When I grow up...

Today Laurel asked me if she could be a pink fairy when she grew up.

No, I said. Then I thought about it. Maybe she can. Who am I to say who can be a fairy or not? What does she really mean by that anyway?

Tonight, I hosted the neighborhood association meeting, and we had a very lengthy discussion about bylaws revisions, which is a totally necessary conversation, but also very boring, when it's not a heated disagreement. (We have passionate neighbors.) I'm the president, so it's my job to keep the meetings running along smoothly. I wondered what a pink fairy would do at a meeting such as this, and if it would make for a better meeting.

At school, I'm teaching a section on prime factorization and it's going pretty well in that I can think of all kinds of real world examples and even invented a card game. Video clips, manipulatives, the whole nine yards. Today I showed them pictures of Margaret's farm and we calculated area for planting vegetables. It was a weird schedule, because the juniors are taking the PSSA's so we had 13 periods instead of 9 and they were all kind of short. I'm thinking the administration at my school could use a pink fairy to make a better schedule. They could use a pink fairy for a lot of things.

Laurel talks about growing up all the time. This morning, she told M that when she got big, she would "cut things all by myself".

Pink fairies and knives, that's my daughter.

Leaves, etc.

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Leaves

We looked for the fish in the pond, but didn't see them. Heard a woodpecker off in the distance. Laurel pointed out every sycamore tree she spotted.

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I have an idea!

Laurel is full of ideas. M and I are the kind of people who act quickly on ideas that seem good. For instance, last night after dinner, Laurel said, "I have an idea! Let's go to the pet store and see turtles and fish."

Well, that seemed like a reasonable request, nevermind the late hour, driving rainstorm, and the fact that it was a weeknight. We needed cat food anyway. So, off we went to the pet store, where we saw a lizard that looked like a snake, some very happy rabbits, and a lot of goldfish.

She tried it again tonight. "I have an idea! Let's go to the zoo. They have monkeys and elephants there."

I wonder if it is confusing to her to figure out when she's going to get what she wants and when we're going to say no or not now. I don't think you can really enforce rules for kids that you don't follow yourself. That's why it bothers me that kids at my school are not allowed to use their cell phones. Obviously, I don't want them to text each other in the middle of math class, but who cares what they do with the 4 minutes in between classes in the hallways? I certainly take the chance to check in with my husband and make sure

Sometimes, though, having a kid around highlights problems in my own habits. Like ice cream for dinner. Or brushing my teeth while walking around the bedroom getting dressed. It's not like there's a rule against either one of those things in our house. But it definitely makes me think, hey why am I doing this?

M is for Museum

"H! I have H! I have H! H! H! H!"

Laurel found a foam letter H in her art supplies. It was the first time I heard her identify H. The first letter she knew was M ("for Mark!"), and L, and then K for Katy, except she calls it "A". She was very, very excited when she found a second foam H in the box. Sometimes she looks at a street sign and says "What are those letters doing, mama?"

We went to the museum this weekend. Laurel asked to look at beautiful paintings and dinosaur bones. They have a kids section now, called M is for Museum, and there are lots of things to touch and do. C is for collection, and at that exhibit, you get a plastic bin that you can fill with whatever you want from this table piled with miniature frogs and rocks and plastic dinosaurs. When you are done, you label your collection and leave it on the shelf so that other visitors can look at it. I love this way of teaching that a museum is a place of collections. It made me think of all the strange museums I've been to over the years, and people's houses that are filled with collections of one kind or another.

When we went to art side of the museum, Laurel was tired and fussy and she kept saying, "No! That is not a painting!" at all my favorite Impressionist paintings until we got to Mark Rothko and then she seemed satisfied that she had seen what she had come for. She fell deeply asleep in the car on the way home and I carried her inside and slipped her shoes off without her even stirring. When she woke up, she wanted to paint. Her paintings were colorful and heavy with paint and featured dinosaurs.

At bedtime, she curled up next to M and recited many lines out of the Lorax, and went to sleep as soon as the book was finished - unusual, but probably due to the fact that we kept her up very late because we were too busy roasting rutabaga and golden beets to pay attention to the clock. (It's a delicious combination, by the way.)

I'm amazed to watch her literacy develop so effortlessly. I've been passing out pamphlets for years, advising parents to do a "few simple things" to ensure school readiness, and it's funny to be following that advice myself and seeing that it actually does work, without it being a lot of work. We've been reading every evening before bed since she was about two months old, usually 2-3 books per day. Over a thousand stories she's heard. It's strange to see how nightly rituals add up over the years. Part of the pleasure is the books, for sure. M and I rediscovered the strange imagination of Maurice Sendak lately. But I think what makes it a sustainable ritual is all of us piled up in bed. Squirmy Laurel jumping from one lap to another. Turning pages. Giving kisses. Best part of the day.

Happy Springer Day

I've got some serious Springer fever.

I cannot believe it has been five years. Life may change, but I still feel the urge to go find a mountain and walk up it. And then walk down it. And then walk up another one.

Neighbors!

When we bought our house, there were two others for sale on the block. Part of a development deal gone sour, they had been vacant for a while. The copper had been ripped out of the walls, stained glass windows stolen.

Because we had a cheerfully apathetic approach to the whole house hunting process, it did not occur to us that buying a property on the border of two of the most economically depressed neighborhoods in Pittsburgh and adjacent to 2 abandoned houses that were owned by a bankrupt development company might be a bit of a PITA. And that we might spend a lot of time over the next two years on the phone with various city government officials. And even more time chasing vagrants, drug dealers and junkies away.

Today, our neighbors are moving in. We went on the tour of the house yesterday and it is Unbelievable.

M and I are feeling inspired. To us, a house you own is nice because you don't have to move, you don't share walls with crackheads who shout out strange phrases in the middle of the night, and there's lots and lots of room for jars of fermented things (that's all M).

We are less fond of the responsibilities that come with it. Like worrying about whether the chimney is going to blow over and crush our brand new car in the 40 mph winds that blew through the other day. Who was supposed to call the mason?! Not me, I thought you were going to take care of it. And our current home security system consists of a refrigerator parked in front of the back door. (Ain't nobody getting in that door now!)

I have friends who bought houses they fell in love with. They have Pinterest boards to organize their design ideas, and spend their weekends changing tile and repainting the walls. I want to live in their houses. I want a magic fairy to come and fix up my house.

I know that in reality, nobody is going to come and do that and I'm going to spend a lot of time on the weekends painting and hemming curtains.

However, now that we have neighbors, it seems like a better investment.

Life Around Here

It's Saturday morning, about 8 o'clock. We've been up since before 6, because once Laurel gets up we make the same mistake of thinking she'll go back to sleep if we bring her into our bed, but she kicks us and wiggles and touches our closed eyes to get them to open and we give up on sleeping in after about 10 minutes and all come downstairs and make (gluten-free, dairy-free) pancakes.

By 7:30, we were done with breakfast and playing a little guitar-ukelele-djembe and watching the snow fall.

There had already been several disagreements over things like sitting on the arm of the chair at the dining room table and pretending to ride a donkey. I want to be really consistent about manners, but Laurel sounds so funny when she says "hee-haw" that I laugh every time. It's hard to discipline a child when you are laughing. I worry that she'll grow up and go to other people's houses for dinner and not have good manners. But really, I worry that her behavior will be seen as a reflection of my poor parenting.

I had a conversation with a parent this week. I have her son in class, and he's basically a good kid. A little ADD, and a little unfocused, because you know, he's 14 and doesn't know what he wants out of life yet. But basically polite, curious, friendly, cooperative, and funny....all of my favorite qualities in a kid. The mom was relaying some of the mistakes he had made over the past few months, and expressing her concerns about, well...how is a kid who can't remember his zip code going to make it in the world.

It's really hard to just take a deep breath and remind yourself to allow your children the freedom and autonomy to take some risks and do some things on their own, based on their own motivation and decisions and control.

We love it when we allow them to take risks and they surprise us with their independence and success.

We cringe when they take a risk and it turns messy, unpleasant, or embarrassing.

We care about our kids so much that we want to take those icky feelings of I-messed-up and just feel them ourselves so they don't have to. We blame ourselves for not teaching them Absolutely Everything About the World so they wouldn't make those mistakes. We act as if their mistakes are our mistakes.

Resist that urge. Let them fly. Let them fall.

It's the absolute hardest part of my job - trying to maintain this balance with "my" kids at school. Loving them, even when they are making their own choices. For example, skipping class and hiding out in the nurses office, or drawing a penis with flames on it in the textbook (I should have taken a photo of that. It was a true work of art).

It's a hard part of parenting, too. Especially parenting a toddler.

Mud

Laurel and I just arrived home from a walk in the park. Muddy pants and red noses. The highlight of this walk was seeing two goldfish in the little pond, or perhaps walking up a "mountain" (according to Laurel). We didn't walk very far, or go anywhere new. However, if you spend time in the woods, you know a tree never looks the same way twice...the sunlight or cloud cover, time of day, and season always give you a new perspective.

I'm reading Richard Louv's the Nature Principle right now. While his last book focused more on how exposure to nature impacts children, this book talks a lot about mental health in adults. Or lack thereof.

I can give you a lot of reasons why I hate my job. But one I hadn't thought of before is that I spend almost 8 hours a day in windowless classrooms. Last month I was prescribed a diet by my acupuncturist, and in addition to what to eat or avoid, there was the instruction to eat mindfully. Do nothing else during meals, except chew. If you are a teacher, you know the temptation is strong to work through lunch. I'm sure it's that way in a lot of professions. But I started to take my lunch (of gluten-free grains and roasted root vegetables. yum.) to the teacher work center, plop down in front of the windows and just stare at the woods on the other side of the tennis courts. Seeing natural light, and trees and birds, and observing the weather is probably as therapeutic as chewing slowly.

This simple action was jolting to me because I hadn't realized just how removed I had become from the outdoors.

Louv doesn't say that we all need to move to the country in order to have exposure to nature. Our proximity to a large urban park is good enough - if we actually get out there. Laurel walking almost a mile to daycare everyday puts her in a better position than a lot of kids...think of how many kids don't even really know the discomfort of rain or cold, because they are ushered between home and school and activities in a climate-controlled vehicle and spend only moments of their day exposed to the elements.

I've learned this lesson before. It was only after hiking about a hundred miles or so of the Appalachian Trail that I felt the first effects of living outdoors and spending a lot of time hearing - not quiet - but the more subtle sounds of nature. After a thousand miles of hiking I felt grounded and accepting of my place in the world. After two thousand, I could not imagine living any other way.

It's a lesson I'm relearning now.

Sunday Night Blues

Sunday night, and while the rest of the world watches the Super Bowl, I'm steaming greens for peanut butter spinach. Packing lunches and laying out clothes for tomorrow.

For the last couple of weeks, my friend and her daughter have been coming over to play after school and to eat dinner. They like it because she doesn't work, and the excuse to get out of their house is nice. I like it, because an extra set of hands and some adult conversation at the dinner table is a welcome change from the usual.

Tonight at dinner, I was tired of talking about Thomas and his friends, so I said, "Laurel, the Super Bowl is tonight."

"For me?" she asked.

"No, it's the most important football game of the year. It has nothing to do with you. Who are you rooting for?"

"Maybe we can watch Thomas," she said.

You see what I mean about needing adult conversation?

In positive news, I went running this weekend! Twice. First I've been out in several months on account of my bad health. I felt pretty good and I think I'm going to credit chinese medicine. I've had three weeks of acupuncture and a bit of mayan abdominal massage and I actually feel somewhat human again. I cooked up another bunch of beets and sweet potatoes for my wheat-free, dairy-free lunch. Can't wait to start another day with green tea instead of coffee (can you detect a bit of resistance lingering?).

It's not so much that I dread Mondays. My job can exhaust me (emotionally needy and sometimes hostile teenagers who have a poor grasp of socially appropriate behavior, and no desire to learn math...that sounds like fun company, doesn't it?). But I don't hate it. At least it's not boring.

I just never want the weekends to end. I miss Laurel as soon as I put her to bed on Sunday night. If all goes well, she's still asleep when I leave for work and I don't see her until the afternoon. I see M even less...perhaps an hour or two in between the time he gets home and when I go to bed. They are my two favorite people, and I hardly even see them for 5 out of 7 days.

I know everybody else does this, but I'm not sure this is how families are supposed to be.