Culture clash

We found a more Californian use for the lovely "soft boiled egg with soldiers plate" that Grandma bought.

California Dreaming

The geekyfamily had been contemplating leaving the golden state. A potential career opportunity for me had us considering upping sticks and moving east. Ultimately the job fell through, and the move is not going to happen, but in considering it, we meandered conversationally through many different future scenarios for our lives. Who's career ascent will we follow? What kind of a community do we want to raise our family in? How far away from our extended family can we be?

For now we're going to carry on being a San Francisco family. Last year, after years of yearning after the pictures in "better homes and gardens" we finally bit the bullet and had our little backyard landscaped into a city oasis, and it would have been a shame to leave before we got a chance to enjoy it. While considering this other job, I was offered a great new position at my existing company, so the sting of this other position closing up is not so bitter.

I think we could have done it and been happy, left San Francisco behind as a chapter in our lives. I expect one day we will.

One day back in February when I first became aware of the job I considered, I took a day off with the kids and took them to the exploratorium. I drove back, climbing high through Pacific Heights with the sky azure and the bay glittering behind me. A ridiculous picture postcard day, made more ridiculous by the fact that we just have so many impossibly beautiful days here.

I moved here in 1996. My hair was long with a thick platinum streak. I dressed from thrift stores and had my belly button pierced. That afternoon I felt the twenty five year old I used to be looking at this woman in her Toyota Prius, wearing a worn overwashed Banana Rebublic T shirt and jeans, peering in the rearview mirror at her happy sleepy kids. I felt the intervening years between her and me fly past as the car efficiently powered up and coasted down the hills that I had staggered over between bars and clubs in unsuitable heels, then jogged up and down the next day in an attempt to shake the hangover. I felt so fortunate for the life that has happened to me here, and I'm glad that we will be staying a bit longer.

imagination

We had a little kiddy pantomime going on this morning, while geekydaddy and I hurriedly tidied the house for our house cleaners. Past disasters mean that we have quite the routine; hide coffee ground filled cafetiere, since past attempts of theirs to clean it have resulted in breakage or lost bits, ditto any expensive wineglasses. Empty dishwasher, otherwise come home to find mixture of clean and dirty things in it, and take down recycling, trash and composting, otherwise come home to find it in all the wrong bins (despite clear instructions on trashcan lids in Spanish, English and several other languages). The effort is worth it for the lovely clean house to come home to once every two weeks.

Putting away toys always inspires the kids to dig through the toy bins and find things they suddenly want to play with. Geekygirl found her toy dog leashes (yes I know, not the safest toy, visions of hog tied, strangulated children come to mind, but since she was always playing with the actual dogs leash, I ended up buying a couple, and a stuffed dog to put them on, for play).

Geekygirl is a garrulous child of great imagination. Wandering the house, she chattered away to her imaginary big sister Leah, her baby doll in its carrier and her imaginary dog Budu, represented by the empty blue leash she was trailing around with her. Budu, she described in great detail to me as "not too big and not too small, brown and fluffy and if you step on him he will bite you, but not hard"

Geekybaby had picked up the other leash and was also trailing it around with him as he followed his sister, chattering away in baby nonsense.

I got to wondering, "what is he imagining?" does a 15 month old have a rich imaginary life, already? Does he see in his minds eye a dog attached to that leash, or is he just copying the actions of his sister? Was he trying to tell me about his dog with his coos and burbles? He can understand so much, but without much language yet, his inner life is a mystery to us.

No doubt we could probably pop babies into MRI machines and discover what areas of their brains light up, and figure out how rich their daydreams are. Maybe someone already has. Whatever those findings may be, I think that he is already learning to use his imagination, and we are just going to have to wait a bit longer for him to be able to tell us about it.

Mother's day essay

I spent a lovely hour wallowing in a bubble bath this afternoon, while the babies napped, goopy face pack on, glass of rose in one hand, book in the other. Since entering this new world of motherhood over three years ago, I've found myself drawn more to non fiction; books about women, society, work, motherhood. Maybe I'm just trying to find the perfect thesis to validate my choices. Today I was reading "Mommy wars" an anthology of essays edited by Leslie Morgan Steiner, who blogs at mommytrackd. Rather than being about mothers at war with one another, it is tales of individual women and their families, sharing their struggles and their solutions, instead of judging each other. Reading all these different perspectives brought out my introspective side, and I started to wonder, what kind of mother am I?

I"m the kind of mum who makes organic chicken stew from scratch and freezes in in batches to be taken to preschool for lunch.

I'm the kind of mum who feeds her kids microwaved frozen meatballs, mixed veg and spaghetti O's.

I"m the kind of mum who buys foam sheets, glitter and glue and spends the afternoon doing art projects

I'm the kind of mother who blogs about being a mum while her three year old is bouncing on the couch trying to get her attention.

I'm the kind of mum who gets down on the floor to be a human climbing frame for a toddler, dances to the Wiggles, and pretends to be Ariel. Or Aurora. Or Dora.

I'm the kind of mum who parks the kids in front of a Dora DVD so that I can read my book about parenting in peace.

I'm the kind of mum who is on the preschool steering committee, takes time off work to read to the class, gives gifts to the teachers, and spends a lazy day at home when one of the kids is just a little under the weather.

I'm the kind of mum who can only seem to remember show and tell day occasionally, has no spare clothes in my kids locker for accidents, so they come home in trousers saying "school pants" in red marker, and takes them to daycare dosed up with tylenol rather than stay home and miss a crucial meeting

I'm a mum who works full time outside the home at a job I love, and am so grateful to the myriad, nameless, forgotten working women of the past who paved the way for those of us who choose to work and mother.

I'm a mum who is fortunate enough to have fantastic daycare, a supportive employer, and a wonderful husband, and wishes that all women had these options.

I'm the mother of the most gorgeous, smartest and funniest little girl and boy in the world.

the never ending laundry basket

Laundry, the bane of my weekend. Two kids and two adults generate a lot, but I wade through it every weekend, transferring clothes from laundry basket, to ancient washing machine, to equally ancient dryer and then back into their respective drawers, ready to be worn all over again. The kids basket, in particular, always seemed to be fuller than I expexted. How many clothes can two kids dirty in a week?

This past weekend I was transfering little shirts and pants into the kids drawers, and I noticed in my peripheral vision that Geekybaby was trying to particpate. I suddenly realized that I had put the same pair of little jeans into the drawer three times. That is when I figured out that Geekybaby and I had a little comedy routine going on. I put some items into the drawer, and while my back was turned to collect more clean items from the basket, he, behind me so out of sight, would take the clean items back out of the drawer, and as I turned back to the drawer again to put in fresh items, he, behind me again, was putting them back into the basket. He was oh, so pleased to be helping his mummy in her game of 'infinate laundry', that I had to laugh.

At this point the mystery of the childrens enormous laundry pile was becoming clear. This week I inspected it more closely and noticed that it was filled with clothes that had not actually been worn, and tellingly, these were items only from the drawers within Geekybaby's reach. On several occasions now I have spied him happily emptying the contents of his drawers into the laundry.

What with Geekygirl's obsession with wearing only one or two favourite items of clothing, and sneakily removing these from the laundry and putting them back in her drawers, I don't know whether I am coming or going. I'm tempted at this point just to throw them in the bath with their clothes on each night and call it a day.

timing is critical

Last night Geekydaddy was bathing geekybaby.

"when should I get him out of the tub?" he called out

"It's not late, so when he's not having fun anymore" I yelled back.

Five minutes later I hear "Help, bring a diaper. Argh, Oh No. Poop in the tub"

As one of us cleaned up the baby and the other sterilized the tub and myriad bath toys I saaid

"The answer to your question should always be, 'before he poops in the tub'"

Anger management

We're dealing with a very angry three year old at the moment. Tiny things fill her tiny being with rage. A shoe on the wrong foot, a marker pen that dries up, a dress with sleeves that are too tight, a request to get in the bathtub, and worst of all, getting the response 'No' to a question.

I'm a big believer in the philosophy that it is OK, in fact healthy, to get angry. It is the method of expressing that anger that needs molding by us parents and teachers into a socially acceptable form. Perhaps swearing should not be quite so taboo. There is nothing quite like spitting a satisfying obsenity when you drop a book on your foot. Having to teach my child how to express anger in a healthy way makes me realize I barely know how to do it myself, and usually need to have a large glass of wine before spilling the words out.

We are not there yet with geekygirl, that is for sure. She isn't hitting the booze, thank goodness, instead hitting others is the reaction that we get most often, both at home and and preschool. One particular child, a boy we will call Billy, seems to bear the brunt of her rage at preschool. This boy has been her friend since they were both tiny (in fact I think he was the one she used to bite, back in the toddler class. I guess looking at it in that light we have made some progress). They are fast friends, but as soon as they get upset with one another, out come Geekygirl's fisticuffs. To his credit this little boy does not hit back. The fact that at 3 he is already a foot taller than all the other kids, and if you look at his dad who is over 6 ft and at least 300lb, is likely going to be a bruiser of a kid, makes me wonder why this is the lad Geekygirl chooses to pick fights with. Sometimes she manages to control her hands, but instead brings our her best insults "you are a poo poo head (also stongly discouraged at school, but in my opinion better than violence), or to me and her father "I DON'T love you anymore".

It has been a week of anger, rage and contrition. We had one morning where, because apparently all the clothes in her closet were unwearable (I confess to removing a few tattered favourites in secret in the hope some of the newer, cuter, less orphanage like items would find favour), she walked into the kitchen and hit her dad before he had the chance to even say good morning.

That morning, I think it was Wednesday, was spent mainly in time out, and culminated with a wailing child with no shoes on being plugged into her cat seat and whisked off to school, leaving us parents exhausted and drained before our work day had begun. The exasperation of trying to help Geekygirl control her behavior is thrown into contrast, perhaps too much, by the adorableness of Geekybaby. Now toddling in his robust arm swinging manner, he will enter the screaming mayhem that is our kitchen proffering his shoes to be put on, or a book to be read, full of smiles and giggles and placid tractability.

But we made it through the week, with a lot of time outs straight out of supernanny, where it takes 10 minutes of restarting the timer to get a calm three minutes, a lot of "well I still love you, even when I feel angry". Today we have made a sticker chart, a hitting free day will earn a sticker, and five stickers some kind of fabulous prize, I think an Ariel costume. I'm a bit worried this might be too high a bar though, since despite good intentions, I have been hit (albeit not very emphatically) twice already today. My new idea is to put 6 sweeties in a jar, each day, and take one out for every hit. Whats left can be consumed with dinner. Better living through bribery.