Three Weird Titles

Influenced By My Time in Japan (or Common Sense):

Our bathroom is still not done, and seemingly not close to it. Our contractor is working on another job which means that he doesn't spend many hours here. Some days -- many days -- he doesn't arrive until the afternoon or the evening. He is also a perfectionist, and is very careful. This means that he is sort of slow but the work he does is gorgeous. He put up all of the trim yesterday and I was impressed with how good it looks and how he cut it perfectly to make spaces for the legs of the vanity.

With the cold and rainy weather our contractor has had to do most of his sawing and other messy work indoors. Our entire basement is a disaster area. The whole house is covered in a layer of dust that I've mostly given up on cleaning because it just returns the next day. Shoes are scattered throughout the house because we've lost our basement shoe-storing area. Same with coats, and hats, and umbrellas.

(We are a shoes off household. I find it disgusting to leave shoes on in the house, especially when shoes treck through mud and dog crap and other stuff outside, including things like nasty public bathroom floors. To then bring all of that inside onto our floors and carpet seems unnecessarily gross. When I step out of the shower, I want to step onto a clean bath mat, not one that has been stepped on with nasty outdoor shoes. In addition, we have hardwood floors, which take a beating from shoes (especially heels). However, lest you think I'm too anal, I don't enforce this rule for parties or when casual guests come over. If they voluntarily take off their shoes, that's great, and if they don't, I just live with it. After a party I know I'll be cleaning the floors anyway, and I don't want to make people feel uncomfortable.)

Of course, all of this goes out the window if somebody insists on clomping around in my shoe pretending to "go bye bye"!

Keeping Up With the Milos:

Yesterday Milo peed in the potty again! The Twin Whisperer had noticed that his diaper was dry so she told him that since he had a dry diaper, that probably meant he had water in his bottom and he could pee in the potty. (Don't get me started on the weird euphemisms like "water" and "bottom" instead of, uh...bladder? -- what can I say, she's old school in some ways). So he did it and announced that he had peed in the potty, and she made a happy commotion and gave him a sticker. When Nora saw all of that, she got her hand wet under the faucet, patted her bottom, and then flicked some of the water into the potty and said "Nora made water in the potty too!" Nothing gets past that kid.

A Happy Haunting:

I'm starting to feel sort of accepted in the neighborhood because last night we got "ghosted". Hooray! Folks here have a tradition of "ghosting" right before Halloween. What it means is that at night you may hear a little rustle or something, or maybe not, but if you then check your front door you're going to find a paper ghost and a little bag of sweets, like cookies or candy or some other dessert. Then you tape the ghost to your front door so everybody knows you've already been a happy recipient of sweets, and the next night you put together two baggiest of sweets, tie them to paper ghosts, and deliver them to two houses in the neighborhood. (It can be any house you want, as long as it's not one with a ghost on the front door).

Little things like this are what make a neighborhood a community. This Saturday we're having a big pizza party in the park followed by a kid's parade around the block -- in costume, of course.

Hmmm

Both kids are sick again. The twin whisperer thinks it was the flu vaccine, that the vaccine caused them to get ill. Does that even make sense? I think it's more likely that one of the couple hundred kids hanging around that day was probably getting sick and spread it to M&N. I suppose we'll never know...

This is why this blog isn't googlable

My mentor complains to me: "I can't even remember the last time I had any time to actually do my own research." The reason is that we have so many service obligations being piled onto us right now, it leaves no time for anything else. I am struggling with the exact same problem, but the difference is, he is already a full professor. So if he can't do any research for a few months, it doesn't have the same dire consequences it has for me.

The details of all of that service aren't important, but what matters is that important people like our dean and the school superintendent are making us do a huge task while simultaneously denying us the resources to effectively carry out the task. These days I'm feeling like everybody wants a piece of me. It's hard to get blood from a stone.

Today I had a difficult meeting with a student in trouble, and another senior professor in the meeting took the opportunity to air his own grievances which were unrelated to the student's issues and inappropriate at that time. These grievances weren't specific to me but had to do with our area. He also (not on purpose, I don't think) belittled me in front of my own student, which was humiliating. I was so angry and embarrassed that it took all of my will and effort to not lose it and start crying in that meeting. My face was red and I'm sure I didn't do the greatest job of keeping a poker face, but I considered it a huge victory that I did not react to the incident and instead kept the focus on the student. Because this person will be voting on my tenure case in the future, I did not confront him after the meeting and stand up for myself.

Instead I just swallowed that ball of humiliation and anger and frustration and helplessness and took another antacid.

Then I came home and made dinner while Nora clung to my leg demanding to see what I was doing, and attempted to feed the kids who stuck their fists into their food and otherwise made a pointless mess. I watched Milo cry angrily because I wouldn't let him pour his water all over his hand. I spent the night grading and have been in and out of the nursery to comfort Nora, who keeps waking and crying. Every time she cries my stomach gets upset and I wonder, is tonight going to be another one of those nights?

Then I go to bed for a few hours, to wake up at 3 a.m. and lie awake in the dark worrying about the future and my job. I wonder if this is going to get better after tenure.

I wonder.

Awesome Email from Jake

"Milo used the potty. He managed to get some urine in the potty, so he had the right idea!"

"In related news, the rug in the bathroom has to be washed."

Just Another October Day

This weekend threatened to be nasty and rainy but actually ended up beautiful. We made sure to enjoy every minute of it...that is, those minutes (120 of them) when we were stuck at the doctor's office waiting in line for the flu shot. I was struck, during that long wait, by how cheerful and friendly Milo is. He happily entertained himself the whole time, and made friends with a family of three older girls. Milo played hide and seek with them, hiding under the chair and laughing as they caught him. Nora was a pretty happy camper too, and the nurse who gave Nora her shot was so amazing and quick that Nora didn't even notice or cry when she got the shot!

That was yesterday morning, and today Milo woke up with a runny nose. Noooooooooo! I think it was only a couple of weeks ago when everybody recovered from the last cold, and now we're getting hit again? It'd be ironic if it turned out to be the flu.

Jake's parents came back into town, swinging through on their way to Florida, and they happily watched the kids for us while we went to the food and wine show at the convention center. We went with some friends who all seemed to have a better capacity to handle lots of different tastes of food and wine than I appear to possess. We were there for 4 hours and tasted incredible amounts of stuff, and it was really fun, but I was in terrible pain by the end. My stomach was killing me. I wonder if it had to do with the fact that I sampled some (locally grown, grass-fed, organic) beef? I don't know. Maybe it was the cheese. Or the chocolate. Or the wine. Or maybe it was the cake, or the barbecue, or perhaps it was the truffles, or the limoncello. Oh, my belly! We came back and sent Jake's parents on their way, and then played games until late into the night. I then woke at 4 a.m. with the worst back ache I've had in years, which I also somehow mysteriously attribute to all of the different foods we sampled.

Today it was beautiful and warm, and the sky was blue. You can see that in the first photo up above. We took the kids to the park in the morning and they had a great time. By the afternoon, it was pretty warm and we didn't need coats any more. We spent a long time raking up the leaves and culling away the dead plants from our garden, and Milo and Nora were more than thrilled to play in the leaves. After we were done I thought about how nice it was that we could spend a couple of hours doing yardwork and the kids are now old enough that they can hang outside with us, not run away willy nilly, and not need constant entertainment. What a gift. We never could have done that kind of thing this time last year.

It almost makes up for Milo reaching into Nora's poopy diaper this morning, grabbing a turd, and trying to hand it over to Jake. Aw, who am I kidding, it totally makes up for it.

Small Things

Today it rained all day without stopping, which made me so glad that yesterday we were able to go to the park with our neighbor and her little girl to play in the gorgeous autumn weather. It was incredibly warm yesterday, and beautiful, and all of the kids and parents were outside. Milo and Nora and their friend Pippa played with balls and ran around wildly in the grass, and then they found some minor depressions (shallow holes) in the grass filled with leaves. They thought it was the greatest thing to sit in the shallow hole and play with the red, orange, and yellow leaves. At one point Milo just flopped onto his back and kicked his legs furiously, tossing the leaves everywhere and laughing at it all. It was the quintessential autumn scene.

A warm breeze scattered the leaves to and fro, and Jake came home from school and joined us, taking a video on his iPod. We sat on the bench and talked to our neighbors and watched the kids taking turns putting leaves in their hair.

Today, as I mentioned, it rained all day, a cold rain. One of the nice things about a day like today is when you come inside after walking home in the wet weather, chilled, your wet pants clinging to your legs, and then you get to take them off and put on your warm, fuzzy sweatpants. It's so cozy. Best of all, tonight at dinner, Nora actually ate rice. I got her to try a single grain, and she decided she liked it, and the next thing I knew she was eating 5, 8 grains at a time. I know, going hog wild. Nora even liked the rice and had several (miniscule) helpings. Eating something like rice is a big step for her.

The Return of Autumn

This past weekend the kids got to enjoy a visit with Grandma and Grandpa. They rolled in on Friday with packages galore to celebrate the kids' birthdays. Yeah, their birthday is in December, but the in-laws are headed to Florida for the winter so they won't be here in December, and I'm pretty sure they're unaware that a thing called the UPS exists. So they deliver all of their packages ahead of time and as far as I'm concerned that works out just fine to spread the joy around a little.

Most exciting was the giant, enormous, made-for-outside-but-currently-residing-inside basketball hoop for Milo! It's about twice as tall as he is, and comes with a little basketball, and Milo has been over the moon about this thing. Tonight he said "Going to make 5 baskets!" and started throwing at random. (Why 5? He doesn't know what 5 is, exactly, but it was cute.) Milo can actually make a basket, and I've seen him make three in a row even, which is amazing to me. The downside, however, is that Milo gets really, really frustrated when he can't make a basket. Red face, tears, and jumping up and down kind of frustrated. Either way, I can tell this thing is going to entertain Milo during many snowy days.

The kids also got a mini trampoline, but I'm saving that one for when the weather really turns nasty and we all start huddling up inside for the winter, the way people tend to do around here. Autumn has returned to us for a while, and we can still run around outside for the time being.

I had to work all weekend but this gave the kids plenty of time to play with Grandpa and Grandma, which they loved. I walked to work on Saturday morning about an hour before the football game started, and it was the most wonderful atmosphere. I passed literally thousands of red-clad fans. I walked under the graceful arc of two footballs in motion. I passed dozens of makeshift brat stands, and hundreds of tailgating vehicles. I heard music everywhere. I love how festive the town gets on days like those.

Walking home at 5, though, was an entirely different story (partly because we lost the game). Those pleasantly tipsy people had reached the falling-down-and-throwing-up drunk stage, which is quite a bit less festive. I felt like the only sober person in the entire town.

On Saturday night we ate a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting courtesy of my mother in law who brought the cake for Jake's birthday. Milo enjoyed it. Nora liked the cake part, but when Jake gave her some chocolate frosting she actually gagged, and then spit it out. My daughter gagged on chocolate frosting. If I hadn't watched her jump out of my belly with my own two eyes I'd wonder if we were related.

Sunday morning found me at a coffee shop with my laptop, working away and watching the people walk by outside. It was a gorgeous, sunny day and the kids spent the morning in the park, going down the slide over and over again. All of the leaves have turned, now, and just walking anywhere -- to the store, to work, to the coffee shop, to the neighbor's house -- it's just beautiful. I love our tree-lined street this time of year. The grandparents left that afternoon and the kids spent the evening coloring and reading books. Another beautiful weekend. Right now I feel like I need to soak it up as much as I can before winter comes.

Bullets of Rough Stuff

• I happen to know that my grant proposal was reviewed at NSF today by the external review panel. (gulp)
• I have to take Nora to the doctor tomorrow instead of spending the morning working and writing. On the bright side, hopefully we can get Nora back on a prescription for reflux because I think she is still suffering from it.
• I have to spend all weekend on a consulting project, and simultaneously my in-laws are going to be in town. Wait. Maybe that's not a bad thing.
• The bathroom project is the project that never ends. A friend told me to double all estimates for time to completion and now I realize she was totally right.

It's all going to work out one way or another.

22 Months

Today the kids are 22 months old. The world, and by the world I mean the weather, has changed so much in the last month and it just seems unfair. Here are the kids just a couple of weeks ago:

Oh, it was so beautiful. Birds were chirping. The sun was shining. My mother was here, which meant I could make dinner without a 19-pound mewling barnacle attached to my leg. And then, in just a few cruel days, things changed to this:

I guess one minor advantage of cold weather is all of the cute hats and hoods and jackets the kids get to wear. So cute! So cuddly!

As an aside, these pictures are crystal clear before I upload them onto blogger, and now they look grainy and blurry. I don't know why that's happening.

So, autumn graced us with its presence for about a day, and skipped right into...well, I don't want to say anything, but as I type this it is currently 35 degrees, so call it what you will. The children have taken this in stride. I have read things about other toddlers their age causing trouble with getting dressed, demanding particular outfits or combinations, and fortunately that's not something we're dealing with at this point. (Uh...I just doomed myself, didn't I.) Now it's all sweaters and socks and fuzzy hats and nobody seems to have a problem with that. Neither of them honestly seem to notice what they wear, or care, other than Nora's occasional attempts to strip. The cooler weather has cut way down on that, too, so there's another up side.

Nora is a little monkey. She loves to swing and climb, and she has no fear. She'll climb on anything. I fear for her safety! I understand that toddlers need to lack a fear of gravity so that they can learn to walk and jump and run, but when is a healthy sense of restraint going to kick in, anyway? Nora is fearless. As a personality trait, I can get behind that, as long as she makes it to adulthood.

Nora is really up and down these days. Jake read about this in a book about 2-year olds. Apparently they can get totally irrational and difficult over nothing, and I guess Nora is being precocious because she's already there. Her current thing is to insist she wants something, and then push it away and cry and get angry when we give it to her, and then repeat that process 80 times in a row until the force of her anger causes her to levitate off the ground. It's really frustrating, because when she gets into that cycle she is hard to distract out of it, and nothing makes her happy. She just gets more and more upset. Nora is also in the midst of "Nora do it!" and "Do it myself!" which is usually unreasonable and often impossible.

In true toddler fashion, though, these storms can move through quickly and Nora will return to her sunny self. She is completely person-oriented and needs to account for everybody in her world regularly. As long as she's got the whole family nearby, and is preferably being held by me, she's perfectly content. Once that's in place Nora will start to tick off other people in her world. "Where's the twin whisperer? At home. She put a hat on and went home! Where'd Grandmom go? To see Papa Greg!"

The inexplicable love affair with glasses continues.

Nora comes up with funny things to say all the time. Yesterday during dinner out of nowhere she declared "Milo has a package!" Okay, is it wrong that I laughed and laughed at that? She just picks up things from who knows where. When the twin whisperer was here Nora said to her "Mommy coming home this afternoon, I promise!" When she says goodbye to me she says "Goodbye sweetie Mommy!"

Nora has a willful streak in her that sometimes strikes me as a little...familiar.

Nora's favorite thing these days is coloring. The kids have these "special seats" that hang off the counter and they like to sit there and color, eat snacks, or play with play dough. Nora loves that special seat and she especially loves coloring. Which mainly involves, as far as I can tell, sorting the crayons and putting them in the box and taking them out again.

Nora's a tiny thing (I don't think she's gained any weight in the last 4 months), but she's energetic, curious, bright eyed, and sharp as a whip. So I think she'll be okay. She cracks me up daily.

Here is a photo of Milo bouncing a basketball. The photo is a little blurry but he is actually bouncing the ball. He can also bounce a ball and catch it again, he can (sometimes) make a basket, and he can do a drop kick. The kid is amazing with balls! I was thinking that we have to figure out what sport to get him into to encourage his love of balls. Ideally it'd be one that isn't super long and boring, and won't require endless Saturdays from me sitting outside shivering on some field somewhere. (So, soccer is out). Also, it needs to be a sport in which you don't have to be big or tall to succeed. (So, football and basketball are out). Also, ideally, it'd be something in which you can get super rich in case Milo ends up being really good. Hmmm...golf? But golf is a game for tools. Tennis? I don't know. I guess we'll just let him do what he wants to do, or something...

Milo is such an easygoing little guy, generally. He sleeps well, he eats well, and the only time he really gets upset is when he and Nora are fighting over something. Which, admittedly, happens regularly. But otherwise he's totally able to roll with the punches.

At the same time, he is a little fearful at times. I think he must be hearing something outside at night that we can't hear, because often in the middle of something else he'll stop and say that he heard an owl. Then he'll get a worried look on his face and sometimes he'll say "I'm scared." Also, in the last couple of days Milo has taken to running to the window and saying "There's something out there!" Sometimes he'll tell us that he's scared then, too. Hopefully Milo is just freaked out by squirrels or something, and this isn't heading down the "I can see dead people" road.

Milo will pretty much do anything Nora wants him to do. He'll let her feed him, give him things to drink, and he'll follow her into any game she suggests. He's a go-to guy, the guy who is always game, the guy you can call up at 4 in the morning because you need help moving the body and you don't want any questions asked. Milo is that kind of guy, just like his daddy.

Milo has two loveys in his crib that he calls his "babies", and he needs to hold both of them when he goes to sleep. Sometimes in the morning he also wants to cuddle with his babies for a couple of minutes before he gets up for the day. It's so cute and sweet. He just seems like kind of a sensitive kid, and he's a real sweetheart.

Milo's favorite thing is still balls, of course, but he's also a huge fan of music and hide-and-seek. Or rather, the "where's Milo" game in which he is a spectacularly bad hider. Milo will hold a grain of rice in front of his face and then say "Where's Milo?"...or even lamer, he'll just shut his eyes or turn his head. It's awesomely hilarious.

Milo also loves being tickled. Is there anything better than the belly laugh of your baby? Yes. That thing is sleeping in on Sunday morning. But since I can't have that, the belly laugh is a pretty good consolation prize.

Projects

So anybody who knows me at all will be totally shocked by this admission: The other day, I did something...crafty. As in, I made something with my hands. I also used material, scissors, and, God help me, a sewing machine.

It wasn't my choice.

Every month I do this Creative Circle thing with some friends in the neighborhood, and the super nice woman who leads it is very into art, and crafts, and design, and things like that. So this month she told us to bring some fabric scraps (fabric whatsits?) and rice and essential oils (essential what?). She said she would have the sewing machine all ready to go.

At that point I was all, waaaaaaiiiiit a minute. I don't do sewing machines. You get me anywhere near a sewing machine and, well, lets just say that words are said. Words people might regret. Usually something ends up broken, blood might be shed, and possibly tears as well. Sewing machines and I do not get along.

And my friend was like "Oh Amy, ha ha ha ha, you're such a card," and I'm sitting there saying "Uh, those aren't jokes" but she didn't believe me and she made me come anyway.

Not being the kind of person who is intimately acquainted with the words "fabric" and "scraps", I brought some old burp cloths. We then proceeded to make these things that, well, I don't know their name, but it's this thing that is filled with rice and you put it in the microwave and then it gets nice and toasty warm and stays that way for a long time. So you can put it on your forehead if you have a headache, or on your wrist if it's hurting from all of that fancy sewing machine action you just went through, or whatever. These things (sachets? I don't know) are often filled with lavender or other aromatic things and are supposed to be soothing.

Behold my beautiful creation:

See, you wrap it around your shoulders or your neck when you have a sore neck from all of the tedious crafty work you just put yourself through. Oh, and by the way I learned an important sewing lesson that night: when you pin stuff together, you're supposed to put the pins perpendicular to the way you're going to sew, not parallel. Behold the crazy look on my face as I enjoy the fruits of my labor. I was all whacked out from breathing in too many essential oils:

In other projecty news, we are making great progress on our bathroom. Here is what the basement bathroom / laundry room used to look like:

Why yes, that is a toilet and a sink just sitting there in the middle of a giant unfinished room. Next to the cat box, because we're classy like that. In the 5 years I've lived here I never once used that frightening toilet. Our desire was to turn this unfinished basement area into an actual bathroom / laundry room. Here, the framing is up:

Next, the drywall:

And today, the tile went in! We're really making progress now.

I know that it is not traditional to give names to rooms in houses, but this room is going to have a name. I think the name will be something like "faith" or "optimism", because this room represents my willingness to invest in this house, under an assumption that I will not be forced to move in a couple of years. Building a basement bathroom is my way of saying that I am going to have faith that I will get tenure.

The Weekend When We Skipped Fall

Apparently it has gone straight from summer to winter! Autumn lasted about a week. This weekend it was cold, cold, cold. We took the kids outside yesterday morning and after just 10 or 15 minutes Nora said she wanted to go back inside, which was unprecedented for her. I was freezing my butt off. An hour later I was walking from the car to the grocery store and it started to snow, so that gives an idea of how cold it truly was! The kids don't have mittens for this year yet (other than the baby ones from last year) but how was I to know they'd need mittens by mid-October?

I had to work all weekend because I had to write two letters of recommendation and read three research projects. These are the type of service/teaching/grading activities that I am trying to do at home for the next 2 years in the hours outside of typical work hours, so that I can devote all of my at-work time to research (and in-person meetings, and teaching). But even though I had to work through naps and at night and during some of the time when the kids played with Jake, there was still time to color, work with play dough, go to the (freezing cold) park, and read books.

Milo totally gets the idea of a simile now. Well, okay, not a simile per se, but he does understand how to use the word "like". Yesterday he started banging his tray loudly and saying "Like Tom! Like Tom!" I thought he was saying "I like Tom" (our contractor) so I said "Oh, you like Tom?" and he said "Making noise like Tom!" Then later he and Jake were talking about a bird, and Jake said the bird was in the sky, and Milo said "Like an airplane!" Wow! Kids are so amazing.

Now that we have one nap Nora keeps waking up after a scant hour and a half or so, and then proceeds to hold conversations with herself. I usually let her stay in there and talk to herself for a while, under the rationalization that I'm providing her with much-needed "quiet time". (Milo sleeps for 3 hours). Today she said something like this:

Where's Mommy? Where'd Mommy go?

Mommy went to work!

Mommy went shopping!

Mommy went to the bathroom!

(Sounds of jumping)

Nora's jumping in the crib!

Want Mommy pick up Nora?

Mommy's sleeping, honey.

Where'd she get that last one? Maybe Jake says it to her when he gets up with the kids and she asks for me. I know that when I get up with them, I have to tell them over and over again that Daddy's still sleeping.

There were little victories this weekend: last night, the kids slept 12 hours. All in a row. And tonight, Nora consented to stick out her tongue and lick a kidney bean. Baby steps.

Is My Toddler an Anorexic?

It's 6 p.m., Milo & Nora are hungry. Milo happily starts eating cheese, beans, pumpkin ravioli, and pizza. As I'm getting Nora into her seat she says "Avocado? Avocado? Avocado please? Avocado in the pink bowl? Avocado?" So I say "Sure, I'll get you some avocado in the pink bowl" and I warm up two cubes of this avocado/banana/yogurt mix that I have ready made for her. I put it into the pink bowl. I set the pink bowl in front of Nora. She digs in with her spoon as I'm putting on her bib and I say "oh hold on, let me get your bib on!" She stops. The bib is on.

And then...."No avocado. All done! No avocado! No pink bowl! All done pink bowl!"

The entire dinner was this way. She never did even taste the avocado, after asking for it non-stop for 5 minutes. I gave her sweet potatoes and chicken. She ate 2 spoonfuls and then stopped. She refused to eat any more. She refused the avocado. But when I gave the sweet potatoes and chicken to Milo, Nora freaked out, yelling "Sweet potatoes! Want sweet potatoes! Want sweet potatoes in green bowl! Want Milo's green bowl!" Okay Nora, you want the sweet potatoes? Okay. Here's the bowl. Here it is. Here's the spoon. Are you happy? "No sweet potatoes! All done! No green bowl! All done green bowl!"

Oh my God seriously Nora? She wouldn't eat a damn thing. 2 bites and that was it, she was going to what, skip dinner entirely? When the kid weighs 19 pounds and hasn't gained anything in the last 3 months? When the kid weighs less than your average 1-year old, and now she's skipping dinner? Aaaaaaaggggghhhhhh!

No cheese. No bread. No avocado. No sweet potatoes. I thought about offering her applesauce, which she loves, or hell, cookies, but then I thought am I really supposed to be teaching her that I'm a short-order cook here, that she can just eat whatever she wants on a whim and refuse what she doesn't happen to desire even though it's what's on the menu for tonight? That she can just dictate her own personal menu every single night even if it's totally different from what I've prepared for her? It's not like I'm asking her to eat liver. Avocado and sweet potatoes and chicken are things that she loves every other night. My strategy is to offer several different things, usually one or two of which is new, and the rest which are staples that I know she likes and will eat. (90% of the time she refuses the new thing, but at least I know there are things on the night's menu that she will eat). But tonight she wouldn't eat anything.

So Nora basically skipped dinner as Milo sat there happily chomping on his beans.

I was so frustrated and angry at this whole insane back-and-forth "WANT IT -- NOOOOO, GET IT AWAY FROM ME -- NOOOOO, WANT IT" craziness that I literally had to leave the room and give myself a time out. Thank goodness for Jake and shared parenting because if I were a single parent and didn't have the option to just let Jake deal with it for 5 minutes, I'm pretty sure I would be doing a lot of yelling. Because I wanted to yell. As it is I still ended up using the word "shit" which of course Milo repeated immediately.

Shit.

Plus ca change...

Progress is slow and steady on our bathroom. Drywall is coming up, our washer and dryer are hooked up again, and we are going to pick out paint colors tomorrow. The kids have mostly gotten used to the construction noise and they cheerfully say "Hi Tom!" whenever the contractor comes or goes.

It is going to be so nice to have a second bathroom!

Autumn has arrived suddenly and decisively. One day it was 78 and humid, the next it was 60 and crisp and suddenly I noticed leaves swirling around on the sidewalk. The tree outside my window is picking up more and more tones of red and orange each day. October is a super fun month. I love the weather and the excitement that it brings with that fall feeling: football games, marching band sounds in the distance, hot chocolate, back to school knee socks.

I take the kids to a community play group every Wednesday morning. It gets us out of the house and around other people, and there are a ton of toys to play with, big and small. There is a play kitchen and little trampolines and slides and scooters and a climbing gym type thing. Last week Milo was sick so I took Nora without him and she spent the entire time clinging to my leg and asking where Milo was. This week I took them both (even though they both still have colds, the cold that never dies) and they ran around like gleeful maniacs. I never realize how much the kids need each other until they are separated.

The twin whisperer has returned from her trip to England and for some reason she taught Milo how to take a bow. He does it very properly, with his hands on his belly.

I am trying to get Nora to say "please" more consistently and she really fights me on it. She will repeat any word you ask her to, unless that word is please:

Nora: More crackers!

Me: More crackers please?

Nora: Okay.

Me: Say "please".

Nora: All right.

Me: Can you say "more crackers please"?

Nora: Nice asking!

Me: Auuuughhh!

Milo cried inexplicably all morning long. I think he is reacting to all of the changes going on with my mother being gone, and the twin whisperer being back, and still having a cold on top of it all. Sometimes when I go into their room first thing in the morning, the first thing Milo says to me is "I want Daddy!" Then when Daddy goes to school it is tough for Milo.

On the bright side, today after the kids' lunch I was able to sit down and eat my own lunch for 20 minutes while the kids happily played together by climbing on top of a vacuum cleaner box. So, the seasons change, life gets easier.

Task List to Tenure

1) Signature piece #1 -- submitted today! Hooray!

2) Write book chapter -- due mid-November.

3) Signature piece #2 -- Submit by March 1 (my internal goal).

4) Co-authored journal piece -- Submit by the end of the year (ambitious, perhaps doable).

5) Co-authored book for teachers on proof -- timeline still in negotiation, this doesn't really matter for tenure.

6) Get my NSF grant awarded -- (Hopefully January-ish! If not, then hopefully January 2011!)

Once #1, #3, and #6 are all successful, I'll be ready to go up. Whenever that happens...we'll see. I just submitted #1 to our top journal, which currently has about an 8% acceptance rate, so these things take time. It usually doesn't happen on the first go around. Same for the NSF grant, so this all could take a while, but fortunately I have time. It feels good to know what I need to get done, and what order I'm going to do it in.

And it feels great to have submitted my first signature piece today! Data collection for this piece began 2 years ago, in fall '07. I analyzed the data all year last year, and started writing this paper this past summer. So it's been a long time coming! Now I'm going to go home, take the weekend OFF, and hang out with the fam! Woo hoo!

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.