favorite

Baby head on my shoulder, cooing.
Daughter's face alight, describing a story.
Children are so alive and afire.

Get short with us at Making Things Up.

amazing

Every day, Lucy amazes me. She seems to have come into some kind of new confidence in herself, in her ability to find things out. "I'm going to 'vestigate," she'll say, and grab a notebook and draw pictures of nature, her sister, mermaids, princesses. Right now, she is hard at work on an art show she's going to stage when we next visit her cousins. We do simple crosswords, and she knits her forehead in concentration as I show her how the straight lines and half-circles make P, B, R, K. The letters have legs, and arms, and heads, and they are all dancing for her right now.

I love his confidence I see in her, this artistry, this desire to devour the world and figure it out. And also the joy that she rushes up with in the morning, to see her sister, and give her kisses.

Today someone at our church asked if she were in preschool there. "No," I said. "We have her at home right now."
"They have scholarships," she said, kindly. And I know that preschool could be lovely, too, that there she would run and discover as well.
But I love that I'm here to see this all unfolding. Right now, you couldn't pay me to miss all of this.

no wonder I'm tense

In my dream last night, I had accidentally bought a cobra. I meant to buy a boa constrictor*. Whoops!

It got loose in our house, and since I'd made the mistake, I was the one who had to go find it and put it in a container (I should have recognized that I was dreaming at this point; no one in their right mind would send me to deal competently with a fanged viper. I am afraid of bumblebees, people). Part of the nightmare was figuring out which container. Just as in real life, it is impossible to find Tupperware lids when you need them.

Then I wandered the house, trying to find the cobra without coming across it unexpectedly. At one point, I watched it take down a very large rattlesnake (kind of like East meets West, with the East winning, hands-down). Another fun highlight was when Julia started to come into the quarantined area of the house, pushing open unlatched doors at the wrong moment (always, at the wrong moment, whether I'm swishing out a poopy diaper or capturing a cobra).

Then a baby woke me. And my first thought upon waking: Man, am I tense. My second thought? Well, no wonder. I was trying to capture a %$^ing cobra in a lidless Tupperware container.

That is all.

*When I told Dyami this dream, I said, "I wouldn't be so scared of a boa constrictor". And he pointed out that a boa might still be problematic with a one-year-old around. Still though, no fangs.

wealth=choice

There's a whole interweb kerfuffle right now over the comments of Todd Henderson, U of Chicago professor, whose household income exceeds $250k. He argues that after expenses (taxes mortgage, childcare, student loan repayments), he has little discretionary income left. He says he's not "superrich", and thus shouldn't be asked to pay more in taxes under Obama's plan.

He's getting flamed by a lot of people, but even liberal voices have made his point. However, I wanted to weigh in:

Mr. Henderson, you are superrich. I understand how frustrating it must be that your income is not more flexible than it is. I don't doubt that it can be hard to make the choices you do. But that you have choices is itself a luxury. You have the choice to pay back $250k in student loans. You have the choice to search out day care, a cleaning service. You have the choice for both parents to work, to afford cable. You can make the mortgage on your house in an expensive place. I'm guessing you have the choice to get your kids in decent schools, pay health care.

For most of the world, you're wealthy beyond imagination.

My question is: how has our expectation in the US gotten so skewed that being "wealthy" means that you don't have to make choices with your wealth? When has wealthy become being able to afford anything?

Sorry, Mr. Henderson. I'm not unsympathetic. What month do I not look at our budget and think: but only if we had X more dollars here? Limits can suck. And paying taxes sucks. I'm not convinced that $250 k is truly a fair designation for "super-rich", but please don't complain about your lack of discretionary income. So much of our lifestyle is discretionary--it's just an attitude adjustment to see it as such.

commuting to fantasyland

These worlds within worlds inside Lucy:
ballet studio, disney vacation, surprise party
artist's lair, runaway hidey-hole, store,
all meant to be populated continually,
by us, to her exact specifications:
I'd like to be fecund, excited,
participate each time, inhabit those worlds,
but my magic is often fitful.
Why is being childlike so hard?

Come on over to Making Things Up and add in your six words.

disneyland

We were at Disneyland for a few days, and it was lovely. It was our first time with Lucy (and Julia, though she didn't care about it too much). We rode Small World twice, met Mickey, Minnie, Belle, and Alice, and got a lollipop that was half the size of Lucy's face.
However, some things did not go exactly as planned:

• We didn't tell Lucy ahead of time, to surprise her! And then when she found out we were going, she was excited for all of three minutes before she got very worried about the projects she was leaving behind, the scary big rides, and said that she wanted to go to Legoland instead. She warmed up after we arrived, but it was not exactly the reaction we were hoping for. Note: next time, tell the child ahead of time, so she has time to wrap her head around the experience.
• I booked in early October, to avoid crowds! And we ran smack dab into huge crowds for the annual Halloween festivities.
  
• I booked in early fall to get nice, sunny, cool weather! And it was raining! Crowds + rain = not ideal.
• I booked us at Disneyland hotel so as to have a place to nap Julia (and sleep, of course). And then realized when we got there that check-in time was 3 pm: well after nap time. And check out time the next day was 10 am. Well before nap time. Hello, walking the fussy, sleepy baby in the stroller until she passes out.
• Julia woke a bit more than we wanted, and woke up her sister in the process, but that wasn't too much a surprise. More a surprise: the two 4 AM cell phone calls, fifteen minutes apart. (Voice mails the next morning: beeps. I hate those beeping calls. What's with them anyway? And why did they beep at us at 4 AM?). I do not usually have my phone in the bedroom with me, but since we were in a hotel, it was conveniently close enough to wake Dyami and I up again! (thankfully, not the girls).
  

Such is the magic of the Disney experience* that none of the above mattered too much. We walked about sixteen miles, we had two tired children, and two exhausted adults, and two very helpful grandparents.
And one mama, grateful to be home.

*Cynic that I am, I think they put some sort of "happy dust" in the air to make everyone cheerful. Opiates, perhaps?

responsibility

I love a good, loud thunderstorm.
My two girls? Not so much.
So: kept the windows closed yesterday,
and missed that wild, wet wind.
For the record: responsibility's no fun.