Old Fogies and Manic Children

Today I went into my bank to deposit some checks, which I normally do in the drive-thru ATM. However I had a couple of questions for a banking professional, so this time I went inside. The teller was quite helpful and answered all of my questions, but he was chewing gum during the entire conversation. I thought that was a bit unprofessional. And then when I was trying to add up my deposits at his window, I couldn't dredge up what 9 plus 6 is. As I walked out of the bank, I had to laugh at myself for losing my mental capacity at the same time I was judging that young whippersnapper. Is 37 now the onset of old age?

* * *

SillyBilly had two enormous tantrums today. The first one happened when I went to pick the kids up from daycare: they were both still napping when I got there, and when I told him we would go home for snack he completely wigged out. It took about 15 minutes to get him dressed and get out the door, with Napoleona standing there covering her ears the whole time. I think he was just sleepy and hungry, but it was waaaay out of proportion.

Once I got them home and gave them a snack, he had calmed down. I then entertained them with making butter with my churn (I meant to take pictures but the camera batteries were dead!) SillyBilly really had fun turning the churn handle, and they both loved eating soft whipped cream, stiff whipped cream, butter mush, and then real butter and buttermilk!

But afterwards he flipped out again when I said that he couldn't have a knife and cutting board to chop up a fragment of acorn meat he brought home. By this time it was almost 5:30 and almost all of the dished in the house were still dirty, no less that no dinner was prepared or even thought of yet. I couldn't take the time to supervise him with a knife, and offered that maybe he could do something after dinner, but that was evidently insufficient.

Luckily Anthropapa arrived a few minutes later, made dinner, and SillyBilly calmed down again.

Which then brought us to our next parenting dilemma: how to get SillyBilly to quit pooping in his pullup every night. He says he doesn't like to poop because it's boring to just sit there -- a while ago we started saying that he couldn't read on the toilet because he just ended up sitting there for 30 minutes without actually accomplishing anything! We thought that the yuck factor of cleaning himself up each morning would be a deterrent, but evidently it's not. He just says he doesn't have to go before bed, and then sometime in the night he lets it fly.

It seems like a control issue, but I'm just getting tired of the whole poop thing. Napoleona is completely potty trained except for peeing at night, and she's 3. I know I'm not supposed to compare the kids with each other, but SillyBilly's 5! He should be on the road to not even peeing at night any more (which he still does in bucket loads)!

Gah!

The one good thing is that for the most part we kept our cool about it all. In fact, at one point in the first tantrum, SillyBilly actually yelled at me "I don't want you to be calm!!" I almost laughed at that one.

Then Again, Apparently I'm Clueless

Did I say yesterday that warm milk was the key to calm children?

HA!

Even with a splash of eggnog and extra cinnamon in her milk, Napoleona was a pill today. She seems to be going through a particularly bratty stage, and I haven't yet found the key to helping her through it.

The worst part is that we've often done a divide-and-conquer manoeuver on the weekends, where Anthropapa will go run errands with SillyBilly, while Napoleona and I have a quiet morning at home. She'll play nicely while I putter around the house.

To be fair, she did play nicely for about a half hour while I cleaned off my desk. Then after snacktime she just seemed to go off the deep end a bit. Using rude words, saying No! to everything, being extremely silly and not attending to anything I'm saying, and so on. I couldn't even get her to settle down to put on her shoes to play outside!

Personally, I think the idea of "terrible twos" is completely off base. Both of my kids have been much worse behaved at three than at two. Even their daycare provider told me that Napoleona's been having trouble sharing and playing nicely, in contrast to earlier in the year when she was the inspiration for lots of nice creative play.

In the Waldorf world, we talk about how a child under three years is still closely bound to the mother, not just emotionally but on the etheric level. At three the child begins to have awareness of being a separate person, and indeed the child's etheric body begins to separate from the mother's and becomes more focused on the child alone.

In theory, this would explain some of the behavioral issues of this age, and why many people consider four-year-olds to be wonderful!

But enough of my parenting woes. Instead, I'll (hopefully) amuse you with a picture of Anthromama in the early years. Please note that the pudding smears would explain the root of my inordinate love of chocolate, and my subsequent, shall we say, zaftigness.

Thank you Grandma Mimi for your old printer/scanner!
If this turns into a blog of old baby photos, it's all your fault.

Mellow Me Out

Sometimes miracles happen.

After a few rough days of conflict, things are a bit calmer today. In fact, when I picked the kids up from daycare, Napoleona was quiet enough that I started to worry she was sick. Turns out she just had a really good nap and was still sleepy.

I thought I'd continue that trend by feeding them some crackers and warmed milk when we got home. I know, sounds like a bedtime snack. But it was very cold and windy today, and it just sounded so yummy. I even put a dash of cream and egg nog in the milk!

They just spent over an hour sitting at the table playing with play dough.

Warm milk may just become a regular part of our diets.

Feeling a Bit Like a Fraud

Seems like I usually talk about all the good things on this blog...fun crafts, beautiful trips, good parenting, funny things the kids say, and so on.

Today I just had an icky day with the kids. Their daycare was closed for Veteran's Day, so they were with me the whole day. Evidently I have lost the ability to entertain/wrangle/stand to be with my kids for that long. That's really embarrassing to admit.

We only got about 1/2 hour of playing outside, they were seemingly especially active/wrestling/jumping off furniture/not listening/screamy/weepy, and except for a few golden moments (we played an impromptu game of Go Naked Fish -- Go Fish, but everybody gets to see the cards because 3 year olds can't hold them up properly! -- a little craft project, and building a gnome village/castle/museum complex out of blocks) the rest of the day was filled with tears, yelling, and overall unhappiness.

I also spent about an hour in their room trying to get them to take a nap, only to find them "waking up" a half hour later. That's the worst for me, getting no down time when we've had a bad day, and them already tired from a very minimal nap yesterday.

And somehow their daycare provider gets them to take naps simply by having them lie down! Grrrr.

So there won't be any pearls of Waldorf wisdom today, nor any NVC methods-in-action. Though I am reminded by something funny I heard said by a presenter at a Waldorf homeschooling conference:

Some days, the best you can say is nobody got hurt!

I guess I can be satisfied with that.


**Edit: After musing on the day a bit, I can see that it wasn't really that bad. True, I didn't model the behavior I'd like for my children, and my needs weren't especially met. But everyone got fed delicious, nutritious meals, I ran a load through the laundry, and I did have some nice play time with the kids. Napoleona even celebrated my birthday by singing and giving me a cloth-wrapped "present." (She does this at least once a week. Today's birthday presents were two sand dollars, some postcards, and a picture drawn on their big DoodlePro.) We also had a silly hairdo moment in the morning, with all three of us adorned with tiny hair clips and pony tails or braids. Sorry, no photos.

What's up with all those gnomes and fairies?

[Fairies and gnomes] actually come from people's experiences of elemental forces that help the plants to grow or the minerals to form. These "sightings" or "sensings" occur cross culturally, although we are pretty steeped in the European tradition of how these "elemental beings" are talked about and represented in visual form. There is a kind of "truth" in how they are represented in paintings or knitted figures, because the person rendering them is trying to convey certain archetypal truths.
-- Rahima Baldwin Dancy, Waldorf in the Home

One thing that many people notice about Waldorf early childhood classrooms are the gnomes and fairies. Little knitted or felt gnomes might live in a basket ready for children to play with, or silk fairies might hang from golden threads above a springtime nature table.

Kindergarten teachers might lead their children in a circle game about gnomes marching through the forest with heavy sacks of jewels, or sing songs about fairies helping the bees to find nectar in summer blooms.

So, what's going on with this? Why all the emphasis on mythical beings?

Waldorf early childhood methods emphasize imaginative play. We also try to foster the child's natural sense of being "one" with the world and with nature. Children love to be outside, playing with water, mud, sticks, rocks, and flowers.

Children also have a natural feeling that everything around them is "alive." Rocks can talk, trees have feelings, and certainly there are invisible beings all around us helping with natural processes. Fairies and gnomes are a physical manifestation of this feeling of the aliveness of nature.

On another level, fairies and gnomes could be seen as representations of the opposing forces that human beings must try to balance: Fairies are pure spirit, hardly touching the Earth, and working with the forces of life and growth. Gnomes are pure matter, living and working under the earth in the mineral realm, and working with the forces of death and hardening.

Here in our house we have lots of gnomes and fairies around. We've got one in the fridge, for example, who lets us know he's happy with the food selection by making loud knocking sounds occasionally. The kids have numerous little gnomes made of felt, wood, and that dashing knitted fellow you see above. I feel that bringing in a bit of this archetypal, elemental world is one way to work imaginatively with forces and processes that are otherwise invisible, and it encourages the kids to use their imaginations.

I'll give one last personal example of why I like to incorporate the "little people" in my little people's lives:

At night we can see some lights in the distance out of a window in the kids' room. One night I told them that perhaps those were the lights of a far-off fairy castle. I wove a story about how the fairies were so busy all day helping the plants to grow, flowers to bloom, etc. that it wasn't until nighttime that they could rest in their castle. We talked about how they have grand processions (are those lights over there flaming torches lighting their way?) and how they love to dance after they've eaten their feast (are those lights the glow of the stoves in their huge kitchens?). The kids were full of wonder and their eyes shone.

The kids often refer to the fairy castle lights, even though I told that story long ago and haven't mentioned it to them since. They really took in those images and can work with them in an imaginative way. They have never once made the connection between the fairy castle's lights and the building that sits there in the daytime!

Impromptu Parenting Tricks

This morning got off on the wrong foot. Or, for a slightly less wacky metaphor, the tall people in the house woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

Normally, the Huntlings like to get up early on the weekends. Yes, on the days when we could all sleep in...they don't. This weekend, however, they slept until 8 am both days. Woo hoo!

Because they're little and not so coordinated, when they open their door they make an amazing amount of noise just turning the doorknob. So I always wake up before they make it to our room (Did I mention this is a small house? Hmmm...I'd say it's 700 square feet, tops. So everything is audible pretty much everywhere else in chez Anthro.)

Anthropapa is a deeper sleeper than I, and seems to need more sleep. So, when Napoleona came in this morning and said "Good morning, Papa!" in her chirpy little voice, and pounced on him, she scared the bejeezus out of him.

This made Papa a little cranky. For the entire day.

At lunchtime we were discussing the annual pumpkin carving extravaganza. We have three little pumpkins and one big one. The big one's mine, the two kids each have one, and the other's up for grabs. I told the kids that I thought it would be better to do one each day so that we don't get overwhelmed.

Calling on all of my NVC powers, I asked them if they agreed to this plan. Napoleona, her usual agreeable self, said yes right away. SillyBilly, his usual too clever self, said yes but only if he got to go first. Napoleona then no longer agreed with the plan.

Then Anthropapa piped up with this brilliant plan: Whoever falls asleep the most quietly and sleeps the longest at naptime can go first!

That Anthropapa, he's a sneaky one. Resolve our conflict and get some quiet time too.

Did the kids take a long nap?

No. No nap AT ALL.

I foolishly deviated from our normal nap routine, thinking that Papa's challenge would encourage them. Not.

So nobody carved any pumpkins today. After "naptime," the kids were being particularly wacky, so to avoid Papa's head from exploding with annoyance, the kids and I did some other crafts. Which I'll have to show off to you later, since Blogger is evidently still having problems with image uploading.

Twittery post

Seems like short-attention-span land around here. Or maybe I'm just saving up all the thoughtful, meaningful posts for NaBloPoMo. Bwahahahaha...I'll never tell!

* * *

It's raining here right now....we needed that. Though I'm sure the mold levels will now officially go through the roof, it's getting cooler and the leaves are really turning beautifully now.

Earlier today I was working by an open window when I heard a bunch of kids walking back to the Waldorf school from the playing field nearby...they were lustily singing "Doe, a Deer." Sweet.

SillyBilly evidently knows how to open his bedroom window. The one that looks out over the one-story drop down to the concrete outside the basement door. After some nausea- and tears-inducing freakouts (on my part), I think we've imparted to him that it's not OK to open the window. And I think he doesn't understand how to work the little tabs that pop out to stop the window from raising more than 3 inches. But I'm sure he'll get that one of these days...

We got out the down comforter from storage and put it on the bed last night. Mmmmm, snuggly. Now if it would only cool down again to merit it!

Imaginative play triumph #4,239: yesterday the kids were making "second breakfast" with their wooden play kitchen after we finished real breakfast. My dear little hobbits! And today, Napoleona was going around the house putting small, colored wooden blocks here and there, saying that they were candles..."cool ones, Mama, the ones that only burn you a little bit, for one day. The burning hot ones are for Christmas time. These are for Halloween night."

We splurged on going out to dinner tonight. Turkish food, yum. I am constantly amazed and grateful at the kids' ability to eat just about anything. We had baba ganoush, tomato/cucumber salad (Çoban Salatası) with shredded feta cheese, lamb kebab, and tiny dumplings (Mantı) in yogurt and tomato sauce, with rice pudding and caramelized milk pudding (Kazandibi) for dessert!

Still trying to figure out why the kids have been kinda whacked out the last few days. Perhaps it's just tiredness from the vacation...evidently they have been taking big naps at daycare. Or maybe it's their souls that are tired, from being driven all over creation and being away from home for so long, as Anthropapa suggested to me tonight. We'll have to spend some time outside in the fresh air tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Big Boy!

Today SillyBilly is 5 years old. I'm having a hard time digesting that...how did he get so big? And I mean big: he's been wearing 6X shirts for a while and has size 12 1/2 feet!

On this day 5 years ago, he was being rushed to the NICU via ambulance while Anthropapa dazedly called people to let them know (He completely forgot to tell my mother what hospital we were in, so she ended up calling my work number and talking to my lead who was fielding my calls, who then told her the names of all the local hospitals. Mom had to call all of them until she figured out where we were!), and I groggily tried to recover from the emergency c-section and essentially could not really comprehend what had happened.

It's hard to believe that those things didn't just happen a few days ago. But, it's true -- SillyBilly is growing up. He's potty trained now (mostly). He has progressed from bassinet to crib to toddler bed, and if we had room for it he would fit into a twin bed nicely now. He will someday soon learn to read and write, and learn to ride his bike sans training wheels.

Let me tell you a bit more about my big boy. He is:

• a tough cookie. He has hidden reserves of strength that showed from the start. Despite the trauma and illness at his birth, he found a way to survive and flourish. Here's the first day I got to hold him, 21 days after his birth. He had made it over the hump and was only 10 days away from coming home:

• full of love. If you want the best hug ever, he's your man. He has mastered the art of the "Dr. Crackit," defined by my dad as a big, big, hug that borders on a chiropractic adjustment.
  
• full of joy:

• a social butterfly. He will run right up to strangers to share his recent discoveries, and goes into transports whenever he sees someone he knows walking down the street.
• a lover of tools.

• a ready helper. He can put out the compost into the big bin, dry dishes, feed the cats, set the table, cut vegetables (with a sharp knife!), and even stir sauces.
• a good brother. Though he has his share of spats and selfishness, he does look after his sister and will sometimes even share his toys. He just needs a little practice, that's all.

• a champion eater. He's always been on the skinny side, but lately he seems to be making up for lost time. Can you say third helpings?

• an eagle eye. I have the world's most amazing feather collection, and he can find any kind of rock you would like, any time. And just try to make a tiny change in decor without him noticing.
• an awesome artist. He has made some amazing cardboard creations, makes about 40 gazillion drawings per week, and is also and accomplished sculptor. Check out this playdough birthday cake, complete with flaming candles:

• gorgeous. You could fall right into those dark brown eyes.

My dear sweetie boy, you have embarked on your sixth year on this Earth. I wish you health, happiness, and all good things. Big smooches and hugs from your Mama.

Monday Mishmash

I'm serving up myself a nice hot dish of humble pie* for dessert tonight....

Yesterday I made the following comment on someone's blog :

"I don't think TV is appropriate for young children at all, and only in small doses for older children."

I followed that up by entertaining my children for a half an hour looking at pictures and YouTube videos of animals from the cuteoverload.com site.

I loathe the overly cutesy captions and comments, but we were all cracking up at kittens attacking empty boxes, overfed hamsters, and the world's tiniest snail.

I know, I know.

It's just that when the kidlets wake up from their nap and I'm already on the computer, they immediately beg for pictures of dinosaurs or puppies or whatever. And I'm weak, I'M WEAK, I TELL YOU!

*I just love Wikipedia: where else can you find the following things all related to each other: Offal | Savoury pies | English idioms?

* * *

This afternoon SillyBilly reminded me of his greatest superpower: eagle-eye vision. (The boy can spot the tiniest things, as well as the one thing that you didn't want him to notice, or the one tiny thing that you changed in the room.) He noticed a visitor in my bedroom window:


Though I hate tormenting creatures, I just had to go outside and bring this amazing mantis in for the kids to see. (It was raining, and the thought of getting the kids ready to go outside in rain gear before the mantis left was beyond me at that moment.) It was mostly reddish brown, with bright green wings peeking out. And about 6 inches long!

I had caught it in a large glass water pitcher, and the mantis showed us his amazing superpower by crawling all the way up the sheer, slippery side of the pitcher and almost escaping!

* * *

Tomorrow is my birthday (yes, it's a nice birthday to have. I just get a little extra pondering of mortality every year now). I decided to make my own birthday cake. Mostly to give the kids a project, but also because the last store-bought cake we ate just wasn't that good, and this way I at least know what the ingredients are and can pronounce them!

I also decided to try out my spiffy cake pan that I bought a long time ago:


Of course, I don't have a recipe for this pan's shape or volume, but with my trusty Joy of Cooking I was feeling no fear. I used the Sour Cream Chocolate Cake recipe.

Now, I seem to have a constitutional inability to follow recipes exactly as written. Though this time it wasn't all my fault: Anthropapa had bought some almond extract so I just had to add some, and we didn't have enough sour cream so I improvise a half cup of whole milk and lemon juice.

The kids had a great time sifting and stirring, though mostly they liked licking the spoons. Coming out of the oven, all seemed well:


I hadn't expected the batter to completely fill the pan, and in any case I could live without a little train around the bottom of my cake.

The problem occurred when I tried to get the cake to come out:


I don't know if the batter just wasn't quite right for the pan, or I didn't grease the pan enough, or didn't let it cool enough before attempting it.

Whatever. It will still taste good, especially after I melt some more chocolate to drizzle on top.

Shove a few candles in it, and pass me a fork!

Mad mildew marauders

Spent an hour yesterday morning madly cleaning out the bathtub and the shower curtain, which despite being "mildew resistant" was not, in fact, mildew-proof. I thought it might help to remove one source of mildew in the house, because the boy is having another asthma episode.

He spent a lovely morning over the weekend, puttering around with his Papa in the basement. The basement that is rather mildewy and is in the process of being organized and cleaned out in anticipation of a possible move this winter.

The puttering was lovely, the mildew was not. He's been having (as we all have had -- thank you, goldenrod and wild molds) lots of gunk in his throat, but over the weekend he developed asthma.

Seems like these episodes come on so suddenly. It would be one thing if he was one of those kids who has to take his meds every day, but overall was functional. That at least would have some rhythm. SillyBilly is functional for a few months and then WHAM! something sets it off. Usually a virus -- this time I think the mold.

So we saw the pediatrician today after loading the boy up with far too much albuterol, sometimes even double doses twice as often. Bad sign, that. We resigned ourselves to giving him the evil pink stuff. As our wonderful doctor put it, giving the boy a bit of it every few months and heading off these attacks before they really go full bore is a sight better than giving him lots of steroids all the time.

We're still working with the homeopathic anthroposophical remedies, but they're kind of supplementary when the wheezing gets too bad. This time it was bad enough that he had a hard time talking and vomited a few times. Almost a trip to the ER, but we worked through it.

Sigh.

Update: The boy is much better. We gave him two doses of evil pink stuff, and that seemed to put the brakes on things. Still lots of congestion, but he's not fighting for air any more. And he got to go to the first day of daycare after all. Now I just need to figure out how to get him to take naps when he's sick....

Madame Anthromama's Art Lesson

I know that according to Waldorf early childhood principles, I should not use too many words or abstract concepts with my children. But sometimes, I just can't help myself....

SillyBilly loves to tell his sister what to do and how to do it. This often occurs when they are at the table "arting." They sit facing each other, sharing a large bin of paper, crayons, construction paper, etc.

SillyBilly is always telling Napoleona, "that's not how you draw X" or "that doesn't look like a Y."

This makes me crazy.

So, the other day I got fed up. I went to the shelf and pulled out Gombrich's The Story of Art, and called the boy over.

I showed him pictures of the Annunciation throughout the ages (chosen simply because they are ubiquitous). I asked him, do any of them look the same? He said no. I pointed out that none of them are "wrong."


Then we looked at some paintings by Van Gogh, one of his favorite artists. I asked, does the sky really have swirls in it? He said no.


I asked, do people really have green and purple and yellow and orange spots on their faces? He said no. And I pointed out that these are still beautiful paintings.


I hope that I didn't go overboard, but it just seemed so important to me that he understand this. I hope that he sees that there isn't just one way to do things, and that there are ways to do things that don't necessarily depict what's "real" but are still valid. And I hope that pointing out "reality" doesn't crush his imagination in some way.

Out of the Mouths of Babes, VIII

SillyBilly: Are Hansel and Gretel real?
Mama: (dodging and weaving like #42) That depends on what you mean by "real."
SillyBilly: Real means real!! (He said this as if he'd already reached the stage where I am a complete idiot. Five going on fifteen, that's my boy.)
Mama: Remember our conversation about thoughts and feelings being real even though you can't see or touch them?
Papa: When you feel hungry, is that real?
SillyBilly: YES!!! (As real as our grocery bill. I'm waiting for the day it exceeds our rent. By then I'm sure the owner of our local Chinese food buffet will have made enough off us to buy that vacation house in the Bahamas.)
Mama: But you can't see your hunger, right?
Papa: So stories are real in the same kind of way. But if you're asking if there were people named Hansel and Gretel who had an adventure with a witch, then...we don't know.
SillyBilly: When we die and go up to heaven, we can find out what's real.

This conversation happened the day after I chose to read the kids Hansel and Gretel while waiting in a doctor's office. It was really too scary for them: the mother was dead? the stepmother wanted to leave the kids in the forest? the witch wanted to cook the kids and eat them? It's really a story for ages 6 and up (according to wise Waldorf kindergarten teachers).

But we just couldn't resist getting all philosophical about "real." Don't get me started on The Velveteen Rabbit.

Ed.: I just realized that I had a previous conversation written down that would explain how we had already talked about "real":

SillyBilly: What's reality?
(Papa hands off to Mama, even though he's the philosopher in the family.)
Mama: Some people say that reality is things that we can touch or see, and things like stories and pretending aren't real.
Papa: But other things like thoughts and feelings are real.
Mama: Some people believe that God is real even though we don't see him or touch him.
Napoleona: God is a spirit!
SillyBilly: God is the biggest spirit of all.

We were being bad Waldorf parents, using lots of words and abstractions with preschoolers who are more in movement and the will. But on the other hand, we were meeting SillyBilly where he is now. How to balance that?!

Out of the Mouths of Babes, VII

Tonight at dinner I said something about bread, and SillyBilly made a joke about cows being bred (can't remember what exactly -- must keep my Moleskine notebook at hand!). I told him that was a synonym, and explained that means two different words that mean the same, or almost the same, thing.

We have talked about antonyms before: hot/cold, dry/wet, in/out. And homonyms: sale/sail, meet/meat, pale/pail. But synonyms were new.

Then Napoleona pipes up: "Like plate/dish!"

Napoleona is 3 years old, and she can spontaneously think of a synonym.

Then SillyBilly said, "Mama, I want to do copy editing just like you do!"

We are in serious trouble.

Does the parenting guilt ever end?

No, I think not.

SillyBilly has asthma. For almost a year after we relocated from California to New York, he had no wheezing. We thought perhaps he had grown out of it, or maybe something in the air in Cal. had caused the problem.

In the last few months things have started to flare up again. We had to renew prescriptions, and started to actually use the nebulizer that we had hardly ever used before.

We finally got an appointment with the anthroposophical doctor, who prescribed several remedies to be taken daily, as a long-term constitutional approach.

SillyBilly was thrilled to learn that one of the remedies is actually made of meteors! (ferrum sidereum -- helps with incarnation as well as finding equilibrium between outer influences and inner responses, e.g. asthma as a response to allergens).

We were doing well, remembering to take the remedies twice a day, plus an added bonus spoonful of local honey to assist with allergies, when early this week SillyBilly seemed to have a sniffly nose. The next day he had a little cough, but I wasn't too worried about it.

The next day he was having a lot of coughing and wheezing, so we arranged another visit to the doctor. He prescribed different remedies for the acute phase of asthma.

I dutifully gave SillyBilly one dose of these remedies when we got home, and within half an hour he was having a severe asthma attack! I gave him some albuterol through the nebulizer, and called the doctor. He called back and told us to stop all of the other remedies and just use the acute remedies every two hours.

So far, things are calming down. We have only given SillyBilly one nebulizer treatment today, which is down from several a day plus once or twice in the evenings, which is a whole lot of albuterol for a little guy. He even got to go to the last day of summer day camp, though he came home early because he was not feeling great. (Though that turned out to be more just needing his Mama than anything physical.)

Where does the guilt come in?

Well, SillyBilly has had trouble with his lungs since his birth. He had severe meconium aspiration after being overdue 4 1/2 weeks. He was in the hospital for 31 days, had to have VV ECMO (blood bypass to allow his lungs to rest) for 10 days, and almost died.

I am having trouble not blaming myself. I chose to skip being induced at 42 weeks. I chose to go with a lay midwife at the last minute instead of continuing with the allopathic doctor. And I have a hard time not thinking that those choices "caused" SillyBilly's lung problems.

I know it's both incorrect and unproductive to blame myself. SillyBilly has his own karma to work out, as do I. But dealing with a sick child now makes it all the harder to knock off that kind of thinking.

Deep preschooler thoughts

This afternoon the kids were playing in their room. Every so often one of them would run out to say something to me, or ask for help. Napoleona at one point came to me while I was washing the dishes and asked for help getting her shirt on. She must have known that I would wonder why she was changing her previously clean clothes, because she said, "Mama, we have to change our clothes because they're all oily from our bodies."

First thought: not for about 10 years, sweetie. Second thought: did I once say something to them about skin secretions or something, or did she just pick that up from the ether?

Then at dinner, we had just said grace and were starting our meal, when I noticed SillyBilly wasn't eating. He looked at me thoughtfully and asked, "Mama, can salamanders clean their feet?"

After a bit of back and forth, we determined that he was thinking about how they might be able to clean their own feet with their "long tongues." Must have been confusing them with chameleons.

Moomintroll Mania

We are on a Moomintroll kick. I had never heard of these books, but a tip from (un)relaxeddad sent me searching the library.

We have now read Finn Family Moomintroll several times, and I plan to swing by the library again tomorrow to get more books.

If you don't know already, the Moomins are Scandinavian trolls, but not the hairy, dirty, nocturnal kind. Moomins love the sun and hibernate all winter. They are round, fat, and white with big noses, almost like hippos. They love pancakes, and parties, and excursions on the sea. The Moominhouse is open to any new friends who happen to come by:

"Moomintroll's mother and father always welcomed all their friends in the same quiet way, just adding another bed and putting another leaf in the dining-room table."

Doesn't that sound lovely! Of course, there are odd bits too, like the Hattifatteners, who are strange creatures that reminded me of the kodama in Princess Mononoke, except the Hattifatteners sting like nettles, and become electrified during thunderstorms. They are ominous little creatures. The Hobgoblin, with his glowing red eyes and flying panther, was a bit scary for us too, but he turned out to be a bit different than we expected. And the Groke, who freezes everything she touches and speaks in monosyllables, was a bit creepy as well.

I found these books very entertaining for me as an adult. It's like there are little bonus jokes for adults hidden inside the otherwise whimsical stories. During a party, Moominpappa makes a speech, thanking people, exhorting all the guests to be happy, "and then he began to talk about his youth. This was the signal for Moominmamma to push in a whole trolleyful of pancakes, and everybody clapped."

I'm waiting to learn more about Snufkin, who loves traveling, plays the harmonica, and sleeps in a tent; the Hemulen, who is not very brave, loves collecting things, and wears a dress; Sniff, who looks kind of like a kangaroo and acts like a little brother; and the Snork and Snork Maiden, who look pretty much like Moomintrolls but somehow are different.

We've moved from picture books to chapter books with SillyBilly. Even though he's only 4 1/2, and typically Waldorf families don't read such long books to children that young, SillyBilly just eats them up. During quiet time when his sister is napping, or when we have to give him his asthma medicine in the nebulizer, we can sit and read these books forever. "Read more, Mama!!"

Other recent chapter book hits:
Stuart Little
Little House in the Big Woods
Farmer Boy
Happy Times in Noisy Village
The Cricket in Times Square

Gratitude

Things have been busy. Summer has come, and all the activity of the season.

Anthropapa spent Father's Day weekend at the Omega Institute, taking a seminar about organizational development and Theory U and camping out. He took the bus and train up to Rhinecliff, but the kids and I drove up on Sunday to get him. The campus there is quite beautiful, with a large lake and many green and wooded acres. We had a yummy vegetarian lunch there and a peaceful drive home.

On Monday, SillyBilly will start summer day camp through The Nature Place. He is so incredibly excited that he asks me how many more days until camp, at least 40 times a day. We just got the information about the special activities (Hike to the top of Black Rock Mountain! Learning about wildlife! Learning to swim! Dirt Week!) so the kid is at a fever pitch of anticipation. And he has his first lunchbox.

We've continued our explorations of our local wildlife and weather. We've been noticing that at least one of the chipmunks in our yard can easily climb trees. The other evening I watched a bat swoop up and down the road in front of our house, busily relieving us of a portion of our insect population. And right after that I saw the first fireflies of the season, though they are getting a little ahead of themselves with the hot weather lately. Tonight we had a wonderful thunderstorm, though SillyBilly doesn't seem convinced when I tell him that the thunderbolts won't hit our little house since they have all those tall trees (not to mention the dorm next door) to hit first.

I've steadily been finding editing work, though some of it at a discounted rate that I would dearly love to discontinue. I guess I get to look forward to some future negotiations on that front. Just finished a memoir of a man who was a cultural officer with the State Department during the Cold War in Germany, Laos, and Russia. Looking forward to doing more translated Rudolf Steiner lectures next week, and possibly a book on working on a spiritual level with a difficult spouse!

So, why did I name this post "Gratitude"?

I've been feeling thankful lately, that's why. Thankful that I can do work I love, thankful that I live in a beautiful place, thankful that my son gets to go to summer camp for free, thankful that the bats are eating some of the bugs, thankful that Anthropapa got to get some time away to study.

The Simplicity of 3-year-old Fun

I realized I had a few pictures to post that I thought were interesting, and only a slightly interesting way to link them together with any cohesion, thereby avoiding one of those "random crap" post titles. Or maybe I just need to take some random-crap-post-titling lessons from Papa Bradstein. (No offense meant, Papa B. Luvya!)

First we have the latest local attraction, baby robins:

(They're already full-fledged, but I just didn't have time to upload this while the news was breaking.) These birds were kind enough to nest only about 4 feet off the ground in our neighbor's cherry tree, allowing us a close-up view of how freakish nestlings are. Word must have gotten around, because when I excitedly asked a local kid if they'd seen the baby birds, this 7-year-old gave me a "yeah" worthy of the grungiest teen. I am so yesterday's news.

Then we have this rather odd installation piece by Napoleona:


She advised me that this was her "nightstand" next to her bed. I thought the sacrificial pose of the farm animals combined with the wooden-play-carrot-piece lingam and cup-full-of-rocks yoni and with the sparkly Indian box were worthy of the next highbrow Asian fusion gallery opening. Also note the oh-so-trendy homemade crochet doll blanket serving as part of the display surface -- didn't you know all the hip chicks crochet now?

And then, the first hot day worthy of playing directly in the water:


Napoleona spent about half and hour sitting directly in the brook, happily scooping up sand and piling it on the rock to her left. She said something about it being a gnome's sandbox. I tell you: who really needs toys!!

A fun-filled day

You thought you'd be reading about our vacation about now, right?

Ha.

This morning, upon assisting with jammie removal, I discovered a large tick imbedded in Napoleona's back. I attempted to remove it, and merely squashed the thing. So, SillyBilly went to daycare, and the girlie and I went to the pediatrician. He informed us, after removing the remains of the creature, that while we should be on the lookout for Lyme Disease, most likely nothing will occur. And if it does, a round of amoxicillin will do the trick. Evidently it's just us lucky grownups that typically have problems.

$25 later (I'm not complaining that we have a free annual visit scheduled with the pediatrician on Tuesday, oh no. It's not like I could leave a blood-sucking parasite on my kid for 4 days. But why why why couldn't this have happened on, say, Tuesday?), I dropped off Napoleona to daycare and used the remaining hour to do some editing.

Lunch, naptime, then playing outside with the kids. Of course, by "playing outside with the kids" I mean supervising SillyBilly while he plays with the hose and Napoleona while she stuffs her face with trail mix, all the while reading a mystery novel. There's got to be some fun in this day somewhere, right?

While I was in the middle of doing some pre-dinner dishes, Napoleona declared in tones of woe that she had stuck a cat-litter crystal up her nose, and it was stuck there. Much nose-blowing later, the offending crystal shot to the floor.

Then I broke my beloved (and only) flower vase while washing it.

Now I'm sitting on the couch blogging while Anthropapa makes dinner. Aaaah, that's better.


**Coming soon**
The mother of all vacation blog posts, part I.

The Joys of Cardboard

Just a quick post today...I've been madly trying to get ready for our big trip out to California to see the grandparents. Hopefully I'll have more to say once the grand events planned for the vacation occur.

Recently we've had fun with the ultimate frugal toy: cardboard. (OK, maybe rocks and sticks are more frugal, but we play with those every day!) We were taking our trash and recycling to the dumpsters the other day, when we stumbled on a goldmine: an enormous, empty cardboard box...probably about 4 feet square. It once contained a sand filter for the nearby stream-fed swimming pond. I immediately convinced Anthropapa to carry it home -- how could we pass that up? So the box now resides under the eaves in the backyard, where it has already been a house, a workshop, and a garage for trucks.

Add to that the joy of what was inside the big box: long strips of corrugated cardboard, about 2 feet by 16 feet. One of those just had to come inside with us, where it has been through several incarnations of houses of various kinds. The kids can make a house of any shape, even with rooms if they curve it back on itself. And when they're done, we just roll it up and put it in the corner.



Then I was inspired to create a dollhouse out of another small cardboard box that recently held birthday presents for Napoleona. I taped the box together, and SillyBilly helped me decorate it (added bonus for him: he got to use the normally verboten Sharpie pens!) with shingles, trees, flowers, and of course a door and windows.


Who knew such riches could be found in a dumpster?