Is my kid racist? And other pressing parenting questions that were not in the books.

It's Black History Month, and Laurel came home with a coloring book page of Jackie Robinson. We asked her why he was important, but really all she seemed to get was that he was a good baseball player. Marko also participated by coloring his own picture of Jackie Robinson. He used an orange crayon. He doesn't really know what baseball is, so I can't begin to imagine what he thought of that activity. And maybe that's the point. Maybe infants and preschoolers are just supposed to become familiar with famous Black people and not dive into the whole whys and hows of it. (Note, the daycare director and much of the staff is Black.) And not that this makes my kids racist, by any means, but it still got me thinking about whether or not I'm doing all I should be.

Did I miss the chapter on "Keep Your Kids From Turning into Racists" in the baby books? I suppose I had this loose expectation that if I raised my kids in an integrated neighborhood and we had friends from a variety of backgrounds then it would all take care of itself. (That was sort of dumb and white of me.) Little kids make a lot of broad and inaccurate assumptions as they are trying to figure out the world. Laurel, when she was about 2, seemed to think that the term "neighbor" meant someone with darker skin...I suppose because we often prompted her to wave to neighbors as they passed by our front porch.

The problem with trying to educate kids about the history of race relations is they just stare at you, incredulous at the absurdity of it all. When we recently talked about "black" or "white" with Laurel she gazed at her skin...trying to make it fit into her understanding of "white." When I asked her if she knew any Black people she named a selection of friends and family members, including my mother. (Why she thinks my mother is Black, I am not sure.) After she said that, I realized it's probably not that important for my daughter to classify people she knows by labels that they may or may not use themselves.

My kids have a lot of exposure to people who are not white. Not that I want them to be rude ever, but I especially don't want them to be rude to people of color. I'm not quite sure what level of white guilt spawns this desire, but it's there. I want to teach them ways to be respectful about labels and names and hair and culture, which roughly equates to just being a generally well-mannered human but seems to require some added clarification.

Part of me thinks I should talk with her a lot more, and part of me thinks we should just let it go for now and let her form her own ideas.

I work with a lot of people who are not white (or not all the way white like me? Am I all the way white?). I hesitate to even use a label because so many of the teens in my program balk at labels in general, or identify as multi-racial or Jamaican and are totally offended by the term "African-American" - but it's in my organization's mission statement and there's definitely some icky racist stuff going on in Pittsburgh that requires us to think something and say something about institutional racism.

This week, I've been carpooling with a young man who lives a few blocks away. Today, I almost asked him to meet me at the Walgreens. I say almost, because I realized at the last minute that a white lady pulling up to young black man in a parking lot known for drug trafficking might look rather suspicious. And we didn't really have time to get pulled over...we had an after-school program to run! Hahaha! Funny police stories. But seriously, this was a legitimate concern. And that's kind of indicative of the true state of racism in our country today.

So, happy black history month! Or African American History Month, if you prefer. Here's a few things I'm thinking about this month.

• Check out this podcast on State of the Reunion, especially damali ayo's piece. Or this one, about blurred racial lines. (Members of the same family cannot agree what race they are!?)
• Don't pretend to be colorblind.
• Make your kid's bookshelves more diverse. I like Zoobean's search function to point me in the direction of books with diverse characters.
• Read this paper.

Sorry! So sorry!

Bad news when it's only Monday evening and you think, no, I just can't. Just no. No.

I'm obsessively checking the Weather Channel because there's supposed to be more snow or freezing rain tonight and the city ran out of salt and please, oh please, let there be a two hour delay tomorrow.

For reasons that would be very lengthy to explain, I ended up way on the other side of the city this afternoon. I crossed rivers, man. I did so with the condition that I would, under no circumstance, leave the site later than 5:00pm so that I may make it back to my 'hood before being charged a dollar a minute late fee at the daycare. I left at 5:18. It was really 5:23 by the time I pulled out of the school parking lot. Miraculously there was no traffic in any of the places I expected it to be and I got caught behind only one bus. I made it to the daycare with 2 minutes to spare, and my kids were not the last ones there. Whew.

By the time we got home though, everyone was crying (I want daddeeeee!!) and I had to carry 15 bags and a baby and a four year old into the house and we were all sliding on the ice in the driveway, and people were still calling me from work about things I really have no control over. There was no dinner and M was out at a meeting.

And I said I can't, but really that's not an option. Keep calm and carry on, and so we did. My friend texted me to say that she can take Laurel to gymnastics on Wednesday, and I whipped up some scrambled eggs and grilled cheese sandwiches and got everyone in and out of the bath in record time. Marko brought me Good Night Moon to read and Laurel read some of the pages and I felt very cozy sitting there with a lapful of children. Suddenly it all felt very manageable again.

I read that working moms say sorry a lot, so I've been trying not to do that. I didn't apologize at all today. I took a gym break midday and only put three things on my To Do list. Points off for eating lunch in my car, but at least it was food.

One

I finally took Marko to his well baby check up today. Nineteen pounds, 28 inches long. He's really into this book, Bear in the Square, right now. He walks, pretty steadily now, but sort of a side shuffle. When he gets close to me, he flings himself into my arms and giggles.

Laurel is pretty rough with him, but he doesn't seem to mind, for the most part. He likes going to daycare and being around other kids. I'm still his favorite person by far, but I can see that time coming to a close. He eats like crazy...grilled cheese sandwiches are his favorite.

He can say "that's good," "mmmm good," and "daddy".

I wrote a lot about Laurel in her first year. Part of it was the newness of having a baby in the house, but part of it is her charisma. She's got to be center stage.

Marko isn't like that. He's very mellow compared to her. He's the baby on my hip while I go about my day. He orbits around us in the morning, toddling into the bathroom and out while we are getting dressed, poking around in drawers. He's pretty good at staying just under the radar. I think about all the stressing over bedtime and sleep schedules I did with Laurel and he just goes to sleep, pretty much at the same time each night. He wakes up happy every morning. I'm not really that much better of a mother.

I wonder what we would be like if he was born first and we were just finishing her first year.

Deep Winter

Marko got it first on Saturday, then Laurel on Sunday. By Sunday evening, M had it too, and I got it shortly after. Monday became a sick day for all four of us, lounging around in our pajamas and watching 8 hours of television. We occasionally staggered into the kitchen for ginger ale and pedialyte. It snowed again, so M made his way outside to clear the sidewalks. Laurel, who was feeling better, thought this was great fun, unlimited tv and no chores. I realized we have very few baby holding devices to strap Marko into. He's mostly free range, which works fine, unless both parents keep laying down "for just a minute, I just need a minute."

I went to a complimentary personal fitness session at our gym on Sunday afternoon, where the trainer ran me through all sorts of foreign motions...burpees and push ups and leaping up onto a board and then back down again. She measured my body fat and declared it to be "not good, but not terrible."

"I'm still breastfeeding my son," I told her. She stared at me for a second and then wrote down a number. My new body fat percentage goal.

She launched into a series of questions about my previous fitness goals and why I had failed to reach them. Then she asked me about upcoming class reunions. Bikinis in the summer, and so forth. She asked me what sort of exercise I enjoy doing. "I like to walk," I said, without hesitation, "Really, really far."The session ended poorly, with my fitness goals not really lining up with their sales pitch, but I was happy to have learned a few new exercises along the way.

Still, I regretted the entire thing the next day, when I woke up after vomiting half the night and was incredibly sore. Combine the hit-by-a-truck flu feeling with too many burpees and...wow. I couldn't even move.

But all things considered, it wasn't a bad day of snuggles and stories and watching the snow fall from inside our cozy house.

Walking the Walk

Marko is. There is officially a toddler in the house! He's a climber, too. Today I found him gleefully sitting on top of the bed. We had dinner with friends and I watched him walk tentatively across the entire length of their apartment, pausing periodically to squat and regain his balance.

School was finally back in session today, and I visited with some Reading Warriors. It feels good, at this point in the year, to have built real relationships with these teens. I love when they are proud of their work and want to show something off to me. Sometimes they text me photos of themselves reading aloud. They boast about the progress of the little ones they work with.

Some days it feels like I bit off a little too much. Most days, I just want to give them all more. That's how I know I'm walking the walk.

Happy Birthday, Marko!

The kids and I went to Texas to visit my cousins last week. I have tons of good memories of hanging out with them as kids. They lived in the South Hills, which of course felt very far away from the North Hills. (I am a yinzer in that way.) I can remember sitting in traffic in the Liberty Tunnels sometimes. We were always scheming to make the family party last just a little longer. It was fun to pick up where we left off, now with another generation of kids to run around and play with each other. Many thanks to them for hosting us for an entire week and cooking fabulous GF food the entire time. Also, the weather was a welcome reprieve from this winter. It was 65 when we left Houston on Wednesday and 5 when we arrived in Pittsburgh two hours later!

And of course, Marko had his birthday this week. One! He's getting really good at climbing up on furniture and stairs. For the past two months it seemed like he was going to start walking, but he takes a few steps and then drops to all fours. M's sister bought him this dinosaur bike thing for Christmas and he loves riding it, and has all sorts of interesting techniques for propelling himself around the room. I gave up on keeping his clothes organized, because they are in a drawer under his crib and his favorite activity is taking them all out. He also likes the dish towel drawer. He started at daycare at the beginning of the month and seems to really like being with other kids. He also started eating regular food. He went from purees to entire sandwiches in about a week and is back to being nice and round.

It's been an awesome year with him. He's pretty good natured, but strong-willed enough to hold his own with Laurel. Maybe it's the second kid, maybe it's his mellow streak, but the infant stage was way easier and more enjoyable this time. I'm looking forward to watching him learn to walk and talk in the coming year.

Unclenching

It's been a very stressful two weeks with Marko getting sick with an intestinal infection that resulted in a hospital stay. I started my new job last week - and by start, I mean canceled all my meetings and took occasional calls while holding a feverish baby in a hospital room.  I really want to jump in and get started on some pretty big goals my boss has for me, not to mention all the regular Reading Warriors programming that I need to be working on. But as soon as we came home from the hospital on Thursday, I felt my entire body unclench and suddenly had a need for a 3 hour nap. I wanted that nap to erase 2 weeks of very little sleep, and then I would just get back to it. But that didn't really work.

So. We're easing back in. (And bleaching. Babies show no discretion or restraint when they vomit.)

The biggest lesson for me in all of this was about how the diagnostic powers of a doctor are highly dependent on the evidence they see. You can be sitting in the same room with them, looking at the same kid, and be seeing totally different evidence. It's very important to pay close attention to details, take notes, track symptoms and offer up information even if they don't ask for it. On our first two trips to the ER the doctors really couldn't see anything other than a regular stomach virus, and I don't blame them for that. Yes, he was dehydrated and needed fluids, but there was no indication that it wouldn't clear up in 3-5 days (ER visit #1). Oh wait, it could last 7-10 days (ER visit #2). Hmmm, maybe we should start investigating other possibilities since he's been vomiting for 12 days (ER visit #3). Really, the only reason they knew what he had was because I gave them a dirty diaper at ER visit #2 and asked them to do a stool culture. The culture takes a couple of days to run so when we returned to the hospital they had the results and could start treatment right away. (He had yersinia, which is sort of like salmonella, but happens when you make chitlins, then don't wash your hands and touch your baby. Which totally didn't happen in this house, so... medical mystery?)

Aside from the whole thing taking a while to figure out, I was very satisfied with Children's Hospital. They were supportive of breastfeeding and even gave me meals while we were there. Volunteers stopped by regularly bring me water and snacks, or toys for Marko once he was feeling better. The nurses were great. They talked to Marko like he was a person. They have this stuff called Pittsburgh Paste, which is some sort of magical diaper rash elixir that cleared up Marko's diaper rash in two days flat (and it was the sort of rash you winced just looking at).

Unfortunately, he's now regressed to nursing every two hours and refusing to sleep except in my arms. I've hit this mental wall where I believe with all my heart that I'll never sleep well again, and I fantasize about napping while waiting at line in the grocery store. Sometimes I pull over on my way home from work and just take a 5 minute catnap in front of some strange's house. (Don't be alarmed if it's your house, just a tired mom here.) I remember hitting this point with Laurel. Girl just would not take to sleep training. It was worse because I had to stand up in front of 9th graders and try to make them learn algebra for 7 hours a day, which is soul-crushing work in and of itself, let alone when you haven't slept in a year and a half. Then magically, around 15 months, bam. She slept through the night and that was never a problem again. (Also, she was toilet trained at night from the beginning. I can't really complain.)

I'm trying to take care of Marko, take care of me, not neglect Laurel too badly, and have a conversation with M every once in a while. I know this is just life when you have a couple of little ones in the house, but dang...it's hard sometimes

Emerging

Today I looked around the house and found it was covered with notes and posters and lists, all labeled with various forms of L-A-U-R-E-L, and then maybe another random word. Like hello. Or camel. Laurel is just on the brink of learning how to read and write. She can do her first name by herself and can write most letters of the alphabet. She practices a lot, on her own mostly, because I am cautious about meddling. I realized too that she's started choosing at least one "baby" book each night, the sort with very few words, that she can read to me or to the stuffed animals lined up next to her pillow. It's wild to me, this effortless shift into literacy, because I spend all day at work moving mountains to make it happen for other kids. Today at training one of the Reading Warriors lent me a book to read. I've noticed this start to happen - kids trading paperbacks and making recommendations to each other. But never have they had the confidence or awareness to give me something to read. When children's books were mentioned many of them even jotted down the title and author. Tiny victories for my cause. But then at home, where literacy isn't a cause, just a thing we do, the victories are tiny as well. So maybe there aren't any mountains to move after all.

Some Days...

Some days I get a little too optimistic with my list of errands, and parked in the garage underneath the Target, I realize there are not one, but two sleeping children in the back seat. Unplanned naps, a little too close to dinner. I immediately wish for a service you could call, where someone would come and watch your car for you while you picked up two things at the store...just two things is all. Instead, I pull out my phone and try to answer emails, update my calendar. The connection is too slow. I think about taking a nap myself. Check the clock. Only 14 minutes until we pick up M.

Some days dinner just doesn't get made and everyone snacks on peanut butter sandwiches. Some days the sink is backed up again. Some days Marko manages to sneak into the hall closet and take little nibbly bites out of every roll of toilet paper before I catch him, and scoop him up into my arms, twirling around in the hallway while he giggles.

How is it possible that there are so many dishes when we didn't even cook dinner? Why is it that I haven't spared a minute to call my friend - didn't even think about it - until her husband pedaled past me this morning while I sat at a traffic light?  Whatever happened to origami night?

It's not an unhappy existence. Mostly, I'm filled with gratitude and joy. But the relentless cycle of chores done and then immediately undone that is so much a part of parenting young children, well, let's just say, some days, it gets to me a little bit.

Getaway

You know M & K are always up for a road trip. Luckily, Laurel shares M's love of Sheetz MTO's and Marko doesn't mind riding in the car, so family trips are pretty fun. This weekend, we took off for Ohiopyle. It was warm enough that we could have camped, but we had a camping cottage. I am a huge fan of the camping cottage. So much less wet and muddy than camping. The one we stayed in had heat, electricity, and furniture - including a picnic table on the porch, and bunk beds, and table and chairs inside. No bathroom, but the bathhouse was toasty warm and had hot showers and was just down the road. We brought bags full of books and puzzles, ingredients to make cheese sandwiches and coffee and chilled out all weekend. M and I both actually finished books, we went on a nice hike from the campground into the town of Ohiopyle and did a little drive to Mt. Davis - high point of Pennsylvania - on our way home.

We've been trying to really prioritize these last few months, and one thing that keeps coming up is going to the mountains and spending time with our little family of four.  I just took on a full time job (Assistant Director! Ooooh, fancy!) and M continues to be busy with Co-op board work and working on the farm, in addition to his full-time job. I know both of us are grateful for all of the "work" in our lives - we are blessed to be doing things that we enjoy and believe are worthwhile, but still, sometimes you need a little time away.

Check out our pictures from the weekend here.