Gigglywinks

Last night, I was sitting at the kitchen table with the kids while they ate dinner.  Oliver and Hazel were trading made up (and thus, not funny) knock knock jokes and cracking each other up.  Henry was staring at them, fascinated, with a half-smile on his face, like he was trying to get the jokes. 

They stopped laughing, and Henry looked back and forth between the two of them, and then started laughing.  It was really cool to see him learning the social cues and the turn taking of interacting with others.

So I told the kids to start laughing again, and I took a video of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORvYXMZoS3M

We Moved To Baltimore

Toronto, Montreal, Atlanta, two houses in Holmdel, multiple homes (and lack of) on Amelia Island, two apartments in Knoxville, Tallahassee, Harlem, Knoxville again, Silver Spring, Chicago, and now Baltimore.  I’ve moved more than a dozen times in my life (and I’m not even counting my summer abroad in Panama or the summer we spent back on the Lower East Side of Manhattan).  Moving out and moving on has been a part of who I am, what makes me me.

I generally make friends quickly, but I don’t make best friends.  I try to be a great friend to other people, but have a hard time accepting the same level of friendship from others.  I don’t open up to people, I don’t like being vulnerable or admitting that I need help and can’t do everything all by myself.  I’m a bit of a gypsy.  And I sort of like that.  There are the few friends that have stuck from every place, and while moving is always hard, because it turns out that most places are awesome, there was always a new adventure waiting in the next place.

There have been two moves that were different.  The first was the move from New Jersey to Florida.  I was halfway through my freshman year in high school.  I had a boyfriend (and he was cute!).  I was settled, I was comfortable, I was happy.  I mean, I was 14, so I was plagued with all of the usual insecurities, melodrama, and self-doubt.  The bombshell dropped—we were moving to Florida.  It was devastating.  We moved over Christmas break, and I spent New Year’s Eve alone in my bedroom, drinking two wine coolers (scandal!) and sobbing on the phone with my old friends who were all together at a party.

A life again later, I lived in Chicago.  The timing brought together that perfect confluence of preschool kids, a wonderful city block, and stubbornness that being ‘city kids’ wouldn’t mean my kids didn’t spend as much time as possible playing outside.  I met people.  And over time, I made friends—the kind of friends who called me on my crap and who insisted on being there for me when I was certain I didn’t need it… but really did.

Moving away has been just awful.  Aside from all of the regular craziness of moving, this is the first time we have transferred a kid from one school to another.  We are also in a bit of a transient living situation right now—we are living in an apartment while we look for a house to buy.  So we don’t feel settled, and it is hard to want to settle down when you know you’re probably, hopefully, going to be moving again within a year.

And so I am fifteen again, crying in my bedroom.  I am filled with all of the hesitation of not wanting to call the people I miss because I’m afraid they’ll get annoyed, or think that I should just move on already.  All of the insecurities and self-doubt are back.  This time, at least, I got to bring my cute boyfriend and my fantastic kids.

I know that it will get easier.  One day, I will love Baltimore, and it will feel like home.  But for now, it is gut-wrenching.  But I also feel so lucky that I have so many wonderful people in my life, and that my life in Chicago was so full of light and laughter and love that makes it hard to leave.

Creative Parenting

Or, How To Shame My Daughter into Behaving Properly Without Leaving Her Feeling Shamed

Last week was a tough week.  Coinciding with (or perhaps because of) the no-sleep solution I had been working on with the baby, Hazel decided to test her boundaries.  Over and over and over, and then some more for good measure.

We’ve been having a lot of conversations about respecting other people’s property.  The street that we live on has tons of kids, and most evenings everyone goes outside to play.  This is great—the parents are all so much fun and we all tend to get along really well.  The downside to that is that sometimes we let the kids wander off a bit and they find some mischief.

One of the current mischievous activities is for the kids to tear flowers out of people’s gardens/pull leaves off their plants/pull out their grass.  Inevitably, they are pulled from the people who have either spent lots of time and energy taking care of their gardens, or from people who have paid landscapers.

So, I spent a lot of time explaining to Hazel, over and over again, why I don’t think that’s appropriate.  We’ve talked about respecting other people.  We’ve talked about how it would feel if someone destroyed something that we cared about.  We’ve talked and talked and talked… and she still did it.

So I instituted what Kullervo called a draconian punishment—if she tore up someone’s garden, essentially destroying their property, I would destroy one of her toys so that she’d know how it felt.  I really hoped that just the thought of this would be enough to keep her from doing it… but of course it wasn’t.  So, the first time she did it, I chose out one of her toys, got a hammer, and brought her to the backyard so she could watch me hammer it into pieces.  Then she cried and I cried.

It didn’t feel good to do it.  To me, it was like spanking.  I have spanked Hazel (her consequence for hurting the baby is that she gets spanked because she has a tendency to be carelessly cavalier about how she plays with him), and I hate it every time.  I was certain that she wouldn’t destroy someone’s property again, and I reminded her a few times what the consequence would be.

Well, last week she did it again.  So I destroyed a toy.  Again.  Again, she cried and said she wished she hadn’t done it.  I was certain then that she had learned her lesson.  The next day, we went outside again, and before we went out, I reminded her not to do that, and that we should play nicely and not break any rules.  Immediately, she went into our next door neighbor’s yard and tore up some of their plants.  I made her sit on our steps for the rest of the time that we were outside, because, I told her, I can’t watch her all the time, and since I can’t trust her to behave, she has to stay where I can see her.

But destroying toy after toy didn’t feel right.  I wanted to do something different.  I reached out to some wise women that I know and asked their advice.  Almost immediately I got feedback—she should do something more restorative.  The punishment should be more of a positive consequence instead of a negative one.

I mulled it over.  Nothing seemed just right for our current situation.  But the next morning, we went outside where each of the kids has been tending to their own tomato plants.  Hazel is growing cherry tomatoes, and every few days she is able to pick a handful of ripe tomatoes.  She looks forward to it, and loves to bring them inside and eat them with her breakfast or her lunch.

And then it hit me.  As Hazel was picking her tomatoes, it came to me.  We brought them inside, and I sat her down.  I reminded her about picking Mrs. O.’s beautiful flowers, and asked her what she thought about it.  I told her I didn’t want to destroy a toy, because clearly that consequence wasn’t working to change her behavior.  I then asked her how it would feel to her if someone came at night and picked all of her tomatoes.  And then I told her that I thought I knew a way that we could make it right.  I had her write an apology card to Mrs. O., and we put all of Hazel’s ripe tomatoes into a bag.  We knocked on Mrs. O.’s door, and when she answered, Hazel apologized for picking her flowers, and gave her the apology card.  And we told her that we wanted to make it right by giving her the tomatoes that Hazel has been growing.  Mrs. O. thanked Hazel, and we all went on our merry way.

And on our walk home, I said, “Hazel, how do you think it would feel if you had to go to Mrs. O.’s house again to apologize because you couldn’t resist picking her flowers?”

And, lo and behold, Hazel has not picked anyone’s garden since.  I’m not saying it won’t happen in the future, but in the meantime, I feel like we’ve done a decent job of righting our wrongs, and doing it in a more positive way for everyone.

Kale for Kids

The other night for dinner, I made a salad (with pan-fried Parmesan chicken).  The ingredients for the salad included: kale*, romaine, beet greens*, Swiss chard*, orange bell pepper*, cherry tomatoes, grated beets*, goat cheese, homemade croutons (out of wheat bread ends), corn, and Italian dressing.

Another night last week, I made a coleslaw to go along with grilled steaks that was made out of kale*, Swiss chard*, and beets* (mixed with red wine vinegar, mayo, and garlic and onion powders).

My kids scarfed them down, telling me how amazing they thought it was.  Seriously.

Now, I don’t say this to brag (okay, maybe I do a little bit!).  But it did get me thinking about what we feed our kids, in general, in the US, and trying to figure out why my kids will eat so healthily (especially since a year or two ago, there was not a chance that it would have crossed their mouths). 

I think it comes down to two things (with my kids, at least). 

First, the food that I make from scratch is good.  Not always (I made a summer squash with ricotta cheese dish on Sunday that, while not abhorrent, wasn’t amazing).  But in general, I make food that is pretty darned good, and I do it with healthy ingredients.  And I’m not a phenomenal cook with all this talent or whatever.  I’m just someone who follows recipes and then when I get comfortable with a recipe I like, I slightly alter it depending on what I have.  And I don’t cook a healthy meal every night!  We bring home pizza from our favorite pizza joint at least once a week.  But, getting back to my point, it’s a lot easier to feed healthy food to your kids if it is delicious. 

Second, and more importantly, they don’t have a choice about it.  On the weekends, we all eat together, and they eat what we eat… or they don’t eat.  They can go to bed hungry, but we will not tolerate whining about being hungry later or first thing in the morning.  They get a ‘too darn bad’ from me, because they had the opportunity to eat and chose not to.  They aren’t allowed to scream about not liking food at the table because it’s rude.  And they have to try everything that we give them. 

Of course, they didn’t adjust to this easily—I’d say it probably takes two hard weeks of making them toe the line and standing your ground as a parent.  I can out-stubborn most people, and that helps too.  And we’ve had conversations where I ask them how they would feel if they spent all day making an art project for me, and making it something that I would think was beautiful, and when I saw it I said it was gross and that I hated it and never wanted to look at it… it turns out, those are hurtful things to say, and while my feelings aren’t actually hurt by my kids acting like kids, they are hurtful things to say to someone and my kids should know it.

Last night I made a ‘beetza’ for the kids.  I made a homemade pizza (with a homemade white wheat crust that’s super easy!), sauce, thinly sliced beets, mozzarella, cheddar, and jack cheese, and halved cherry tomatoes.  Both kids ate two slices.

 

*-all items with a star were organic, and most of them were local

Raising Kids in a Techno World

If you’ve met Kullervo and me, and seen the way that we raise our kids, you have probably heard us express disdain over all of the technology in kids’ lives.  We work really hard to minimize that, and make sure our kids get childhoods that aren’t spent in front of a screen.  To that end, we take them camping, they help us grow plants, they know the farmers from whom we get our meat, eggs, and much of our produce.  We encourage them to read, to explore, to pretend.  We subtly work them away from having all of their games revolve around characters (you can play pretend just as well if your guys are just heroes without them having to be Batman or Superman, and your girls can just be girls and don’t have to be Cinderella and Ariel).  As a result, they have invented their own characters in games (we have accumulated the Red Checkers Men (with their flying car), the Blue Goons, the Poison Red Toad Yogre, Lulu, the Dark Rider and his purple horse, and the Sun God, all of whom have distinct personalities and goals (and sometimes superpowers)).  Our kids can run and bike for miles, and play outside almost every day.  We feel strongly that this is an important part of childhood.

We also have felt strongly that things like playing on iPhones and other devices all the time really detract from that.  Part of that is due to Oliver’s personality type—he gets so involved in stuff that he thinks about it constantly, and when he’s focusing all his attention on, say, Angry Birds, he’s not actually becoming a better human being.

There is also the revulsion that comes from going out to eat and seeing someone with children at another table who have propped up an iPad or other tablet that is playing a kids’ movie so that their children will sit quietly at the table.  I realize, when I think rationally, that there are times when this might be your best or only option.  And when I see someone once in my life, I don’t know the back story of why they are doing this.  But if people are doing that regularly—well, in my opinion, there are so many problems with teaching children that they aren’t expected to behave properly in social situations.  If I sat at a table with a group and just looked at my smartphone the entire time, it would be shockingly rude.  What are we teaching children if we aren’t expecting them to try to sit, quietly, having a conversation, learning table manners and what it’s like to eat out?  Again, I can see situations where it really might be the best option, but I genuinely hope it would be the exception and not the rule.

So, with all of this, and our pull away from technology, imagine my chagrin when, as a part of a raffle from a school fundraiser, Hazel won an iPad.  All of what I’m about to say aside, seriously?  What the heck does a four year old need with an iPad?!!  Our first thought was that we would sell it, and use the money to let the kids buy a ton of books.  But we decided to go ahead and try it out, with the firm rule that the only apps we would get would be educational apps, so that if the kids were using it, at least they wouldn’t be rotting their brains on “Birds Who Teach Our Kids About Revenge”/”Happy Pigs”.

My quest began—it turns out there are a lot of apps that claim to be educational, but the link to education is tenuous at best.  Letter/word tracing apps are okay… but for the fact that you don’t write with your finger, so you aren’t learning much beyond what the letters look like (which, since my kids can read, is not something they need to learn).  Math games are often so filled with non-math related activities that they don’t actually teach much.  Finding apps that are appropriately leveled for my kids is also difficult.

I have found some diamonds in the rough, though.  First of all, I downloaded the Kindle app, so I can borrow library books for Oliver to read.  I feel like it’s a win-win—he is playing on the iPad, and also reading the Magic Tree House series (which he loves).  And it can be hard to find the right Magic Tree House book at the library, and hard to want to spend a $5 on a book that he’ll finish in two hours.  I have also found some books that Hazel adores.

Another app that has proven itself is one called “Stack the States”.  It’s not a game for pre-readers and early readers to play independently.  But Oliver, as an advanced reader, has learned so much from it.  Seriously, he can name at least 35 of the states without looking at a map; if I name a state, he can tell me the capital for 24 of them.  And he knows how they all fit together on a map and how they are all shaped.  He answered questions about the states to earn states on the map, and when he earns enough states, he unlocks games—which include puzzles of the states, and identifying the states based on their shape.  Here’s what I like about it—the games that he unlocks are still educational.  They aren’t just brain rotting mindless activities.

And herein lies the problem with game designers these days, in my opinion.  They don’t give kids enough credit.  Sure, brain-rotting things are fun… but kids have so much fun with technology—just using it–that it doesn’t have to be brainless.

So, I am rethinking my opinion about the rampant technology in the world right now—there is a place for it, and I think it could be a useful tool in education (if you gave kids, along with summer reading lists, summer apps that they should work on, they could all come into a grade with more content knowledge that the teachers then wouldn’t have to teach, but could supplement with more in-depth projects.  But, before that can happen, work needs to be done to develop quality apps for the devices that will actually promote learning, as well as help kids memorize the things we expect them to memorize.

What about you?  Do you have any excellent apps that you would recommend?  What do you like about them?

Valentine’s Day

I feel like, in general, people either love Valentine’s Day or they hate it.  People love the reason to get extra love and presents and treat their honey to something nice, or they are annoyed that on some random day of the year they are expected to cough up money for an overpriced bouquet of flowers.  Me, I don’t really care one way or the other about it.  I’d just as soon leave it as take it.

Kullervo and I have had trouble figuring out the best way to handle Valentine’s, and I think this year we got it just right.

Other people seem to have so many expectations on Valentine’s Day, and it took Kullervo years (this is our 11th V-Day!) to realize that when I say I want a low key day… I’m not just blowing smoke and expecting fireworks.

Also, since we’ve had kids, Valentine’s Day has gotten even more complicated because we have three birthdays right afterwards.  Spending a ton of money on Valentine’s Day seems sort of disgusting in the gluttony of it all.

However, if you do nothing on Valentine’s Day, it’s like being the Valentine’s Grinch.  And since Kullervo and I love each other and are all mushy and stuff, being Grinchy about it doesn’t sit right either.

This year, when Kullervo came home from work, we cooked a nice dinner and dessert together (ham steaks with bourbon-cream sauce over rice with steamed vegetables and mocha-walnut brownies), drank a glass of wine, and watched the new episode of Cougar Town.  The original plan was to watch a classic romantic movie–something with Audrey Hepburn–but by the time we were done with dinner, it was too late to start a movie.  And we love Cougar Town.

I feel like this suits me well.  If we are asked what we’re doing, we don’t seem miserly… but we aren’t spending a ton of money trying to live up to anything other than what comes naturally to us.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Remember Me?

So, I haven’t blogged in forever.  In my defense, I have another kid in the house, and two kids in two different schools, so spare time is a bit of a premium.

A bit of a condensed update:

Henry was born in November.  He was huge (9lbs 6oz), and has stayed well ahead of the curve for height, weight, and head size.  He’s got a really sweet disposition, and sleeps really well.  Right now, he generally sleeps from about midnight to six or seven in the morning.

I am still trying to make time to practice the fiddle (and if I never blogged about that before, then guess what?  I play the fiddle!).  I am taking a class to learn the mandolin right now too.

I’m exclusively breastfeeding (EBFing) Henry, and it’s great.  I enjoy my 500 extra calories a day.  (Granted, I should use them on healthy things like kale and salmon or whatever, but chocolate and cheese are just so yummy…)

Since we came home from the hospital, we have exclusively cloth diapered the baby.  It’s amazing.  Seriously.  There are SO many things that make it so much better than disposables, and the only downside is the extra laundry… but even that isn’t so bad because it’s a part of the routine now.  Plus, it’s let me get away with some… unusual… diapers when I’ve needed to.  I want to write a real blog post about it though, one day, when I get around to it.

Oliver and Hazel are great older siblings.  They fight about who gets to look at the baby and who gets to help with the baby, and sometimes it’s frustrating but generally sweet.

Oliver recently showed us that he can run a mile.  This was with no practice or anything… he went running with Kullervo and they went a mile.  We’re really proud of him.

Hazel, that same day, biked a mile on her Skuut bike (it’s a balance bike with no pedals and no training wheels).  It’s the longest she’d ever gone!

I’ve been working still on making small changes every month.  We still don’t get plastic bags when we get groceries, favoring either bags from home or paper (which we re-use to put our recycling in).  I’m working now on trying to make all or most of the chocolate I eat be fair trade.  The problem is that fair trade stuff is so expensive… but the problem on the flip side is that non-fair trade chocolate is cheap because of slave labor.  So, I’m working on cutting back on my chocolate consumption.  Some stuff I haven’t found sources for fair trade chocolate (like, baking chocolate for example)–not to say it isn’t out there; I just haven’t seen it yet.  Anyway, that’s going to be an ongoing project.

So, mini-update is complete.  Here’s hoping I’ll carve out some time for more regular blogging.

My three favorite kiddoes

Baby Yoga

What? You don’t regularly stick your foot in your eye?

Hamming it up for the camera

Baby foot!

Even his ears are cute!

10 Years Merry!

July 25, 2001

Ten years.  More than a third of my life so far.  Basically my entire adulthood, I have spent with you.  (In fact, there were only a couple of months of my entire adulthood that I wasn’t mooning over you/dating you/married to you.)

When we got married, on this day ten years ago, I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into.  I was a teenager, a child of a broken marriage, and a new convert to religion.  I was a romantic, an idealist.  I thought I knew what love was.  I thought I knew what marriage was about.  I thought I knew exactly what would happen next.  I was so wrong.

In ten years, I’ve changed.  You’ve changed.  We aren’t even similar to the people we were back then.

But somehow, magically, wonderfully—we changed together.  We aren’t the same people we were.  We’ve grown up.  Hopefully, for the most part, we’re better.  You make me better, that’s for sure.

In ten years, I’ve seen the worst parts of you.  And you’ve seen the worst parts of me (and the grossest, because, let’s face it, having a baby is gross, especially when it involves vomiting on your spouse!).  But we’ve also seen the best in each other.

I am continually blown away by your absolute and unwavering devotion to me, to our marriage, to fidelity and love and the bond that we created when we were joined.  It’s inspiring to me, and makes me want to live up to all that you believe that I’m capable of.  You are my safe place, and the only place I let my guard down.  I trust you completely with my feelings and my heart and my insecurities, and you never violate that trust.  I cannot imagine my life without you in it.

For ten years, you’ve hung up my towels, done the dishes, and cleaned the bathrooms.  For ten years, you’ve left your socks wherever they may fall, you’ve found ever-increasingly gross things to eat and drink, and left dirty Tupperware to grow into science projects at work.  For ten years, you’ve made me laugh, let me cry, held my hand, and supported my dreams.  For ten years, you’ve laughed at my jokes, fathered my children, and been my best friend.

Ten years later, I’m still a romantic and an idealist.  I believe that we stay married because we want to stay married—because we are committed to making it work and resolving any problems.  We are committed to staying in love.

I love you.  Every day I love you.  I feel so blessed for our first ten years, and look forward to all that the future holds for us and to sharing those experiences with you.  I am still as giddy and mad about you as I was on July 25, 2001.  Happy anniversary, my love.

True Love

Livin’ In Bliss

I hardly ever blog anymore.  It’s not because I don’t enjoy blogging–I do.  It’s not that I don’t have anything to say–I do.  It’s not for any reason that has anything to do with blogging, actually.

But here’s the thing–I’m living the dream right now.  I live this blissed out existence where everything is working and happy and warm and fuzzy and filled with bubbles, rainbows, and ice cream sandwiches.

I am fortunate that right now, I get to stay home with my kids.  Oliver and Hazel are amazing and I am absolutely in love with them, and every day I am blown away by their awesomeness.

"The Gooj"

Oliver is five, and regularly reads chapter books–and comprehends them.  He can be reasoned with, he’s really intelligent, he’s funny, and he’s a lot of fun to be around.  He’s incredibly affectionate and really thoughtful.

"The Geej"

Hazel is 3, and she’s just begun reading.  Watching the light bulb over her head when she sounds out a word and then realizes that she knows exactly what she just said is something that I just never want to turn away from.  Pretty soon, reading becomes something a kid can just do… and not something that delights them with every word.  She also has the most expressive face, and comic timing that must have come from someone other than me.  She loves animals more than dolls (and is currently pregnant with a female baby puppy she’s going to name Clifford), and loves me more than anything else.

Kullervo

I also have this wonderful, intelligent, hilarious, super hot husband who I get to spend my evenings and weekends with.  He gets up with the kids, he makes the best pies I’ve ever had (his pie crust is seriously to die for), and hanging out with him is my favorite thing to do, whether we’re watching movies together, playing board games, spending time with friends, or reading together.

I wake up in the morning to Hazel giving me hugs and kisses and telling me that I’m beautiful and cute and she loves me.  I eat breakfast to Oliver and Kullervo telling me how lovely I am.  Really–my life is totally surreal.  My kids act up and frustrate me, and I yell and get angry… but then I remember they’re little and they’re learning how to exist in this huge world, and I apologize for yelling and being grumpy.  And we have dance parties.

I spend my afternoons outside, where, on our little street, we have about 20 kids under the age of ten.  And the kids all play together, and the parents are all awesome.  We wind up keeping all the kids out much too late… because everyone is enjoying themselves too much to want to go inside.

Knocked Up!

On top of all that, I am 24 weeks pregnant, and while I haven’t kept up with the journal documenting everything about being pregnant this time around… I have enjoyed every minute of it.  When I was feeling sick to my stomach in the first trimester, I realized it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, and enjoyed my body’s reminder that it was busy doing a wickedly cool science project.  This second trimester has been lovely, where the only negative side effect has been being so. incredibly. tired.  And while I’m coming into the uncomfortableness of the third trimester, complete with swollen ankles (ha!  who am I kidding? I don’t have ankles anymore!), an inability to see my feet, and the ‘wanting-to-roll-over-at-night-but-that-means-heaving-myself-and-all-those-pillows-over-and-oh-yeah-while-I’m-awake-I-really-ought-to-go-pee’.  I also get to participate in a fetal growth study, which means that I get to have extra ultrasounds, and all of them are 2-D and 3-D.

So, basically, I haven’t been blogging, because my life is so amazing right now that I am just enjoying every day, living in the moment, making the most of this magical time in my life.  One day my kids will grow up and realize that I’m not the most beautiful person in the world (Kullervo’s eyes aren’t getting any better, so he maybe won’t realize), they won’t want to smother me with kisses when I have morning breath, and their friends will be way cooler than me.  But today?  Today is amazing and unreal and beautiful, and I refuse to take any of it for granted.

The Four (point five) of Us