Persuasion

The other night Jake and I watched a pretty good movie in which there was a scene between a man and his dog-phobic wife. The woman is afraid of dogs, and the man drives her to a pound as a "surprise". She's upset, saying "you know I hate dogs", and he cajoles and presses her to just go in for a moment. The dogs are all in cages, they won't hurt her or bite her, so just try it? For a minute? She relents, smiling at his goofy insistence, and allows herself to be dragged into the pound.

I remarked to Jake how incredibly common that scene is in tv shows and movies. I see it all the time. What I mean is the scene in which the man tries to get the woman to do something she doesn't want to do, and he ultimately succeeds with sheer persistence. That persistence (that willingness to exert pressure, that unwillingness to take no for an answer) is viewed as acceptable and even charming. And it usually works. The guy gets the girl in the end.

I hate that message and its ubiquity because I lived it for a long time. When I was living it, it felt normal, because it is normal, it's everywhere, especially in our media. When I met my ex in college he used to do things like offer me something to eat, to share a piece of candy he had in his backpack or whatever. I'd say "no, thanks" and he'd press a little, saying "but it's bad for you!" I'd laugh and take him up on it. This subtle dynamic governed all of our years together. He'd press and press, and usually I would give in. This fact kind of surprises me about myself, as I'd wager that most people don't view me as the kind of person who goes against what she really wants just to please other people, but it felt natural. So we took trips to places I didn't want to visit, and somehow never managed to make it to the places I really wanted to see. And we ate out at places that didn't really excite me, but never went to Thai or Indian restaurants. And we did all kinds of things I didn't feel all that interested in, because he was very good at exerting pressure and I was very bad at saying no. In some ways, this was good for me as it pushed me into hobbies that I wouldn't have gotten into otherwise, like hiking. But in the long term, it was just really bad for me, because I started to feel invisible.

I don't mean to paint this as a bad character trait of my ex, because it certainly isn't unique to him. He also didn't even realize he was doing it most of the time. It was just second nature to him. He wasn't overtly cruel about it; he would never belittle me or attack me for not going along with what he wanted to do. And if I said something like "I'm feeling backed into a corner", he'd stop, horrified to realize what was going on, and would cut it out and express contrition. So it's not like he was trying to be a jerk at all, but I think his behavior is just something he'd picked up somewhere, and it worked for him. One time he said "I'm just so used to trying to get my way, and I didn't realize how that might not actually be a good thing." I think folks are kind of conditioned to press for things, especially in our culture. I was so used to it too that it wasn't even something I noticed until we'd been together for a long time. And I was so bad at saying no that the few times I did do it, I felt weird and uncomfortable and upset about the possibility of upsetting him. Like I didn't take it as my right to say no to stuff.

After reflecting on all of that I decided to not be ashamed or feel guilty about saying no to things that I wasn't comfortable with. I was pretty strong about that when I met Jake, but it didn't matter because Jake is not the kind of guy who pushes for things. Jake is the kind of guy who goes along with what the other person wants to do. Jake's the go-along guy, the guy his brother or his friends can convince to do anything. Even today, although I am aware of this dynamic and how much it can hurt me, I still have a hard time saying no to people. I typically say "yes" off the bat rather than "no", because I just don't feel right saying no. And sometimes, I still allow myself to get sucked into a persuasion dynamic, not even recognizing that it's happening in the moment, not even cutting it off when the conversation turns a little too forceful, a little too personal, a little mean.

So now I turn my thoughts to Nora and Milo. I want to be able to teach both of them how to stand up for themselves and say no to things. I also want to teach them to respect other people's limits and not be too insistent or pushy. All while also teaching them to be open to new experiences, because great things can come from abandoning your first instinct and just saying "yes" every now and then.

So how do I do all that? Heck if I know. They're not even 2 yet, so perhaps that's too young to think about broader issues like these in parenting, but my gut tells me that you can't just act any old way and then sit down and have a philosophical talk when they're 14 and expect the talk to overrule years of modeled behavior. So all I've come up with so far is modeling. Jake and I can model respectful behavior towards each other, accepting each other's desires and wishes and not being too pushy. That's the easy part. Then I figure that we should also model this behavior with Nora and Milo too, which means respecting them when they say no to the things that are open for negotiation, and not pushing too much.

It's tricky because you pretty much have to make kids do stuff they don't want to do all the time. So I can't accept their no's when it comes to bedtime or putting their coat on or a hundred other things. But I figure I can bend a little and accept their need for autonomy and control over the things that don't matter so much, not to mention listen to their signals when they don't seem to be ready or comfortable with something that's not critical. So if Nora's not ready to try a soybean, I accept it and don't force her. And if Milo doesn't want to wear a hat and I can keep him in the shade, then so be it.

Back to the movie: I'd love to see a movie with a different dynamic between the man and the woman. Maybe one in which the woman expresses some hesitation or discomfort about something, and the man doesn't even think to push, pressure, or try to persuade her. Because he recognizes that she's an actual person with feelings that matter. Because he respects those feelings. Because he'd never want to make her do something if she didn't feel right about it. Because how she felt mattered more to him than getting his way.

I guess, in the end, that'd be a pretty boring movie.

Saturday at the Gardens

Privilege

Almost immediately after Jimmy Carter pointed out the racism behind recent attacks on Obama, pundits and politicians everywhere (even Democrats) rebutted the notion. Because it's just oh-so-appropriate for White men to tell everybody else what is and isn't racist.

If you're not a member of an oppressed class you don't get to tell them what counts as racism (or sexism, or homophobia). We don't get to dictate what counts as other people's experiences.

One thing that impressed me about Jake when I first met him was his open nature and his willingness to abandon his assumptions in favor of just listening to somebody else's point of view. It's like he has no ego tied up in being right, so he is free to just...listen. And therefore learn. I guess this is part of what makes him so smart.

I remember one time a friend and I were talking about how his parents had taught him what to do when he got pulled over by police: how he needed to keep both hands on the wheel the entire time, only taking them off when they told him to get his registration, how he needed to be extremely polite, smiling, and friendly, how he needed to call the police officers "sir". Part of my White privilege is that my parents never had to teach me those things. My parents never had to worry about me getting shot by the cops because I might make a sudden move with my hands. Jake was flabbergasted by our friend's experience and the number of times he's been pulled over in our town after having lived here for only 2 years. (He is African American, we are White. I have never been pulled over. Jake has never been pulled over.) I could see so many people becoming defensive and trying to argue that our police officers aren't racist, but Jake just did what we all need to do, which is shut the hell up and listen to what other people go through. I can come home from work and relay an experience I had and hopefully Jake won't try to write it off, play devil's advocate, or argue that it was all in my mind.

I feel similarly lucky right now in the work sphere because my mentor is another person who is capable of noticing and attending to issues of race and gender in a way that I have almost never before experienced when working with my (White, male) seniors.

Shit happens all the time, of course. This ranges from the mundane to the structural. On the structural end, if you're a woman in my department at the same level of achievement and productivity as a man in an identical position, you're going to make less than him. (We have, at least, created a committee to try to rectify this and other salary inequity issues, but we'll see how that plays out). On the mundane level, there are just a million little things that add up day after day to tire me out.

Things like: A student will come up to me and discuss something that my mentor had told him, saying, "Hi Amy, I just wanted to mention that Professor Lastname told me blah blah...". I am Amy. He is Professor Lastname. Or the fact that our school district administrator in charge of research sends written correspondence addressed to my mentor as "Dear Dr. Lastname", but every letter he has ever sent me is addressed "Dear Ms. Lastname". (Yes, he is aware that I have a Ph.D.) Or the fact that earlier this month our department chair sent out a newsletter with congratulations for my mentor for two grants he has received, failing to mention my name at all even though I am a PI on one of those two grants. Or the fact that after 5 years on a committee with the math department, and literally dozens and dozens of reminders that my area of research is secondary math, not elementary, every single time the old math dudes mysteriously keep forgetting and refer to me as an elementary specialist and the male in the room as the secondary specialist, when in fact it is the other way around.

Or the fact that in a project meeting this morning with me and 5 other people, one of the people in the meeting said "Yes, as I recall Mentor saying last week, there is this distinction between proofs that prove and proofs that explain", when actually it was me who had made that distinction, not him.

The thing that makes everything so different now, however, is that somehow my mentor actually notices this stuff and tries to correct it. This morning he pointed out that it was actually my line of research, and not his, that addresses this distinction. This totally blew my mind. My ideas and contributions have been misattributed to others (always men, usually older men with more power) countless times. It happens all the time, but nobody has ever noticed these things before. Which makes sense, because when you are the person who is being treated appropriately, it is difficult to even see those subtle, constant instances in which others around you are being ever so slightly denigrated. It's just not on your radar, because it's not something you personally are experiencing. So when others complain about things like racist or sexist behavior the tendency is to poo-poo it, complaining that others are overly sensitive, can't take a joke, or are imagining things.

I don't know what it is that has made my mentor capable of attending to stuff like that. I don't know if it's a personality trait or a result of a set of experiences or what. I'd like to understand it better so that I can understand how to foster this in other people. In Nora and Milo, certainly -- I want them to be aware of their privileged status -- but also in my student teachers. Who are all White, but who are teaching many students of color. They are teaching kids who are unlike them in other ways, too, in terms of their primary language, their country of origin, their religion, etc. If you can't even notice your own privilege and how that makes your experiences different (easier) than others', then you're going to have a much harder time supporting your students and treating them appropriately.

This is a place to start, but it's just a start.

Just Another Beautiful Weekend

Fall has been pretty and warm here, which is kind of nice after our cool, rainy summer. On Friday afternoon I took the kids to the park as Jake biked off to class, and everybody else was in the park too. Nora and Milo played with lots of their friends and I had people to talk to, and before I knew it almost 2 hours had gone by and it was time for dinner. It's nice how quickly the time passes when there are people around to hang out with, instead of just me and the kids. Jake doesn't mind doing the same thing with the kids day after day (park, other park, walk, play inside, park again), but I find it so boring that it drives me nuts. I'm always looking for ways to make things more interesting, like play groups or drop-in gyms or whatnot.

Amy: It's so much better when there are people at the park and I can talk to them instead of getting bored.

Jake: What do you mean, get bored?

Amy: Uh, don't you find hanging out with the kids kind of...boring? I can only watch them go down the slide 50 times in a row before it gets a little old.

Jake: It doesn't bother me at all. I can just stare off into space and amuse myself by looking at a tree or something.

Amy: Uh...wow. Yeah, for me it's kind of like torture, that's how boring it is.

Jake: Man, you are really not cut out to be a stay-at-home mom. Who would have thought I'd have a better temperament for it than you.

Saturday was a game day, so we didn't drive anywhere, and instead walked to the other park (it's got swings, and the lake, different trees to stare at). That was fun too, because we ran into a few of our neighbors there (more talking!) and their older kids played with Milo and Nora. The kids are getting so big that they can climb around on the play structure themselves, going through the tubes and down the slides just like big kids. That afternoon I started making cassoulet but accidentally ended up making festive black bean chili instead, which was stupid and annoying. But in the end, the chili turned out okay, and I made cornbread to go with it, and I'll save cassoulet for another day. Milo actually ate both the cornbread and the chili, declaring that he liked the beans.

Today the kids learned new words and phrases like "chihuahua" and "football went down the drain". It was a fine day, nothing special, nothing bad, except that I had to miss the afternoon with the kids to attend a work-related picnic that involved awkward mingling exercises and games of kickball. Fortunately I got home in time for our nightly pre-bedtime dance party, and all was well.

Pictured above is Milo after he enjoyed every last drop of the smoothie Jake made for him.

On a different note...

This is why I had kids:

Oh, The Temptation from Steve V on Vimeo.

Signs That You're Crazy

By about 3:30 today I could barely keep my eyes open. My bones hurt. I couldn't think about things today, about anything important, because I just didn't have the energy. I was ready to take a catnap at my desk, but I had a student coming in at 4 so I propped my eyes open with toothpicks and told myself I'd make it up by going to bed early.

Time for bed, which somehow turns into 11, instead of 10 or 9 when it should really happen. Bones still hurt. I know, let's lie wide awake for over an hour because I think I have a tiny hair in my right nostril. I mean, I know I have lots of hairs in my nose, but this one seems...in the way. I blow my nose. I rub my nose. There is some hair or piece of fuzz in there and I cannot relax or fall asleep.

Which makes, like, complete sense for me to lie awake over something imagined after being so exhausted and fantasizing about sleep all the time. Very logical.

Finally drift off and get a decent half hour or so before Nora's crying wakes me right back up. Now she's finally quiet. What are the chances I'll be able to go back to sleep now? I teach tomorrow, which means I need to be rested, so the chances are probably slim.

I really need to see a doctor and get a prescription.

21 Months

Another month older, already. Time's a flying. This month, actually this past weekend, we finally shifted the kids from two naps to one. We probably could have eeked out two naps for another month or so, but their afternoon nap kept shifting later and later, and things were getting wonky. So on Saturday we went cold turkey and spent the morning at the arboretum, ate lunch, and then the kids crashed. Not bad!

Sunday we also kept super busy and the kids spent the afternoon outdoors at a birthday party, playing in a sand box, a tent, with balls, and running around with a bunch of other toddlers. There were cupcakes. There was lemonade. They went wild. They're growing up.

In another not-so-big change we're putting the kids on the potty every day. We're kind of late to the game, I guess, mainly due to my laziness but I finally wised up when I read a little about potty training and how the average age to train used to be under 2 years back in the day. The idea is that if you get them used to sitting on the potty when they're younger and more amenable to doing whatever we want them to do (no power struggles or battles at this point), that is a good thing. Sure enough their little friend down the street who is only 18 months is now out of diapers as of this week! Oh well, I'm a bit of a slacker, but that's okay. Nora and Milo looooove sitting on the potty, so we're incorporating it into our routine. In theory at some point they'll actually do something in the potty, but we'll see.

There are certainly times when Milo & Nora seem more like kids and less like toddlers to me. This past weekend they both figured out how to go up and down shallow stairs like a big person, with their feet, not on their hands or their bottoms. There was something about that image of both kids walking up the stairs like...people...that struck me. I can see their future kidness in them. I can see them running around and riding bikes and climbing all over everything like a couple of little monkeys. Oh wait. They already do that last one.

What has Milo been doing lately other than evoking the ire of neighborhood felines? Well, his other hobbies include saying hi to all of the ladies and guys he encounters (with that language: "hi, lady!"), declaring that he likes-a the music, dancing, looking out the window for planes and helicopters, and identifying birds and insects.

What a happy guy! Milo has finally recovered from his cold. It took over a week. He also appears to have moved beyond his phase of waking up in the middle of the night and crying piteously until Jake holds him. I won't do. It's all, daddy this, daddy that, daddy pick-you-up Milo, and when I go into their room in the morning, the first thing he says is "Where's Daddy?"

Milo's really awesome at greeting people, though, so it's hard not to feel great when I walk through the door and he comes running up to me saying, "Hi Mama!" He's so enthusiastic. He'll even say "bless you, Daddy!" when Jake sneezes.

Boy do these kids love being outside. Milo loves to swing, play with the tetherball, watch bubbles, throw inappropriate objects like sticks and rocks, run everywhere, and the other day he even asked me to help him climb a tree. (I didn't). Milo constantly has two skinned knees.

Milo continues to be adventurous with food. Any time he sees either one of us eating something he'll immediately say over and over again "Need some? Some? Want some? Need some?" I don't think he knows what "need" means, especially when it comes to something like a brownie. I'm so glad at least one of my kids will eat stuff. Real people stuff. Nora's unwillingness to try anything irritates me almost as much as people who still use internet explorer. Milo will eat from any of the food groups but he does seem to have a particular penchant for anything involving sugar. Finally, something letting me know this kid is mine. What with all of the sporty ball behaviors, I wasn't quite sure at times.

Milo is a bright guy. He knows letters and shapes and numbers and can draw a circle, sort of, which the twin whisperer thinks is a 10th-grade skill, or something, so I'm pretty sure she is ready to sign him up for Mensa at this point. I feel kind of bad because Nora has been saying and doing funny stuff lately, which I share with people and then my friends go on and on about how clever she is, while Milo is just there in the background practicing at throwing the ball over the rocking chair 800 times in a row. But he can do all of that stuff too. And his ball skills, while perhaps not traditionally valued by No Millionaire Child Left Behind, are pretty sweet. This weekend he saw an older kid head butting a soccer ball, or whatever you call it (okay, so I'm not sporty...what is the antithesis of sporty? Couch potato? Nerd?), and by that evening he was doing the same thing.

Milo's favorite thing now, picked up from Nora, is the kiss as bump healer. A kiss on the elbow, the knee, the head, the ear, or the back will make it all better. "Mama kiss it" is something I hear at least a dozen times a day. It's so great to still have the power to cure what ails him with a simple kiss. Milo also thinks I control things like the airplanes flying over or the sirens sounding in the distance -- I guess at this age, we parents are omnipotent. Oh, the power. The glory. The adulation.

Nora's latest thing is to take off all of her clothes, and sometimes her diaper. She is interested in putting her own clothes on, too, but that's more difficult. It's handy, though, because I can give Nora a sweater and then buy myself at least 10 minutes of free time while she entertains herself by trying to put her arm through the armhole over and over again.

The nakedness, though...sometimes it's cute. Sometimes it's a pain, like when a steaming hot pile of crap is sitting on the floor. Nora mostly likes to take off her shirt and then run around patting her belly, sticking it out, and declaring "I have a naked belly." Actually, come to think of it, Nora is pretty interested in all things body these days. She likes to inform people that she has a bottom. She also likes to inform people that she possesses a certain piece of anatomy that belongs only to Milo, but we're working on it. She can now state that Nora is a big girl, and Milo is a big boy. She also knows that Mama is a girl, and Daddy is a boy.

Oh, we still struggle with sleep. We struggle and we struggle. I think that I am an eternal optimist because each time that it gets better for a couple of days I think that we must be turning a corner. Then each time it turns bad again I am surprised all over again, as if this has never happened before. The other night I firmly told her it was time to go to sleep and walked out of the room and listened to Nora yell "Mama open the door", "Mama turn on the light", "Mama get the bunny", and "Mama pick you up!" Boy, was she mad. It actually seems like Nora might think she can make these things happen by saying them. Or maybe she is just vocalizing her internal desires all the time, and night time is no different.

Nora just narrates everything that pops into her mind, but the cool thing is that she and Milo both have recently begun to tell me things that happened in the past. So Nora will tell little stories about how she went outside, she went to the park, she went on the slide. Nora saw an airplane (airplanes are big with her too). Nora switches between using "I" and calling herself "Nora". She can say "I like it", or "I did it", or "I want to go outside." But she'll also say "Nora's turn", or sometimes "Nora did it!", or "Nora go downstairs."

Nora's getting into wanting to do things by herself. Go downstairs by herself (which takes about 20 minutes what with all of the dawdling), get up into her chair by herself, put on her shorts by herself, and so forth. It's natural. I have a hair clip and sometimes I'll put it in her hair, and she'll snatch it and say "Nora do it", and then she'll carefully balance the hair clip on top of her head.

I can now mostly, thank God, leave the house without Nora having a conniption. She'll just cheerfully say "Bye bye Mama!" as I leave for work. Nora still wants to be held when I cook, and in the night time her clinginess peaks, but it is generally decreasing.

Nora's big thing these days is colors. She loves to identify colors, and is pretty consistently correct with yellow (apparently her favorite), red, orange, and pink. She is pretty good at purple and green. She just can't get blue most of the time, it's weird. I think she likes to say yellow (which she pronounces "lellow"), and so any time she sees anything yellow she'll mention it.

Nora has a habit of wiggling her hands and doing a prancy little dance when she is excited or happy. She wears everything on her sleeve. Both kids do, I guess. That is the nature of kiddom at this age. They don't yet realize that we have thoughts and ideas separate from them, and they have no self consciousness as a result. That lack of self consciousness is awesome. There is no embarrassment yet, no reticence. Just complete, utter openness.

Only 3 more months until they're 2. Bring it on!

Injuries

Poor Milo! He has been through the wringer lately.

This week he went up to Nora when she was in her booster seat, grabbed onto her tray and gave it a big yank, and ended up pulling Nora and her chair on top of him. Big bruise on his head. Nora didn't fare too well from that accident either. This was the first major accident on the Twin Whisperer's watch and she felt awful. But it happens.

Then later on, that very night, Milo was happily running through the house, as he does, and he tripped and lobbed himself forward...right onto our step. He fell face first onto the corner of the step and cut himself right below his eye. It looks terrible! I was standing right there and watched it happen, but there was no way to prevent it. These thing happen so quickly.

Then this evening I was outside with Milo and Nora, and the neighbor's cat wandered into our yard. I saw Milo start to follow him and meanwhile Nora was heading towards the street. I grabbed Nora, turned towards Milo, and right at that moment the cat hissed and attacked Milo on the face. Milo wasn't even touching the cat when this happened. It happened so quickly that I couldn't tell if the cat bit him or scratched him. The whole right side of his face is cut up with 4 or 5 little cuts from this fucker of a cat.

I cleaned him up and worried about it being a bite (because cat bites are notoriously infectious). I found out who the cat belonged to, thanks to our neighborhood listserve, and talked to the owner and she said that he's been known to scratch but she's never seen him bite, so I'm feeling better that it was just a scratch. (Just. It still hurt the little guy, though). Later this evening another neighbor called me up and told me that this cat has attacked several children, and they are always hassling the owner to not let him out. Tonight the owner told me that they're going to reinforce this with their kids in a family meeting tonight, so that's a good outcome I guess.

So it's been a rough week for poor Milo man, his face looks like he's been in a fight! I swear a lot of what we do these days is just trying to keep the kids from killing themselves.

Tenure, tenure, tenure

Last night was another 4 hours of sleep night.

Things have been hard lately. 

I think I am sort of deciding to go up for tenure in fall 2011, i.e. 2 years from now, not 1. It is related to a complicated series of events, for instance, I got invited to write a book chapter due in a couple of months, but if I write the book chapter this fall then that will delay my second signature piece, which is needed for my tenure case. (Book chapters don't count for tenure here, but this one would be good for non-tenure reasons given the other people involved, who the publisher is, the amount of exposure it would get me, etc). If my second piece is delayed, I won't get it submitted and therefore accepted in time to go up next fall, and so on and so forth. In reality about 3 different things, all super unlikely (I have statistics for it -- each thing would have about a 5% - 10% chance of happening), would ALL have to happen this year for me to be ready to go up next fall. I've had enough probability courses to know the chances of all 3 happening.

Anyway...if I give myself my full 2 years extension on the clock, it means I could relax a little. I could keep working hard and pushing to get a paper written for the chapter, then write my second signature piece, then write a 3rd piece I'm jointly authoring with somebody, but know that I have time, an extra cushion built in.

But more importantly I think it would help me through the nights. I got so angry last night. I am so, so tired of being tired. I am sick and tired of feeling like shit all the time, and then constantly worrying about how my exhaustion is messing with my writing and publishing pace. Taking a step back and taking the time I need might help me say to myself, during those hopeless moments at night, "It's okay, you've committed to raising these kids, you don't have to get everything done all at once, you have time."

Today as I walked home from work I got to my street and stopped to talk with 2 neighbors, both professors here on the tenure track, and they both kept saying "Why not take the time you've been given? It's your right, take it! Make it so that you can have a sane life over the next 2 years instead of driving yourself crazy constantly." I don't know, it helped. They're not in my department but they know my kids, they know the mom side of me rather than the work side of me, and for some reason, it helped.

My tenure committee chair helped too.  Tonight he sent an email that included this: "Tenure can wreak havoc on one's psyche that's for sure. The bottom line (and most important line) is that YOU WILL GET TENURE." That kind of support and reassurance does help.  

Sometimes the pressure to keep my job, to be the sole financial support for the family, to be the one up with Nora night after night, to do a good job raising the kids, to control myself so that I don't slip up and yell at 3 a.m., to figure out their childcare each semester, the pressure to do all of this mothering and working simultaneously is just more than I can take. Lately I've been feeling like I'm not strong enough to handle it and I am reaching some sort of breaking point. So maybe mentally giving myself my full 2 years' extension can be a way to lighten all that pressure a little bit. If all of the necessary things did magically happen to fall into place this year, we could still reconsider next fall and put me up in the spring. But if not...that's okay.

Also maybe taking the full 2 year extension is a way of saying to myself, this mothering thing is actually a big fucking deal. Stop pretending that it is just some side hobby that doesn't really interfere with my work. It is wholly consuming, and it matters, and what I've been doing with my time over the past 2 years is important, and is worth acknowledging.

This is what I have been doing, and this matters:

Fall foods

Since moving to the prairie I've become much more in tune with seasonal eating. Fall is on the way and I am looking forward to eating some of these quintessential fall foods:

- Apples, apple cider, apple pie

- Squash -- first will come butternut squash! Pasta with squash is great, but I also love to roast it in the oven and eat it out of the shell.

- Brussels sprouts. Strangely enough I don't think I ever ate these before moving here. My first year here Jake brought a bunch back from his grandparents' garden, and boy are they delicious! I love to steam them until they're bordering on soft and then briefly pan fry them with butter and salt.

- Nuts, like chestnuts, walnuts, and hazelnuts.

- Thick stews, hearty soups, and of course, risotto! We make risotto all throughout the fall and the winter. It is a 2-person job because of all the stirring it requires, but risotto is one of my favorite things. It is too hot to stand over the big pot through the summer, and it's too hearty for spring and summer meals, but it is perfect for fall and winter. I especially love wild mushroom risotto and smoked salmon risotto. 

In a few weeks it'll be farm visiting season and this year the kids will be old enough to take a trip to the farm, go through the corn maze, and pet the animals. I love living here. Summer is great here but I think the season in which I appreciate this town the most is fall. It is so beautiful in the fall, and the food is so fresh, and it smells good, and I love the weekends when we have football games and you can hear the crowd and the band in the distance. I hope that Milo and Nora have great childhood memories of stuff like this, like jumping into the middle of giant leaf piles and carving pumpkins and making drawings of turkeys by using their hands. It's so homey here.

(I took these pictures in 2006. It still looks like summer here, and hopefully will for a few more weeks).

Revelation

I figured something out just now, at 3 a.m. I figured out that for the last year and a half I've been trying to solve an unsolvable puzzle. I keep trying to figure out how to get Nora to sleep through the night, or even just how to prevent her from holding the entire family hostage some nights, as is her whim, but tonight I finally realized, there is no solution. There is just no solution to this problem!

Take tonight. Nora wakes up at 10:20. I soothe her for a while. Put her back down. She never really goes back to sleep so at about 10:30 or 10:40 or something, she's crying again. This wakes up Milo. He cries too. Both kids are upset now and Jake takes Milo out of the room. I soothe Nora and put her back to bed. But now she can't really sleep because Milo's not there. She fusses and moans and makes a racket. I give up, get her, and we all pile onto our bed, which Milo and Nora think is the greatest thing ever. They start an imitation game in which Milo says "Fa fa!" and pats the bed three times. Nora repeats this and then they both crack up, and do it over and over again. I'm pretty sure this is one of their secret codes. Like before they go to bed they agree to this: "Okay, if I say 'fa fa' and pat the bed 3 times, that means we torture the 'rents all night long. You do the same if you agree."

Now that the kids have been "reset", so to speak, we put them back to bed and miraculously they submit to that, and everybody goes to sleep.  I sleep from 11 to 2, at which point Nora is up and crying again. I go in and hold her for a while. She relaxes, I put her back to bed. This usually works...except for when it doesn't. Like tonight. She doesn't want me to leave. I go to the bathroom and she starts crying again, so I go back in there, comfort her from the crib, and Nora is happy and wide awake, jumping up and down in her crib. She thinks it's play time. 

And THIS is the situation for which there is no solution.  I can:

a) Spend my entire night appeasing her every whim, getting no sleep and ensuring that she gets no sleep.  Not acceptable.

b) Not do that, which means she will cry. But the problem is, Nora will scream hysterically for hours. Without stopping. Without winding down. Until Milo is up and the cats are up and Jake and I are ready to claw our ears off. 

So that's it. No solution. Either option sucks. Tonight I told her it was time for sleep, not for play, and I walked out of the room and she immediately started tantruming. She was very angry. I went to the basement (where we can't hear her). Jake joined me. We stayed down there for half an hour. I came up here and she was going stronger than ever. I gave up, as I always do, because I just don't have the stomach for it. Nora is stronger than me. She can scream longer than I can endure it. Much, much longer. I held her until 3, put her back to bed. And I thought all was okay but now it's 3:15 and she is crying hysterically once again.

So...no solution.  From what I've heard kids like this don't sleep through until they're 4 or 5.  So another 2 or 3 years of this, I suppose.  

The Pleasure of the Mundane

At 20.5 months the kids still take two naps. We're getting ready to start the transition to one nap, but for now, they still sleep from about 9:30 - 11 in the morning and from 2:30 - 4 in the afternoon. This means that big outings, like to a fair or a festival the next town over, are generally off the table. When you factor in meal times and nap times, our time out of the house is spent in brief 1-2 hour chunks.

Next summer I bet we'll be taking all sorts of trips all over town, and doing holiday weekend type journeys, visiting the state fair and the local arts festival and that kind of thing. This summer, we've stuck pretty close to home, and that's okay with me.  This weekend has been a nice, easygoing weekend.  We've been playing outside and on the back patio, enjoying the sunny, warm weather.

The kids like to play with the sodas in the cooler, left over from last week's party. Milo's got his trusty ball under his arm:

Yesterday one of the neighbor kids came over to visit with Milo and Nora. She's 6, and Milo was thrilled to have her visit. He was so excited that he ran around and around, showing off for her. This is why the poor kid always has two skinned knees. Also, I think his diaper is falling down one of his pant legs:

Here I display my magic hair, in which I can apparently get different parts of it to swing in different directions simultaneously.  

Last winter I made a ton of soups, because the kids will eat soup. Also, soups are convenient to make over the weekend.  They take a lot of time but you can do it ahead of time and then let it simmer all afternoon, so I can cook while the kids nap. This weekend we had beautiful, warm weather but the nights are getting cool and you can feel fall approaching. All of that meant that it's time to start breaking out the soups again. This morning I made a homemade chicken stock that will provide the base for lots of different soups. Chicken parts, onions, carrots, celery, leeks, peppercorns, and fresh thyme and parsley simmer for a couple of hours to fill the house with the most delicious aroma. This is the kind of thing I love about weekends and family: music playing in the background, kids' voices happily chattering away, and the aroma of chicken stock on the stove. It is such a homey feeling.

Then this afternoon I used some of the stock to make a Thai chicken lemongrass soup with coconut milk, lime, basil, and cilantro. Using the homemade stock was so worth it. This is a spicy soup, with red pepper and jalapeno pepper, and as it was cooking I tasted it and thought it was too spicy, too harsh. But just as the recipe promised, adding lime and fresh herbs amazingly cuts the heat. The result is an incredible blend of flavors, with a spicy, garlicky taste up front which then mellows to something sweet and citrusy with the taste of coconut, lemongrass, and lime. Seriously, it was so good.

Jake's review: I could eat this entire pot. Seriously, I can't stop eating this soup. 

Nora's review: No, I do not want to try it. No! No no no no no!

Milo's review: I like it! More please?

I couldn't believe Milo ate that soup. It really was quite spicy and I served it to him over rice and he ate it right up.  Amazing.

Afterwards the kids did some reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar:

This lasted until they heard the music of the ice cream truck. What is that? Milo had to check it out:

I love this next picture because if you look between the kids, through the window screen, you can actually see the ice cream truck driving down the road. The truck has been hitting our neighborhood hard lately. The ice cream man was brilliant to drive around here tonight because tonight was one of our movie-in-the-park nights. It was the last one of the summer. The parents string up a giant sheet, and everybody from around the neighborhood comes and sets up blankets and picnic baskets, and somebody plays music until it gets dark. Then when it is dark they play a children's movie, and all of the kids watch (although half of them fall asleep before the end). 

Once the kids were in bed, we lit a fire out back and enjoyed the sound of the crickets and watched the stars. Here is Jake enjoying a beer by the fire. I got this picture with no flash:

Tomorrow it's Labor Day but it's back to work for me, since Jake has no classes and can stay home to watch the kids. There are no 3-day weekends for freaked-out professors barreling down on tenure. It's been a good weekend and I love being at work, so I'll enjoy going there tomorrow, getting (I hope) a lot of good writing done without any distractions since the building will be empty. 

Good weekend, hopefully a good week coming up. I really enjoy fall.

Vignettes

1) Milo is so excited these days because I got him a nerf football. He throws it and says "Throw Nora! Throw Mama! Throw Daddy!" Nora is the one who does not return the throw quickly enough to meet Milo's desires, so he'll start instructing her, "Throw Milo, Nora! Throw Milo!"

2) Yesterday Jake came into the house with his bike helmet on.

Nora: Daddy's hat!

Me: That's Daddy's helmet. We wear a helmet when we ride our bikes.

Nora disappears, scurrying into the sunroom mumbling to herself about hats and bikes. Then I hear her shouting to herself in the sunroom, "Nora riding the bike! Nora riding the bike!" We walk in there and she's got one of her hats jammed onto her head, all off kilter, and she's riding her little trike cart.

3) Nora likes to administer things to Milo and Milo always lets her do it. She'll carry a cup around and then she'll put it up to his lips, saying "Milo drink it!" If she has a brush, she'll brush his hair. Nora's latest thing is to carry around an empty nose spray bottle and occasionally shove it up Milo's nose, saying "Here you go, Milo." At mealtimes now, Nora will sometimes take her spoon and feed Milo. Milo allows this and will open up his mouth and eat whatever it is Nora shoves at him.

4) Dancing:

Nasty Surprise

I am paid on a 9-month contract and the university doesn't pay me to work through the summer.

Sometimes people have grants and get paid for doing grant-related work during the summer. This is the case for me, and I have recently been a co-PI on three grants. Two just ended yesterday, and the third one just started up in January. I was signed up to get summer salary for the month of August from grant #2, whose PI is a professor in the psychology dept. here at my university. So imagine my surprise this morning when I saw that I have not been paid for August. The paycheck I was supposed to get today didn't come.

I emailed the PI about it. Actually I had tried several times to contact her throughout the summer and she has been AWOL. I think this is because she has breast cancer, and she has been struggling with her treatment and understandably is not very focused on work stuff right now. So I didn't want to pester her too much, and just went ahead and filed my paperwork to get paid. This morning she emailed me back to note that, whoops, actually, the grant has run out of money. She forgot that I was supposed to get paid this summer, and there is no way I can be paid because there is no money left in the grant.

This is a nasty surprise to have today, but I'm trying hard to take an easy come, easy go attitude about it. There will be other grants and other summers when I can get paid. I got some unexpected consulting work at the beginning of this summer, which was a landfall I hadn't anticipated. So that was easy come, and this is...easy go. We have benefited a great deal from the generosity of family and friends over the years, too. And last year when I was secretly worrying about how I was going to support the family and pay for Jake's grad school tuition, at the last minute he was awarded a fellowship that covered his tuition. So these things have happened that have helped us out tremendously and we have been lucky.

Today's snafu really sucks, and it's hard to suddenly not have a paycheck in my bank account that I was counting on, but in the grand scheme of things lots of people have next to nothing and I know we're very fortunate. It'll all work out.

I know that Jake and I will never be wealthy because this is my attitude towards money. I am not aggressive about it and I'm just pretty conservative and content with the status quo. I don't do the smart investing stuff I should be doing (we just have the standard retirement and savings/college plans). I don't put a lot of mental energy into it, and I know it's kind of dumb, but I also don't want to be the kind of person who thinks a lot about money in order to have a lot of money. I don't know. This isn't really making sense, and today I'm just trying to make myself feel better about this lousy thing that happened. I don't see any point in getting mad at the PI over this mistake, seeing as how she is battling cancer and all...things could be worse, right? I am healthy, and my family is healthy, and it's okay. It's only money.