Day 1: The Write On, Mamas! Blog-Off of 2012

I started a Blog Off. I probably can’t really say that because I’m the only one who knows about it right now.

You see, my writing group (Write On, Mamas!) is starting an Indiegogo fundraising campaign so we can self-publish an anthology of our work. The campaign hasn’t started yet, but when it does, I know I will have to start doing the thing I like least: asking people for money. So I thought I’d combine it with one of the things I enjoy most: writing. For each day of our campaign I will write a blog post of 100 words or more on a topic that has to do with writing and likely will have to do with the meta-theme of writing about asking people for money. Of course, at the end of each post, I will ask people for money.

That’s the backstory. Here’s my post for Day 1:

Every morning I get the quote of the day from Goodreads. Then I slap a label on the quote and the quote gets filed on the cloud. “writing/spam” for boring quotes. “writing/save” for not-boring quotes, and “interesting/inspirational” for quotes that I don’t want to forget.

So for Day 1 of the Blog Off, I decided to pick an inspirational quote at random and write about it.

My all-time favorite inspirational quote is Joseph Campbell’s paraphrasing of the advice given to a young native American standing at the edge of a chasm.

“Jump,” the wise man tells him. “It's not as far as you think.”

Isn’t that great? Don’t you feel smarter just for having read it? For that matter, don’t I look smarter just for having mentioned this quote in the first place? That’s why people quote smart people. To look smart without actually having to put the smart thoughts together themselves.

And that’s why I decided to pick an inspirational quote at random for my first blog post. Only I didn’t randomly pick Joseph Campbell. I picked Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler.)

Here it is:
If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats.
-- Lemony Snicket

It doesn’t quite fire up the belly in the same way. I guess I’ll have to close on a different quote.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

Stay tuned for Day 2 (and 3, 4, 5, 6...)

Kinder Report

Kindergarten sucks.

OK, it doesn’t SUCK-suck. But it’s an uncomfortable adjustment. We were in such a great groove—even through a summer of swimming lessons. All three kids went everywhere with me. I was like a Mama Hen with my chicks. And now Chiara goes to Chabot for kindergarten, a day that is too long for a five-year-old and not long enough for a mom who wants to write and go to yoga. The boys don’t want to go to daycare without their sister. They’re crabby when they wake up to find she’s gone already. Then on days when they stay home and we have to pick Chiara up from school, I have to wake them up from their naps and that makes them crabby, too.

These are small adjustments, I know. But they’re still irritating.

Chiara is doing well enough in school. Every day she “gets on blue” which is the teacher’s system of giving the kids’ feedback on their behavior. At the beginning of every day, all the students “start on green” and move up and down through the colors depending on whether they are little angels or little five-year-olds.

“You mean the kids get red cards?” my husband whispered during orientation. The color system made him think of soccer. It made me think of the Defcon colors. To Chiara, it was just a rainbow.

Last Tuesday Emerson “got on yellow” for putting a plastic triangle in his nose and pretending it was a booger.

Everyday Chiara gets bumped up to “blue.” This is partly because she is a well-behaved little girl who is fairly socially-advanced and has good self-control and partly because she is very competitive. She is fighting to get more stars than ANYONE. (I can’t keep track of the star system. It’s like credit card reward points for kindergartners.)

It’s been an adjustment—kindergarten. All this learning. Not so much playing. Last week Chiara burst into tears when we got in the car.

“I wanted Chenille to be my friend but she won’t talk to me. I think she’s decided that Mavis is her BFF. Mama, I don’t have any friends! I just play by myself and then I don’t feel like playing.”

I have to fight the feeling that I have to do something. Set her up with play dates. Talk to her about how it takes time to make friends.

I never tried to make friends in school. Since my dad was in the military, I always started at a new school in the middle of the school year and by then all the clumps of friends are already set. The teacher always pairs you with someone to show you the ropes, so you’ll have an instant friend. But even at six years old I knew what was going on—the teacher pairs you with the other loser in the class who doesn’t have any friends. She thinks she’s killing two birds with one stone. So now you have to shake the person who’s trailing you, stalking you, clinging to you and you STILL don’t have any friends.

Even now I don’t try to make friends with strangers. The other parents cordially introduce themselves or seem to know each other already. I just drop my kid off and leave. Not anxious to make new friends.

So I might not be the best person to give Chiara friend-advice.

Monkey Hear, Monkey Say

Last week Michael informed me (in the lowest register he could muster): “I’m a BIG BOY!” And then, after a pause (and in his normal voice): “And a gentleman.”

He has also started this game where he runs down the hall arms, outspread asking, “Who needs a hu-ug?”

Wagner has his cute moments, too. He likes to nuzzle my neck and say, “Ooh, dat’s tasty!”

Of course, they say those things because I say those things.

Like today—when Matt let Wagner choose which socks he wanted to wear.

Now, I don’t know if it’s a Berkeley thing or a “raising your kids in the 21^st century thing” or if it’s because I hang out with these Greater Good types, but apparently the thing to do these days is to validate your child’s emotions.

“All feelings are valid, but not all behavior is acceptable,” the books tell you (or at least the ones that I used for my research back in the day when I was collecting linguistic data for parenting research.)

Anyway, it goes like this. Your child throws a screaming fit. He kicks and spits like a rabid goat. You say, “Honey, I know you’re disappointed/angry/disgruntled/sardonic.” And this is supposed to help matters.

So back to my house—

Wagner is choosing socks to wear. He chooses Michael’s socks (which happen to be green.) We have lots and lots of socks and usually we have several of the same kind of socks because I don’t want to have to hunt for matching socks. But these socks are Chiara hand-me-down socks (they might have even come from Claire/Jack/Maria/Annie. I can’t remember. I only know that there are two of them and they are highly coveted because they are almost knee-length and the boys are very into knee-length socks.)

So of course Michael throws a fit when he sees that Wagner is wearing HIS socks. And Wagner knows full well that they are Michael’s socks, but he won’t take them off. In fact, he puts on his rain boots to hide the fact that he is wearing Michael’s socks. Then he does his best approximation of the Nonchalant Whistle.

He also tries to sell Michael on other socks. Red ones? How ‘bout...dese socks?

Michael is screaming, “I WANT GREEN SOCKS! ‘DOSE MY SOCKS, WAGNER!”

And Wagner hands him another pair of socks. Gray? Yellow? Brown?

Finally, he puts a hand on his brother’s shoulder.

“You OK, Michael?” he asks, as if he is genuinely interested.

“NO!” Michael yells emphatically. “I’n [sic] not OK! I want green socks!”

Wagner pats him again and says, “I know.”

The Night Before Kindergarten

Dear Chiara,

Tomorrow is your first day of kindergarten. I am SOOOO tired. But what kind of parent would I be if I didn’t record these last thoughts before you start school?*

* Answer: a rested one.

You are going to have a great time. Your storytelling skills are awesome. Your counting skills are quite frankly, well, your counting skills suck, but that’s why we’re sending you to school instead of trying to do it ourselves. If we couldn’t teach you how to count in your first five years, then there’s not much hope that we can teach you in the next five.

But I digress.

Years from now when you can read and open a browser and run a Google search on yourself and find this blog, here’s what I want you to remember about the last few days before you started kindergarten.

The week before kindergarten there was a “play date” organized by the PTA. The idea was for kids and parents to meet on the school playground. It’s more for the parents than it is for the children. I thought it was a dumb idea, but only because I don’t like to meet new people. I told you this and you thought it was terribly funny and this last week you kept reminding me of this fact, coupling it with the fact that you (at my bidding) introduced yourself to several kids on the playground. And now you know about five kids, including one we decided is crazy. (She was wearing feathers and oversized sunglasses). On orientation last Friday in which you learnt who your kindergarten teacher will be and who will be in your class, Miss Crazy is among your classmates. You and she are now BFFs.

You have a backpack that you will take to school tomorrow. We bought it three years ago. It’s pink and is supposed to be the face of a mouse that looks suspiciously like the face of Hello Kitty. We got it at SFMoMA so I guess that means it’s more artsy than Hello Kitty. It’s not quite big enough to fit in your Tinkerbell folder and I hope this doesn’t mean we need to get a new backpack.

Inside your backpack are two markers you picked out—one red and one blue to remind you of Michael and Wagner. There’s also a ziploc bag (by request of your teacher) of extra clothes. You picked them out. I wrote your name in them.

There’s a coin purse inside your backpack. I put some lunch money in there in case you might buy lunch one day. Although Daddy and I have no idea how you will pull this off. You have no sense of money and call all change “gold coins.” And even if you did have a sense of money, as I previously mentioned, you cannot count.

For lunch on your first day, you requested quesadillas with a lemon cucumber and heirloom tomato salad. Raspberries for morning snack and edamame for afternoon snack. You also decided that you want chard for lunch on Tuesday. I have to say that when I was your age, none of these foods had even been invented yet, except for maybe the raspberries.

Your actual lunch will be a little bit different. Quesadilla (with Monterey Jack cheese instead of cheddar. I’m hoping you can’t tell the difference.) Organic strawberries instead of raspberries (because they didn’t have raspberries at the farmer’s market this morning). Lemon cucumber and yellow cherry tomatoes (because I didn’t feel like chopping up 1/5 of an heirloom tomato). No edamame because if we open the package, we have to finish the package and the boys won’t eat the same thing more than 2 days in a row and we really need them to want to eat edamame when we get on the plane to go to Cousin-O-Rama on Friday. Instead you get grapes. Grapes with the heads cut off (because you and the boys complain that the part that attaches to the stem is a little brown—and you are right, but they still taste fine. None of you kids believe me, though).

Oh—and half a chocolate chip cookie from the Litquake Palo Alto Festival today. (Your lunchbox also came from the Litquake Festival. It was some JCC swag and says “Jewish Bedtime Stories for Families” on the side of it. It was free. And it’s pink. Win-win.)

I have to say, this letter is a lot more boring than I thought it would be. I hope you don’t find it through Google after all.

Tomorrow morning we decided that you are going to wake up and get dressed and if I’m still asleep, you will help yourself to the hard-boiled eggs I cooked and peeled tonight while I was cutting up lemon cucumbers and grating Monterey Jack cheese and writing “Chiara Kovac” with a silver sharpie because silver on pink looks much cooler than black. You think we decided that you will serve yourself breakfast and let me sleep in because you think I get grumpy when I wake up in the morning. I think we decided that you will serve yourself breakfast and get yourself dressed because it’s quite possible that you will wake up at 5:00 a.m.

That’s how excited you are.

I love you,

Mama

Your First Morning of School

You are purposely blurry because now that you are in kindergarten I am protectively guarding your privacy and if you are blurring, the Google and the Facebook machines will not be able to recognize you

OK. That's not true. You are blurry because we're in the Stone Age here in 2012 and we just don't have the technology to take clear, digital pictures.

OK. OK. That's not true, either. I would have loved to get an unblurry picture of you, but because we were trying to get to kindergarten 20 minutes early in hopes of finding a parking space, I didn't bother to check the quality of the photo.

This one's a little better.

Summer Livin'

I haven’t posted on the blog in a million years. I even stopped the Greater Good Gratitude Journal for the summer.

I blame swimming lessons. I signed Chiara up for 6 weeks of swimming lessons, 6 days a weeks and it has thrown off my whole rhythm of writing. It has also made my daughter hate me, as she harbors a deep hatred for the swimming pool, which she conveniently forgets during the actual half-hour of the lesson and inconveniently remembers for the next 23 ½ hours.

Here’s some stuff I meant to post but didn’t:

Matt’s working in Cupertino for the summer on iStuff. He loves it, although the commute makes us all grouchy.

Speaking of grouchy, Wagner has a song he sings. (Wagner is always singing.) This one is to the tune of Frère Jacques minus the first two lines. 

It goes like this:

Grumpy Grumpy Grumpy!
Grumpy Grumpy Grumpy!
Grumpypants!
Grumpypants!

He likes to sing it to Chiara on the way to swimming lessons.

I am also happy to report that the boys are now wearing their underpants the normal way. For a very long time they would go to the potty but refused to wear anything but diapers. (Michael kept complaining that his penis would get “stuck”—which was never independently verified.) Finally I broke down and bought 31 pairs of underpants, most which were either Thomas the Tank Engine or Lightening McQueen. It made the underpants more enticing than the diapers, but then the boys would only wear them backwards. (Because the logo is bigger on the back).

I would have sent them onward through middle school and beyond with backwards-facing underpants, but luckily my mother came in worked her magic. I was gone for a week at the Squaw Valley Writer’s Workshop again and my mom and stepdad held up the fort here at home. And one of the things that Nonna did (in addition to getting Chiara to swimming lessons) was get the boys underwear frontside-front.

So now summer’s practically over. We’ve got three more weeks of swimming lessons and Matt’s got three more weeks of commuting to Apple. He’s lining up interviews for next summer’s jobs at law firms. And before you know it, it’ll time for kindergarten and CoR.

WAIT! I buried the lead! Not on purpose. I just forgot.

The boys are no longer preemies! We had our final follow-up with the NICU and the boys tested between 29 months (their chronological age) and 42 months. 29 months because they can’t jump with both feet of the ground and 42 months for...drum roll... LANGUAGE SKILLS! Someday someday someday I’ll write a post on the follow-up exam but with all these swimming lessons, who knows when that will be.

And now, here’s why I sat down to write something on the blog in the first place—Wagner invented a term for grated parmesan. He calls it “cheese dust.” 

Family Dinners

When it comes to mealtimes, my daughter is a dream eater. She always eats what is put in front of her. She likes to try new foods—even bitter salad greens such as radicchio and arugula. She’ll eat Mexican food, Ethiopian food, Vietnamese food, sushi. She’ll even eat my cooking. She doesn’t always like all of what she tries and when she doesn’t, she politely declines with a rehearsed phrase we taught her, “Thank you, but this isn’t to my liking.”

It was easy to have dinner as a family with a kid like that.

Wagner, my youngest son, also loves to eat. He eats eggplant, guacamole, curry sauces, and even radishes.

If I only had two kids, family dinners at my house would rival a 50’s sitcom. But I have three kids and my other son—Wagner’s identical twin—won’t eat bananas if they’re cut the wrong way. One day he’ll eat a bowl of peas; the next he refuses to touch them. Recently he has boycotted grapes because he has noticed that they all have little holes in them. It’s just the part of the grape that attaches to the vine, but try telling him that.

Michael is the kind of eater I was. Picky. If I had thought about it, I’m sure I would have eschewed fruit with stems. To this day I prefer to eat apples sliced rather than to bite into them. I hate to eat cold food or drink cold beverages. My early childhood memories of mealtimes are all about anxiety around eating.

My parents would plead with me to eat. They’d set the timer for twenty minutes. Then the timer would go off and I would cry. They’d reset the timer for another twenty minutes. I’d start to pick at my food and complain that it was too cold. They’d put it in the oven (this was eons before the invention of the kitchen microwave oven). They’d take it out and I’d complain that it was too hot. They’d put it in the refrigerator. I could get away with two, sometimes three full rounds of oven-too-hot-then-fridge-too-cold before my dad would yell at me, “Just eat it!”

And then I’d cry again.

I don’t ever remember being hungry, but I do remember eating toothpaste and pretending it was dessert.

So I have a soft spot for Michael and his pickiness. And I don’t want to bug him about eating and make a thing of it. But jeez, it sure does make the family dinner thing a pain. 

More Raising Happiness Guest Posts

There are more posts on Raising Happiness.

Here are the links to posts 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10.

Step Ten:
Have Dinner as a Family

Step Nine: 
Nurture Happiness and Foster Resilience

The tools that nurture happiness are the same ones that foster resilience. I found that out when I had to tell my daughter that Grandpa was dying.

Step Eight: Living in the Present
Enjoy the Present Moment

This was a fun one. It's where I get to incorporate all those metaphors we use for time as a container, as in a full calendar or an empty schedule. When considering a new task or activity, we wonder how we can fit it into our busy lives. Cool stuff! And I got to use this adorable picture of Michael.

Step Seven: Self-Discipline 

Get to the Root of the Problem

Chapter 7 in the book Raising Happiness is my favorite chapter. I love the ideas on how to structure your life and your parenting so that kids make good choices rather than depending on a system of rules, bribes and punishments.

Step Six

Make Happiness Routine

During the three months that the boys spent in intensive care, I stuck to a strict routine. Really, I did it because it was the only way to get me out of bed. (But this post is a little more positive than that!)

Step Five

Empathy for the Mompetitor!

Boy, this woman was annoying. Raising Happiness and conceptual metaphor analysis to the rescue!