Sleepy Breeze » kids http://sleepybreeze.com mom blog Sat, 02 May 2009 05:00:30 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Making Introductions http://sleepybreeze.com/2009/04/30/making-introductions/ http://sleepybreeze.com/2009/04/30/making-introductions/#comments Fri, 01 May 2009 03:35:10 +0000 Breeze http://sleepybreeze.com/2009/04/30/making-introductions/ It all started at kindergarten round-up. Tulip was too nervous to enjoy herself as much as we had hoped, but Smiley was in his element. The round-up was, of course, geared toward the rising kindergarten student, so Tulip was given a passport with pages for each of the areas she was supposed to explore. She toured classrooms, the gym, the cafeteria, the art room, the music room, the guidance classroom, and the nurse’s station, earning a stamp at each stop. Everyone was very nice, and after she got warmed up she seemed to have a bit more fun, but it was slow going.

Smiley, on the other hand, figured out a few rooms into the experience that he was being left out, and he didn’t like it a bit. Sure, they let the whole family into the rooms, and we all got to play with the toys and sit on the story time rugs, but did anyone introduce him? No! How rude! What was a boy to do? He was going to need to introduce himself, obviously, and so he did. At every opportunity, he would wait patiently until Lennie and the teacher had exchanged names and then interject, “And my name Binny!” The little guy can’t say his Fs yet, but he still wants in on the fun.

The introductions have continued in the weeks since the round-up. At Blockbuster, I had to say my name so that my account could be looked up, and he took that as his cue to begin introducing not just himself, but me as well. “That’s my momma!” he declared in his most earnest voice. I translated for the man who was checking us out. “That’s my momma, and my name Binny!” he continued. I translated. “That’s my momma. My name Binny, and I’m pooting!” he decided to share. At this point Tulip was cracking up, since she understood him perfectly, but the movie guy was looking at me expectantly for the translation. I told Smiley that we typically don’t tell complete strangers when we poot, so I guess the man got all the explanation he wanted.

Smiley’s undaunted approach to strangers has made me struggle to figure out if my surprise (and amusement) with this trait is a result of how different he and nearly-5-year-old Tulip are or if 2-year-old Tulip was this outgoing. I remember thinking she was fairly outgoing and being amazed by everything about her personality, but I can’t take a step back and compare my two 2-year-olds. Tulip’s almost-5 is too all-consuming to allow more than glimpses of 2-year-old Tulip. I really wish I hadn’t been so overwhelmed by her then and had taken the time to jot down more reminders for myself.

]]> http://sleepybreeze.com/2009/04/30/making-introductions/feed/ 1 It finally happened http://sleepybreeze.com/2009/04/05/it-finally-happened/ http://sleepybreeze.com/2009/04/05/it-finally-happened/#comments Sun, 05 Apr 2009 13:34:47 +0000 Breeze http://sleepybreeze.com/2009/04/05/it-finally-happened/ The main reason I considered homeschooling Tulip next fall had nothing to do with academics and everything to do with the way little girls treat one another. I wanted her to be older when she learned that some kids revel in excluding other children just because they can, but it turns out she experienced it for the first time in April instead of August. That was probably best because I was there to hear it happen, so I have an opportunity to eliminate the behavior now, avoiding the risk of having it creep in unexpectedly, which would give it an opportunity to flourish.

It happend the same way it usually does; one little girl, who I’m sure is a perfectly sweet child 99% of the time, decided that she would have more fun if she could remove another child from the group that had been playing happily for hours. I was off to the side playing with Smiley when I heard, “We’re going to go play another game in my backyard, and everyone can play except you, Mia.” No beating around the bush, huh? I looked up just in time to see Mia’s face crumple. I’m perfectly willing to admit that Mia may have been bossing everyone around or trying to alienate someone else moments before I overheard that sentence, but that’s immaterial. This behavior is everything I hate about elementary school playgrounds, and I’m not having it.

Apparently I’m not the only one who isn’t having it, because another mother swept in from the next yard over and removed her child from the situation just as I was telling the girls that there were not going to be any games that didn’t include everyone, and just like that, the group broke up into twos and threes and wandered in different directions.

Tulip didn’t immediately empathize with Mia in the way I had assumed she would. She complained that she had really wanted to play the newly proposed game, and when I asked if she would want to play if she was the one left out, she answered that she would have. I was too frazzled to rephrase the question to focus on how Mia must have felt at being left out, but I’m going to work on that today. She’s probably, at some point or another, going to exclude other children for sport, but at the very least, I want her to understand how much I loathe the behavior and how it hurts the one excluded.

]]> http://sleepybreeze.com/2009/04/05/it-finally-happened/feed/ 0 Scheduled Families http://sleepybreeze.com/2008/03/10/scheduled-families/ http://sleepybreeze.com/2008/03/10/scheduled-families/#comments Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:08:57 +0000 Breeze http://sleepybreeze.com/2008/03/10/scheduled-families/ I frequently see blog entries and hear comments about the woeful state of affairs when children are “over-scheduled,” but as far as I can tell, the definition of that state is pretty vague. To some it means kids being shuffled from one activity to another from morning to night, but for many others it seems that any child who has more than one activity is over-scheduled, and I’m a little tired of hearing other peoples’ opinions about how I organize my family’s day.

We do attend plenty of activities, don’t get me wrong. Tulip, Smiley, and I attend Tulip’s dance/gymnastics class on Mondays, a creative movement class on Tuesdays, either a playgroup or library story hour on Wednesdays, and a kindermusic-like class on Fridays. To hear some people discuss it, you’d think this was some new form of child abuse. When do those poor children have time to just play, they ask.

Let’s do the math. Dance class: 1 hour. Creative movement: 45 minutes. Library story time plus library puttering time: 1 hour or playgroup: 2 hours. Music class plus free play time: 1 1/2 hours. Grand total: 5 hours, 15 minutes per week on playgroup weeks, 4 hours 15 minutes on story time weeks.

Now let’s think about the hours we have during the week while their dad is working since that is the bulk of their waking time during the week. Yes, Tulip gets up at 7 and eats breakfast and plays with Daddy for a bit, but Smiley and I sleep until 8, so I won’t count that as play time. Here’s what I’ll count: 8-5 with a half hour lunch break spent together. 42.5 hours. Subtract 5.25 or 4.25 and there’s still plenty of play time in our over-scheduled week. I don’t think they’ll grow up not knowing how to climb a tree or make mud pies.

This post has been building for a bit, but the last straw was Tulip’s creative movement teacher, who knows that she also takes the ballet/tap/gymnastics class along with one other girl in the creative movement class and who is on the email list for our rather large playgroup. He responded to a comment about Tulip and her friend having played together the day before with the standard, “Oh, I’m so glad they get a chance to just play. So many kids are (wait for it) over scheduled.” I wanted to ask him how exactly he thought the class he had just taught figured in to that problem, but instead I just pointed out that we have an activity most days and still find the time to play both as a family and with friends. He was embarrassed, and I’m sorry for that, but shame on him. I guess I’m just dreading tomorrow’s class, so I’m writing about how much he irritated me so I won’t be hateful to him in person.

We’ve been taking his class for six months or so, and he ought to know I’m not there to make my kids’ lives harder. Tulip is giddy at the prospect of Mr. M’s class where she gets to hang like a cat, crawl like a lizard, and run like a wild child. Smiley’s too young to participate much, but he enjoys playing on the mats before and after class and watching the big kids during class.

I’m the first to admit that one of the reasons we have so many activities is because I need the break. It’s nice to plop down during story time at the library and know that Tulip is engaged and absorbing new things while I get to just sit on my behind and cuddle Smiley. Yes, I’m there for their (mostly her at this point) benefit, but I’m also there so that my little sponge girl will be soaking up what some other adult has to offer for a half hour or so. She can be a bit draining no matter how much I love her.

I firmly believe that there’s nothing wrong or unnatural in my feeling the need for this break. I live in a nuclear family, which is a very unnatural way for a family with small children to live. I see my siblings several times a month, and they do help out with my kids, and we see the grandparents monthly as well, but for most of human history, living in extended family groups every day was the norm. I find being alone with my kids day-in and day-out exhausting, so I get out and create the modern day approximation of an extended family. Miss D at the library? Another grandmotherly figure, and to be honest, one we see a good bit more of than my own mother. The kids in our playgroup? The cousins Tulip and Smiley don’t see because they all live an 8 or more hour drive away. Their moms and dads? Like aunts and uncles.

]]> http://sleepybreeze.com/2008/03/10/scheduled-families/feed/ 5 Smiley is a talker http://sleepybreeze.com/2008/03/03/smiley-is-a-talker/ http://sleepybreeze.com/2008/03/03/smiley-is-a-talker/#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:23:23 +0000 Breeze http://sleepybreeze.com/2008/03/03/smiley-is-a-talker/ I must say I’ve been nervous. Tulip talked so early and so well that I was nervous about him, both because he was a second child who frequently gets less attention than his big sister did at the same age and because he’s a boy. Many of the little boys I know have had issues of one sort or another with talking, and it’s hard on them and leads to frustration. One little boy had said that he didn’t want to try to talk to new people because they didn’t understand him before he started getting speech therapy, and that’s just sad. I hoped my little guy wouldn’t have to deal with the same frustration, but as he got older and older with very few sounds, I got nervous.

Then a few weeks ago he started saying “mama” and “dada” pretty regularly. Then it was pointing to the dog and saying “daw.” My husband, ever the skeptic, was hard to convince, but a girlfriend and I were sure that this was it, his first real word. Last week even his daddy couldn’t deny that Smiley was saying dog and ball (“baw”). Yesterday he went for a walk with the same girlfriend and her family and saw a flock of noisy and active geese. It didn’t take long at all for him to start repeating “geese” while pointing to them. Today it was “dis.” He would hand me “dis” toy or point to “dis” book. He’ll repeat sounds after a few repetitions, and he’s so proud of himself. I think he just wasn’t ready or interested until now, a quiet little guy like his dad, but the time has come, and like everything else, he’s going to do it all at once.

]]> http://sleepybreeze.com/2008/03/03/smiley-is-a-talker/feed/ 0 Raising my husband’s daughter http://sleepybreeze.com/2007/12/14/raising-my-husbands-daughter/ http://sleepybreeze.com/2007/12/14/raising-my-husbands-daughter/#comments Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:47:43 +0000 Breeze http://sleepybreeze.com/2007/12/14/raising-my-husbands-daughter/ I’ve recently been confronted with my own prudishness in the form of my 3 1/2 year old’s interest in menstruation and the intricacies of conception. She has questions; she wants answers; I shudder at what comes out of my mouth and fear what strange versions of it will come out of hers.

It all started when she wanted to know more than the old “the baby came out of Mommy’s belly” story. My girl is smart, and what smart kid doesn’t eventually ask how the baby got in there? We were driving down the road, and my first answer was that love puts babies in there. Then I decided that that was potentially embarrassing and came up with something more technical but still simple enough that she might understand it. Yes, I did use the phrase “when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much.” It’s embarrassing to admit, but in my defense, kids don’t generally ask these questions at times when their parents can focus, and if the parent is too busy running the possible misinterpretations of what she is about to say through her head to think creatively, the parent may just freeze up. I am such a parent. After several repeats of the question, I have decided that our official line is that Daddy and I wanted a baby, so he helped me to put the baby in there.

Lucky me; all my problems were solved, at least until I started menstruating again. When last I had a period, way back in June of 2006 before Daddy loved me so much that he helped me make a baby (See? It is embarrassing!), little Tulip, the not quite 2 years old Tulip, didn’t even notice that something was going on when I menstruated. A year and a half later I still don’t get to the bathroom alone much, but this time around I have a potty trained big girl watching my every move.

Today she wanted to know what the red stuff in the potty was. I’m not really so embarrassed about the topic this time, just worried I’ll freak her out. I don’t want her to think of it as bleeding because she associates that with injury. I tried telling her that it was a period to avoid calling it blood. Then I tried to explain that women have periods every month and that it’s the body’s way of cleaning out a woman’s belly when it doesn’t have a baby in it. She looked at my face, looked down at the toilet again, and stepped out of the room. This is the part where I explain that she has her father’s sense of humor and timing. She waited a beat, stuck her head back into the room, said “Vulva!” with a laugh and ran out to play with Daddy and the baby again in the other room.

]]> http://sleepybreeze.com/2007/12/14/raising-my-husbands-daughter/feed/ 0 Cinderella lost her slipper http://sleepybreeze.com/2007/12/10/cinderella-lost-her-slipper/ http://sleepybreeze.com/2007/12/10/cinderella-lost-her-slipper/#comments Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:01:05 +0000 Breeze http://sleepybreeze.com/2007/12/10/cinderella-lost-her-slipper/ Once upon a time here was a sweet little Cinderella doll. She had two tiny little plastic slippers, which were fortunately smooth and unfortunately about the size of a peanut. One day a little boy was sitting in his sister’s bedroom floor while his mom helped his sister get dressed and brushed her hair. When it was his turn to be dressed, he started gagging on something small, something transparent, something just exactly like a tiny plastic shoe. His mommy did what mommies nearly always do even though they know they shouldn’t; she reached into his mouth thinking she could get the shoe out only to assist him in pushing it farther toward the back. The little boy swallowed the shoe with a gag and a gulp while the mommy screamed for the daddy and the daddy thundered out of his office and down the hall ready to help.

That was Thursday afternoon. Fast-foward past all the digestion-aiding massages, Friday night’s poop and Saturday’s baby food jar full of pureed stewed prunes that looked just like meconium. Now it’s Monday morning, and the happy little boy still isn’t ready to see if Cinderella’s slipper fits her tiny foot. Not that he’ll ever have a chance to find out after I fish it out of his diaper and throw it away. We’ve called the doctor, but as freaked out as I’m getting, he isn’t in the least bit of discomfort. He’s crawling around playing with toys and is happy to let me rub his tummy any time I want.

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