Peter's Cross Station

Why I Like Working at Home

J. made the kids super capes out of baby blankets.  Moments later...

Nat: Mama Shannon!  We are supers! I am Super Nat and Selina is Super Selina and J. is laughing and laughing!

Off to the rescue!

J: Who are you going to rescue?

Nat: Selina!  and Selina is going to rescue me!

Come on Super Selina, let's go fly some more!

Bambina Update

Sigh.  I know my baby is not a baby anymore, and here is why:  When she was a baby, she hated being held in a way that confined her limbs and rocked and sung to.  Instead, she insisted on being held up, facing me and singing along.  (It took me ages to figure this out, too, because Nat had loved--still does, really--to snuggle up to me and surrender all control while I sang and rocked.)

But now she loves to play "baby" in which I rock her, cradle-style in my arms and sing "My baby, Selina, my little baby, Selina!"  She still sings along though--"baby Seena, baby Seena!" with a huge grin.  It's a sure sign she isn't really a baby anymore.

I stopped looking at developmental milestone charts as soon as it seemed that Selina was A) done with the preemie delays and B) shaping up mentally and physically within typical perimeters.  But recently someone raised the question of her language development, suggesting that the fact she's very difficult to understand may indicate she is lagging in language development.  (I understand her about 75% of the time, Cole and babysitter J understand her about 50% of the time and everyone else is in the dark--except, come to think of it, Nat, who understands her most of the time, I think.)

My immediate instinct was the opposite--that her language is ahead of the curve and that her funny baby speech is a matter of her tongue being on a more normal trajectory and her brain being ahead of it.  (Not that I won't keep a sharp ear on her speech and take her for help if it ever does seem she has a slight impediment, mind you.)  So I checked the book we all love to hate and according to those perimeters, she is indeed quite a few months ahead in language development--at least as far as what she is trying to say, even if we don't always understand.

For example, she's all over the prepositional phrases.  "Sit down right here!" is a favorite of hers (it tends to be the rocking chair and it tends to be part of a demand to read books).  "Over there" "up the stairs" "into" the room, the car, the bathtub, etc. are favorites.  Instead of "look" or "what?" she points to things that impress her and says "right there!" (I know that's not a prepositional phrase, but anyhow).  She also regularly strings two, three or four words together in phrases or sentences.  After being happy with "have that!" for a few months, I have moved on to encourage "may I have that please?" and she usually gets it after one reminder.

She has reached the age of loving books.  She knows all of her favorites by title and asks for them accordingly.  "Panda Bear What See?" "Every Babies" "Happy Baby ABC" (actually the correct title), "Counting Book" "Welcome Presh" "Head-Toe" "Big Red Barn" are some of her greatest hits.  She likes to take a book to bed and if I let her, will play and read for a good 20-30 minutes alone after waking up.  (Yes!)  I will say she has quite an obsession with balls and hats, and these days, reading books is all about finding the balls and hats on any given page.

She knows about 80% of the capital ABCs and all the ASL letter signs.  She points out the ones she finds herself and tries to sign them (and usually fails--her fingers aren't that nimble yet). For instance, this morning, the clock hands on a dial clock were crossed in an X pattern and she pointed, declared "x!" excitedly and tried to make the sign for X.

She is a bit ahead of the curve in certain gross motor skills too.  She's been "kicking a ball forward" and "jumping up" for some time.  In fact, she climbs up on the sofa in the playroom and jumps off of it to a pile a cushions below on a fairly regular basis.  Nat doesn't like to do that sort of thing, but wants to join (and best) her, so Selina actually has Nat engaging a bit more with her body than she would ever choose to do on her own.  As I recall, Nat was still a long way from walking up a single stair at Selina's age, and here, Selina has hit the "do it myself" stage and will fight me to let her climb three floors when we arrive home from somewhere.  I'm glad, frankly, as my back is more than happy to have the break, even if it takes three times as long to plod along behind, spotting Selina on the stairs.  Really, she and Nat can get up them at about the same pace, though Selina's short little bow legs can't step up very well, she scrambles up using her hands to assist, now and then, while Nat is still working on the every-other stair climb technique.

Selina still loves music and singing and has a great sense of rhythm.  At the moment, she has a thing for Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and will just bust out with it from time to time when the mood strikes her.  She isn't pitch-perfect, but she is quite melodic for her age.  She and Nat also perform duets on the toy piano and toy guitar and sing the ABC song or Twinkle, Twinkle to their own accompaniment.

Selina informs us about 25% of the time when she needs a diaper change.  Since Nat is still refusing to poop on the potty (save two big events), I am hoping that God's reward to us for potty-training (or not, as the case may be) the hugely resistant Nat, will be one of those kids who just does it herself at two and a half.  Fingers crossed.

Selina's favorite person at this point is still baby sitter, J, whose name she shrieks with delight upon seeing him, or hearing that he's coming to see her.  She has, at least, stopped asking for him in the morning when I go in to get her, though.  Really it was sad, like, "sorry kid, it's just your mother."

She was also a big Uncle Jeremy fan when he came to visit and asked for him after he was gone too.  Both my kids do love them some uncles.  If you can put a kid on your shoulders and sing tenor, you're golden around here.

And that is Selina, about one week shy of 22 months old!

A Conversation Worth Having

When I was in high school and college I was subject to a gazillion courses in bioethics.  At the time, IVF was newish, egg donation was mostly theoretical, right-to-die folks were just starting to get noisy, the human genome was only just beginning to be mapped, etc.  I spent countless hours in discussions with far more conservative peers, arguing mostly for a great deal of freedom for the uses of new medical technologies and research (including research using human embryos).

So imagine my surprise when my recent post at Strollerderby about a new for-profit offering at a fertility clinic, allowing parents to use PGD to determine a child's hair and eye color, was met with a big shrug.  Most commenters seemed to feel that hey, it's a free market.  And of course, IVF being a massive undertaking--only done by the medically in need, at great pain and suffering and expense--this procedure isn't going to be sought by many and thus will have very little impact on society.

Well of course.  This procedure.  At this moment.  But that doesn't mean we should just accept it and move on.  The fact that huge expense goes into developing something so--frankly--stupid as hair and eye color selection and it is offered in a free market to medical consumers is a travesty in my opinion.  No it won't impact the gene pool (which fact plenty of people don't seem to understand and is another problem with the lack of discussion) and no, banning it won't automatically cause money to spent elsewhere.

But unlike Barack Obama, I'm a socialist--at least about a great many things.  And it seems more than obvious to me that a free market approach to medicine has failed miserably in the United States.  It's time to pull in the reins on the race to the ethical bottom (octuplets, anyone?) and the excessive gap between rich and poor people's access to medicine.  Taking a good look at high-cost fertility treatment that forces people to mortgage their homes for a 5% shot at having a baby seems reasonable to me, when we re-evaluate how our society allocates spending.

And I am not talking about banning fertility treatment.  It seems like in some corners, if you say "regulate" and "fertility treatment" anywhere within 100 words of each other, people jump to assume they will no longer be allowed to do those high-end procedures.  I am hardly suggesting that.  In fact, I think that any public health coverage should include fertility treatment--including IVF, including PGD when medically called for--which is considerably more than most private insurance plans do for us now.  But if we are going to provide fertility coverage to everyone, we are going to need to make the expenses reasonable.  Why not include in any new health plan, caps on pricing for treatments and drugs like many countries have now?  Why not put a maximum on the profit a doctor can make with this stuff?  How could regulating that kind of thing not help infertile people who need the treatment?

Look, I'm not interested in ever getting pregnant myself.  But I'm happy to pony up some percentage of my tax money so that you folks who are interested and need help with it can get that help even if you aren't rich, without going into monumental debt.  But I'm not paying so some fool doctor in LA can line his pockets with cash from people who know no better than to think it's a good idea to custom order a baby by looks.  And I'd like to see the incentives to a doctor to offer that sort of thing drastically reduced--by, for example, making it illegal to charge anything extra for that kind of service.  That would also reduce the R&D incentives to go finding those genes in the first place.  The market is not a force of nature.  Plenty of people outside the United States know this.  It is time U.S. Americans realized it and started taking some responsibility for where the market goes next.

Let's focus on curing cancer, not filling the prep schools of tomorrow with customized kids.

Nat's Story* and Other Literary Achievements at Our House

"There was a dark, dark outside. And in the dark, dark outside, there was a dark, dark marching band. And in the dark, dark marching band there was a dark, dark peeking eye. And in the dark, dark peeking eye, there was a dark, dark look. And in the dark, dark look there was a dark, dark closet. And in the dark, dark closet there was a dark, dark rocking chair. And in the dark, dark rocking chair, there was a...GHOST!"

I don't know which I like better, the marching band or the peeking eye.

Selina, meanwhile, recognized a letter for the first time yesterday.  Well, that is to say, I recognized Selina recognizing a letter for the first time yesterday.

I was rocking her before her nap and reading a book to her.  She kept getting mad at me for trying to turn the first page and go on past "Big red dog barks bow wow wow."  So finally I said "fine, you hold the book and read it yourself."

She took it and looked at it and looked at it and talked a bunch of gibberish until it occurred to me that she was actually saying "W."

I said "W? You see a W?" and she got so excited that I had finally realized what she was talking about and why she didn't want to turn the page and went "yes!  W! W!" and pointed to the W in "wow."  So I pointed to the O and she said "ohhh" and then the next W again.  "W.  Ohhh. W.  wow-wow-wow!" she declared.  We stayed on that page repeating this for a good five minutes and she took the book with her to bed to study it some more.

Since I am always bragging on Nat's reading, I figured I'd better record this one for posterity to be fair to baby sis who is clearly a total genius in her own right.

* Based on a Halloween book that made a big impression on her last fall.

Me Too!

That is Selina's new battle cry.  She runs behind Nat, arms outstretched, squeaking "metoo!  metoo! metoo!"

It is adorable beyond words.

Love of Big Sister is gonna be the end of that kid, though, I tell you.  Yesterday, Nat was running around the hardwood floors in socks, slipped and sort of belly flopped onto a (luckily) carpeted part of the floor.  She survived, picked herself up and commenced to running again.  Selina, having watched the whole thing, immediately launched herself--squealing with delight--face-first onto the part of the carpet where Nat had fallen.  Then she giggled "Uh-oh!" scrambled up and did it again.

Selina is, shall we say, more physical than Nat was at this age?  Than Nat is now?

Meanwhile, babysitter, J, the one whose name Selina chants like a mantra at all times, whether he is present or not (she is head over heels in love), is teaching Nat to play Go.  I have no idea what it is, but J. is all into it, like crazy and he has been reading up on how to teach it to wee snappers.  He told me that "all the really successful professional Go players started when they were, like, 3 or 4."  I asked him if Nat could afford to keep me in the posh rest home in Honolulu to which I want to become accustomed in my dotage on a professional Go salary.  He told me professional Go players make between $100,000 and $million a year, depending on how many tournaments they win.

"Carry on, good man!" I told him.  Even Supreme Court justices need hobbies, right?

Nat, on her own, is reading things like "Daddy says we're going to grow vegetable soup." (Yes, from the book, wherein she also read "zucchini squash" which I can barely read myself) and "If you go outside today, be sure to take your umbrella."

I think she gained about a semester's worth of reading levels in about the past two weeks and I don't know how it happened.

Yeah, I'm bragging. Sorry, I can't help it.  The kid positively blows me away.

Thinking about School--Sort of!

One of the main reasons we want to home school is that we figure we'll never find a school with a curriculum we like, with any decent number of children of color, for tuition we can afford.

Except we just did.

We found a Montessori school near us that actually has a serious commitment to diversity and it's working.  There are at least 2 or 3 African American kids per 15-20 kid class, and lots more non-Black kids of color, too.

The curriculum is classic Montessori, which I mostly like.  I like the multi-age classrooms (each "level" incorporates 3 years), the individualized "work plans" for each student, the complete absence of grading (quarterly anecdotal reports) and the physical classroom space.  What sometimes squicks me a little about Montessori is the emphasis on orderliness and the idea that there is One Right Way to do everything.  But this particular school (we went for a private tour) seems to have a flexible enough attitude not to be too awful about that.  I do like the emphasis on respecting the materials and each other and tidying up after yourself.

I wish Montessori didn't insist on calling everything the children do "work."  I realize this was Maria Montessori's way to emphasize the importance of children's play, I just wish we could respect play, as play and not call it work.  But that's kind of a semantic issue and I can get over it.

I am also not ready for Nat to be in a full-time school and don't think I will be for a long time.  This program is three hours/five days.  We might very well skip Fridays on a regular basis, if she goes, since Friday is usually "yea! Cole-mom is home, let's hang out with the family all together" day and Nat did so terribly when asked to just spend 45 minutes tap-dancing on Fridays last Fall.

If she goes, it will be in the Fall when she's four and a half.  I am telling myself it's okay, because I am getting roughly this many hours of baby sitting, now, so it will still give me plenty of time to do all the same home school things I do now (or plan to do this spring, after not being able to keep on top much last fall during all our moving and settling).

Nat would get two full years of part-time before she went into the 6-9 year-olds class for an 8am-3pm day.  I don't know how I feel about 8am-3pm days for a 6-year old.  Maybe we can keep taking Fridays off or something, if we decide to do this school at that point.  And Nat's birthday is in February, so she'll be fully six and a half then.

But this brings me to money.  We can afford the half-days, as the money for that is slightly less than I'm paying for baby sitting now.  The trouble is, we'd still need some baby sitting, because of Selina.  But not as much.  And the nice thing is I can spend the time when Nat is in school (and Selina isn't with a sitter) hanging out with Selina so she can get her own good strong home education going between now and 4 if we do this same thing with her.

I'm also reminding myself that we can not go to the 6-9 year old class if we don't want to or it doesn't seem like the best decision (or we can't afford the full-time tuition, the very same year Selina would be starting to do the 3-6 year old half days).  I had been pleased to learn that school is not compulsory for kids until 7 years old in Illinois, and was thinking seven would be the first time I'd even consider school, but probably wait until nine.  We could, theoretically, bring her home again for the 6-9 years and send her to the third level ("upper elementary" they call it) at nine and a half.

On the other hand, the Montessori place is small, with a 1:10 teacher:student ratio and it follows a lot of the same philosophy that attracts me to home schooling.  Its weaknesses are music and physical education, but we'd have time (in the half-day years, anyway) to keep Suzuki and church choir and capoeira in our plans.  I don't want us to be rushed and stressed and over-scheduled when Nat is only six, because she's in school full-time and trying to cram in "extracurricular" things.  The school does keep to a half-hour homework limit after the kids hit the 9-12 year old class, so that bit seems reasonable.

We will apply for the fall and see what we see.  I do think Nat will really enjoy it.  It's totally up her alley.  She will thrive with the freedom to explore the room and choose what she wants to do, and she will enjoy playing with the same other kids--at a range of ages--every day.  I think she'll handle that "One Right Way" to do everything without getting a perfectionist or compulsive hang up, like some kids definitely do.  I just hope she doesn't get bored with the One Way, or if she starts inventing her own ways, they let her.  Because that's how she is.  When she finishes out the learning curve for something, she complicates it.  Most commonly, she complicates it by turning it on the adult who's trying to "teach her" and tries to teach the adult.  "What sound does B make?" she'll ask "b-b-b" I'll say "Good, Mama Shannon, I'm so proud of you!" she'll praise.

Can't you just see her doing that with the counting beads to her Montessori teacher?

It will be an adventure, I guess. 

Selina-Speak

"Bear Pooh" has evolved into "Beebo."

Do you think she's trying to tell us something, Steph?

Quick Child Development Question

Here's one I've never really noticed in toddlers before and I've never read about it specifically, that I recall.

Selina is really exploding with language these days.  I have lost track of the words she knows and she will repeat any word you tell her to repeat--usually quite accurately, in fact.  But as she picks up language on her own, Cole and I have just noticed a pattern.  She focuses on the end of words rather than the beginning like most kids seem to do.  This explains "Bear Pooh."  Because I usually say, "It's Pooh Bear!" then Selina says "bear!" and I say "Pooh!"  So she picked it up "Bear Pooh."

Likewise, Selina calls herself "eena," calls babysitter J by the last 2 (of 3) syllables of his name, calls Cole-Mom "m-mom" and calls Mama Shannon "nyan-nyan."

My first thought was that maybe it was a hearing thing--maybe she doesn't notice someone is speaking at first and then once she realizes they are, she's catching the end of the word.  But that doesn't jive with her very clear speech when she does speak.

So, anybody ever experience this with a kid before?  Or read about it anywhere?  Or do you suppose it's just an odd little quirk of Selina's?

Online At Last

I think this year's sentence will be "The family moved twice in three months and five days after the second move, hosted 17 people for Thanksgiving at which Shannon roasted 17 stuffed Cornish hens."  But I never decide until the year is completely over.  Because you never know, we could adopt triplets before Christmas.

Probably not, though.

The hens were a hit, and really, it was as stress-free as these things can realistically be.  I made a little flow chart of the work involved in the meal and did everything ahead of time one step at a time over about 72 hours so that all I really had to do was pop the birds in the oven and braise the greens an hour before sit-down and we were good to go.  I also had a couple of willing and charming sous-chefs along the way.  No one makes a better sommelier than a gay godfather and we had two on hand.  Unfortunately, Mama Fern had to work, but we're having a private do-over with her this Sunday.

The new place is fantabulous.  Really.  Words fall pathetically short of describing my joy at being here.  Perfect location, perfect space, perfect neighbors, just plain lovely.  The master bedroom is obscenely huge, so I have a plan for adding a fourth bedroom, should those triplets arrive on the doorstep.

Yes, I can't shake the idea that I want more babies, even as the babies I have are becoming more and more overwhelming in their demands.  I suppose it comes of Selina being 18 months old this Saturday and not really my baby anymore.  At this point in Nat's life, we had been on the waiting list for number two for six months or so already.  And this time, our foster license has expired and our home study is returning to dust.  I guess we're done unless Rose or Fern needs us again or until Selina is a good bit older and we start looking into toddler adoption.  There's a big part of me that wants 3, or 4 or 5 kids.  Other parts of me shake me, while screaming "have you lost your tiny mind???" and slap me to snap out of it.

You can't always get (everything) you want.  Because there are also things I want that sort of require having fewer than three children--like some modicum of personal freedom before I'm fifty.  Plus, I love this place we just moved to, as I have said, and there may be room for one more, but even that would be a squeeze.  There's certainly not room for more than one more and I don't want to move again until Cole retires.

Meanwhile, Selina calls her Pooh Bear, "Bear Pooh."  Or "Bear, Pooh."  Or "Bear: Pooh."  I'm not sure which it is, but it so cute it makes me break out in hives.

Cole has been going hither and yon to teach on the prairie and return to us for long weekends (though more recently she was here for the long holiday) and it is going pretty well.  I have 5 days per week of afternoon baby sitting split between two marvelous sitters, both more or less overqualified to baby sit, but happy to do it nonetheless.  One is C and one is J.  C, among other accomplishments has Head Start teaching experience and an MSW, J has no degrees, but a year's nannying experience for a baby and a half-dozen younger siblings he was often responsible for.  His life's aspiration is to be a SAHD and I have to say it would suit him perfectly.

I have been working in cafes which can be okay, as long as I don't end up spending whatever meager amount I've mede in three hours on tea and scones, which can be a challenge.  I may work at home a bit more when the wireless is up and running, but over the winter the kids will be staying at home more for baby sitting and Nat is not of a mind to leave me alone if she knows I am in the building, so I will probably continue my hunt for the perfect Internet cafe as the weather worsens over the next few months.  I tried a new place this week and it is a great candidate--cheap, laid-back, free wireless with no password required, not too busy so if I sit there for hours I don't feel like I'm taking the space of a paying customer.  The only problem is that on my first (and so far, only) visit there, I set the toaster on fire.  It was a toast-it-yourself bagel operation and the butter that dripped from my bagel was the camel's last straw in the bottom of a crumb-filled toaster oven and the flames leapt wildly.  I unplugged the thing and called the sole worker's attention to it.  She left some customers hanging at the counter, came over, opened the oven door and started blowing at the fire, which of course, only made it burn stronger.  "Close the door and it'll burn itself out" I shouted, "but there's air in there!" she shouted back, as the smoke alarm began to wail.  "Now there is" I thought to myself, as the flames finally slowed and stopped.

"Ah, there" said the cafe employee-of-all-work, "do you want a new bagel?"  But it was just charred slightly on one side, so I said no thanks and went back to work.

I bet you ten dollars they have A) not replaced that toaster and B) not even cleaned that toaster and I'm afraid to go back, because I don't like raw bagels!

See you all at Strollerderby.

A Year and a Half Later It's A Lot Easier and So Worth it

Tonight I was thinking "wow, I'm so glad we have Selina." I have to tell you, I've always been glad we have Selina but I haven't always been glad we have two kids--if it's possible to somehow speculate in a detached way from your own specific children.

Some of you may recall that only days before we brought Selina home, we had informed our agency that we wanted to be an only child family and to take us off the list. They ignored us and called us with Selina.

Obviously, they knew our ambivalence was deeper than we realized, because we jumped on the offer of this newborn baby. Next thing you know, all my predictions about how much having a toddler and a newborn would suck came true. So much of it sucked. It was soooooo hard. (I know, YOU have six kids, I admire you, I'm even jealous. For us, two was very hard.)

But almost immediately, all the good things about having siblings came true too, even though I had not expected them to for, oh, 30+ years or so. Nat adored baby sister, baby sister adored Nat. Any jealousy or frustrations Nat had, she took out on me, not Selina. Selina she cooed and sang and read to. That happy surprise helped pick me up in the midst of the sleepless misery of so much of the rest of it.

Then pretty soon, Selina developed this little personality that was so different from Nat's yet every bit as charming. She and I would exchange secret grins. She was overflowing with affection and completely easy-going. She bumps her head, she rubs it and moves on. She trips and falls, she giggles and gets up and moves on. Sister grabs a toy away, she cries. I make Nat apologize, but by the time she can say "sorry Selina," Selina has forgotten the problem and is just thrilled that Nat is talking to her.

The other day I realized that at some point recently, Nat turned a corner and became Selina's sister as much as Selina is Nat's sister. That is, Selina joined Nat in the family, but Nat had already established herself. Now, they've been together for so long that they both exist in relation to each other in the family. It isn't Nat and her baby sister, it's The Sisters. Nat's language reflects this. Instead of asking me for things for herself, about half the time at least she says "two girls need something to eat" or "two girls need to get down now and do some jumping" (and they did, as I'd had them at the table watching videos for a hour while I washed dishes and other things I didn't want them getting into). "Come on, sister!" Nat says when I tell Nat to go play in her room for awhile. And in the morning, if I have left a cup of milk and a sippy cup of formula in the fridge the night before, Nat will get them both, take them back to their room and they have their milk together before waking me up.

But most of all these days, I'm glad Selina is here, because she is just a little ball of sugarplum sweetness right now. Not only is that great in and of itself, but when three and a half-year old Nat is making me tear my hair out, I look at sweet, grinning Selina and remember that no so long ago, Nat was that compliant and easy-going and just plain cute and it reminds me to cut her some slack. She's still my sweet little baby, she's just growing up. Selina will do it too, and go through her own terrible threes (and I have no doubt they will be most terrible--she has a nasty temper when she shows it--it's just that she's still little enough that her tantrums are comical and cute instead of exasperating).

So as good as Nat is for Selina, Selina is doing Nat a big favor too. They are really well suited together and I can't imagine either of them without the other. I'm so glad we put up with the misery of that first year (and it did get increasingly better all year anyhow). It was so worth it!

(No word yet, on our speculations about adding a third. I still look at moms with three and feel a pang of jealousy, but that doesn't mean I'll do anything about it--necessarily!)