June 2009

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2009.

Cats and Dogs

June 19, 2009 in Parenting, Pets | 1 comment

MOMMY. TELL JIJI-BABY STORY!

Once upon a time, there was a little kitty cat.  He didn’t even have a name.  He lived in a cattery with many other cats.  His brothers and sisters all got sick, so they took him away from his mommy.  He was sad.  They put him with a new mommy who gave him milk, but he still missed his real mommy and his brothers and sisters.  Then, one day, a man and a woman came into the cattery.  The kitty smelled them.  [sniff]  They smelled good.  He wanted to go home with them.  The man sat on the bed and the kitty jumped up on the bed and bit him on the butt.  The man said, “I like this one. Let’s bring him home.”  The woman said, “Ok, if you insist.”  They brought him home and named him…[dramatic pause]…Jinx!

MOMMY. TELL TOBY STORY!

Once upon a time there was a brown puppy dog.  He was left on the side of the road, but at least he had his brothers and sisters with him.  They were scared, but a lady came and picked them up and brought them to her home, which she called, “The Rescue.”  She named them all.  The brown puppy was named Spencer.  One day, a family took Spencer to their home, and changed his name to Buddy.  Spencer especially liked the little boy, but every time he went near him, the boy would sneeze and cough.  The daddy said that the boy was allergic to Buddy and they would have to take him back to The Rescue.  Buddy was very sad.  At The Rescue, the lady changed his name back to Spencer.  He was confused.  Then, one day, a man and a woman came to The Rescue.  Spencer smelled them. [sniff]  They smelled good.  He wanted to go home with them.  He jumped out of The Rescue lady’s arms and ran to the woman, who picked him up and kissed him.  The man said, “He loves you.”  The woman said, “Let’s bring him home.”  The man said, “Ok, if you insist.”  They brought him home and named him…[dramatic pause]…Toby!

MOMMY. TELL MOMMY DADDY STORY.

I’ll tell you that one when you are older.

Objectivist Round Up

June 19, 2009 in Ideas | No comments

The Round Up can be found at Reality Talk this week.

A Little Thing

June 18, 2009 in Little Things | No comments

Samantha likes to put lotion on my feet.

My New Throne

June 17, 2009 in Homemaking | 4 comments

After my dad fixed the inner workings of three out of our four toilets, we got motivated to replace the seats, too.  Three were chipped and disgusting just like this one:

Old toilet seat

The fourth, in the powder room on the main level, was wood, which I think is wrong on so many levels:

Wood Seat

 

To replace them, we got 2 of these awesome kids’ seats:

Kid Seat

The smaller seat folds up into the lid and is held there by a magnet.  We put one of these in the powder room and one in Sam’s bathroom.  Hopefully she’ll start using them soon. (Arg!)

Then for the other 2, we got the “Whisper Close” seats.  Check it out:

It may seem like a gimmick, but we always keep the lids shut to keep the animals out, and in the middle of the night that small luxury is welcome, indeed.  It’s a Little Thing.

In Case You Think I’m Against Modern Medicine

June 16, 2009 in Experiences | 16 comments

I peed on a stick this morning.  That’s 2 months of failure now.  I’m not surprised this month, though, since Adam was away on a business trip during the crucial time.  I have more hope this coming month because we were successful in month number 3 both of the previous times.  The other key ingredient was the ovulation predictor kit, which worked on the first try both other times, so I’m pulling that tool out of the box next time too.

If you’ve done the math you may be wondering what happened to the other pregnancy.  Something bad happened.  Something really bad.  Not a miscarriage.  At twenty weeks, I had the ultrasound that told us we were having a girl, but there were some anomalies.  So, I had an amnio.  Waiting the 10 days for the results was hard, but they came back normal.  Then we had to wait through another 3 weeks of torture to have another ultrasound, and that’s when we found out that the baby was horribly disfigured.  We got a second opinion just in case, but we knew what we had to do.  I would never give birth to a child with Down’s, and this was probably worse, although we couldn’t know for sure since it wasn’t a recognizable condition or syndrome.  If the baby made it to term at all, it might have even endangered my health to give birth – at least that’s what the good doctors told the religious nuts on the Board of the hospital, who would presume to tell me what the rest of my life must be.  You see, I was just about to enter the 3rd trimester.

The doctor gave the baby a lethal injection and I gave birth to a dead baby the next day.  I was so scared to look at her, but I did.  She never could have lived – not a real life – but she wasn’t a monster either.  I’m so glad I looked at her or I would have had a black hole of terror inside me forever.  The autopsy didn’t tell us anything about why it happened.  It could have been a combination of our genes, which would mean that it could happen again, or it could have been something that went wrong after conception, in which case it would be very unlikely to happen again.  We waited 3 months and started over and ended up with Samantha, who is perfectly healthy.  Still, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that we have a lethal combination of genes; it just makes it less likely.

I’ve had to work really, really hard at not allowing that experience to cripple me with fear.  I’d had very little experience with death before that, and it was a hard way to join the club.  I didn’t feel like I was truly pregnant with Sam until we had a clean 20 month ultrasound, which was a shame because I did love being pregnant.  I know if I get pregnant again, it will be the same.  Most people wait until the 12 week mark to make any announcements because the chances of a miscarriage are so high up until that point.  I figure that by the time I’m 20 weeks along and feeling comfortable, I’ll be as big as a house already anyway, so I might as well lay it all out from day one.

Since nobody likes to be pitied and we hide early miscarriages, I had no idea how common they were.  After our experience, it seemed like every woman I knew told me about their miscarriages.  If they hadn’t had a miscarriage, they had fertility issues.  Despite all the racy jokes to the contrary, the process of making babies is a terrible, difficult thing.  And now, I’m 39.  Doctors call that, “advanced maternal age,” and it comes with all sorts of fun stuff to worry about.  I was in that category last time too, but at 36, it was borderline.  Now I’m clearly past the time when making babies is supposed to be easy.

So I’m excited to try to make another one, but I’m going to be on-edge for a while, no matter what happens.

I want to conclude this story with one observation.  As bad as our first pregnancy experience was, I thank my lucky stars that I was born in this age of modern medicine.  My baby’s problem was diagnosed before she was born, allowing me to save her, my husband, and myself from the unimaginable misery that would have ensued should she had lived.  I had an abortion.  I’m proud of it, and so very thankful for the doctors who helped me through it.  And now when I hear anti-abortion advocates calling abortion immoral, I get angry.  I get head-spinning, stomach-churning angry because I remember the 3 hours I spent in the doctor’s office, waiting for the lethal injection.  The 3 hours that it took to clear the procedure through the Catholic Board of Directors.  The 3 worst hours of my life.

A Little Thing

June 15, 2009 in Little Things | No comments

Samantha drew her first recognizable face.  I think the scribble over the head is supposed to be hair.

First Face

Sammy Says

June 14, 2009 in Parenting | No comments

Samantha is really too young for Simon Says, but she made up a similar game, pretty much on her own, that works well for her age (coming up on 3 now!).

At the dinner table the other night, she slammed both palms down on the table, just in playful way, so I did the same.  She put her hands in her lap.  I did the same.  Then back and forth she went, with me copying her each time.  Adam joined in after a few rounds.  It didn’t take long before Sam decided to trick us by hitting the table twice in a row, and we fell for it.  That was a hit, so we kept going, and she got pretty good at fooling us.

Last night we played again, and after Sam’s turn, I told her and Adam to copy me.  I added clapping into the mix.  Adam took a turn being It and added in the Macaulay Culkin hands-to-the-cheeks move.

All of this got huge giggles from Sam, and from us grownups as well.  At least one type of humor is the surprise of the unexpected.  All the clown-inspired entertainers for tots seem to go by this principle, pulling bananas from their ears or just falling on the ground for no apparent reason. 

I really enjoyed that Sam was able to surprise us, and that she was able to invent a game like this.

Problem Solver

June 13, 2009 in Parenting, Pets | No comments

My dog has been refusing to eat his dry food lately.  After his bout of Pukinson’s Disease (credit for that term goes to Rational Jenn) he got used to eating wet food and rice, so now dry food is just oh-so-dull.  He’ll wait until he’s sure it’s the best he’s going to get before he’ll take a bite.

This morning, he wasn’t eating his breakfast, but Jinx, the cat, wanted some.  The cat is usually the dominant animal in the house, but when it comes to food, Toby will stand up for himself.  So Jinx goes into Toby’s crate where his bowl is, and Toby growls and snaps at him.  It’s a pretty scary sound, coming from a dog who is otherwise completely non-aggressive.  Jinx then either runs away, or starts a face off, where they just look at each other until Jinx makes a move, and Toby snaps at him again.

This is all a bit scary to Samantha, who is not used to the dog sounding so mean.  After a few rounds, she got fed up and decided to solve the problem.  She went to Toby’s crate, picked up his bowl, and put it up on top of the crate where neither of them could get to it.

I thought that was pretty darn smart.

Homeschooling Conference

June 12, 2009 in Homeschooling | 4 comments

Wow!  I actually learned quite a bit at the conference yesterday.  First, I learned that god is everywhere.  At least, he is at one of these events.

Religion aside, I really got a better feel for how to start tackling the homeschooling thing.  First, there was a workshop on understanding Virginia homeschooling law.  I had read the law itself and a couple of summaries, but the hour-long presentation really answered my questions about small details.  There were also a couple of “how to begin” type courses which ranged from mind-numbingly boring to mildly helpful, and a course on the major types of homeschooling: traditional, classical, unit studies, “the living book,” the principle approach, and unschooling.  None of the categories struck me as exactly what I want to do, but it’s nice to have a framework when searching for materials to use.

The exhibit hall was 90% Christian.  I know a huge amount of homeschoolers do it for religious reasons, but I was still shocked.  I managed to find six or seven interesting vendors out of the hundreds there.  I also got a great tip from a woman selling a grammar program.  When I joked that it would be a long time before my 2-year-old would be ready for grammar, she suggested that I buy a set of those accordion files that are numbered 1-12 for the months, but use them to file away ideas for each grade level.  I thought that was a great idea, as I’m quickly outgrowing my current system of pasting ideas into a single Word document with no organization whatsoever.

I managed to buy only one thing: a book called Slow and Steady Get Me Ready by June R. Oberlander, which is just a collection of weekly activities for birth to age 5, using common household items.  I doubt that I’ll follow the week-by-week structure of it, but I’m always looking for ways to do fun, challenging things with Sam.

Objectivist Round Up

June 12, 2009 in Ideas | 1 comment

Titanic Deck Chairs hosts the 100th edition of the Objectivist Round Up this week.

Baby Steps

June 11, 2009 in Homeschooling | No comments

I’m going to my first homeschooling conference today.  (What a coincidence!  I guess it’s that time of year.)  It’s run by Home Educators Association of Virginia (HEAV) which seems to be a terribly religious organization.  Still, I need to start somewhere and this conference is free to me, as a parent of a pre-schooler.  The conference goes on all weekend but I’m just going to attend the newbie presentations and check out the exhibit hall today.  I’ll report back tomorrow.  Now I’m off on the 2 hour drive to Richmond!

(Incidentally, I’m pretty sure this is the longest I’ll have ever been away from Samantha.  Her dad took her to day care at 10:30, and I won’t see her again until tomorrow morning.  I still remember the days when I’d have to fight milk-leakage and extreme anxiety when leaving her for a few hours.  I wonder what part of me will ache this time.  Probably my face – it’s so used to smiling and laughing that the relaxed state might feel odd.)

A Little Thing

June 10, 2009 in Little Things | 4 comments

I’ve taken a shower every day for weeks.

Babysitters

June 9, 2009 in Selfish Parenting | 5 comments

A classic selfish thing to do when you have children is to have a date night with your spouse a couple of times a month, at least.  Marriage takes time and effort, but it is all-too-easy to neglect it.

Adam and I have never managed to do this.  We’ve been out alone together here and there since Sam came along, but never as a regular part of our lives.  We have a good excuse though: all that moving around.

The kind of sitters you can find on sittercity.com or through the local college charge $20/hour plus tip.  That means that just the babysitting for a quick dinner-date costs about $50-60.  Add a movie and you’re talking about $100 or more.  We don’t have that kind of money to throw around.  We have not lived in one place long enough to make local friends to share babysitters with, we have no family nearby, and we’ve never had time to tap into the local teenage pool of sitters, who are considerably cheaper.  Well, the last part has changed.  We have a few teenagers living within walking distance.  We’re using one tonight for the first time, and she only charges $9/hour.  I offered her $10, but with a no-tip policy.  The best part is that her parents live directly across the street, so if she is uncertain about something but hesitates to call us or make a decision, she’ll certainly go straight to them for advice.  Of course, I still made sure she had real sitting experience and checked her references.

Let the date nights begin!

Make-Believe

June 9, 2009 in Parenting | 3 comments

Along with her stories, Samantha is clearly playing with the make-believe world more and more lately.  The other day, she told me there was a rabbit in our kitchen.  I said, “Really? Will you go get it and bring it to me?”  She came back with cupped hands and said LOOK,  MOMMY.  I said, “Hello, rabbit. May I hold you?  What is your name?  Oh, he won’t answer me.  Samantha, did you give him a name?”  HMMMM. HMMMM. GUACAMOLE. “Hello, Guacamole. That is a nice name.  I can’t see you because you are a pretend rabbit, but it’s nice to meet you.”  Then I turned to Samantha and said something about how it was fun to make up an imaginary rabbit named Guacamole.  She beamed.

Believe it or not, some parents would call this “lying,” and would punish their children for it.

We got into the make-believe issue a little bit in the comments on my TV post and at Rational Jenn’s post that inspired it.  I haven’t yet sensed any danger in letting Sam explore the pretend, the imaginary, and the make-believe.  I’ve read that children have a hard time distinguishing between reality and their imaginations (especially dreams) until they are quite a bit older than Sam, so I’ve got to assume that she doesn’t completely get the concept.  However, it seems clear to me that she will learn precisely by using her imagination, pretending things are real, and seeing what happens.  I’ve been labeling things as “pretend,” “imaginary,” and “made-up” for a while now, but I don’t make a big deal about it.  Last October when we looked at Halloween pictures of, say, a cat, a Jack-o-lantern, and a ghost, I would name them and then tell her that ghosts aren’t real and leave it at that.  She also likes to talk about “monsters.”  I think a monster, to her, is something that growls, so there’s really not much pretend going on there yet, but sometimes I’ll say, “Daddy is pretending to be a monster.”  I’m just trying to use the word “pretend” in different contexts so that she get an idea that there is something specific going on.

It’s interesting that Sam’s more intense exploration of her imagination coincides with her development of fears.  Her mind must have enough data now to move from simply identification, to projection of possibilities.  I wish I knew more about epistemology and child psychology because this is really starting to get interesting!

Reading Update

June 8, 2009 in Books | 5 comments

I’ve read a few more books recently so I’ll dash off some quick reviews.  Warning: I’m feeling a bit flippant today.

First, I finally finished the bible.  Actually, I gave up reading the actual bible and turned back to my Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Bible.  I just got so bored with Jesus and the traveling and the healing and all that.  Also, the bible that I have has some strange notations in it that make it very difficult to read.  Every single proper name is written with the dictionary-type pronunciation notation, with stress marks, carats, and the whole works.  Considering the number of names in the bible, this gets quite overwhelming.  All of Jesus’ words are in red which was actually helpful because I never could have figured out who was speaking on my own.  Then, of course, are the paragraph numbers and italicized words.  I had no idea why so many words were italicized in this King James Version, but apparently, these words were added at some later point in translation.  I really do not understand why they would need to do this.  Other works are translated between languages all the time and it is understood that there is no such thing as a word-for-word translation and that the translator must be trusted to convey the proper meaning.

As to substance, here are just a few impressions.  The Old Testament was a lot of fun, but if I was trying to take it as some kind of moral guide I suppose it might have been depressing.  Jesus did not impress me, but I did get a bit more of a sense of how Christianity was new and unique.  The altruism in the New Testament is definitely much stronger, as is the focus on reward and punishment in the afterlife.  Really, what struck me most is how absurd the bible is.  I’ve always held that Christianity is no different than any cult, and reading the bible just gave me more evidence.  Do Christians really believe that Jesus came back from the dead?  I mean, are you kidding me? 

Next, I read a terrible Michael Crichton book called Timeline.  Crichton always has some kind of intriguing premise, and then he lets you down.  This one was worse than usual.  I’m done with Crichton.

I’m sorry to say that I was disappointed in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.  I read it for my book club.  It’s a classic, right?  Well, I found the mystery to be dull, the resolution to be somewhat arbitrary, and I didn’t even like Poirot.  I’ve read Christie before and liked her mysteries, but this one left me cold.

So, three duds out of three.  I am glad that I read the guide to the bible, though.  I’m sure reading the actual bible carefully would have given me a clearer picture, but I got what I wanted out of the guide.  Since I started with almost no knowledge of the bible, this gave me an overview.  It was worth the time.  The other two, not so much.

« Older entries § Newer entries »