positive

Okay, I'll stop being so mopey and say something positive. The husband's new city is very nice. It's a "master-planned community" with lots of cool shops and fabulous restaurants and fun stuff for kids because lots of rich people live there. It's a little too close to Extremely Large City for my comfort and a little too rich for our bank account. But the adjacent town where we hope to live is also nice, not quite so "master-planned," and close enough for husband to commute easily. It has stores and restaurants and parks. We live in a tiny little place right now and have to drive twenty miles to College Town for any of those things--seriously, can't even find the food I want at the local grocery store. There are several great preschools to choose from, all of them with openings for three-year-olds. None of them have openings for infants, but that is an entirely different issue and I still haven't decided what to do with Annabelle or when to do it. I'm content with her strapped to my chest for the time being.

Off topic, I've been amused at the names of preschools and daycare centers as I've been researching. Many of them are descriptively titled, "Christian Church Preschool" or "Local City Montessori." Others are more creative, "All God's Little Children" or "Frogs and Fairies." Others emphasize academics, "Academy of Excellence"--seriously! They love to use the words "academy" and "excellence" and "learning center" in various ways. Even the in-home child care providers with a maximum of, like, eight kids give their operations names like "Little Angels Academy" or "Sugar and Spice Child Development Center." Not exaggerating, people.

It makes me want to put a sign on my door: Mommy, Ph.D.'s Center of Excellence for the Nurturing of Girl Geniuses. Maximum capacity: 2.

love my tie-dyed baby shirt

Thanks for the compliments on the tie-dyed baby shirt :) I dyed several onesies and shirts before RB was born because I was frustrated with the limited offerings--why does everything have to be pink or blue? I love my tie-dyed baby clothes.

Here she is...

Our Easter baby is here!

Annabelle was born on Easter Sunday at 4:51 p.m. She weighed 8 lbs. 4 oz. and is 21 inches long. Details coming soon :)

second child anxiety

No baby yet. Still holding.

Yesterday I took RB with me to my doctor's appointment and she thought it was really exciting. She talked to the doctor the whole time we were there, telling her all about her baby sister and what she was like when she was a baby and asking her what she was doing to Mommy. She has been telling us all about what she "remembers" about being a baby. After that we went to the hospital for a special sibling tour, which included about fifteen three-year-olds and their pregnant mothers. Quite an experience! But it was surprisingly hard for me. I fought tears the whole time, and I feel like crying again thinking about it. It's hard for me to think of RB as a big sister. I'm not worried about my ability to care for the baby. I am concerned about RB and how she will feel. I don't want her to feel displaced or less important. But also it's hard to see how mature and independent she is, a feeling that is intensified by the fact that her days as the baby of the house are almost over. As she has grown up, I have not missed the stage that passed. I've never looked back at her days as an infant wistfully because the toddler stages have been so exciting and, for me, much more fun. But now that there will be a new baby and RB is taking on the role of big sister, I do feel some sadness and anxiety over her growing up.

One thing I have thought about since she was a baby was how I would care for a second baby--I realized right away that it would have to be different. There have been so many times when RB and I have been the only people in the whole world, snuggled up together, sometimes all day long when she was small enough to stay in one place for more than ten minutes. Back then my worry was how I would care for the baby; I knew that I couldn't just rely on how my experience with RB but that I would have to learn a whole new way of parenting for that child. Even though that is still true, I'm not worried about it. I'm confident that I will do just fine with the baby. I worry about how I will have to change the way I care for RB. I know I will take care of her and give her attention and show her plenty of love, but it will have to be different in some ways.

And I'm extremely pregnant and hormonal, so I'll spend the day crying over it now.

a rare photo

I just posted this on my family blog, but I thought it was worth sharing here, too. It makes me happy.

dining out with RB

Here's a kid story for you.

We went out to eat with friends Wednesday night, and we sat on the patio at the restaurant. Like typical outdoor furniture, the chairs were metal with no cushions and had openings in the seats. RB was wearing a dress and had it hiked up because she has decided she can't sit on her dress (very attractive at church when she pulls her skirt up to her chest before she sits down). In the middle of dinner, she turned to me and said, matter-of-factly, "I'm tee-tee-ing" (apparently she did not think this one warranted a trip to the potty). I looked down and, sure enough, I saw a steady flow coming through the holes in her chair down to the floor and rolling into the grass. What to do? I just waited until she was finished and then took her to the bathroom to change her underwear. She got nothing on her dress, no puddle in the chair, no puddle under the chair--no one around even knew what happened, including the people at our table! And the mess just rolled off the porch into the grass. I think we'll sit outside from now on!

more insights from the child

Yesterday, RB said to me, "You're my mommy-baby-sister." Even though she talks to her unborn sister and even tells her, "Stop kicking Mommy, Annabelle," she still thinks of us as a package deal. It made me think of the concept of maternal-fetal conflict and how before ultrasounds could project images of fetuses separate from mothers, the mother and the unborn child could not really be imagined as separate individuals. I do love the technology available to me to let me hear my baby's heart and even see her face before she's born. But I also prefer to think of us still as one unit. We share a body, blood, nutrients, everything. One day she'll be a separate person, but for now we are "mommy-baby-sister" all in one.

And I love when my toddler gives me such wonderful insight into how she understands the world.

The child encounters religious ritual

(Which doesn't happen too often for a Baptist)

I've talked a bit about religion on the blog, and my dissertation (shall we assume for the moment that I am writing a dissertation) is on religion, but I can't recall how much I've revealed about my own religion. So I'm Baptist (insert stereotypes and assumptions here). My daughter goes to a Baptist church every Sunday, and she goes to a Lutheran preschool during the week. My sister-in-law (who is especially Baptist) was appalled that we were sending her to a Lutheran preschool, but my response was that they are not teaching her Lutheran doctrine at two years old. But this week I found out that they were baptising baby dolls at school (seriously!), and RB said that she is going to baptise her sister when she's born. This is an interesting coincidence because on Sunday we are going to a Methodist church to see a friend's baby baptised. Baptists don't baptise babies. I plan to bring Rebekah into the service at least for the baptism instead of sending her straight to the nursery. I think she will be very interested in the baptism since she has "participated" in one at school.

I don't have any specific thoughts on this right now--I'm sort of trying to work out how to handle it. Some of my questions are, What does RB understand about baptism at this age? What does she think is happening? Will she notice that her sister will not be baptised (at least not as an infant)? Will she ask if she was baptised? Should I explain that some churches baptise babies while others don't? Should I wait until she asks?

Our church does have a nice baby dedication service that will sort of take the place of a baptism service (certainly not the same thing but it might look similar to a young child). Perhaps it will be enough to explain that some churches use water and some do not. But that's not really the truth. And I have a feeling that it is going to be more complicated than that even for RB.

So this post just sets up the problem. Maybe I will have more later when we start working these things out. For now, I am listening to what she has to say. And she does have things to say.

Maybe she's ready for Butler

After reading so much gender theory, watching my daughter develop a concept of gender fascinates me (and often entertains me).

Sunday morning I put her hair up with a bow, and she looked in the mirror and said, "Now I'm a girl." She messed it up and I had to take it out and start over. When I took it out, she said, "I'm not a girl anymore."

I didn't say anything--sometimes I think it's more important to let her work those things out for herself.

everything is okay; RB makes an observation

Just an update for the kind commenters who expressed support. Dad's okay (reasonably). Mom's okay (resonably). I'm as okay as I ever am. We'll see how next week goes.

RB has brought it to my attention that I talk to myself. A lot. Every day. I never really noticed it, but lately I'll say something, and she'll ask, "What did you say?" Then I realize I'm talking to myself aloud again. Usually she just shrugs it off, but today she asked, "Why do you talk to yourself?" She is starting to figure out that her mother is just a touch crazy. (But she talks to herself, too. Maybe it's genetic. There is a line of crazy women in my family.)

the tomboy and the princess

My mother has decided that RB will be my "tomboy" while AB (who is still in utero) will be my "princess." I don't know how she has come to these conclusions or why there necessarily has to be the dichotomy of tomboy and princess, but there it is.

Recording session

In an effort to do something that resembles work, I tried out the free audio editor I downloaded to make podcasts for my online class. Not to be excluded, Rebekah jumped in my lap, and she had a recording session. If you read my family blog, you've gotten the extended version, but here's a bit for you all. She sang several songs, but the big laugh is my favorite.

Halloween update (and an RB funny)

In case any of you were holding your breath for the resolution of that conflict, we have a Halloween costume. My husband took RB to the store last night to get her a new toothbrush and she came back wearing a bright orange T-shirt with a Jack-o-lantern face. Instant costume. Zero effort.

BTW, the reason they had to get a new toothbrush was that I had somehow lost hers. I tore the house apart looking for it and after two days decided that I would just have to get a new one. She picked out her own Care Bears toothbrush. When she got home she took it out of the bag, showed it off proudly, and then went immediately to the entertainment center, opened the drawer, and there among the DVDs was her old toothbrush, exactly where she had left it (and where Mommy never thought to look). She held them both up and shouted, "Now I have all of them!" Sneaky.

I don't want to do Halloween

I'm so unmotivated in general right now, and that extends to Halloween. I'd really like it to just pass by unnoticed, and RB is young enough that I could get away with that. But my husband was appalled by that suggestion, so I guess we're doing Halloween. So now I need a low-effort, low-cost costume for a small person.

How about a T-shirt that says, "I'm a feminist. We look like everybody else."

the g-word

A few months ago, I started to realize that my daughter is verbally advanced far beyond many children her age. She has a large vocabulary, constructs complex sentence structures, and articulates emotions. I was a bit startled when all of this came together right before her second birthday, partly because I had not really been comparing her to other children her age until then. And I was frustrated because talking about it with other people was difficult.

Of course, I am pleased to see her doing so well, but I was also worried because I wasn't sure what my responsibility should be at that point. How do I respond to this? Does this mean she is gifted? If so, how do I nurture that? When I posted on the blog about it, I used the word gifted. Little did I know how loaded that word is!

I began a web search and started browsing some books on advanced toddlers, and what I found made me very uncomfortable. So much of the information I got began with talk of testing children to see if they are really gifted or just very bright. I am sure that there is a purpose to this distinction and a purpose to academic testing of toddlers, but I can't see what it is. Even the suggestion of it shocked me. I found tons of teaching materials for very young children and information about schools with special curricula, but it all smacked of pressure and pushing and competition, which I think has no place in the life of a two-year-old.

I have worked with RB at home on some academic skills--learning ABCs, numbers, shapes, colors, etc. But in her first two years, I did not rely on books or websites to tell me what to teach her. I watched her. Early on I tried to talk to her about colors, and she clearly had no interest, so I assumed she was too young and dropped it. Later I brought it up again and she was enthusiastic about it, so I thought she must be ready. That's how everything went. If she paid attention to it and enjoyed it, we did it. If not, I just took for granted that it was too soon and left it alone. And it has all been in the context of fun and games and play. RB goes to preschool with a curriculum and lesson plans and all that, but the way it actually happens is more like play time with a theme. One week, it's family members. One week it's food. One week it's the color red. This kind of play-learning, I believe (and I am not an expert on child development, of course), is the only kind appropriate for young children, and it also allows children of many developmental stages to be in the same class, doing activities together, learning at the individual pace of each child.

So the big question I had over the summer was do I teach her to read? I have decided that, no, I will not impose a strutured approach to teaching reading before she goes to kindergarten (but I am not criticizing those who do--this is a very personal choice). She is interested in reading and she loves books, and I am just going to keep reading to her, reading my own books in front of her, singing songs and playing games, and she will show me what she wants to learn. A good friend of mine has a son who is four and reads quite well without a formal curriculum of phonics exercises. He just picked it up by playing games and reading with his mom. Maybe RB will do that. Maybe she will learn to read in kindergarten. And that's totally okay! I learned to read in kindergarten, and I was six years old when I started. And I'm getting a Ph.D. in literature. Clearly, my reading life has gone well.

I think that too many people look at childhood as a race to be the first and the best, and that puts stress and pressure on parents and children alike. It also creates barriers to parents sharing the joyful (and painful) experiences of raising children because of the anxiety of competition among them. I have decided not to worry about that anymore. I will tell my cute kid stories, I will even brag sometimes, and I will happily listen to other parents brag about all of their cute kid stories. And I will not use the word "gifted" anymore. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Fun with Audioblogger

Newsweek: The New First Grade

This is frightening.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14638573/site/newsweek/

Female characters in children's programs

The big news lately is that Sesame Street has introduced its first female leading character. The controversy is that she is very "girly"--a pink and sparkly fairy princess. What I haven't heard discussed is how ridiculous it is that this is Sesame Street's first female leading character.
Here are a couple of short NPR stories on Abby Cadabby:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5641456
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5638389
The person interviewed in the first story comments on the controversy over the "girly-girl" character, say that "Creating characters for girls is the 'challenge of trying to write so that they're reflective of girls and their character, but also are strong and smart and funny.'" This bothered me tremendously because, while I am not a creator of children's programming, I believe that if anyone created a character reflective of my daughter and her character, it would, by definition, be strong and smart and funny.

The lack of female characters in general, especially those in leading roles--whether they are "girly" or not (if you haven't guessed, I am increasingly annoyed by that word)--has bothered me for some time and even more lately. At RB's age she is just beginning to construct a gender identity--she described herself to me as a girl for the first time last week, in the context of trying to get everyone in their proper categories--Mommy and RB are girls and Daddy is a boy. She's learning right now what it means to be a girl. And in the majority of children's books and television shows, what she is being shown is that male is the default gender. The lead characters in children's books and shows are almost always male, and if the lead is female, it is packaged as a "girl's" product, not one that might appeal to all children. I had read about this issue long before I had a child, but I have still been surprised as I have been exploring it myself.

In addition to the lack of female characters in general, so many of the most popular and beloved Disney films are based on an inherently sexist marriage plot. And I don't mean just the ubiquitous princesses, whom I have not yet allowed to infiltrate my home--Lady and the Tramp, The Aristocats, many adorable little animals engaged in the same process as Cinderella and The Little Mermaid.

I am not rejecting these images wholly. In fact, I see an advantage to watching these programs with her, allowing her to enjoy them, but also using them as a vehicle to provide the language to ask important questions and challenge limiting stereotypes as she learns how to be a girl. But I want to balance these with positive images of active girl and boy characters so that she does not, at this crucial stage in her development, learn that male is the right gender and that boys are somehow more active, more powerful, more human, than she is.

I think that Disney's Jo-Jo's Circus, starring a girl clown but not a "girl's show," does a good job with this, and I also appreciate Little Einsteins. A couple of times Little Einsteins has referred to the white male child as the "leader," and he pilots the rocket, but in most of the episodes, I see none of them standing out as in-charge. The team of two boys and two girls work together equally, which is important because RB has already begun to identify herself with the girl characters, especially the blonde girl, Annie, who looks the most like her. Of course, I have yet to see them feature any female artists or composers in their episodes, but RB is too young to realize that.

budding genius

I swear I did not pose this picture--just recorded it for posterity.