CityMama™

The real developmental milestones

Remember when we all hovered over our babies waiting for them to smile, sit up, crawl, walk, or talk? Some of us probably sized up our kid with all the other kids in playgroup, or constantly checked BabyCenter to see when our babies should have a pincer grasp or eat solids or be expected to sleep through the night. All those developmental milestones are encouraging to parents, but I venture to say they aren't as important as the real milestones of young childhood. Like:

Learning to wipe her/his own butt. At a meeting with teachers before Bunny started kindergarten two years ago, the teachers said that they expected the kids to be able to handle all their own potty needs. All. So the next day, I bought a box of Kandoos and went to town teaching eager-to-learn and independent-minded Bunny proper bum-wiping skills.  Two days later, she was solid. Wallie, on the other hand, refuses to even try and starts to cry when I mention it.  We have a whole summer to work on it. Wish me luck. I'm going to need it.

Clicking her/his own seatbelt. At age four, I taught my kids to click their own seatbelts. Pull, pull, pull the belt, hold it, then click. Then, pull, pull, pull it tight. For several weeks I gave a final check until I was confident that the belts were straight and tight.  My back thanked me very much for not having to lean into a car, across two kids to click seatbelts. And I admit I am a little thrown when we carpool a kid who still can't do it, so I teach him/her how. They can do it! Let 'em!

Working the TV/DVD Player/AppleTV: "Wallie, push the button that looks like a house...yes, that one...take out the DVD...put the new one in DON'TFORCEIT!...Now push the button that looks like a sideways nose, the triangle button...It'll start...NODONTPUSHITAGAIN...just WAIT...it'll start....I said wait!"  You know what?  That is BULLSHIT.  Bunny is our official AV Kid and that's how I like it.  As long as she asks permission before renting or buying any movies on AppleTV, she can pretty much run the TV viewing show in this house.  (It's not a free-for-all, they have designated TV times and have specific shows they can watch, but not having to push the TV/Video button to get the TV on the right setting to watch regular TV or DVDs or AppleTV = priceless.)

Steps to five

Lately, Wallie, my shy little bug of a girl, has been venturing out of her shell to explore the world on her own. The girl that buries herself in my pants whenever a stranger says "hi" (or appears to want to say "hi") to her or who won't play with newish friends, is taking giant leaps towards independence.

Last week, I was in the carpool line waiting to pick Bunny up from school when Wallie declared that she had to go to the bathroom.  Really badly. The school bathroom was about 50 feet away from where I was parked, but around a slight corner so I couldn't see it. We're not supposed to leave our cars once in the carpool line so I couldn't take her. I explained that we'd be home soon, but she quickly tired of my explanations and cut me off. "I can go myself!" she squeaked.

Off she trotted to the girls' bathroom.  Two, three, four minutes ticked by.  "How long does it take to pee, flush, and wash hands," I asked myself. At the five minute mark, just as panic was starting to set in, Wallie's bright face came skipping around the corner.  As she scrambled into the car she told me all about how she flushed the toilet without covering her ears and that her hands were clean. "Smell them!"

A month ago, she'd never have done that.  I wouldn't have let her and I have to say, I don't think I will let her do it again, but still. I couldn't help but marvel at her new-found confidence.

Yesterday we were at the cafe where we like to have tea and sit outside. She accidentally knocked the table and some tea spilled.  "I'll get some napkins," Wallie volunteered.  I watched as she ducked into the busy cafe and this time ticked off the seconds until she returned.  After about 30 seconds she still hadn't returned so I walked in to see where she was. I saw a line of about 7 people waiting to order their coffees and right smack in the middle of all the adults, patiently waiting for her turn at the counter, was Wallie. She turned and saw me and waved me over to her and that gesture seemed so...adult, that my heart leaped and shattered at the same time. My four-year-old isn't a baby anymore.

Wallie goes to kindergarten next year and I have to admit that I have been a little worried about how she'd handle the new situation. She is very attached to her preschool and her friends there and doesn't do well with the "newness" of anything.  She will likely have Bunny's teacher and she is very familiar with the classroom so we have that in our favor, but still.  Wallie has always been a particular kid, a mixture of extreme shyness and attachment and pointed assertiveness when things don't go her way.

We've been trying to expose her to new adventures and new friends. For example, one of the things she loves to do lately is go to the bathroom in a restaurant with Bunny, just the two of them. (Or at least they think it's just the two of them as I usually check the bathroom before they go in and watch the door until they are done.) This kind of experience is just the thing she needs to give her a little more independence and bring her out of her comfort zone.

So we continue on this path of independence with Wallie.  We can now add "goes to the bathroom by herself" and "fetches napkins" to the short list of things she can do without an adult standing right there.

And so, they grow.

Of schedules and routines

We've always been a pretty routine-oriented family. From a set bedtime routine that has been the same since both kids were babies to our habit of having coffee and pastries at the mall every Saturday when the weather is nice (it's an outdoor mall that is very pretty and pleasant) to Sunday mornings spent moving from one hippie church activity to the next until lunchtime, we're kind of set in our ways.

 The hardest times for me are the after school to bedtime hours, I know these hours are hard for a lot of stay-at-home parents. They are especially tough for me as a work-at-home parent because I am interrupted so many times during the day by appointments or phone calls or school volunteering or school picks-ups that oftentimes I'm not even really getting rolling with work until after lunch.  The afternoon is also when I try to schedule all my calls, something I may have to revisit.

We have after school activities that fill an hour or two here or there, but for the most part, we've been playing those hours fast and loose. And it's been a problem.  Left to their own devices, the girls will play for a while and then eventually start getting on each other's nerves. Then the day ends on a bad note where everyone is frustrated and pissed off at each other.

How the Grinch tried to ruin Christmas and how he didn't know he would be blogged

Wallie with her beloved smoked salmon plate.

On Christmas Eve eve the girls and I hit up the local mall with my mom and brother to do some last minute shopping and along the way, we decided to stop and have lunch.  My brother wanted to continue shopping and said he'd meet us for dessert so my mom and I headed into the restaurant with Bunny and Wallie and promised to save him a spot.

Naturally, the narrow restaurant was crowded with shoppers and the many outside tables—normally packed—were empty due to inclement weather. When I asked for a table for five, the grandmotherly hostess (aka Strega Nona, who I think was also the owner) tutted and asked where the fifth member of our party was. I could tell this wasn't going to go well.

"He's shopping," I explained. "But he'll meet us later for dessert."

I was prepared for one of those "we can't seat you until your party is all here" spiels, but instead she huffed and said something even more frustrating, "You are going to order food...right?"

It was the "dot-dot-dot, right" that killed me.

I blinked.

Twice.

Why would she ask that question? Sometimes I think (and this is something that is probably common with mixed race folk though we don't readily admit it), "Is it because I'm not white? Is that why you think I won't order something?" I don't want to go there, but I've been learned to be disappointed by presumptuous people. And she looked presumptuous. It wouldn't be the first time someone assumed something incorrect about me based on my appearance.

I wanted to scream, "I'm half-Italian! Aren't you Italian, too?" But instead I said."Yes, we're here for lunch." We were standing in the crowded entry and people were pushing past us bumping their shopping bags into ours and all I could think was, "I'm getting out of here." But at that moment she sighed and said, "Hold on, let me prepare a table."  And so we waited.

Little things marking big changes.

After one month of patching Wallie's stronger eye, the vision in her weaker eye has improved. We do it four hours a day and she hates it, but was encouraged to know that that it is working.  We will continue for three more months and hope we see even more improvement. It will probably never reach 20/20 but maybe it won't be so, in Wallie's words, "blurry" when she tries to read books.

And Bunny has another loose tooth. #6.

100% pure joy

 

fall. beauties.

It was cold today, but that didn't stop us from taking a pre-dinner walk outside. My plan was to leave the house while it was still light out and be out walking the neighborhood as it turned to dusk.

We are all a little antsy in the late afternoon. Work is wrapping up for the day and yet I sit at my monitor just in case one more email comes in. My to-do list has only three checks on it. The empty boxes are mocking me. I need to get outside.

The girls have gone from games to drawing to playing and are just about to start causing little rows. So we threw on our hodge-podge of it's-cold-but-we-live-in-California attire (jackets, dresses, scarves, shoes with no socks) and prepare to head out. Before we could leave Bunny needed to get her diary. Wallie grabbed her stuffed rabbit.

Letter to Bunny and Wallie before Election Day

Dear Bunny and Wallie,

For the past year, your Mamma has been living and breathing politics trying very hard--along with other mothers (your blogger aunties)--to do everything we can to get a Democrat elected to the White House, or as you understand, trying to get "The Blue Team" elected. It has been a tough year and I know I haven't always spent enough time cooking, reading, and playing games with you, but I did it for you, and if we win, girls, it will be so worth it.

We started out supporting one candidate, then that candidate dropped out, so since then, we've been supporting Barack Obama. I know that you don't fully understand why your Mamma and Papa are Democrats or why we think Barack Obama is the best person to be president for our country. When you are older, you can go back and read the history of this time and hopefully you will see why we voted the way we did. And hopefully, because you are our daughters, raised with our values which also mesh with the values of our liberal spiritual community, you will understand that whatever the outcome is on Tuesday, we made the right decision for our family and our country.

Now for something a little less silly, talking about fire safety with kids

A couple of weeks ago it was Fire Prevention week, and because she'd been studying about it at school, Bunny came home everyday and shared her knowledge with us. I used to love these safety-themed weeks when I was a kid and, like her, ate up all the information with a spoon.

Because we live in earthquake country, we had always talked about a meeting place outside our home should anything happen, but we hadn't really gone through what to do in case of a fire, a much more immediate danger.  So last weekend, we got together as a family, made a plan, and practiced it.

Family Closed: Will return on Monday

This week I've been thinking a lot about how precious the time that my family spends together as a whole family is. We rarely eat dinner together during the week because my husband works start-up hours and often isn't home until after the girls go to bed.  Their early schedule doesn't help matters. They are hungry for dinner between 5:00 pm and 5:30 pm and begging to be put to bed starting at 6:30. I do my best to distract them with stories until 7:00 pm or else I fear going to bed too early will mean they'll be up at 6:00 am. So J. comes home, peeks in on them, gives them kisses they won't remember in the morning, and eats his dinner alone.

The nights he does get home in time for bedtime, the usual calmness of our bedtime story time is interrupted by excited squeals and shrieks of, "Papa! Papa!" There's no keeping the girls in bed when they hear his key in the lock. I feign annoyance, playing bad cop and shooing the girls finally to bed, but not before J. has constructed an elaborate ruse (never the same twice) to get them into bed, "Meow like a kitty all the way to your room while hopping, then get under your covers and bark like a dog. First one in bed who does those things gets five extra kisses," he says. "I'm gonna be first," they giggle. My heart explodes with happiness and love from the cuteness of it all.

Mornings used to be family time together every day, but a couple nights a week, J. has to return to the office or data center for late night work and when that happens we let him sleep in.  It's hard being "on" from 7:20 am (when I get up) until 7:00 pm when the girls go bed especially since I work from home and am also the biker to school, the carpool driver, school and church volunteer, swimming lessons shuttle-er (twice a day on Thursdays), and go-to playmate, but I try to remember that this schedule won't last forever.

That's why the time we actually get to spend together, usually on the weekend, is so sacred.