Weekend Reading: Mixed Media Edition

So, Petunia's infectious disease expert doesn't think we should take her tonsils out. We officially asked one too many doctors- now we don't know what we're going to do. Personally, I'm curious to see if she gets a fever this Sunday. I'll probably write a post with more details soon, but in the meantime, she's fine and happy right now. Except that she's got a snotty nose, but really, what toddler doesn't?

I'm going to keep this one short, because I have today off and I want to go play with my kids. But I couldn't not send anyone who hasn't heard about the family in Canada who is not revealing their baby's sex (after the baby was born) over to read about it. I don't have a strong opinion on this one. You can check out what blue milk and Julie at A Little Pregnant think- they said smart things. I find myself torn between two gut feelings: on one hand, I think that gender identity is a fairly important thing and that we don't really understand how it develops, so I wonder if this family is playing a bit with fire on this. But on the other hand, I think kids are generally pretty resilient, and that the kids in this family are clearly loved and cared for, so everything will probably turn out fine. Maybe one of them will write a memoir as an adult and let us know what they think.

The story did make me think about the book Middlesex, by Jeffery Eugenides, which was an interesting fictional look at what happens when a child's gender is undetermined.

And finally, apropos to nothing, I give you this funny YouTube clip, thanks to my husband. Having once experienced something similar to the event described in the video, but with Abba's "Dancing Queen", I can confirm that it will indeed make you a bit crazy. (The video has a little bit of bad language, so you might not want to do what I did and watch it in front of your kids- Pumpkin mostly picked up on the cats, though.)

Ideals and Reality

We had a great weekend.

On Saturday, we took the kids down to Balboa Park for a visit to the fish pond, carousel, and zoo train. This was Pumpkin's idea, and it was a great one. Pumpkin still judges the main carousel to be too fast for her (and it is a fast one), so she climbed into an airplane in the little ride nearby, to show Petunia how it was done. Petunia happily allowed us to strap her in behind her sister, hung her arms on the side of the airplane in an almost perfect mimic of her big sister, and enjoyed the ride.

After the ride on the carousel, we headed over to the nearby train, and again, both girls loved it. Petunia was quite serious, and seemed more interested in her crackers than the train ride until we passed the mosaic lion, at which point she said "raaarrr" and started to smile.

Then we met my sister at The Station for lunch. San Diegans with kids- if you have not yet discovered The Station, you should check it out. You may never eat the over-priced zoo lunch again. Of course, we still do, because Pumpkin likes to eat at the zoo.


On Sunday, the mother of one of Pumpkin's day care friends emailed to see if we wanted to meet them at the Sicilian Festival in Little Italy. We decided that we did- so we packed Petunia's snacks and milk into the diaper bag and headed out. Pumpkin enjoyed getting her face painted, watching the short parade, and jumping in the bouncy. Petunia was a little overwhelmed by it all, but had a great time walking around on the little patch of sidewalk we grabbed to eat our lunch. The adults enjoyed some good food, although I wish I'd been able to hack the long line to get a cannoli.

After nap, I took the girls outside to play for awhile, and decided to thin the carrots Pumpkin and I had planted a couple of months back. Both girls enthusiastically wandered the yard with carrots in their hands for awhile. In fact, I only rescued the last carrot from Petunia with great difficulty. And yet, neither would eat the carrots for dinner. Ah well, at least we had fun with them before they were cooked.

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Here is what I left out of the above synospis:

• The nap time f*** up on Saturday that resulted in me taking an hour long walk instead of the nap I so craved (the walk did at least get Petunia enough sleep to allow her to make it through the rest of the afternoon without trouble)
• Me losing it at bathtime on Saturday when Petunia kept climbing out of the bath and sitting on my lap.
• Hubby giving Pumpkin a time out in her empty bath tub on Sunday because she kept demanding that I come dry her off, when I was nursing Petunia.
• Me losing it during pre-bedtime snack on Sunday when Petunia threw her strawberries on the floor. Why do I fall for this over and over? She never eats the strawberries. But she signs '"strawberry" and she says "raw-bury" so convincingly, so I get out the strawberries I've cut for the next day's morning snack at day care. And she squishes them and throws them on the floor.

And probably a few other less than idyllic scenes that I've already blotted from my memory.

All of this was fresh in my mind when I read blue milk's post (and linked article) about why women work. It is refreshing to read an article in a mainstream publication that acknowledges that work for mothers is not all about economics- it is also about sanity.

It sometimes seems to me that we have all entered into a collective vow of silence about the reality of parenting. Perhaps it is just because we love our kids so much that we highlight the good parts and gloss over the bad. But surely we have all struggled to answer the question from the childless (or is it "child free"?) friend or colleague about why we had kids, and ended up with some lame answer about how they make us see things with fresh eyes (and they do!) or how there is nothing quite like making a baby laugh (and there isn't!)- all while our friend/colleague looks at us with obvious disbelief and cannot comprehend how whatever good thing we're highlighting could possibly compensate for the lost sleep and lack of free time.

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Then today, both Female Science Professor and Dr. Isis had Q&A posts from women who wanted to take time off to stay home with their kids (or, in FSP's case, had already done so). It is interesting that the comment sections diverged quite a bit- the comments on FSP's post slant heavily toward "yes, I'd hire someone with a gap"- perhaps because the woman in question had actually been working part time and producing papers during her "time off"- while the comments on Dr. Isis's post slant heavily toward "your kids will be fine in day care, don't take time off".  It is an interesting dichotomy, and I'm not sure what to make of it.

Perhaps it is just another in a long string of mixed messages mothers get these days. One one hand, there is still a fairly large societal bias towards staying home- even though the majority of mothers in America do not stay home. It seems that we reconcile this by saying that they would stay home, if they could afford it. But of course, as that blue milk post- and my own experience- indicates, that isn't necessarily true. Plenty of us could afford to stay home and choose not to. That reality is rarely acknowledged.

Of course, some women really do want to stay at home with their kids, and that is great. But I wonder if some women end up feeling pressured to stay home, and worse, to give up all of their non-child interests. If no one really wants to admit that sometimes, parenting sucks, then it is hard to explain why sometimes you just need to do something else for awhile, particularly if you've decided to leave your career to spend more time with your kids.


This all feeds into a society that has frankly gone a little bit off the deep end in terms of what we expect good, middle class parents to do for their kids. We have taken an already intense experience, and intensified it further. Just when the kids are coming out of the time period in which they truly are quite needy and demand more time and attention than it sometimes feels possible to give, we decide to tack on more expectations. Rather than saying "phew, now I can rest a bit," we decide that our kids need lessons of all sorts, and sports leagues, and various other enrichment activities. It is easy to see how a mother could end up in a situation in which the entire focus of her life, all of her dreams and aspirations, involve the kids. In fact, that is in a way what our culture tells us is the ideal mother.

Until the kids get older. At some point, this focused mother is not the ideal. She becomes a "helicopter parent" and is ridiculed for not being able to let go and let her kids succeed or fail on their own.

I am certainly no fan of helicopter parenting, but I can't help but think that we have at least in part created this phenomenon. Perhaps the helicopter mothers are just the natural extension of the false ideals that we are fed about parenting. Maybe we'd have fewer helicopter parents if we all just acknowledged that sometimes, parenting is no fun at all, and that it is fine and normal for any parent to want some other thing in his or her life, too, be that paid work or volunteer work or a hobby.

But I don't know. This is all just semi-coherent musings- I have no data to back me up and it is past my bed time. What do you all think? Is this all related? Or have I finally gone crazy from the sleep deprivation?

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edited to ad: In the light of morning, after a fairly good night's sleep (thanks, Petunia!) I realize that I left out the other half of the mixed message- that if you decide to keep working, it is hard to ease up a bit. There aren't many part time jobs, and it is hard to even just downshift your drive for a few years and "idle" in a good fulltime job without aiming for promotions, etc., without being shifted permanently to a "mommy track".


So the choice that may feel most natural to some women- lower your career expectations a bit for a few years while the kids are in the very young, very needy time and combine that with motherhood that isn't all consuming- doesn't feel available. It can be easy to feel that you are making an all or nothing decision, and making it quite early in your baby's life, since we don't give decent maternity leaves in the US.

Surprisingly Profound Kid's Art: Mommy's Face

Shapes were provided by the teachers. Placement was provided by the artist.

The subject wondered if perhaps the placement of the ears was a statement about how well Mommy listens. The artist indicated that those were cheeks.

Mommy's Face
Artist: Pumpkin, age 2 years, 1 month

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This is the second entry in a  series. The first entry explains the concept: these are pictures of art my kids make that seems to be saying something a little more than most.

Weekend Reading: The If You Read One Thing... Edition

Thank you all for you nice comments and ideas on my last post. Petunia is better now and back to her playful self, but unfortunately, we doubt it will last. We have an appointment with a pediatric infectious disease expert next week and will also be getting a sweat test to rule out (or in, I suppose) the unlikely possibility that she has a mild case of cystic fibrosis. Once we've done those two things, we'll have all the opinions of a wide range of doctors:  allergist/immunologist, ENT, infectious disease, pulmonary function, plus our excellent regular pediatrician... that's a lot of doctors for a 19 month old who seems to be a basically healthy kid who gets a lot of sore throats with fevers. At that point, we'll just have to make a decision.

Anyway, it has been a hectic week. Between Petunia's illness and an intense week at work with a vendor onsite trying to get a new version of a key tool rolled out and integrated with some things we wrote (disappointingly, we didn't quite make it- but we made good progress), I am exhausted. So I don't have a lot of links for you this week.

What I lack in quantity, though, I make up in quality. I came across a wonderful post on the Daddy Dialectic, via a link from blue milk. It is a story about racism on the playground, and it broke my heart and made me angry all at once. Truly, if you only read one thing on the internet this weekend, this post should be it.

Also, if you are interested in feminism, politics, motherhood, and how they intersect and aren't already reading blue milk, you should head over there now and add it to your reader. You'll be glad you did.

This is My Heart Breaking

Petunia had a great day on Saturday. She was funny and playful, and on the go. She mastered the stairs on our little outdoor jungle gym, and slid down the slide all by herself- grinning and laughing her big belly laugh at the end.

On Sunday, she got sick again. She was clingy, and by the end of the day, she was whining, shivering, and just wanting to be held until the Tylenol kicked in and she was able to really go to sleep.

She wouldn't go down in her crib at bedtime, so I sat in my rocking chair, holding her and trying again to figure out what we should do.

Everyone agrees that Petunia's frequent fevers aren't just the normal routine for a day care kid. Something else is going on. But what? And what should we do?

Her core symptoms are remarkably consistent: a high fever, refusing to eat, a strong preference for cold milk, and red, inflamed tonsils. Around that core, there is variability: she may or may not have a runny nose or a cough, for instance. She's usually better in about three days, but one time, she was sick for a full week.

She's had throat cultures, which have always come back negative. But on the other hand, she generally is healthy when she's on antibiotics, so maybe there is some sort of persistent infection that is not showing up in the standard culture.

She's had her immune system checked (it is fine), her adenoids x-rayed (also fine), and blood drawn enough times that she now cries if she sees a nurse in a pink shirt (because that's what the technicians who draw blood wear).

We recently took her to an ear, nose and throat specialist, who prescribed another course of antibiotics (which we finished last Thursday) and decongestant (which knocked her out so strongly that we had to cut the dosage to one quarter of what was initially prescribed). Hubby took her back for the follow up today, and came back with the recommendation from the doctor that we could try a tonsillectomy.

I wasn't surprised by this, but I'm not sure I want to do it, either. There is evidence that this sort of problem with recurrent tonsillitis will resolve on its own with time- some doctors argue that we should just wait. But it might take until puberty for the problem to resolve on its own, and right now, puberty seems a long way away. On Sunday, as I sat there rocking my miserable little girl, I kept saying "we have to do something"- but is surgery really our only option?

We've considered getting a nanny and taking her out of day care- but since her fevers are so consistent, there is a good chance that this won't do any good. The problem could be in how her tonsils respond to germs, not in the number of germs she's being exposed to. And, as my husband points out, it is not like we'd be able to keep her in a bubble if we took her out of day care. Her older sister would still go to day care. We'd still go out and about on the weekends. She'd still run across germs. So we could disrupt her routine (she loves day care and is visibly excited to go back after having to stay home for a few days while sick) and increase our child care expenses and get nothing from it.

We could push for more antibiotics, or perhaps for the next line of antibiotics- so far, she's had nothing but amoxicillin (and augmentin, which is sort of like amoxicillin plus). I've read some interesting things recently about persistent bacterial infections. But since the throat cultures keep coming back negative, that might not do anything but upset her tummy. "Interesting" is a fine criteria for choosing which science papers to read, but it is not such a good criteria for choosing how to handle a sick kid.

Or we could do the surgery. It is fairly safe, but it is still surgery. There are risks. And even if all goes well, the post-op recovery sounds like it would be two solid weeks of hell in which Petunia wold have a very sore throat, probably wouldn't want to eat much, and we'd need to work hard to keep her hydrated. However, as my husband points out, that isn't all that different than what we have now. She's been sick three of the last six weeks, and when she's sick, she has a sore throat and won't eat much. Still, there is no guarantee that surgery would solve the problem, either.

So I'm a bit stuck. I know that we have to try something different for Petunia. The difference between Saturday and Sunday was too stark to leave me any doubt on that point, but I really have no idea what we should do. I don't like any of our options.