As I've been reading the wonderful comments on my last two posts (and they really are wonderful, every single one of them- I'm lucky to have such thoughtful commenters), I've been trying to better pin down my thoughts on the issues we've been discussing: what careers are "better" for mothers, how unfair it is that we rarely worry about what careers are good for fathers, the differences between difficulties inherent in the work and difficulties that are artificially created by the culture of the field or the company involved.... I want to write a thoughtful, well-organized post about all of this, but I can't do it yet. My thoughts just are that organized, I guess.
But I still wanted to get a few more ideas out there, before I move on to other topics for awhile.
The first is the thought, which I am sure is not novel, that motherhood is a lot like the Choose Your Own Adventure books I loved as a kid. You make choices along the way, and they shape the choices that you are presented with down the road a bit, and it is not always easy to predict the ultimate outcome from any one choice. But also (because these were books written for kids), the alternate outcomes were rarely bad- just different.
I see four sets of choices around motherhood. As I've written before, I don't think there is an easy way to be a mother- I think that no matter how you do it, you get an adventure.
1. You could choose to leave the workforce when you have kids and never really go back, or at least not go back until the kids are grown. I don't really have a lot to say about this path, because it is so far removed from my experience. I think I have one friend who has gone this path, and we see each other so infrequently that I wouldn't presume to comment based on that one example. But I want to make sure to acknowledge this option, because the women who choose this path do make valuable contributions to the community- they are often the classroom volunteers, soccer coaches, and the den mothers, for instance. Just because our society hasn't figured out how to place an economic value on the work that they do, we should not ignore it or belittle it.
2. You could choose to leave the workforce for a shorter period, maybe five years or so, staying out until your youngest kids is two, or starts kindergarten, or whatnot. I do know several people who have done this, although it is rare in my particular line of work.
3. You could choose to stay in the workforce full time, just taking your maternity leaves. Obviously, this is the path I took, and it is also the path that most of my friends have taken.
4. You could choose to stay in the workforce, but go to part time work. I know two people who have done this, and they were doing a job share with each other. I think it is hard to set this option up, but if you can get it, it can be pretty awesome... unless you find yourself permanently on a "mommy track", I suppose.
I'm sure I'm missing something, but my main point is that there are different ways to do motherhood, and each has its pluses and minuses. In my view, the trick to being happy is to be happy with the path you took. The problem is, of course, that it is not always obvious ahead of time which path will make you happy. Also, sometimes you get forced down a path due to financial considerations, and you would actually prefer to be on another path, or you really want to leave the workforce for awhile, but the career you love isn't very accepting of that. And of course, you may think you can switch paths- going back to fulltime work after a stint of part time work, and find that it is harder than you'd like to make that switch. And a whole host of other things can go not quite according to plan.
So its a high tension Choose Your Own Adventure, I guess.
The second thing that I've been thinking about is the difference between things that are hard for working parents that are inherent in the work required by a job (the difficulty with leaving for a mid-day doctor's appointment if you are a teacher, for instance) and things that are hard due solely because of the arbitrary way in which the culture of that job has evolved (the late-shifted hours of some computer programming jobs, for instance, or the difficulty of re-entering science after a break of a few years).
If I ran the universe, the only difficulties would be those inherent in the work, and we'd actually try as a society to minimize those. But I suppose that is obvious. And I don't run the world.
Finally, at the risk of calling privilege on myself... I have been thinking about how invisible mothers working in service industry jobs are in these discussions. People will tell me that I must have a hard time balancing my career and my family, and the truth of the matter is that it isn't all that hard for me. Sure, there are challenging times, and times when I sit and want to cry out of frustration or exhaustion and think that surely there has to be an easier way. But those times are infrequent, and for the most part, my life isn't that hard. It is pretty darn good, actually. But when I try to imagine making it all work with a service industry job, my mind boggles. Those are the working mothers who have it the hardest, I think, and I don't see my society doing much at all to help them. I don't actually see many viable solutions to this problem, either.
And on that depressing note, I'm going to go watch some TV with my husband. Thanks for the interesting discussion everyone. Keep the comments coming!
Monday, August 29, 2011
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Clarifications on My Last Post
I started to write a long comment on my last post, in response to the awesome comments I'd gotten. But then I thought, "Hey! This is my blog. I can make this into a new post." And so here it is.
First of all, I didn't mean to imply that I think we should never try to educate the sexists, or call them out. I just think that it is smart to choose your battles carefully. At least in my career, there have been times when calling out the sexist would have done more harm than good- I wasn't going to change his mind and the kerfuffle it caused would have been more damaging to me than him. I think it is better in some cases to just go around the sexist, particularly if you are trying to get ahead in a very male dominated field and will need male allies. This is not right or fair, but it is not my job to make the world a fair place. I'm just trying to live my life and work in my chosen field.
Second, on the question of which careers are more friendly to mothers... I think I was unclear there, too. I don't think teaching is a worse career for a mother than mine, I just don't think it is a better career for a mother than mine is. They both have challenges for mothers- they are just different challenges, and I do not agree with the view that the challenges I face are harder or worse. Sure, teachers get the same random days off and holidays as their kids (if they are in the same school district), and I do not (unless I take my vacation days)- but that is a problem that money can actually solve fairly well, in the form of camps and babysitters. And on the flip side, my friends who are teachers had a much, much harder time pumping than I did. Their pumping schedule was dictated by their class schedule. Mine was set by me, to closely match my baby's nursing schedule- and if my milk was flowing slow one day, I could usually extend the session, or add an extra one. My teacher friends got their allotted time and that was it.
I do see that teaching is a very mobile career, and one that it is easier to interrupt if you want to stay home with your kids before they reach school age. But, as I said in my first post, on the other hand, teachers have a much harder time scheduling doctor's appointments and the like, and can't work from home with a sick kid. And I guess I don't see the portability thing as being an issue, since I am actually considered the breadwinner in my family (I make more money than my husband). I think it is easiest if one spouse has a portable career, but I don't see why it has to be the woman.
So- my view is that no job is perfectly easy to combine with motherhood. But very few (if any) jobs are truly incompatible with it. And yet we scare young women off of perfectly good careers because of this idea that some jobs are too hard to combine with a family.
And I stand by my assertion that we mislabel a lot of jobs in male dominated fields as hard to combine with motherhood. Mine, for one. But even more puzzling to me, I've heard people argue that computer programming is a job that isn't compatible with motherhood, and that just boggles my mind. It is extremely portable. If you decide to take some time off to raise kids, you can actually keep your skills fresh (and your resume up to date) by volunteering some hours on open source projects. The work can largely be done from home, and usually has very flexible schedules. Sure, working at a start up may require more hours than most mothers would be comfortable with- but there are lots of other places to work as a computer programmer. It is also one of the easiest fields I know of in which to strike out on your own as an independent contractor, which gives you even more flexibility over hours. And yet it is a heavily male-dominated field, and supposedly one of the reasons women don't go into it is worries about "work-life balance". I don't get that at all.
First of all, I didn't mean to imply that I think we should never try to educate the sexists, or call them out. I just think that it is smart to choose your battles carefully. At least in my career, there have been times when calling out the sexist would have done more harm than good- I wasn't going to change his mind and the kerfuffle it caused would have been more damaging to me than him. I think it is better in some cases to just go around the sexist, particularly if you are trying to get ahead in a very male dominated field and will need male allies. This is not right or fair, but it is not my job to make the world a fair place. I'm just trying to live my life and work in my chosen field.
Second, on the question of which careers are more friendly to mothers... I think I was unclear there, too. I don't think teaching is a worse career for a mother than mine, I just don't think it is a better career for a mother than mine is. They both have challenges for mothers- they are just different challenges, and I do not agree with the view that the challenges I face are harder or worse. Sure, teachers get the same random days off and holidays as their kids (if they are in the same school district), and I do not (unless I take my vacation days)- but that is a problem that money can actually solve fairly well, in the form of camps and babysitters. And on the flip side, my friends who are teachers had a much, much harder time pumping than I did. Their pumping schedule was dictated by their class schedule. Mine was set by me, to closely match my baby's nursing schedule- and if my milk was flowing slow one day, I could usually extend the session, or add an extra one. My teacher friends got their allotted time and that was it.
I do see that teaching is a very mobile career, and one that it is easier to interrupt if you want to stay home with your kids before they reach school age. But, as I said in my first post, on the other hand, teachers have a much harder time scheduling doctor's appointments and the like, and can't work from home with a sick kid. And I guess I don't see the portability thing as being an issue, since I am actually considered the breadwinner in my family (I make more money than my husband). I think it is easiest if one spouse has a portable career, but I don't see why it has to be the woman.
So- my view is that no job is perfectly easy to combine with motherhood. But very few (if any) jobs are truly incompatible with it. And yet we scare young women off of perfectly good careers because of this idea that some jobs are too hard to combine with a family.
And I stand by my assertion that we mislabel a lot of jobs in male dominated fields as hard to combine with motherhood. Mine, for one. But even more puzzling to me, I've heard people argue that computer programming is a job that isn't compatible with motherhood, and that just boggles my mind. It is extremely portable. If you decide to take some time off to raise kids, you can actually keep your skills fresh (and your resume up to date) by volunteering some hours on open source projects. The work can largely be done from home, and usually has very flexible schedules. Sure, working at a start up may require more hours than most mothers would be comfortable with- but there are lots of other places to work as a computer programmer. It is also one of the easiest fields I know of in which to strike out on your own as an independent contractor, which gives you even more flexibility over hours. And yet it is a heavily male-dominated field, and supposedly one of the reasons women don't go into it is worries about "work-life balance". I don't get that at all.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Weekend Reading: The Lets Just Get On With It Edition
The Hermitage organized a panel of bloggers to answer questions about being a woman in academia, without any questions about having kids (because apparently all the women in academia events she goes to devolve into discussions about work-life balance and the like). I read some of the posts, even though I am not in academia and I clearly have kids, because I like the bloggers she had on the panel and I figured they'd probably have some smart and interesting things to say. They did. All of the posts are worth reading. But I was particularly struck by GMP's answer to the question about how to handle women who deny the existence of sexism:
"It is a fact that over the course of your career you will most likely get some (or quite a bit of?) friction under your professional wheels because you are a woman. Life is definitely too short to try to convert naysayers. If you suspect that someone is biased against you professionally, don't waste time going around looking for validation; assume they are indeed biased and try to minimize their influence on your career (I am talking about unconscious bias and the virtually imperceptible inequalities it creates; egregious violations of your rights to a safe work environment or sexual harassment should always be reported). Focus on surrounding yourself with supportive people of both genders and keep looking and going ahead."
It reminded me of one of the quotes I highlighted in Bossypants, by Tina Fey:
"So my unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: "Is this person in between me and what I want to do?" If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you're in charge, don't hire the people who were jerky to you."
Good advice from both GMP and Tina Fey, but of course, hard to follow.
I've been thinking about why it is so hard to follow, and I think it is related to the whole "motherhood is incompatible with a career in X" meme that our culture seems so enamored with these days. (I'm not part of the panel, so I can talk about babies.) Bear with me on this... maybe you'll see the connection, too.
When the career you've worked really hard for is not as awesome as you think it should be, particularly when things seem so much easier for other people (who all happen to be men), or when you're trying to understand why you can't get the career success you think you deserve, particularly when other people (who all happen to be men) are getting that success... well, you want an explanation. And if you manage to rule out the "I'm just not good enough" explanation that a lot of us women default to, the next obvious thing to consider is sexism.
But these days, the sexism you've run into is almost always subtle, and hard to identify, let alone prove, so you look to other people to agree with your diagnosis about what's going on- to help convince yourself that you really are good enough. However, most people hate conflict, and the men you suspect of sexism are probably nice guys and no one wants to believe they are sexist. So they point you at the fact that you have a family and a working spouse, while the men who are getting ahead instead of you have stay at home spouses, and they say maybe its just that the demands of your career are incompatible with the demands of your family, and of course something has to give and you're a good mom, so it is no wonder that you compromised your career in favor of your family. Or maybe, you've just been told so many times that there is no sexism anymore, it is just women opting out to raise families, or "downshifting" to focus more on their family or whatnot, that you think of this explanation before sexism.
I've written a lot about how I don't think motherhood and a demanding career are incompatible- maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but not incompatible. But lately, I've been thinking that the whole discussion is predicated on a false assumption- i.e., that the careers that have lots of women in them, and therefore presumably lots of mothers, are some how easier to manage with kids. I am not sure this is true. Take teaching, for instance. This is supposed to be such a great job for working mothers, right? But why? The hours are long (every teacher I know brings work home- I would guess they are working at least as many hours as I do, probably more), the pay isn't all that great, making it harder to buy time. There is very little flexibility in the work schedule- whereas I can duck out for an hour or so to take care of a doctor's appointment and make up the hours at night, teachers generally have to take a sick day for that sort of thing. And they certainly can't work from home while watching a sick kid! So how is this easier than my job, exactly?
I think similar arguments can be made about nursing, and even a lot of the lower level "pink collar" office jobs- if our receptionist wants to go run an errand in the middle of the day, she has to arrange someone to cover the front desk. If I want to go run an errand in the middle of the day, I check my calendar to make sure I have no meetings, and then I just go. My job may be demanding, but with those demands comes a fair amount of autonomy and flexibility. Not to mention the money.
But we never hear about how a career in teaching or nursing is incompatible with motherhood. It is just the traditionally male jobs that are. This makes no sense.
And the data don't support that conclusion. I came across fresh evidence of that this week, in this article about the Forbes Most Powerful Women list - apparently 88% of them are mothers. With an average of two kids.
I don't argue with the statement that it can be hard to balance the demands of a career and the demands of family. I have plenty of examples of the challenges in my own life. But I think we do a disservice to all women when we say that these challenges are unique to male-dominated careers. They aren't. And as Nicoleandmaggie point out- for a lot of women, the alternative of being a stay at home mom is just not appealing, even if they don't admit it, because our society judges that a bit harshly (see, for instance, the old "if you don't want to stay home with your kids, why did you have them?" canard).
So I say it is time to apply the advice from GMP and Tina Fey, and ignore the people who say there is no problem for women in the traditionally male-dominated careers and their close cousins, the people who say that the problem is just that the demands of these careers are incompatible with motherhood. The data don't support either of these contentions. We need to charge ahead and just keep working. It won't always be easy. Sometimes sexism will get in our way. Sometimes we'll choose to make adjustments to our career because of family (or other non-work) considerations. And yes, sometimes we won't get something we aim for because someone else really is better suited for the job. But sometimes, we'll get the success we want- even if we have kids. We won't know until we try.
"It is a fact that over the course of your career you will most likely get some (or quite a bit of?) friction under your professional wheels because you are a woman. Life is definitely too short to try to convert naysayers. If you suspect that someone is biased against you professionally, don't waste time going around looking for validation; assume they are indeed biased and try to minimize their influence on your career (I am talking about unconscious bias and the virtually imperceptible inequalities it creates; egregious violations of your rights to a safe work environment or sexual harassment should always be reported). Focus on surrounding yourself with supportive people of both genders and keep looking and going ahead."
It reminded me of one of the quotes I highlighted in Bossypants, by Tina Fey:
"So my unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: "Is this person in between me and what I want to do?" If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you're in charge, don't hire the people who were jerky to you."
Good advice from both GMP and Tina Fey, but of course, hard to follow.
I've been thinking about why it is so hard to follow, and I think it is related to the whole "motherhood is incompatible with a career in X" meme that our culture seems so enamored with these days. (I'm not part of the panel, so I can talk about babies.) Bear with me on this... maybe you'll see the connection, too.
When the career you've worked really hard for is not as awesome as you think it should be, particularly when things seem so much easier for other people (who all happen to be men), or when you're trying to understand why you can't get the career success you think you deserve, particularly when other people (who all happen to be men) are getting that success... well, you want an explanation. And if you manage to rule out the "I'm just not good enough" explanation that a lot of us women default to, the next obvious thing to consider is sexism.
But these days, the sexism you've run into is almost always subtle, and hard to identify, let alone prove, so you look to other people to agree with your diagnosis about what's going on- to help convince yourself that you really are good enough. However, most people hate conflict, and the men you suspect of sexism are probably nice guys and no one wants to believe they are sexist. So they point you at the fact that you have a family and a working spouse, while the men who are getting ahead instead of you have stay at home spouses, and they say maybe its just that the demands of your career are incompatible with the demands of your family, and of course something has to give and you're a good mom, so it is no wonder that you compromised your career in favor of your family. Or maybe, you've just been told so many times that there is no sexism anymore, it is just women opting out to raise families, or "downshifting" to focus more on their family or whatnot, that you think of this explanation before sexism.
I've written a lot about how I don't think motherhood and a demanding career are incompatible- maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but not incompatible. But lately, I've been thinking that the whole discussion is predicated on a false assumption- i.e., that the careers that have lots of women in them, and therefore presumably lots of mothers, are some how easier to manage with kids. I am not sure this is true. Take teaching, for instance. This is supposed to be such a great job for working mothers, right? But why? The hours are long (every teacher I know brings work home- I would guess they are working at least as many hours as I do, probably more), the pay isn't all that great, making it harder to buy time. There is very little flexibility in the work schedule- whereas I can duck out for an hour or so to take care of a doctor's appointment and make up the hours at night, teachers generally have to take a sick day for that sort of thing. And they certainly can't work from home while watching a sick kid! So how is this easier than my job, exactly?
I think similar arguments can be made about nursing, and even a lot of the lower level "pink collar" office jobs- if our receptionist wants to go run an errand in the middle of the day, she has to arrange someone to cover the front desk. If I want to go run an errand in the middle of the day, I check my calendar to make sure I have no meetings, and then I just go. My job may be demanding, but with those demands comes a fair amount of autonomy and flexibility. Not to mention the money.
But we never hear about how a career in teaching or nursing is incompatible with motherhood. It is just the traditionally male jobs that are. This makes no sense.
And the data don't support that conclusion. I came across fresh evidence of that this week, in this article about the Forbes Most Powerful Women list - apparently 88% of them are mothers. With an average of two kids.
I don't argue with the statement that it can be hard to balance the demands of a career and the demands of family. I have plenty of examples of the challenges in my own life. But I think we do a disservice to all women when we say that these challenges are unique to male-dominated careers. They aren't. And as Nicoleandmaggie point out- for a lot of women, the alternative of being a stay at home mom is just not appealing, even if they don't admit it, because our society judges that a bit harshly (see, for instance, the old "if you don't want to stay home with your kids, why did you have them?" canard).
So I say it is time to apply the advice from GMP and Tina Fey, and ignore the people who say there is no problem for women in the traditionally male-dominated careers and their close cousins, the people who say that the problem is just that the demands of these careers are incompatible with motherhood. The data don't support either of these contentions. We need to charge ahead and just keep working. It won't always be easy. Sometimes sexism will get in our way. Sometimes we'll choose to make adjustments to our career because of family (or other non-work) considerations. And yes, sometimes we won't get something we aim for because someone else really is better suited for the job. But sometimes, we'll get the success we want- even if we have kids. We won't know until we try.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Is This Karma or Just the Universe Laughing at Me?
I have mentioned before that I was a picky eater as a kid. I am partially reformed now, but there are still a few things that I just can't stand, and two of the worst are beans (it's the texture) and peas (it's the taste).
When Pumpkin was about 3, we noticed that her day care reports indicated that she would eat refried beans. In fact, she would eat them all up, which was (and is) unusual for her.
This was big news, since she didn't (and doesn't) eat much in the way of either vegetables or protein.
So I dutifully bought a can of refried beans and made them for dinner one night. I took a deep breath and put some on my plate, figuring this was just one more of the many sacrifices of parenthood.
But she wouldn't touch them. We tried several times, with different brands and cooking techniques, trying to make the beans just like day care. Nothing worked, and we finally accepted that refried beans are a food she will only eat at day care, for reasons that only she knows.
I was secretly relieved. I hate beans.
This week, I looked at one of Petunia's day care reports and noticed that she'd eaten all of her vegetables that day. This is big news, the last time she ate a non-pureed, non-grated vegetable, she was about 10 months old- back then she really liked cooked carrot sticks and green beans.
So what vegetable did she gobble up? You guessed it. Peas.
When Pumpkin was about 3, we noticed that her day care reports indicated that she would eat refried beans. In fact, she would eat them all up, which was (and is) unusual for her.
This was big news, since she didn't (and doesn't) eat much in the way of either vegetables or protein.
So I dutifully bought a can of refried beans and made them for dinner one night. I took a deep breath and put some on my plate, figuring this was just one more of the many sacrifices of parenthood.
But she wouldn't touch them. We tried several times, with different brands and cooking techniques, trying to make the beans just like day care. Nothing worked, and we finally accepted that refried beans are a food she will only eat at day care, for reasons that only she knows.
I was secretly relieved. I hate beans.
This week, I looked at one of Petunia's day care reports and noticed that she'd eaten all of her vegetables that day. This is big news, the last time she ate a non-pureed, non-grated vegetable, she was about 10 months old- back then she really liked cooked carrot sticks and green beans.
So what vegetable did she gobble up? You guessed it. Peas.
Monday, August 22, 2011
A Scene
Tonight was one of the good nights.
I got lucky today, and my drive home had relatively little traffic, so we got home on time even though I had left work a little late. (I was pushing to test an upgrade we'd just made- I wanted to know if I was doomed to have a very bad day tomorrow. I am not.)
It was Petunia's turn to pick a show to watch, and she picked one that Pumpkin also likes, and actually watched it without too many trips out to the kitchen to check that I was still there.
So dinner was ready on time, and we finished eating it on time, and had lots of time to play outside before bath. The girls played happily with their outdoor kitchen toys for awhile, but were starting to disagree about whose turn it was to have the plastic strawberry and things like that, so I suggested a walk. They agreed- they usually will if we ask them if they want to go on a walk- so we headed out through the garage. I intended an old-fashioned walk with no wheels involved, but Petunia wanted in her stroller. So I agreed to get that out and strapped her in. Then Pumpkin wanted to push the umbrella stroller, so I got that down and unfolded it for her. And we set off. But we hadn't even gotten off our driveway before Petunia was saying "wah, wah", which means she wants to get out of her stoller and walk. (We do not, by the way, have some sort of big, long driveway. It is long enough to fit two cars if they park close together. She's just fickle.)
So I got her out of her stroller, and she went toddle-running back to the front door, and banged on it saying "wah, wah!"
In a rare stroke of insight, I realized that she wanted to push a stroller, too, just like her big sister. So I went in and got her the doll stroller. And, thinking ahead, I picked up her baby doll (cleverly named "Baby") and one of Pumpkin's baby dolls, too. Petunia happily snuggled Baby into her stroller and set off after Pumpkin- who ran back to get her baby doll and secured it, not in the stroller, but peaking up from the mesh bag that hangs from the stroller's handles.
And so we set off down our street, two little girls pushing babies in strollers, with their mother following behind, wishing she had her camera.
It was an unusually nice walk, with very little argument from anyone about which way to go or when to turn around. I wish I had put rocks in Pumpkin's stroller, though, to tire her out, because she has called me back into her room 5 times now. I think her bedtime needs to move later, too, but I'm not sure my sanity can take that. So I'm focusing on what a good night it has been up to this point.
I got lucky today, and my drive home had relatively little traffic, so we got home on time even though I had left work a little late. (I was pushing to test an upgrade we'd just made- I wanted to know if I was doomed to have a very bad day tomorrow. I am not.)
It was Petunia's turn to pick a show to watch, and she picked one that Pumpkin also likes, and actually watched it without too many trips out to the kitchen to check that I was still there.
So dinner was ready on time, and we finished eating it on time, and had lots of time to play outside before bath. The girls played happily with their outdoor kitchen toys for awhile, but were starting to disagree about whose turn it was to have the plastic strawberry and things like that, so I suggested a walk. They agreed- they usually will if we ask them if they want to go on a walk- so we headed out through the garage. I intended an old-fashioned walk with no wheels involved, but Petunia wanted in her stroller. So I agreed to get that out and strapped her in. Then Pumpkin wanted to push the umbrella stroller, so I got that down and unfolded it for her. And we set off. But we hadn't even gotten off our driveway before Petunia was saying "wah, wah", which means she wants to get out of her stoller and walk. (We do not, by the way, have some sort of big, long driveway. It is long enough to fit two cars if they park close together. She's just fickle.)
So I got her out of her stroller, and she went toddle-running back to the front door, and banged on it saying "wah, wah!"
In a rare stroke of insight, I realized that she wanted to push a stroller, too, just like her big sister. So I went in and got her the doll stroller. And, thinking ahead, I picked up her baby doll (cleverly named "Baby") and one of Pumpkin's baby dolls, too. Petunia happily snuggled Baby into her stroller and set off after Pumpkin- who ran back to get her baby doll and secured it, not in the stroller, but peaking up from the mesh bag that hangs from the stroller's handles.
And so we set off down our street, two little girls pushing babies in strollers, with their mother following behind, wishing she had her camera.
It was an unusually nice walk, with very little argument from anyone about which way to go or when to turn around. I wish I had put rocks in Pumpkin's stroller, though, to tire her out, because she has called me back into her room 5 times now. I think her bedtime needs to move later, too, but I'm not sure my sanity can take that. So I'm focusing on what a good night it has been up to this point.
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