This Moment

My weekly post - a moment from our week I want to share and remember. Have a great weekend!

A "yes" moment. Ni-ni baby!

 It's been well documented that my doctor feels that Gillian is a bit, well, large. That she is in danger of becoming an obese child. 

Clearly, she's not.

In fact, at our 9 month well-baby appointment it was discovered that, GASP, she hadn't gained a single ounce since the appointment before. She dropped down ever-so-slightly in her weight for height percentile rating, thanks to the zero gain and a little extra help from me in stretching her limbs as the nurse measured her length on the paper that covers the exam table. Can you blame me?

My doctor likes to worry; she likes to advise. She feels that is what she is being paid for, I'm sure. She advised me to limit Gillian's tv watching (do 9 month olds watch tv???) She suggested Gillian might be eating out of boredom. She worried that her head was too large. She recommended I night wean as soon as possible. She  told me to limit my use of the word "no". 

I, on the other hand, like to ignore. I make eye contact and smile, I nod, I look away or down at my baby when she's saying things I don't agree with, so she can't see my eyes rolling. But when she recommended I not use the word "no", I was intrigued.

Yes, I do suppose that we parents overuse this little two letter tool. I walked away from that office with a new personal challenge: avoid the word NO. 

It's been pretty funny around here, to say the least. Gillian is crawling and scooting all over the place. She's snatching my glasses off my face, the water out of my hands. She's chewing on computer cords, getting into the as-of-yet never used gas fireplace with the fake logs and the weird fake charcoal/rock pieces. She's ruining games of SORRY out on the front lawn  by eating the green pawns, she's stealing crayons, pooping without a diaper on, pulling the cat's tail. 

In the spirit of the challenge, I end up running after her with awkward moaning sounds coming out of my mouth. They sound something like Nooaaaahhhhhhhh. Naw. Num. Nu-hu-huh. Instinct number one is to say NOOOOOOOOOO. Reflex takes over; but only long enough to get the NUH sound out. Then, I remember the challenge. And that's where the noises get weird.

This was a lot easier before she started crawling.

this moment

My weekly post - A moment from our week I'd like to share and remember. Have a great weekend!

1/3 of our dining room table

Strike

My bed - this morning @ 7:00am

That really boring blog post I was telling you about... The one I was working on two weeks ago? I never finished it. And now it seems pointless. It sure is hard to blog when you have a newly mobile little one, two bored older kids, a job, and a house that is in a constant state of packing and unpacking, painting and sanding. And cleaning. Oh, the cleaning.

The post was about the first day of school. It was, as per my usual, way too many silly words to describe a single, simple event. The girls started school. Bela is in 2nd grade. Mae is in kindergarten. They are no longer at Waldorf. It was, at first, a hard transition. Now, we are very happy.

Well, almost very happy.

They had one glorious week at school. Every day they came home and said, "it was awesome!". I loved it. They loved it. They had drama, art, library, gym, computer class, and two recesses every day. Not bad for Chicago Public Schools. When asked what they didn't like about it, Bela reported 'nothing! I loved it all!' Mae, slightly more pessimistic at times than her sister, stated quickly that her least favorite part was something called "Chicago runs." 'We have to run around in circles for like 10 minutes. I HATED it.'

Clearly, she is not her mother's daughter.

One "awesome" week in, though, and they were back on summer break, minus the stifling heat. You may have heard about our little teachers' strike here in Chicago; the only teachers visible in our neighborhood these days are the ones who have set up camp outside the middle school on our street. I walk by them every day as I walk the girls to the field house at our local park, which, thankfully, is offering free "strike camp."

We stand behind our teachers over here. We support them in this fight, which is our fight. Which has our children's best interest in mind. We agree that they should consider the offered contract carefully.

But I'm also ready for these girls to be back in school, where they belong. As a fellow educator already disillusioned with public education in general, and the sad state of the Chicago Public School system in particular, I find myself treading strange middle ground because I am also a parent and I don't like to see my kids locked out of a school and used as leverage in any way, shape or form. And these days, I just kind of don't like seeing my kids Monday through Friday, in the middle of the day, at our house.

So GO TEACHERS! Damn it. FIGHT FOR WHAT YOU AND OUR CHILDREN DESERVE! Get my kids out of my house please. DON'T LET YOURSELVES BE BULLIED! Don't mind me if I give you half an evil eye as I drag my whiny kids past your picket line. STAND UP FOR OUR UNDER-SERVED COMMUNITIES! I can't honk as I drive by because I'm yelling at my kids in the back seat.  CLOSING DOWN SCHOOLS IS NOT REFORM! I'm going to move to the suburbs soon.

This moment

My Friday post. A moment from our week I want to share and remember. Have a great weekend, everyone!

I was  working on a really boring blog post last week in my free time, which boiled down to about 1 sentence a day. I thought maybe today I'd finish and post, but something much more pressing is on my mind.

We moved from a very hip and happening neighborhood to a very sleepy one with a tragic lack of local businesses. Our closest coffee shop within a 1 mile radius is the nearby Dunkin Donuts. The newest restaurant of note getting ready to break ground and open its doors to the Independence Park neighborhood is Olive Garden.

But we didn't move here for hip and happening. We moved here for the kids, and man we didn't go wrong.

Take last Friday. After walking Bela and Mae the three blocks to school in the morning, our babysitter arrived to take Gillian off my hands. I hopped on the train and headed to work. I spent the day hablando español  and hopped that train back.

As I approached our house, I caught glimpse of Bela and Mae running around in circles in the front yard. They were waiting for their new friends to come over: a pair of 7 year old twins who visit the woman across the street every day after school.

The girls pulled up, exploded out of their car, and ran ahead of me with Bela and Mae into our house. They ran upstairs and played with Calico Critters. They ran downstairs and did puzzles and painting. Their dad came to get them and they burst into tears.

The girls and I headed to the kitchen to start dinner and someone came a-knocking at our back door. Enter the 12 year old boy from down the street and a friend of his from school. Four pairs of feet went running up the stairs again. They played with guinea pigs upstairs. They threw a bunch of crap around in the basement and made a mess downstairs. They ran outside.

The boys left for a Sox game, and the girls headed out to the front yard after dinner to clean the guinea pig cage.  This drew the attention of some other little friends of ours: the two little grand-daughters of one of our neighbors. They also have a guinea pig at home, so they sat in our yard, did some sidewalk chalking, and played with the girls and the piggies.

By this point I was thinking to myself how incredible this all was. We were hanging out in our yard, entertaining every child on the block, talking to parents and passersby alike. Could it get any better?

And it did. We met for the first time the little girl who lives three doors down. She is very close to Mae's age and owns an impressive array of dress up clothes. I know this because it took me the next 40 minutes to drag my kids out of their house.

I feel at times like I'm on the set of some very wholesome, strangely utopic family movie. I keep waiting for our house to get broken into, for someone to steal the junk out of our back yard, break the windows of my car. Snub me on the sidewalk.

But every day, something super duper nice happens around here. The neighbor lady bakes us two dozen cookies (and we eat them in 24 hours). We get invited over for playdates, sleep overs, fall festivals, bike rides. All of these kids were here before us, and yet none of them played together before. I honestly feel like Bela (and to a lesser extent, Mae) has brought this neighborhood together in a new way.

And how cool is that?

This Moment

My weekly post. A moment I'd like to share and remember. Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!