apparently

I wonder why we haven't heard the following re-working to "I've been working on the railroad."

I've been working in the house-hold, all the live long day.
I've been working in the house-hold, just to pass the time away.
Don't you hear the baby yelling?
Rise up so early in the morn.
Don't you hear the baby squishing
"Baby, won't you blow"

Baby, won't you blow,
Baby, won't you blow,
Baby, won't you blow your diaper?
Baby, won't you blow,
Baby, won't you blow,
Baby, won't you blow your diaper?

Someone's in the kitchen with Daddy.
Someone's in the kitchen, I know.
Someone's in the kitchen with Daddy
Playing with the old dishes.

Smash, bang, rattle-i-o.
Smash, bang, rattle-i-o-o-o-o.
Smash, bang, rattle-i-o.
Playing with the old dishes.

Posted by Chris at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you have any doubt that we evolved in the tropics, consider how much easier every aspect of parenting is in warm weather. Today, with no change other than the extra 40 degrees from our last no-school day, instead of sitting around missing TV, sighing in a dramatically bored fashion, climbing on couches, or throwing forks, we painted 2 giant murals (in the outside air and light), played in the sand box, and climbed trees for hours.

No arguing about shoes. Fine, no shoes, if you are tough enough to walk over the acorn shells. Fine, no pants, what do I care about clothes in the back yard. Fine, take your diaper off, maybe this way you can see how that whole potty thing works and yet I won't have to consider the cleanliness of peeing on an old wooden floor. Fine, bring the mice outside, just be careful of any cats. (I spent two days away from my beloved life-partner and the kids, and when I get back, not only have mice been purchased, but one has escaped. I caught it and now we have mice, which I appear to be in charge of, of course.)

And the murals? Sailboats on a blue see from the first graders. I can almost feel summer. The 2 year old had an impressive amount of blue, orange and brown on his paper as well.

Posted by Chris at 02:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There was some time ago a study showing that childless people are happier than people with children. At first I found this absurd, but then I looked into the study (I can't find the study on the internet now) and the method was to have people write down every 4 hours or so what they were doing and how happy they were at that time, and then they just averaged it all together. Well, shoot, that's not happiness.

The non-parents are probably off watching movies or eating out in a calm and relaxed fashion, said to aid the digestion. Perhaps they are getting busy. Other times they are working hard and making a good impression on their coworkers and bosses. Maybe they enjoy the satisfaction of a house well cleaned, and then go out to the opera.

Meanwhile, we parents are trying to stay calm as we explain that snow is very cold, and shoes would be a good choice, while we silently try to decide if the milk is old enough to require a trip to the coop before nap, and furtively try to rub the dried jelly off of the floor. It wouldn't be right to say we've forgotten that our beloved life partner is good for amorous adventure, because the very concept of amorous adventure is a misty abstraction. As a numeric average, it doesn't sound excellent. But fortunately for parents, happiness isn't something all averaged together.

Being present to witness a mind's first discovery of a mud-puddle, or to witness a mind's pleasure in mastering addition of 12 digit numbers with carrying the tens, these just slice right through questions of happiness or boredom. Even seeing the dawning light as the connection between comfort, cold and shoes grow in some one's eyes can do it.

These clear moments aren't even the things that I can take credit for. Kids with really awful parents wear shoes. And whatever sense my children end up making out of their world, I'll have at best a very dim view of. But the unfolding of life in these little forms captures me.

A day with kids, when not overwhelmed with worries and impossibly demanding ideals (low standards are essential to quality child-rearing*), is just full of these opportunities. Here's my kid helping a kid that he has so often yelled at. Here's my kid hiding his giant head and then smiling shyly at me. Here's my kid discovering how yucky liquid soap tastes, with a face so perfectly expressive of soap taste. Here's my kid laughing so thoroughly at my amateurish "Who's belly is so big!" game. Here he is checking on the meaning of my warning, "Tapping is ok. If you bang with the spoon, I will put it away" with a smiling glance as he bangs the spoon on the table.

Here's this little piece of myself somehow wandering over there totally unaware of all the stuff that I've learned with such effort and cost. I procrastinate phone calls as much as I can, because of innumerable tedious fears and dislikes. The toddler falls off the wall, cries whole-heartedly, so much sadness expressing itself, and then he climbs up again, more skillfully but not more fearfully. He's even learned "Me too scared" as a line to get picked up, and he utters it with complete jovial confidence, a smile as he lifts his arms towards the parent. The first grader tries one strategy after another to tame the uncivilized world of human relationships. It's funny, a constant comic show, but it doesn't measure well.

One thing that can distract us from these moments is regretting our loss of personal autonomy. I had a really good belly laugh recently when a friend who was having trouble with dealing with TV and her kids, let on that she expected to watch what she wanted to watch on TV (easy for me to let go of that one, as my great love is reading the books I want to read). I laughed when I realized that I hadn't expected to watch TV, hear radio, or listen to music that I wanted to for years and years. (I do manage to slip in the books here and there; one does what one must.)

I can't even plan the day without understanding that a first grader having to pee at the wrong time, or a toddler insisting both on putting his giant back pack into the car and putting himself into the car, can randomly add 10 minutes without warning. How many times have I suggested we read something with a bit of narrative line, The Hungry Caterpillar, maybe, only to learn that this precious hunk of life demands a book that is just a bunch of truck photos?

I'd certainly never choose to wake up at 2 until 5 holding a fussy baby. And yet, I can't recall holding the baby, drunk with fatigue, laying on the futon couch, trying to find a spot for him to lay on me and still sleep myself, without a smile appearing on my face.

All those things you read about in great novels or great biographies: plunging ahead in difficult conditions to advance a great cause; enduring losses but trusting in the victory of history; helping the least among these; all those things are available fifty times a day with small children.

Happy spring. I'd write a blog entry about how easy and pleasant it is to take care of kids in spring, but that would be pretty dull and obvious. Just go enjoy it.

--Chris

PS Perhaps this should be "lowerable standards are key to good child-rearing." While I used to advocate for lower house-keeping standards as a part of my feminist ideas, I must confess to a great respect for my friends that regularly have tidy, clean and welcoming homes. Not there yet myself, but the achievement demands respect. But I'm much better at the compassionate leadership thing when I'm striving for something we can achieve, which isn't regularly tidy and clean and welcoming.

Posted by Chris at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Before we had children, I believed that the work of raising children was distinct, was separable from the work of keeping a home clean and running well. However, I've been coming to the conclusion that they aren't really two different things.

First of all, of course, houses don't really get dirty without kids. When I had to look decent at work, but I hadn't done the laundry, there was no worry. I'd grab some khakis worn a few days ago, and wear them again not imagining there could be giant hand prints of jelly or rotten fruit in the pocket or whatever.

We'd clean the house somewhat regularly, and what seems more surprising now, successfully. My sister called our house "immaculate" on one stay. Now, even when "get the house in shape" is a week long project, I just can't escape the fear that a guest might kick a few dried apples from under the radiators or be bothered by the giant stacks of non-toddler-allowed stuff looming around from all the high-enough-to-not-be-climbed-up-to-this-month surfaces.

And running out of clothes, which means all the clothes are in fact, actually dirty, is serious. I've mentioned that I'm a stay at home parent, and so I have both the job of washing the clothes and the horror of showing up in the park with old yogurt and banana mush on both my and my child's pants. (This is a different problem from "same clothes on toddler for 2nd or 3rd day in a row," which isn't actually so bad, at least among friends, at least my friends.) So we don't skip laundry too much.

But the phenomena I find most fascinating is that house work is just so darned compatible with small kids. Kids hate parents on the phone. Kids hate parents relaxing with a newspaper or book. Kids hate parents working on the computer (this blog being written as the toddler sleeps and I actively hide from the other people in the house). If I pick up that sudoku puzzle, the toddler, with a piercing soprano scream, yells, "No, down, no 8 9, read back-hoe book." I'm taking a few classes in meteorology, and even scribbling little bits of math (how precious to my, ah what's that called, oh yes, adult identity) on paper are cause for grave concern in the toddler, and resigned disappointment in the first grader.

But start folding clothes, and they even want to help. The toddler can play happily for long stretches of clothes folding, sometimes putting his clothes away, sometimes just running around. And the toddler is the soap-helper.

I can putter around for hours making complex (by my earlier standards) dinners (that I at least will appreciate). There will be demands for stirring soup or pouring the spices, maybe a request for pre-dinner snacks, but largely my work is not seen as a serious problem by the kids. They fight over cracking eggs.

Vacuuming the floors? The only problem is that some kids insist on doing it themselves but aren't yet quite as thorough as I might prefer.

Searching for missing toys? What a great game.

Shopping deserves a whole separate blog entry, but suffice to say that although I curse the people that put the candy so low, the store can be a high point of interactive play. Along with cooking, shopping feels like I'm allowing my kids to have experience with the world: making choices about which one treat they'll get (and how many treats the first grader will argue into the category of non-treats); seeing me carefully inspect the food for rottenness; talking to neighbors; cleaning up after pulling a rack of cards down.

And I am more into the rhythms of housework than before. I don't even bother to mind the orange stuff that grows in the toilet bowl; I just notice it (eventually) and surreptitiously (because the toddler loves the brush) clean it. I get suffused with happiness on those rare moments when there are no dirty clothes in the house. I know more where stuff in the house is than I used to, even more than my wife does. (This is a huge role reversal - I've been one of the most absent minded people ever.) I like pre-washing the dishes before putting them in the machine for washing. I like having a delicate load and a load of all pink clothes. I'm at a party, and the subject of stains comes up, and I get more animated. Sigh.

PS A little disclaimer here. My actual ability at housework is, while not off the charts of "community standards," is always perilously close to the edge. Definitely on the messy side of the spectrum. Untidy is the word we use. I once bragged in the park about having all the clothes we owned cleaned, and I was immediately taken back to reality by the mom I was speaking with asking me if they were all hung up as well! They were not.

The crazy thing is we've never spent so much time and energy tidying and cleaning. Hopefully as the kids become less messy, we'll still do a decent portion of the same cleaning now, and live in that tidy and clean house we spend so much time imagining.

PPS If you want to contact me, please do so! chris@austin-lane.net I do periodically get swamped and don't read email very soon, but I do read it all.

Posted by Chris at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Check out this funny article Sue Katz Miller wrote about taking her tweens to the Who concert recently.

Posted by blogpop at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In Goldilocks and three Bears, "Just right" in the middle is easily attained. That one's too hard, that one's too soft, ahh, this is perfect. In our house, it is not so.

We have lots of practice going slow, taking the time to play with the clay family and the neigh-neighs in this room before tromping downstairs. Having parents sit down and read a book and then again. Hopping off the wall next to the side walk. Taking 40 minutes to come home from school. My first had even more time to go slowly than my second has, but he and I can get up at 7 and get out the door almost late to our first thing at 11, no sweat. Stop the car and throw rocks? Sure. Take the time to let all the layers of clothes go on the child with consent and without tears? Sure.

And thanks to elementary school, we've been learning how to rush. We often end up running to elementary school. The two year old has been offered the choice "Eat that cereal now, or you have to wait until we get back." Cereal bowls have been put away before people were totally done. Shoes have been put on outside with tears. "Look at me, remember you haven't lost TV yet" has been wielded at each transition. Claims of hunger have even been met with statements like "You can try again tomorrow to eat as much as you need when it's time for eating." (This statement is generally made in a quavery voice as though even I can't believe I'm such a mean daddy, at least the first few times, then it's made in a bored quasi-preschool teacher peppy voice.) They have also been met with, "I am sorry you are still hungry, we have to go now." On a few memorable days, toddlers have even been buckled into car-seats by main force.

But we really just don't have a way of going medium. Like, can we just take ten minutes for dressing, fifteen minutes for breakfast, five minutes for shoes/coat/backpack, and just move along from one to the other without any improvisational dancing to music, without any happy running games with the sibling, and for heaven's sake, without any richly detailed drawing? Can we just get ready slowly but steadily?

But we can't. Not yet.

* Incidentally, I learned something useful about whining, at least for my kids, during this learn how to rush program. The first dozen (or was it several dozen times? the unpleasant memories continue to fade faster than the pleasant ones) times my daughter was, umm, forced into running all the way to school, she was whining enough to start to bother me. However, since we were really in a hurry and since I was carrying a heavy toddler, I couldn't really do anything about the complaints except an odd "Mmm" or "My legs hurt a bit too." And then, eventually she stopped whining about it. And I realized I had been expecting her to start up a new boring stressful habit ("running to school with threats of losing TV if we end up being tardy") without whining. Well, shoot, when I have to start some new tedious thing, I tend to complain. Why shouldn't she be able to whine? As long as the whining doesn't bother me, it's not really a problem. And it goes away in the face of habitual reality. If you really do run to school enough, you aren't going to whine about it.

PPS I noticed in retrospect that many of the examples here are from the mornings. Emory Luce Baldwin has a great column about how to make the mornings easier: Here.

Posted by Chris at 06:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A recent Saturday afternoon at Rock ‘n Romp made me realize just how much I missed my grown-up life. We’re still in that “I can’t go to sleep without Mommy” stage, which, while very sweet and fleeting (or so I thought), makes me turn down evening outings rather than deal with a wired kid who finally conks out 3 hours past her bedtime.

I remember going to a concert in Austin and seeing a pile of children sleeping on blankets not far from the stage while parents danced the night away. Wow, I thought, when I have kids, that’s the kind of parent I want to be!” And to tell the truth, that’s the parent I would be, if I still lived in Austin. It’s hard to find those opportunities up here.

Which is why we jumped at the opportunity to head to McGinty’s for Rock ‘n Romp a few weeks ago. Sure, the first band should never have been allowed to play in front of children (loud garage band, loud – did I mention loud?), and we spent more money than we should have on their excellent beers. But it was just the fix I needed.

It wasn’t quite like the great kid-friendly shows back home. But, seeing my five year-old tearing around the joint and partying up on stage like a rock star, I realized – wow, I’m not so far from home after all.

And when hubby calls up asking if I want to go see the Who with him at $300-plus per ticket? That’s when I’m glad to say “love to, honey, but Alya would stay up too late on a school night.”

Hmm… maybe the “can’t go to sleep without Mommy” thing has bonuses, too.

Posted by Karen at 02:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I used to be an avid camper, having seen much of Texas outdoors (which is pretty easy, since you can camp nine months out of the year, more if you can tolerate the heat). I’ve backpacked my way around the Rockies and even – gasp! – my first ever backpacking trip was solo, using borrowed gear. I started accumulating and had just about everything any survivalist would give his best wool socks for. I could even stow enough stuff in one backpack to last me for two weeks in the wild, including food. Then I became a parent.

The first thing to go was my very first tent, my own personal tent, the tent I wouldn’t even let my own husband pack up. I would fold that tent away so perfectly that it still has the factory creases in it. But camping with a baby requires more than approximately 12 square feet of real estate. We upgraded to what our camping friends quickly referred to as “the Manor.” Can we talk big? I’ve had smaller apartments than this thing. It has rooms. It went totally against my minimalist nature to pitch such a thing. But I’m telling you, when you camp with a 5 month-old and you use cloth diapers, being able to put those stinky things in another room is, well, for lack of a better word – priceless.

Once the tent got upgraded, it was a slippery slope to swap all my lightweight, tiny gear for the family-sized options. (Now, for those of you who don’t know me and my family, the three of us together could easily make one large man, so I’m sure our camping neighbors get a big kick out of us unfurling all this largesse). At dinner, instead of cooking over a stove the size of a Tiger mosquito, we now had the huge multi-burner model. We switched from inflatable pads to a queen-sized inflatable mattress. I hauled rugs with us so the “sitting room” was padded for her highness.

Was I nuts? Perhaps. But I quickly realized that being able to adapt can take the edge off a bad situation, not to mention make a camping trip much more comfortable. My husband and I have our share of those awful-in-the-moment camping stories that we now laugh over. By making it easier on us (if you don’t count the extra weight from all this junk) we now have a five year-old who thinks that camping is the neatest thing ever.

And my old backpacking tent? We still take it camping with us. It makes a really great playhouse.

Posted by Karen at 09:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I’m a (mostly) stay-at-home parent who told Liesl I’d be glad to post to the new Voice parenting blog in an apparent (get it????) fit of insanity. I’ve probably seen a blog once or twice, why in the world would I think I have anything interesting to say in public about being a mom? But it seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Sometimes I feel like I’m about to win the “Joan Crawford Mother of the Year” award for my parenting style. But one of my strengths is my ability to obsess ad nausea about things I’ve done and don’t like (or things my daughter does that I don’t like) until I’ve come up with every possible reason why. Of course, my most popular conclusion is that my mother was a horrible parent and I’m merely the victim. Hopefully she doesn’t know what a blog is...

After a week of anxiety of not being able to be erudite and funny simultaneously, here I am, emptying out my tiny brain of thoughts about parenting. The things we do for our therapists!

Posted by Karen at 09:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In one of the emails planning this blog, someone implied that the group of people writing were to be an "expert resource." I have to laugh. I am in no way an expert about parenting. Just listen to me yelling "Try that relaxing breathing right now, or you're going to lose TV!" I find that being a parent has shown me most clearly my faults and actual limitations.

At a professional job, you can sort of gloss over the days when you get tired or angry and you just sit and surf the web. Similar sorts of days as a parent often involve a beloved person having some need unmet or feelings hurt or something equally at odds with parental dreams.

And I was always a sort of mellow, live and let live crunchy Takoma Park guy; being a parent has activated a strangely harsh but prompt inner Prussian (I am descended from a long line of German stay at home parents). I have been known to say that we may not be happy, but jeezy petes we are going to be on time. (Even this will make all my friends laugh, as my whole family is notorious for being late; then we are unhappy, late and at times feeling like failures.)

I'm not really sure that I believe in parental expertise as a real thing. (I do have to make an exception for Emory Luce Baldwin, as my wife and I often quote her Voice column to one another to definitely settle points of dispute.) Most of the really influential child rearing books foster the idea of trusting your own feelings about a matter (even my Mom's Dr. Spock, which I stole when my daughter was born). Solutions that work for one child or one parent won't necessarily work for another (they often do, that's why parents are so chatty, we all hope to either brag over or copy useful strategies). The most important thing I learned in the first few years of parenting was to pay attention to the actual concrete child in front of me. One can read about the importance of a regular routine, and it makes sense on the face of it. But the ability to look at my child, and know that she runs in circles when she's tired, or that he rubs his nose when he's tired, that's the whole game.

For my two year old, sometimes that shouted "no" means "I'm in charge, but those blue berries would be nice in a minute." Sometimes it means, "No, I'm still upset over the keys!" and sometimes it means "I don't want them in that bowl, I want them in the plastic container!" These nuances aren't universals, they are specific to my son, and even to the moment.

Even something as obvious as "taking care of yourself" isn't a no-brainer. It's a no-brainer that parents need to do this, sure, but what this means for me can't be found in a book. I never liked waking early before we had kids, but now I find my most refreshing moments are alone in the early dawn reading or bathing, drinking my tea. Not something I could have anticipated I'd find useful.

The interesting thing is that despite the specific faults and trickiness of it all, that things end up being ok. My kids know what it's like to have me, as I actually am, as a parent. Imperfect, but good enough for the day. And that's a miracle.

Posted by Chris at 06:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm a stay at home Dad in Takoma Park with two kids, six and two years old. I maintain a website in my basement that aspires to capture the collective best advice of people on a local parenting listserv. My daughter goes to Takoma Park Elementary School in the first grade. My son isn't in school yet, just a play group where he tends to scare the other two year olds in between trying to play with them.

I'm the sort of parent that last summer signed up for no camps at all, on the theory that in this county kids are pushed harder than is needed and can easily end up with lives that are over organized, and out of missing my school-age daughter during the school year. Not that there weren't certain types of camp I had to hide the existence of from my daughter (I'd scowl when my neighbors started talking about the great horse riding camp they managed to get a spot in) to carry out that plan. I've always had a love of the more labor intensive solution.

We did have fun, though. Picnics (albeit brief due to PM toddler naps) on the rocks of Great Falls. Metro trips to China Town to buy Dragon Bowls and Mountain Bowls. Art trips to the Sackler where I got to practice my authoritative hissing by hissing at them both not to touch anything or run or bother the guards or too much fun of any sort. Riding the carousel on the Mall. Using all the science project kits I'd bought during the school year. Lazy mornings at the Y pool with friends. My personal favorite, not waking children up in the morning or after nap. Throwing rocks into Rock Creek for hours at a time. More nouns than verbs really. So little rush.

My son who scares so many other two year olds (they are scared on account of his trying to harm them) didn't get his naps interrupted every day and didn't try to bite or hit anyone during the summer. He wasn't inherently mean during school, he was just tired!

The only problem we had with the summer was that we kept going out of town for family trips. I remember really liking family vacations, enjoying the relaxed time at the ocean or where ever. As a parent of course, a vacation is no longer a vacation. Each one week vacation wasn't just a tiring week with no schedule and curiously unhelpful relatives, but it was a full four disrupted weeks of routine.

The week ahead of the vacation of course is packing. I actually know some parents that pack well and in just a few hours, but it takes me a week and I still manage to show up places with no socks for my daughter or perhaps myself. At least I am now skilled enough (or, we bought a larger car that has a luggage rack on top) so that there's nothing actually packed above the children. The week of vacation is great, we had a kayak all week and we'd go mucking in the marshes. It's been fun to watch the rise and fall of fears at the beach. One year olds will just run right into surf. Two year olds are more wary. My daughter wouldn't go in much at all when she was three or four. Now, she loves the water enough to play there in a tidal pool for quite a while, chasing the birds and playing her games.

It should be perfect, but I still have a piece of my brain making me expect to read lots of books and nap everyday as though somehow I left the kids behind in Maryland for the vacation. So while fun, the week away is exhausting and tinged with disappointment. Then it takes two weeks to get our sleeping and eating routines back to normal, and over one week just to process all the sandy laundry and newspapers, and I still haven't had the long days of reading and napping. I think that this may have been when we had a movie marathon or two.

One surprise benefit about not having plans was that it was very easy to "crank up the boredom" in the weeks before school started, so that school came as a welcome blessing to my daughter.

For the next summer, we've signed up for one week long camp (with a former favorite teacher of my daughter's), but I hope to keep it at that. Unless of course my daughter or wife overrule me. But we are going to the beach again, and I have already stocked up on science project kits and books.

Posted by Chris at 12:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)