Please send me an anarchist for Christmas. Or Channukah. Or Memorial Day. What a great co-brand that would be: Hallmark offering anarchists for Mother’s Day. “When you care enough to give mom a break, send an anarchist.”

Anyway, each of these incidents of strange but typical toddler behavior got a casual, measured, supportive, and corrective comment and a plea to “please don’t do that” because fill-in-the-simplest-reason. Except the hitting. That got a time out.

Here’s the problem. By incident number four I actually said, “Please don’t do that because…can’t you just be civilized? We have the same rules every day. They don’t change. It’s the same rule Sunday as it is Thursday.” [“Thursday,” he cries, “Movie!” He’s right. Thursday is movie day. One half hour of some video that is not geared toward kids. It’s the only way I get to see Planet Earth. But that’s not the point. The consistency of rules is. Or so I thought. Not in his world. Consistency, choices, whatever. He doesn’t really care that we have always been careful with our “no”s because we saved them for genuine danger. He thinks we’re restrictive no matter how many ways we use to suggest activities other than the disgusting, irritating, or destructive one he’s chosen. Please, please. An Anarchist for the weekend. Please. On a toddler for disestablishmentarian trade program?]

An anarchist might look in the trash to find food, subverting the establishment’s insistence on exchanging money for sustenance. Not just to look in there, and not just after I helped her wash her hands. An anarchist might throw the sponge at a representative of government, to suggest any number of metaphoric or literal needs to clean up. But probably not just to piss me off. An anarchist might…okay, seriously, what self-respecting anarchist would drag straws along the wall or unroll paper towels? And therein lies the reason I’d probably choose to live with an anarchist over a toddler–they know the rules and break some to make a point. Toddlers have heard the rules, figure they’re the center of the universe and not subject to the rules, and just do things to get a reaction out of those who watch them. Kisses make mommy sigh with happiness, and ridiculousness pisses off mommy. Gonna try each twenty times today to see what happens. And they quite enjoy that power.

Anarchists push society’s buttons to make us question assumptions. Toddlers push our buttons because it’s fun. I just want to scream at Peanut: “Have some principles, at least, like those comparatively upstanding and logical anarchists. The world is not your plaything, and my rules are really just society’s rules. So put on some pants so we can leave the house, pick up the sting ray so mommy doesn’t hurt her foot again, and please put your plate in the sink or I’m going to have to remember that all the things I’m teaching you will make you thoughtful and logical. Just like an anarchist!”

Who, looking at an infant, would think anarchy would be a positive trajectory?

Well, it’s a serious improvement over two-and-a-half.

Fire alarm

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Ah, Peanut. I’m glad we named you something that would go well with either “Supreme Court Justice…” or “Recently Indicted…” because you’re getting to be a bit of a handful.

I was carrying him up the stairs to my mom’s place and he pointed and asked what the fire alarm was. I said, “That’s a no touch. It is for when you really need help, like an emergency, and it rings an alarm at the fire fighter’s stationhouse.” So he reached out and grabbed it. To be fair, it didn’t have a cover, and the little lucite dowel that usually keeps us from accidentally tripping the alarm was missing. Nevertheless, the alarm went off in eight or more condos Sunday just before noon. Thanks, Peanut. Nice way to meet grandma’s neighbors.

People were worried, but we were standing on the porch, reassuring everyone it was a false alarm, and very willingly blaming Peanut. “He did it. We told him not to, but he didn’t listen. We’re so sorry.” Everyone was, I’m sure, just waking up at noon to watch the Olympics and sit in their underwear spooning ice cream into their gaping maws (I assume people, given a day off, are able to do all the things we can’t do now that Peanut is here. Sleep in? Check. Watch t.v.? Check. Eat ice cream? Check. Hang out in either jammies or underwear, willfully defying the social rule that one must dress for the day? Check. Things we have to do under the cover of darkness for the one hour he actually sleeps–that’s what people with real lives do. Nobody else was off volunteering at an animal shelter, or befriending the elderly, or anything. That’s what I’d do if I had a day off. After the ice cream and Olympics and nap. And a little more ice cream. And flip through the channels in case I’m missing anything. THEN volunteering.)

Anyway, it took the fire department 25 minutes, so say the more irritated of Zsa Zsa’s neighbors say, to arrive with their shiny pumper truck. Peanut asked the fire fighter (whom I’ll call Young, Buff, and Gorgeous Number Three, only because there were two before him that got that name. I might have named them something else, had I seen YBaGNThree first). YBaGNThree confirmed that it was a pumper, not a hose wagon, as was Peanut’s second guess. Seriously. Okay, a little more honestly, Peanut asked me if it was a pumper or a hose wagon, and instructed me to ask YBaGNTwo. I was going to, when Three appeared and caught my eye. Instead of asking him if he knew a good attorney and would be willing to wait for me while the divorce paperwork processed, I asked about the truck. Whatever. Can’t believe I know the difference between a rear-mount aerial ladder truck and a snorkel truck, anyway. I mean, it’s pretty obvious, and nobody would confuse the two once they knew, but still. I’m pretty sure that cluster of neurons would be resting right now if it weren’t for my two-year-old’s g..d.. book collection.

So I kept apologizing to the fire fighters, telling them I knew they had better things to attend to, like, for instance, emergencies; and tried not to cry every time they said it was okay. Because the last three times I’ve seen a fire fighter up close, it was an emergency, and they were much less jovial and much less silly, but just as friendly and supportive. I know more than a few police officers who have no special love for fire fighters. I know the reasons abound. But I have had nothing but good experiences with the few fire fighters I’ve met, and I have nothing but gratitude in my tiny little Grinch heart for them.

Anyway, the Older, Buff, and Outrageously Handsome fire fighter (OBOH) praised Peanut for doing a good job. Told him he knew he’d hire him on the spot in 18 years. Gave him a red plastic fire fighter’s helmet, and told him to keep up the good work. Wonderfully nice, totally counter-productive stuff, parenting-wise.

Now we have to pay for the false alarm call, and frequently remind Peanut not to pull fire alarms, all while watching him run through the house naked, fire helmet on, pretending to squirt everything and everyone with anything that seems like a hose. Yes, that means anything—-drum stick, hockey stick, imaginary hose, and little boy parts. The reality that little boys get to have all the fun of a built-in friend is probably half the battle of gender-based differences that show up before those horrible other kids bring their parents’ baggage to kindergarten.

Oh well. At least ours can rouse all those lounging neighbors whenever he feels like it.

Rewriting history and fairy tales

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I feel dishonest, I feel manipulative. But we change just about every book in the house because the content just isn’t appropriate for a toddler.
The troll in the Billy Goats Gruff, at least here, is a “great, big, silly troll” who pretends he’s going to eat goats up, but really just wants to go swimming.
The wolf in Little Red Riding Hood is proud of his huge mouth, for it’s all the better to kiss you with.
The coyote in The Three Little Pigs just wants to eat all the pigs’ cookies, and when he can’t get into the brick house, the pigs eat the cookies themselves.
Even in Where The Wild Things are, the monsters gnash their teeth and roll their eyes and show their claws, none of which is horrible. And Max isn’t sent to bed without supper. He just goes to bed.
I don’t like that I have to warn other people to read our books “correctly.” But I also don’t like that Ming Lo’s wife never has a name, even though she has just as many lines and pages as Ming Lo, and even when she does ust as much to move the mountain. So in our house she’s Sing Lo. Because my son isn’t going to grow up thinking the world is scary (he’ll find that soon enough) or that woman are just “so-and-so’s wife.”

Spent fuel

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When did we stop calling it “radioactive waste,” and start calling it “spent fuel”?
Maybe it’s just moms, who have to, um, handle a variation of nuclear waste every day, and who actually fear that radioactive waste will be buried next door for the convenience of politicians who don’t particularly care about the long-term, in this increasingly here today, dont’ care about tomorrow mortgaging of the future political landscape, but are they seriously glossing over the waste problem associated with nuclear power?
I know if we just call torture “enhanced interrogation tactics,” and if we just call civil war “sectatrian violence,” and if we just call religious war “war on terror,” that we can fool most of the people most of the time.
But “spent fuel”?

Centered, grounded day

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Today I parented at my brilliant best. No frustration. No yelling. Lots of cuddling and kisses and never once experiencing the caged-animal panic of “what have I gotten myself into?”

I guess it helped that Peanut’s fever was over 103 all day and he took five naps, all draped across me, trusting, sweaty, and vulnerable. Poor sweet Peanut. Hope you feel better tomorrow.

Are you two or twelve?

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Playing with pretend kitchen items today, Peanut made me a very elaborate meal. As I tasted it and marveled about the particular flavors I noticed in his pretend meal, he told me the sandwich was poop, the coffee was pee, and the pudding was full of squirrels and acorns.

Mmmm. Thanks. If only I could put you straight into fourth grade, where you apparently belong.

Ants in my pants

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Not funny that the day we brought Ants in My Pants home from the library, ants appeared in the kitchen. On day two, a stream came in through the bathroom. Day three: ants in the cats’ room.

That book is going back. I’d go tonight, if leaving Peanut home alone for 20 minutes didn’t smack of slightly irresponsible parenting.

And so is my policy of using only nontoxic, eco-friendly pest solutions. I’ve done the eco cleanser and vinegar wipe down three times a day for three days. I’ve done the line of cinnamon (hard to do on vertical surfaces). I’ve done everything except sell the house (ba ha ha ha hahahaha. would if I could.)

What can I do for ants that won’t harm Peanut, the planet, the cats, or me?

Attachment parenting

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Friends have asked me where the posts about my great parenting experiences are. Where, they ask, are the submissions about how patient you were, how you used love and respect where you were tempted to use knee-jerk techniques like bribes or yelling? Where are the stories about how you found great reward in parenting with patience and a child-centered perspective? They’re a bit horrified at the stuff I’ve posted so far, and I don’t blame them.

Here’s the problem with blogging: at the end of the day, I want time to write a little something. I don’t have enough left to work on my novels, and so I want to vent about the day. And after a day with dozens of AP successes and wonderful interaction, what I really want to talk about is the one or two moments of frustration, fury, miscommunication, and regret. I don’t want to talk about how well Peanut listens, and how hard he’s trying to both be himself please me. We’re done with child-led weaning, he’s in his own bed, the repeated times we go lovingly and gently to him when he needs help at night are NOT my favorite topic of conversation, and positive reinforcement for great behavior doesn’t make for good reading. There’s no reason to write all about how carefully I measure my responses or find the teachable moment out of the many things we experience. I don’t want to write about how I carefully set boundaries only around that which will help him learn and grow, and let him explore wildly around the stuff that doesn’t matter, can’t hurt him, and won’t make him an icky person later.

I don’t want to spend time on that stuff because that’s the parenting that takes every ounce of my compassion, nurturing, intelligence, and love. The hard work is being present in his needs and development almost every minute of the day, and I really don’t want to rehash it all because it took enough out of me the first time. The necessary consistency of AP parenting is exhausting to me, and I don’t want to write about it.

That’s why I feel so worn to the nub with this child-rearing job. Not because it’s inherently hard to maintain the safety of one kid. But because I throw myself heart and soul into making everything work for him, from a developmental, personal, emotional, and spiritual standpoint. I can’t spend my time complaining that it’s hard to raise a kid without t.v., with a healthy respect for child-centric principles, with an eye to growing a world citizen, and with the daily goal of making most moments count for something. Because that’s not good reading.

Besides, it’s not funny to talk about the moments that work. It’s just not. When our compromises leave us both satisfied, respected, and happy, that’s boring to everyone else. I want to entertain myself when I write, and only the moments of my self-defined poor parenting, or the snipets of my self-consciously pathetic life make the cut here.

Sorry to disappoint you. If you’re looking for good parenting tips, you’ll have to spend all day with us. Whatever you glean is yours to keep. Whatever leaves me shuddering is that night’s post.

Falling asleep on the job

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Drifting off during bedtime stories ain’t just for kids anymore.

I’ve read all our books, even the brand-newly-rented library books dozens of times. And I often change the words to engage Peanut in the story, adding questions for him or descriptions of the illustrations. In fact, he thinks one page of his favorite book actually says, “what do you see?” because when he reads it to me, that’s how he reads the page.

Anyway, when we read (several times a day), I sometimes (not proud of this) close my eyes and read the book from memory. I check in often, but I’m tired. My eyes hurt. We’ve read these books hundreds of times. They are not treatises in philosophy. They’re children’s books. I have a Master’s in English. With honors. I can handle faking Where the Wild Things Might Be if I Were Looking Right Now.

So I occasionally, also, fall asleep while intoning my made up version of the story. (I mentioned being somewhat ashamed of this, right? But I mentioned that the kid doesn’t watch t.v. and that he doesn’t sleep through the night and that our bedtime ritual is precise and regular and has been since four months old and that I don’t have any help except when Spouse is home and that I’m writing when I should be napping, right? You did, at least, get that from the title of the blog, right?) And Peanut sometimes turns in my lap to figure out why I’ve stopped. Or he begs, “Please. Read.” loudly enough for me to awake.

Last night I jerked back awake because I heard myself say, “They ask the pigs, but no help. They ask the police officer…but…no help. They…..ask…….the………..guerilla marketing.”

I only woke up because I thought I was in a meeting. Once I realized it was Bananas Gorilla, I turned the page and closed my eyes again. (Mr. Fixit comes next and tows the car, in case you were worried that the police officer didn’t help. He radioed for help but couldn’t stop. Chasing a repeat litterer.) Peanut didn’t know what guerrilla marketing meant. I need to step up the branding flashcard sessions.

As with the time I was on summer break and woke up with a book in my lap, terrified that I was missing lecture, late for a test, and late with a paper, only to realize that I was reading for pleasure; waking up this time I was terrified that I’d be fired for sleeping on the job, would have to find a new job, and would languish in a state of underemployment where I made no money and earned no respect.

Oh, wait. That wasn’t a dream. That was my life. Some days I wish I could get fired and that they could hire someone more capable for the job. Except that I’m the they and I don’t know that there is someone more capable.

Guess I should nap tomorrow.

Modeling good behavior

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Oh, my, this parenting thing brings a whole new layer of perspective to rude people. I tend to thrive on confrontation. In business and personal relationships, I am quite forward about what I need, want, and will tolerate. I don’t mince words and it doesn’t make me any extra friends. But having a small child watch my every action and listen to my every word has changed the way I do things. Even when people are really nasty and horrible.

We were in Target this weekend, which is now a whole different adventure than it used to be. I used to avoid Target because I found so many things I “needed” and would walk away with a whole apartment redecorating project, garden renovation, and new beauty regimen. Now I’m lucky to run the half mile to whatever random household product we need and make it to checkout before Peanut loses his patience with the whole shopping thing. Luckily, he has no tolerance for shopping, whether in sling, cart, or on foot. I relish this because, aside from the biannual Target spendfest, I loathe shopping and would rather get everything on amazon (once they stop including disgusting McD*n*ld’s advertising in every one of my organic, vegetarian food shipments). So it’s nice to have a child who, likewise, has patience for 4.2 minutes in a store, and then wants out.

Anyway, he needed to use the facilities, and we headed toward the ladies’ room. (He prefers it when I take him into the men’s, and when we’re somewhere that it doesn’t matter, I do. I told him that our society has some people who think everyone should use the same potty, and some people who think men and ladies should go in different rooms to pee. I don’t know why, I told him. It seems silly. Nobody has a men’s and ladies’ bathroom sign at home. Whatever. I blame a lot of things I don’t understand on “society,” and I’m sure some year he’ll go dressed as “society” for Halloween.)

On the way to the ladies’ room, he saw a standalone handicapped-accessible bathroom. He was excited, because he knows that means more room and a lower sink. He’s used to the family-friendly bathrooms at the hospital and the mall (shudder), and prefers them greatly to the cramped quarters of a single stall. I looked around to see if anyone was headed that way. There was a woman with a cane in her cart making a beeline for the same bathroom. So I stopped and asked, “Are you headed in there?” I figured if she wanted the room, it was hers.

“Yes,” she barked. “That’s what it’s for.” She grabbed her cane and waved it. “I’m handicapped.”

No problem, I thought. But Peanut, of course, began his now standard line. “No share. No share that lady. Peanut turn. Please no share.” It used to be, “Hit that lady! No lady! Hit! Hit! Hit!” but we’ve managed, through talking, ignoring, and offering new words, to eliminate the hitting chorus of his skipping record. But the lady didn’t like the sound of his new song.

“It’s not for children, you know. It’s for handicapped people.”

“And families with small children,” I answered. That was my first mistake. I know damned well it’s for people with different abilities, who need more time, more space, more features. I know that. But don’t tell me off, and don’t snap at my kid. It just pushes my buttons. Imagine a family with three or four kids, who has trouble keeping them all perfectly well behaved in a huge, cavernous Target bathroom. If they want a shot at an empty, unwanted handicapped standalone bathroom, I say they deserve it. I don’t care what the picture on the door says. If the standalone is empty, my recently potty-trained kid with a fear of regular bathroom stalls gets it. I don’t believe in expectant mother parking. I don’t believe parents should get privileges that the child-free don’t have. But I think if a bathroom is empty and nobody wants it, a family that walks the balance beam of keeping everyone in a socially-acceptable mood can use the differently abled standalone. I know it’s not polite to occupy that bathroom in case someone else needs it . But life’s not fair and I have a kid with bathroom avoidance issues.

Plus, she goaded me.

“No, it’s not. It’s not. I’ve been handicapped for a long time and I know that much,” she sneered.

“No share that lady,” repeated Peanut. “No share. That lady no share.”

“Yes,” I said calmly to Peanut, mostly for the woman’s benefit. “We’re going to share with that lady. It’s her turn. When she’s done, you can have a turn,” I said calmly. I wanted to tell her we were there first, but I knew we didn’t really have a right to the bathroom, so I wanted to teach him that we wait graciously when someone else needs it first, even if we were technically in the geographic area first.

She left her cart and cane outside and started into the bathroom. “Wait,” she said, as she had almost closed the door. “Do you mean for changing diapers?”

“Yes,” I said, trying to silently hurry her. I have a recently potty trained toddler, lady, who needs to go. Please, please just go in there and so I can convince him to use the other bathroom. He won’t listen to me while you’re here and he con’t compromise while he can see into the Holy Land of Big Potties. There was no way, I figured, that he would let go of the idea of the big room. Not now. He had seen it and he knew he was next. So either shut the door and let me reason with him, or get down to business so we can be next.

“There’s a diaper changing area right over there.”

“Thank you. We’ll wait.”

“I’m handicapped you know, and even I know there are diaper changing areas in the other bathroom.”

I’m not an idiot. I know there are diaper changing areas elsewhere. I know most babies hate the changing tables and most moms wind up with babies on the floor. I know I don’t need a diaper change, I need a small bladder emptied in the potty. Get the f*%& in the bathroom! “Thank you. Please. Go.” I indicated the room. “Go ahead. Have fun.”

Ooops.

“Have fun? Have fun?!?! You’re an a**! You’re an a**”

Without Peanut there I might have chosen a few words for her. I might have walked away. I might have done a million different things. But I felt little eyes on me, and felt a warm calm come over what is normally a very hot temper.

“I don’t like that kind of talk.”

“You’re an a**!”

“That’s not nice talk. Please don’t talk that way in front of my child.”

“I have raised all my kids and I know you’re an a**!”

I picked up Peanut. I whispered to him, ignoring her. “That lady is feeling grouchy. It’s okay to have a grouchy day. It’s not okay to talk like that to people. She’s being not nice right now. That makes mommy sad and angry.”

She was FURIOUS that I was talking to him instead of her. She was railing on about how long she’d been handicapped. By myself I thought, so did you start out nice and being handicapped made you horrible, or were you horrible to start with? But that’s not nice talk. I know nothing about her life, and I just can’t do this right now. I’m holding my child and trying to put myself in her shoes. Maybe someone else had been rude to her today. Maybe she’d had bad experiences with kids playing in the handicapped bathroom when she needed to go. Maybe her different abilities include developmental delays that make outbursts more common. All I knew was that I treated her just like I would any other human being. I believe that people who need help should get help without feeling like it’s charity. I believe people should have every chance to have some of that pursuit of happiness stuff that seems to get disproportionately distributed lately. I hold the door for people who look as though they might need or appreciate the help. I offer my place in line or my seat to someone who looks like they’ve had a long day. I want to be as helpful as I can to anyone who needs it, handicapped or not. But I don’t like rude people. I’m sorry if life dealt you a shitty hand. I’m sorry if you’re usually nice and are having a hard day. I smiled at you, I le you go first, and you’re really pissing me off.

“GO AHEAD!” she shouted, pointing to the bathroom. “Go ahead and I hope you’re never handicapped.”

Me, too, I thought. I stared right at her and calmly turned around and walked my scared son into the main bathroom. Because he was distracted, he didn’t notice the loss of the fun bathroom. Because he really had to go, we had no issues with balking and refusing the small stall. And because I have to be a different person now, I talked with him quietly about how feeling grouchy is okay. How being rude is not okay. How I felt sad and angry that the woman yelled.

Unlike my former self, I didn’t want to have a whole conversation with her. I didn’t want to explain my point of view and feel satisfied that we were both heard. I wanted to take a deep breath and walk away.

If that’s what I’ve learned from child-centered parenting today, it was a really good day.

You say, russet? I say, leave the kid alone.

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What is wrong with people?

My son loves painting. The day he saw me paint my toenails (he was in the bath, Spouse was watching him carefully, I was bored, the polish was nontoxic-ish) he fell in love with a new artform. He paints his own toenails about once a week now. He paints his father’s toenails. He tries to paint the cats’ toenails. He loves using a different polish for each toenail, then covers most with “russ-sit,” his favorite.

He paints a lot of toe with toenail. We pretend we don’t care. At first we quickly wiped off the excess, horrified at all the chemicals seeping into his otherwise Dr. Bronner’ed body. Then we stopped caring. ‘Cuz wiping tiny skin next to itty bitty toenails leads to smudges, and the boy hates having his art mucked up. Plus, since we’re trying to be all green and organic and nontoxic, we figure he has a few healthy liver cells to spare. It’s like we’ve been all hyper-organic just to save up purity credits so he can formaldehyde himself once a week. Sigg bottles all the time, with nailpolish on a third of his body. Like drinking organic Coke.

So yesterday we’re walking the ‘hood and a neighbor points at his toenails. “What are you doing with this girlie stuff?”

Um, he’s two and a half. He doesn’t know there are things society reserves for girls and for boys. He doesn’t know because we don’t feel the need to tell him. He doesn’t know that small-minded people will close off half of his joys in life soon enough. He doesn’t know why the shoe lady resisted, for a moment, bringing him the pink butterfly boots he asked for, or why when he asks for purple clothes, there aren’t any in his section. (Yes, most of his jammies are pink and purple…HOLD THE PHONE. What East Coast freaks are in charge of Word’s spellchecker? Because since when is jimmies a better guess than jammies? There’s no such word as jimmies. They’re sprinkles. It’s a shopping cart, not a carriage. It’s a freaking purse, not a pocketbook. At least give me the West Coast version of Word, not the Boston edition. If I type milkshake is it going to correct to frappe? Or better yet, cabinet? Geez. Come on. They look like sprinkles. They act like sprinkles. Why in the hell would they be jimmies? And why, you stupid little paperclip freak, would I have my kid wear jimmies? Jammies. Now I have to go teach autocorrect a lesson or two in California vernacular. Damned thing probably says PEAbuddy instead of Pea-Body.)

(Wait, do they mean jimmies as a verb or a noun? I guess jimmy as a verb occurs more than jammies…no it doesn’t. Nighttime is every day, and jimmying things open is rather rare. If not, get yourself in good with a locksmith or a carpenter. Because life’s too short to jimmy things open all the time. Or to have to recorrect jimmies to jammies, when you typed what you wanted in the first place. Meddling coder geeks.)

Anyway, why do strangers feel the need to put their ubermasculine malarkey on my kid? So he polishes his toenails. So? So he likes butterflies and ladybugs. So? He likes pink. A lot. Used to be, parents were told to dress their boys in pink because red was too strong a color for girls, who were conventionally dressed in blue. (Note that it all changed to blue/boy, pink/girl when the Baby Boomers showed up. Dagnabit, could more of the world revolve around that generation?! When will they go away and let someone else have a chance at determining the nation’s priorities?)

My parents gave me a dump truck when I was in the hospital at age 2, and the nurses thought we were from some cult. I liked freaking trucks, y’all. And I didn’t turn out anything except open minded. All toddlers like trucks and trains and bugs and dolls, so why do we have to be wiping half of that off the map-o’-funness for them based on their plumbing? Spin mama’s son erupted from the bathroom five years ago and pronounced, with his hair wrapped in a towel and nothing else on, that he was a beautiful princess. “Yes, you are!” we all fawned, and went back to our conversation.

I love that Spouse goes to the playground with his son, both of them in sandals and toenail polish. Spouse doesn’t think twice about saying “yes, please” to our little painter. And when friends give him hell, he just looks at them without flinching and says, “My son did them for me.”

Gives me a tangible reminder of why Spouse is the best spouse for me and the best dad for Peanut.

So all y’all who have a problem with the two men in my life painting their toenails, you can just shove off. ‘Cuz I like them more than I like you, anyway.

It’s a yucky, icky world out there

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I don’t like the world, right at this particular minute. Everything that’s gross and violent and scary is getting worse, and everything that’s supposed to be safe isn’t. Aside from the whole “poisoning ourselves with every single thing in our over-produced and over-consuming country,” the lead stories today include a decapitation on a bus, a video-taped torture death, and a preacher killing his wife and freezing her body. (Sorry, no links. I can’t bear it–I didn’t read ant of those stories. The headlines were enough.) I was going to let all of that go, but, a blogger I found tag surfing at wordpress, whose kids have developmental differences, went to the library and burst into tears when storytime made her feel that she can’t even do normal things with her kids. Cried in the library.

Dude, that’s not okay. Some days, this is not a nice place to exist. Neither is the third world, I know. But I don’t live there and don’t have the energy to empathize that far today. I really don’t. I know that my absolute darkest moments are diamond-laden sunlight compared to the lives of 99% of the people in this world. I’m sorry if my kvetching dishonors those living in war-torn, impoverished countries. But seriously, a guy can’t sleep on a bus without being stabbed and decapitated? wtf?

People have been asking me, while Spouse is temporarily working in a galaxy far, far away, how I’m faring as a single parent. And without taking more than a nanosecond to wallow in missing him, I know that having a spouse be away is nothing at all like being a single parent. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to raise kids by myself with the added sorrow/fear/anger/joy of a relationship that ended, regardless of how amicably. (‘Cuz there are a lot of those around, right? Amicable divorces? Sure.) I can’t imagine how hard it would be to lose not only a co-parent, but a person with whom you once felt friendly/safe/loved. (I don’t want to be presumptuous about other people marrying someone who makes them feel warm and fuzzy, for one minute of work in domestic abuse organizations makes you rethink what marriage means. Can’t imagine that, either.) While we’re at it, I can’t imagine how hard it would be to raise children while working two or three jobs (thanks, ‘country that has nice ideas about democracy but totally sucks in its priorities,’ for completely abandoning the working poor, for letting the minimum wage drop to a relative fifty-year low, for being an international embarrassment on family leave, for letting our public schools undereducate our kids while a big chunk of the country teaches belief instead of science, and for proposing that a minority view trump women’s health). I can’t imagine how hard it would be to work three jobs and raise children by myself, with child care I could barely afford. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to do any of that with a child who doesn’t fit a typical developmental profile.

So, no. It’s not hard without Spouse here. It’s a little quieter and a little cleaner. And our phone bill is a lot higher. And I stay up too late blogging. But it’s nothing compared to what most people do everyday.

It’s still a yucky, yucky world. We’ve gotten a damned good deal so far, seeing as how I didn’t marry a preacher who killed and froze me, I didn’t sleep on the bus for part of the ride, and I didn’t die while being tortured. And I didn’t sink into lonely despair because a librarian snapped at my kids’ differences.

So, I guess…happy, happy day?