What I Learned at School Today

Miles did great on his first day of school, not a tear to be found. I was so relieved! Today was my first day working there and I really enjoyed it. I wasn't sure I would, but I found it totally relaxing. I got to hang out and play in the sandbox while kids came and went. I helped make tracks for their trucks, hid "jewels" for them to dig up and discover and helped wash their little hands at the end of it all. It was nice to be able to just focus on playing, not cleaning, laundry or cooking. I'm going to try to take that lesson home with me.

Ist Day of Preschool!

I dropped Miles off at preschool this morning and left him there for the 1st time. You may recall a previous post of the same kind about a year ago. I sent him when he when he was around 20 months but it was too tough for both of us and I decided to wait until he got a little older. This time his cousin Remi is there with him and it's a co-op so I will be working there one day and his aunt Jen will be working there another day so that makes me feel much more comfortable. That said, my chest has been tight since I left him and I keep looking at the clock to see if it isn't finally time to go pick him up.

Muppet luv

A girl after my own heart :)

Trip to San Diego

We took our first family trip a few weeks back to visit my cousin Dianne, her husband Orlando and son Sammy. Dianne and Orlando were fabulous hosts and seemed sorry to see us go despite the fact that within hours of arriving my kids rubbed play dough into their carpet and tracked diarrhea through their living room. The trip included a few firsts including Danika's first hotel stay and the first time in a real pool for both kids!



Danika took to feeding Sammy and would probably still be doing it had we not forcefully stopped her.

Hi again

Hola
I'm certain no one is still checking this blog as it's been SO long since I posted but I'm back in the saddle tonight. Robert is away on a 4-day bachelor party (how did this get to be ok?), and I'm feeling good so far on how I've handled the kids. It's a long time without him but I have lots of help and it's been fine really. He's been working kind of late so I've grown accustomed to doing dinner/bath time alone so it's mostly his company that I miss. It's funny that before we had kids I would have been worried about Robert on a bachelor party (there were so many) - what is he doing, who is he with etc.. but now I just think, have as much fun as you can. Don't get arrested or lose too much money if you gamble and that's about it. It feels really healthy.

Oh, and Miles is STILL two :)

Some changes

It's lasted longer than an illness. It's nothing he ate. He's been getting enough sleep.

It is for these reasons that I must face the fact that Miles has hit the terrible twos. He's a wonderful kid and all but things have been tough around here for about a month. EVERYTHING is a battle. Every meal, outing, bedtime, change of clothes or diaper - even fun things like getting ready to go to a park or see a friend. There are multiple tantrums each day. It's been exhausting and the days are feeling long. I feel myself watching the clock for the hour when reinforcements (husband) arrive. I know this is a stage and that it too will pass. Until then I am doing my best not to match his mood. I can't get derailed by every tantrum, I have another kid hanging onto my skirt and I have learned from experience that the calmer I am the better things are.

On the plus side, Danika has been wonderful. All I can ask for is that they stagger their tough patches :)

Paaarty

Last week Danika celebrated her 1st birthday. We had 2 little parties and both she and Miles enjoyed themselves immensely. I think her favorite present was a baby doll from her aunt Jenny. She loves that thing and cuddles it all the time - so cute. She's totally walking now - pretty much no crawling anymore which opens up the world of dresses!! I am guilty of dressing her up like a little girly girl, I can't help it :P Here are some pictures of the festivities.

Walking!!

Well, we were right, Danika took her first step today! Unfortunately I missed it as I was in the kitchen getting something for someone but Robert was right there and he yelled out to Miles and I about it. Very exciting. I will be anxiously watching for the next one. She's right on track with Miles who also took his first steps in his 11th month.

I spent extra time putting her to bed tonight and held her close until she fell asleep. I smelled her breath as she slept and stroked her little ear lobes like she likes. Walking is good of course, it's what she's supposed to do. It's just that now she can walk away.

Baby Girl

Here are some recent pictures of Danika. She's cruising the furniture and we're all watching for that first solo step - it'll be any day now.

2 Things

Some things happened today that I felt are worth sharing. First, I pulled the "lock the keys AND kids in the car" trick. My car is in the shop so I'm driving Robert's and you lock that car by flipping a switch inside the car instead of pressing a button on your keys (which are presumably in your hand), like you do with my car. I have a spare but of course it was in my wallet. In the car. Thankfully we were only in our garage so the embarrassment factor was minimal. Anyway, I tried to get Miles to unlock himself from the car seat so he could open the door, but he kept saying "mommy do it" which led me to believe he just didn't get it. Eventually my sister brought her spare and we moved on with the day.

The next thing that happened is that Miles took his nap in a big boy bed (thank you Ben & Jen!). He's actually sleeping in there right now so I'm curious to see how long this nap lasts. It will be so weird to have him just open the door and walk out of his room like a regular person.

A week in photos

Miles has taken an interest in the camera. Here is some of his recent work.

Letter to Me

My friend Lauren recently emailed me this article by Anna Quindlen that was published in Newsweek in Oct of 2000. It really spoke to me and made me wince. I can identify with this woman and my husband has often tried to encourage me to slow down and enjoy parenting more. Anyway, it's long I know, but give it a read especially if you've got a little one.

Goodbye Dr. Spock

If not for the photographs I might have a hard time believing they ever existed. The pensive infant with the swipe of dark bangs and the black button eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with the yellow ringlets and the high piping voice. The sturdy toddler with the lower lip that curled into an apostrophe above her chin. ALL MY BABIES are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who,
miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber duckie at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely

discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach. T. Berry Brazelton. Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages, dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and
what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations, what they taught me was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then it becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put Baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome.

To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. First science told us they were insensate blobs. But we thought they were looking, and watching, and learning, even when they spent so much time hitting themselves in the face. And eventually science
said that we were right, that important cognitive function began in early babyhood. First science said environment was the great shaper of human nature. But it certainly seemed as though those babies had distinct personalities, some contemplative, some gregarious, some crabby. And eventually science said that was right, too, and that they were hard-wired exactly as we had suspected.

Still, the temptation to defer to the experts was huge. The literate parent, who approaches everything; cooking, decorating, life as though there were a paper due or an exam scheduled, is in particular peril when the kids arrive. How silly it all seems now, the obsessing about language acquisition and physical milestones, the riding the waves of normal, gifted, hyperactive, all those labels that reduced individuality to a series of cubbyholes.

But I could not help myself. I had watched my mother casually raise five children born over 10 years, but by watching her I intuitively knew that I was engaged in the greatest and potentially most catastrophic task of my life. I knew that there were mothers who had worried with good reason, that there were children who would have great challenges to meet. We were lucky; ours were not among them. Nothing horrible or astonishing happened: there was hernia surgery, some stitches, a broken arm and a fuchsia cast to go with it. Mostly ours were the ordinary everyday terrors and miracles of raising a child, and our children's challenges the old familiar ones of learning to live as themselves in the world.

The trick was to get past my fears, my ego and my inadequacies to help them do that. During my first pregnancy I picked up a set of old clothbound books at a flea market. Published in 1933, they were called Mother'sEncyclopedia, and one volume described what a mother needs to be: psychologically good, sound, wholesome, healthy, unafraid, able to deal with the world and to live in this particular age, an integrated personality, an adjusted person. In a word, yow. It is good that we know so much more now, know that mothers need not be perfect to be successful.

But some of what we learn is as pernicious as that daunting description, calculated to make us feel like failures every single day. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can walk just fine. He can walk too well. Every part of raising children at some point comes down to this: be careful what you wish for.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember When Mom Did Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography
test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insisted I include that.)The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. How much influence did I really have over the personality of the former baby who cried only when we gave parties and who today, as a teenager, still dislikes socializing and crowds?

When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. There was babbling I forgot to do, stimulation they never got, foods I meant to introduce and never got around to introducing. If a black-and-white mobile really increases depth perception and early exposure to classical music increases the likelihood of perfect pitch, I blew it. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact, and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity.

That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

Dude

So excited. I entered a fitness challenge contest on sbparent.com at the recommendation of my dear friend Kristen. They pick a certain number of moms to participate in different fitness programs throughout the city free of charge for a number of weeks. I was able to select 6 weeks at a Pilates studio. I have always wanted to try that! The only catch is that you must work out at least 3 times a week and do a short blog about your experience twice a week I think. 3 workouts a week is ah...about 3 more workouts a week than I have done since I was preggers with Miles but I am up for it, I'm ready. I'm gonna go eat some cheese to prepare.