bitterness before breakfast

I think I'm starting to become suspicious and weary of people without children. I remember pre-offspring I would be sitting, for example, in the college pub after class with a classmate and they'd have to leave after only one beer to go pick up their toddler from daycare and I'd feel sorry for them. 'Awww, poor person,' I'd think, 'having kids is such a drag, man.' And the other person would rather charitably let me believe that they would actually rather be sitting around discussing obscure social theorists and their convoluted ideas about consumsuption and the modern individual with me rather than snuggling with their sweet smelling, cuddly babe while reading 'pajama time' for the 200th time.

Now I know better.

Bam, what a difference a few years can make. Now I think of adults without children as not really fully grown yet. They have an innocence about them. They carry life lightly on their shoulders, amusing unaware of the superficiality of their problems, of how irrelevant all of life is compared the bottomless responsibility and sense of forboding that having a few bambinos running around brings. Love is gruesome. It is a heavy, heavy thing.

Remember those 1970s or so little cartoons of naked people with sickly sweet little "Love is..." sayings. I've never quite gotten them, perhaps I was too young to really get it, and the fact that they never wore clothes kind of distracted me (don't they get cold? They don't live around here, I know that.) But now, here I am older and more tired, I know for certain that those nudies were totally out to lunch. The one I remember best is the the 'Love means never having to say sorry.' What the? In my experience, love means having to say sorry all the time. Over things that couldn't possibility be my fault, like the weather and socks that don't match (okay, maybe my fault, but, dude, I got better things to feel sorry about).

Love is spending years nursing, cuddling, feeding, dressing, sacrificing in a thousand ways to please, sooth, and nourish a child and then have that child pass you over for someone who keeps whacking them with a plastic light saber and pushes them down the stairs.

Love is carrying a collective 60 pounds of screaming raging children through the darkened house after a very long day, stepping in cat upchuck along the way, and still reading one child her chapter before bedtime, nursing and singing the other to sleep and making sure the cat gets a good scratch behind the ears before dragging your own exhausted body off to bed.

Love is not having enough time to trim your toe nails for five months.

Love is taking years off your life by only sleeping in 15 minute stints for years at a time.

Love is poop, pee, vomit and applying salve to strange rashes in places only highly paid doctors or prostitutes will venture.

Love is not hauling off and smacking the brat who wakes you up an hour and half before you need to and then going back to sleep half an hour later, leaving you to deal with the now completely awake baby, who then falls asleep 30 minutes before you must start work, leaving you just enough time to finally trim your toe nails and blog out a whine about the whole love and children thing.

For so many years there has been no such thing as calling in sick, of walking while swinging my arms, of using the bathroom alone. Love is the only thing that would motivate someone to tolerate these barbarous conditions, and to make a person insane enough to actually enjoy it along the way.

rambling rant

The big deal lately for us is the colonization of the Disney Princesses of our house and our daughter's heart. I hate the Disney Princesses. I have violent fantasies about a big princess dismemberment and stewing party. Which makes me a little bit sad, because when I was little I thought Sleeping Beauty was about as great of a film as there could be. It's up there with Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, Annie, and The Best Little Whore House in Texas for me. I even seriously considered naming Smootch 'Aurora', that film had such an influence on me. And as far as it goes, Aladdin is a great, Mulan is fabulous (though problematic politically, I know, but cross dressing is always a winner in my mind), and Cinderella, well, everybody can identify with Cinderella. I grew up with these movies and I love them (except Snow White - never could abide with Snowy's 'Someday My Prince will Come' *shutter*). These movies are not exactly a feminist ideal, they are a far cry away from the Grimm's fairy tales, but they've got something that I like anyway. Humor. Irony. Dragons.

But the princesses all together are now The Princesses, and they are a force to be reckoned with. The Disney Princesses are whores for an imperialistic marketing scheme. Their images are slapped loose and fancy free across everything imaginable without feeling moored to any logical connection between image and product: bed sheets, crayons, kitchen ware, toothpaste, wallpaper, sandwich bags, clothing, books, and on and on and on. The 'princesses', which are simply heroines of disney films, actually being royality is not a prerequiste, are pictured as a group, an uber princess, and their individuality is reduced to slight quirky preferences for certain colours, hair style, and pets. The princess personality (which I have extrapolated from my extensive research watching Smootch watch the Princess sing-a-long videos borrowed from the library) is mainly concerned with men and partying.

So, where am I going with this? I don't know (it's getting pretty late). I was thinking I was going to write about my revelation that I do not need to fight this silliness, because that is what it is. It is marketing, and the last time I checked, I am still not required to actually buy this crap. True, I resent the hell that shopping for the few things I do actually have to buy is about a faux-choice between this brand or that, having no trademark-less thing avaliable in my local shops (have you tried to buy a child's toothbrush without a cartoon character on it lately?), but it is not the only influence in my child's life. Of course, Smootch completely lacks the critical thinking necessary to defend herself from advertising and that Disney is horrifically predatory when it comes to imbedding their brand into the consciousness of young minds in an effort to create lifelong consumers, but, hey, such is modern life, right? Still, with two of her classmates actually going to Disneyland in the past month, and being asked continually about the Princesses, and what do you want Santa to bring you for Christmas (she has already discovered that replying "playing with mom alone all day long" (poor Birdie was not invited) is not an acceptable response - that was poo pooed by a stranger on the bus today who refused to believe that Smootch's innermost desires had nothing to do with bubble wrapped plastic), and then having our video store carry at least half of their children's selection produced by Disney (the other half Nickelodeon), and nothing of any damn value, well, it's enough to make a mom rant.

Ahem.

So, when I was a girl, I had toys. Some were character toys, though Branding as a marketing scheme was still in its infancy. I remember it being a bit of a scandal that they were selling toys related to Gremlins before the movie actually was released. Though with He-Man and GI Joe, cartoons created exclusively to support a line of toys, we were no trademark virgins. Still, it was a mere sideshow of influence, compared to the whole earthquake level of advertising now. What I would consider to be the most important influence on my own childhood play to be is the fact that every couple of weeks or so I would find myself out at an isolated rural acerage for an entire weekend, with virtually no toys at all. This is the time otherwise known as parental visitation with my father. My 'fun' resources were my brother, the land such as it offered for exploration (and amazing land it was!), and a few grown up games my father kept out such as Risk, Monolopy, and chess pieces. Yes, folks, I had to make my own fun and I'm sure I'm a better person for it (though I occasionally failed and could spend an entire day staring up at a slowly moving ceiling fan missing my nintendo, but I'm going to believe that was some sort of mind enhancing zen experience and not a complete lack of character and creativity).

One of my favorite play items was a set of chess pieces painted by my mother before I was born. They are little masterpieces of dedication and intricacy. I have them today and Smootch has grown to love them also.

I spent hundred of hours playing with these little figures, though, truth be known, never actually played chess with them. You can create almost any story you want with 32 pieces in two colours. I'm sure most of us have similar recollections of creating complicated plots and intriques with just a few raw materials. Good times, being bored on those weekends.

Now, back to marketing. I was thinking about this today while watching Smootch play with my chess pieces and a Dora the Explorer game set she received for her birthday. Now Dora is as insidious as The Princesses and her image has been slapped on everything under the sun and more. Dora isn't a friend of mine either, but Smootch's Dora game chest has been pretty good to us because we like games and the game chest contains classics like Old Maid, dominios, and checkers that have been modified slightly to be understandable to the preschooler set. Smootch has learnt to play checkers with the Dora and Swiper characters, and it is the game of checkers she likes, with the licensed characters being a bit of a bonus for her. So, there is some redeemable value there (though decapitating the Dora characters has come to mind...)

Back to it: this morning watching Smootch play (actually, I was playing with her, but she thinks that my part in the action is usually as spectator to the Great Smootch Show - but that's another story). Smootch had out her Dora game board, the Dora characters for checkers, and my chess pieces. She spent a good 15 minutes setting up the board, which went like this:Those are dominios, btw, with Dora characters on them. The set up was very deliberate and technical, with Smootch using whatever internal logic she had going on, followed by fussing, minor adjustments, and viewing the arrangements from multiple angles before she was ready to get on with the game.Which made me realize that Dora (and the Princesses) may be prominent in my daughter's material life, but they do not necessarily rule her imaginative life. This insight was compounded when Smootch, finally was ready to start the play after the hemming and hawing of the arranging, proceeded in a way that was wholly unexpected. With the final arrangement reminding me of some sort of Celtic ritual taking place by some holy ruins, perhaps they were trying to appease the gods?, along came The Baby. Baby the Destroyer.

Then a couple of survivors picked themselves up from the rubble and decided to get married (the marriage ceremony, btw, is a part of the play I'm allowed to speak in since Smootch can never remember exactly how wedding vows go).

Of course, the wedding took some time to set up. More arranging and fussing.

I do my slick as a justice of the peace, and then Smootch follows with the truly important part:

The ceremony ended with a scuffle between the bride and groom's families, with much drama, and whisper shouting, falsetto voices, and eventually a sword battle over how to set up the lemonade stand for the reception. (I laid back for this part and got comfy - Smootch's play brawls tend to go on for awhile.)

The lemonade stand was in the closet. Perhaps because of the differences of opinions between the families, it took a whole 20 minutes to set up.However, after a couple of lemonades, the guests all loosened up and the party turned out to be a great success with only a few broken tables.

Which brings me to my thoughts after spending this very entertaining morning with Smootch. Disney may be marketing evil geniuses, same with the crew of Dora, or the teletubbies or lazytown or whatever is the flavor of the week, but Smootch will, just as I did, make her own fun if she is allowed the time and space to do her own thing. The danger is not the Disney Princess stuff per se, it is failing to provide the head space she needs to create her own plots and dramas. Smootch needs time to develop her own style, to learn about her mind and body, and quiet in order to hear her own thoughts and recognize what is truly hers versus what has been suggested by others. Instead of fighting against the marketers, I need to focus on getting Smootch her time to play without distractions of commerical culture. Or without me or even other children sometimes. My job as a parent is to provide the raw materials and then get out of the way. Something to keep in mind, anyway.

happy wednesday

If my kids were musical genres, Birdie would be reggae. And Smootch would be rock n roll.

holiday blues

Is it me, or does the holidays seem like a really bad idea this year. I'm suffering terribly from the Christmas season. I hate shopping. I hate it so much I don't actually do it anymore. The shops are filled with things I don't need and at prices I can't afford. And increasingly I do not want. With The Man's great experiment, I am starting to see the shop shelves as filled with items that are only six months away from the landfill. In addition, it's hard to ignore that we pay only a fraction of the cost of any particular consumable. The price is much higher than what the tag says. Things not calculated on the sales bill is the cost to the earth's resources (trees, ore, oil), the cost to the people and governments (procuring, protecting and fighting over resources), the cost to our health (pollution, toxic byproducts like dioxin), the cost to human lives (low paid labourers working in unsafe, unclean factories), and the cost to my time (seeking, working for money to buy, buying, hauling, cleaning, and finally disposing).

A handmade Christmas is a lovely idea, but, honestly, I'm not sure that it gets at the root of the problem here for me. I am making the gifts I am giving, and am pleased to be able to make them. Especially nice is actually thinking about the person the whole time I make the gift. But, Christmas is not about the gifts. And because I feel strongly about this, damnit, I'm going to say it again: Christmas is NOT about the gifts. We know this, we say this, but our actions tell a different story. How many times does a child get asked what they hope Santa will bring them for Christmas before they think that the presents are the actual point of the whole shebang? Why do we pace our lives according to shopping days 'til Christmas? Why does every person I meet during the month of December ask me if I have my shopping done yet?

Okay, enough rant. Those receiving gifts from me this year are going to looking at them sideways, wondering what kind of negative energy I've infused them with. Just know this, I want Christmas. I want the family, the visiting, the food (oh, yes, the food!), the decorations, even the Christmas jingles. But I do not want material gifts. I feel grateful for all I already have and to be a part of your lives. No more is needed.

I'm not just a total bummer lately. I've been soothing my Christmas Rage (I'm not the only one who has it) by noticing how thrilled our children are with the simple things. Watching the kids play with a cardboard box is more than a reminder, it's a blueprint for life around here. Here are a few pictures of some of the things we enjoy around here.

The cardboard box play house. Which, just to prove me wrong, actually does contain one of last year's Christmas presents to Smootch, which Birdie loves to chew on.

What? You never seen a baby in a box chewing on a donkey before?


Smootch learning to sew. Watching her brings a phenomenal feeling for me.

Can't. Stop. Eating. Homemade. Carmel. Popcorn.
And more arrived in the mail yesterday :0

Dancing, twirling, booty dances. I think that this perfect dance floor in our living room actually appeared magically for Smootch to dance on. I can't imagine who we would be without dancing together.

Staring into each other's eyes. How beautiful and wonderous these children are! So, please, don't give us a bunch of stuff to distract us from each other. The gifts are just a side attraction, spending time with friends and family is the main event. Let's not get sidetracked!

growing

Birdie is on his way to having a full blown personality.

His quirks and isms have been a bit slower to emerge than his sisters. However, it may be that he simply can not compete with the monkey master.
Yet. We shall see what the future brings.

my own personal gong show

Boy: three teeth have broke through his gums in the past two days. That makes six this month. He has taken to grinding his teeth. And not sleeping.

Girl: is unnaturally cold, cranky, and having a tough time adjusting to the 'sharing mama with every bloody urchin that comes through the door, it's bad enough that that baby showed up 7 months ago, but now there are all these kids around all the time and I can't seem to get mom's attention, and further more...' Blowing major wobblers.

The Man: has developed a serious passion for wallowing in waste. Can not sustain a conversation unrelated to garbage.

Me: I had spaghetti in my hair at lunch today. It stayed there for an hour before I found the time to de-pasta my head. Enough said about that.

Let's move over to happy photos now.

Awwww, lookit the cute baby!

It's my weekend now. That means I do my other job sewing for fun and profit (otherwise known as my third shift). Hope you all have a good weekend (and G, damnit, get well!)

books: not just for eating

Birdie is getting to the stage where books are something a little more to just taste or bang on his head. He spent a few minutes the other day stroking the cover of this book in a ridiculously loving manner. Every once in awhile he would look up at me and give me a wonderous smile that said, 'hey, lady, why didn't you tell me before that there is more to these things than indigestion?'

I tried to tell you, Birdie, but we all must find out for ourselves. Welcome to the world of books! It's going to be an amazing adventure.

open for business

I've just finished my first two days of being a family day home provider. It was both interesting and exhausting. I learnt a lot. For instance, kids will eat and enjoy anything placed before them on the table until someone says the 's' word. Smootch says, to a child with a mouth full of milk, 'that's soymilk,' which she says happily, firmly programmed to see soy analogues as superior to animal products. The child, however, sets down glass of milk and never, ever picks it up again. Same goes with soysauges.

Unfortunately for all of us, the government requires licensed dayhomes (me, me) to feed the four food groups per a meal to the children in our care. And has anyone checked out what the four food groups are lately? Fruit/vegetable, grain (no difference mentioned between processed grains and whole grains), meat and meat alternatives (beans, soy, analogues), and dairy (milk, cheese, or analogues). What that means to us is that we have to feed the kids beans or tofu or nuts or analogues twice a day, which is okay, but also analogue milk or soy cheese (which is not at all nutritionally related to cow milk made cheese and is quite a junky product, not to mention doesn't taste very good). We have to ignore that a serving of whole wheat spaghetti has more protein in it than a glass of milk, soy or otherwise. And that spinach has more iron by weight than a hamburger. Apparently we need 'meat', not protein and iron.

This is a barrier to good nutrition.

Anyhoo, that is a topic for another day. Me vs. the four food groups. Nothing new there.

On the other hand, a really fantastic part of this dayhome biz is that it seriously stretches my creativity muscles. Not just the kiddie crafts, which are completely fantastic, see the fairy puppets that did double duty comforting home sick children:
But every aspect, from structuring the environment to be exciting but not overwhelming, to finding things to talk about, to guiding behavior (from crazed excitment to calm enthusiam), to just finding the energy.

As I said, interesting and exhausting. If anyone has any online resources for me on this dayhome/daycare dealie, I would love to know. Other than that, we will plod along, seeing what we can discover as we good.

cookie party

la la la la la.

Hey, Booboo, this cookie making stuff is kinda fun, huh?

Yeah. I like to cut out the shapes. And what's this stuff your mom's got on the table? Sprinkles to decorate? I don't know, seems sorta weird, but I'll give it a go. I'm comfortable with my masculinity.

Oh, yeah, sprinkles are neat. Make sure you cover the entire cookie, you don't want to leave any brown stuff showing. Here, use the big spoon.

Poke them all down so they don't escape.
Wow, these sprinkles are pretty sticky. Hey, Booboo, have you tried these? They taste good. Kind of sweet and crunchy.

Yeah, you're right! Sprinkles are yummo. Try some more! Here, where's that big spoon again?
Wow, so good. Hey, did I ever tell you about the time that I was on the playground and this really funny lookin' kid came up to me and...

Huh, mom? Wha? Cookies? Oh, yeah cookies. Gotta put sprinkles on the cookies.

Smootch, you know what would be a really funny thing? How about if we use the tools to punch out the cookies? That seems like such a good idea right now!
One sprinkle for the cookie, one hundred sprinkles for me.
Dude, where have these sprinkles been all my life?

I know! They're, like, so good! I don't know why mom keeps them at the back of the cupboard.

Hey, check out this sprinkle container. I bet I could eat all the sprinkles in here all in one go.

No way! I dare ya! OMG, you totally did it! I want do one too!

Ha, ha, that last one (hic) totally made my throat (hic) burn.

Ha, ha! Okay, one more! Race ya!

Ah, no (hic) fair! There is no way you could of beat me. One more. I know I can suck them back (hic) way faster than you.

You wish, dude. I rule these sprinkles.

(20 minutes later)

I'm flying! Look at me, look at me, I'm flyinnnnnnngggggg!

Oh, no, dude, I've gone blind! I can't see! Somebody talk me down!
Mommy, why are you lying down? You know what you need? Sprinkles.

yesterday

3:30 am Smootch can't sleep - tossing, turning, moaning - her legs hurt.

4:00 am Smootch finally settles asleep

4:01 am Birdie wakes up

4:30 am Birdie back to sleep

5:30 am Mama back to sleep

6:00 am Birdie singing his morning song - time to wake up

6:30 am Smootch awake, moaning. She has a fever.

7:00 am Smootch throws up on Mama. Bath to wash vomit from both our hair.

9:30 am Mama goes back to bed for nap.

12:00 pm Mama has coughing fit that brings up something youdon'tevenwanttoknowwhat. Mama has fever.

4:00 pm Mama has developed a limp from some sort of weird, painful swelling on the bottom of her foot. What the?! Are there limph nodes down there or something?

6:00 pm Smootch pulls herself away from 'how it's made' videos and announces it's nap time.

6:30 pm Birdie falls asleep

7:00 pm Mama and Papa feel like deer in headlights - should be be happy the kids are both asleep early, or are the kids regrouping for another long night?

7:01 pm Birdie up

9:30 pm Birdie down

9:31 pm Mama in bath. Mama accidently knocks glass of water off the side of the tub where it shatters into two millions pointy shards of glass, which all run this way and that in the water. Mama gets out of bath to clean up, just as cats knock over new christmas tree in living room. Mama takes a tour to pick up tree and as she does the base falls off BANG on the floor. Smootch wakes up, comes out to find a bathroom filled with glass shards. Smootch HAS TO GO NOW. Mama lifts Smootch over glass to toliet and promptly imbeds glass shard in toe. Smootch, stranded on toliet, panicking about blood dripping on floor while Mama wrestles with bandaids that do not want to stick on wet foot when Birdie wakes up and begins to cry in next room.

Mama cries.

12:00 pm No one crying, no one bleeding, no one awake.

6:00 am Pappa wakes up with a scratchy throat. Pappa has fever...

trashy talk

Yesterday walking to school, I noticed everything that Smootch was wearing was handmade. Made me feel good.

Another good thing: The Man has begun a blog to chronicle his dumpster diving, junk yard scavenging ways. You can find his adventures and thoughts over on Squanderism.

Smootch is tremendously proud of her father's work to upcycle junk. She tells her friend this morning, "My daddy went to the dump!" while holding up a little treasure The Man found on one of his forays.

Smootch drawing with found felt markers:I admit that at first I was a bit squemish about The Man bringing stuff home from the dump. Okay, there is a high percentage of furniture I brought into this union that actually came from dumpsters (try all of the furniture I owed 10 years ago, a significant amount we still use today). Still, I was thinking dumpster diving belonged to my poor past, and now that we are solidly middle class we could maybe get stuff from thrift stores rather than dumpsters. Thrift stores are my idea of la dee da high class now :)

But just a small glance at what is actually being thrown out I'm absolutely blown away. I had no idea. It's sad and sickening and bewildering. But I'll let The Man tell you all about it over on Squanderism. I might even be allowed to blog over there too one day ;)

Let's just say for now, all of y'alls holiday gifts are coming from the dump. That is our gift to the earth this year. But don't freak out. You are going to find that reclaimed, salvaged, and rescued makes for a good home.

montessori make over

Some changes around my house lately. When I say 'some', I mean the place has flipped upside down. I may as well confess now the main reason why I've been so lame as to getting things done sewing-wise is because I've been doing the massive amounts of paper work, course work and house work needed to be a family day home provider. I just signed the contract with a licensing agency on friday and I'm good to go. Now all I need are some people willing to trust me with their precious wee ones (every plan has a glitch, yes?)

So, some changes. One of the things I've done is give my home a Montessori make over. Which is to say that I've taken the Montessori method as a model for the environment in my dayhome. I chose Montessori for a few reasons. The biggest is that Smootch attends a Montessori preschool and the type of organization comes naturally to her. Since setting up I do not have to tell her to clean up her things anymore. That alone is worth the rearranging. Another reason is that Montessori environment is very friendly to groups of children of varying ages, which I will have in my dayhome. Also, the set up allows for the children to be very self sufficient. I am so on that - the more they can do for themselves (and I don't have to slump around getting things for them or cleaning up) the better.

Changes. Lots of hooks at child height, avaliability of kitchen linens, brushes, and rags. Small dishes and utensils, small jugs for pouring water and soy milk. I've also arranged Smootch's playthings and actitivites in a Montessori style, and added another shelf in the living room, to be used as a playroom for the dayhome.

That's my ugly shelf (one day I shall build it a cloth cozy). But you can see how the activities are divided up, readily accessible, neatly placed, and logically grouped. Not exactly how a Montessori school room would be arranged, but definitely a home friendly version.

I've also added some mats to be rolled out and played on. They are undyed cotton - I love them. Good for defining play space that can be respected by playee and those walking past.

Smootch playing a memory game she learnt for school. She has a song, "Something's missing from my tray, can you tell what I took away?" This is her favorite activity right now and, I hate to say this, but she is so bad at it!

Smootch has also been drawing up some playmats to play with the toys. This is her roads, and she has a dollhouse drawn on paper too (for the bratz dolls - please don't ask why she has them [but a grandma was involved, just so's you know]).

There are a lot of other changes but you'll have to wait for more pics. Now that the dayhome is approved, I've got a pattern to get out (which is way overdue) and, from a phone call I just received, a scoodie to make up for my young friend. (btw, I just got rid of the scoodie that went virual since I felt so weird wearing it around. Remind me not to post pictures of myself anymore.)