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Mommy Talk
July 2008
Wednesday July 30, 2008
Posted by: Janine Anderson at 7:04AM CST on July 30, 2008
Henry learned to crawl today.
He woke up at 4 a.m., wet and screaming. I changed him, fed him, and he wanted nothing to do with going back to sleep. So up we got, and on the floor he went. Early-morning play time, and there's nothing he wanted more than to have the colorful ball in front of him. He dug in with his toes, pulled with his arms, and army crawled his way over there. Just to be sure it wasn't a fluke, I tried it again. And again. We've got a mobile baby, just in time for a cross-country train trip! Woo-hoo! A crawling baby means baby-proofing. We'll need to get cupboard locks and figure out a way to keep Henry out of the basement while letting the cats get down there. And, I'm sure it's just a matter of time before he gets crazy mad when he can't go somewhere because of a baby gate or a closed door. We'll be putting those barriers up for his safety (and our sanity), but I want him to be able to explore as much as possible, to discover his home on his terms. With the summer weather, we've been taking walks to discover the neighborhood together. We can walk to the lake and to the zoo, and I love having a destination when I take Henry out in the stroller. But each time we walk down the sidewalk, I'm surprised by how many houses have fences. I can hear people talking behind their 6-foot wooden fences. I hear parties and children playing. I see strollers left by the entrances, and I wonder who lives there. Is it another mom with a young baby? Is it someone who'd be interested in walking to the lake with us? Is this someone Henry could play with? I grew up in a somewhat rural part of Walworth County. I don't think anybody had fences in my neighborhood, unless they had horses.When we bought our house four years ago I was surprised to see fences surrounding our backyard. On two sides, there are 6-foot-tall wooden fences; in the back, a shorter chain link fence. We quickly got to know our rear neighbor, chatting over the chain link fence. We talk about gardening, about cooking, the baby, family, the newspaper. Over that fence, we've also met an around-the-corner neighbor and seen kids playing on the other side of the block.
Four years after moving in, we finally met one of the families that's on the other side of one of the tall fences. They live around the corner from us, and we ended up talking about a tree next to our garage, on their side of the fence, that needs to come down. I know Henry won't have the same childhood experience I did, with connected yards to play hide-and-seek or ghosts in the graveyard on summer nights. It's tough to even play a real game of tag in a postage-stamp city backyard.Right now I'm (sort of) thankful for the fences. It'll make it easier to keep him contained next year, when he's toddling around instead of crawling. But as he gets older, I wish they could come down, that he'd be able to play with the kids next door without walking out to the sidewalk. What do you think of fences? Why do you have them (or not have them)? Monday July 28, 2008
Posted by: eyoung at 12:18PM CST on July 28, 2008
So last week I wrote about making the most of summer weekends, and I instructed Mommy Talk readers to get their families to Chicago to play in the fountain at Millennium Park. I still think everybody should do that, but there’s also so much to do right here in Racine. Over the past few days, my children and I have been doing some tourist-y things in our own hometown. And we’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Our "Rediscover Racine" adventure actually started a couple of weeks back, when I finally got my children into the Racine Art Museum, 441 Main St. I was a Nervous Nelly mom for most of the visit ("Don’t touch! Don’t lean on that! Not so close!"), but my daughters, 4 and 6, happily obeyed the rules and patiently endured my reminders. They enjoyed studying the various works — we especially liked the woodturned vessels in the Moulthrop exhibit — and I enjoyed their interpretations: "That looks like a mountain goat with blue hair standing on a cloud made of chocolate chips." "That one looks like a giant ocean with a big silly hat floating in it and a bunch of spaghetti noodles next to a mop." (And my youngest, master of stating the obvious: "That looks like a sparkly bracelet" when she saw, you guessed it, a sparkly bracelet.) We don’t visit art museums nearly enough. Our other recent activities included watching Thursday’s Racine.org Cycling Classic race through Downtown, walking to get ice cream from the Sugar Shack Sweet Shoppe, strolling through Downtown stores, and admiring the teeny tiny little microcars at Saturday’s Micros on the Monument event. Then yesterday, we rented a canoe from the Root River Environmental Community Center, or REC, 1301 Sixth St. in Racine. We spent an hour and a half rowing up and down the river, waving at cyclists on the bike paths, marveling at the underside of bridges, pointing out ducks and blue heron, and shrieking when we got stuck in the river’s shallow spots. My daughters were enthralled with stuff they spotted that must have washed down river during the flooding: three bicycles, a tow camper, a scooter, a picnic table. But overall the river was beautiful. If you haven’t done this yet, add it to your must-do list. ... (more)Friday July 25, 2008
Posted by: mlaehr at 9:57AM CST on July 25, 2008
Twice a year for the past four or five years I’ve had to ask the same dreaded question of my boys: “What would you like for your birthday?” “A puppy,” one of them might say. (Absolutely not. We already have a cat.) My youngest son LOVES to take pictures. He is forever stealing my husband’s cell phone and using the camera to snap shots of his dad’s feet, the kitchen floor, his brother making goofy faces, his Spider-Man action figure propped up on the counter, the back of his baby sister’s head, the kitchen floor, and every once in a while, he’ll turn the camera around on himself and take the funniest photos of himself - you know the ones that are so close it distorts the head shape. Wednesday July 23, 2008
Posted by: Janine Anderson at 11:47AM CST on July 23, 2008
Sometimes in our house, you'll hear this forlorn yee-owww. Over and over again, one of our cats makes this noise. It sounds like she's stuck somewhere. Trapped. About to die. But spend a few minutes looking for her, and you'll find she's sitting in the basement - unstuck and unharmed - big cat eyes staring back. As soon as she sees a person, she breaks out of her cat-trance and trots upstairs. Now, we don't even look for her anymore. We just holler her name from wherever we are, and she quiets down and comes upstairs. We call it the bewilderment cry. It's like she's forgotten that she knows this place, that it's all OK, and that if she just went up the stairs, everything would be as it should. This morning, Henry gave us a bewilderment cry. Like the cat, it sounded like he was in serious trouble. He woke up at 5 a.m. (too early, by my clock). I tried to give him his pacifier to get him back to sleep, but it didn't work. So I got him out of his crib and cuddled with him in my bed. I didn't want to be awake and moving around just yet, and was hoping he'd give me some quiet time to fully wake up. About 20 minutes later it was obvious that he wasn't interested in quiet time. He was far more excited by the cat (who was also no longer interested in sleeping) walking back and forth. So we got up. I nursed him, changed his diaper and put his clothes on. We played for a while, and then he started getting sleepy. I gave him his pacifier and put him in his crib, turned the mobile on, and left him there. When I checked on him he was flat on his back, fists near his ears, staring into space. So tired. Five minutes later, he was out. That gave me time to sit down for breakfast - a vanilla latte, banana bread and cherries - before heading off to work. As I was getting ready to go, I heard this horrible cry. It sounded like a cartoon baby's cry: "Waaaaaaaaa!" Just one big awful noise. No breath, no repeat. I got to him before it was even done. And he was fine. Like the cat, he had no problem. He'd just woken up and flipped out. Maybe it was because the mobile had stopped, or his pacifier fell out, or that he was alone. I'll never know. But, just like when we holler "Catinca!" to make the cat stop her kitty freak-out, it only took a quick cuddle to right Henry's world. That's the power of parenting: I am all he needs. At least right now. Give me 16 years. Then I'll be the one making the bewilderment cry. Monday July 21, 2008
Posted by: eyoung at 3:23PM CST on July 21, 2008
Winter weekends I waste. I hibernate inside, grumbling about the cold, grousing about the snow. But summer weekends? Summer weekends fill fast for our family. We try to squeeze every drop of summer-y, sunshine-y goodness out of the 12 weekends we get.
So two weekends ago, we went to Chicago for a spur-of-the-moment overnight stay. (Thank you, Expedia, for our fabulously cheap hotel.) We had such a great time that I’m now going to give you six reasons to hop a train and get your family to the Windy City:
1 – Weekend passes on the Metra. Ride as often as you want Saturday and Sunday, and it will only cost you $5 per adult. Kids 11 and younger ride free. That means it only cost $10 for our family to get to and from Ogilvie Station in Downtown Chicago. No traffic. No tolls. No parking garages charging $50/day. (Just make sure you check the train schedule; only a few trains leave from and return to Kenosha each day.) Cost: $10.
2 – Free trolleys. Chicago is so courteous to its tourists. We hopped a free downtown trolley with the intent of traveling quickly to Millennium Park. We ended up skipping our stop and riding the trolley on its full loop around the city, just to see the sights. It was like one of those double-decker bus tours without the fee or the facts – which, when you’re riding with two young children, you probably wouldn’t get to hear anyway. Cost: $0. ... (more) Friday July 18, 2008
Posted by: Janine Anderson at 12:24PM CST on July 18, 2008
Is there anything more tempting than a high-priced, well-designed baby product?
I don't think so.
It's so easy to get sucked in by the slogans. Buy our high chair and have a better relationship with your child! Buy our modern stroller and take modern walks with your modern baby! Your little princess will have the sleep of her life in this amazing crib! I gave in twice. We registered for the Baby Bjorn because we'd heard other, cheaper brands weren't as comfortable. It was great for a few months, but by the time Henry was 3 months old, I was sick of it. It hurt my back and I couldn't do important household chores (like cooking) with it on, because he would have been in serious danger.So I shopped around and wound up spending almost twice as much as the Baby Bjorn initially cost to get a Beco Baby Carrier. This time, I was thrilled with it. This puppy's amazing. And, it's cute! I recommend it to anyone who's looking for a carrier, despite its $150 price tag. We've been taking Henry for lots of walks. We got one of those travel systems that come with a car seat and stroller. I've got no real problem with it. Stroller works great, car seat works great. But when I see something like this, I get stroller envy. Now this is a stroller. It's got a seat that adjusts in height, that you can flip to face front or back, that can even be used as a high chair when you're out to eat. Heck, it was even in the Sex and the City movie. Which I haven't seen. There's something about a product that touts its design as a way to boost my ability to interact with Henry that wants me to snatch it up, no matter the cost. The price tags for the items I've written about so far? Beco Baby Carrier: $150 Stokke Tripp Trapp high chair: $230 Bugaboo strollers: $530-$800 Princess Carriage Crib: $14,995Stokke Xplory stroller: $780
Granted, I don't want the crib. Not in a million years (even if I'd had a girl) would I have wanted that confection in my house. It cost almost as much as my current car. Even if I had a million dollars, I think I could find a far better way to spend $15,000 on my kid.
I find I have the same mental battles over toys. Henry loves pushing buttons. The remote and our cell phones have become incredibly interesting to him. I think about getting him some toy with buttons on it that he could hold and smash and make noise with. But I don't want to. I've got some serious toy snobbery going on.It's the opposite of my luxury stroller envy. I want his toys to be simple. When I pick out a toy for him, it's got no batteries and is made out of wood. His books don't pop up or play music. They're just books. I've been hunting around for something that would satisfy his desire for buttons and mine to keep his room filled with toys that don't do all the work for him. Maybe I need to find the Octotunes, or the NooBoo Pound-A-Sound. Or I could just get the darn piano tuned. Then he'll have 88 no-battery-required buttons to push. It won't satisfy my fancy-schmancy stroller desire, but it would keep me and the baby busy. Maybe then I won't have time to fantasize about blowing our mortgage payment on a stroller. Monday July 14, 2008
Posted by: eyoung at 8:50AM CST on July 14, 2008
So it’s a typical Tuesday and I’m eavesdropping on my kids. I love to do this. It’s why I haven’t gotten rid of our baby monitor yet. As usual this morning, my 6-year-old is instructing my 4-year-old on the wonders of the world. The 6-year-old is using her "teacher voice," as I call it — her very calm, very patient, very s-l-o-w voice that makes it clear that she’s about to explain something incredibly important and complicated to her less-educated little sister. Today’s lesson: The first people ever. "The first people ever were a man and a woman," the 6-year-old instructs. "And they were made by God. And their names were Odd and Eve." Get it? Tee hee. She, of course, knows somewhere in her brain that it’s actually Adam and Eve. But because she’s 6, and because she’s absorbing hundreds of new facts every single week, if not every day, things get a little mixed up sometimes. And I love, love, love how my children can completely mix things up. My 4-year-old horrified herself at bedtime one night a few months ago: I kissed her all over her face during a particularly enthusiastic rendition of The Brady Bunch theme song. (We sing whatever we want at bedtime, lullaby or not). She was elated at this silly display of affection and exclaimed, "Now I’ve got nipples! — Oh! I mean dimples!" And of course, since "nipples" is on the list of Funniest Words Ever for kids, the giggles that ensued were uncontrollable. Bedtime was pushed back a full 15 minutes while we all calmed down. ... (more)Friday July 11, 2008
Posted by: mlaehr at 5:26PM CST on July 11, 2008
So I was trying to get our family of five ready for our annual week-long trip to my parents' cabin in Northern Wisconsin. Do you know how hard it is to pack for all those people, especially when one of them is a baby? I had to organize and stack everything from bibs and diapers to life vests and beach towels, enough underwear for everyone and extra socks. And since the weather in that neck of the woods can range anywhere from 56 degrees and raining to 84 degrees and sweating, I also had to pack clothing for the seemingly impossible to predict range of elements. Then I had to figure out how I was going to stuff all of us, our suitcases, the big fat stroller, the cooler, the Pack N' Play and cases of soda and water into the back of the minivan. In the midst of my packing fervor, the boys alternately decided to color with markers, spray each other with the hose, fight over Battleship (sending small game pieces all over the kitchen floor for my 14-month-old to pick up), dig out their favorite T-shirts from my careful stacks, spill juice and tromp sand in the kitchen. What else could I do? I exploded. I used the word pissed. About four hours later my husband came home to find us all crabby. And the first words out of my 4-year-old's mouth were: "Daddy, what's pissed?" He looked at me. Guilty as charged. "He learned it from me," I admitted. But it's not just the words we use, I've come to see. Our kids watch us intently. They see the way we cope with frustration, the way we treat people we're supposed to love and respect, the dedication we have to our jobs and homes, even the way we take care of our stuff. As much as it irritates me when my husband leaves dirty socks in the middle of the bedroom floor, I dislike it even more when I see my sons have followed his example. In my experience, the phrase, "Do as I say and not as I do," just doesn't work. Leading by example is probably the best possible way to get your children to use good table manners, apply themselves in school and everything in between. It makes sense that kids with no parental guidance, whatever their socio-economic status might be, often wind up in trouble. They have no one to emulate, or they choose their own role models, who often don't point them in the right direction. But for many of us, it almost comes naturally as a parent, doesn't it? A lot of us stop swearing, smoking and spending money on foolish stuff once we have kids. We start going to church again, clip coupons and trade in Saturday nights at the bar for Saturday afternoons at the soccer field. I've watched myself become more careful, and I keep striving to become a more worthy role model for my three children. You should have heard my heart sing when my 6-year-old asked me the other day if a movie he wanted to watch was "appropriate" for his age. It almost made up for my teaching his younger brother the word pissed. Have you noticed your children mimicking you? Have you ever felt like they were holding a mirror up to your face when they said or did something?
Wednesday July 9, 2008
Posted by: Janine Anderson at 9:42AM CST on July 9, 2008
Henry's 8 months old now, and I'd love to do things with him as his interest in the world increases.
What things did you do with your babies in the warm weather? How about as they got older? What are the best things to do in the area now that it's nice out? Monday July 7, 2008
Posted by: eyoung at 10:36AM CST on July 7, 2008
"Any fire drills, Daddy?" And so it begins: Our daily after-school, after-day care, after-work, dinner table wrap-up. My husband and I learned back in September that getting our daughters to talk about their school day wasn’t going to be easy. "How was school today?" we’d ask. "Fine," said one. "Fine," said the other. "What did you learn?" we’d ask. "I dunno." "I dunno." With one daughter in kindergarten at a new school and the other in a new preschool class, we wanted details: Whom did they sit with at lunch? Whom did they play with at recess? What books did they read, what songs did they sing, how high did they count? We wanted an accounting of every minute, from 7:40 a.m. when we dropped them off, to 3:45 p.m. when I picked them up. Instead we got "fine" and "I dunno." I’ve been a reporter for 11 years, and those conversations with my children early in the school year were among the toughest interviews I’ve done. In my efforts to be an involved parent, I felt like I was interrogating them every evening. Until one day when someone had a fire drill. I’m pretty sure it was Sophie — her first fire drill in kindergarten. She announced the big news at dinner and the conversation took off. From fire drills we got to classroom jobs (She was the line leader! Isabel got to feed the fish!). From classroom jobs, we got to lunch. And from lunch we got to recess and rest time, science and story time. The next day — smarter now — we launched the conversation the same way: "Any fire drills today?" ... (more)Wednesday July 2, 2008
Posted by: Janine Anderson at 10:05AM CST on July 2, 2008
Last month, I got all teary-eyed at the thought of wanting to go golfing with my husband on a Sunday morning. The idea that it would be nice to leave Henry with someone else for a few hours so we could go and have fun together upset me. We left Henry with his grandma, and played golf. We had a great time. So did the baby. I've been talking for years about taking a dance class again, but never make the time to do it. I'm a working mom, and that's OK. But it makes me feel guilty about taking any time away from Henry when I'm not at work. I already take time away from him every day to go to The Journal Times and be a reporter. Why should I take any more time away from him to take ballet, or get my hair cut, or shop for clothes, or get my nails done, or water the garden, or do the laundry, or make dinner, or sleep? I don't believe that being a good mom means devoting myself, 100 percent of the time, to direct care of the baby. I don't watch him while he takes his nap. I don't stay awake next to his crib to watch him sleep. I let him play in his crib by himself sometimes. I want him to grow up seeing parents who are complete people, not just mom and dad. Having things to do outside the home is healthy, for me, for Henry and for us as a family. But I can't get over that giant guilt speed bump. It's like I'm going along, la-de-da-de-da, and have a thought -- oh! wouldn't it be great to take a ballet class? -- but somewhere between the thought and the execution of it, I get hung up on the reality that doing it means leaving Henry behind. After talking and talking and talking about getting back to dance, I managed to actually do it this week. I went to an adult ballet class Monday night. It was glorious. I degaged and plied and tendued and fondued and fouetted. I came home sweaty and exhilarated. I've spent the rest of the week nursing my ridiculously sore leg muscles. I hadn't realized just how out of dancing shape I really was. I'm going to go back again. I just need to find time to buy a new leotard and tights. The ones I wore in college aren't exactly cutting it any more. But that's a different problem altogether. How do you deal with mom guilt? What do you get hung up on? |
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