Write, Mama. Write.

Toddler boot camp

Things are doggedly unsettled and so, of course, we've simultaneously entered Toddler Boot Camp.  We enjoyed a wonderful parenting class set-up awhile back, where the kiddos played in a delightful space with great supervision and the parents chatted in an attached room.  It was cost-prohibitive but nice.  The disequilibrium discussions there resonated, and I do believe moments of disequilibrium follow you from childhood through life.  Periods of calm rock-a-bye with spans of rockiness, skills and balance are attained and so the push and growth of a new journey begins.  Learning requires a degree of disequilibrium.  This is ever-present at two, and as a parent too.

I wear my teeth down in my sleep, periodically.  I'm supposed to use a bite guard, but lately I feel like I need to wear it all day long as I grit my teeth and steady myself for teachable moment #847 by 9 a.m.  It's all about who controls what, how much, where are the lines, when do they move, who gets to make the choice, is there a choice...  I'm exhausted.  Happy, lazy bath time is a cherry tomato face battle of epic proportions.  Nighttime hugs are withheld, with a smirk.  Two hours into our effort for nap I drudge to my bed and lay there.  It's a throwing, hitting, tantrum-y mess of days and nights here lately.  Out in the world he is the model of excellence in child behavior.  Delightful.  Charming.

I remind myself that this is exactly what he's supposed to do, albeit with more dramatic flair than one might generally muster.  This is exactly what I'm supposed to do too, to help him feel safe.  The other week when he ran to his room disgruntled and slammed the door (never, ever modeled, by the way), the moment should have come with lightening bolts of foreboding.  A teenager would keep the door closed for awhile and zone out to an iPod, but a two-and-a-half year old comes back with determined persistence.  So I grit, and admire the zeal if not the delivery.  Somewhere a thought trips along: the things you find especially annoying and trying are the things within you too. 

We stirred the beginnings of weekly banana bread yesterday and he looked up at me, chef's hat and apron poised just so, and said, "Me lub me Mama" for the very first time ever.  Swoon.  I keep defining the boundaries and he keeps pushing them and it's just beginning.  Maybe what my defined parameters need is something to toss them around a bit, for growth and all.  Toddler Boot Camp is, in any given moment, me doing the push-ups or me barking: "Lights out." 

I want a "frolic through the little daisy-covered meadows"-type of a picnic-y series of days, not a dust billowing, barbed wire, marching sort-of slop thing.  I'm all for a bit of compromise; we could march through the meadow, you know.  I'm ready for him to share a little lub.

Maybe

"Maybe!" you sing-song, and it could mean "Maybe we should have a cookie for breakfast" or sometimes it really means "Maybe my idea is warranted and you shouldn't dismiss it offhand."  Maybe it is possible to track down that girl from the cover of the Pottery Barn Kids catalog, the cute one in the pretty dress whispering to a friend; she does look like a fun girl.  Maybe you could take Daddy and me on your blanket train, with an elephant conductor and a pathway through the livingroom, and maybe we really could end up on the moon.

You nod emphatically and gesture like you're running for office.  It is possible.  Surely.  We can do it.  Let's do it!  Maybe we can make everything the way you dream it... Now.  And then, when we're pumped! and we buy in! and you have us hooked! you sometimes say: "Maybe Not."  There are wistful shakes of your head for what could have been.  There are convincing frowns for what you told us we wanted, and then removed with your two year old chicanery.  Every sorrow comes with a twinkle in your eye for what you control, and a consolation prize of Dinner! Now! In your room! With everybody! 

You're learning to make everything the way you dream it. 

You help me see things differently.  "Maybe" is a whole world of negotiation, luck, whiplash and possibility.  It's contagious, this heady linguistic push of determination and promise.  Maybe Daddy could have his own design business and I could write a book, we could paint your new bedroom light blue and cuddle under your quilt together after a happy day of family puttering in our garden. 

Maybe.

One Square Window

I'm spring cleaning the blog with a new look.  You don't notice anything?  Right.  Well...  I'm working on it and it's s-l-o-w because the boy wants me to play with trucks, people still insist on eating around here and I don't really know what I'm doing.  I was waiting for the new space to write about another new space but this is just getting silly, this waiting, so:

Megan (from the scent of water) and I are writing on One Square Window... just to write.  When you love to write but aren't _____ (all alone, independently wealthy, living in seclusion with a laptop and a publisher waiting with bated breath for your manuscript), I think the trick might be to _____ (create opportunities for yourself to write, rope someone in from around the world to write with you).  It strengthens your writing muscles and it helps you breathe.  I think the space will grow and change; it's organic.  One Square Window.  All of the windows around here are totally dirty, by the way, so I'm going to test out the vinegar/water/newspaper approach and spring clean my real world too.

Preschoolers & political candidates

It is now standard practice for our three foot+ family member to pop into his room and start clapping.  I hear the clapping and I'm trained to automatically start clapping too.  It transitions to "wild" cheers as our little racer bursts from the room and speeds around the house in complete circles, slowing as he nears to bask in the adulation.  This past week the local public radio station has replayed candidate speeches from recent NW visits.  As I listened, similarities hit me (repeatedly); there are striking parallels between preschoolers and political candidates. 

There's the whole "We love puppies" phenomenon.  A lot of speeches can be broken down into candidates forcefully declaring their appreciation and dedication to things everyone seems to agree about.  We all want respect for veterans.  We'd love to have more money to use for our families.  We think education is important.  You know, "We love _____ (strong economies, little kids, America... puppies)".  It's the same with toddlers.  It's easy to get behind affection for trains, animals, cookies and playgrounds.  Preschoolers have classic loves that can cross a divide.  Hey, they love puppies too.

At some point in the speeches it's always clear the audience is riled up to such a degree that anything the candidate says will be met with enthusiasm.  These local pre-caucus/pre-primary stump speech attendees make for a friendly audience.  The speech ball starts to roll and you're confident the audience will roll anywhere, as long as it's to "change" or "experience" or our personal reduction of basic hope embodied in the process.  You stick with a preschooler too, through the convoluted explanations that carry you from dawn 'til bedtime.  You'll roll with them anywhere.  You believe in their essence.  You're a friendly audience to their passion or their skill, to their bid for what's to come.

Preschoolers and political candidates embrace extreme energy.  Teams of people tag along to help in any way possible.  There's lots of passion, cheering, confusion in "process"... Simultaneously in the parent/voter there's a slight fear of power, and the realization that to some degree or another you are complicit in giving some of that power.  There are moments of disequilibrium when your messages aren't the same.  There are factors in decision-making you won't understand (the importance of obscure special interests from mid-west farmer associations or the importance of wearing just the right color and weight of socks with just the right pair of boots before hitting the trike, rocks in hand).  Their running is full of our dreams.

The differences abound, of course, but that collective appreciation of what is possible for a country or a child whips up some mighty fine energy.  It's enough to get me huddled in a hot and stinky gym on a Saturday caucus afternoon, with all of the neighbors I've never met.  It's enough to get me off the couch to chase the racing boy for a hug. 

As the country gets ready for a big playoff with big payoffs and as my guy grows, I've discovered there's a democratic existence here at home.  I'm campaigning for our future one preschool day at a time.       

Denyse Schmidt stuff

My little article/interview with Denyse posted yesterday and today there's a sneak peek at her new collection on the SMS blog.  Just in case you missed it... 

It all makes me want to kick off a new business and improvise a quilt or two.  Today.

Rambling on blogging (blogging, which is often rambling)

I’m so impatient.  When there needs to be a process I just want a result.  Skip, hop… There!  I’m on the final square!  Really, always, the journey is the essential component in most things that matter because that’s where the learning (and hopefully growth) takes place.  I recognize that same tension in lots of things in my life, this little blog being one of them (the journey to being the best mama I can be is bigger and more involved!).  So I’m mostly sure my little epiphany about blogging won’t matter to anyone but me (or even make sense to others) but part of the “a ha!” tells me I should just get it down here.

My disclaimer, and you must really understand this before you read any of the following, is that what works for me is probably not what works for you.  There is NO JUDGMENT about what others do in any of my thoughts on what I should or should not do.  The democracy and freedom of blogging should be the core of the medium, in my humble opinion. 

That said, here goes: Blogging is an odd thing to me, still.  I really love having a space of my own and it’s the only thing I consistently do for myself (aside from showering, I suppose).  I’m actually reserved, private and somewhat shy in numerous situations so the odd dichotomy of this private nature coupled with sharing things here is still something I reconcile.  It’s always been important to me that this is not a space where I blog about the boy but about being a mama.  It’s not his baby book but a glimpse into toddler life.  He doesn’t make choices about whether he wants intimate details of his personality or photos of his cute mug shared with the world, so I’m reserving his right to make those decisions later in life.  So there’s that.  It’s that mama/me part I struggle with. 

I read lots of the yarnstorm debates when The Gentle Art of Domesticity came out and found it fascinating.  There was a lot about modern feminism thrown in there, and some of the little comments made bigger points about what it is to be a woman, mother and creative individual today.  Essentially, for those who don’t know what I’m talking about, this woman’s book came out full of beautiful photos and a broader look into a life of knitting, baking, mothering, etc. than what’s provided almost daily on the woman’s blog, yarnstorm.  There was a big “storm” in England that actually reflected lots of the criticism about the Martha Stewart empire here, in my opinion.  Some people thought a focus on the “unattainable” was a waste while others appreciated the beauty.  It’s much more involved than that but that’s the crux of the argument. 

OK.  Then I also read Keri Smith’s “rant on blogging” (scroll to November 17th) and found myself thinking… “Yep!”  Leave it to her to write something so succinct, honest and reflective.  Not all of what she writes there fits with my thinking, but much of it does.  At the same time I’ve had so many people write or talk to me over the past year about blogging, particularly in the crafty/motherly milieu and I’ve reflected on it a lot.  As people mentioned in the comments a few posts down you edit your life in a blog; it’s a snapshot.  Others have mentioned how difficult it can be to take all of those snapshots in and to reconcile that with one’s own reality.  And then it all came together: yarnstorm, Smith, slices of life and my uneasy dance of comfort level here with knowing how and what to share. 

There are so many blogs I love to visit for that view of what, for me, will always be the unattainable.  I like the pretty pictures.  I get inspired by the creative production.  The views of childhood make me smile.  The thing is to remember that those are slices of life, snapshots and embedded in all of that are decisions too.  Sometimes a little bit of that is about selling something also.  The thing is to stay on the right side of inspiration and not slip into that nasty problem of comparison, because that’s one of the rotten things about life, that comparison.  When you compare, you slice and fixate and oftentimes you forget about the whole picture that is your body or your family or your reality… You as a mama, you as a woman. 

All year I think I’ve felt some unease when my words don’t reflect the beauty around us.  Simultaneously I feel best when I write my own truth and there is always someone who says something to the effect of, “Thank goodness you said that.  That’s exactly how I feel.”  I feel uncomfortable with too much of the mundane (what’s the point, I ask myself), but the mundane shines through when I’m anxious about just telling it like it is.  My “a ha!” was realizing that I shouldn’t feel bad when this space isn’t just the good of it all.  I don’t think I want it to be that.  It’s not that I want to bitch and moan here (excuse the language but that's the appropriate wording for this right now), and I definitely don’t want the impression I project to be a “less than” mama because I don’t have it all together.  But I don’t.  And too often I think we, as women (and maybe just we, as people), bombard ourselves with the perfection of the slices of life we see on television, work or in playgroup or crafty blogs and we slip into comparison.  Everyone then does that comparison and feels too cruddy about “inadequacies” to share the honesty of their life. 

I think, what if my boy looks back at this archive of thoughts and wishes and occasional exhaustion some day?…  How will I feel about “snapshots” that aren’t just beauty alone, but rather more of the honesty of our life?  The answer is, truly, that I want him to see the good and not-as-good parts because one day, maybe, he’ll be a father experiencing his own thoughts and wishes and occasional exhaustion.  I’d rather he saw more of my truth.  It’s not like I’m going to take a picture of the dirty dishes in the sink, but I might say I’m desperate for an hour with coffee out in the world where no one needs me to do anything for them.  There’s lots of good, but being a mama, trying to hold on to non-mama pieces of myself without feeling like a total cliché, working through being a woman in the 21st century (one who spent loads on a Masters degree but stays at home baking bread and laughing with a toddler)…  Well, all of that is difficult.  There’s beauty in it and lots of joy, but there’s also difficulty and choices.  Really I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a woman who feels like she has it all together; I think that might be why more of what I’m really feeling can show up here instead of just beauty alone.  Totally hokey, but I think I need to just embrace the mama I am and the life we have.  The damn draft excluder still isn’t done but my boy doesn’t watch TV and still won’t play (safely) on his own for any extended period of time.  That’s that… Decisions, reality, future production stored away for a different sort of beauty. 

I’m just not going to have tons of beautiful items for an Etsy shop right now.  Piles abound.  I should exercise more, eat better, sleep more, worry less.  I need to find more time for myself.  I need to relax.  I cook good meals for my family, keep a tidy home and have piles of fabric full of possibility.  I appreciate glimpses of others’ beauty in my days and I appreciate the joy all around me, every day.  Life is good, being a mama is tough and wonderful.      

So the journey of blogging continues and this space always changes to reflect that process and that growth.  This space inspires me to create and write more, helps me look at my life in different ways and helps me feel connected to a world of people older than two.  Skip, hop, skip, hop.  All of the rambling really just means I’ve decided to feel OK about choosing not to highlight only the good.  Sometimes I wish more people would.  But I don’t want the beauty to go away either.  That’s that.   

In the spirit of existential comedy

We (me + the boy) haven't been sleeping much lately.  We've been stuck inside a lot and lots of little things that make us all click along have gone by the wayside this week.  The dishes, for example, have greeted me in the morning every day (they seem to sneer at me) because I keep falling asleep before checking them off the nighttime routine list in my head.  I had a wise friend once with the most colorful life I've ever known and she said that cleaning the dishes after a meal was the conclusion to the process of eating and enjoying a meal.  It was essential.  Hmmm.

I have a giganto stack of things cut out, ready to sew in preparation for our little street fair in two weeks.  As it stands I'll have nothing to even try to sell (well, aside from the things in the little shop that refuse to sell and a veritable field of calla lilies).  The plan is for the boys to head out to The Children's Museum and leave me to it tomorrow. 

Anyhow, I'm tired and boring.  Odd things always happen to me though, so today we have these random photos and this random bit of meaninglessness:

One early weekend morning I headed from my dorm to the Quad.  I remember the destination was the Ave, but I don't know what I was planning to do once I got there.  I loved staying up late, late in college but I also really enjoyed getting up early and heading out while everyone slept.  Come to think of it, I still like doing both of those things.  Anyhow, there was nobody, no one, anywhere and all I heard was birds chirping.  Then a man popped out from behind the corner of the art building with a little journal in hand and he didn't look scary in the least.  He was fairly young, with stringy, greasy hair, and he had a pleasant smile and, it turns out, a French accent.  "Skoozeh (you get the phonetic thing here... I don't know a bit of French)...  Ehxkoooz me!  Miss!"  He ran over to me and, again, I wasn't freaked out in the least for some reason. 

He was a "journalist" for the most "POPpuhlr" radio station in all of France.  It was big.  It was famous.  He was important, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah.  He was also in deep, sweaty what-the-heck-am-I-going-to-do trouble.  He was supposed to be doing a radio segment on Kurt Cobain and he was supposed to be in front of Kurt Cobain's house but he hadn't been able to find it.  Kurt Cobain had died half a year or so before this, and "AAAAaahhlll ze French want to know?  What iz it like for zee Americans?  How do zey miss him?  What iz hiz beautiful home like?"  I'm not so sure he ever tried to find Kurt Cobain's house but I know he was in a bad place all the same because I know I was the only person out on campus and he needed the view of zee Americans.  He was dezzzperate, for sure. 

So I said, yep, I'd talk to his radio people and no, he didn't need to tell me how many millions of people would be listening, thank you.  The guy broke into a huge, sweaty, greasy smile and kept up with his "mercis" for awhile, and then I was on the pay phone (next to us, incidentally) and everything I said was translated by a woman into French on a delay as I said it.  The man on the other end "interviewing" me spoke OK English and asked me all about how much zee American guys and girls love zee Kurt Cobain and what was his house like, zat I waz standing in front of, of course (in tribute to Kurt with a candle and an album cover, no doubt).  I don't like to lie but I wasn't sleeping off a drug stupor or anything so on the college scale of things I think it's forgivable. 

After we'd covered Kurt in depth the dude on the other end of the phone said, "Are you pretty?"  "Huh?" I thought.  "Do you like ze boys?  Or do you like ze girls?"  Interview over.

The fellow next to me, much relieved that he still had a job I suppose, was quite thankful.  He promised he would send me a tape of the show and never did (I imagine he needed my name, etc., to document his journalistic integrity or some such thing).  Then I was off, heading to the Quad again, and ten odd minutes of my life were so isolated and bizarre that it felt like it never happened. 

But it did.  Millions of French people thought of me for a few moments, standing in front of Kurt's gate waving my lighter.