ChildWild » parenting

Being Nibbled By The Homeschooling Bug

Sierra — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 05:12:23 +0000

I keep starting blog posts and then not writing them because OMFG you would not believe how much writing I do all day. I mean, you would, because I post it all to the Internets and share it with you on the Twitter and like that. But it turns out that even I can become exhausted by the sound of my own voice and not want to write any more words down at the end of the day.

Here is the thing I keep starting blog posts about: my kids and how AWESOME they are. It has been so much fun to be their mom lately. So much fun that I want to quit sending them to school and embark on a crazed homeschooling mission with them.

Rio turned 7 and then finished first grade and poof, she has totally leveled up into this full-blown school age kid who is just her own person and not my baby at all anymore. And she’s a pretty terrific person. She reminds me of all the spunky child heroines I love from literature, like Anne of Green Gables and Lyra from His Dark Materials and Coraline. She’s just a bad ass little kid. Only her life is not all fucked up, so instead of starring in a book about herself and fighting monsters and bravely saving me from evil button-eyed witches, she mostly makes weird salads in the kitchen and plays card games and rides her bike and torments her little sister. But I know she would save me from evil spirits if she had to, because she’s just that kind of kid.

Serena, meanwhile, is milking every drop of cuteness out of her last month as a three-year-old. She’s sweet beyond belief. She does tricks. She plays games. She “helps” with the laundry and the cooking. She rides her hobby horse everywhere – to school, to bed, up and down the stairs. She’s adopted this hilarious way of saying, “What?” with one hand on her hip as if she were 3 going on 13.

All of which adds up to me wanting to be around them all the time. The kids, I mean. We’ve been having grand adventures, and I just don’t want to stop. I miss them when they go to school or summer camp. They disappear for playdates and I wish they’d come home and tell me jokes and make a mess in the kitchen.

This is sort of new. I’d gotten used to feeling pretty burned out on parenting, and treasuring my kid-free hours. Now I’m starting to feel hungry for more time with the kids again.

I’m not going to pull them out of school just so I can play with them or anything crazy like that. But Rio will graduate from her current school next year and then what? She’s said a couple times that she wants to start homeschooling then, and this week I’m feeling more and more inclined to let her. So what if I have a day job now? She can sit on the floor of my office and play Sleeping Queens while I type. It’ll be fine. Right? Right?

Of course we have a year to sort this all out. I’m just noticing happily that I’m feeling inspired to play and learn with my kids all the time now, in a way I’d lost touch with for most of a year. Whether I ever wind up homeschooling them or not, wanting to is a pretty awesome feeling.

What Do You Want For Your Kids?

Sierra — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 16:10:37 +0000

I posted on Strollerderby yesterday about Amy Chua’s cub getting into Harvard, and why my kids won’t be following in her footsteps. The bottom line is that I don’t have Harvard ambitions for my kids. As I said in my SD post:

I don’t lack the willpower to drive them toward excellence. I just have different standards of excellence. I care more about health and happiness than I do about wealth, power or fame. This seems to be a point Amy Chua is missing in her Tiger Mom manifesto: She thinks “Chinese mothers” are superior because they push their kids to succeed and get results, but some of us “Western parents” really don’t care about those results. I don’t need to see my kid play at Carnegie Hall or get accepted to Harvard. I just want them to be happy.

I guess that makes me a satisficer rather than a perfectionist as a parent. I’m pretty OK with that. Turns out, that might be the best anyone can really do. A new book called Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids, by economist Bryan Caplan, argues that all this intensive parenting doesn’t change outcomes very much anyway. Whether we shuttle the kids to ballet class or park them in front of the tube, they’ll grow how they want to grow.

I’m a bigger believer in nurture than Caplan is, but I think he has a point: micromanaging kids is an investment that won’t pay off. Our kids are more than the sum of our parenting efforts; they’re people in their own right.

It got me thinking, though, what do I want for my children? I may not be as ambitious as Ms. Chua, but I realized I do have a mental “bucket list” of things I’d like my kids to have by the time they hit adulthood. It’s a work in progress, but I’m pretty sure I’d like my kids to have:

Safety from violence
A good education
A love of reading
The ability to swim
Ditto riding a bike
A driver’s license
Healthy diet and exercise habits
Basic musical skills
The ability to manage their finances
Healthy attitudes about sex
Happy childhood memories
The courage to chase dreams
Rock solid self esteem

What else should go on my list? What’s on yours? What do you consider essential to teach your children before they fly the nest?

The Zebra and the Train: A Tale of Two Costumes

Sierra — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 06:22:58 +0000

Serena is going as a train for Halloween

A week or so ago, Serena announced she wanted to be a zebra for Halloween. I smiled, nodded, thought she’d make a cute zebra, and promptly forgot about it.

Until tonight, after dinner, when she smiled sweetly at me and said, “Mommy! Tonight while I am sleeping, I want you to sew a zebra costume for me! Or a giraffe costume! Or a train, like Greta. Or a zebra.”

Um, sure. I’ll get right on that. With my mad sewing skills. And all this zebra-print material I don’t happen to have lying around the house.

Actually I forgot about it again ten minutes later and went about my evening. That’s how being the ADHD mama I am rolls.

A few hours later:

“Oh FUCK! Serena needs a Zebra costume!” I wasn’t even home then, so I turned to my host and said, “I need to make a zebra costume out of things I find in your house.”

‘Cause I’m classy like that. He’s a sweetie, though, and always willing to help. Together we started ransacking the house in search of zebra parts.

“I think I could use some black yarn,” I said. “And a white bag. Or an old T-shirt. And a sharpie.”

He rummaged through a closet, and a bin of old clothes, and came up with some stuff. The haul:

A cowboy hat
A pair of 3D glasses
Fairy wings

Me: Have you ever seen a zebra?

Things got desperate. I got ready to head home. Even though it meant interrupting his jam session, I texted Martin.

We had this text exchange:

Me: Dude! Serena needs a zebra costume.

Him: She switched to train (like Greta). I am almost done.

I have no idea who Greta is, but I love her and her crazy choo-choo Halloween costume. Almost as much as I love the man who skipped guitar practice tonight to build this monstrosity.

Take that, Disney. My daughter is going to be a train for Halloween. Not a princess, or a fairy, or a mermaid, or a ballerina. Not even a zebra with a cowboy hat and fairy wings. A train. Because she has the Best. Daddy. Ever.

The Power of “NO”: Lessons From My 3-year-old

Sierra — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 03:58:44 +0000

Serena is deep in the threes. Anyone who’s been there knows what that means: “NO! I DO IT MYSELF!”

Rio going through this phase was one of the hardest years of my life: we fought bitterly, more days than not. Even at the time, it seemed insane. How could I be so angry, and so helpless, in the face of my tiny daughter?

Rio was exceptional in her defiance. She’d just started preschool, and we had a new baby at home. She had a lot to be defiant about. But she was also herself, even then: strong-willed, stubborn, fiery-tempered. A lot like her mom. Of course we fought.

Serena is the easy-going kid in this family. Yes, I know I’m not supposed to label them that way, and I never say those things so categorically to their faces. But calling her easy-going is the shortest way through this paragraph to the really interesting part: Serena may be easy-going, but she is still three.

She writes on the walls. She wears pyjamas all day, unless the one pair of zebra-stripe pants she likes happens to be clean. She screams bloody murder if she doesn’t get her way. Yesterday she bit me.

And all day, every day, she says no. No, Mommy, you can’t help me. No, I want to make my own sandwich. No, I will dress myself. No, I can go potty on my own.

After no, her favorite word these days is “privatesy.” As in, “I need my privatesy!”

When Rio was going through this I was younger and, well, different, and I fought back hard not only because her behavior was annoying and often dangerous, but because I wanted to keep her attached to me. And me attached to her. It was hard to let go of that mother-baby bubble, and I didn’t really understand what was happening. It seemed like my sweet baby had just suddenly turned on me.

I get it a little better now: this the end of the mother-baby time, whether I’m ready or not. Whether Serena’s ready or not. She’s growing, and this change hurts us both a little. At least a little. As we peel apart to make space for her own fierce little self to grow into, we’ll both feel angry and sad sometimes. Sometimes she’ll write on the walls. Sometimes I’ll yell.

Mostly, I try to be the grown-up in the room. ‘Cause, you know, I am.

And I’m learning from her. Being a little more willing to let her grow, and a little more skilled at choosing my battles, has its perks. One is that I get to notice more of what she’s doing.

She’s saying no to me because she needs to do things on her own. Even if she does them badly, even if it takes her twice as long, even if she pinches her fingers in the seat belt and cries: she needs to do it for herself.

I’ve always been a huge fan of letting kids do their own thing. I want my girls to be super-competent, and they are. Have been from a young age. I never spoon-fed them, literally or figuratively. If they were hungry, I reasoned, they’d learn to feed themselves. They did.

But I still love being Mommy, and doing All The Things. Also, selfishly, I love doing them fairly quickly. I’m not the world’s most patient teacher, and I don’t always have ten minutes to kill while my daughter tries to buckle her own seat belt or lace up her own shoes.

So: I go to do the thing, and she says no. She’s often irrational, asking me to put jelly on her toast and then screaming with rage when I do. This is crazy, right?

Maybe. Maybe not. I’m thinking she might be on to something. I’m thinking about all the times I say “Yes” in my own life when I don’t really want to. Times when I feel forced to accept an offer of help, because doing so would seem rude or unkind.

I eat a lot of meals I don’t want because my husband cooks, and I don’t want to refuse the gift of good food he puts in front of me. Even if all I really want is a sandwich. My house is full of clothes, furniture and toys we’ve been given. Most of it isn’t stuff I’d choose for myself, but it seems rude to say no, and once it’s here, there’s no point in spending money or effort to replace it with something I actually like.

My point: maybe that kid has a point. Maybe sometimes when someone is offering to help me, I need to say no. Even if it seems irrational. Downright crazy. Rude.

Just because sometimes it’s better to do it myself.

A Pox On September

Sierra — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 13:17:16 +0000

Serena with her popsicle

So school started, and then there was flu. We had one day where both girls went to school and I got to work in peace and then *wham* the world was fevers and vomit for two solid weeks. Serena kicked it off by vomiting directly down my cleavage.

At the worst of it, everyone in the house but me was sick. Even the cats were throwing up. At the same time. I did probably 100 loads of laundry last month. I am not even joking.

Serena wound up so sick we had to take her to the emergency room. Not my idea of a good time. Early in the week we saw her doctor because in the midst of the vomiting and fever, she complained that her neck hurt, and then that her back hurt, and then that her legs were too weak to walk. Hello, red flags for meningitis.

Nope. Just the flu. Back home, more cuddles and care. Friday, back at the doctor for her annual physical. Her doctor wrote her a note saying she was too sick to have a physical after she threw up in the waiting room. Made me promise that if she was not better on Saturday, we’d call.

Saturday, the poor little duck was not better. Friday night Rio and Martin got sick, and I was a little distracted all morning playing Florence Nightingale. Not my strong suit. Serena threw up six times in an hour, and kept falling asleep. She came into the kitchen to get a glass of water and fell asleep on the kitchen floor while I was pouring it. Woke up, drank the water, threw it up, had diarrhea, and fell asleep again on the toilet.

“Take her to the emergency room right now,” her doctor said when I eventually got through. In retrospect: duh. At the time I felt like a hypochondriac. I mean, she wasn’t bleeding from the head or anything.

So we took her to Children’s, because we are lucky enough to have one of the best hospitals for kids right in our backyard. They gave her a popsicle, an IV full of fluids, and a medication to stop the vomiting so her little body could get a break.

She is convinced it was the Popsicle that made her better, and has been eating them with abandon every since. As far as I am concerned, she can eat as many popsicles as she likes, as long as we don’t have to go back to the ER to get them.

The problem with mothering a tiny genius

Some Imaginary Friends are Stinky

Sierra — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:38:09 +0000

Staggering to the shower this morning, Serena stopped me in the hall outside the bathroom door.

“Kayleigh and Jesi are in there, Mama,” she said.

“Who are Kayleigh and Jesi?”

“Kayleigh is my friend and Jesi is Rio’s friend.”

Rio, from the bedroom, joins the conversation.

“You can go in there if you want, Mama, but…”

Both girls look very serious. I open the door and Serena backs away.

“They fart a lot,” Rio says. “That’s why we locked them in the bathroom.”

Serena chimes in, “Yeah. They fart like this.”

She spreads her legs wide and starts hopping in place, making loud farting sounds.

“They really like to fart. Don’t go close to them. They will fart on you.”

Yeah, thanks for the warning, girls. I’ll be sure to avoid your gassy imaginary friends while I’m showering. I’m so glad you’re still small enough to have imaginary friends, even if they’re stinky.

The Indigo Girls Rock My Baby’s World

Sierra — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 19:04:09 +0000

We hit the ground running: we went to an Indigo Girls concert last night, about 15 hours after getting home from Argentina. Both girls slept through it. It was adorable, but I may tease Rio for 20 years for sleeping through the show we flew home a few days early for her to go to.

The Indigo Girls have been Rio’s favorite band since she was a baby. She used to cry uncontrollably in the car unless I played their music on repeat for her. She’s memorized most of their ouvre and can sing several of their songs impeccably from memory. It’s a little scary.

At the show, they were taking requests. Because this was her birthday gift, she is cute, and I want to teach her to be an entitled bitch when she grows up, I helped her sneak down to the front row to shout her request. But then when we got there I discovered a miscommunication: she thought she would be allowed to walk right up on stage and politely ask them to play her favorite song. Security was not amused. The Indigo Girls blessedly did not notice.

And then, because this is how her world works, they broke into her song (Power of Two) anyway, and she got to sit right at the foot of the stage and listen to it. We shuffled back to our seats on the distant perimeter of the lawn right after that, and she promptly fell asleep in my lap. Clutching the CD I’d bought her in a death grip.

The show was amazing. I *heart* the Indigo Girls big time, but even better than getting to see one of my favorite bands in concert was getting to be with people I love enjoying them. Martin loves live music more than I ever could, and getting to be with him playing music, hearing music, experiencing music is such a gift. I love seeing him so happy.

And for Rio, well, her little heart just pounded in my hands the whole time she was listening to their show. At home, the Indigo Girls are a constant soundtrack in our lives. She sings, she dances, she plays them over breakfast and after school. She’s taught the chorus of several songs to her little sister and they rock them in harmony. Real harmony. I am not even joking.

But confronted with her idols alive in front of her, she sort of froze. No singing, no dancing. She just stared at them awestruck, tried to sneak up on them, stared awestruck some more, and then passed out in my arms.

We wound up with two orphan tickets to the show that we were unable to give away. When we got home, Martin wrote the date and details on the back of the unused wristbands and put them in a safe place.

“If there’s time travel when Rio grows up,” he said, “she has free tickets to go back and see the other half of the show.”

Happy 3rd Birthday, Serena Rose!

Sierra — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:39:37 +0000

My baby is three. Her birthday was actually on Friday, July 9, which is also the Argentine independence day.

We spent the whole day having a BBQ in the backyard. Argentine’s are simply mad about BBQ. They all (at least, all the affluent houses in this neighborhood), have these huge hand-built brick BBQ ovens in their backyards. They’re not like anything I’ve ever seen in the states, or anywhere outside a fairy tale. Somewhere in Argentina, the witch from Hansel and Gretel is enjoying her retirement. These ovens are hardcore.

I digress. The point is that the whole family gathered on this unseasonably warm and sunny day to roast burger and choricos and provoletas and corn and so much food that not even 11 hungry cousins could eat it all… to celebrate my baby turning 3 years old.

Which she totally did. And then everything changed, and nothing seemed different.

Serena, at three years old you’re the least serene you’ve been in your life. You’re finding your independence and trying out new everything. Words. Puzzles. Willpower.

This is, frankly, exhausting for me and your dad. I’m sorry for the days when I’m cranky. I know how to be a great mom to a 3-year-old, but I don’t have the resources every hour to be fully present, fully in control and fully flexible. You need Mary Poppins these days, little girl, and all you get is me.

I do love you, and this moment of your growth, even if I’m spending half our time together lying face down in bed pretending to sleep and praying you’ll take the hint and pass out. When it’s not 2 a.m., or bedtime, or naptime, we have a lot of fun.

Here’s you, little girl: your words are coming in clearer and clearer, and you’re using them to put the pieces of your world together. You think the bidet is a bird bath, the dog is terrifying and your big sister the Best Kid Ever. You do not want to share your toys, but will sometimes be hit with a wave of generosity and give them to her so tenderly.

You love spending long hours alone, some days, just playing quietly with your dolls or looking at a book. I wonder who you are, inside those quiet spells. Your sister has gone off seeking time alone like that approximately never. I’m just now, at 31, starting to see the value of letting some of my hours lie fallow that way. It seems like uncanny wisdom that you at 3 can know you need to be alone sometimes and just go there.

You love to eat. When we were flying here, a scary drunk man harassed our family until the flight crew moved us all to first class for our safety. You slept through the scary part and just woke up in my arms when we carried you to your new seat. Where a flight attendant showed you how to operate your personal video screen. You sat on a pile of pillows eating delicious food and watching cartoons for the rest of the night, and cried when the stewardess took your empty plate away.

Today, you ran across the kitchen with a jar of dulce de leche under one arm and a jar of honey under the other, and when I asked you where you were going you gave me the most mischievous grin and said, “To taste!”

That’s my girl: loving ease, luxury, rich food and passive entertainment. Also lightning quick at puzzles, at Figuring Things Out, at claiming what’s yours. You’re amazing, and so unlike me I wonder how we’ll ever get to know each other, even with a lifetime to figure one another out.

Also: you make me smile like anything. You look like a ray of sunshine with that ridiculous halo of blonde curls, and your voice is still baby sweet and lilting whenever you speak. My face cracks open in a smile at the sound of your voice. And then I clean up the spilled milk, try to sort out your fight with your sister, and collapse again.

I love you. And I hope you sleep through the night someday soon.

Happy Birthday, Serena Rose.

That’s Sweet

Sierra — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:17:29 +0000

Yesterday, I was getting changed while Serena played on the bed nearby.

I took my shirt off and she said, “Mama! Your boobies! I can see your boobies! And…(long, dramatic, awestruck pause) your nibbles!”

We’re in the midst of a too-slow-for-me and too-fast-for-her weaning process, so my breasts have recently become an even more interesting topic for her than they always have been. I say no more often than yes when she asks to nurse these days, but she doesn’t want it any less. I sort of braced myself for her asking to nurse, and the inevitable “no” I’d have to say because this isn’t one of our “nursing times”.

She approached me, beaming. Sitting on the bed put her nose to nibble with her favorite things in the whole world.

“I just want to kiss them, Mama!” she said, and then leaned forward and placed a gentle peck on top of each breast.

When she was finished, she looked me in the eye. “That was sweet,” she said very matter-of-factly. Then she walked away.

Oh sweet baby. That was sweet. Thanks for making me smile and laugh. Nursing a big girl like you isn’t always easy, but moments like that make it worth it.

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A Time of Few Words

Sierra — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:28:57 +0000

I’ve been sick for two weeks, with a chest infection that made it impossible for me to talk for most of a week, and merely uncomfortable for a week after that. I am finally – today – done with the medicine for my bronchitis. I have bruised ribs from coughing so much. I’m very tired.

We went to Maine over the weekend, to stay with Molly at her lake house. Just the two of us and three little girls. We let the kids run feral on the lakeshore, ate berries fresh off the ground, found a bouquet of four-leaf clovers. We rowed across the lake to an unhabited island full of tumbledown tree branches and steep boulders and Adventure. We took sudden Emergency Naps whenever we felt like it.

It was idyllic.

Now I’m home and healthy and it’s the final stretch of running my preschool. Enjoying my last days with the preschool kids, starting to sort and wash clothes so we can pack up for a month of travel, straining to keep up with my new schedule as a professional writer: this is a idyllic too, but at a much faster pace.

I’m incredibly grateful for the heavy dose of the slow path. Days like that keep me steady for these sprints.