Cuter than robots

I discovered while watching Wallace and Gromit videos with my girls that it was just what you might call “MST3K: Kinder Edition.” I always mean to take notes on their running commentary when we watch movies, and the other night when we sat down to watch Josh Ritter’s concert on NPR, I realized that I really needed to. So this is a self-indulgent blog post (I suppose that’s redundant), that got a little long, even though I tried to edit it down (so you don't know all the times they fussed that the other one was being too noisy or pushing or argued about whose turn it was for my lap). And also an example of why I don't take my children to anything but daytime concerts outdoors.

As the band takes the stage

Adriana: Wait. Are all those guys Josh Ritter?

Me: No, that’s his band. He can’t play all the instruments at once.

Lyra: I’m in his band.

Adriana: Mom, Lyra’s telling lies.

After a close-up of Josh Ritter

Adriana: His face looks all scratchy.

Lyra: I hope he doesn’t kiss anyone.

Adriana: I hope the first song is Snow Is Gone.

After a shot of Zach Hickman

Lyra: Can I have a mustache like that when I grow up?

Adriana: When will he sing Snow Is Gone?

During Wolves

Adriana: Hey, is this about the Wolves in the Walls? Does he read Neil Gaiman?

Me: I bet he does, but that’s not what this is about.

Adriana: [begins howling like a wolf]

Lyra: Stop that! I can’t hear the music! Mama, Adriana is a-noise-ing me.

Adriana: Mom, Lyra can’t say “annoying” right.

Me: Girls. Seriously.

Adriana and Lyra: [howl like wolves]

Josh Ritter: Wolves underneath the stairs/Wolves inside the hinges/Circling round my door/At night inside the bedsprings/Clicking cross the floor

Adriana: I TOLD YOU THIS WAS ABOUT WOLVES IN THE WALLS.

Josh Ritter: [encourages audience to howl]

Adriana and Lyra: [howl like wolves]

Lyra: Don’t worry, Mama. I’m a coyote, not a wolf. Don’t be scared.

During New Lover

Lyra: New blubber? Is he singing about blubber? Hey, he’s got a song about seals and whales! How come he’s not saying anything about seals and whales?

Adriana: No, he’s saying “New lover.”

Lyra: I love you, I lover you, I lovest you, Mama.

As something goes wrong with our connection and the music and video both stop for a minute

Lyra: Keep singing, Josh Ritter! Now!

During Appleblossom Rag

Lyra: He said apple blossom! That is a flower that grows on an apple tree! Can I have an apple?

Adriana: This isn’t Snow Is Gone. When will he sing that?

Lyra: The blossoms don’t come until the snow is all gone.

Adriana: You’ve never even seen snow.

During Hopeful

Lyra: This song has a lot of words.

During Harrisburg

Adriana: The train song!

Lyra: Mister Mustache is singing!

From then on, anytime the camera focused on just Zach Hickman

Both girls: Mr. Mustache! Mr. Mustache Man!

During Joy To You Baby:

Lyra: I think he’s singing about his baby. Hey, Josh Ritter! Hey, Josh Ritter. Don’t kiss your baby until you shave. You’ll hurt your baby!

Adriana: I like this better than “Joy To The World.” I’ll sing this at Christmas. I bet Jewish people like it too, so it will be good for Hanukkah and Christmas. And maybe my birthday.

As To The Dogs Or Whoever begins

Adriana: It’s the underwear song!

Lyra; Do you think it’s about rocket underwear? I have rocket underwear. They are the best underwear in the world.

At the end of the show

Adriana: Wait, they’re leaving? That’s it?

Lyra: Where are they going?

Me: Just offstage. They’ll probably be back for an encore.

Lyra: What’s that?
Me: It’s where they come back and sing extra songs because everyone was cheering so much.

Lyra: Can I pick the song?
Adriana: It better be Snow Is Gone.

Lyra: THEY’RE COMING BACK. ALL THE JOSH RITTERS ARE COMING BACK. EVEN MUSTACHE JOSH RITTER.

Adriana: This is still not “Snow Is Gone.”

After the concert ended (“Is really finished this time? Maybe they’ll come back again!”), the girls talked about how someday they would go to a real Josh Ritter concert, not just watch on the computer. I decided to keep the show I’m going to in Oakland a secret for now.

Travel journal: Australia!

We arrived in Australia! this morning. (I noticed this past week that none of us say Australia. It always ends with the exclamation point.)

I didn't have high expectations for the journey here, but even my normal attitude about traveling with kids (just expect it to suck) didn't prepare me for this flight. Lyra puked in the car on the way to the airport. I assumed it was carsickness until she puked again not long after we started the second leg of our flight. And I realized she had a fever, too. We were the middle two people in a four person row, with a non-English speaking granny who had an almost-two-year-old riding on her lap on one side, and a very understanding father of three young boys on the other side. He cheered Lyra on for telling us in time to give her one of the airsickness bags, taught her how to call the flight attendants to bring us more, and told her what a good sport she was being. Meanwhile, Brian and Adriana slept for most of the flight about 30 rows back (also in center seats).

Lyra was doing pretty well by the end of the flight. She nibbled on the fruit on her breakfast tray and drank some juice, and managed to keep both down. She was in pretty good spirits as we approached customs, at which point Adriana, who had gotten a bit queasy during some turbulence toward the end of our flight, projectile vomited all over the floor of customs. Luckily I still had her change of fresh clothes in my carry-on, so I took her into the restroom and got her changed, and we made it through customs without anyone throwing a temper tantrum, which I believe is a first for us.

We got to the flat we're renting in Petersham easily, met the incredibly nice woman who owns it, and after getting cleaned up and having a snack, we set out to explore the neighborhood, getting lunch and gelato in Leichardt, and giving the girls a chance to play at a playground.

The kids are fascinated by the birds and plants they don't recognize, but drop bears are a bit of a problem. Brian warned the kids about them well in advance, telling them that sun hats would keep the bears from landing on them to nibble their ears. Basically, our kids don't like to wear their hats, and so we lied to them. But it's kind of backfiring. Adriana was almost afraid to leave the flat because of her fear of them (although by the end of the afternoon she was just trying to spot them). Lyra has declined to wear her hat and at any mention of them (or of Australia!) insists loudly and angrily, "We are not in Australia!"

Lyra's still a bit fussy and not feeling great (perhaps the last sentence already made that clear), so we're sticking at "home" for dinner. The woman who runs the apartment stocked the kitchen for us, so I was able to throw together a lentil soup, and there is already stuff here for breakfast tomorrow morning, so hopefully everyone will wake up healthy (or at least healthy enough to concede that maybe we are actually on The Continent That Shall Not Be Named) and we'll be able to get an early start.

Underwear and sexism and toddlers, oh my!

Lyra's been mostly potty trained for about a month now, so yesterday I took her to pick out some new underwear. There were two racks in the store: one had underwear in mostly primary colors and prints of rockets, cars, and dinosaurs. The other rack was pastels--pink, purple, and turquoise mostly--and prints of flowers and hearts. I showed them all to Lyra who gleefully picked out rockets and dinosaurs.

Then we got to the register. The young woman looked at what we had and asked me, "Oh, didn't you see? We have a rack of girls underwear too."

"But in the training pants, the cut's the same, right? The only difference is the colors and the prints?" I figured I had better made sure, since Adriana had never been interested in colors and prints on the "boys" racks, or even the ones on the "girls" racks that weren't pink.

"They're the same," the woman said. And then she turned to Lyra, "Did you see the pretty underwear? You're a pretty girl. Don't you want some with flowers? You don't want boy underwear."

"Those are not boy underwear. Those are my big girl underwear. For me. Boys can't have my underwear," Lyra said. Loudly.

I kept my mouth shut, but you know what? I was proud.

Worlds

I like listening to the girls talk to one another when I’m in the car with them. Sometimes they ask each other questions about the parts of the day they’ve been apart, sounding like small adults; sometimes they discuss what they see out the window; sometimes it’s they play little role playing games--mostly house or scenes from their favorite books; and sometimes (so, so often lately) they squabble over seemingly ridiculous things (and so I don't always like listening to them talk).

Yesterday in the car, Lyra began telling a story about “another world that is underneath our world.” Adriana has always seemed like a storyteller to me, and it’s fun to see that same trait developing in her sister. “The other world is full of magical animals and fairies.”

Adriana jumped in immediately to correct Lyra. “There is only one world and it is this world. There is not another world under it. Under us is just crust and mantle and core.”

I joke that Adriana is such an engineer sometimes--the way she thinks about things, the way she takes problems apart, the way she looks at the world very scientifically. I think it’s actually just the way kids her age are: they’re learning so much and gathering information and figuring out how the world works. She’s still imaginative and prone to flights of fancy--she is only six after all (and I think the imagination is part of what helps her figure things out)--but I can see that Lyra is still very much in a more fairy tale world compared to her sister.

It’s so tempting to jump in then, to instruct Adriana to let her sister be, to let her go ahead and tell her stories. But Lyra didn’t seem to mind, and continued on the story, so I let it go. It wasn’t long before Adriana was interrupting again to point out a scientific inaccuracy, this time to lecture on volcanoes. And I got to marvel at how much she’s learning at school, about how she really seems to understand things and can explain about plates and magma and pressure and eruption to her sister. And then I marveled again as Lyra listened carefully, seeming to take it all in, and then said, without missing a beat, “The world under this one has volcanoes and the volcanoes are full of fire dogs having parties. And the world above this one has an owl as big as an elephant for a king.”

Rose and The Witch

A story by Adriana
(original spelling preserved)

Once upon a time there was a little fariy named Rose. She herd a rore and she didn't no if it was just a dream or if it was real so qietly she creped out of bed got her rocket and took it out side and climbed in. Then she started it and she didn't no how to control it so she crashed in to a monster and it fell asleep. Then a witch put a spell on Rose. The spell made rose fall asleep. The next day she turned in to a snow fariy. The next day she turned back in to Rose the fariy and came home from her exvender. The end.

Boring bliss

I've had a productive few days this week--nothing major has been accomplished, but I've managed to knock a lot of little things off my to-do list. I joked last night that since I'd done so much, I was basically done for the week.  And that's why nothing practical happened this afternoon. I played tag with Adriana and her friends after school and climbed on the ropes on the playground with them. At home we watched an episode of Mr. Rogers, then did the same kind of art he had done on the show--drawing what we heard as we listened to classical music. I took them out for dinner, since I hadn't wanted to stop playing and drawing with them to cook, and we drove home singing songs. We skipped bath in favor of dancing and a few extra bedtime stories.

So when I said nothing practical happened? I think actually meant that I believe I spent the afternoon the most practical way I could: just enjoying these awesome girls and feeling lucky that I have so much time with them.

/schmaltz

Words

Today I dropped our car off for some body work. Lyra was with me and wanted to know why we were leaving the car behind. I told her they were going to get rid of the dents.

"And the car will have no more dents?" She thought about this for a few moments, then said with honest concern, "But where will the coyotes live?"

We went round and round on this one (because WTF, kid? Coyotes?) before I realized that she was hearing me say "dens." I promised her that we weren't going to make any coyotes homeless by getting our car fixed.

***

Adriana is currently lying in bed trying to fall asleep (at least in theory), but her reading has taken off lately, and while she hasn't yet discovered the time honored tradition of reading under the covers with a flashlight, her brain can't seem to shut off the words running through it. So I keep getting called in to answer "urgent" questions on matters of spelling:

• "What is the I before E rule again?"
• "Did you know some words can rhyme even when they're not spelled the same?"
• "Crossing doesn't start with X, but signs always say 'X-ing.' Why is that?"

I suppose at some point I should  stop going in to answer the questions. But I can't stop my curiosity about what she's going to ask next.

She just called me in to tell me that she would remember the difference between "here" and "hear" by remembering that "you hear with your ear. Get it, Mom? Because the last three letters in that kind of hear actually spell ear?"

At least she's cute.

I had to try hard not to laugh when she said the bit about living on the same planet

Last night Adriana was singing a song from school that lists the months of the year. She did it first in English, then in Spanish. Then I heard her singing "Shanuarysh, Febshuarysh, Shmarsh, and Shaprilsh." At that point I looked up from my book and asked her why she was singing it so silly. "Mama! It's not polite to call other languages silly!" And then she informed me that those were the words for the months in Hebrew. I guess that's what Hebrew sounds like to her, but I pointed out that what she was doing was akin to throwing an O on the end of every English word and pretending it was Spanish--so also not very polite. 

She considered that for a moment and then said, "But the Jewish calendar has different months completely! Even though we live on the same planet! Are they south of the equator? Is that why?" I told her no, and then she began to wonder if there were even words in Hebrew for the "English" months of the year since the Jewish calendar was so different. I assured her that there will still be words for the Western calendar even in cultures that use lunar calendars for religious observances. At which point she began wondering about what to spend her red envelope money on next month, and we moved on. 

There is so much awesome in how this kid's mind connects different things she learns about. 

This is way better than when Adriana used to scream at him

When Adriana heard that Lyra got to see Santa Claus without her, she was not amused. I made vague promises about "soon" and "later in the week," and then realized that with Adriana's swim lesson canceled that afternoon, we didn't really have any plans, so we headed off to see Santa again.

It turns out he does his afternoon shift at a different mall. And that he changed his clothes (and also his beard) since we'd seen him. But again there wasn't a line, and he spent lots of time chatting with them. Lyra was a little reluctant, as I knew she would be in the afternoon, and even Adriana clung to my hand at first, but he started singing "All I Want For Christmas" to Adriana and asking Lyra how high she could jump, and soon he led them over to his bench and read them a story.

He got them onto his lap and we got a couple of smiles out of them.

And then as the woman taking the photos was showing me what she'd gotten, we heard giggles, and turned to look. The girls had discovered that Santa's beard was tickly and were cracking up. The woman picked up the camera and started snapping photos again. 

Finally, he asked what they'd like for Christmas. Adriana requested a baby doll and "lots and lots of legos." Lyra asked for a flying hockey stick. I guess she figures that will have to do until she's big enough for a rocket.

PS: I like the Blogger now lets you click on the photos to see them bigger.

If only he could see one of her tantrums instead

I wasn't planning to take Lyra to visit Santa while Adriana was in school today, but I had to return something at the mall, and he waved to her when we walked by, and she wanted to go say hi. She was, conveniently, wearing a candy cane dress, and I started to think it might be a good photo op. There was no line, so she walked right up to him and did a little dance, then a somersault.

"What a talented young lady you are! Do you want to tell me what you'd like for Christmas?" he asked her, and she walked closer to him. He held out his hands to her, and she let him scoop her onto his lap.

"I want an owl," she told him.

"An owl?"

She nodded. "A toy one. And a rocket ship."

"A toy owl and a toy rocket ship."

"No, a real rocket ship. I am an astronaut but I don't have a rocket ship, so I need one."

He somehow talked her into considering waiting for a real rocket ship until she was a little bit bigger, and then she smiled for the camera. As I was paying for the photo (which I had to get as I've never had a kid actually sitting on Santa's lap and giving a genuine smile before) a few minutes later, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Santa coming over talk to me.

"She's a charmer," he told me in a low voice. "Good luck with that one."

I Voted!

It's the night before the election, and I just finished filling out my ballot. From the first time I voted, I loved going to vote. Actually, I even loved going with my parents to vote when I was a kid. But once I was living in town in Santa Cruz instead of on campus, I loved walking over to the church to cast my ballot with my neighbors (even though I knew relatively few of them). And when we lived in the Parkfairfax neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia, I loved seeing everyone walk over to the synagogue to vote, and then a bunch of us being on different, later buses to the Metro together after casting our votes. So when we moved back to California, I was reluctant at first to sign up for "permanent vote by mail." Then I figured out that I was allowed to fill out the ballot at home and drop it off on election day. So tomorrow morning, I'll walk my envelope across the street, get my "I Voted" sticker (they didn't include one with the ballot this time), and feel as though I am participating in my community by more than just voting, but in joining my neighbors as well.

***

How cool is it that I got to vote against the death penalty? Sometimes I think our system in California with all these propositions is a little ridiculous. But tonight I got to vote yes on Proposition 34 to repeal the death penalty in this state. That's been an important issue to me ever since I was a teenager and the movie Dead Man Walking got me interested in it and cause me to make it my issue for my civics research paper. (Also, I remember all that, including the weather when I came out of the theater, so vividly. That seems kind of weird.) The death penalty feels wrong to me--intellectually, emotionally, and morally--and here I get a chance to say so. The ballot measure is close, and it's losing by a few points still in the polls, but I am still hopeful.

***

And just because I can't post something without mentioning my kids, here is a picture of Adriana from four years ago.

And some people just worry about when kids are "old enough to ask for it"

Lyra mostly isn't nursing in public anymore. She's just big and wriggly, and since she doesn't need it constantly, it's easy to have it be just something we do at home. I remember reaching this same spot with Adriana. Sometimes, though it's just easier to say yes--when I'm having a conversation, or trying to read my book while I watch Adriana's gymnastics class. Today I was talking with some other parents at Adriana's school, and Lyra made her way onto my lap and asked nicely, so I let her. One of the other moms observed with surprise, "Oh, she's still nursing!" In the split second it took me to gauge the tone of the comment and how I should respond (always politely, but sometimes as more of a joke, and other times as more of an off-hand-isn't-everybody? reaction), Lyra pulled away and said to the woman, "My mama makes nice, sweet milky, just for me!"

Kindergarten Eve

When I stopped writing monthly blog posts about Adriana around the time she was two--not a conscious decision by any means, just something that happened--it would occur to me to write something quickly to sum her up. I remember around the time she was two-and-a-half thinking I could simply write, “Adriana likes butterflies, dogs, mermaids, and trucks. She knows her ABCs and how to count to 10.” Now it would be “Adriana likes butterflies, bears, princesses, and bicycles. She is beginning to read and can count to 100.” But I also want something more extensive than that. I’m hate knowing that I will forget so many little details about what she is like now. Tomorrow she starts kindergarten and even if it’s not her birthday, it seems like a good time to stop and think about how she is right now.

At five-and-a-half Adriana is a strange mix of babyishness and teenager. There are certain parts of this age I wish I could capture forever. She is so wonderfully, beautifully, perfectly engaged with the world. She is watching everything, paying attention, but that’s been true for a while now. Now she is really getting it. She’s thinking about things. She’s questioning. Of course, there are certain things about this age I’ll be glad to see go. A five-year-old’s tantrums are truly terrifying.

One night, angry that I told her it was time to head to bed, she ran into her room and slammed the door shut. I heard her lock it behind her, so I went to my room and sat down with my book. It wasn’t two full minutes later that she came out of her room, crying real tears, sobbing, because she wanted me and I wasn’t in her room with her. I resisted the urge to laugh, just pointed out that she had locked me out, and walked her back to her room, cuddled in her bed with her until I felt her breathing change and knew she was asleep. I went back to my book, thinking that those ten minutes were probably a good analogy for parenting.

I really am enjoying watching her grow, though. She is interacting with the world in new ways, or at least interacting with the world in a way where I get to observe more of her thought processes. I remember when we went to London, not too long before she turned three, reading Madeline to our friends’ daughter and being surprised by how many questions she asked about the story. Adriana had never asked anything like that; she listened to books, enjoyed them, but never questioned them. Now I see her deciding more often not to simply observe but to really try to figure things out.

Although she is still difficult to understand--she talks quickly, and still doesn’t have G or K sounds in her repertoire--Adriana talks non-stop when we are at home, and even more so in the car. On the way to speech therapy one day last month she chattered at me constantly from the back seat:

Wanna see how high I can count? How many days has it been since I was born? What makes earthquakes happen? How come not all the countries in Europe use the euro for their money? If Canada is right by the United States, how come they have the same picture on their money that they have in England? Why won't you let us eat marshmallows for dinner? Do you think asparagus looks kind of like bamboo? Can I dip my whole body in paint and make a paint angel instead of a snow angel?

And then on the way to nursery school the next morning it started again:

What is cement made of? It must have water in it because it is wet so they can pour it, but what else is in there? What makes it stop being wet and get hard? Maybe we could put mud in ice cube trays and then when we took them out we could build something with them and it would be super strong. What if you put a flower in the freezer? Would it still give you allergies? Why are you allergic to some kinds of flowers? How do plants know what color their flowers are supposed to be?

I do my best with her questions. I’m not a geologist or a physicist or a genetics expert (although I remember a surprising amount from Mr. Pruitt’s biology class in the 10th grade), but I can usually pull off a decent enough answer to satisfy her, or if I’m truly stumped, we look it up together.

She’s beginning to read now. She has sight words and can sound things out. She hates being wrong, so a lot of the time she’s reluctant to sound things out, wants me to tell her how things are spelled so she can memorize the correct way. It’s a little frightening to see that aspect of myself in her. I want her to understand things, not just memorize them. I want her to work things out for herself, not just expect someone to tell her. But memorization like that works! I tell myself. It’s how some people learn. Right? I also see a certain amount of Brian’s engineering mind in her: she loves tools and machines and knowing how things work. She has a creative streak that is growing--she draws more interesting things now (always with a stripe of blue across the top for sky, which I love), and will get herself and Lyra both in costumes to put on a performance for me. My favorite was a “ballet” set to Josh Ritter’s “Snow Is Gone.” Adriana was a snowflake and Lyra was a bird, and they twirled around and around in the living room.

I watched her through the window at gymnastics one week this spring--the way she moved, how she interacted with the teachers and the other kids, the enormous smile on her face--and told the friend I was texting with (what?) “I love watching Adriana. She’s beautiful and amazing.” I tried to explain it, how it’s different watching her now. I’m more aware of her personality. Her Self. “She’s separate from me now.” My friend asked me if that made me sad, and without even thinking about it I answered no. It’s how it’s supposed to be. Ten, twenty years from now, I’ll probably laugh at myself for thinking she was so big now and thinking we were so separate. But right now it’s this amazing thing: she was my little tiny baby, and now she is this gangly girl who rides a bike and plays with her friends and questions the world around her. But she also folds herself into my lap, pulling at my arm hair the way she used to when she was nursing, and falls asleep while I read her stories.

Tomorrow she starts kindergarten. Amazing.

I thought about teaching her the “if wishes were horses” rhyme, but worried that she’d start wishing for an actual horse.

At some point I told Adriana about wishing on stars and taught her the rhyme

Star light, star bright

First star I see tonight

I wish I may, I wish I might

Have the wish I wish tonight.

She knows about making wishes when she blows on a dandelion, and making wishes when she throws a penny in a fountain. I used to wonder what she would wish for, and I loved it when she got to the age when she would rush to check the mail to see if the mermaids she’d wished for had arrived. Then she picked up the idea that she was supposed to keep her wishes secret, and I was back to wondering.

Earlier this summer I bought her a new scooter, one with two wheels. She’d been coveting them ever since she saw her friend Abigail’s this spring, and I was wanting to hand down her three-wheeled one to Lyra. As soon as it was ready, she spent the afternoon riding up and down our block on it. It was fun to see her so excited about it. That night as I tucked her into bed, she looked out her window for a star to wish on and told me that she was going to have to think of a new wish since her wish for a scooter had come true.

We spent the day at the beach yesterday, and my normal routine is to keep the kids there until after dinner, then change them into pajamas and let them fall asleep on the way home, so I can just throw them into their beds. Last night Adriana was determined to stay up on the way home, and spent the hour in the car gazing out the window at the sky. Mostly she was quiet, but just as we reached the summit on Highway 17 she told me, "Sometimes I like to imagine that stars aren't really balls of burning gas. Because how could a ball of burning gas understand a person's wish and make it come true? It just doesn't make sense. So I like to imagine that stars are actually tiny fairies in very sparkly dresses, and they hear the wishes that people make and use their magic to grant them."

I love that at five, fairies make logical sense to her. When I told Brian about it, he was amused that I had inadvertantly reinforced her belief in magic and wishes by buying that scooter. And I love that she tells me these things. She does seem to have a better sense of what’s real and what’s pretend than many kids her age, so I don’t know how much of it she actually believe, and how much she just likes the idea of the magic. A part of me hopes she really does believe. And I hope that as she outgrows it she still loves the poetry of the idea.

Baby's first nightmare

I normally joke about my kids’ nightmares. Adriana went through a phase about three years ago when she would wake up hollering at us not to take away her eggplant. What kid has nightmares about someone trying to take her eggplant? When Lyra talks in her sleep, her bad dreams seem so fitting for a toddler and a younger sister: “It’s my turn!” she shouts before settling back to sleep, or “No, that’s mine!”

They have each gone through a brief period of night terrors--they awake screaming wordlessly, and nothing I do can wake them or comfort them. Fortunately, the individual terrors and the phase have both passed quickly. In Adriana it seemed to be caused by chocolate desserts before bed. In Lyra we never found any potential triggers.

But then they grow up a bit more and they have bad dreams that don’t seem funny to me at all. It breaks my heart to have them so scared. Last summer Adriana became terribly afraid of house fires. Any loud noise might be a fire alarm, and she woke early one morning and insisted on being taken to peek at Brian asleep in bed, because she didn’t believe me when I told her it was a dream that a fire had “gotten” him.

Lyra had her first break-mom’s-heart nightmare last night. I woke to her screaming from her room, “Don’t touch me! Stop hurting me! Mama, they’re hurting me! Make it stop, Mama!” I ran to her and picked her up, and she continued screaming while I tried to talk to her. I told her it was just a dream, and asked her what was happening. All she could do was beg me to help her and cry. I stopped trying to talk to her, and laid down beside her. She wound her hands through her hair, found my breast, and nursed back to sleep. It didn’t take long before she rolled away from me, sound asleep. I stayed there beside her, trying to calm myself down after the adrenaline rush that her screaming had brought on.

In the morning we spent half an hour cuddling in her bed after we woke up, until she declared that her name was Nom-Nom McEat-a-lot and she needed her breakfast. She devoured a scrambled egg, a bowl of oatmeal, and half a basket of strawberries, washed down with a few ounces of cow’s milk and two oranges worth of juice. I didn’t ask her about her bad dream, and she didn’t mention it. I seem to be the only one with any trauma. I hope she forgot about it. I also hope it doesn’t happen again tonight--I'm not sure I can take it.

I'm beginning to believe baby birds have better survival instincts than human toddlers

The girls have been pretending to be birds since lunchtime. They built a nest of blankets on my bed, Adriana sat on Lyra, Lyra "hatched" out of a blanket/egg, and Adriana has been "flying" about the house getting imaginary worms and bugs for her baby to eat. It's adorable, and I love that they can play together so well sometimes. But I just now heard Adriana say "Okay, Baby Bird. Now it's time for you to learn to fly, so I have to push you out of the nest. Lyra, just flap your arms like wings when I shove you off the bed. Ready? Steady..."

And then they were both shocked and angry that I stopped them.

Questions I was unprepared to answer this morning

1. Are bays made by earthquakes or by erosion?
2. Do flamingos have kneecaps?
3. Why don't people lick the amniotic fluid off of their babies when they are born like mama cats do?

It does make the times I pretend to gnaw on the baby seem a little more sinister

“Some animal mothers? Eat. Their. Young,” I told Adriana one day last week when she was being obnoxious about something.

“Lucky for me you’re a vegetarian,” she snarked right back.*

So yesterday when I was browsing the children’s section at Books Inc., I couldn’t resist picking up a copy of Monsters Eat Whiny Children by Bruce Eric Kaplan. Lyra was getting antsy at that point (and starting to whine for a Thomas board book that I didn’t even have to glance at to know I wouldn’t like), so I bought it without reading it. Adriana found it in my room just before her bedtime, so I got into bed with her and read it.

Immediately I recognized the artwork from the author’s cartoons in The New Yorker. Henry and Eve are whiny children who disregard their father’s warning that monsters eat small children, and then are abducted by indecisive monster gourmands who spend the book debating the best way to eat the children. The drawings are simple and amusing, and it’s full of lines I am sure to be annoying the kids with. I mean, I don’t think I’ll be able to resist suggesting “Perhaps a whiny-child vindaloo” next time we are wondering what we should make for dinner. Adriana and I both giggled throughout the story.

The humor in the book is definitely aimed at adults, but it’s in the way there are jokes in animated films that are for the grown ups that go right over the kids’ heads, rather than something akin to Go The Fuck To Sleep. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that book. In fact, I found it quite amusing, especially the audiobook version read by Samuel L. Jackson). I wouldn’t share Monsters Eat Whiny Children with some of Adriana’s friends. Adriana, though, loves all things scary, and can handle the idea of monsters eating children. On the other hand, I also picked up a copy of Outside Over There. Perhaps my girls will start to take these books as warnings.

*I love this kid so much.

Civics lesson

On the way to drop of my ballot this morning:

Adriana: But what is voting for?
Me: Well, it's so we can decide who is in charge and makes rules, and so we can say what we think the rules should be.
Adriana: But you're the mom. You're in charge. And you get to make up the rules yourself. 

Our great future in plastics

I’m reading a fascinating book, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History by Florence Williams. It’s written in a casual, fun-to-read style, and I’m learning a lot about evolutionary theories, cultural trends, and ecology. I rarely read non-fiction, but this book has drawn me in the way a novel might.

The problem I’m having is that last night before I fell asleep, I read the chapter on plastics. I learned a lot about the chemicals that are in plastics and our cosmetics, and how scientists think these things may be contributing to early puberty (and what early puberty means in terms of cancer rates). I didn’t know that BPA was originally used as an estrogen replacement in women, a replacement for DES. That makes its use in so many products today seem much more ominous to me. When Williams wrote the book, she had herself and her young daughter tested for many of the chemicals she was learning about, and then tried to reduce the presence of those chemicals in their life, but found it very hard to do.

I woke up this morning, thinking about our exposure to these things. I already try to buy lotions and soaps that don’t contain parabens and phthalates. But plastics are ubiquitous. I made my orange juice this morning in the juicer we received as a wedding gift--that was ten years ago, before BPA was being questioned so much. I sliced peaches to put in oatmeal for the girls and me on a plastic cutting board that for all I remember at this point may have been treated with triclosan. I served the kids their oatmeal in brightly colored plastic dishes that I’m pretty sure are BPA free--but what else is in the plastics? I am generally pleased with myself for not feeding the kids a lot of processed foods, but every time I pack us a picnic, I put cut up vegetables, sliced fruits, and sandwiches into plastic containers. Canned beans seem like such a quick and easy alternative to soaking and cooking dried beans, but do they contain chemicals from the cans? I reheat leftovers in the microwave in plastic containers that say they are safe for microwave use, but how do I know? Our water bottles say they are BPA-free, but what is being used in the plastics that can hurt us? Even the produce I buy at our farmers’ market comes home in plastic bags.

I’m finding myself feeling helpless and hopeless. I remember a similar feeding years ago reading Our Stolen Future for a college course, but then I was only worried about myself. Now I’m wondering what effect the choices I make have on my daughters.