Sometimes I’m that one fish hanging out at the edge, trying to find a way in.
Sometimes I’m part of the crowd caught up in the energy of movement.
Sometimes I’m the shark in the distance, evaluating possibilities to devour.
And sometimes I’m just a bit of seaweed floating along.
Someone recently said to me that they haven’t heard much about our house search and assumed we’d stopped trying. That’s not the case, actually. But trying to find and buy the right house is, I’m finding, very similar to my experience of trying to get pregnant. The first time I was pregnant I told everyone right away, and then I lost the baby. The second time I got pregnant I also miscarried, and I hadn’t told anyone yet because I really didn’t want to go through the explanation. The third time we kept our mouths sealed until we were well into the second trimester and then announced our news, and later joyfully announced Bean’s debut.
And so it goes with house-hunting. Husband still looks and goes to open houses. He researches MLS listings. If there is one he visits that looks viable, he will ask me to go see it too. We have been looking for a home to buy for almost nine months. Maybe we’ll find one; maybe not. It just gets tiresome to talk about after awhile. I’ll not likely talk about the search until we’ve made an offer that is accepted. In fact, because Things Can Go Wrong, I’ll probably keep my mouth shut until we sign all the papers.
In other news, though, Bean and I were on a waiting list for a nursery school that a friend will attend. The school follows the philosophy espoused by the National Institute for Play (who knew there was such a thing?). I was content to wait and assumed I would not hear until next year. But on Labor Day I got a call that a spot opened, and I accepted. Bean and I will attend together on Wednesday mornings starting this week. I think she will enjoy it a lot.
We will have three busy mornings in a row, which concerns me a little because it can feel intense, but I think it’ll be okay. Tuesday is Music Together, Wednesday is school, and Thursday will be Little Gym. Other mornings and afternoons will be for parks, playdates, errands, and fun stuff at home, such as the painting we did today.
Today is cloudy and cool — perfect weather to make a small craft. Bean and I made this one together.
Happy birthday, Sunshine Girl!
A woman was shopping in a Walmart with a screaming child. A man approached and threatened the mother to shut her child up or he’d do it. A few moments later, the toddler was still screaming, and the man returned and slapped the child about four times. The incident makes me see red. I am careful to go out with my toddler only when she is well, fed, and rested, but sometimes toddlers throw tantrums regardless. They are learning and growing and have primitive emotional regulation. I guess I am lucky it didn’t happen to us. We just got a dirty look. And I got out of there, apologizing to everyone near us, just as soon as I’d completed our transaction.
I’m spreading the word about a local diaper drive. If you live in the Bay Area, take note!
Give Cheeks a Chance!
Kickoff @ Baby Buzz Café
09.09.09 from 3 – 6 PM
Our Goal
Help us collect over 3000 diapers on September 9th so that we can break our single-day San Jose collection record!
Where Is It?
1314 Lincoln Avenue
San Jose, CA 95126
Questions?
Call 408.885.9870
http://www.babybuzzcafe.com
Gift bags for the first 30 people to arrive with diapers! Goodies include products from: Little Lamb Design, Baby Legs, Sketchers Kids, Puma Kids, OSH eco shopping bags & more!
Plus TWO GRAND PRIZE gift baskets!
Can’t make it to the event? Please contact us if you’d like to host a diaper drive during September for one of our local-area partners. Email: info@helpamotherout.org.
What is Help a Mother Out?
To learn more about the Help a Mother Out Campaign, find us on the web at: http://www.helpamotherout.org.
Today we took Bean to the Children’s Discovery Museum, and she had a grand time. She played with water, climbed ramps, painted, crawled, turned things over, looked in mirrors, climbed inside boxes, danced, painted her face, and generally filled her brain through all her senses. We bought a family membership, and we’ll be going frequently from now on, especially with rainy season coming.
Bean likes to play the beep-beep nose game (sometimes Mommy just needs to have her nose beeped). She’s getting more vocal about things she doesn’t want; “Mommy won’t make that noise!” She named her stuffed doggie animals (previously known as black doggy and brown doggy) “Pepper” and “Puff” respectively. Everything is mommy, daddy, and baby: buses, pieces of food, stuffed animal toys, cutlery. She needs everything to be in threes like that. She sings many songs, some of which she hasn’t heard in months (the persistence of memory!) and often is nearly on-key.
Bean is two weeks away from turning two, and it’s been an amazing journey so far. I’ll be posting more in the future about the fun projects we do and the resources and ideas I discover on the way.
Since her birth, Husband has sung a Beatles a love song to Bean. He sings it at diaper changes, during baths, and just because. Tonight as she bathed and I sat in the living room, I heard her singing the chorus along with him, and she was even on key sometimes!
Falling, yes I am falling,
And she keeps calling
Me back again
Click here if the embedded video doesn’t work.
Our first overnight trip was a success, although we decided to make it only one night instead of two. Bean napped on the way to Monterey, so that when we arrived we could play. We drove to Pacific Grove and ate lunch at Lover’s Point Park. There we encountered a huge clan of unusually tame, fat, aggressive squirrels accustomed to being fed (and who competed with nearly as tame seagulls). Bean climbed the jumbled rocks on the point and laughed at the squirrels. Then we checked into our motel back in Monterey.
Next we visited Dennis the Menace park, which was a blast. Her very favorite part was a long slide made of roller bars. I didn’t bring the camera with me, unfortunately. I went with her a few times, and she laughed her belly laugh. She then went by herself over and over again, giggling on each trip down, until she began to get impatient about waiting her turn (a sign she was tired). She also enjoyed running back and forth over a hanging wood bridge (the kind you see suspended over steep ravines in jungles). Dinner followed this, and then a short trip to the beach to jump in waves, followed by the bedtime routine. It had been an adventurous day.
Bean had difficulty falling asleep; it took 90 minutes, and she finally let go at 9:30. It was her first time ever in a big bed (the room was too small for the pack-and-play). I slept lightly next to her, waking several times. She woke at 5:15 a.m., and so did I. She was running on only eight hours of sleep, which was clearly not enough. She devoured pancakes and ham at Denny’s.
We decided that going home after the aquarium would be our wisest course of action. I was exhausted, as was she, and Husband was tired too. So we took her to the “zoo for fish” as we called it, and she was entranced. We had a grand visit, until she couldn’t take it anymore; around 1 p.m. she had her first spectacular public tantrum, complete with hitting me in the face, flailing arms, and running away. Since we’d seen all we wanted to see, we headed for the car. Husband carried her, a sack of wailing and tears, to the car, where she fell asleep as soon as we drove out of the parking garage. Two hours later she awoke cheerfully refreshed when we pulled into our garage at home.
It was a general success. We could have done another night, but we didn’t want to push it. I had (and still have) a sore throat, which I believe might be the cold she has recently had (or it could be particulate matter from forest fire smoke). Are we ready for a long haul trip by plane across the country? We think not just yet.
Bean is still coughing and sneezing some, but she is restless and cheerful, so we are heading out on our little trip. I hope we’ve packed well enough: clothes, books (for us all), snacks, stuffed animals. I wonder if she’ll sleep in the pack-and-play, which she hated to even be in to play? I wonder if she and I will end up sleeping together in the motel bed? I wonder if any of us will get any sleep? Should be interesting.
Today we’ll go to the Dennis the Menace park. Tomorrow the aquarium. Saturday morning we’ll do a little drive and head home. Here we go!
Husband is taking time off work. We were planning to go to Monterey for a couple nights — our first away from home with Bean — this week. Except Bean has a nasty cold with a cough, sneezes, and so forth.
Also, the water hose to our refrigerator broke and leaked everywhere last night. Though we rent the house, we own the fridge, so it’s our problem to fix.
And I successfully cast on my first sock, only to find I’d dropped a stitch in the first row. So this will require frogging and starting over.
None of these are huge crises, but they do set a tone for the vacation that we didn’t really want (but that’s not permanent). We may still decide to take our little trip, depending on how she seems tomorrow. She’s mostly cheerful and active, just with symptoms. We’ll have a repair guy come to fix the fridge. And casting on the sock again will be good practice for working with toothpick needles.
Earlier this summer I searched for recommendations, and I got some. I also recently heard about some sites that offer good info. This site offers some interesting reviews and recommendations of fiction, non-fiction, kid lit, and memoir: Five Minutes for Books.
Then there’s Good Reading: A Guide for Serious Readers (I’m thinking my father would want to tackle some of these).
Mojo Mom offered a summer reading list that I still intend to tackle.
Book Bytes looks interesting too!
There are thousands of sites to find recommendations. These are just a few sources that caught my attention.
There comes a point in a knitter’s life that one must move beyond scarves and hats. I decided that the next reasonable step — one which would likely result in a completed project — is to knit socks. Bean and I went to our local yarn store today, and I acquired the needles and yarn. I’ve never knit on anything so thin (size 1.5, which is 2.5 millimeters thick). They’re like toothpicks. Bean really enjoyed the store; we’re able to stay increasingly longer periods (almost an hour yesterday) as she learns not to pull all the yarn off the shelves.
Well, I’m here at home on the sofa with a sick kid. She has a fever and congestion. “We” are watching Sesame Street and Between the Lions, after which we’ll try to figure out what else to do. She’s just sick enough to be clingy and well enough to be restless and whiny.
I’ve written very little here lately, in part because I’m rethinking what I want to share. Bean approaches her second birthday, and I’ve converted past posts that provided great detail to private status. It’s time to curtail the posts, out of respect for her privacy. I’m sure cute potty stories won’t be a hit with her when she’s a teen.
Truth be told, I find it easier and more social to spend time on Facebook. It’s more interactive; I can see what friends are up to, and we can comment to each other. I can restrict who can view updates and photos. I am also more inclined to post something when it’s a one-or-two-sentence update; posting here requires more substance, for which I don’t have much time or motivation.
Also, the kinds of topics I want to explore in my writing aren’t ones I want to share with the world. As Bean grows, a whole new set of neuroses and concerns are emerging within me, and while I want to write to explore my thinking and sort things out, I feel protective of myself (with good reason, I have discovered).
In the past two years, I’ve watched this blog go from having about 80 unique visitors a day (not huge) to about 15. I’ve lost my mojo here. And, well, I’ve got a life that I didn’t have before, lived in the here and now.
I won’t close the blog. It has some substance, and much effort was expended to create it. I’ll still post photos of the knitting and whatever occurs to me; I just don’t know what that will be!
I had a 100-yard ball of expensive yarn and found a neat little pattern for fingerless gloves. Here, in light woad, are they:
And here is information about woad, which is a plant used to make blue dye.
Bean colored, I cut, and she “helped” with the tape.
How realistic is the expectation that an almost-2 child should self-amuse often and long? I know some mothers whose children of the same age will play for 30-60 minutes by themselves. I sometimes worry that I “play too much” with Bean. I do try to take little breaks to do chores, read, or blog, but often after 10-20 minutes she runs up saying, “Mommy come, Mommy come.” And she is in a repetitive stage, so she will utter that phrase until I relent; unfortunately this teaches and reinforces the behavior, and she learns that it takes “X repetitions” to get Mommy. Usually I try to stretch her a bit if I’m busy: “I’m cooking sweetie, I’ll be with you in a few minutes.” Sometimes I set a timer and tell her when it dings I’ll come play with her. When I do play, we’ll do it about 10-20 minutes at a time. Then I try to get up and do some more stuff. But here’s the point: I’m a stay-at-home mom for a reason, and that reason is to care for Bean. Part of caring is setting up different activities and participating in some of them. One of her biggest pleasures is reading books; lately it’s all the Richard Scarry books. Sometimes I feel like “disappearing” a few of them for a few days, because I am bored witless with them and almost at the end of my patience.
Another thing that I wonder about is her tantrums. Often when she is mad about not getting her way, she cries “I need a hug!” Or when she wants to be sure to get my attention she begs for a hug and cries. Or she announces, “I’m crying,” or “I’m sad (or mad),” or “I’m so sorry, Mommy!” The questions are: should I withhold a hug until she is calm and done having the tantrum? Or should I hold her if that helps to calm her down? Should I give her a hug when she is using it as a means to get my attention and pull me away from my own task?
Well, I’ve had my ten minutes, and now I’m being tugged and whined at for another thing. For now I’ll comfort myself with this excerpt from a blog and favorite book:
Lila has been driving me to the brink lately with the Being Two: the whining, the screaming, the abandoning of the diapers in random sodden heaps around the house, the eating nothing-but-blueberries-and-mini-marsmallows, the “Meeee dooooo!” the “No Mama sing!”
But last night I read this, on page 83 of Karen Maezen Miller’s excellent book, Momma Zen:
“Yes, it’s said that “two” is terrible, but can you consider the course load for a minute? Self-feeding and table skills, language, emotional management, toilet training, and social etiquitte for starters.
And all occuring amid the frightening undertow towards separation and independence. Throw in weaning, the big bed, and assorted other traumatic transitions such as a new sibling, babysitter or preschool, whenever they enter the picture. These kids are working in a coal mine!
Consider all of this as a way to conjure up more empathy on an ordinary day.”
Ahhh. Suddenly I feel better. Thanks Karen.
This book is an old Moms Are Talking About favorite, categorized under the intriguing label Parenting/Buddhism.
If you ask me, that’s a literary subgenre that really ought to have its own bookstore. Or planet. With free green tea and massages.
Yesterday Bean went with her father to the hardware store, and she saw paint there, and of course she came home obsessed with a desire to paint. It was too late in the day to start since we had company coming, and I promised her today we’d do it. She was thrilled this morning when she saw the setup. Here’s a little movie of her painting, and below that is a photo of the output. She said here she was painting a picture of Maria and Abby (from Sesame Street). I think she was also saying at the end of the movie, “My painting is lovely.” We painted wrapping paper.
