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.