Life According to Oliver

Favorite bon mots from Oli for the week....

~~Our laptop broke yesterday. I told Oliver about it when he asked me if he could play a computer game. "That's terrible!" Oliver replied in full sincerity and concern.
I told him that his dad was going to try to fix it. He said, "I can fix it!" (This was incidentally the first sentence he spoke around age 2). I explained that it would probably not be a good idea for him to fix the computer.
"I know how to fix the computer!" he insisted. I asked him how he would do it.
"Well, the first thing you have to do is screw it up. You screw it up with your screwdriver. And then you just fix it!"

~~"Jack is a pooper stinky poop pants! Poop!! Poop and fart and poop!!! (Oli's older boy cousins are all great vocab sources for him.)

~~"Mom, look! That is a little man!" (Man is sitting about 6 ft from us). "He is a man with little head!". Both were true and not knowing what to say, I told Oliver to eat a carrot.

My babies are special

I think this will be a straight up mommy blog about the cute things my two babies do.

Jack is starting to talk. He said "night- night" for the first time last night. I swear he said "apple" in the store today. Jack loves sounds and music. He is keen on anything that makes a good noise. He meows like a kitty- it is awesome. He has the most ridiculoulsy cute curls, is a good eater, and loves to cuddle; all paricularly endearing qualities.

Last week, he was going through something and just would not let us put him down. This is tedious enough -particularly for me since he is big fella- but even worse, it triggers jealous fits of attention getting behavior in Oliver. In case you are not clear on the math...
1 clingy, cranky, crying 35lb toddler + 1 crazy jealous attention fiend 3 year old = HELL or a creepy level of surreal surrender that feels almost zen.

Oliver does not stop talking. There is no ignoring him. He will demand you reply to every precious thing he says, or he will say it over. and over. and over. and over. and over.
He will ask "why"5 times in a row to a simple statement . Or better- he will disagree with my answer.

(reading a book together) Oliver asks, "what's that?" I say "headphones". He asks, "whose headphones are those?" I say "Dizzy's headphones". He says "no, those aren't' Dizzy's headphones". I say, "yes, it says write here in the book, right here.. see?" He says "no" .....(repeat a few times). To move him along, I say "well if you want to be wrong, you can believe that." He'll usually agree to that.

He is so freaking funny! He will ask "do you want to see my moves?" and proceed to truly bust moves- the robot, the breakdance, the spin, the running from one end of the house to the other super super fast, the Spiderman, hanging from the clothes bar in the closet and climbing up the wall with his feet. He can sommersault and hop on one foot. My little Oli-bear is a natural athlete and a championship talker.

I told Tom's mom yesterday that I had a lover and a fighter. I don't want a label to keep me from truly seeing my kids, but it is perfect for who they are now. I can't believe we are just getting started with them! I try to imagine them as teens or men and it just blows my mind. I don't want this time to be just a blur, so I am going to have to make a real effort to write more down.

It is precious, after all.

Where is my cup?

I love this poem from our new Poet Laureate, Kay Allen-

How can
you tell
at the start
what you
can give away
and what
you must hold
to your heart.
What is
the well
and what is
a cup. Some
people get
drunk up.

("The Well or the Cup" from “The Niagara River,” 2005.)

The best boss ever!

Icelandic skipper kills shark with bare hands ( October 23, 2003)

An Icelandic fishing captain, known as "the Iceman" for his tough character, grabbed a 300 kg shark with his bare hands as it swam in shallow water towards his crew, a witness said today.

The skipper of the trawler "Erik the Red" was on a beach in Kuummiit, east Greenland, watching his crew processing a catch when he saw the shark swimming towards the fish blood and guts - and his men.

Captain Sigurdur Petursson, known to locals as "the Iceman", ran into the shallow water and grabbed the shark by its tail. He dragged it off to dry land and killed it with his knife.

"He caught it just with his hands. There was a lot of blood in the sea and the shark came in and he thought it was dangerous," Frede Kilime, a hunter and fisherman who watched from the beach, told Reuters by phone from Greenland.

Icelandic author and journalist Reynir Traustason, who knows the trawler captain, said the act was typical of the man.

"He's called 'the Iceman' because he isn't scared of anything," he said. "I know the people in that part of the world. They are really tough."

My Pomegranate Life is Juicy and Delicious

Last month I got my first tattoo. A big, blooming and ripe pomegranate. It is an illustration from Anna Maria Sibylla Merian (minus the butterfly tranformations). She was ahead of her time,a German woman traveling in Africa in the 1600's to study and make paintings of plants and insects. Her detailed observations and documentation of the metamorphosis of the butterfly make her a significant, albeit not well known, contributor to entomology.

Also... A few things about the pomegranate that inspire me(totally clipped from wikipedia):

Jewish tradition teaches that the pomegranate is a symbol for righteousness, because it is said to have 613 seeds which corresponds with the 613 mitzvot or commandments of the Torah. However, the actual number of seeds varies with individual fruits. For this reason and others, many Jews eat pomegranates on Rosh Hashanah. It is also a symbol of fruitfulness. Some Jewish scholars believe that it was the pomegranate, not the apple, that was the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden.

Pomegranates are a motif found in Christian religious decoration. The fruit, broken or bursting open, is a symbol of the fullness of his suffering and resurrection.^[34] In the Eastern Orthodox Church, pomegranate seeds may be used in kolyva, a dish prepared for memorial services, as a symbol of the sweetness of the heavenly kingdom

According to the Qur'an, pomegranates grow in the gardens of paradise (55:068). According to Islamic tradition, every seed of a pomegranate must be eaten, because one can't be sure which aril came from paradise. The Prophet Mohammed is said to have encouraged his followers to eat pomegranates to ward off envy and hatred.^[34] The Qur'an also mentions (6:99, 6:141) pomegranates twice as examples of good things God creates.

The myth of Persephone, the chthonic goddess of the Underworld, also prominently features the pomegranate.

A Fellow Faithful Agnostic

I think I've found a spokesperson! Check out A.J. Jacobs: My year of living biblically .

Salad Anyone?

What does it mean when someone says "those were the salad days"? I honestly don't know, but I imagine it means poor, but happy. Simple, but satisfied. Let's do a quick wiki look, shall we...

"Salad days" is an idiomatic expression, referring to a youthful time, accompanied by the inexperience, enthusiasm, idealism, innocence, or indiscretion that one associates with a young person. More modern use, especially in the United States, refers to a person's heyday when somebody was at the peak of his/her abilities—not necessarily in that person's youth.

The phrase was coined in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra in 1606. In the speech at the end of Act One in which Cleopatra is regretting her youthful dalliances with Julius Caesar she says:

"...My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood..."

Okay, not exactly what I had in mind. I'm not feeling particularly "green" anymore. I would opt more for "ripe". Although I can imagine in 10 years I will laugh my head off at that.

I have been turning that salad phrase (or dare I say tossing it) around in my head, because I can only see my life getting more complicated, rich and chaotic from here. Right now there is a simplicity in having small children with small problems and needs, an entry level career, a 2 bedroom home and little money to spare. My marriage is strong, my kids healthy, and we just planted our first garden. Life is good. Salad is good. Now I am sorta itching to add a bit of sauce....

Mother of a Morning

Third Mother's Day and I am looking forward to cute, handmade cards instead of being peed on in the middle of the night. Really.

My almost 3 year old is mostly potty trained; the nighttime is the final battlefront. Peeing in his own bed, thereby summoning me out of sleep to do clean up on Aisle Oli, is for any ol' night. To make it special for Mother's Day, he went the extra mile and got in my bed and peed on me and my bed, as well.

I was wearing my new pj's , a gift from my mom for Mother's Day. I think I was too stunned to react much, but my ever steady husband almost lost it. Repeat: clean up, console, return to bed. Sleep…one....two...three......WAKE UP! It's 6:15 am and Oli is on a roll!

My ever thoughtful husband, who came home from work at 12:30am with beautiful roses for me, meant to get up. But he was in the coma stage of sleep, so it was down to me.

I did not handle this with grace or style. More like anger and desperation. Oli asked for food he then wouldn't eat and demanded to hear Daft Punk "faster stronger". Jack was screeching because he realized his arm was trapped inside his sleeve. He managed to pull his arm out of the sleeve, towards his body and then was furious that his arm was caught in his shirt. Repeat after several rescues from mom. More screeching.

Mercifully, I was relieved of duty around 8 and slept like a stone till almost 11. That kind of sleep is great re-set button (smart husband) and it has been a nice, relaxing day after-all.

Sucking on Bisphenol A

Below is my letter to the National Toxicology Program concerning its draft brief on Bisphenol A.
Just another petro-chemical leaking into our body, but this time it is in my baby's bottle. I have known about this for a few days, from an email I get from MomsRising.org urging action, but I couldn't open it right away because I knew how sickened and enraged I would become. Please sign this petition to CEOs of the leading manufacturers of baby bottles to stop the use of the toxic chemical bisphenol A (BPA) in our baby bottles and other children’s products.

*****

To NTP experts,

I appreciate that the board is investigating this issue. I am once again dismayed that the FDA, EPA and the NIH are not able to protect the consumer from dangerous products. Lead in the toys, poison in pet food, and estrogen-mimicking chemicals in a baby’s bottle. I have to say as a mother and a voter; I have had enough and demand that my tax money be used to care for public health and well-being rather than war and all its weapons. It is painfully clear that our technology and science has outpaced our capacity to regulate and even understand the potential harm of lab created substances.

Please, take the greatest care possible in deciding on your levels of concern for BPA. We all know the song and dance surrounding issues of causality, but it is a losing perspective that puts the chance of profit above the chance of cancer. It is time for the US to become leaders in safe, green products. Our economy is ready to be revived by a real commitment to technologies and science that increase our chance of health as a planet and a people. BPA certainly isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it feels like the last straw to me as a stare at the baby bottle I have used to feed my son for the last year. I am outraged.

Thank you for your consideration of my concerns

.

Holy Crap... This could change my life

The Kazdin Method: How to Parent a Defiant Child.
This works. Oh my good mother of god and baby Jesus. We are only through Ch. 2 and on day 5, and it has changed my son's behavior remarkably. It has stopped the yelling. Oliver still yells sometimes (naturally) and he behaves (mostly, naturally). We do not yell hardly at all with the goal being never. Yelling does not work, but heaven help me, it gets to a point where I don't know what to do. This technique offers an alternative based on solid research instead of tired opinions of some righteous doctor, celebrity, or plucky do it all mom.

Never would I imagine myself to be a yelling, red faced mother. I knew that once angry, I tend towards the white hot, head exploding kind of anger. But I can be quite patient and calm, I thought I had learned. I did not know how thin my little Oli would wear my last thread of dignified control over my anger. Nothing had prepared me for the solar flare, the block of steel, the raging ego of wanting everything and heeding nothing that is my Oliver. Bless his perfect, golden spun hair covered little head. He is quite possibly brilliant, but most definitely defiant.

I sense a bit of push back from folks who think I am exaggerating Oli's behavior and really "he is just two". But trust me, this is no "phase" for my son. It is his personality from the moment he had one to be strong willed, intense, and demanding. He is very high energy, extremely smart and articulate, and wildly particular about how things are done. I love these things about him, but had not a skill in my pocket to parent this child.

This is what I learned doesn't work to get Oli to do something not on his agenda or to his liking:

• making it a game
• repetition
  
• reasoning
• explaining
• punishing
  
• yelling
• warning
• time-outs
  
• time-ins
• naughty chairs...worked for a while and then didn't anymore.
  
• taking away toys
• more yelling
• spanking....really not proud of that one.

Praising like a drunk cheerleader (loud, touchy, and often) with points for everything he does "good" and mostly ignoring the "bad" does work.

Sweet, sweet boy is to me returned and I to him. He hugs me more, tighter, and longer. He says to me "hey mama, you are soooo sweet! Come here and give me a hug."

Fabulous

In this, my 30th year, I have made a commitment to be more fabulous.

If I do not, I worry I will be sucked down a spiral of boring, blah, and comfort that can only end in Mom Jeans and scuffed tennies. That is scarier than my very old fear of being too bold, too weird, to "look at me"! My feeling now is "I please me!" because I currently dance to the piper of children and a mortgage every other given moment.

My bossed dubbed my hair "parrot purple and pink". I love it. Love my boss even more for not firing me. I work with students, so I try to sell it as giving me "street cred".
Sometimes I realize a person is staring at me and I wonder why. Then I remember, right-- I have purple hair. But most folks seem to really like it. Not that I care too much... not that I would admit it if I did.

Also on my quest to being more fab: I am getting rid of all my clothes that do not fall into these two categories: It is fabulous and It fits. Why shouldn't I feel great in my clothes everyday?

Hopefully, a side benefit is to prepare me to embarrass my boys properly. Not as a MILF (a full discussion of how stupid that term is requires a separate post) but as the slightly nutty mom who sings and laughs too loud, is not sufficiently invisible in public, and makes some other parents a little nervous -- but always has cool music, good food, and excellent conversation to offer up in exchange.

Maternity leave--- it's the least you can do

Everyone contributes to society's bounty and everyone takes from it. We pour and we dip.

Is maternity leave (12 weeks paid minimum) too much to take?

Is it too much to ask parents to produce children who are well nourished, socialized, ready and willing to learn, compassionate, morally upright but not uptight, non-aggressive but assertive, compliant but not apathetic, height to weight proportionate, psychologically balanced with a healthy body image and self esteem, able to develop and sustain friendships and caring family relationships,properly groomed and suitably dressed, confident but not arrogant, self-reliant but not loners,...am I forgetting anything? Surely!

If you have any hopes for the environment, the national debt, or your social security, you can add ingenious and tenacious problem solvers, capable of global consciousness and forgiveness, and willing to take care of your old, broken ass to the list.

A blank book

I have a beautifully hand bound blank book given to me by a dear and old friend for my 30th birthday. I put it in my sock drawer on a pretty tray. But I haven't written in it. I might think of something clever, quick, or insightful and consider writing on that first page of thick many. But I don't. I am too scared of writing the wrong thing. The first page could determine everything, I assume. I don't want to ruin the book.

Mother Hood of Confessions

Some days, I just do not want to be bothered. At all.

I want to...
Sleep in, then QUIET breakfast with a slow cup of coffee and an uninterrupted crossword. A lazy bath and time with the hubby. A day without anybody needing or wanting something from me. And a night at a posh restaurant and then dancing and drinks.

I love my life. But some days I feel so chipped away. The house is not remotely clean, the baby's not satisfied, the toddler is a drunk monkey with a default, repeating vocab of "no" and "mine". And I just want to sit and eat my egg hot, for chrissakesssssssss.

THEY GET UP AT 5:58 am, 6:07 IF YOU ARE LUCKY. (after waking up at 2:30 and 4:30) and then they want things from you. All day long!!!

I am in the "this too shall pass" zone right now. Trying so so hard (but still not hard enough) not to loose my temper, my manners, or my mind.

I thought I was a nice, peaceful person. I think I was just trained well.
But these buttons found/created by my children are fresh and raw. Worn out. Worn thin.
I have noticed I am a better mom when other people are around. So there must be hope that I can remain a civilized person in the face of great tyranny. Just need to feel someone is watching. Maybe I'll get a nanny cam.

trancy dancin'

I will be participating in a "trance dance" in a couple of weeks. Blindfolded, dancing mania to let the ego take a break and spirit step in.
This sounds even to me corny and "new age"- recognizable by the bunny ears for certain. But it is an experience, where something might actually happen! Oh, delightful deliverance from the monotony of scripted life. I am to have an intention for my dance to trance. So I decided I will be letting go of regrets for all the dances I might have missed because I was too scared.

poem

You hold that memory
like candy
getting sticky
in your hand
You want to wait
You want to relish
Je mehr desto weniger
the more
the less
it seems

What I think I might know

1. Biblical Literalism is an awesome opportunity for comedy. Check out Why Can't I Own a Canadian for proof.

2. Moral Relativism, although sexy and freeing, makes me a bit nauseous-- like moocher hippy boys who really just want in your pants and a hit off the pipe. I like this overview of the problem from Wesley Owen
"What's the difference between a relativist and a person who admits she has no morality at all? There seems to be none. How does a relativist make a moral decision? He decides for himself whatever he thinks is best. How does someone with no morality know how to act? She decides for herself whatever she thinks is best. "

3. I have a "God-Shaped Hole" in my heart. I know it is irrational, but that doesn't bother me one bit.

4. I am not interested in debating atheism. People get very bent out of shape when defending their right to think they know it all. Check out my little video on youtube.