Celebrating the equinox

One of the themes in the books and articles about child-rearing has been how very removed from nature our kids are becoming. Between over-scheduling them and suburban sprawl, kids don't have a chance to connect to nature. One of Barb's favorite stories is about a kid she had in a class who thought that horses were carnivorous. (What are they doing out in the field, then? Hunting for mice, of course.)

It's the whole point of Last Child In the Woods, and I think it's also a root cause in a lot of the environmental problems we're suffering. I mean, if a child doesn't understand that the earth provide our food and air, if the child never experiences nature, then why would she fight to save it?

So Christopher and I have been thinking of ways to help May -- a city child, after all -- connect to nature. We celebrated the spring equinox this week with our friend Mary by having a nice dinner of seasonal foods. (Roasted chicken, asparagus, sweet pea soup, new potatoes, and, to get the whole re-birth-egg connection in, chocolate souffle.) Then we went to Mass Audubon's Drumlin Farm today. It was intended to be a trip to see maple sugaring, but apparently we're a little late. (Dang global warming.) But we did get to see sheep and very small baby lambs, and mules and ponies and goats and lots of chickens. Even a pair of small cows.

We bombed through the muck and the mud and saw birds (owls and falcons and hawks and a pheasant) and even a fox and a skunk. We visited the green houses and the garden. And we joined the Audubon Society as a family. Drumlin is only about 20 minutes away and we can drop by every few weeks and buy eggs and go for a walk through the woods.

I know that May is a little young yet to understand all this. But the other day, a squirrel ran in front of us and she pointed and said "kitty!" and I realized that she's never really seen any animals but doggies and kitties. So I'm making a point to stop and point out the crocuses that are blooming in the bike path garden and we're going to a sheep shearing festival next week.

I'm trying, damnit.

May checks out the view of the farm from Daddy's shoulders.

Goats are funny. There were kids, too, but the pictures of them didn't come out so well.

This is a free-range rooster. Really free range. It just hung out on the path and ran away fromt he toddlers who all wanted to pull its coxcomb.

May and Christopher in the Big Red Barn. It's a really big big red barn. Huge.

But on a happier note:

Because my post was so depressing, I'm including lovely pictures of my daughter to make us all feel better.

A very small guilt trip to start my week

Once I managed to get my breast milk to come in, May started refusing all bottles and formula. Christopher and I decided to clear out our pantry this weekend and we're donating the 2 quarts of premade formula along with the giant 1 pound box of powdered formula. In my quest to find someone to take it, I stumbled on this website: Horizons For Homeless Children.

Turns out that about half a million kids between birth and 5 will be homeless at some point during any give year. 80,000 in the Commonwealth alone this year. And oh lord did that make me feel small and petty for fretting about how many pairs of shoes May has. (Four that fit, in case you're curious.)

They have a list of things that they urgently need and a list of things they always need. What I found interesting was that under the urgent list was arts and crafts supplies. It made sense once I thought about it: Kids need to paint and play regardless of their straights. In fact, I'm guessing that they need the creative outlet more if they are really messed up. And homelessness can't be good for any one's brain.

So I'm taking a moment and adding a few other things to the box that I plan to drop off at Horizon later this week. May has seventeen blankets and she doesn't need them all. Christopher got a much nicer cordless drill for Christmas so our old one is getting donated.

So that was my start to the week. A little of a downer but it made me particularly thankful for what we've got: among other things, an amazing and generous set of family and friends. Plus, you know, a house. Money. A job.

It's raining out. Or sleeting. Or slushing. Or snowing, possibly. The streets are more deserted now than when it was near-whiteout conditions yesterday. Only the occasional snowplow and the fire engine from next door are bothering to venture out.

That could be because it's still early for child-free folks (7ish) or because it's Saturday or because it's miserably yucky out.




Let's see, what news of May? Nothing terribly new. She's managed to master the art of putting crayon to paper and then moving it. Before she would watch us move the crayon and take it from us and then carefully and deliberately set it down on the paper and let go. Then she would put her face just a few centimeters from it and wait for it to move or something.

We're contemplating putting down a large plastic sheet and taking all her clothes off and letting her go at the paper with finger paints. But she really hates baths. So we're still thinking about it.

We've bought her a pair of boots for rainy days. They are, necessarily, vomitously cute. Sadly, the purple and pink lady bugs were the least awful of my choices (if I didn't want to add to her gender confusion). The jacket I bought is simply pale lilac. I really wanted the school bus yellow boots and jacket, but that has to wait until she's out of the "T" sizes.

I've got some cinnamon rolls rising right now. They will be finally risen and then baked in time for what I usually call "second breakfast." (I got into the habit of five or six meals a day when I was a diabetic pregnant woman. Now, with May, I try and feed her about that often.) Usually second breakfast is fruit or some carrots and hummus or something. And May will get those things today. But I'll get cinnamon rolls fresh from the oven.

It's good to be an adult.

May learns....

"Water"

The sign for water is a "W" held to the cheek. (W being the first three fingers on our right hand, like, you know, a "W".) May can't quite manage that. Instead, she holds one finger to her cheek. But we know what she means.

Stairs

Our condo doesn't have any stairs and frankly, I'm glad of that. But it does mean that May hasn't really learned the fine art of navigating the inclined plane. Until this week. At the library, the children's room is divided into an upstairs and a down stairs. And May's been obsessed with the in-between. The stairs. This week, she mastered the art of the up in about fifteen minutes of concentrated effort. She's still working on down, though she can manage about half the time.

Blow me a kiss

Some random Chinese lady on the street blew her a kiss once. Now she does it all the time.

A quick May hit

The week in review

It was cold this week. May and I went out a lot, but only after we bundled up very thoroughly. (On one particularly cold morning, May had on the following: Onsie, thermal underwear, jeans and a t-shirt, cotton leg warmers and a fleece sweatshirt, the Ewok bunting, heavy angora legwarmers, plus three fleece blankets, all folded into four layers, tucked around her. I had on a jacket and big fluffy mittens.)

Tuesday, I had lunch with another mom who I met on my Somerville Moms list serve. Laura and her 7 week old son Liam. She was very nice, though I still think she' day

Wednesday was a low-key day. May and I went to the Porter Sq. story hour with Doria, though May slept through most of it. However, we had some sad news that day, too. Nikki and Dave said goodbye to their astounding dog, Harley.. Our thoughts and prayers are with them.


Thursday, of course, was Christopher's birthday! He's 33 now and claiming to be officially middle aged. (I told him you're not middle aged til your 40s nowadays.) As his request, we had quiche Lorraine for dinner and devil's food cake with butter cream icing for a birthday cake. May abstained from both and instead had peas and cashew butter for dinner

Also on Thursday, May and I went to our Babygarten playgroup at the W. Branch of the Somerville Library. We go every Thursday and enjoy it quite a bit. But this week (the last week before a three week break, we resume in early April) the number of babies and moms and dads (we've got four dads in the group at various times, which is very nice) reached a critical mass of like-minded folks. So we're trying to arrange an additional playgroup at the Somerville Family Network open play hours today. I'll let you know how that goes.

And that brings us to Friday, this morning. Christopher has left for work and May just woke up. She's now demanding food and a reading of "Where is Maisy's Panda?" So I'll be off.

May's many words

I haven't posted about May's talking lately. She's got a double handful of words - verbal and sign.

Her verbal vocabulary hasn't expanded recently. She still has the basics: Mama. DaDEE. Kee (kitty). Uh-oh!

But she's added a host of signs in the past month. More (forefinger to palm), which means she wants food of some sort. Nursing (the sign for milk, like milking a cow, which let me tell you makes me feel fabu when I over analyze it). All-done (dusting your hands off). Pick me up, damnit (that's pretty obvious). And of course, the "fell down" sign, the "i want that" sign, and the "loud noise/fire truck" sign.

Since it's a vocal "sign" I don't know how to classify her "puppy" word. The Baby ASL sign for dog is a panting motion. May has evolved this into not panting but gorilla noises -- ook! ook! But it's consistent and a close imitation of the "sign" so we will give it to her.

It's nice that she can communicate with us, now. I no longer wonder if she's hungry when she wakes up since the first thing she does is "more". We're trying to teach her the sign for "water" (the ASL for "W" held at the corner of the mouth) so that we can figure out when she's thirsty, too. She's drinking -- if only out of sports bottles.

It's also frustrating, at least somewhat. There are times when she's clearly distressed and signing "more, more more!" and refusing all food, water, or even nursing. Every time I start to get really annoyed, though, I think how much more frustrating it must be for her. Okay, I don't. Usually I just get annoyed. But later I think of how frustrating it must be for her and feel guilty. Imagine having all of your needs in the hands of apparently whimsical and capricious giants and being unable to make the understand!

It's hard for me to imagine completely, but easy t understand why that would be so tremendously terrifying and frustrating. It's why I do sign and attachment parenting stuff like feed on demand and co-sleep. The only thing worse would be having those adults ignore my needs and let me suffer alone because some dumb book says so.

In the "Yay attachment parenting" side of the ledge book, this story on NPR talks about a new study that indicates that babies who trust their parents (as indicated by who they turn to when they are in distress and how easily they are comforted) have happier love relationships later in life.

I'm pretty confident of her later success in love if this story is true.

But enough ruminations on parenting. Here's another photo of May.