Ramblings of a pseudo intellectual

Jake is just incredibly sociable.  He smiles and interacts with everyone, and is rarely anything but a complete pleasure when we are out and about.

For that, I am certainly grateful.  It’s definitely fun to run errands with him.  It can certainly be easy to be productive and efficient with him along.

But at the same time, his being so darned cute and affable can be a hindrance.  And not because of him, really.  Because of other people.  He draws people in, makes them like him, makes them feel special with his smile and eye contact.  Certainly this is a great talent, and if he learns to use it well it will be an asset to him in nearly any career he chooses.  But now, I love it and could use to turn it off occasionally.  We hit Costco and the supermarket today, and I couldn’t go more than ten minutes in either store without someone impeding our progress.  I heard about how adorable he is.  Jake got four different games of peek-a-boo.  “He looks like a doll.”  “He’s so happy.”

I try not to get annoyed by it.  I’m fairly certain the people who seek out interacting with me, or with him, it’s to fulfill a social need of theirs, or something.  And naturally I love hearing how cute and sweet and happy my kids are.  But after a while, man, I just want to eat my Costco slice of pizza and find the best dates on the yogurt and get on with my day… before the little cute happy guy gets hungry or tired and isn’t nearly as charming anymore.

We had one of those All-American sort of Sundays.  We slept in a bit, Frank napped on the couch, I vacuumed and washed the floors.  (And color me surprised that Murphy’s Oil Soap has gotten the tile floor in my kitchen more clean than any other cleaner I’ve used on it since we’ve lived here.)  Then we went to a local park and had a BBQ/picnic for dinner, I walked a nature trail with the kids while Frank did some studying, we all played on the playground for a bit, then when we got home I decided to make Rice Krispies treat with Lane to top it all off.

It was all going great until an errant Rice Krispie fell onto the stovetop and Lane tried to pick it up… burning two of her fingers in the process.  :(  I realized what she was doing and grabbed and pulled her hand away before it could have been much worse, thankfully.  But I’m still disappointed that I let it happen at all.  :(  I was right there!  Oh well.  It could have been much worse, and it wasn’t.

They’re not bad.  Her index finger has a blister just a bit bigger than the size of a pencil eraser, and her middle finger has one a bit smaller than a pencil eraser.  Oh man, did she cry.  She’s not exactly a child of reasonably-scaled reactions to things (to call her intense is unjust to the word “intense”) so this smallish boo-boo sent her off the deep end.  The wailing went on for at least 20 minutes, followed by sniffling and recurring bouts of tears for 20 minutes after that.  It wasn’t for at least an hour that I managed to get a smile out of her.  We did all the requisite first aid for a second degree burn — cold running water for as long as I could get her to keep her fingers in the bathroom sink, then sitting on the couch watching a baseball game with her fingers in a cup of cold water after that.  (See, baseball!  Even an All-American distraction for my little girl!)

So now she’s in bed, fingers intact.  My heart has mostly recovered.  And hopefully our upstairs neighbor hasn’t called Child & Family Services on us.

We’re on about day ten of stickiness.  Even though it hasn’t been super hot, the humidity just will not go away, and the forecast doesn’t bode well for me not sweating all over myself.  Oh well, life could be worse.

We went to see Wall-E today.  Two big thumbs up from me, and the rest of the family really liked it too.  I loved the storyline — it was really thought-provoking in terms of conservation & consumerism, and delivered a sobering message without being preachy.  It definitely reframed some of my thoughts around what I might “need”.  I’d been ruminating on that as it is, as Lane has started noticing advertising and marketing gimmicks and I’m trying to show her them for what they are.  Does she want that tube of toothpaste because she thinks it will make her teeth really clean, or because it will taste good, or is it just because it has Diego on it?  Yes, the Aqua Globes on the infomercial are cool, and yes we do have plants, but our watering can works just fine, we don’t need hand-blown glass globes to automatically deliver the perfect amount of water for up to two weeks!

In trying to help Lane see through this mental clutter, I’ve started to realize how much of it I have, and how I sometimes fail to see around the obstacles that the media has planted in my mental path.  I’ve spent a long time really digging Burberry plaid.  Why?  I do find the pattern visually appealing… but do I like it more because of the illusion of status it might convey?  Probably.  I drive a Honda Odyssey right now.  We bought it with the intention that we would take care of it and it would be driven until it simply could not be driven any more.  It boggles the mind how many times people have called that into question — do I really want to drive a car into the ground?  What if it lasts another ten years?  Do I want to be driving a 15-year-old vehicle?  Part of me does cringe at that… ugh.  But why do I cringe?  Is there anything fundamentally flawed about loyalty to a vehicle that continues to serve its purpose, that being to get me and my family and my stuff (some of which I probably don’t need anyway) from Point A to Point B and back again?  Why should any part of my brain worry about the impression someone might get because I don’t have the latest model?

We are in the process of buying a house.  This whole foray brings up a related set of values and perceptions.  Frank and I were contemplating buying a 3 bedroom ranch, and my in-laws (people who are not generally the keep-up-with-the-Joneses type) were convinced it simply could not be big enough for our family.   First of all, it was more than big enough for us.  Maybe not for all our ’stuff’ too — but that could be rectified via a garage sale, Craigslist and Freecycle.  Regardless, my brother and I grew up in a 3 bedroom ranch that wasn’t any bigger than the house Frank and I were considering, and my childhood house was probably smaller.  Before we bought the 3 bedroom ranch, my family and I were in a 3 bedroom cape cod, which was DEFINITELY smaller than the ranch we bought when I was 13… and while it may have lacked for space (especially in the closet department) we survived.  The house we are now under contract on is definitely bigger, a 4 bedroom raised ranch with a living room and family room and roomy master suite with two closets, and a dining room and huge deck and big backyard.  We decided to buy it not because it was “more house” but mainly because it was very close to my in-laws’ house.  That it is bigger and more updated is simply a bonus (until I start thinking about the bigger mortgage that comes with it.)  Yet a part of me still feels a big oodgy when I mentally compare it to other people’s houses.  How does it compare, and how will others compare their house to mine?

This rat race, it is a hard habit to break.  And it seems so fundamentally pervasive in our culture.  It must tie somehow to some mental process, some functioning of the human psyche that served us well for survival when we all were hunting and gathering and trying to avoid saber-toothed tigers lest we become an entree.  Perhaps it helped to ensure our survival, if we always strove to collect more berries than the people in the next cave.  But it’s time to draw the proverbial line in the sand.  I’ve collected enough berries.

Sesame Street is a staple in our house.  We TiVo it and it is one of few shows the kids get to watch on a regular basis.

A couple different episodes have been showing up regularly on the DVR schedule.  One has Mr. Noodle (actually, Mr. Noodle’s brother, Mr. Noodle) lip-syncing to an opera.  Another has Andrea Bocelli singing Elmo an operatic lullaby.  Lane HATES both of these segments.  I’m not using the word ‘hate’ lightly.  She hides like she’s scared of the singing.  She says she isn’t scared of it, but that she doesn’t like it.  She won’t let me turn it off, but she still leaves the room or quietly hides behind me until each segment is over.

Lane has a history of being averse to singing…. especially MY singing.  It is only recently that she’s actually asked me to sing.  When she was two years old, she would yell at me when I sang.  “STOP SINGING MOMMY!  NO!!!“  If I didn’t stop it reduced her to tears.  Perhaps I am a bit cruel, but it was pretty funny.  So nowadays, she actually does let me sing, and asks me to sing sometimes too.  So that she is showing this aversion to opera isn’t exactly a surprise.

Lack of sleep put little damper on the fun, suffice it to say.  We had a really good time.  Jake completely crashed in the stroller around 4:30 and stayed crashed until we loaded him into the car at 6:00.  We went out to dinner at Red Robin (first time for most of us, in every way it was a better experience than TGI Friday’s) and Lane crashed about two minutes into our car ride home and slept the full two hours of the trip, waking only a couple miles from home.  So now, she is watching Family Guy with Frank… something that happens a little too much than I really care for, but as I decreed yesterday, Frank sucks.

To be fair, I am not always a stellar parent either.

After we got home, we got Jake to bed and Lane and I took a long bath together, which we don’t do too often and I usually use as an opportunity to have a Q & A about our bodies.  I just let her ask me any questions she has about how bodies work or about body parts.  We talked about why I have boobs, and that she might grow a baby in her belly when she’s a grown-up like me, and how food turns into poop and juice turns into pee-pee, and why boys only have one penis and how she’ll never have a penis because she’s a girl, and why Mike Wazowski only has one very big eye.

I love having these conversations with her, but they sometimes bring forth a mindset that creates very interesting talks later on…

Shortly after the bath, Lane walked into the bathroom while Frank was peeing, and she then came out and we had the ensuing conversation, somewhat paraphrased but pretty close to the original:

Lane:  “Daddy has a penis too.  A REALLY BIG penis.”

Me, after a pause to suppress a peal of laughter:  “Yep, Daddy has a penis because he’s a boy, like Jake’s a boy.”

Lane: “Jake has a little teeny tiny penis.”  This sentence is said in a cutesy little voice with accompanying hand gestures.

Me: <stifling insane giggles> “That’s all true.  Daddy is a lot bigger than Jake.  Daddy’s nose is a lot bigger than Jake’s nose, too, right?”

Lane:  “Yeah… Daddy’s penis is a lot bigger than Jake’s.  Someday Jake will be bigger and his penis will be bigger, right?”

Me:  “Yep, Jake is going to keep getting bigger, just like you keep getting bigger.  Someday he’ll be as big as Daddy.”

Lane: “And he’ll learn to go potty on the toilet, too!”

Me:  “He sure will.  (to Frank, who is still in the bathroom)  Are you overhearing this conversation, Frank?”

Frank: (muffled through bathroom door) “Yes, unfortunately.”

We got to Pennsylvania at about 2:00 p.m.  It was expected to be really rainy, so we’d sort of planned to play the afternoon by ear.  We could maybe go down to Philly and check out the art museum, or a cool children’s museum called the Please Touch Museum.  Or we could take advantage of the hotel pool for the afternoon, or hit the local mall and just stroll around.  Options abounded.  But once we got here, our room was not yet ready, and the rain seemed to be holding off for the afternoon, so since we have season’s passes we headed over to Sesame Place for a couple hours.  The kids got to go on every ‘dry’ ride once, we saw the Abby Cadabby show, and Lane got to hug Zoe and Baby Bear and Grover.  Just a generally smilific afternoon.  (And, let it be noted, you may only use the word “smilific” if you’ve spend the day in a place like Sesame Place.)

Then we came and checked into the hotel around 5:00, met up with Dave & Renee and the twins, who are in the adjoining room, so we got to enjoy a few minutes of toddler & preschooler screeches as they scurried through the adjoining room doors and discover the identical rooms on each side.

Once the novelty of the screeches abated, we headed out to dinner.  In some crazy hallucinogenic state we decided to take the whole crew to TGI Friday’s for dinner.  Yep, four adults and four short people.

Actually, it was good.  Once we sat down.  The restaurant’s promise of a 30 minute wait somehow became nearly 70 minutes, and if you’ve ever tried to entertain four very short people for that long just outside a TGI Friday’s…. well, it ain’t no picnic that’s for darn tootin’.  But once we were inside, we got the kids their food stat, ours came shortly after, we actually enjoyed a bit of adult conversation (smattered with the occasional talking-by-spelling-and-acronyms that seems to happen more as your kids get old enough to hear you speak a hundred words and zero in on the only word you don’t ever want them to repeat, EVER).

After that, we got a quickie dessert a la the McDonald’s drive-thru, and are now on to the oh-so-tantalizing fiasco that is Putting The Kids To Sleep In A Strange Place.  Has anyone figured this out?  Because I sure haven’t.  Right now it is after midnight and both kids are still awake, which on a normal night actually isn’t that obscene for our family, but they were up earlier than normal this morning and had a pretty busy day.  Naturally it doesn’t help that right after dinner, during the three minutes I ran into Target to get a couple snacks and a couple drinks that Frank let Jake fall asleep in the car.  Nor does it help that when I wanted to start bedtime, despite strong suggestions from me that Frank postpone or relocate such activity, that Frank insisted on studying in the room with a light on.  Can you tell I’m trying to pin this all on Frank??!  Well, I am.  I mean, come on.  Help me out a little here, dude.

So a bit ago, I literally threw up my arms in exasperation, gave both kids to Frank, and am sitting here on the hotel’s WiFi writing this and stewing in my own annoyance.  And Frank’s getting frustrated with the whole situation because he’s now personally vested in trying to get them to sleep.  Imagine that.

Assuming any of us get any sleep tonight, tomorrow should be a day filled with rides and water slides and lunch with the Sesame Street characters and hopefully more smilificness and not so much of oh-my-gosh-these-exhausted-kids-are-making-me-craziness.

We got some great news yesterday: Lane got a spot in our county’s Universal Pre-K program!  This means she gets to go to preschool starting in September for 5 days a week, 2.5 hours a day, at no cost to us.  Given the very tight budget we are going to have to be on once we own this house, ‘no cost to us’ is an incredibly wonderful thing.

The best part of the news is that she was placed at our first choice school.  The school is run by a local agency that specializes in services for the disabled; the preschool is an offshoot of their programs.  Lane’s class specifically is a blended class: half the children in each class are ‘typical’ kids (like Lane) and half are kids with some early-intervention type needs - speech therapy, sensory issues, some minor motor development issues.  I fully expect that when I visit and volunteer in the class, I won’t be able to tell the typical kids from the others.  There are other classes at the school for kids with greater needs: classes for kids with autism, classes for kids with physical disabilities, and some programs for older kids with needs, too.

As such, it’s a school with an incredible wealth of benefits.  All the teachers have master’s degrees in early childhood education (and the assistants all have at least associate’s degrees, most have bachelor’s degrees).  And granted, an advanced degree does not always equal a great teacher, but in my mind it reduces the likelihood a great deal of having a teacher who completely sucks.  The school has a full-time staff of professionals: a nurse, a psychologist, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist.  And while Lane isn’t entering school with any sort of impending need, these professionals are there for us as well.  As a couple examples, the speech therapist will spend time with all the kids in Lane’s class and provide any assistance as the need arises.  The occupational therapist comes in and helps all the kids with lessons in motor skills, such as tying shoes and holding a pencil correctly.  If Lane has any behavior issues, I can meet with the psychologist and get advice.

I have to give a proper shout-out and thanks to my friend Good Fountain, whose daughter goes to a blended preschool.  Her insight not only opened my mind to the possibility, but actually made it a desirable type of preschool for me to seek out.  Without hearing about her experience with Chee, I’m not sure I could manage to be so open-minded.  Thanks, love!

My heart aches a little at sending her to school five days a week, but at the same time she’s a kid that’s slow-to-warm-up, so the continual exposure to the same classroom and the same kids will be good for her.   I’m sure we’ll struggle with drop-offs for awhile… Lane is a mama’s girl, through-and-through, and when she went to day care it often took her 10-15 minutes to ‘warm up’ to being there so that I could leave without tears.  The teachers there thought I was a bit wacky for spending 15 minutes in the classroom every morning (the other parents were mostly dump-and-go, which worked for them… but the days I left her crying always ended up being bad days at work for me emotionally, so those 15 minutes were as much for her as for me). And as far as five days a week… there’s no reason why she can’t play hooky once in a while.   ;)  I’m sure we’ll have to meet attendance standards of some sort, but chances are we’ll *just* meet them.

Anyway, I’m excited.  I really feel like it’s an environment where she’ll thrive, and I’m excited to get some one-on-one time on a consistent basis with Jake, too.  (I get more one-on-one time with Lane right now, because Jake is so easy-going!  He’s much ‘easier’ - for lack of a better word - to leave with my in-laws or Frank for a couple hours.)