From my toddler to yours

Today we have a guest post from our almost-two-year-old, Butter. He was inspired this morning to start composing this. And since I started this blog when his brother was just a bit older than Butter is now, I thought it would be a nice beginning to The Years That Require Some Coping Mechanism.

Take it away, Butterbean.

***

Want to know what’s fun about being almost Two? Everything. Except when they try to do things for you. Blech. They don’t know anything. Why would I want shoes or socks or pants? If you don’t want shoes or socks or pants, just tell them. Loudly. They’ll give up. And then, guess what? No shoes or socks or pants!

Want to know what’s fun about being almost Two? Dumping. And Throwing. Today I asked the Cuddle Lady to get me a game so I could dump out all the plastic disks into the box, then dump the box into my truck, then dump my truck into another truck, then dump all the disks on the floor. When I asked her to put them back in the bags so I could dump again she said “yes.” I like “yes.” I also like “uh-oh.” Uh-oh means people pay attention and say gentle words and clean up for you.

I don’t like shoes or socks or pants.

Want to know what’s fun about being almost Two? Chalk. Today the Cuddle Lady game me some chalk and I dumped it on the floor. Guess what? Chalk makes More Chalk if you dump it. I took my More Chalk and put it in the cup thing that goes with other cup things in my drawer of cup things. Then I poured the More Chalk into a different cup thing. Then I dumped it on the floor. Guess what? Even More Chalk. Back into the cup thing and into the other cup thing and onto a table and onto the floor and into the cup thing and then guess what? Some of the Even More Chalk was dirt! Lello dirt and purpu dirt and boo dirt and orja dirt! I pinched that into the dirtpan then dumped it on the table. Then I put stickers on it. Stickers with BEES! Then the Cuddle Lady said it was time for pants. Boy, was she wrong. Uh-oh, Cuddle Lady. Time to clean Even More Chalk.

Know what’s fun about being almost Two? Lunch! The Cuddle Lady calls not-quite-bathtime food at the table “dinner” and morning food at the table “breakfast” but food walking around the kitchen or in the yard is “lunch.” Lunch means no shoes or socks or pants. Lunch is yay!

The most yay is potty. Being almost Two means taking off your pants, and sometimes taking off your pants and sitting on the potty. If you tell your Cuddle Lady or Poky Face to stay away while you’re on the potty, then when you’re done you can throw the potty. And guess what? Throwing the potty is even more fun than dumping the potty! Everything flies out of the potty.

Flying out of the potty is yay!

Uh-oh. Cuddle Lady says pants. And dinner. Pants and dinner are not yay. Time to make more uh-ohs so Cuddle Lady will talk gently and forget about pants. While she’s cleaning the potty throwing, I’ll climb up to the table and dump dinner.

Bye-bye!

No.

No? No.

The 18-month-through-3-year phase (the “No NO NO!” era) is getting funnier. Butter has been saying “no” a lot since 9 months, but it’s the most popular choice in his limited vocabulary. (Thank goodness for ASL.) It would be easy to get irritated with our little throw-everything, scream-in-frustration, answer-every-single-statement-or-question-with-NO Butterbean, but it’s just too funny to predict his every answer. Sad, for him, that powerlessness and frustration. But funny for us. (Sorry Butternut. I know it’s wrong to laugh at your tiny personhood, as real and important as it is to you. But if I take everything as seriously as I should, I’d go bloomin’ insane.)

***

Me: Isn’t this a good lunch, Butter?
B: [shoveling down the food; nods]
Me: Yup, this is lunch. “Lunch” is what we call it when we eat in the middle of the day.
B: NO!

It’s almost as though he’s a member of Congress, albeit a little more straightforward when he just barks “NO!” every time someone talks.

***

Me: Thanks for peeing in the potty, Butterbug. Now Mommy has to pee.
B: No!
M: Yes. I need to pee.
B: No-o!
M: [proceeding with the necessary steps] Buttercookie, I have to listen to my body, and my body says time to pee.
B: No! NO!
M: Honey, I’m right here. You can see me, you can hug me. I need to pee.
B: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! [throws himself to the floor a few feet from me, intentionally bangs head on tile, twice, and cries a bit harder]

This won’t last. He’ll get more words, he’ll decide that some things should get a “yes,” and he’ll learn that nothing is permanent except our love for him.

Plus, he’ll get to the Age of “No. Wait, Yes! Wait, No! Wait! YES! NOOOOO! [sobs]“

But dang, it’s a laugh-until-you-cry kind of world, life with a toddler. If an intense and highly spirited Three Year Old hadn’t killed my memory, coping skills, and patience reserves, maybe I would have remembered how much fun Two really can be, as long I can spare some respect and empathy for the Two-er.

Which I, thankfully, can. Right Butterbutt?

Wait. Don’t answer that.

Soap and croutons

I’m ending my SOPA/PIPA protest because those bills are dead, yo. Banner was cool, thanks to wordpress for making it so easy.

Watching the SOPA funeral feels like the first time I’ve helped create success since my teaching days. As a writing professor I worked hard on critical thinking lessons, and enjoyed watching students have breakthroughs learning to identify logical fallacies. That was nice. Dead SOPA is nice, too. Better, really, since teaching has limited results until they let me teach everyone on the planet.

Now can we get everyone who blacked out for SOPA to protest the U.S. ag/food policy, toxic chemicals, child abuse, overfishing, and croutons, please?

Stealing Beauty

Not the movie. I’m mostly stealing posts I found all over the Interwebz during my deliriously happy half-day-by-myself afterglow, which lasted DAYS.

So go read this striking post (to which I hopped after being almost forced by She Suggests) over at Mom 101 about how the grass is definitely way greener. Definitely.

And this post at Momastery about how ignoring tantrums in Target will get you arrested (and how thoughtful parents always save the day). And how, when someone tells her to enjoy every minute of her children, she tells them, “I can’t even carpe fifteen minutes in a row, so a whole diem is out of the question.”

Or this article, a personal favorite, about how academics need to play even more than children need to play. Oh, dang, I misread the headline. It says kids need to play more than they need academics. Stupid Twitter got me all excited that I get to play a bit more. But this is just more about playing instead of studying? I knew that. But now it seems I’m back to thinking I should homeschool. Damn.

Saturday Night Fever

This weekend I ran away from home.

Okay, I’m way too responsible and uptight to run away from home, but I negotiated a LOT of free time so Spouse could hang out with the boys. (See how I am now choosing to see that? Good for me! Good for them! Bonding time, not escaping time. Win-win-win-win.)

I got up before dawn with my little tornadoes, frolicked, cooked, attended, and mediated battles big and small for a couple of hours until Spouse tumbled out of bed. Then I left. I walked, I wrote, I surfed the Internet, and I had grownup food.

I came home after four hours alone and had a date with almost-six-year-old Peanut while Spouse and almost-two-year-old Butter slept. My sweet, highly spirited boy and I did some science, some art, some reading, and some side-by-side napping. More importantly, we smiled, we laughed, we cuddled.

When the little guy woke up from his nap I heard him, but Spouse played with him for almost an hour before they discovered us. Eight hours after I kissed them goodbye.

Eight hours. I was so giddy with freedom I danced and skipped (yes, literally) through dinner and bathtime.

(NB: I observed that no amount of battery recharge can make dinnertime with my particular small children easy. Nice to know it’s not the end of my patience-reserves that makes dinner so vision-dimmingly fraught. Quite simply, the nightly, two-hour adrenaline-pumping-fest that is dinner, bath, and bed, is spread heavily across the fragile skeleton of their utterly depleted, frenetic little bodies. So: witching hour is their fault. I did not know that before. I had continually criticized myself for not finding joy in hours 11-13 of my all-child-all-the-time days. Now I’m just going to drink through them, since I’m not the problem.)

(Kidding.)

(No, I’m totally not kidding.)

But back to my colossal Saturday of Joy break…

Oh, Interwebz, how I love operating at my own speed, to my rhythms, in whatever directions I want to go. Good Gravy, freedom feels like warm salted caramel sauce on chocolate and marshmallow ice cream. Why did I not know this? Why have I not worked harder to get this? Is the sweetness relative to the preceeding batshit insane-iness?

And how delightful, delicious, and delectable my adorable and silly children are when I am not running on fumes. My, but I enjoyed my time with Peanut, my reunion with Butter, my gratitude toward Spouse. Amazing, yummy creatures, my guys are.

I hope all parents, working inside and outside the home, get a chance to experience the glory that is solitude. After we get running water to all the world and health care to everyone and stability to the world’s violent regions and food and safety to children and adults alike, maybe we could get all humankind some breathing room and a vegan reuben.

This day has been a long time coming. And I so enjoyed the peace, quiet, and space to complete my own thoughts while doing a novel thing called blinking, that I am willing to proclaim my Saturday break intoxicating.

Drunk on mental health day awesomeness! Woo-hoo! Get yourself some of this!

Cheers!

Conundrum

A post in which I tell the story of 2012: prioritize, realign, whine, pout, self-chasten, turn to gratitude journaling, feel grateful *and* defeated.

***

December was a month in which I made list upon list of priorities and goals and dreams so that I could begin 2012 realigned, making choices I could fee good about and avoiding the detritus I had been mired in for too long.

Because I chose to stay home to raise my kids, my life got shoved into a closet, where it sat unused, unexamined, and devalued. Each time we moved, my hopes, dreams, goals, and interests got pushed further and further into the dark, cobwebby spots of our lives. Any time the old me called out from the dank recesses of the attic, the utilitarian me shouted her down.

“QUIET back there! You have no right to raise your voice to me! You chose this, so you have to do it really, really well 100% of the time!”

I wasn’t allowing myself time or space for my mind or body because I harbored this secret belief that, if I decided to do my best to raise my kids, there was absolutely no room for doing what I wanted. My job, 24 hours a day, is my little boys. Putting myself first, even for an hour, meant compromising and giving them less.

And it was driving me mad. Seriously. Both the insane and angry connotations applied. I have been losing it and just barely hanging on for almost six years. But this winter has been hard core. I’ve been climbing out of my skin, wasting time berating myself for every poor decision I made pre-kids because now I have nothing to show for my life. Oh, sure, those, but they’ll leave me and hate me and tell their therapist about how I was an empty shell of a zombie Mom. Or, rather, and empty shell of a zombie Mom who’s trying strenuously hard yet seemed to be failing miserably at just about everything, from personhood to motherhood.

So I reevaluated. I decided to find a sitter for the toddler a few hours a week so I could blink. I finished some client work and turned down new projects to focus on my own work. I convinced Spouse to be with the kids at 6am so I could start running again. I made manageable lists of short and long term goals with small steps to get to each one. I put one foot in front of the other. And I ditched facebook.

So far so good. On paper.

But I didn’t find the sitter. I checked out a few home-based daycare centers and read ads for sitters and remembered why we didn’t have anyone stay with Peanut (except my parents, and only a few times a year) until he was 4: I don’t want someone else raising my children. Until the boys can speak for themselves and express their needs and feelings, I don’t think someone else can do the best job with my itty bitty people. That’s just me, but it’s how I feel. Yes, I want to be with them because I want to see and hear everything in their day. Yes, I don’t always sound as though I do want to be with them. Yes, I think being a full time parent is important but I also feel it’s necessary to prove I’m not a freeloader absconding from my other jobs to do this job. I’ve already mentioned, I believe, my borderline insanity and obvious tendencies toward perfectionism that are ill-suited to my current role as Court Jester of Chaos, right? Okay then. Now I can mention that I don’t think I deserve to hire help when this is my job. The battle of the boxed goals and the utilitarian judgement are at it again, deeming who is worthy and who doesn’t deserve.

Good times.

So I’ve been whining about how hard it is to have a toddler and a kindergartener and a Spouse who works long hours. How very, very difficult it is to not blink for 13 hours straight. Boo hoo, big deal, people seem to parent with debilitating diseases and in the midst of trauma and major depressions, so I can take my withering hopes and dreams and shove them up my unfulfilled goals, right?

And someone offered to help me. Sweet Mary, Mother of my Cousins, someone offered to help me.

Normal people might sigh with relief and take a friend up on a sweet offer of help.

Ah, but I’m not normal. Instead, I felt chagrined that I’d complained so loudly. I vowed to start a gratitude journal and practice saying thank you for all the great things in my life. I promised myself I would focus on hopes and dreams and goals in my spare time but would refocus on my current, unpaid, disrespected, thankless, maddening, amazing, exhausting, important job.

And I heard this interview on KQED’s Forum, in which Chip Conley explained that more important than having what you want (oh, how I want and want and want) is wanting what you have. Appreciating all that is rather than longing for what might be.

So I spent the day being present and mindful and grateful. And by 7 p.m. I was in tears because I still don’t like being with my kids all day every day forever and ever amen without cease or break or freaking showers. I don’t want to make or serve or clean up food ever again. Ever. Ever ever ever again.

So I’m torn. I want to be happy with what I have. But I need. I have hopes and dreams and goals that are not well suited to tightly wrapped boxes in the back of the closet.

How do you balance being grateful for your life and still want desperately to change at least 12 things right now?

Blerg.

http://www.kqed.org/assets/flash/kqedplayer.swf

Now we’re talkin’

The United States needs to have more sales like Japan does…

from Gawker, via MightyRedPen

I want to do marketing overseas, is all I'm saying

Did you know about this?

I hadn’t heard of KickStarter. It’s a site where all manner of small businesses can pitch their ideas to the Interwebz and hope to get financial backers. $1 at a time. There are people on KickStarter funding documentaries, jam making, cookie delivery, and music. And whatnot.

Go check it out. You can search by topic or your favorite city or key word.

I found a few companies to whom I may send $2 in exchange for their eternal gratitude (or $15 so I can get some awesome swag). I am a sucker for quirky children’s books and satirical grownup books, so I’ve tried to help authors of these books by pledging enough to get a free copy if they get their project funded.

Try it. It’s fun! And you help people with dreams create stuff, which makes you a part of history and whatever awesomeness you believe in. What could be better? Vegan fudge? They have that, too.

I walked past a delivery van for this company a few days ago and thought, “I want some.” Then found them on KickStarter. Turns out, they want me! (Or, more accurately, my money. But isn’t that the way the world really works, anyway?)

Cable lock for your bike that hides in the handlebars? Shut the front door.

This startup wants to create peace in Afghanistan by making a viable market for various agricultural products. A “make poppies less attractive by making peppers more attractive” kind of thing. With hot sauce.[Full disclosure: the dude on the video is my brother. I have no financial stake in the company, though.] Help them make sauce and world peace. Because who doesn’t love tasty sauces and world peace?

Open Letter to My Toddler

Dearest Butterbean,

Thank you. You’re right.

I say that because all of the delightful, delicious, maddening, exhausting things you do teach me something. All of them. In a tasty, hilarious, infuriating, depleting way. Did I mention adorable? And exhausting, did I mention that?

Thank you for dragging the step stool over to the kitchen counter to help me. Every single time I try to do anything. You’re right that I was foolish to think I could do something without you. You’re right that your job is to learn, especially from me. You’re right that I need to find better horizontal surfaces to cover with all the stuff I don’t want you touching. Thank you for that reminder.

Thank you for reminding me about yoga. And manners. You’re right that yoga is fun, Butter Curl. You may not do yoga while you’re nursing, sweetie. Bridge and fish pose and chatturanga are all very nice except when you’re attached to someone else’s nipple. Then they are not nice. Please stop the milk-yoga. You may nurse or you may do yoga. Not together. Thank you for making me ponder our house rules on that one. I hadn’t thought of it before. What a gift.

Thank you for demanding your independence. You’re right that I don’t have to open that cheese or tie your shoes or zip your jacket or cut the bread by myself. Of course you need to learn by trying. I know it makes you happy to try and you’re willingly to let me finish if your sweet little hands can’t complete the task. Thank you for reminding me what the whole 18 month to 3 year process is about. You. Not me.

Thank you for headbutting me in the nose when I refused you something. You’re right that angry feels like hitting. We don’t hit, Bug Butt. Good thing I know that or your tiny little face would have a handprint on it. Thank you for the reminder that I need to take a break when someone makes me so mad I see black. Good job, monkey. You’re the best.

Thank you for delighting in playing with simple things. You’re right that we should pour water back and forth from cup to pot for a long, long time. You’re right that it’s fun to open and close doors dozens of times. Thank you for finally slowing down for two seconds to do these things, Butterpat. You’ve been whirling around for so long without stopping that I wasn’t sure I’d blink before you turned Two. Thanks for your new love of repetition (and for setting up my ability to share that love by running me ragged for a year.) Let’s go get the pots and the water, shall we?

Thank you for pointing out that, whatever I give you leaves one of your hands empty. You’re right. You have two hands. So of course you need two chips. Yes. Two bananas. Two sticks. Two halves of the sandwich. Thank you for noticing both halves of your body, Butterbug. Thank you for making me see all functional units in pairs.

Kind of like us, right?

Love you, sweet little man.
—Mama.

Okay, break over.

Aside from the fact that I can’t be quiet (like, ever), I found some interesting articles for your consideration while doing my hour of Sunday Internet time. Guess that thought about maybe abandoning the blog was foolish talk. My Internet limit, though, means you’re in for a wild ride this post…

Fascinating article on Trader Joe’s, the highly secretive and mum company that supplies 75% of my family’s food. The LA Magazine piece is quite interesting and revelatory, though the last two paragraphs are almost the lamest conclusion I’ve ever read. And given that I taught freshman level English at a community college, “lamest” is saying a lot.

The controversy swirling about LEGO’s horrific decision to create pink and purple LEGOs for girls in which the characters lounge poolside and drink frothy beverages has me so angry I can barely speak. I’ve already ranted about Melissa and Doug‘s disgusting choice to have career dress up dolls for boys and fashion dress up dolls for girls, the hatefulness and ignorance of which made me stop buying their toys (a decision on which I doubled down when I realized how much of their stuff has PVC in it.)

And, in the interest of public service, a good read on how to affect public policy</a. I found Information Diet searching for a list of which companies support PIPA and SOPA, the terrifying congressional attempts to regulate the Internet that will make American access to information a lot more like so-called access in countries with overt government-sponsored censorship like China and Iran.

So. Learn about Trader Joe’s, debate toy pinkification, and wrangle with your legislative representative about the Internet. These are my contributions to your first day of 2012. What do you think?