Fruit in my dessert

The Invisible War

It's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day - a day on, not a day off. This year, like the few previous, I have planned to dedicate the day to service, particularly since I am no longer employed full-time by a national service organization. I did not make it happen today.

So, in the spirit of what Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us - about equality, service, and human rights - I would like to share this video that was brought to my attention by the folks at Miss Representation, a documentary film-turned-campaign "that seeks to empower women and girls to challenge limiting labels in order to realize their potential."

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who wrote, directed, and produced Miss Representation (2011, find a way to see it if you haven't), is a producer on a new documentary called, The Invisible War, Official Selection at 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The film brings to light the prevalence of sexual assault in the military. 

I do not want to say too much before seeing the film or doing any research beyond the trailer, but that such large scale atrocities are taking place within the United States and its government agencies - particularly one created to protect us - devastates and angers me. I hope this film is the beginning of a louder, more effective and efficient movement to eradicate this particular disgusting injustice.

Jumpstart's Read for the Record 2011

My regular readers know that I have worked for Jumpstart, an early childhood education organization, not once, not twice, but three different times during my illustrious career. The organization's pull on me has been strong for several reasons, but the most important has always been the mission, to ensure EVERY child in America enters school prepared to succeed.

Tomorrow marks the SIXTH annual Jumpstart's Read for the Record, during which more than TWO MILLION adults and children will read Llama Llama Red Pajama together across the country to bring attention to the importance of HIGH QUALITY early education for ALL children.

Please pull out your copy to read with your child(ren), read it online HERE(English) or HERE(Spanish), and/or watch it being read by the author, Anna Dewdney, HERE.

Please register to be counted as part of the new world record and check out the national coverage of the event on NBC's Today Show tomorrow morning (Thursday, October 6, 2011)!

This year, I'm reading to Henry's preschool class in the morning and taking Henry and Lucy to Starbucks to read it again in the afternoon. [Starbucks is having Read for the Record events at 26 locations in NY. Check HERE to see if you can go to one near you!] We might even read it again at bedtime just for kicks (don't worry, we will only count each one of us once).

And, if you want to see the personal impact and importance of the work Jumpstart does every day to address the early education crisis, please read THIS PIECE by a Jumpstart volunteer on The Huffington Post.

Please vote for me

I just submitted 150 words to the Reader's Digest Your Life writing contest on Facebook. The 100 entries that receive the most votes will be judged by an "expert" panel with the chance to be published in Reader's Digest and to win $25,000.

My piece is entitled Angry Mother. Please check it out, and if you love it, vote for it. You can vote once per day through November 1. Please note, you have to LIKE Reader's Digest on Facebook before you can vote.

You can click on "Angry Mother" above or HERE to read my entry.

Thank you!

SpongeBob and other thoughts on media for young children

I wrote a post last week for Shaping Youth in response to the recent study on the immediate effects of fast paced television on young children. I was angry at the study, the media coverage of it, and the programming aimed at young children and their parents. Please read my post and leave a comment at Shaping Youth to let me know what you think. If you want to hear more of my opinions on young children and media, let me know that too!

Full of Awesome

My good friend, Amy, a mother and designer of 4March and Meenooma fame, just shared this awesome post from Pig Tail Pals, a blog I hadn't heard of before now that is all about redefining what it means to be girly. It always inspires me when I see people spreading the messages of power and strength for girls and women. Read the post, which is a poem, and think about how full of awesome you feel. I think I'm in the category of "getting it back."

And, in the same vein, I just saw The Help a couple of nights ago, and thought NOTHING was missing and that it was a beautiful adaptation of a beautiful story. And it brought this back for me, which I am highly considering starting to say every day with my own children:

You [are] kind

You [are] smart

You [are] important

 

Well, you are!

 

The kindness of strangers

Today was a good day. A rare day when I got up at 5am and had two and a half hours to shower and read and clean and make lists before the children got up at 7:30 (noon by our standards). Our wonderful babysitter came for four hours and played with the children, including one on one time with the older one while the younger one napped, while I got lots of work done promoting Brian's new book. The transitions flowed. We had a lovely trip to the post office to send books away. And then, as we were walking back toward home, actually toward the playground to play tennis, I engaged Henry in a conversation about making a choice, mostly because I couldn't decide and wanted him to make the choice for me (it had to do with him and an activity).

I noticed a woman walking alongside us and I was pretty sure she was listening to the conversation. She was about my mother's age I think. After Henry and I were done with our conversation (and he had made the choice, not the one I would have made on my own), the woman said, "I'm sorry for eavesdropping, but I just wanted to say what a lovely conversation that was. And what a wonderful example of parenting...you didn't interrupt him...respect...I wish you were MY mother...you're a F***ing rock star...here's that Mother of the Year Award you know you deserve...." Okay, so I'm paraphrasing, but she did gush and it was more than a few sentences. I laughed (uncomfortably) and said thank you several times, and yes, I might have teared up a bit, and I might be now.

Here's the thing: I don't know who that woman is. I don't know what, if any qualifications she has to say those glorious things to me (though I know she was right - dead on, actually). She doesn't know who I am. On a different day in a different moment, I am 100% sure that she could have just as easily seen a very different scene and heard a very different conversation between Henry and me. I remind myself of this not just with my own public parenting moments, but with those around me. I try hard not to (somewhat unsuccessfully) judge. I go out of my way to say when a parent gives me the slightest opening, "oh, we've been there," or "it's so hard sometimes," or something else to say, "no, no, I'm not judging you, I swear." I try hard (somewhat unsuccessfully) not to care if I think someone is silently judging me.

But the good stuff, LET IT FLOW. That woman made my day and it took a second. It was kind, it was generous. It was judgmental (of me, of experiences she might have been comparing me to). We need to do it more - to each other, to ourselves. All day long. And we need to hear it, be open to it. Thank you, stranger lady.

On second thought, you might not be in to that whole, "praise me and tell I'm awesome all day long and I'll be okay" thing like I am.

Today was a good day even without stranger lady. I didn't "need" her comment today, but I'm going to save it up for a day that I do.

PS - There was a second stranger lady a few minutes later who helped me locate Lucy's lost shoe on the sidewalk. She spotted us walking back covering our tracks with one shoe on the Luce Goose and pointed it out - it was one inch from falling off the sidewalk and into the bus path. Thank you, stranger lady #2.

PPS - yes, I am that ethnocentric that my though right now is, "only in New York." Don't burst my bubble by telling me that people are like that everywhere. They're not. At least to me ;)

PPSS - yes, I know that New York isn't an ethnicity. Is there a similar word that means the same thing for cities? I couldn't find it and I'm too tired to search anymore.

Third person

"I can't believe mommy didn't clean out this bag."

That was me to H this morning as I went through a bag that we took with us on a trip last weekend and I never went through and cleaned out. As it came out of my mouth, I thought to myself, "eww, why did you use the third person?" Okay, maybe I said, "ewww, why did I use the third person?" but I'm pretty sure I talk to myself in the 2nd person as well. Anyways, I do this sometimes, the third person thing, usually when talking to my kids (and, now, out of habit, and even more cringe worthy, sometimes when talking to my husband), and it drives me nuts for two reasons:

1. it just sounds icky to me
2. it's developmentally inappropriate (at least with my three year old, and certainly, my husband)

I just came up with a new reason for why I might do it. I notice that I often do I when I'm criticizing myself. Why didn't mommy do this? Why didn't mommy do that? Mommy forgot X thing, etc. So, here's what I'm thinking: I'm fairly good at criticizing other people, so it comes naturally for me to say, "Hey, why didn't X person do this?" "Why did X place do it that way?" AND why blame myself when I can blame this other, incompetent person I don't know that well, named, of all things, "Mommy."

Multi-tasking

While in a professional sense, and even a personal, non-mothering sense, I have spoken out against the true practice of attempting to do several things at one time, I have realized that many times during the ins and outs of a full day of mothering, I encounter two major issues repeatedly and in rapid succession:

1. I am unable to multi-task
2. I am forced to mutli-task

I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty sure this pair contributes to that frequent feeling I only half-joke with other mothers about: LOSING MY MIND! And, no, I don't find it the least bit ironic that as I type this with Sesame Street on the TV, that my toddler is literally picking on my preschooler and me and my preschooler is silently and without much movement driving both of us insane. There is food involved.

Back to multi-tasking. When I say that I am unable to multi-task, I mean that there are things that I would like to be accomplishing on occasion while the children are in my care. Not big and exciting things like blog posts, but maybe making a doctor appointment for someone, paying a bill, doing the laundry, researching water filters or family and children activities, all those chores that I'd rather not do when I'm paying someone else to be with the children, or worse, when I'd rather be sleeping or staring mindlessly into space (read: RHONYNJOC). I know it's a lot to ask and I don't know how many times I need to learn the lesson for it to stick, but I still try, and, on rare occasion, succeed. Most of the time it's a miserable failure of screaming while I'm talking to the doctor's office, or pinching my hands in the computer, or unfolding every last piece of laundry. There are also times when I'm successful because I manage to entranse them with "high quality early childhood programming" and then my prize is guilt and concern. Yes, I'm one of those. What is most frustrating for me is the inconsistency of it all. I do know it's temporary of course, but it's hard to hold on to that long view sometimes. Plus, then I'd be sitting here crying about how they're all grown up and want nothing to do with me anymore. It's never good enough. Can you imagine how my husband feels?

On the flip side of this, and this has become particularly true since having a second child, I am always multi-tasking and never accomplishing anything. Because, as you might have heard, children can't be "accomplished" in the same way a PowerPoint can be, and I definitely find that challenging sometimes [as I type this, toddler is sitting on my lap picking at mole on my arm]. Somebody always needs or wants something and in the rare instances that they don't, I'm preparing for the next wants and needs and/or cleaning up from the last ones. It's never ending.

I spend part of every day teaching my children how not to muti-task to prevent their own frustrations (e.g. socks and shoes can't go on at the SAME exact time, you can't climb on your rocking train while holding your milk with two hands - or at least in this house it's recommended against). Doing one thing at a time can feel peaceful and calm. It's the closest thing to meditation that I'm doing at the moment. So, I suck those moments in and move on to the next thing, forgetting all the lessons that I've learned along the way. That laundry* isn't going to re-fold itself.

Thank goodness I like them so much, or this would really suck.

PS - I successfully completed this post as Sesame Street ended. It's the little things.

*I cringe every time I type the word laundry because I can't believe what a disproportionate amont of time the topics of laundry (and groceries) spend in my head and coming out of my mouth.

Imprint

Lisa Tucker McElroy recently wrote a guest post for Lisa Belkin's NYT Motherlode blog pertaining to sleep, called, Bedtime Witches. It's beautifully written, and while we don't have monsters in this house (yet), she put into words how I often feel as a mother, and I wanted to share an excerpt with you here:

Someday, when Zoe has a daughter just like her, what nights will she remember? Will she look back on bedtime and think of it as a nurturing time, an hour of bonding, an occasion of love? Or, recalling our bedtime struggles, will she strive, in stark contrast to her own experience, to be the Good Witch of Bedtime? I long to know what imprint I’m leaving on my child, what fears I’m eliminating, what anxieties I’m creating*. I want a house to land on the Wicked Witch and stamp her out for good, both for my own sake and for that of my daughter, who deserves nothing less.

The house is quiet....And it is now, in the peace of the sleeping house, that I face head-on my motherhood fear, deeply buried, yet surfacing at bedtime: I’m no longer afraid of encountering the Wicked Witch; I’m afraid of becoming her.

*emphasis added by Fruit in my dessert

Spilt Milk

I have been working very hard over the last three and a half years, and about seventeen times harder than that in the last fifteen months, to outwardly process my anger, disappointment, and frustration with daily, mostly motherhood related occurrences that I find less than desirable without screaming, swearing, stomping, throwing or otherwise acting like a young child who does not yet have the words and tools and brain to do the same. I have been working so hard primarily because my children are usually present and oftentimes their actions or inactions or existence are the direct or indirect cause of said anger, disappointment, and frustration (we will save the guilt about this for another post). While there have definitely been momentary spikes in my inability to do this well since adding a second child to the mix, I would argue (but not loudly) that I have been quite successful in my attempts to show less frustration than I feel most of the time - or rather to show my frustration in more constructive or creative and less dramatic ways than I otherwise would. 

Just yesterday, at dinner, H spilled his milk all over me, the table, and the floor after a long weekend of traveling and family separation. We were ALL exhausted. It was an accident. As soon as it happened, he looked at me, perhaps B and L did too. I'm pretty sure they weren't sure how I would react (and yes, I know many of the reasons and ramifications; see paragraph one). I looked at myself. I took a breath. I laughed a little. I got a towel. It was bath time.

In our house, at least for me, life is what happens in the moment between when the milk spills and I open my mouth. I hope I can keep remembering that in the moment, and with different and bigger things than milk.