katehaney

06:51 am: birthday planning
Teddy and I are attending a birthday party this afternoon, at another gymnastics place (I was going to write "gym," but didn't want to associate "5-year-old's birthday party" with "Gold's" or somethin' - look! your kid can pump iron!). I realized as we were discussing the weekend plans that...

:gulp:

...we need to plan Teddy's party. Unlike past years, Teddy will be having a party with, y'know, kids. So I can't do the "fambly? please come on Teddy's birthday? kthxbye" routine. (Though I plan to also do that. Fambly, please come, etc.)

Around here, people seem to do parties at various venues. Bowling alleys, gymnastics places, etc. We haven't been invited to any pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, musical-chairs, cake-at-home type o' parties.

I thought Teddy was going to go that cheaper, but higher-effort, route until I realized that he was only voting for it 'cause he wanted friends there.

Oops, my bad communication.

So he seems to have settled on the movies, which we'll do a couple of weeks before his birthday (thus the need to plan, like, now). We'll get the "party room" (which I won't see until later today, so this plan could change abruptly) for an hour before the movie with popcorn and drinks (and cake and ice cream, of course). The kids get Go Boxes (popcorn, drink, and candy in an easy-carry box) and the movie, of course. Gotta figure out favors.

We'll see how it goes.

Most of the kids' parties we've been to have NOT involved opening gifts at the party, which I think is an excellent idea. But how long does eating cake and ice cream take? How much entertainment do I have to plan? What kind of entertainment? Is the movie enough, I hope?

Advice from experienced partiers much appreciated.

07:08 am: baguette
Teddy insisted that we buy a baguette at Trader Joe's the other day, and even agreed to eat the :gasp: crust if I bought one.

And he did indeed eat the crust. Hot diggity!

Seems Simone (his French teacher) has been telling him about how people buy baguettes every day in France, but there are to be no leftovers because the bread will be stale.

I got lectured about NO LEFTOVERS, but he did concede that it tasted fine the second day. And there will not be a third.

07:37 am: Curse you, Sunkist!
Teddy and I arrived at my folks' house just in time for dinner (YUM - thanks Dad!) Tuesday night. Teddy was being Sir Cranky, the Crankmeister of Crankendom, having been rudely awakened from his lovely car nap when we arrived. He snuggled on my lap and refused to eat, drink, or interact with anyone but me.

When he finally settled down a bit, I let him have a small glass of soda as a treat. Orange soda, one of my favorites when I was a kid. Just the thing to rinse down his American cheese and apple slices (sauerbraten being deemed Unacceptable by the Crankenheimer).

Turns out this particular orange soda has caffeine. Caffeine. A beverage with a kick. A kick that Teddy has never before felt in any significant amount (chocolate has comparative traces of Teh Kick).

YOWZA. And the child, he did awaken. Within about 15 minutes, he was careening around the house with his cousin M, having a great time.

It was heart-warming to see the two of them together. They see each other rarely, but they get along like a house a-fire. A caffeinated house a-fire.

He fell asleep sometime after 9, and would probably not have slept yet if he hadn't still been on Benadryl.

* * * * *

He woke up earlier than I'd have liked (though later than usual) yesterday and would. not. let. me. sleep. I had a hard time falling back asleep after his 12:30 awakening (I was worrying about this and that) and would really have enjoyed a lie-in. Nope.

So we got up, visited with my folks, and bundled all the cousins (M, her older brother A [Teddy's idol], and Teddy) off to the New Balance outlet, where new shoes were acquired for all, then to the Children's Museum.

I'm so glad we're members of the museum. Great organization, lots of fun, and the line skippage is most excellent indeed (as is the discount at the store, natch)... especially on holidays when the regular line winds outdoors and past the milk bottle.

What a fun day! Teddy and M were wonderful together, and A? What a great kid (an 18-year-old, 6'1" kid whose diapers I changed and whose very adultitude and heightification make my head explode). He was so wonderful with both kids. It was an absolute pleasure spending time with him, and he was an enormous help, too.

Get this! I got to go to the bathroom. BY MYSELF. In the Children's Museum!! You do not know privilege until you get to the bathroom by yourself at a kids' venue when your kid is also there but NOT with you in the bathroom while you're doing your thing all by yourself. I'm a blithering run-on sentence idiot from the sheer joy and surprise of it!

:ahem: Anyway. We had a great time.

The kids wound down around the same time, which was quite a happy coincidence, and we headed home (without having seen the Nutcracker rehearsals we came for, because the line for free tickets was so outrageous and no one really cared but me anyway). Stopped by my office for nothing (grr... the benefits vendor with whom I was supposed to meet had already left, dammit, though I was there two hours earlier than I'd thought I might be).

There was still time for a nice little visit with my folks, a quick drink and potty break, and an even quicker stop at Trader Joe's for the all-important Apple Crushers (because other brands just. will. not. do.). We were home again before dinner.

* * * * *

aaaaaand I woke up with vertigo. wtf?

04:39 pm: Ladies and Gentlemen, we have... the metaphor (via movie soundtrack)
On our way to Southwick* yesterday, Teddy said: "We're about to get on the life!"

"What?"

"Because life is a highway!"

And so it is.


* Why Southwick, you ask? An excellent question. Peter likes to pick semi-random towns in the area to check out. They're semi-random because he always picks the ones with yoga studios, so he can see whether the drive is worth going to a class there. So he picked Southwick, MA, which I'd never heard of. We had dinner at the Summer House, a pretty good, very cheap little family ice cream place. And drove back a most circuitous route that made me really, really wish I had my new glasses.

03:20 pm: do you know how much I love you?
Teddy has no patience for this question any more. He used to love teasing about it, with all kinds of variations (deeper than the sky, higher than the ocean, bigger than the whole wide eyebrow; deeper than the toilet, higher than the ceiling, bigger than the whole wide vacuum cleaner; etc.) leading up to the right answer: "higher than the sky, deeper than the ocean, and bigger than the whole wide world."

Now, he rolls his eyes and says "I know, I know! You love me infinity."

The "get on with the next thing" is only implied so far.

Still, I suppose it's a good thing that he knows he's loved.

09:04 am: Sir Teddy the Cautious

06:13 am: mostly about reading
Teddy's decided to use his Halloween candy money for the Lego Star Wars dictionary (which I've just learned costs half as much on Amazon as through Scholastic, grr). A good deal, I think, as I wouldn't have bought him the dictionary myself.

* * * * *

And yes, we have made our first Scholastic Books selections. I'm more excited about this than is perhaps seemly, but I loved Scholastic Book orders when I was a kid. No matter how broke they were (which was generally "very"), my parents always bought us books. And usually my stack was the biggest in the class. I remember how lucky that always made me feel. "More books! I have more books to read!"

I hope Teddy finds it just as exciting as I always did. He certainly enjoyed the selection process.

* * * * *

It's my reading day at Montessori. On the agenda are Llama Llama Mad at Mama (by request, after I read Llama Llama Red Pajama last week), The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and The Big Fat Enormous Lie.

* * * * *

I've been reading Harry Potter to Teddy at night, which I love. Reading aloud makes me slow waaay down, too, which is a first for me in reading HP.

Teddy's favorite parts? When Hagrid gives Dudley a pig's tail and when Peeves refuses to tell Filch something because he doesn't say please.

Figures.

08:36 am: You don't know the power of the dark side


Sir Teddy to be uploaded soon. Ish. I hope.

12:25 pm: Haney's Halloween Index
Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

• 800 pieces of candy given away (less Laffy Taffies for Peter, SweetTarts for Teddy, and a 3 Musketeers for me)


• Several hundred trick-or-treaters (at our house -- more in the neighborhood)


• 10% of ToTs who actually live in the neighborhood (guesstimate)


• 3 costumes: futurist knight, Optimus Prime (or so I'm told), and Darth Vader


• 3 hours to distribute the aforementioned candy to the aforementioned ToTs


• 27 pieces of candy collected by Teddy


• 13 pieces of Teddy's candy sold to Mommy for Storm Trooper helmet money


• 1 piece of Teddy's remaining 14 pieces eaten by Teddy on Halloween


• 50% of houses rejected by Teddy as "too scary" for trick-or-treating


• 1 rolling pirate ship that made its way around the neighborhood for everyone's entertainment


• 30 or so jack-o-lanterns at the Pumpkin House


• 0 non-costumed ToTs


• 0 trash in the yard

Most popular costumes: Mario Bros, SuperGirl, storm troopers, Michael Jackson
Personal favorites: candy machine (takes rather than dispenses), anything on a small, polite child

I love Halloween in this neighborhood.

(Sir Teddy and Darth Vader videos coming soon)

06:11 pm: Some Halloween Pictures
( pictures under the cut )

03:37 pm: gearing up for Halloween
Last year was a blast, so I have high hopes for this year. Low probability of rain tomorrow, which is good. If we don't get the usual rush of trick-or-treaters, I'm screwed. 'Cause we have 800 pieces of candy (we got about 500 TOTs last year).

Teddy's Halloween parade at school was fun, I think. I missed the parade part (though I got to see the pre-schoolers' parade, which was completely adorable, of course), but got to see the show (Halloween songs in English and French, as well as a dance of some sort that I didn't entirely understand). I'll preview the videos I took, but I suspect they're all too awful to post.

Teddy is a knight this year, with glow-in-the-dark stars on his helmet and glow-in-the-dark stars and a rocket (with flames) on his shield. He's got kind of a medieval space age thing going. Pictures coming in a couple of days, though I'm not sure how to capture glow-in-the-dark, which is the coolest part.

In any case, he's very excited about getting lots of candy and selling it to me so he can buy something. Preferably either a Millennium Falcon or a Storm Trooper helmet.

I love Halloween.

09:56 am: NO WRKIN, the flip side
I'm working diligently on a project, while Teddy plays by himself next to me (Peter is in the shower).

When Teddy stuck something in front of my face, I said:
"Teddy, what am I doing?"

"You're working on something slow and boring."

"Actually, I'm working on something really interesting that matters a lot to me." (Truth: I love this project.)

"I know what you're doing!"

"What?"

"You're making money so you can buy me toys!"

And he smiled all over his face.

09:06 am: That's enough of the video

07:07 am: Teddy's opinion of my working




That's a picture of me sitting at a computer with a big ol' "X" through the picture.

Caption: "NO WRKIN"

06:50 am: Peter the stealth blogger
I found out the other day that Peter has been blogging almost as long as I have, about the Moravian separatist movement.

My husband. Blogging.

My husband, who makes fun of me for blogging, blogs.

I'm mostly thrilled about it. He's passionate about politics. He's blogging in Czech, so he's keeping up his language skills. His blog gets a lot of traffic, including the chairman of the Moravian separatist party (Jan Kryčer, I think, but Peter's asleep so I can't confirm that right now), who comments regularly.

:happy chair dance:

How totally cool is that?

I don't know (or care, except insofar as my husband does) all that much about politics, particularly Czech politics, but from what I can tell, living in some parts of the Czech Republic is very much like living in Western Massachusetts: it's as if you're in a totally different state/country from the bits that get all the attention (and money and other resources, too). In MA, it's all about Boston. Boston, Boston, Boston.

Don't get me wrong: I love Boston. But there is more to the state than Boston and its immediate environs.

Similarly, there's more to the Czech Republic than Prague. But you wouldn't know that to read about it in the newspapers or to look at budgets. Moravia, where Peter's from (Nové Město na Moravě, specifically), doesn't get much respect.

...and Peter's working on that. Which is, as Teddy would say, AWESOME.

On the other hand? He's been blogging about this for four years and I found out two days ago (he told me as proof that he was not using the computer to look at porn - which I had not accused him of doing, but there was a breakdown in communication, as happens periodically between people with different native languages, cultures, and genders).

He says he would've told me before he was elected to office. In the Czech Republic.

I'm pretty sure he was joking. I think.

07:40 pm: na zdraví, dude!
Tonight I served sparkling cider with dinner, just for the heck of it.

Teddy saw the champagne flutes and said "AWESOME! Na zdraví dude glasses!"

"Na zdraví" is "cheers!" in Czech. The "dude" is Teddy's own addition.

08:18 am: When half-heimers meets parenting
Teddy asked "Do we need the hoo-ra tonight?"

Yep. The hoo-ra. Also known as the humidifier, the word for which I could never remember last winter.

More often than not, I called it the hoo-ra.

(He remembered that from last winter!)

:sigh:

06:37 am: It was 12 months ago today
We moved into our new house a year ago today. I wrote about it, but I don't recommend (re-?)reading it. For me, at least, it's stressful just to think about it.

We got here. It worked. The process was horrible and put enormous strain on each of us and our relationships, but we got through it. We've unpacked everything, including all the stuff I never unpacked when I moved into the old house 13 years before that. We've since divested ourselves of even more stuff (20 boxes of clothes that we paid movers to move? gone!). Most of the house is pretty well organized. It feels like home.

When we first moved, Teddy still referred to our old house as "home." This was "the new house."

I asked him this morning if he missed the old house. He said "yes, I miss the big yard."

"I don't understand, Teddy. Our new yard is more than twice the size of the old one."

"I miss the valleys. And the mud."

Valleys are either the monster divots in the side yard or the tulip "beds." By which I mean "where I planted tulips and they died, leaving a mud hole."

"I played monster trucks there. They talked a lot."

Uh huh. Next spring, I guess I need to designate part of the yard as the monster truck valley.

So, yes, we moved a year ago. We're here!

01:00 pm: Stuff that's buggin' me (rant)
I wouldn't say I'm a particularly deep person, but some big stuff's been buggin' me recently and I figured I'd try to work it out here, so I can let. it. go.

I have some friends and relatives who have very different views from my own - views on child-rearing, on religion, on politics. And that's totally cool. In fact, I like getting a range of different perspectives. They're all really smart, thoughtful people, and I like learning from smart, thoughtful people. I can be very knee-jerk in my crunchy-granola, attachment-parenting, liberal ways, so it's good for me to hear other points of view. Totally dig that.

But some of the stuff I've seen recently really, really bugs me. Online social networking means that we're all exposed to each others' thoughts with much greater frequency and - sometimes, if not always - much less filtering. With one little click ("publish"), someone passes something on, frequently without adding any commentary about why they like it or whether they agree with every bit of it or whatever.

So... parenting.

Mothering is one of my very favorite parenting magazines. Very crunchy. Somewhat closed-minded if you're not really crunchy too, which is disappointing (I hold up Moxie as the best example of open-mindedness, regardless of where you are on the spectrum), but since I'm pretty crunchy, I tend to find it like-minded.

I'm a fan of Mothering in Facebook, so I get regular posts about Mothering articles or blogs. Today, they posted an answer to a reader's question about a 4-year-old who says "I hate you" when she's angry.

I happen to have very strong (negative) feelings about using the word "hate," so when Teddy uses it (very rarely, thankfully), he gets LOTS of feedback about using more appropriate language. And most of the advice from Mothering is along those lines. But there were two things there that bugged the heck out of me.

Don't use discipline strategies that make use of threats, power plays (punishment of any sort), or social exclusion (timeouts), because you don't want to model those things. Instead, set appropriate limits, enforced with empathy.

No punishment of any sort? Really? I've read Cohen et al. on the subject, but I have not succeeded in completely eliminating punishments. How, exactly, do you "set appropriate limits," when there's no reinforcement if those limits are broken? "Enforce with empathy"?? "It feels awful when you can't play with a toy, doesn't it?" SMASH! "Breaking that toy must have felt really good, because you were so angry!"

WTF?

I'm sure there are many examples of how to do that better. I haven't mastered them, however. So Teddy does indeed get timeouts (and threats of them) with fair frequency (a couple of times a week, maybe?).

And I'm OK with that.

But this?

[D]on't make the mistake of validating her anger. Anger is always a response to underlying hurt, fear or sadness.

Validating her anger is a mistake? Anger is always a response to underlying hurt, fear or sadness? (Never mind how I feel about the missing serial comma.)

I don't think so. In my experience, anger is most often a response to perceived injustice. And it is a legitimate response to that feeling (whether the perceived injustice is actually an injustice is an important issue, IMHO, for parents to address). It is a valid response. Suggesting that anger is always wrong is neither true nor fair... nor does it prepare a child to deal with the world, in which anger is so often and vehemently expressed.

I think it's much more important to teach children that anger is sometimes a valid response, help them to identify when it's a valid response (and absolutely, of course, when it's not), and especially help them to express it in constructive ways... or at least not to express it in destructive ways.

I think there's a crapload of neuroses created by suppressing or denying legitimate anger.

:grr:

So, yeah, that's parenting.

Religion. Religion is tough. I am not a religious person. I never have been, and I doubt I ever will be. I'm one of those folks who require proof for things, and that seems to be the antithesis of faith.

And I'm OK with that. I know, love, and respect a lot of people who are religious on all kinds of different levels and in all kinds of different ways. I don't tend to talk about religion much 'cause, well, I usually have nothing to add to the conversation. I think, too, that people tend to be circumspect about expressing those views in a casual social setting.

In social networking, I don't see much circumspection. I see a lot of in-your-face. I don't care for it.

For instance, a video is making the rounds recently that talks about an incident in a classroom where a professor spends a semester trying to convince all his students that there is no God. All his students are totally intimidated for 20 years until one finally stands up and says he does believe.

The professor, irate, says that there is no God, because if there were, God would stop the professor's chalk from breaking when he drops it. He drops the chalk, it doesn't break. The video describes this as evidence that there is a God and that we all ought to be standing up in classes to declare our believe in Jesus.

First off, I gotta say this is a very boring video. It's all text slides (at least 75% of the way into a long video, whereupon I gave up), with schmaltzy religious music playing in the background.

More important, though, is that it gives no specifics of the incident (again, not in the first 75% of the video): what university, what course, what professor, what true-believer student? So there's no way to verify that it's even true (really? a required course where the objective is to prove there is no God? 20 years of students who accept everything a professor says? a professor ridiculing religious belief? that's not been my experience at 6 different colleges in 2 countries and 3 states).

And if it were? er... so what? (Not about the professor's conduct - that would be appalling - but about the chalk not breaking.) Either God kept the chalk from breaking, in which case I'm deeply concerned that God is spending time proving one idiot professor wrong while letting wars continue and children die of preventable diseases.

Or it's not God that kept the chalk from breaking, which is the likelier scenario, because there are many, many, many other explanations for why the chalk didn't break, what with chalk not being sufficiently fragile to be assured of breaking every time it drops.

What's worse is that several assertions within the presentation are patently false. The one that bugs me the most is that it declares that it's OK to be obscene or racist in conversation at work or school, but not to discuss religion.

um... no. No, it's not. In the U.S., in fact, it's illegal. I would venture a guess that it's easier to get fired (or sued) for obscene or racist conversation than for religious conversation.

This is a hot button for me because I suffered with religious harassment (not realizing that that was what it was) for several years, and it was pretty excruciating. When I raised the issue, I was belittled.

So, yeah. Not diggin' that one either.

And then there's politics. I understand that almost half the country who voted didn't vote for Obama. That's a lot of people who don't agree with him (even assuming everyone who did vote for him agrees with him all the time, which is of course ridiculous).

But our president won the Nobel Peace Prize. This is a good thing. This is something to be proud of. Our president has received international recognition of his goals and his intent.

Yes, goals and intent. Not accomplishments. As Rachel Maddow points out, that has often been the case with the Nobel Peace Prize. This is not new or unique.

In fact, this puts more pressure on Obama to accomplish more.

THIS IS A GOOD THING.

So why are people jumping all over it and acting as if it's new, unique, and absurd?

Why?

I think Nixon was a freaky sneak, but I appreciate what he accomplished in U.S. relations with China. I think Reagan was an idiot who thought he was still acting in movies while acting as president, but I admire his role in ending the cold war.

Why are people taking an excellent example of the improved reputation of the U.S. around the world and acting as if it's bad?

Why?

:sigh:

09:30 am: a story I thought would be over by now
Potty. Oy.

Teddy doesn't like going poop in anyone's potty but our own. (He even has a preference for a specific potty at home, but will use any of them if necessary.) I suspect most people prefer pooping in their own potties, but most people get over it when they need to go.

Right?

So... We've been at my folks' house in Oak Bluffs and we have had Potty Issues.

Specifically, he's been holding it in.

"I don't want to go!" he wails. "I'm afraid of the smell!"

No matter how many times we reassure him that the smell won't be any different from the smell at home, that we will flush immediately, that we will spray anti-stinky, he's worried. I finally gave him a tiny lesson in what your large intestine does to poop, complete with its tiny, high-pitched voice claiming "I want more water! Gimme more water!" When warned that it will only get more difficult, and potentially painful, to poop if he doesn't go when he needs to, he pooped. I had to hold him the whole time, and coach him through pushing, but he pooped.

Halle-freakin'-lujah.

We're heading home in a few hours, whereupon I expect regular pooping to recommence.