This morning I had the luxury of going grocery shopping minus the kids. It is not until you are a parent of two or more that you fully start appreciating this as a luxury.
So I decided to go two different places. Instead of just getting my produce at Safeway (which honestly I am often not thrilled with the quality of the organic so usually end up with conventional) I decided to visit the local fruit stand. Our local farmers market opens this Friday, but I needed things before then. This fruit stand is small & locally owned. The manager has always been friendly. It is a no-frills place with a limited organic section but I like seeing what is coming in season in WA and supporting a small business. But I am going to think twice about going back there.
When I entered the store this morning the manager was talking outside it to someone. He saw me go in out of the corner of his eye probably. So when his conversation ended he came into the store to greet me. But his first words were not "hello, how are you?" they were "wow!" pause "wow". I could guess, but did not want to make assumptions, so innocently said "what?" His response started off a bad chain-reaction of a conversation "you are pregnant. Really pregnant!" pause "when are you due?" My standard response is "not for a while still" because really, why would strangers need to know more than that? And does the actual date really matter unless it is something like, tomorrow? So I gave him my standard response. But he felt the need to follow-up with him "how long?" so I told him Sept 3. He said "oh, that is a while still. I thought you must be due really soon". I continued to try my best not to be annoyed or offended as I selected my fruits and vegetables and casually ambled away from him. But he piped up with "it must be a big strong boy!" Seriously sir? Was that necessary? "No, its a girl" I say. And then because I was feeling defensive I said something like "its my third kid so my body knows how to grow." And his filter must be completely broken because he says "are the other 2 boys?". "No, they are girls as well". And his final foot-in-mouth "you gonna keep trying until you have a boy?" Now some of these comments or questions could have been innocent. Some I get from people I know. Maybe I was being an overly-sensitive pregnant lady, but I felt like he crossed the line on more than one of these. He was probably just trying to be friendly and have a conversation based on the obvious fact that I am pregnant.
I have been looking at my baby bump lately and thinking "it could stop getting bigger at any point now!" But I know it won't. I will find out at my next appointment, but I can guess that I had a significant "growth spurt". But I do not think it is so extreme that strangers would think I was due any day now. But of course I am paranoid now.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Water Fun
Yesterday we went to Matt's cousin Susy's house to hang out & let the kids play together. I did not take any pictures, but the girls had a blast playing on the inflatable water slide like this. They had warm water hooked up to it so the girls did not freeze since the weather was probably not even 70. The girls had a ton of fun climbing up, sliding down, and splashing in the pool. Plus when they got too cold they could sit under the heat lamp. I told Matt I want a heat lamp for our yard!
When we were at my parents house over Mothers day weekend they got water fun too, and that time the weather was in the low 80s. We stuck a house on a plastic slide and that was fun. But even more fun was Aubree's slip & slide. Etta discovered that she liked it best when she was naked. So Addie got naked too. Aubree watched a lot of the time as her two silly naked cousins splashed & cavorted around!
When we were at my parents house over Mothers day weekend they got water fun too, and that time the weather was in the low 80s. We stuck a house on a plastic slide and that was fun. But even more fun was Aubree's slip & slide. Etta discovered that she liked it best when she was naked. So Addie got naked too. Aubree watched a lot of the time as her two silly naked cousins splashed & cavorted around!
Just a couple pictures
The girls getting along and smiling nice.
Because I don't usually pull out my camera when they are pulling out each others hair.
Addie in an extreme case of hiding. She fell asleep like this!
On Fridays she does not have class during naptime so usually I have her do one hour of quiet play time in her bedroom. She told me she thought she heard me walking upstairs and she wanted to surprise me be hiding. So she hung her blanket over the side of the bed to cover it, then crawled under. But her hour of quiet time was not actually up & I did not know what she was up to, so I did not go in there.
And she was obviously tired because she fell asleep hiding under her bed like this.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
A name for our girl
GIRLS
1. Sophia
2. Isabella
3. Emma
4. Olivia
5. Ava
6. Emily
7. Abigail
8. Madison
9. Mia
10. Chloe
2. Isabella
3. Emma
4. Olivia
5. Ava
6. Emily
7. Abigail
8. Madison
9. Mia
10. Chloe
This is not the list of our favorites. It is the list of the top 10 baby girl names for 2011. So I am pretty sure we will be steering clear of them :)
Some of Etta's favorite books at 2 1/2
The Cat in the Hat
The Little Engine that Could (original by Watty Piper)
Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day
Going on a Bear Hunt
Where the Wild Things Are
Etta seems to like books that have a character in them that is naughty. Or a situation where things go bad. Or something is "scary".
Addie does not like some of these books for those very same reasons. She does not want scary or things going wrong or people being naughty or making messes.
Now I know that comparing children is really not beneficial and labeling them as a certain kind of child can do more harm than good. So I am refraining from delving into their differences. I am just pointing out their current likes or dislikes.
Speaking of parenting children, I am currently attending a 7 week series called "Sanity circus" (hokey name but good material). I am not sure how much I will blog about it because there is so much information and it would be so hard to condense while still being clear as to why certain parenting tools are encouraged or discouraged. But it is certainly making me think about how I was raised, where my pitfalls as a parent are. It is motivating me to read more parenting books and to try to start making some small changes to my parenting and go from there.
The Little Engine that Could (original by Watty Piper)
Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day
Going on a Bear Hunt
Where the Wild Things Are
Etta seems to like books that have a character in them that is naughty. Or a situation where things go bad. Or something is "scary".
Addie does not like some of these books for those very same reasons. She does not want scary or things going wrong or people being naughty or making messes.
Now I know that comparing children is really not beneficial and labeling them as a certain kind of child can do more harm than good. So I am refraining from delving into their differences. I am just pointing out their current likes or dislikes.
Speaking of parenting children, I am currently attending a 7 week series called "Sanity circus" (hokey name but good material). I am not sure how much I will blog about it because there is so much information and it would be so hard to condense while still being clear as to why certain parenting tools are encouraged or discouraged. But it is certainly making me think about how I was raised, where my pitfalls as a parent are. It is motivating me to read more parenting books and to try to start making some small changes to my parenting and go from there.
Happy (belated) Mothers Day!
A wonderful essay on motherhood for all you moms
Anna Quindlen on Motherhood
All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves.
Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.
Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with “Goodnight Moon” and “Where the Wild Things Are,” they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations –what they taught me was that they couldn’t really teach me very much at all.
Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a
timeout. One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden
infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.
I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton’s wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.
Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language – mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her
geography test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insisted I
include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald’s drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?
But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
Even today I’m not sure what worked and what didn’t, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I’d done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity.
That’s what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.
–Anna Quindlen is a Pulizer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author.
Anna Quindlen on Motherhood
All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves.
Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.
Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with “Goodnight Moon” and “Where the Wild Things Are,” they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations –what they taught me was that they couldn’t really teach me very much at all.
Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a
timeout. One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden
infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.
I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton’s wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.
Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language – mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her
geography test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insisted I
include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald’s drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?
But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
Even today I’m not sure what worked and what didn’t, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I’d done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity.
That’s what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.
–Anna Quindlen is a Pulizer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author.
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