Unanticipated Things I've Learned about Day Care and School

While I was at the Halloween parades on Friday, in between sniffling about how big my kids are getting and how delightfully cute all the kids were, I was struck by how lucky we've been in our choices of where to send our kids during the day.

Of course, we visited several options and did a bunch of research before making each decision, but in each case, there have been unanticipated things that we never thought to ask about that have made a big difference in how much we've enjoyed our choices.

I'm not sure if we would have made choices based on these factors even if we had thought to ask about them ahead of time, but in the spirit of sharing what I've learned, here are the two biggest things that we didn't consider when making our choices but that have had a big impact on how much we've liked those choices:

Item 1: we didn't ask about how the day cares we visited handle kid-on-kid aggression in the toddler rooms. This, however, turns out to be a point of wide variation. One of my friends spent three solid months stressed out about whether her older son was going to get expelled from day care for biting. He was two. Another friend would hear from her child that she'd been bitten, but not get any communication from the school about the incidents. Both of these extremes are unnecessarily stressful, in my opinion.

Our day care strikes a nice middle ground. Older kids (4 and up) who bite or hit are sent home for the day, and if they can't stop, might be expelled. I'm not aware of that ever happening, though. In the toddler set, these things were treated as something that happens when kids don't yet have the words to express their emotions. The presumption is that they just need to learn better ways to respond, and the school partnered with the parents to make that learning happen. We got reports home of bites given or received, and the school taught very specific behaviors to do instead of physical aggression and shared those with us so we could reinforce them at home.

It was still stressful when Pumpkin was biting and being bitten- something that happened occasionally between 15 months and 3 years, with a peak at about 2 years- but at least we weren't worrying that she was going to be expelled from day care or wondering what else was happening that we weren't being told about.

Pumpkin at the height of the biting phase

Petunia never went through the biting phase. I think this is partly due to Petunia just being more laid back than Pumpkin, and partly due to the fact that Petunia's class is smaller than Pumpkin's was, so the teachers were probably able to see an incident escalating and intervene before any child made it physical. Regardless, this is now the main thing I mention when an expecting parent asks me about how to pick a day care. Most of the other advice I could give is pretty standard, but I never came across this particular issue when I was researching day cares and how to choose them.

Item 2: there are distinct advantages to NOT being at the "best" school in the "good" district. We picked our school for two main reasons: (1) It is a language magnet, and we love the idea of having our kids become fluent in a second language, (2) it is two and a half blocks from our house, which makes the logistics of drop off and pick up soooo much easier. We also visited other magnet schools and our neighborhood school when making our choice, but in the end, we only entered the lottery for our current school. (If we hadn't gotten in, we would have defaulted back to the neighborhood school, which we actually really liked.)

We looked at the various school performance statistics and did all the other things you're supposed to do when evaluating schools, but we didn't think to ask about things like: how much money will you extort from us with "expected donations" and other "optional" fundraisers? How do you schedule your on campus activities? It turns out that in those two key areas, we got lucky.

Our school is a magnet (meaning it draws kids from all over the district) and a Title 1 school (meaning that a large percentage of the kids qualify for the free or reduced lunch program). Both of these things contribute to a school environment that feels much friendlier to working parents than what I hear about from my friends in the "good" (i.e., wealthier) schools. There is an annual giving campaign, but they were appreciative of our donation, not demanding of it. There are a few other fundraisers throughout the year, but there is no pressure for the kids to bring in large amounts of money, so they truly do feel optional. And most importantly to me- they schedule their events in a way that minimizes impact on the parents' schedules. Parades, performances, and other special events tend to be first thing in the morning or last thing in the afternoon, not at random times in the middle of the day like I hear about from other parents.

I would never have thought to ask about event scheduling when visiting schools, but this thoughtful scheduling makes a big difference in whether Mr. Snarky and I can attend the events, so we are able to be more involved parents without having to take large amounts of time off work.

Bonus item: talking about school choice with other parents will uncover racism and classism that will shock you. Only about 25% of the kids in our school are white. The largest racial group is Hispanic, at just over 50%. A lot of parents with Mexican or Central American heritage send their kids to our school so that they can be not just bilingual but bi-literate. The next largest racial group is African-American, at roughly 16%. The school does not have a larger than average number of expulsions or other serious behavior problems (that information is included in the statistics we looked at when checking out schools), but many other parents would respond to the news about where we were thinking of going by getting a moderately surprised look on their face and saying something along the lines of "but that's a rough school!"

I quickly learned that "rough" is the code word for "not majority upper middle class white kids." Our school is not rough, not even in the upper grades (it is a K-8 school). One of my favorite things about going to school events is actually seeing the middle schoolers, who are always involved in the events and participating in a positive way.

I have no advice on this one. Schools are a difficult topic, where your general beliefs about what is right and your worries and aspirations for your children collide. It happens that both Mr. Snarky and I went to schools that would be coded as "rough" and thought that the diversity of our fellow students was one of the best things about our pre-college education. So it is relatively easy for us to ignore the comments about the school being "rough" and just be grateful that we got into such an awesome school that is so convenient for us (it was a lottery process).

Other parents will have different educational priorities and I would never judge a parent for making a different choice. I do judge the people who use the "that school is rough" code words, though. If you want your kid to go to a school where most of the other kids are of the same race and/or in the same socioeconomic class, fine, but don't justify that decision with the lazy assumption that schools with a different student body composition are somehow dangerous. Some may be, but many are not. Also, the biggest local on campus drug bust I can recall hearing about recently happened at one of the toniest schools in town. Using the "rough" code word just perpetuates inaccurate and harmful stereotypes. We need to do better.

Have you learned any unexpected things about schools and day care? Share them in the comments!

Postpartum

Last week, the tragic death of Miriam Carey briefly put postpartum depression in the news. We still don't know what led to the events that culminated in Carey's death, and I will not speculate on that here. But it made me think again about my own experiences postpartum, and perhaps now enough time has passed that I want to write about them in more detail. Already, the details are fading into the haze of early motherhood, and I would like to be able to remember my experiences more clearly.

I did not experience anything that I would characterize as postpartum depression, although I did have a hard time making the transition to motherhood. Looking back, it is impossible to separate the effects of chronic and severe sleep deprivation, hormonal changes, and the unexpected difficulties I had navigating societal expectations about mothers. There is no denying that I was a bit of a mess, but there was a lot of joy in the day to day. I chose to write mostly about the joy here, because I (mistakenly) thought that is what I'd most want to remember. It turns out, though, that the joy has stayed sharp in my memory much more than the difficult bits have. I did post occasionally about specific problems, and I also sometimes acknowledged the fact that I found the transition to motherhood harder than many other women do. Looking back through my earlier posts, I don't find that many details about the difficult bits, though. It wasn't so much that I didn't want to write about the details of why I found that transition hard as that I didn't know how to write about it. I still don't, really.

I know enough about depression to know that whatever was going on with me in my first year of motherhood, it wasn't that. I wish we had a better way to talk about how hard the first year (or two) of motherhood can be beyond discussion of postpartum depression. PPD is too important a topic to clutter with experiences like mine, but experiences like mine should be discussed, too.

The times postpartum I came closest to depression (and perhaps was indeed experiencing depression) were during weaning. I experienced quite strong effects on my mood anytime I dropped a nursing session. For this reason, I weaned very slowly. If dropping one session made me feel depressed, I didn't want to find out what going cold turkey would do.

Pumpkin, a few months post-weaning.

Even with the gradual approach, weaning was one of the hardest parts of motherhood for me, which always felt strange, since breastfeeding was one of my favorite parts of motherhood, once the early difficulties were past. It seemed strange to be suffering so much to end something I liked, but both times, I knew it was time to wean. With Pumpkin, I weaned because I was pregnant again and nursing was making my morning sickness worse. Also, I thought it would be best to be well and truly past nursing Pumpkin before the new baby arrived. With Petunia, I weaned in part because I was afraid that if I didn't take advantage of the window of opportunity that presented itself, we'd be that outlier mother-child pair that was still nursing when the kid was 7 and in part because I needed to introduce a little more space between me and her. She always was, and continues to be, a child who prefers snuggling mommy to anyone else. Usually, that is wonderful. Sometimes, though, it feels smothering.

Anyway, for a few weeks after each dropped nursing session, I felt lethargic and ineffectual, as if I couldn't do anything "right." Little setbacks at work or at home loomed unnaturally large. I was prone to crying jags over minor things, like forgetting to buy the kids' favorite flavor of yogurt. The heightened sense of anxiety that I remembered from pregnancy returned, and I was once again playing out detailed responses to ridiculous scenarios in my head at night, like "what would I do if a car crashed through the front of my house?"

I'm not sure how I was able to have the detachment needed to diagnose the problem. I can't remember how I figured it out. I think I might have read an off-hand comment about the possibility that weaning could cause depression. It was probably in a comment on AskMoxie, but I can't remember the post. Anyway, something made me recognize what was going on, and that helped quite a bit. I felt less crazy and out of control, because I had a reason for the weird things going on in my head, and, most importantly, a reason to think that the weirdness would end.

Petunia, a few months post-weaning, with Pumpkin.
Petunia is wearing that polka dot dress now.

Even once I knew what was going on, I didn't talk about it much. I left a few comments on blog posts mentioning the problems I had, and I mentioned it here a few times. But for the most part, I didn't talk about it. Friends in real life joshed me good-naturedly about how attached to breastfeeding I was, and how I was going to have to "give it up" eventually. Those comments hurt, but I never told them so. The thought of needing to explain what was going on with me was too exhausting, so I just smiled and pretended everything was fine.

And in the end, everything was fine. My kids are weaned. My moods went back to normal. All is well.

Still, I think we would be better off as a society if we found a way to acknowledge the varied realities of new motherhood, to talk about how becoming a mother can mess with your mind in a myriad of ways, and to get all new mothers support as they work through the changes that baby brings. We need to let mothers talk about what has been hard for them without trying to convince them that it shouldn't be hard. I have no idea how to make that happen, but I am pretty sure that it would help if more people talked openly about what early motherhood was like for them. This post is my attempt to start doing that. Feel free to join in, either in the comments or in a post of your own.

Sparse

Posting may be a bit sparse around here for the next month or so.

I could say that I'm really busy at work, and that we have a vacation coming up, and we promised Pumpkin a new big girl desk to match the new big girl computer we got her as a late birthday gift, and that requires some serious thinking about how to rearrange her room. Also, that will free up her "little girl" desk for Petunia, and getting that into the oversized closet that passes for Petunia's bedroom will require even more serious thinking. And all of that would be true.

But the real reason that posting may be sparse is that Petunia has decided that bedtime is a quaint tradition that perhaps other 2.5 year olds still observe, but that is quite beneath her now. Last night, she did not really go to sleep until sometime between 11 and 12. I'm not sure, because I'd dozed off by that point. Lights went out at 8:30, at her request- she usually tells us when she is done reading stories and settles herself into bed. Back in the old days- you know, roughly a week ago- the adult in charge of her bedtime would then turn on her music and her bedtime turtle nightlight, snuggle her for 15-30 minutes, and then leave the room. No more! My husband has been able to get her down if he snuggles her for 1-1.5 hours. Last night, I snuggled her for over an hour, was convinced she was in deep sleep, so rolled out of her bed, only to be called back immediately by a plaintive "Mommy!" She is quite patient. She will snuggle me peacefully as long as I stay. She does not demand to get up unless I try to do so. So three of the last four nights, I have just given up and gone to bed with her.

Now, I know we could just say good night and walk out and let her cry. (I will note, however, that she has figured out how to open her door, so this approach would require an adult to continually return her to her room.) Or we could try moving her bedtime later (which we may do). But I also know that she has had phases like this many times before. They usually last until I am just about to lose my mind, and then she goes back to sleeping well.

Also, I am inclined to be patient with sleep issues. I figure that for most of evolutionary history, a toddler whose mother tried to leave her alone at bedtime would quite rightly scream as if her life were being threatened. Because it was. So I am sympathetic to the deep instinct to insist on my presence, and am actually pleased that most times, she will accept a substitute, allowing my husband and I to take turns snuggling her. I know, from my experience with her sister, that she will slowly but surely learn to go to sleep on her own and stay asleep all night. I also know that although I may think the sleep disruption is killing me, I, too, will survive.

So we're working through this patiently. We're trying to get her more exercise, both physical and mental, because we know that helps her sleep. My husband and I went out to lunch today, so that we could actually talk to each other about the various things that we're trying to get done.

But blogging will be difficult until this phase passes. I'll see you when I can!

An Unusual Sort of Getaway

We're just back from a long weekend with my parents, who live in a suburb of Phoenix, AZ. My aunt and uncle were in town, and the family planned an early celebration for my grandparents' 70th wedding anniversary. I wanted to be there for that, and thought the kids would have fun visiting their grandparents, so we figured out the logistics and off we went. My husband had just taken a couple of days off when his parents were in town, so he couldn't spare any time off. I could, but didn't want to drive over to AZ with the kids on my own, so we decided that my Mom would fly over to join us on the road trip. My husband would fly over on Friday night, go to the party and hang out with us on Saturday, and then we'd drive back on Sunday.

It was a pretty good plan. But nothing went quite as planned. The basics all happened as we planned- but everything was just a little bit off.

First of all, we were all sick. We all caught a nasty cold, starting with my parents a couple of weeks before the trip. None of us were likely to be contagious, but we weren't feeling like going out and having a lot of fun. Of all the travelers, the only one who felt really good was Pumpkin, who shrugged this cold off in a just a couple of days.

Then, Petunia's usual post-infection mild constipation turned for the worse, making the drive over pretty miserable for her- she screamed in protest when we got her back into her car seat after our mid-morning break and after our lunch/play stop. She cried and screamed "Mommy! Help! Poopies!" for most of our first evening at my parents' house. I finally had to go get some laxative for her to sort things out.

Finally, we got spooked by the specter of the vacation tummy bug, and ended up making only a brief appearance at the anniversary party. My cousin hosted the party, and one of her kids got sent home from day care after throwing up. We are still a bit traumatized by the great Hawaii Christmas Norovirus incident, and were more than a little afraid of the thought of trying to drive home with vomiting children... so we bowed out of the party and just swung by for a little while when the party had moved outdoors. (It turns out that we need not have worried- the poor kid had gotten four teeth in quick succession and probably just had an upset stomach from the teething drool. Better safe than sorry, I guess.) We did go around to spend more time with my grandparents and my aunt and uncle that evening, and the kids played happily while we visited- so at least we didn't miss out on seeing everyone.

But, you know what? It was still a nice little mini-vacation. It was great to see my grandparents, and to give them a chance to see the kids- who behaved better than I dared to hope during our visit, leaving my grandparents and my aunt and uncle with a false but flattering opinion of our children! (They are cute, but they are not usually so angelic.) The kids had a lot of fun at Mimi and Boppa's house, even if we didn't get in the fun outings we had expected. I got the chance to lounge around a bit while the kids were entertained by my parents. I even read a book.

So, despite the general air of feeling not quite well that hung over the trip, I'm glad we went. The alert reader may notice that our travel plans were quite different from those we employed during our California Road Trip- on that trip, we tried to keep the driving to only a couple of hours per day. On this trip, we drove from San Diego to Phoenix (a six hour drive if you don't stop) in a single day. 
Frankly, I was surprised at how well the drives went. Both directions, we left in the morning and stopped in Yuma for lunch and a good long play at the West Wetlands park, which is a truly great park, with a "regular" playground and a gigantic castle "imagination playground". On the way over, I decided to break up the morning drive by stopping at the Desert View tower outside of Jacumba. The kids were moderately impressed with the tower and the view and not at all impressed with the large number of unleashed (but incredibly docile and non-threatening!) dogs roaming around the place, so they would not explore the rocks nearby as I had hoped. We really should work on getting Pumpkin comfortable with dogs again- and I guess now we need to work on Petunia, too, who hadn't previously shown any fear of dogs.

I wish I could say that I have figured out the secret to keeping young children amused in the car, but that would be a lie. Petunia slept a lot, which obviously helped. Pumpkin read, colored, and played with a felt board my Mom had made her. I had my Kindle Fire with me, and she played with it a bit, but mostly preferred to read or look out the window. She napped a little bit, too.

I did pick up some ideas to make the driving (and flying) portion of our upcoming Texas vacation easier: I think I will get each kid her own clipboard and pouch of appropriate crayons/markers, and stock it with papers for coloring. I will also take along some small plastic bags to use to pass snacks to the backseat- we don't let them snack in the car very often, so getting a snack is a treat and serves as a good whine-diffuser. But really, I'm have no idea why the kids tolerated the long drives so well. I I am officially accepting the universe's offer of two good travelers as payback for the fact that neither of my kids slept through the night much before they turned two (heck, Petunia still doesn't reliably sleep through the night, and she is two and a half already). I wonder if the universe thinks this also covers the fact that the kids won't eat vegetables?

Toys to Promote Skills: Gender Neutral Edition

Last week, I wrote a guest post for Mommy Shorts about pink, purple, and princess toys that still promote important skills for future math and science success. The great toys featured in that post aren't the only toys we have that promote those skills, though. Pumpkin loves pink, purple, and princesses, but she has always been interested in other, toys, too. I thought I'd follow up the "girl toys" post with a list of some of our favorite "gender neutral" toys that promote skills that set kids up for future success in math and science.

1. Blocks. Lots and lots of blocks.

As I wrote in that guest post, building toys are great for stretching spatial reasoning skills, and also for instilling a love and "feel" for building things. Everyone knows about LEGO and Duplo, and we have lots of that. But there is more to building toys than LEGO.

We started both kids on blocks early. Petunia, though, has benefited from some things we figured out a bit late with Pumpkin- namely, that a kid's motor skills have a big impact on how well building things goes. Therefore, Petunia has had a wider range of blocks than Pumpkin did, as we looked for blocks that she could use from an early age.

Petunia was able to build with the Fisher-Price Little People Builders Stack 'n Learn Alphabet Blocks much, much earlier than she could build with Duplo. The downside is that she outgrew the blocks by the time she was two. These are definitely for young toddlers.

The big Megabloks were another type of block Petunia mastered before she could handle Duplo. They've also had more staying power. Petunia and Pumpkin both still play with these, and will also build with these blocks together, which is pretty cool to watch. Until Petunia knocks over Pumpkin's tower, or they both want the same piece at the same time....

Nesting blocks are also really good for toddlers. One day, you'll look over and see that your "baby" has figured out how to stack them properly, and you'll realize she's starting to figure out some basic things about the size of objects. Lots of companies make blocks like this. We have a set of sturdy cardboard ABC Building Blocks, which we got second hand when Pumpkin was about two and have not destroyed yet.

Both of my kids really love playing blocks with the pieces from the Zimbbos game.

I'm sure the game is fun to play, too, but we've never tried it. The blocks are explicitly intended to use for building pyramids, including inverted pyramids, so they are great building toys.


2. Take Apart Toys

Taking something apart and putting it back together is a great way to practice spatial skills and logic. Our favorite toy in this category is the Battat Take Apart Airplane

It comes with a little "drill" to use on the big plastic screws that hold it together. Pumpkin and Petunia both like playing with it. Petunia definitely needs some help reassembling it, but she can mostly disassemble it on her own.

3. Puzzles

Pumpkin took to puzzles early and without much effort on our part. Petunia has been slower to show an interest, and we definitely had to work a bit more at it. We put in the effort, though, because puzzles are great toys for spatial reasoning and logic skills.  Petunia first warmed up to puzzles wiht the Melissa & Doug Pets Sound Puzzle.

She also really liked the mix-and-match puzzles from Melissa and Doug, Fish Colors Mix N Match Peg Puzzle. She will still stop and "fix" the puzzle if someone puts the fishes back together the "wrong" way- i.e., not matching. Incidentally, we had bought that puzzle for Pumpkin, back when she had outgrown the simple peg puzzles but wasn't quite ready for a jigsaw puzzle.

Petunia hasn't transitioned directly to small jigsaw puzzles the way Pumpkin did, but she really enjoys doing floor puzzles with a grown up right now. Her favorite is this jungle numbers floor puzzle.

Pumpkin still really likes puzzles. She has also started to enjoy tangrams. My mom brought some over for her once, and since they were leftover from her years as a teacher, they were probably similar to these. We'll have to get some for her soon.

4. Logic Games

I've got nothing against Candyland (although I will confess to being fairly bored with it after playing it roughly 4237 times since Pumpkin got it), but I love games that stretch logic skills.  Our favorite in this department is the Gobblet Gobblers game we bought Pumpkin for Christmas.

It is like three-dimensional tic-tac-toe. It is easy enough for a four year old, but challenging enough that the adults sometimes actually lose. And it is fun!

Do you have any other games/toys to suggest? Add them in the comments!

Tying Up Loose Ends

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! This year, Pumpkin was supposed to write her own valentines. She has eleven classmates, plus she wanted to give cards to two of her teachers. We started off strong, completing nine of the valentines over the weekend, most of them in one sitting on Saturday. The last four were quite a trial, though. Pumpkin wanted them to be perfect, and would erase anything that didn't meet her standards. There were many rest breaks with her head on the table. I exhausted my patience, and went off to get Petunia to bed. Hubby managed to convince her to finish up, but the experience clearly took quite a bit out of him. After Pumpkin was in bed, he decided to relive the highlight of last year and replay the New Zealand-Australia semi-final from the rugby world cup.

The holiday was rescued, though, by how excited Pumpkin was to give us all our valentines this morning. She had made one for Daddy (with my help), written one for Petunia, and dictated one for me (clearly, she'd run out of steam). Petunia was really excited, too, when she saw the little Cinderella card inside her envelope. She kept it next to her all through breakfast.

This evening, Pumpkin was most excited by the candy, pencils, and stickers that had come with her valentines at day care. Petunia, though, just wanted to go through her cards, repeating who each one was from. Very cute. I'm not sure if this was worth all the hassle with getting Pumpkin's valentines done, but at least it ended the holiday on a high note.

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The song from which I lifted the title of my last post was an obscure 80s song- Having It All, by Eighth Wonder.



It was on the Absolute Beginners soundtrack, which my sister had- on cassette. For some reason, it has stuck in my head all of these years.

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I did finally draw another winner for the Jeanne Baret giveaway. I've notified the winner and she's sent her contact details, so I guess that's that.

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Remember back in November/December when I was trying to wean Petunia and she wasn't cooperating? Well, I gave up, and now she's weaned. OK, technically, she's almost completely weaned. She still sometimes asks to nurse, but when she does she rarely nurses for more than a second or two. I think the last "real" nursing was last Tuesday (Feb. 7), and the last time before that was probably around January 24th. I've decided that she's weaned enough for me, and I'll let her decide when to stop asking to nurse. Unless she's still asking when she's in kindergarten or something- which seems unlikely.

I knew that I just needed to chill out on that one and wait, but my god, that was hard to do.

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Petunia's sleep is also improving. She's sleeping through until 4 or 5 in the morning most nights now. I like it best when she wakes up at about 4, comes padding down the hall, climbs into bed with us, and then snuggles in and sleeps well until we get up at about 6:30. This doesn't happen that often, but I'll also take her sitting up at 5 a.m., screaming for me, and then snuggling and kicking me in her bed until 6:30. It is a vast improvement over the status quo at the end of the year (which saw me spending half of my night getting aggressively snuggled/kicked).

Of course, last night she woke up at about 2 a.m. and I ended up spending the rest of the night in her room because every time I woke up and thought I might move back to my own bed, she was restless. We're not to sleep nirvana yet, but we're getting closer. (Sleep nirvana = both kids sleeping through the night most nights.)

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My boss is still a bit freaked out over my outburst in that meeting- which is funny, because, really all I did was raise my voice a little bit and then leave the room, and as one of my team members pointed out, he yells more than that in roughly half of the meetings he comes to.  He's stopped trying to deflect work from me, so I think things are going back to normal. We'll see how all of this plays out at review time. I suspect that if I can bring my projects in roughly on time, all will be forgotten. If I don't bring in my projects on time, I guess we'll see how much he really blames himself for the situation. But I have every intention of bringing my projects in on time.

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Pumpkin has discovered that the hair on the LEGO Friends figurine comes off, and has swapped hair/hats among Olivia, the dude that came with the house, and the castle guard.

So, I continue to feel absolutely no angst about the fact that we bought one of the LEGO Friends sets.

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We won't hear about our school choice until April or May, but it is still nice to have the choice part done. We were at a birthday party on Sunday, and everyone was talking about schools. It was interesting to hear what other people chose. A lot of Pumpkin's day care classmates will be heading to private school in the fall- but there are a few others who chose public school, including the two sets of parents with whom we get along the best. It will be interesting to see if we manage to stay in touch once the kids go on to kindergarten- we all chose different schools, mostly because we live and work in different areas.

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Anything else I've left dangling? Ask in the comments.

Different Genders, Gender Differences and How We Handle the Princesses

I recently came across a post by a teacher about how she handled a little girl in her class who didn't have the typical girl behaviors and preferences. You've probably seen it, too- it was linked to from lots of blogs.

It is a great post, written by a teacher who sounds wonderful. I am glad our society is getting more accepting of little girls who want to dress and act more like we expect little boys to. It made me think about the furor over the little baby in Canada whose gender was being kept a secret and the baby's older brother, Jazz- and my reaction to that.

And this clarified some of my thoughts on the recent discussions about the "girl" LEGO sets, the Princess phase, and all that.

It has become clear to me that the reason that I'm uncomfortable with a lot of the discussions about gender specific toys is that they include an implicit judgment of the typically girl toys and of typically female pursuits. It is a fine line between advocating for little girls to have a wide open field when dreaming about their future careers and instilling an idea that being a hair stylist or a nurse is somehow less than being a mechanic or a scientist, and frankly, it seems like we're coming down on the wrong side of that line sometimes. And, as I wrote in those earlier posts, I am deeply uncomfortable with the message our culture sends that being into princesses (or, for the older girls and women, fashion and makeup) is somehow incompatible with an interest in building things or studying science. As I described in the gender bender post, I came up against that stereotype in college, and it was harmful. In fact, it may have been the source of my most serious doubts about pursuing a degree and eventual career in science.

The really disturbing thing about these issues is that they are coming from both sides of the political spectrum. I expect this nonsense from conservative traditionalists who think that women's place is in the kitchen, but it comes from people who consider themselves progressive, too. The same people who were defending Jazz's right to wear purple dresses and put his hair in braids wrote comments that said I was raising my children in a "pink ghetto" because we haven't banned the Disney princesses from our house. I don't want Jazz or the little girl in the post I linked to at the top to be bullied for being themselves. But I also don't want Pumpkin to be pre-judged based on her interest in princesses. I realize that the former is more vicious and harmful, but that doesn't mean that the latter is entirely benign.

We need to get to a place where anyone of either gender can be into anything, and not be judged, where we all recognize that the presence of one stereotypically female trait doesn't equal the presence of all stereotypically female traits, and where we don't denigrate those traits, regardless of who is exhibiting them. I want more women in STEM, but I want more male nurses and preschool teachers, too. And I want equal respect for all careers- even for that bogey-woman of the Lego girls discussions, hair stylists. (I mean really, what is up with the disdain for hair stylists? Where would we be without good hair stylists? Given how I feel right now, when I'm past due for a haircut- not a happy place.)

Pumpkin is fairly ignorant of all this nonsense so far. She doesn't see a problem with liking princesses and LEGO. She doesn't think that a love of purple is incompatible with a love of math. She doesn't know that strong language skills and strong spatial reasoning skills aren't supposed to go together (and you know what? She's actually pretty strong in both right now). It breaks my heart to think that soon, our culture is going to tell her that she's wrong. She is going to realize that people- even people who say that they are for equal rights for all- look down on some of her interests, while other people tell her that she is innately inferior at other things that she is actually quite good at, like spatial reasoning, while citing (incomplete and/or over-interpreted) science.

I hate that my culture is going to tear down my little girl's confidence. I want to protect her from that as long as I can, at least until I can start explaining this all to her and help her learn how to make her way through this mess of bullshit with her self-confidence intact.  And I'm certainly not going to be the one who tears her down. Princesses are OK in our house, and I've told the adults who visit us that their joking references to gender stereotypes are not acceptable while my daughters are young.

I've also been making conscious decisions about toys and activities- but my decisions are driven primarily by a desire to make sure that her environment stretches all of her skills. I've been heavily influenced by Pink Brain, Blue Brain, by Lise Eliot. I recommend this book highly to anyone who is interested in gender differences, specifically as they impact parenting. Dr. Eliot, a neuroscientist with three kids of her own (one girl, two boys), surveys the literature and finds "surprisingly little solid evidence of sex differences in children's brains." She makes a convincing case for the role of plasticity (or the fact that our brains change in response to its environment) in the gender differences observed in adults. (She also points out that the gender differences in cognitive skills are much smaller than one would think from the popular literature.) As she says, "the male-female differences that have the most impact- cognitive skills, such as speaking, reading, math, and mechanical ability; and interpersonal skills, such as aggression, empathy, risk taking, and competitveness- are heavily shaped by learning. Yes, they germinate from basic instincts and initial biases in brain function, but each of these traits is massively amplified by the different sorts of practice, role models, and reinforcement that boys and girls are exposed to from birth onward."

I won't try to summarize her entire argument here- if you are interested, really, go read the book. But I will explain what it has meant to our parenting. We focus heavily on ensuring that our girls get experiences, via toys and other routes, that will let them grow all of their skills. Dolls are great for practicing empathy. Puzzles and LEGO are great for spatial reasoning. Trucks and cars are great for instilling an instinctive understanding of the laws of physics.  Princess dresses are great for stretching the imagination. Etc., etc.

I think that we all start from a somewhat blank slate- evidence indicates that intelligence is only about 50% genetics. From the starting point provided by genetics and prenatal environment, we grow to achieve our potential based on the experiences we have. So my husband and I aim to make our daughters' experiences rich and varied, and to make sure that they get the chance to practice all of their skills. This does not mean that I think it is my job to make sure that their environment is optimal, as defined as "no iota of the potential on that not quite blank slate is squandered."  Rather, I think my job is just to make sure that a strong foundation is laid to ensure that they have the skills to pursue their future interests, whatever they may be.

This is why we have Pumpkin taking Chinese lessons- the window of opportunity for language learning is too good to pass up (and she likes them). This is why I didn't just shrug my shoulders and put the puzzles away when Petunia didn't show the same early enthusiasm for them that her sister did. We kept trying different things and found ones she'll play with. Eventually, we figured out that her fine motor development isn't as advanced as Pumpkin's was. The puzzles that she was physically able to do were boring to her. After much experimentation, we discovered that she likes mix and match puzzles (like mix and match fix puzzle) and puzzles that make sounds (like this animal sounds one). We also give her stickers and freely indulge her love of coloring, which will eventually help her fine motor skills come up to speed. And this is why I care that the "starter" LEGO castle didn't have a princess- because I want toys that encourage spatial reasoning AND that will get played with by my princess loving daughter.

To me, the most pernicious thing about the princess phase and other gender specific toys is that they deprive kids of the chance to grow all of their skills. Don't get me wrong- I care about the gender-based career stereotypes in the toys, too. But my (probably naive and arrogant) assumption is that the living example I provide will be more important to my daughters' opinions of their career options that whatever Barbie or LEGO show them. I realize that it isn't all about me and my family, and that most little girls don't have mothers whose career is a traditionally male-dominated one. However, I somehow became a scientist despite the lack of any scientist in my family, male or female, and the abundance of Barbie dolls in my toy chest. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be  carpenter, and then a country and western singer, and then a doctor, and then an anthropologist. Of those, only the carpenter had precedence in my family. My parents encouraged my ever changing interests. They contradicted the gender stereotypes when I came up against them, and always told me that I could do whatever I wanted. I'll do the same for my girls, and I think they will be OK.

What do you think about all of this? Tell me in the comments. It may be your last chance to discuss this topic here for awhile- I think I need to move on!

Christmas Cookies

Can you stand one more Christmas post? If not, click away.

One of my favorite things about Christmas is the baking, specifically the cookies. When I was younger, I would bake multiple batches of cookies: sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies (mine were bunnies and teapots and various things more interesting than plain old people), two types of shortbread, chocolate chip cookies, and random other recipes that sounded good to me.

The arrival of children in my life has changed that tradition a bit. A lot, actually. So much that this year, I struggled to find time to bake at all. But baking at Christmas is important to me, so somehow, time was made to produce a few batches. We leave a plate of cookies out for Santa, you know, and perhaps he reads the New York Times and would be offended by store bought cookies.

So, we baked some cookies for Santa's plate. And our tummies. I am a bit of a cookie monster- I can easily skip cake, brownies, and all other types of treats, but it takes a great deal of willpower for me to turn down a good cookie! Particularly a sugar cookie.

In fact, we left a plate of cookies, a glass of milk, a note, and a picture for Santa.

 Here's a close up of the cookies:

They are, from the top left: a caramel-oat bar (made by me and Petunia), a sugar cookie (made by me and Pumpkin, decorated by Pumpkin), a piece of chocolate shortbread (made by me), and a slice of ginger crunch (a New Zealand delicacy, made by Hubby and Pumpkin).

Hubby uses the Edmond's ginger crunch recipe, but doubles or triples the amount of icing. I use the sugar cookie and butter frosting recipes from the The Fannie Farmer Baking Book (a great cookbook to have on hand if you like to bake).

The caramel-oat squares are from an old copy of Betty Crocker's Cookie Book- the same book that provided the sort of dairy free brownies that got me through the dairy prohibition while nursing Pumpkin. These bars are super easy and fun for a toddler to help with- Petunia enjoyed mixing the ingredients and helping to spread the chocolate chips on top. The Google search for these turns up a bunch of things using some new Betty Crocker mix, so here is the recipe:

Caramel-Oat Bars

2 cups oats
1/2 cup packed brown sugar (Petunia loved packing the brown sugar. I had to help, of course)
1/2 cup melted butter
1/4 cup dark corn syrup (eh, I only had light, and it worked fine)
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
6 oz semisweet chocolate chips (I probably use closer to 9 oz. Note that the bag you buy at the store is 12 oz. We had an accidental but fortuitous innovation here this year. I bought mini chocolate chips. As you'd expect, they melt faster, which makes the step that uses them faster and more satisfying for a toddler)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Grease a 9x9x2 inches baking pan. I grease even a non-stick pan. What's a little more butter?

Mix oats, brown sugar, melted butter, corn syrup, vanilla and salt. Spread in greased baking pan and bake until bubbly, about 8 minutes. (Nice and short- good for toddler attention spans!)

Immediately sprinkle with chocolate chips. Let stand until soft (very quick if you're using mini chips!) and spread evenly. A rubber spatula works best.

Refrigerate at least an hour. Cut into bars. If you wait too long, this will require some muscle. Store in fridge.

The chocolate shortbread recipe is from The Cookie Jar Cookbook, which I no longer have. But I had copied the recipe out into my recipe notebook. I couldn't find it on Google (OK, I didn't look that hard), so here it is. You can thank the 15 years ago me for the lack of detail- but my batch turned out well.

Chocolate Shortbread

2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa
pinch salt
1 cup butter softened
2/3 cup powdered sugar
1 1/4 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Sift flour, cocoa, and salt together and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add vanilla and bat. Add dry ingredients and mix (I had to finish this with my hands- basically squishing the dough together until it all mixed).

Press dough into ungreased 10x10xwhatever pan. (This recipe is fairly forgiving of pan size, actually- my notes say that I sued to make it in two round cake pans. They were on the small side, though, and my current ones are bigger, so I used a 10x10 baking pan and it worked well.)

Bake ~35 minutes, until it is firm to the touch and the center springs back when gently pressed. The edges shouldn't darken.

Cut while still warm.

Santa must have liked our cookies, because he left both a camera (real, not a toy! Hooray for cheap electronics from China) and a Ken doll (in the stocking) for Pumpkin. He did not bring the Barbie princess castle she had asked for. We suspect it wouldn't fit in his sleigh- which is a good thing, because it also wouldn't fit in our house. My mom had the brilliant idea of repurposing her toy shelves, which are cubby shelves from Target), into a castle. Pumpkin loves this. They even built a moat with her train tracks.

Petunia got a CD player/karaoke machine, which she seems to like, but not as much as the hand pump operated owl flashlight that her aunt in NZ sent to her.

We gave Pumpkin a "My first LEGO" house set, which she used a bit, with help. We gave Petunia some play doh of her own (she had been sharing her sister's) and some toys to stamp letters, numbers, and various patterns into play doh. She loves the play doh, but hasn't seen the point of the stamps yet. Both girls got many more toys and books and clothes from various extended family members, all of which were appreciated. Petunia even let me read one of her new books tonight, which is a remarkably fast uptake for her. It usually takes months to introduce a new book. I wish I were exaggerating.

I gave Hubby a home brew starter's kit. My idea is that if he has a hobby like that he'll stop hassling me about how much time I spend blogging.

Hubby gave me some CDs and a fancy case for my Kindle Fire. So I won this round. (He won last year with a surprise gift of a Kindle. Overall, we're probably about even.)

My parents and my sister went together to get me something with which to work off the effects of all those Christmas cookies:

It is awesome and way more fun than that stupid dance exercise DVD I've been using.

Christmas was almost completely tear free, although Petunia did insist on wearing butterfly wings and antennae for most of the day.

All and all, it was a good Christmas. We are very fortunate to be able to celebrate in the way that we do. I hope Christmas was also good to you, if you celebrate. We'll be back to rants and other such posts soon!

Updates on Things You Probably Haven't Been Wondering About

I have a long list of "real" posts lined up, waiting for me to write them. Among other things, I want to talk about ambition and my goals in life. I've promised Fishscientist that I will write a post about project management and becoming a project manager. And I want to write about how to keep pervasive sexism in your chosen line of work from getting you down.

But I can't find the time or the head space to write any of those things right now. It is all I can do to stay sort of caught up at work and semi on top of Christmas preparations at home. The month of December: brought to you by the letter C, the number 25, and the feeling of doing everything half-assed. It doesn't help that Petunia has brought several colds home to me since mid-November- I feel like I am constantly a little bit under the weather. Still, this is a huge improvement over last year, when Petunia and I spent most of December feeling really miserable.

So, I'll give you some updates on things I've written about recently, in no particular order. But don't worry- I'll have a "real" weekend reading post this week. In fact, I think I have three possible themes to choose between.

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The ornaments on our tree are far more clustered than you can tell from the picture I posted. Maybe these two photos will give a better flavor for our ornament distribution:

Some have been moved since they were originally hung, but we're discouraging that, for the sake of my sanity.

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The giveaway on my post about the Secret Agent Jo books is still open. I'll choose the winner on Saturday. I actually may have another giveaway post soon. I've been sent a copy of The Discovery of Jeanne Baret, by Glynis Ridley to review, and I think I get a second copy to give away. (Incidentally, I've started the book and like it so far- so, if you're stuck for a gift idea for someone who likes biographies of obscure but interesting historical figures, this would be a good gamble. However, I'm only about one chapter in, so I can't promise it doesn't suck in the end. And yes, if you're wondering, that description does fit me pretty well- which is why I agreed to do the review.)

Long time readers know that I don't do this sort of thing often- it is just random luck that I'll have two giveaways so close together. I've never done a giveaway before, and as far as I can recall, there are only two other freebies that I've reviewed on this blog- Baby Signing Time volumes 3 and 4 and 168 Hours, which I didn't so much review as use as a starting point for a series of posts. So never fear- this isn't turning into a blog where I'll write about anything someone will send me for free! I only accept things that I'm interested in, and I'll never sell my opinion. Still, if the occasional giveaway and/or review bothers you, feel free to tell me why in the comments. I don't promise to change my mind about doing them, though.

I also find it interesting to look at the readership stats. That Secret Agent Jo post has more hits than either my recent rant about women and negotiation or the post about being a feminist mother- two of my more popular recent posts. Clearly, Brenda's book tour is sending a lot of new people my way. I wonder if any of them are sticking around? (Any new readers out there who want to say hi?)

However, because Blogger isn't smart enough to filter out hits from crawlers, none of these are as popular as a random post I wrote about Petunia starting day care, which Blogger thinks 50,903 people have read. I am quite confident that there aren't that many people on this planet who are interested in Petunia's first days at day care.

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I called the schools we're considering for Pumpkin to arrange tours, and discovered that the two magnet schools will have tours on Monday, January 9. My husband and I decided to take the day off work and do both tours on one day. When I called our neighborhood school, they said that they would probably have tours sometime in January, and I should call back then. At first I was a little bit annoyed with this answer, but then I figured that we don't have to decide whether or not we're going to our neighborhood school by February 15- just whether or not we want to try to get into one of the magnets. So I've calmed down on that front. If you have any additional questions I should ask, there is still time to tell me about them!

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Pumpkin's reading skills continue to improve, and she's still enjoying learning to read. I am fascinated by the learning process. Watching my kid learn to read is one of the cooler aspects of parenthood so far. But I have to admit, I sometimes have a hard time sitting still and listening to her slow progress through a book. Our most recent book was Harry and the Lady Next Door, by Gene Zion, and Pumpkin was sooo proud when she finished it. I was just glad it was done- and that is not an indictment of the book, which is actually a good story.

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Progress on weaning Petunia continues, albeit slowly. We're down to nursing before bed, mostly. Some nights, she forgets. And sometimes she really, really wants to nurse at some other random time. I decided to ease off on my self-imposed deadline of the end of the year. It didn't seem smart to add forced weaning into our mix this month. We'll be done when we're done, I suppose.

She is also still as clingy and mommy-centered as ever. I'm beginning to think that the approach I used to get through these phases with Pumpkin- namely, give her all the mommy she wants and just wait it out- might not be the right approach with Petunia. But I don't really have any other bright ideas that seem consistent with our parenting philosophy, so I continue to spend half of each night snuggling with Petunia in her bed. We definitely should have bought her a nicer mattress.

Her language skills continue to improve, though. She is now very clear when she tells her Daddy to go away if he tries to come to her when she wakes up in the middle of the night. "No, Daddy! 'Way!"

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I think that'll do it for tonight. But if I've forgotten to update you on something that you've been curious about, ask in the comments.

In Which I Find a Little Christmas Spirit

I've been struggling to find my Christmas spirit this year. Our December weekends are so full that we had to write "buy Christmas tree" on our calendar, and our initial weekend plan doesn't have me doing any Christmas baking until Dec. 24th. We still haven't figured out when we'll take the girls out to see the Christmas lights in our neighborhood. To be honest, the season has felt more like a forced march through a list of things I have to do than like a celebration of peace, love, and all that.

Yesterday, as our calendar dictated, Hubby went out and bought our Christmas tree. He came home with a tree that seemed far too big to me. We had to rearrange our entire living room to find it a place to stand, and even so, the only place it fits is right next to our front door. This is our first year with a full size tree- previous years, we have bought a small tree and perched it on top of an up-ended trunk full of books. We figured this would keep curious little hands from breaking any ornaments or pulling the tree over. But this year, we decided that the girls are big enough to handle a big tree.

So a big tree we have. It is so much bigger than previous years' trees that I had to go out and buy more lights for it. I bought a light up star for the top, too, in an attempt to buy myself a little Christmas spirit. That attempt failed, but tonight we decorated our tree, and a little bit of magic happened.

It started out poorly, with the girls chasing each other around the house giggling, and us almost yelling to get them to listen to us and calm down enough to start decorating.

But then, they started hanging ornaments on the tree, and it was wonderful. Pumpkin pronounced every ornament she picked up to be "beautiful" and was eager to help her little sister figure out the ornament hanging thing- maybe a little too eager, but Petunia didn't complain, so neither did we.

Petunia kept saying "I help" as she went between the table with the ornaments and the tree. She was so proud of herself every time she managed to hang an ornament that we didn't have the heart to tell her that the ornaments were meant to hang on tree branches, not light bulbs, and just surreptitiously moved them to safer locations nearby when her back was turned.

My sister had come to help us decorate, and brought a box of cheap but festive ornaments from Target to fill in the inevitable gaps caused by going from a 4 foot tree to a 7 foot one. The girls let us lift them up from time to time to put ornaments higher on the tree, but there is a definite local minimum for ornaments in the front and at the bottom, giving the tree a charmingly uneven look. But I think it is beautiful.

I'm sitting on the (rearranged) sofa typing this, enjoying the view of the tree and some newly discovered Christmas spirit. The only thing missing is a good Christmas cookie- the ones I bought turned out to be pretty dreadful. I think that if I go ahead and bake this weekend, even if there isn't really time, my Christmas spirit may turn out to be intact this year, after all.

How about you? How's your holiday spirit this year? What makes it feel like the holidays at your house?

The giveaway on the Secret Agent Jo post is still open. I'll pick the winner Saturday night, maybe over some nice Christmas cookies.

Secret Agent Josephine and the Kindle Fire

In lieu of a weekend reading post this weekend, I bring you a special event! A review post with giveaway.  And a title that sounds a bit like a Nancy Drew book. I even have a cool Nancy Drewish image.

As I've mentioned before, I recently bought a Kindle Fire. In fact, I ordered one on the first day that you could place an order, and therefore, got my Fire on the first day that they were shipping.

I bought the Fire for a couple of reasons. I have been a slow-adopter on the smartphone front, and still don't have one. In fact, I still don't really want one, although I do think it is nice that we can use my husband's smartphone to check traffic on the go and look up restaurants, etc., while we're out and about. But I was curious about apps, both because I wonder if the current boom in app programming has legs (or if I'm going to suddenly find it a lot easier to hire programmers at some point in the future when the app bubble bursts) and because I am interested in their potential as a way for people to make money in the "new economy".

I also wanted to let the kids try it out. OK, if I'm completely honest, I want it to help us through difficult situations, like waiting at restaurants. And the price was right for those purposes- I couldn't see buying a $500 iPad just because I was curious, and I doubted that I had the fortitude to hand such a thing over to my 2 year old at a restaurant, no matter how badly I wanted to not have to do laps around the place.

I wasn't planning to do much reading on my Kindle Fire. I have an "old" (I only got it last Christmas!) black and white Kindle, and I like reading on that. Actually, I love reading on that. I had checked out the iPad as a potential eReader and decided that I prefer eInk to an LCD for reading. (I also thought the iPad was too large and heavy to use one handed, which is a key requirement in an eReader for me, since I do a lot of reading while pinned on the sofa with a sick or sleeping toddler.)

Then, my Twitter friend Calee offered me review copies of some children's eBooks. Calee has founded Xist publishing, which has the tagline: "books for the touchscreen generation." Her goal is to create eBooks for kids. I love the fact that she has started her own publishing company (here is some of the back story on that). And I was curious to see what my kids would think of eBooks, so I agreed to take the review copies... and write this post.

So here's the disclosure: the three Secret Agent Jo books I am going to review were free. I am also going to receive two free prints from the Secret Agent Jo Alphabet book (one for each kid), and I get a print to give away- more on that at the bottom. Any other book I mention, I paid for (or downloaded for free as part of a general promotion). I paid for my own Kindle Fire, of course, but the links to books are referral links, as always. And I will confess that I am rooting for Xist Publishing to succeed. But I have tried very hard not to let any of that change the opinions you are about to read.

First up: my impressions of the Kindle Fire. I like it. For what I wanted, it is great. It is the right size to fit easily into my purse, and it is a good size for my kids to hold comfortably while sitting on the sofa.

It is reasonably responsive and fast. The picture quality is gorgeous. Really. We've watched some Sesame Street songs on YouTube, and the picture quality is top notch. I haven't tried the streaming movies yet, but I suspect they'll be good, too. As you might expect, shopping on Amazon is a breeze, but I don't find that I do that much on the Fire. Typing text is a pain- but that is a universal feature of the touchscreens, I think. No doubt, I'll get better at it. There were enough apps to satisfy me so far- and I'm sure more will be coming along. I got a memory matching game and a puzzle game for the girls, and they like those. I also got Angry Birds and made the mistake of letting them see it. Petunia still signs and asks for "birds" when she sees the Fire. My husband doesn't think they should be playing that game yet (a subject for another post, I think), so I regret letting them see it. But he has taken the Fire and played something like 20 levels o f Angry Birds, so I guess it works well. I got some Spanish flashcards for Pumpkin, and she loves those. She sounds out the English word, then taps to get the Spanish word and thinks that is great. Petunia struggles a bit with the dragging required for some games, but got the tapping action figured out quickly.

So all and all- I think the Fire is a great tablet for kids to use. Really, the only thing it lacks that I wish it had is 3G. I knew that was missing when I bought it, though, so I have no complaints.

Next: my impressions of the books. Calee was kind enough to send me review copies of all three books: Secret Agent Josephine's ABC's, Secret Agent Josephine's Colors, and Secret Agent Josephine's Numbers, all by Brenda Ponnay.  I downloaded all three onto my Kindle Fire and my old black and white Kindle. I put them on the black and white Kindle because I was curious what they'd look like (and because my review copies came before my Kindle Fire did). Of the three, the ABC's book works best in black and white- I like it better in color, but the illustrations are still cute in black and white. The numbers book is a bit hard to read in black and white, and the colors book just doesn't make much sense without, well, color. I think Calee's own Caterpillars Don't Check Email is actually the kids book that works best on the black and white Kindle- the photograph illustrations work well in black and white and the story is charming. Incidentally, this one is also free at Amazon right now.

I read all three Secret Agent Jo books to both girls on the Kindle Fire. Pumpkin (who is 4.5 years old, and learning how to read), liked all three. She could easily read the ABC book, because the pictures help. She likes to try to read the colors book, even though there are a lot of words that are well beyond her current skill level (like patisserie)- I think the pictures are engaging enough to hold her attention even though she is struggling a bit with some of the words. They are cute illustrations. But I think her favorite is the numbers book. She loves the detail, and the way that all of the items illustrated are labeled.

This is where the eBook format shines- the labels on the items are a bit small, but we can tap on the screen and zoom in, which Pumpkin thinks is pretty darn cool. I'd actually recommend that Calee consider adding more zooming features in future books- Pumpkin likes "exploring" the page.

Anyway, if I sit down with her and the Fire and say that she can't play a game but can read a book, she'll usually pick the numbers book.

Petunia (who is 2 years old and still has a tendency to wander away sometimes when you're trying to read to her) likes the colors book the best. The bright illustrations capture her attention, and she likes the alliteration in the text. She also loves to listen to the ABCs book... especially if her sister is reading it to her. The numbers book is a bit too detailed for her right now.

So, my verdict is that if you have a color tablet, you should get some eBooks for the kids on it, and you could do a lot worse than the three Secret Agent Jo books. They are all charming and engaging for the kids. Furthermore, they are formatted with an eReader in mind. This is actually reasonably important. At Pumpkin's urging, I bought her one of the Step into Reading books on the Fire. We bought Cat Traps, by Molly Coxe. It is a cute story, and I'd actually recommend it... in paper format. It was clearly a quick conversion to the Kindle format, and it shows. The pages do not take full advantage of the Kindle screen:

Whereas the Xist Publishing books do not have that problem:

(Apologies for the crappy photos. I am too lazy to figure out if I can do a screen capture on the Fire. Honestly, I don't know how I can call myself a techie.)

The books come in a variety of formats- Kindle eBook, Nook eBook, iBook, and old school paper. You can see the list on Calee's stealthy book tour page. Or you can order the Kindle or paper versions from Amazon, via the links I put above.

And finally... Calee and Brenda were kind enough to offer me a print to give away to my readers. I get the S print, for Scientist... and Snake. So maybe a herpetologist out there wants this? Just kidding- it is open to anyone. Here is the print I'm giving away:

If you want to try to win the print, just leave me a comment that says somewhere in it that you want the print, and I will do a random drawing... um, I'm not sure when. I need to check with Calee and see if I'm supposed to wait until the end of their stealthy book tour or do it now. So soon, anyway.

And of course, as always, I'd love to hear what you think. Do you let your kid play with your iPad or other expensive electronic gadget? What do you think of eBooks, for kids or adults?

Updated to add: Brenda has an etsy shop, and she says that if you like that S is for Scientist picture at the top of the post, she could add it to her shop. Also, the pheasant has no agenda. And if you want to know what that means, I think you need to poke around on her blog for more details of her book tour.