Almost 20 Months

Evs has a new morning routine: he wakes up, giggles to let us know he’s awake, and then refuses to get out of his crib. He likes to hang out in there for a while, sipping some milk and assembling some legos.

He can’t yet talk clearly, but he can make his wishes known, so every morning, we keep passing legos into his crib while he babbles happily and instructs us not to open the curtains, not just yet, because it’s still early and he likes his mornings to go slowly.

He also has new opinions about what clothes he wants to wear. If a shirt doesn’t have a fire-engine or a motorcycle on it, he is not interested in it. Fortunately, our large collection of hand-me-downs contains many items of clothing featuring vehicles.

His other favorite item of clothing is women’s shoes.

He’s beginning the promised language explosion, articulating a half-dozen new words every day. He’s debating our no-walking-in-the-street rule. He’s acquiring new skills: assembling wooden train tracks all on his own, actually successfully playing catch almost half the time, and joining in Sophie’s relay races around our backyard bike track.

And he’s at the stage when he doesn’t like to have his photo taken, because he really wants to look at the back-of-the-camera digital display and see the photo already, so why are we pointing the boring front-side of the camera at him, why are we telling him to wait a minute and let us take the photo first, he wants to see that photo NOW.

Here he is, wearing girl’s shoes atop his favorite firetruck-festooned pajamas, upset that he is out of his crib too quickly and not yet permitted to see the photo that doesn’t yet exist. Also upset that he isn’t yet capable of riding his Dad’s bike to his Dad’s work, even though he is capable of getting his bike helmet on.

The difference with a second child is that now I understand why people say, “Enjoy every minute.” I know this doesn’t quite mean to enjoy the tantrums, but to recognize that it will all change so quickly, and so to take it lightly without too much worrying — just relishing what is relishable. Soph’s bemused expression here is one of my favorite things in this photo. Also her curls, and the adorable freckles that are sprinkling themselves across both my children’s faces.

 

Parenting Dilemna #6428

When I picked up Soph from school, she looked tired. It was a hot day, her class had just returned from a forest-hiking field trip, and so I didn’t think much of it. We biked home and I started to make her a smoothie, while she wandered back to her bedroom. When I called her, she didn’t answer. It turned out she had just climbed into bed and fallen asleep.

She felt a little feverish. She was deep asleep.

She wasn’t even sleeping in her own bed, because I happened to be washing her sheets. She had climbed into my bed, instead. Sweet independent girl.

Here’s the parenting dilemna: I have to pick up Everett from daycare 45 minutes after I pick up Sophie from school. I didn’t want to wake her up and drag her to Evs’s daycare. And I didn’t want to leave her home alone.

What would you do?

Parenting solution #1: I called a neighbor.

My elderly, retired neighbor said he’d be right over. He brought his harmonica, so he could play songs to Soph if she woke up. He sat on my couch and read the nearest book, a story for 4-year-olds, while I biked to pick up Everett. When I returned, a half-hour later, my neighbor told me he was “just going down memory lane,” since his house used to look like mine, 47 years ago, before he’d renovated his.

And he said, “I don’t know how to say this, but, thank you. It feels good to be needed.”

 

 

 

Milestones

Just before bathtime, Everett dragged out his toy potty and toy cell-phone. He sat down on the little potty, and — although the boy can’t yet talk — it turns out he can use a potty. Evs is growing up.

Too much crying in my office hours

“I think I’m gay,” a student told me this week, in my office hours. “I’m scared. I haven’t told anyone except you.” She was crying.

“I’m honored to be told,” I said. I passed her the kleenex I keep in my office, because it’s needed surprisingly often. And I wondered, really, what decade are we living in? So I said, “Help me understand this: what’s scary? It seems like exciting news to me, that you’re figuring out who you want to love.”

She’s scared of being judged, scared of taking on the label of being gay. She told me she knows her parents are open-minded and love her no matter what. She knows her friends are actually huge fans of every famous lesbian she can think of. And she doesn’t know any gay woman personally. Not a single one.

I don’t have a script for this. I just kept asking questions. Recommended she seek out some lesbians to talk to, if she thinks that would help alleviate her fear. Recommended she visit the counselling office we have on campus. Reassured her that if she does choose to label herself gay, the very worst that might happen (aside from gay-bashing, which I like to think is rare) is that she might lose a friend or two who were not worth holding onto anyway, because who wants homophobic friends?

She told me she’s been too scared to go to class, “Because what if someone figures out my secret?”

I actually wondered whether she was putting on an act. Is this really the attitude of people in 2013 in Southern California?

My students’ world is so different from mine. They’ve been drawn to the kind of open-minded cultural studies I teach, but it’s tragic to realize how much basic dignity they don’t yet know to demand.

Today, another student started crying during class because her ex-boyfriend kept sending her threatening and insulting text-messages, dozens of them. “Stop reading those,” I advised her (class was starting, and I don’t allow cell-phone use in class, of course), so she put away her phone and simply sat in class, red-faced, just barely suppressing her crying. After class, she told me that what was hardest was that every third or fourth message was actually a sweet “I miss you so much,” while the rest were nastily hurtful.

“He sounds manipulative,” I said. “Do you know your phone company can block his phone number from ever sending you texts again? You don’t have to put up with this. You can block him.”

She didn’t know she had that right. She had hopes of convincing him to change.

Oy vey, these girls.

These kids, I should say, because it’s not just my female students who have troubles demanding the respectful treatment they deserve, it just seems so this week. Another needed an extension because she hasn’t yet managed to move out of the home of her abusive boyfriend. Another spoke in class about her mother’s meth addiction.

I don’t know what to do, except be honored they talk to me, reassure them that they all do deserve dignity, and come home to hug my kids.

Sexed

“Guess what?” Sophie asked me, leaning in close. “Susie and Jimmy sexed.”

“They did what?” I asked, hoping that she was mispronouncing “text.” Maybe they got ahold of a cell-phone and sent a text-message, even though they’re only in kindergarten.

“They sexed.”

“What does that mean?” I was trying to keep my voice calm and neutral.

“They kissed each other here,” she explained, pointing to her crotch. She shivered and giggled.

Well, well. Probably I should stop blogging I-didn’t-expect-that-this-soon, since it seems to be such a common theme, lately. In kindergarten.

I thought for a minute, then decided that when Soph is hearing about sex from others is the time when she should hear it straightforwardly from me.

We happened to be crossing the street, in our crowded downtown, but that seemed as good a time as any. I said, “You know, Soph, sex isn’t just kissing,” She asked what it is, I told her, and then she gave the age-appropriate reply: “That’s icky.” I told her it might not be icky when she’s older, and eventually she’ll be old enough to be in love and have a baby, and that’s when sex will be appropriate — but not until she is in love and ready for a baby of her own. The whole conversation took about two minutes.

We’ll have this conversation again, I hope. As long as she’s talking to me and looking to me for information, I think I’m pretty comfortable with that.

What I’m not so sure of is whether I should let anyone else know about this piece of five-year-old gossip. I’m using pseudonyms here, of course. I’m friends with Susie’s mother and grandfather: should I mention it to either of them? I know I would want to know if someone heard this about Soph, but I also know it’s not an easy piece of information to share. Alternately, do I simply tell the kindergarten teacher? It could be a warning sign of some deeper problem in that household, and even a sign that one of the kids is acting out some sort of abuse the kid has experienced. Or it could be nothing at all.

UPDATE: I told the teacher, she talked to all families involved, and it turns out that, in her words, “some experimenting was indeed going on.” And now all the families who need to know, do know.

Reviving Ophelia

Remember the book Reviving Ophelia? That’s the one that explains that girls tend to excel at school until they hit adolescence and discover that it’s socially encouraged to hide their intelligence.

Soph may be hitting adolescence at age 5.

She is a fast learner, so she gets pulled out of class once a week for an advanced reading group — and she doesn’t like this.

“Mom,” she told me, “if I learn even more than my friends, then I’ll start finishing my work even earlier than my friends, and then I’ll be REALLY bored. I’m not allowed to talk to them when I finish early, because that distracts them and they still have work to do.”

She’s right: she is a distraction to her classmates because she does finish seat-work quickly. She’s sweetly responsible, trying hard not to distract anyone, and it breaks my heart to see her think the solution is to learn less.

I assured her that once she learns to truly read, she won’t ever have to be bored, because once she can read, then she can find out on her own what happens to Ramona or Cam Jansen the Girl Detective next. In the meantime, I asked if she can color, or something, whenever she finishes her work early. Her teacher gave her a basic reading book to store in her desk and gave me some tips on challenging gifted children. We’re not quite facing the adolescent challenges of Reviving Ophelia. But I’m afraid it’s just around the corner.

Easter Photos

It’s our Easter tradition to go camping in the desert with friends. Little Blair Valley, in the Anzo Borrego Desert, in case you’re wondering. 

 

Bike Racing Weekends

When I wake my kids up around 5 a.m. and move them, still in their pajamas, into the car, they just smile sleepily and welcome the adventure. The long car-ride to the bike-race is actually easier while they sleep. That’s when Ben & I can listen together to the podcasts I usually hear all alone during my own commute: This American Life, Unfictional, Radiolab, New Yorker Fiction… Once Soph wakes up, she grows impatient with hearing things she can’t understand, so we switch to music and games of “I spy,” but even then, car-time conversations can be even better than dinner-time conversations. Thanks to lots of practice, my kids are great road-trippers. I’m probably the grumpiest in my family about long car rides.

It’s often still cold around 7:30 am, when we arrive at that weekend’s race location. So I let the kids play in the car while Ben goes off to register and scout the course and whatever it is he does.

We get to the start-line in time to take his arm-warmers and cheer him on.

 

My kids bring their own bikes, but, really, they mostly play with simple toys: build a house for ants out of sticks, clamber on whatever boulders cluster around the start-line of the mountain-bike course, jump-rope maniacally, organize a complicated fantasy world with the other kids, vroom a few small cars down a hill…  We will be at the park for many hours. They find things to do.

If I’m lucky — and I usually am — there will be a 9-year-old girl who wants to take charge of watching Sophie. That way, I can do the water hand-ups to Ben every 30 minutes or so, as he comes round the course having finished one water-bottle and thirsty for another. I’m getting adept at passing water to someone speeding by at over 20 mph, while also keeping an eye on one kid — but I’m less adept at doing this while watching two kids.

 

I learn something at every race. At the most recent race, I learned that if “Muscle Milk” brand is passing out free chocolate-milk-ish protein smoothies, the kids will enjoy drinking it, but Everett shouldn’t be left unsupervised. It turns out that Muscle Milk is actually an astounding hair-styling product for toddlers.

At least I know to laugh at this.

The kids know how to behave on a winner’s podium.

And they know how to enjoy the ride home, covered in Muscle Milk and the dirt of playing outside all day.

 

And, just like that, the princess stage is over

Now it’s Wonder Woman.

Even though there’s the whole weird Cold-War-ish plot (in which, ironically, the forces of the US government seem to be engaging in exactly the kind of propaganda & sneakiness that they claim to be opposing) and of course the whole female-objectification-with-overtones-of-bondage stuff going on in that show, still, I’m actually really pleased with Sophie watching Wonder Woman. Soph is so cute when she herself spins around, pretending to transform into her most powerful version. She likes to toss her lasso, now, and rope me in. She’s proud that Wonder Woman is a force for good. Smart and strong and helping the police: that’s how Sophie sees Wonder Woman. And, Sophie proclaims, she herself IS Wonder Woman.

Sorting, eighteen-month-old style

Everett is now a year and a half old, but he still has only a few words. Between pointing and declaring “This!” he gets most of what he wants, anyway, without speaking.

He does like to talk about body parts, sort of. “Eyes,” to him, means point to something round on your face, plus, for some reason, stick your tongue out and point at it, then make some more silly faces, before returning to a game of peekaboo while repeating the word “eyes!” I think he may have learned this at school, overgeneralizing from a lesson on the names of body parts.

He also likes to talk about animals by the sounds they make. “Moo” means a horse or a cow, “arf” means a dog or a wolf, and “this” means “Oh my goodness, this is so exciting, there’s a bird in the sky!” Or maybe an airplane. “This” is a very capacious word, for Everett.

He also tends to say “shhhh” while placing his finger on his cheek (not on his lips, as that gesture should go, but at least close to his lips), and meaning, “Is that person actually sleeping when they could be playing with me? Let’s wake them up!”

Despite his relative lack of language, I know my baby is brilliant. How do I know? He sorts the garbage. I don’t just mean the simple sorting, like recognizing that plastics go in the recycling bin and not the general trash. I think I already may have blogged about that. Now, Everett knows sorting that I was not even conscious of, myself. Tea-bags, I learned from him, go into the sink. That is in fact where I habitually place wet and hot tea-bags, to avoid soaking the small plastic garbage can under the sink — but I had no idea that Everett had observed this, nor that he would refuse to place even an old tea-bag anywhere but the sink. He knows that diapers go only in the best-sealed garbage can in the house. He really likes to pick leaves off our bushes and take them to the yard-waste bin. He knows that the yard-waste bin, when full, can get emptied into the compost. You see? Brilliant. And helpful.

Now I just need to teach him that the best way to greet his sister in the morning is NOT to climb exuberantly onto her bed and bite her shoulder.