snow-eating

School has ended for me and for P; j has school until tomorrow, the 23rd. These are some pictures from this weekend, when we were pretty much snowed in for three days. As in years past, there was much snow-eating. Snow-eating, I’ve found, is the outdoor equivalent of paper-eating, which is j’s indoor fascination. He’s even found himself a corner of the room, behind the living room curtain, in which he crumbles, munches, and then disposes of spitballs in one of my many plants. Yes, this is my amazing, spectacular child.


The snowflakes have been my project with j, who has learned to use scissors quite well at school. Scissor-wrangling was not even on my radar screen (What do you mean, scissors? He’s only 3!), so I’m glad that he’s been learning at school. So the snowflakes you see on the window are my creation; however, j will do quite a bit of cutting on his own (mostly ribbon). He’s also been helping me tape as I wrap presents--since I recycle catalogs for wrapping paper, this usually means putting tape over the models’ eyes--and he’s also been monitoring the Christmas lights that are taped to the windows. They inevitably fall off (loudly, too--as a family we’re just starting to learn not to jump when they unexpectedly drop), so it’s good to have someone eager to tape them back onto the windows.

We’re headed to Michigan this weekend just after Christmas, and are very excited (yet completely unprepared, as usual) for the trip.

holiday decorating

We just pulled out the holiday decorations, which we haven’t seen since December 2006. Last year we closed on the house in December and moved here in early January, so we didn’t bother decorating our apartment. Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of holiday decorating, but even an old Scrooge like me can appreciate making holiday decorations part of a home. We have not spent two Christmases in a row anywhere since we lived in the Bronx (1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003). When we lived in the house in Easton, I remember being very excited while putting up the decorations, imagining that each holiday the tree would be where I had placed it for years--nay, decades--to come. And then we moved 5 months later.

Since P likes his job, I (mostly) like mine, j is doing well, and the economy is going down the drain, we plan never to move again, so I got that same feeling when opening up the box of decorations this year: I will always put the tree here. We only have a baby tree (given to P by a students a few years ago); we also don’t have many decorations, which is just fine by me as I try to simplify and declutter. Two years ago I made the commitment that if the decorations can’t fit into the designated box, we have too many. P is more than fine with this. :)

I haven’t been blogging this semester mostly because my commitment to work has taken over my entire life, and this week I became chair of my department, which is a commitment which will last until June 30, 2010 when I hope to pass off the responsibility to someone else. I’ve sort of been doing the chair responsibilities this semester but getting paid much less, so the pay bump starting next month will give us some more money in the bank--or rather, the student loan coffers. Also, now that I have a better sense of what the job requires, I hope that things will calm down next semester as I settle into a routine.

And with that, I leave you with an interesting picture of j. Discuss.

happy weekend, happy tuesday

Last weekend was a good one, and it was followed by an even better week. Tuesday night... I can't tell you how ecstatic I was to hear the words "President Elect Obama." And you know what? It Still Feels Good. (This Judith Warner piece, especially the picture, is really fantastic too.)

I really should be in bed right now--just 20 more minutes while I wait for the laundry to finish. Here are some pictures of last weekend. On Saturday we raked leaves (still far too many left, though) and our boy danced among them wearing many stripes.


Then, on Sunday, we headed back to PA to visit our old neighbors L and S, who will be moving themselves next month to South Carolina to be with their sons. Friday was S's birthday, so j helped me bake some pumpkin bread with cream cheese frosting. There was a lot of pouring water to and from measuring cups, and he insisted that I put powdered sugar on his face.


Then it was off to PA. As we neared the end of Jersey, we saw some beautiful hot air balloons, and I was able to grab a few shots while racing along the highway.


(Click on the images to make them larger.)

halloween

This week I got to see Cornel West on campus--what a fantastic speaker. It was more than his referring to private conversations with “Brother Barack.” He puts things into perspective and despite all of his excitement and preacher-like cadences (or perhaps because of them?), he's a very calming presence... actually, I need to finish this blog entry soon because he’ll be on Bill Maher in a few minutes.

We had a great Halloween this year. In the afternoon my mom and I headed over to j’s school, where they had a Halloween “parade” with the kids in their costumes. j wore the same spider costume he had last year (glad I listened to P’s advice about getting the larger size!), and it was fun to see all the little ones dressed up. My favorite was the kid dressed as a slice of mushroom pizza.

Our presence having completely distracted j from any hope of a normal day, we took him home about 45 minutes early. Though we planned to have dinner before trick-or-treating, kids began at around 4:30, so P and j headed out early. The trick-or-treaters kept coming on and off until about 8.

I know it’s not everyone’s thing, but I like Halloween quite a bit, and am ecstatic that we finally live somewhere where a fair amount of kids come trick-or-treating. I’m already planning for changes I’ll make next year. The first is that I should buy some kind of luminaries to light the way to our door since it’s somewhat dark. Kids had to travel up two flights of stairs to get to our kitchen door, and the luminaries would make it safer. Also, I want to start collecting some more decorations, and get j in on the act sooner. (Over the last few weeks in school, he made the few things I put on the window here.) Oh, and more creepy stuff--we have some funky spaces in the front of the house that could lend themselves well to more Halloween decorating.

I took some fun pictures tonight... if you’d like to see them and I haven’t already sent them to you, send me an email. I’m not sure if j is getting too old for me to keep sending tons of unrequested photos. :)

playing catch-up

This may have been the longest blog hiatus I’ve had. It’s been a crazy month, what with all this administrative work, P being in rehearsal, and my mom moving a mere 10 minutes away from us. As of yesterday, however, P’s show is over, my mom is moved, and the administrative work is at least slowing down a bit. Lately work, especially this extra job, has been incredibly stressful and kind of depressing and I’m not sure how it will--or even should--fit into the rest of my life, but I’m trying to do my best for now.

School is going well for j. Because of the bus, he has long days, leaving at 8 and not getting home until 4:30, but we’ve definitely seen an improvement in his communication skills and behavior. According to his teacher, he’s an enthusiastic participant in all the activities--especially the singing. He still has trouble focusing on one thing at a time. All this isn’t a surprise, but it is nice to hear overall positive things right now.

And the election! Only one more week to go and I cannot tell you how much I long for next Wednesday when it’s all over. We’ve been talking politics in this house every day for over a year. j can immediately identify the candidates by sight:

“Barack Obama—-yea! John McCain—-ugh”
...though he sometimes, much to his parents’ chagrin, gets the commentary reversed.

He can also identify Michelle Obama and “Joey Biden!” and McCain’s running mate, “Tina Fey.” (I’m desperately hoping that come next week, he won’t need to ever know the actual name of the Republican VP nominee.)

It's funny, this writing thing. Getting down just the few above thoughts was a little rough since I haven't been doing it for a while. Must. write. more. often.

chopsticks!

Let me preface this video by explaining that today was the first day j used chopsticks. It was not intentional. There’s a new restaurant in town that serves Chinese food and sushi, and P decided to get some sushi for lunch.

I knew that there was a brief mention of chopsticks on a Sesame Street video that j watches, but I had no idea how well he had it memorized until he saw P’s chopsticks.

“Chopsticks!” j grabbed the chopsticks from his dad, forcing P to wander the kitchen in search of a new pair and ending up with some fancy ones I purchased a few years back. Then, while trying to spear a piece of avocado, j said (I am not making this up), “This is how I eat chopsticks. I hold it like a pencil, then you take it, and eat it!” And for his first attempt, he didn’t do half bad.

Then he got a bit more adventurous, and, well, this happened...

ahoy

Did you all know that today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day?

Seriously, it is. And there's an event going on at a local bar here in celebration. Really.

school (seems to be) way cool

Well, we’re near the end of the week and the bus is going well. j rides in the morning with one aide and a driver, and in the afternoon with another aide and driver. He loves the aide who rides with him on the way home--her name is Aggie, and this week has been All. About. Aggie. (The wheels on the bus go Aggie, Aggie, Aggie... etc.) I think his reluctance to get on the bus in the morning has been more about the fact that Aggie isn’t there rather than general dislike of the bus.

And school seems to be going well, too. He brings home tons of artwork each day, including this masterpiece, which cracked me up. I can imagine him leafing through a toy catalogue with someone at daycare, pointing to things excitedly. Ball! Letter! Baby!

fey as palin

In case you haven't seen it, here is Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton on SNL last night.



Best line? Poehler/Clinton saying she doesn't "want to hear you compare your road to the White House to my road to the White House. I scratched and clawed through mud and barbed wire and you just glided in on a dog sled wearing your pageant sash and your Tina Fey glasses."

palin is crap

Yeah, I said it. There are so many reasons that this woman gives me agita, sometimes I just freeze when I hear her name. It’s like 10 times worse than thinking about Bratz.

My agita is not all about her (though I find her policies atrocious); it’s because her VP candidacy has once again focused this election on personality rather than the issues. Not to mention the fact that reactions to and defenses of her--from both the Left and the Right--reek of sexism.

Since my Palin-agita typically renders me incoherent, I'm going to need to use bullets. Here are just some of the many reasons I despise her candidacy:

• Her policy on the environment (This one is a must-read.)


• Her views on abortion (If you feel like laughing while being pissed off at Republican hypocrisy, see Samantha Bee's take on Bristol Palin's "choice.")


• Her policy on sex education


• Her stance on same sex marriage


• Her take on civil liberties in general


• Her lack of knowledge about issues (see Bush Doctrine, etc.)... not to mention how insulting it is that it is this woman we're discussing over intelligent, accomplished politicians like Hillary Clinton. Oh, and while we’re on the topic...


• The difference in treatment between Palin and Clinton (I hope to read more commentary on this, because I haven't seen a whole lot yet. For now, there’s Warner’s "Mirrored Ceiling" piece that gestures towards what I would call Palin’s “palatable feminism” in relation to Clinton’s. There’s also Collins’s commentary here in which she argues that in comparison to Clinton’s achievement, Palin’s nomination “feels like a step back.” Uh, yeah. More like a mile back.)


• The sexist treatment of Palin by some Obama supporters! Come on now, people! Set aside the fact that it’s offensive: there’s no way to win using that strategy now that conservatives have discovered sexism. I’ve had a hard time with NOW this year (there was, you know, the whole primary season), but I think that their recent statement on the treatment of Palin is spot-on: “...we should defeat anti-women's rights candidates like Sarah Palin based on their merits and their positions, not their gender.”

In “The Mirrored Ceiling,” Judith Warner states that “real people” find Palin

acceptably “real,” because Palin’s not intimidating, and makes it clear that she’s subordinate to a great man.

That’s the worst thing a woman can be in this world, isn’t it? Intimidating, which appears to be synonymous with competent. It’s the kiss of death, personally and politically.

But shouldn’t a woman who is prepared to be commander in chief be intimidating? Because of the intelligence, experience, talent and drive that got her there? If she isn’t, at least on some level, off-putting, if her presence inspires national commentary on breast-pumping and babysitting rather than health care reform and social security, then something is seriously wrong. If she doesn’t elicit at least some degree of awe, then something is missing.

Yes, yes, and yes.

school is cool

j started school today. It’s a school that specializes in kids with special needs--according to his IEP, he’ll get speech therapy and occupational therapy several times a week there. The “school” part only lasts from 1-3:30, but they have a daycare there as well, so we decided to have him in the daycare in the morning so he can have more daily interaction with other kids, which he really needs. The daycare is an integrated program, but the classroom is right across the hall from his afternoon class.

He seemed to have a really good time. j’s been having a very tough time with transitions lately, but he has always seemed to adapt pretty easily to other people. The place--playground, teachers, classroom, services--is wonderful, and P and I feel very comfortable with it. Between all our moving around, we’ve seen many daycares/preschools and this is one of the nicest.

So he’ll be there 5 days a week, and I am excited for him to (1) be on a regular schedule and (2) be playing with other kids regularly. And they won’t kick him out if there’s an incident.

The immediate concern, though, is the bus. j’s services include transportation to and from school. He hasn’t gone on the bus yet, since P and I decided to take him for these few two days so he knows where he’s going. The ride takes 45 minutes, and he’ll start Monday. I’m terrified that he’ll scream for the entire bus ride and that it will take 3 people to strap him into the car seat. I think he’ll be fine once he actually gets to school (since there's that transitions-are-bad-but-new-people-are-fine thing).

I’m back to school too, doing a bunch of administrative work in addition to teaching. P is directing a play at his college that goes up in October; he’ll been gone a lot in the next month. So we’re all pretty darn busy, and truth be told, I love it. I feel better overall when I can focus on work and we have a schedule going.

getting ready

I’ve been organizing and getting ready for school. I just donated a bunch of clothes that I don’t wear, which means that my closet is virtually empty. (Peter Walsh claims that the average person only wears about 20% of what s/he owns--or something like that--and I have found that to be true in my own closet. So I have purged, though I’m still not satisfied that I will indeed wear all that I’ve kept.) This purge has made me realize I need some more work clothes, especially since I will likely be going in much more than I previously thought. The administrative work that was supposed to happen, but then didn’t, is now once again happening.

Other things... since we don’t yet have money to fully renovate the bathroom (nor the stomach for it--kitchen renovations were pretty tough earlier this year), P did great work painting the woodwork and cabinets white and it looks much cleaner and more open in there.

Our next house improvement is to get a bed. As some of you know, we’ve been sleeping on a mattress on the floor since we moved into our house in PA over two years ago. On move-in day, we realized that the boxspring wouldn’t fit up the stairs, so out to the curb it went. (I tried to Freecycle it for a while, but no one seemed to want a boxspring with no mattress.) Anyway, we’ve been sleeping on the floor since. I don’t really mind it, but I do miss being able to, say, sit on the bed to put on my socks. I think it would also cut down on the abrupt wake-ups from j, who just this morning ran and jumped on me, saying, “I made some coffee.” Though I was hopeful, this was unfortunately not true. However, j *has* been “helping” make coffee with me lately, which used to involve just pushing the button on the coffeemaker and shouting “Here it comes!” as the coffee began to drip. Lately, though, he wants to actually scoop the coffee into the maker, and this experience has become more and more harrowing since he doesn’t want me to touch him as he wields an overflowing scoop of ground coffee, some of which lands in the intended filter, while some gets sprinkled all over the counter, the floor, and the chair on which he stands. I try to help, but he admonishes me to “go see Daddy,” which is--as I should know--code for “I need some space, dude.”

j and I went to a lovely playdate yesterday hosted by a mom in our village who has access to a private beach on the lake. All the kids were younger than j, but he had a great time, focusing on all the sand toys. This is somewhat unusual for him, but I have seen some more focus in the last few weeks, even in the art room.
These are a few pictures of his obsession with putting eyes on bagels. I think I did this once to make him laugh and then he insisted all clay bagels must have eyes.

phelps returns

Only a few more days of the Olympics left: you can tell because Michael Phelps is on his way home.

birthday boy

The Olympics are exhausting me. Others get injuries from participating in sports; I get injured from watching them. Today I woke up with the worst kink in my neck from falling asleep on the couch trying to get my Olympics fix.

j has been making me play his birthday video over and over. It’s the one where we’re all in Northern MI and everyone sings “Happy Birthday” to him and then he blows out the candles on his birthday pie--which, as you can see, he does quite nicely. This picture was taken before the candles were even lit, so this was essentially taken during a trial run, but I assure you that he blew out the candles like a pro. I credit the training provided by aunts and cousins during extreme bubble sessions. :)

That Michigan cherry one was his first of two birthday pies. The second one was an apple one I made using a Bittman recipe I hadn’t tried before. It was nice: really subtle and not too sugary. For j, it was pie, so it was good. The next day I reminded p and my mom (visiting for a few days) that we “have some leftover P.I.E.” j perked up and said, “Mama, I love P.I.E.” I’m going to need to bake desserts with longer names.


We’re giving in to his musical side. For a while there I had banned j’s “dance playlist” because he was growling “Good Morning Starshine” over and over. However, we’re realizing that the music can calm him, too. It’s a hard balance, but essentially if music is not playing, he’ll make it play himself, growling and stomping whatever his favorite song happens to be. In the last few days he’s done this wearing a new winter hat he got for his birthday. He seems to love this hat, which is strange since he usually hates wearing hats... but he actually napped wearing it the other day. I took this picture just after he woke up; he's wearing the hat and holding a new bat he also got for his birthday.

No official word on where he’ll be for preschool this September. I would love it if he could go back to the child development center at my work, but I just don’t think he’s ready--ok, I don’t think the other kids are ready--for that yet. I am hopefully that after he’s in this early intervention program for a bit (maybe a semester? Maybe a year?), he can return to the other school. I’d like to write more about all the hand-wringing and inconsistent evaluations that have gone into this process, but I’m a little too fragile right now. More later...

laptops, books, bubbles

Hooray! After a few days, the wonderful techie-dudes at work located my lost files and pictures and hooked me up with a new laptop. I like this new PC is nice, which is good since I don’t have a choice anyway. Going Mac isn’t an option unless we buy one for personal use once our home desktop finally dies... but I have to admit feeling a bit of computer-envy when I look over at P’s Mac from work.

Over vacation I only got to 3 books this year: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (good), Bel Canto (good), and Saturday (great). I’m updating my Shelfari now, but M’s post and my conversation with N last month are making me think I should also check out Goodreads. Is the interface better than Shelfari?

We’ve had a pretty good week over here. j and I have been playing with the birthday presents. From Grandma and Grandpa: a fantastic dollhouse with people who, according to j, like to eat a red flower for every sit-down meal. From the cousins and aunts: a birthday bubble set, complete with food coloring, soap, glycerin, and mixer. Those neon colors are sweet, guys. Thanks--j and his mama love them.

s'mores club

My laptop has exploded. After our return from two great weeks in Michigan, I attempted to turn on my laptop Sunday night only to find that it refuses to load Windows. Screens in DOS never looked scary when I used them to type college papers, but now they are most unwelcome.

The good news is that I'll finally be getting the much-needed new laptop I've been requesting for months. However, I am now at the mercy of the great guys in our IT department, who have given only vague promises that they can reclaim the 15+ hours worth of course prep I did and about half of the pictures I took in Northern Michigan (sob!). As most of you know, I love taking and sorting pictures, so the possibility that I've lost many of them is pretty devastating to me. We'll see what kind of magic they can work this week.

It may therefore be a while before I can post a vacation picture. In the meantime, I encourage anyone reading this to go and vote for the first caption for this cartoon in The New Yorker's weekly contest. How can that first one not win?


"The first rule of s'mores club is you do not talk about s'mores club."

vacation part 1

Ack! So long since blogging. We took what is becoming an annual trip to the shore this past week, one of us went to a family wedding, and P finished up the months-long saga of his (most excellent) show. Now we have four relaxing days at home before heading off again to Michigan. I plan to relax by doing what I often do in the summer when September seems uncomfortably close for comfort—course redesign and planning.

In short, there may not be much blogging, but as I often do to make up for writing, here are some pictures of j as worthy substitutes. We had a great time at the shore. j loves running into the ocean with no fear (except for that of his parents). He also loves lemon water ice, which he was reluctant to share. One night after he finished some water ice walking down the boardwalk, I looked down to see that he began to gnaw on the cup itself.

people in your neighborhood

Today all three of us were home—such a treat, since P’s been rehearsing in the city a lot. P took j for a grocery store run and a quick visit to the lake (as captured here on P’s phone) while I began to attack the horror that is the basement. I like to think of it as decluttering, but once we started moving things around down there, I realized it was unpacking. We’d never really recovered from two moves in a year and then renovating the kitchen immediately after the move... so we had stuff in kitchen boxes that we’d packed over a year ago and never opened until today. There are other things in the basement that have been moved from each of our six (!) homes in the past five years.

After today, my immediate goal has changed from throwing out 80% of what we own to just being able to walk easily through the basement. I actually took pictures of this godforsakenbasementmess that I will post only when I have some beautiful “after” shots with which to contrast them. But I’m happy with today’s progress, if only because I yanked down the curtain in the laundry area that must have been there for at least 40 years and replaced it with a curtain we had lying around. Things are getting there.

This evening, after a relatively calm dinner, we decided to take j for a walk in his tricycle (we push from behind as he hasn’t yet mastered pedaling) to get some ice cream at the shop closest to our house, which is about a 5 minute walk. This short walk turned into a 90 minute journey, however, since j ran into a little boy his age with whom he’s swapped tricycles a few times. After some fun playtime, we got our ice cream, then ran into j’s buddy again on the way home, along with a few other kids and parents on the block. Everyone was incredibly friendly and I was so happy to actually be outside, (gasp!) talking to people.

j’s buddy is large for his age, too, though he’s about 6 months older. The little girl who lives down the street (a year older than j) is also large for her age. This is comforting: her mother and I mused that on this street, at least, all three of them can feel completely “normal.” I think we’ll be ok here.

colbert and cookie monster

Stephen Colbert blames Cookie Monster for fruit usurping the cookie's rightful place as the number one snack for children under six. Favorite line delivery? CM calls Elmo's car fuel-efficient because it runs on "imagination."



I like the Colbert/Sesame Street combination. j went through a whole phase last year during which Z was his favorite letter because of Colbert's appearance on this DVD.

your groove i do deeply dig

We've been working on art and generally airing out the basement room the last few days. Also, there's been a whole lotta dancing. I created "j's Dance Playlist" on my MP3 player and apparently it is now the only music suitable for j to dance to. I hope to add more songs in and delete some so the adults in the house don't get bored. His favorite song right now is "Good Morning Starshine" from Hair, which he sings loudly in a scary sort of growl:

gliddy glub gloopy nibby nabby noopy
la la la - lo lo
sabba sibbi sabba nooby aba naba
lee lee - lo lo
tooby ooby wala
nooby aba naba
early morning singing song

He'll dance to this at home, but he'll also growl it loudly, rocker-style, in the grocery store, prompting mostly startled looks. The only way I have so far discovered to get him to settle a bit is to sing the song to him softly. If I sing with him he'll sing it sans growl.

The other song he loves is "Groove is in the Heart," which does indeed include the line "Horton Hears a Who" (see, P?).

wearable feedbags

Love this video...


New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less

art & letters (& shoes)

P finished painting and I finished arranging the artroom today. Hooray! If I can get locate some batteries, I can take some pictures. It isn’t completely finished yet (I’m trying to figure out a way to drape cloth over the ceiling beams), but j and I have had a good time already making paintings and play-dough “salads.” I may have to remove the gigantic letter puzzle that we have on one corner of the floor (it was a holiday present we hadn’t yet gotten around to unpacking). The letters are great, but their presence means he is easily distracted from all the art. The man loves his letters.

He’s also become obsessed with shoes the last few weeks. Usually this means he wants to put shoes on you. He will bring you your shoes and say Mama, a-shoes? Or Daddy, want-a shoes? Sometimes he will put on other people’s shoes and walk around. In today’s case, it was both shoes (my sandals) and gardening gloves. Nice look.

shall we rant?

I think I may just turn this blog into a big old rant against perfect parenting. We’re trying out some new techniques to get j to sleep on his own. Though I am a big supporter of co-sleeping babies, j has slept in his own bed and room for a while. However, we still usually read him to sleep (or simply pass out in bed at the same time he does, until I wake P up or vice versa). A friend suggested putting him down and closing the door repeatedly until he drifts off. I think P is having some success with this at night, but my attempt to do this yesterday went like this:

I place j in bed. He pulls up the covers. I say “Have a good sleep.” He says, “Good night, Mama.” I leave the room. Five seconds later, I hear him get out of bed and play with toys. I enter the room. He runs into bed, and then says, “Bye, bye, Mama: see-uh later!” and before I get out the door, he is inching out of bed. I open the door again, and repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

Another suggestion she had was staying in the room doing something really boring, like knitting, while he drifts off. I like this image of the calm mother and docile child. So I pulled in my knitting, hoping it would mesmerize him. Instead, he jumped up and started grabbing the ball, pulling the yarn around, and quickly got so tangled we couldn’t stop laughing.

Then, I heard back from a local parenting group that I was interested in joining through Meetup.Com. I had been in a fantastic Meetup group when we lived in the apartment last year, and am desperate to meet some other people with kids--or, frankly, anyone--around here in this new place.

So I get the response. There is a waitlist, and would I like to be on it?

A waitlist! I asked how long the waitlist was, and haven’t yet heard back. I would love to ask this vigilant-moderator-lady if she can give me the names of the other people on the waitlist so I can start my own Meetup with the overflow. And it’ll be super awesome, and all the cool people will want to come over to my house for milk and cookies. What am I, in second grade?

I just re-read this. Ok, so the rant idea for the blog really blows. I will write a more positive blog entry next time. I will, I will, I will.

artroom

The basement artroom area is primed (thanks, P!) and ready to be painted tomorrow morning; I hope to get a bit of it set up tomorrow afternoon. Then I can stock it with supplies we have and a few we don't.

We have a ridiculous amount of crap in the (rest of the) basement. I often blame the excessive moving of the last few years, but it's embarassing nevertheless. I Freecycled one thing this week, but I think I need to average one Freecyle thing a day if I plan to ever give the full house tour to friends who come to visit. The good news is that with so much stuff, we have plenty of furniture we can use in the artroom.

I've found a favorite blog to inspire: The Artful Parent. She has some beautiful ideas, and there are lots of pictures. Of course, like many blogs of this ilk, it inspires at the same time it makes me feel like a worthless parent for not being as prepared, organized, and clean.

I'm determined to stay positive and accept my many imperfections. This is one of the things professional organizer Peter Walsh encourages in his latest book, Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? (Side note: I requested it from the local library ages ago; when it finally came in this week, the librarian couldn't stop laughing at the title.) I've been skimming it--sorry, Peter, but it's not terribly profound and somewhat repetitive--but it's a motivating read to get things in order. However, his previous book, It's All Too Much, is a much better reference (fyi).

Ok, ok, so the quality of my reading material has declined significantly in the last month. But when all you've read for the past year are books on pedagogy and discourse and revised dissertation chapters, I say you deserve a break. :)

sentence, mill, mowers

After all my venting of the last post, I feel I may have done j a disservice. I am trying to focus on the positive things right now. This morning j said, "Mama, j want-a applesauce" when he woke up. I was only too happy to oblige. Real, actual sentences with nouns and verbs: they are so wonderful to hear. I give credit to the applesauce; it is very--in j's words--"mmm, tasty!". P makes it himself, and it's much easier with the food mill he just bought last month. The man loves his food mill.

Today I went to work in the morning. When I returned P was ripping down the ceiling paneling in what we hope will be the basement playroom... in the 95 degree heat. Yikes. Hopefully the garbage people will take the bags of this stuff tomorrow, though it just stormed tonight so I'm sure it's a nasty mess. If they do take the stuff, tomorrow we shall treat the room to some serious shop-vaccing.

Later, after a trip to the grocery store and then dinner, I decided to pick up the assorted random things lying about the yard and somehow ended up mowing the lawn for 30 minutes on the mower's way to the garage. Sadly, 30 minutes only does a patch of the yard, in part because we have a good sized yard--but mostly because we use a push mower. We do this to avoid using gas. We are trying to avoid using gas for environmental reasons, but P has told the neighbors when they ask (and they do ask--I think they think we're nuts) that it's because gas is too expensive. I should have been better prepared with this excuse when a man driving down the street literally stopped his car to reminicise about how his grandfather ("not my father, my grandfather--and I'm 58!") used to use one, to ask how much it cost, and to mention how he heard on talk radio how people are now buying them "to be 'green'." I detected a little bit of distaste in the last comment, so I just nodded and continued mowing. But then he kept looking at me expectantly, and before I knew it he had jumped out of his car and was asking if he could try it out. He pushed the thing around in amazement, and then decided that he should tell me how to use it ("let's pull the blade up a little higher" and "be careful of your toes").

our guy

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Things have been a little stressful over here, and I don’t usually post about it, but since the issues with baby-j consume so much of our thoughts, it seems that I will have to refer to them if I ever want to blog again.

j is a wonderful, sweet, energetic child, but he has some issues socializing with other kids and dealing with his emotions. This is not a new phenomenon, but it’s gotten to the point that we have to do something about it. In the last couple months, he’s been looked at by hearing specialists, occupational therapists, a chiropractor, an acupressurist, and a speech pathologist. We have plans to take him to a nutritionist/holistic-minded practioner and probably more evaluations, one of which will be completed by a “team” of child development experts. All this is complicated by the fact that his issues are not severe enough for my insurance to pay for it (so if we pay for it, it’s $400 for each 45 min. session of OT!), so we will have to go through the local school for (probably) new evaluations and therapy.

According to a speech pathologist we've seen, he has a slight speech delay. P and I think that this may be adding to his frustration and the aggression he experiences from time to time. In the last few weeks, the aggression has been constant, though it’s hard to call it “aggression” when he’s so happy as he does it.

j has had a long history of not being able to interact well with other kids. First, it was biting. Now, it's an inability to express his (happy!) feelings towards other kids. He copes by biting his hand extremely hard (bite marks, rashes)... though it’s clear that he wants to get close to kids--to hug really hard, and sometimes to pinch. The hand-biting-coping-mechanism stopped for a few months, but has returned in the last few weeks.

So this morning we decided to take him out of pre-school... for now. He only had three weeks left in the summer anyway, and we still plan on taking him back in fall. Actually, getting him ready for the fall is partly why we’ve decided to take him out for now. Perhaps a little bit more time with us (and opinions from others) will make him better able to handle things next semester.

This was such a tough decision, and I can't really explain how difficult things are right now--not really with j, but with our feelings about it, including my guilt over feeling like I just did something wrong somewhere, like working and going to school. And of course, that feeling completely, well, sucks because it feeds right into the kind of gender expectations I try to resist.

In other--but kind of related--news, we’re working on the house some more. In the last few weeks this has meant painting the bedrooms. This week, we’re focused on the room in the basement that is semi-finished but that we need to clean up some more to make into a playroom for j.

nightmare ticket

I can always count on The Onion for a good laugh.

Obama, Clinton, McCain Join Forces To Form Nightmare Ticket

At the top of the platform is a military strategy calling for the phased withdrawal of .000006 brigades from Iraq and Afghanistan every seven months over the next 350 years. Universal health care would also be provided, taken away on McCain's birthday, and then provided again only to those wealthy enough to afford it. Abortions would be made available on every other even-numbered Friday from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. EST to all women who can prove residency in Alaska or Nevada. And an entirely new immigration policy will be instituted, sources said, as soon as the candidates can stand to be in the same room with one another for more than five minutes.

musical stylings

j has developed a hankerin’ for the breakfast cereal I’ve been eating lately--Kashi GoLean, “a lightly sweetened mix of crunchy fiber twigs, crispy soy protein grahams, and honey-toasted 7 Whole Grains and Sesame Puffs.” Why he likes this stuff I don’t know. I barely like it myself--I eat it mostly for the extra protein. The first few times he ate it, I composed a little ditty:

I like the Kashi, yo;
I’ll never let it go
I like the Kashi, yo;
I’ll never let it go

Mistake. Now we can’t get him to stop singing it at the kitchen table, even when he’s not eating Kashi. Sometimes I can get him to substitute “apple” or “pasta” for “Kashi” when he's eating those things, but then he’ll just start singing about liking the Kashi, yo, and how he’ll never let it go. Then, when eating something else, he remembers how much he likes that Kashi, yo, and he wants to eat Kashi instead of whatever he's eating. Then he’s all like Kashi, please and I’m all like But you’ve had 2 bowls of Kashi already today and it’s not a good scene.

So I guess “I Like the Kashi, Yo” will go down with the other family-created hit songs of j’s youth, which include:


1. “His Name is [baby-j], and He’s a Baby” (sung to the tune of Copacabana),
2. “You Gotta Go Get the Duckies,” which is not to be confused with
3. “You Give Me Duckies,”
4. “Gettin’ in Your Business (A-Business!),” and
5. “Heat Up the Mommy Juice” (his cousin's response to hearing my mom sing this one as she prepared a bottle of my pumped labors? “That’s not mommy juice; that’s milk!”).

graduation!

Yesterday my mom, P, and I headed into the city for graduation. It was great. First, there was the full university commencement in the morning. Between P’s graduations and mine, this was--I think--my fourth time at the morning ceremony. The previous times usually involved rain. At P’s morning commencement, it rained so hard we soaked through several towels (I’m sure my in-laws have fond memories of this). I believe that I also ended up wearing a garbage bag by the end of the day to keep dry. At least, that’s what it looks like in the pictures. Maybe it was just a really cheap poncho. This time, we were prepared. I had heavy-duty ponchos and umbrellas for the three of us.

Despite our preparedness (or perhaps because of it), yesterday morning was beautiful and the rain held off until a few hours after the ceremony. What a relief! However, while we had planned for rain, we hadn’t planned for sun, so P ended up with a bit of a sunburn, despite buying an emergency baseball cap in the campus bookstore.

After the morning commencement, there was time for a quick sandwich and then we were off to the doctoral hooding ceremony that took place in the church. The doctoral ceremony was really lovely, made more so by the fact that my advisor, who has encouraged me for so long, happened to be a part of the ceremony as she introduced one of the college’s honorees. She was on the dais the whole time; I was only a few feet away from her while I got “hooded.”

In the line of graduates, I ran into a friend with whom I had done a project in class several years back, and met some other community college teachers I hadn’t known before. My aunt M was able to get a few hours off work to attend, and our friends D & B also made it through the (pretty long!) ceremony. I felt so lucky to have so much support there.

We had to rush off quickly after the ceremony for a number of reasons, and I was somewhat saddened that it all came to such an abrupt end. I am so happy to have finished finally, but it’s sad knowing such a large part of my life--I started there 11 years ago--is done. It’s not the school itself, really, since I know that I’ll be back regularly to work with my writing group, but this degree has been a goal for so long... I guess I already feel a little lost without it as something to work towards.

mother's day

Happy mother's day to those of you we didn't get to speak to yesterday. We had a pretty nice Mother's Day over here. P, baby-j, my mom and I all went to a local farm that has a really old, beautiful carousel and a train ride which--though we didn't know it until we were on the train--took us past several animals. There were llamas, ponies, and emus. But baby-j's favorite had to be the goats. He does a mean goat impersonation. Seriously: it sounded kind of mean. :) But its accuracy seemed to fool some of the other parents and kids into thinking there was a goat actually on the train with us.


Also, there were ostriches!

the garbage mystery

Someone who shall remain nameless (ok, it was me) accidentally placed a garbage bag of “regular” garbage in the recycling can last week. It went out with the recycling last night when P took it out in anticipation of the Friday morning pick-up.

This morning, the bag was ripped up and lying in our yard, the contents half-eaten. This is not the mystery. Obviously some kind of animal got to it: a raccoon, perhaps, or maybe a really ambitious squirrel. However, what is a mystery is *how* the bag got on our yard, a full 10 feet away from where P placed the garbage, behind a fence, AND--since our yard is raised up from the driveway--elevated 3 feet. Based on the evidence of the crime scene, it appears that the bag was moved prior to being assaulted. So how did this happen?

P seemed to favor the raccoon hypothesis, but that would mean that the hypothetical raccoon would have taken the bag up the five concrete steps it takes to get into our yard and then have had to make a couple left turns with it before the attack. I’m thinking it was either a human who tossed the bag into our yard as a prank (but why would anyone do this and leave the rest of the recycling where it is?) or... I hate to even think this... a bear. (They are not uncommon in this area; see here.) But then, the bear would have had to toss the bag into the yard and eat standing up in our driveway. Or maybe the bear and the raccoon worked as a team: the bear tossing the bag into the yard, high-fiving the raccoon, and then moving on to assist another local animal in its quest for high-quality garbage.

The yard swans that we inherited from the previous owners (pictured here) must have seen it all.

Or were they the culprits?

cover art

Oh, my: I just found this page of "covers" online from The Onion Magazine, featuring the following magazine covers.







In other news, this is my 200th post(!) and I've been keeping this blog for over two years now. I really can't believe it's been that long.