You Can't Send Patience, So Please Send Beer

I took the girls out for their "nap walk" today, and three different people stopped me and told me how precious they were. And they were- at that moment, sound asleep in their double stroller. Petunia had reached over and was holding on to Pumpkin's blanket, and it would have taken a very hard heart indeed not to think they were cute.

But a mere 30 minutes earlier, Hubby and I were struggling to deal with a clingy 1 year old who screams if I hand her to anyone else, including her Daddy, and a 3.5 year old throwing a whopper of a tantrum over our insistence that if she is not going to use the potty, then she at least has to change herself out of her wet pants. This tantrum went on for at least 45 minutes. She finally accepted that we weren't going to change her pants for her and got into her new underwear on her own, but then she had another accident before she could get her pants on- because of course, she hadn't sat on the potty after her first accident. We're trying yet another new approach to the potty issue around here. In this one, we don't remind her or push her to go potty. We reward her if she sits on the potty and we have her change her own clothes after accidents. This is day one of the new regime, so it is too early to say whether it is going to do anything other than add a bunch of tantrums to our life.

My ability to deal with the potty issues and the other tantrums that come with being three and a half years old is severely compromised by my lack of sleep- Petunia's sleep went all to Hell during the 6 weeks or so of recurrent fevers, and we haven't gotten it back on track yet. Some nights, she does fairly well- even sleeping 5 hours in a row sometimes. And then there are nights like last night, when she wakes up every two hours.

Now, I could feel really bad, because here I have one kid who won't sleep and another who won't pee in the potty. But I actually think we're doing better than that summary implies. At her check up yesterday, Petunia was judged to be developing well, and was pronounced a smart little baby. (I know, they say that to all the mothers. But I still think she IS a smart little baby!) She is a delight to play with, and although I think it is too early for us to claim responsibility for any of her good traits (like being such an easy baby to take to restaurants), at least I don't think we've messed anything up yet.  The clinginess is normal for her age, and I suspect it will pass once she learns to walk and decides that she wants to explore more on her own. I also believe that the best thing to do is to give her the attention she wants now, to lay a solid foundation of attachment from which she can explore later. Pumpkin was an even clingier baby, and is not clingy at all now.

And despite her infuriating three-and-a-half-ness, Pumpkin is a pretty amazing little girl, too. She doesn't always eat all that well when we go out to eat, but she almost never disrupts the meal (and I do claim some credit for this- Hubby and I ate many tag-team meals as we followed through on our promise to take Pumpkin out of the restaurant if she didn't behave). She can throw an impressive tantrum, but she is also quick to come and give me a hug and tell me that she loves me. When she chooses to argue rationally instead of throw a tantrum, she makes a good argument. She's very logical, and will catch us in any inconsistencies. I am not too proud to admit that I've lost more than one argument to her! She loves her Chinese lessons, and is also delighting in learning "pre-reading" phonics- she can tell us what letter most words start with, and is starting to get the hang of sounding out an entire word. I know that the tantrums and stubbornness are normal for her age, too, and will pass. Or at least, the tantrums will. I suspect she will be stubborn, um, I mean persistent for life. Let's just say that I see a lot of her Daddy in her in that regard.

So, I think I just need to come up with the patience to get through this difficult phase without compromising my parenting beliefs- or at least without compromising them too much, too often. Which brings me to beer. I think I should drink a beer more often- one beer tends to make me mellow and more patient. To the people who think that a nursing mother shouldn't drink (and for the one or two readers I have who aren't mothers, yes, people think this and no, they won't hesitate to tell me what they think)- I say: consider the alternatives. Cheers!

The Absence of Worry and Other Good Things

Petunia's one year check up was today. She was in a great mood for the doctor, and showed off her babbling skills as well as her winning smile. She has adorable dimples when she smiles.

It was a crying intensive visit, despite her great mood- she got all of the vaccinations on offer (MMR, chicken pox, hepatitis A, and flu), and she also had to have blood drawn to follow up on her recurring fevers. We'd had an ultrasound done last week, which showed no problems, and she got so much happier after a day or two on antibiotics that we all pretty strongly suspected that the health scare was caused by a bacterial infection of some sort. However, the doctor ordered follow up blood tests, just to be sure. She called earlier this evening to let us know that the sedimentation rate test, which was the test that was most worrisome the first time around, came back completely normal. So yes- it was an infection, and that infection is gone now, thanks to the antibiotics. Phew! I hadn't realized that I was still worried until suddenly, I wasn't anymore.

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After the doctor's appointment, I took Petunia for a little walk in our neighborhood. I happened to be walking past the school down the street from us when the parents were arriving to pick up their kids. It is a public school, but it is a Spanish immersion magnet. We're thinking about trying to get Pumpkin in there for kindergarten, but haven't really decided yet. So I asked some of the parents what they think of the school. They all loved it- but they told me that this year, there were 300 applicants for 100 kindergarten spots. However, they also told me that there are a couple bilingual programs in the district, including one at a school that wouldn't be too far out of the way for us. So Hubby and I have some research to do. 

I've been reading Bad Mom, Good Mom's education posts with interest (here is her latest: Economic Integration of Schools), because she is sending her daughter to public schools in LA, and knows a lot about the California education system. Her posts give me hope that we can figure this out and get our children good educations in our local public schools. In fact, I suspect that our kids would do just fine if we just sent them to the "default" public school for our area. It is really just the lure of having them become fluent in a second language that is making us look at other options. Well, that and the fact that the Spanish immersion school is only a few blocks away, while our "default" school is many more blocks away, and down a fairly steep hill. If we want to have our daughters walk to or from school in elementary school, we'd better get into the Spanish immersion school. Either that, or they'll be very, very fit from walking up that hill every day!

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In other news, I have finally updated Pumpkin and Petunia's book list post.
Pumpkin doesn't attach as strongly to particular books as she used to, but Petunia definitely does!

Less-trickity

We're just back from a short trip to Zion National Park for a family reunion, with a single night stop in Las Vegas on the way back. I'll write up a post or two about the trip soon, but we're busy unpacking- we had our house tented for termites while we were gone, so we need to unpack all of the food and things that we had to bag before we left.

But there is something Pumpkin has been saying that I want to write down, so that I won't forget it. On our trip to Coronado, we walked past a transformer station. Pumpkin asked us what it was, and we said that it made electricity. So now, every time we see a transformer station (and we drive past a small one everyday on our way home from day care), Pumpkin says "that's less-trickity!'

Zenbit: Night Lights

 

Location: Hong Kong, China

Date: April 4, 2006

List of Nowhere Near 100 Dreams

I last posted about my life reorg quite awhile ago. Part of the delay in getting this next post up was due to how busy my life has been over the last few weeks, but that's not the whole story. The truth is, I found the next assignment surprisingly challenging. It sounded easy enough- write a list of 100 dreams. These could be big or small, they just had to be things I wanted to accomplish in life.

It wasn't easy. Not by a long shot. In fact, I still don't have a list of 100 dreams. I have a list of 25 dreams and two ongoing things I'd like to add to my life. Despite my failure to actually complete this task, I found the exercise very useful. The difficulty I had in doing this was surprising to me, and very thought-provoking. I don't think I would have had this much trouble earlier in my life. Was my trouble at this time due to my age or my status as a mother? I suspect it was due to both.

I realized as I started thinking about what my dreams are that I was assuming that my adventurous days were behind me- I was thinking that I was too old for some things. That is pretty silly. I am 38. People on my dad's side of the family regularly live- and live well- into their late 90s. My Mom's oldest brother is over 70 and still going strong. Chances are, I'm not even half way through my life. Realizing that was quite a wake up call for me. Why was I assuming that my time for achieving dreams was over when I still have at least half of my life ahead of me? That makes no sense.

I think motherhood plays a role in my problems with this assignment, too. In our popular culture, mothers aren't really expected to have their own aspirations. The good mothers are shown as caretakers, whose goals in life all involve supporting their kids. If a mother has her own goals, she is usually portrayed as being incredibly conflicted about them. This is probably related to our cultural hang up with the idea of working mothers. Regardless, I think it is B.S. I can support my kids in their goals and dreams (and even support my husband in his goals and dreams!) without completely abandoning my own goals and dreams.

So there is no good reason why I can't write a list of 100 dreams. I haven't given up. I'll get to 100 some day. But for now, I'll be content with a list of 25 dreams:

1. Set up my travel website and put in the effort to see if I can make it a success, whatever that means. I guess I’ll know it when I see it....
2. Learn how to take good photos. Most of the nice photos I post were taken by my husband.
3. Write a list of 100 (or should it be 200?) major islands and visit them all. I’ll have quite a few crossed off already.
4. Visit all of the US National parks
5. Have a meaningful yoga practice. Bonus points if this lasts for more than a month.
6. Raise great kids. I get to decide if they’re great. When is this “done”? I think by age 25 it is their own fault if they screw up. But maybe I'll change my mind about that when Pumpkin is 25....
7. Visit the carribean already. Which is better? Carribean or South Pacific? I can't say because I haven't been to the carribean!
8. Publish a book. I haven’t decided yet if self-publishing would cross this off.
9. Read some Tolstoy. I’ve never read any. It seems like I should...
10. Swim behind a waterfall.
11. (Help) build a database, website, or software tool that develops a sustaining user community- the kind with power users and evangelists. This could be within a company; it doesn’t have to be a publicly available resource.
12. Take another “big trip”- be gone for multiple months.
13. Visit every continent. Yeah, even Antartica, even though it will be cold and I’ll get sea sick going there.
14. Be part of a company/team that brings a drug to market. I’ll have a small part, but I still think it would be a thrill.
15. Cruise somewhere. Probably Alaska or Fjords. But do it in style.
16. See a concert at Carnegie Hall. Classical music strongly preferred.
17. Spend a weekend in a hotel where the attraction is the room (eg, oceanfront condos at hotel del)
18. Live in a house that is completely decorated how I’d like, inside and outside. My husband says this will never happen. Pessimist.
19. See Machu Picchu. My husband is probably going to insist that we hike to it, but I’d be happy to take the train.
20. Have conversational proficiency in another language
21. Be The Boss. I’d love to stop implementing other people’s boneheaded decisions and start implementing some of my own boneheaded decisions. I think being an independent contractor would fit the bill, but I don’t know if I can hack the business development that would go with that.
22. Live in a foreign country. (With the caveat that I don’t want to do this until my kids are much older- probably until they are off to college.)
23. Take my kids to see a live performance of Beethoven’s 5th. It is still one of my favorite symphonies, and it is a good intro to classical music for kids.
24. See the pyramids in Egypt.
25. Take a big train trip. Maybe the Orient Express? Bonus points if I can do it in luxury.

And here are the two things I think I should try to do, but which aren't really goals because they are never completed:

1. Have a date lunch or dinner with my husband once a month
2. Take a walk every day. OK, most days. I do my best thinking while walking!

I also came up with some things I've already done that surely would have been on earlier versions of my list:

1. Take a big trip
2. Go to Easter Island
3. See Angkor Wat
4. Lead the informatics department at a small biotech
5. Get a PhD

I was struck by a couple of things as I worked on my list:

1. I didn't think of career related things to put on the list until I'd been working on it for several days.
2. A lot of my items, both past and present, involve travel. 

Hubby thinks that these two things are good and normal. I wonder if it says something about what I should be doing with my life, work-wise (i.e., not what I'm doing now).  On the other hand, I don't necessarily think that I should try to my travel part of my career- sometimes trying to do something as a career sucks the joy out of it. For instance, I like music, but I know that trying to be a professional musician would make me miserable, and would probably destroy my love of music. 

So it was an interesting exercise, on many levels, and it was actually a lot of fun to try to figure out what I really want to do with my life in the broadest sense. And it gave me a lot to think about for my life reorg. I think my next post in this thread will try to pull a lot of the things I've been thinking about from doing these exercises together. But I make no promises about how long it will take me to get that post written. I have a lot of thinking to do first.