Reader

It happened quickly.  Charles entered kindergarten knowing all of his letters and some of the sounds they make, and now, barely 5 months in, he can read full books aloud to his brother.

 

 

And thank God, because I’m getting a little tired of reading about Star Wars.

 

Charles’s and Jamie’s reading diet has been heavy on the superheroes, with a smattering of Berenstain Bears, Mercer Mayer, and random other books from our shelves or the library.  However, I’m constantly scouring Pinterest (the Devil’s website) and library websites for recommendation for chapter books to read aloud to my boys.  Jamie, believe it or not, will sit still and listen to chapter books, even when he doesn’t totally understand the plot.

 

Charles is a bit too young for The Boxcar Children, but here are some other great chapter books we have enjoyed:

 

Beverly Cleary books, nearly all of them.  We’ve worked our way through the Ramona Quimby books, the Henry Huggins books, and some of the Motorcycle Mouse books.  Charles loved them, especially Henry & Ribsy because Henry catches a Chinook Salmon, just like Charles did last summer.

 

My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett.  Seriously, this book is fantastic.  It’s short enough to be read all at once or over a couple of evenings, and it presents some good examples of cleverness.

 

Nate the Great series by Marjorie Sharmat.  These detective stories and easy to understand, and I love the idea of teaching Charles to be observant.  Charles really loves the pancakes.

 

Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard Atwater.  We’re reading this right now, and the kids BEGGED me to read another chapter before school this morning.

 

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White.  Prepare to cry when Charlotte dies.  My kids, my boy children, just don’t understand.

 

Roald Dahl books, all of them.  We’ve read James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  There are some tough parts where we’ve had conversations about poverty and what happens when one’s parents die, but overall, we loved the whimsy in these books.

 

It makes my heart so happy that my children are readers.  They love books so much.  Aside from all the obvious benefits of reading and loving books (cognitive function, vocabulary, learning about different places and times), I once read that novel readers are more empathetic because they learn to see things from others’ points of view.  So yeah, I’m teaching my kids empathy without even trying.  Parenting win, right?

 

What are some of your favorite early chapter books?

Growth and Re-Growth

This morning

 

At Freddie’s six-month checkup (a month ago), he had grown an inch-and-a-half since his four-month checkup, but only gained half a pound.  In other words, he was leaning out, and not in a good way.  Babies need body fat to grow, and Freddie was growing so fast and nursing so often that he was waking every two hours, day and night, and drinking 16 ounces of pumped milk during five hours of daycare three days a week.  That level of nursing and pumping was impossible for me to keep up.

 

A few weeks ago, when that onesie was large on him.

 

We tried to feed him solid foods, but the little stinker would slam his lips shut and turn away from the spoon, no matter what food we gave him (he seemed to enjoy avocado ONE DAY, but the next promptly rejected it).  Finally, finally, after a month of nursing like a newborn, he condescended to eat some solid foods.

 

“Lady, what is this shit?” (Notice excited me in the mirror, holding my ever-present cup of coffee because I AM EXHAUSTED.)

 

What a weird kid.  He doesn’t like sweet potatoes, bananas, applesauce, pears, peas, carrots, plums, or squash.  He adores refried beans and plain yogurt.  At least he’s starting to chunk up again.

 

 

He’s starting to fill the onesie out again.

 

He’s happy, and even though he still nurses every two hours, all day, all night, I’m happy, too.  His cheeks are coming back, and we all love to eat baby cheeks.

 

 

 

Concurrently, my hair is starting to grow back.  Just in case you thought the indignities of pregnancy and birth stopped after the kid comes out, I’m here to say that you also get to lose a significant amount of hair and then put up with weird hairstyles as it grows out.

 

Shorties, all the way around my hairline.

 

Sigh.  The things we do for our children.

Styled By Charles

There’s an article making the rounds of the Facewebs called something like “I Let My Toddler Dress Me For A Week.”  Shit, I’ve been letting my kids dress me since they were old enough to express an opinion.  Those boys prefer me to wear dresses, shirts with flowers, and the colors pink and purple.  It’s tough to argue with that.

 

Recently, I took Charles shopping with me for an auction dress.  It was after dinner, just the two of us – almost a quick mommy/Charles date, a treat to stay up later than usual and have me all to himself.  We walked into Dress Barn (an underappreciated store, in my opinion) and Charles immediately chose a fit-and-flare, sort of retro dress with big, pink flowers.  He wouldn’t even let my try on another dress.

 

He helped me zip up the back.

 

He asked me to twirl in front of the mirrors.

 

He said it was the prettiest dress in the whole store and that I would be the prettiest mommy at the auction when I wore it.

 

He told me to buy it and I did.

 

I chose to let my heart melt instead of assuming it was all a ploy to get us in and out of a dress store as fast as possible.

 

Turns out, the kid has good taste.

 

 

He’s lucky I didn’t make him go shoe shopping with me.

Lunch Lady Land

Deep breaths.  Deep breaths.

 

Charles takes his lunch to school.  Not because he doesn’t like hot lunch – he does, and some days (okay… like, twice, ever) he buys hot lunch.  But most days he takes his lunch because his best friends take their lunches and he wants to sit with them.

 

This stresses me out for two reasons: 1) he wants lunch from home but he would prefer not to eat real food, and 2) by never eating hot lunch, he is participating in de facto segregation.  I assume.  Which is where this post turns into mostly my paranoia about raising a socially-conscious kid who voluntarily eats healthy food.

 

This motherhood gig is not easy, y’all.

 

So, thing the first: Charles doesn’t want sandwiches or wraps in his lunch.  He doesn’t want a selection of meats or cheeses.  He will not eat vegetables.  He would like cookies, please.  And squeezy applesauce, but not the kind that has vegetables mixed in.  He wants water, not milk or chocolate milk (which is fine, but kid needs to ingest some calories!).

 

I usually make a sandwich (PBJ, PBH {H for honey}) or a wrap (ham & cheese) or this morning I convinced him to have a mini bagel with cream cheese.  He might eat half of it.  The wraps were going really well for awhile and he would eat the whole thing almost every day, but then he got bored, I guess?  I don’t know.  He doesn’t want them anymore.

 

For, like, a day he really liked cashews in his lunch.  He begs me to buy strawberries and raspberries for his lunch, but they’re super out of season right now.  Raisins or craisins get a cringe.  Carrots get ignored.

 

Consequence?  I stuff him full of vegetables at dinner, since that’s the only meal at which I can influence his choices in real time.  And tonight I’m going to make muffins to see if he’ll take one of those in his lunchbox.  I’ll try new things until I find something he’ll like!

 

But thing the second really gets my sad-worry juices flowing.  Charles’s school is 79% free or reduced lunch (below the poverty level).  Those kids all eat hot lunch.  And the hot lunch kids sit separately from cold lunch kids.  The last thing I want to do is raise a kid who thinks he’s better than another kid just based on lunch.

 

For the record, I don’t think Charles thinks like that (yet?).  I don’t remember thinking like that when I was a kid.  I had lunch from home when I was in grade school, and I remember it mostly being because I had an unfounded terror of going through the lunch line.  As I’ve gotten older, I’ve trained away the terror, or at least turned it into a generalized discomfort when I go to cafeterias or places with some amount of diy-ness: what if I do it wrong?  What if I get through the lunch line and I forgot to pick up silverware at the beginning?  The first time I went to Chipotle or Taco Del Mar, I had the same anxiety, the what do I do? unease of a new place where I have to follow some sort of established protocol and I don’t know what that protocol is.  Wine tasting.  Build-A-Bear.  Cooking class.  I feel like such a fraud.

 

It’s ridiculous, really, and I know that now and I am mostly over it.  There’s a first time for everything, right?  Anyhow, that’s why I didn’t eat hot lunch.  I don’t know why Charles doesn’t eat hot lunch, other than he’s picky, picky, picky all of the sudden.  I just don’t want it to turn into a thing.  I remember my whole third-grade class picking on a couple of girls who lived in the trailer park not far from my parents’ house.  We would say they were smelly.  We bullied them.  It was awful, and I am ashamed.  Yesterday, Charles told me that a friend of his (who is a boy) wore his older sister’s “girl shoes” to school that day.  What made them “girl shoes”?  Little hearts on them.  We talked it through and then I lectured him to never, ever make fun of someone because of what they wear.  I happen to know that this kid lives with his three siblings and a parent in a low-income apartment near us.  Maybe his shoes were just dirty, or maybe his family can’t afford new shoes for him and these were the only ones that fit.

 

Kids do this, and I know it.  Some amount of “bullying” at the younger grade levels is kids just figuring out how to treat people.  The anti-bullying movement has made us hyper-aware of the consequences of hateful speech, and we’re calling kids on it, which helps.  I’m doing my part by having open conversations with my kids about words and actions.  I asked Charles why the hot lunch kids and the home lunch kids don’t sit together and he told me it was because the hot lunch kids have to go through the line.  But still.

 

I wish I could have some assurance now that he will grow up to be a good person later, but I guess I just have to put in the hard work and hope for the best.

Sorry, Thank You

I’m one of those people who has pet peeves… lots of them.  Do you creep into the crosswalk without stopping first at the stop line to see if there are pedestrians?  IT REALLY ANNOYS ME WHEN YOU DO THAT.  Do you “share” pictures on FaceBook with bad grammar written over them (such as, “I seen that”)?  GAWD, STOP IT NOW.  Are you grumpy or blasé on the phone as a customer service representative?  IT’S YOUR JOB TO BE NICE.

 

Okay, okay.  The only person I can change is myself, right?  So I try to do just that.  I notice, nearly every morning, some driver stopping in the middle of the crosswalk because he or she can’t see to turn into traffic.  But there I am, baby strapped to my front, pushing a stroller, dog on the leash, kindergartner prattling on about Star Wars, and I’d like to cross to the next corner.  I’m not going to walk my troupe out into traffic, so I have to wait until the car in the intersection either backs up (unlikely, in my experience) or turns into traffic (it can take awhile).  So I’ve been paying close attention to my stopping habits in the car.  I try hard to stop at stop lines and then creep out into the crosswalk to check traffic, after I look for pedestrians.

 

I try to drive like I learned how to drive 19 years ago and follow the damn rules.

 

This is not, actually, a post about driving.

 

There are two things that have been bothering me lately that are much tougher habits to break: excuses and taking compliments.

 

Have you noticed that when most people are late, they say “Sorry I’m late, but…” and immediately give the reason (excuse) why?  For me, the reason is often that I tried to do too many things in the short time before I had to leave to be somewhere.  Like, I’ll just put this load of laundry in so it will be done when I get home, even though if I left right now, not five minutes from now, I’d be pushing it to be on time.  That, or the kids wouldn’t put on their shoes.  Seriously, what is with that?  They want to go where we’re going, but they never want to put on their shoes.  I can’t begin to tell you how many times I ask the boys to put on their shoes each morning.  Leaving the house is the most yell-y part of my day.

 

Well, anyway, excuses.  They’re kind of rude, you know?  Like, you were expected to show up somewhere on time and you didn’t, so you say you’re sorry… and then you add that little “but” in there to somehow justify yourself.  It’s not just lateness, it’s “sorry I didn’t get this done, but…” or “sorry the house is such a mess, but…”  And I used to do it all the time but I try not to anymore because people don’t need the reason for my tardiness or absence or absent-mindedness or ineffective prioritizing skills. 

 

I think just saying “sorry” is much more respectful of whomever I’m saying it to.  I’m late to Boot Camp?  “I’m sorry I’m late.”  End of story.  I didn’t iron the shirts?  “I’m sorry.”  The house is a pigsty?  “I’m sorry for the mess.”  Simple, respectful, correct.  I’m not trying to convince myself or anyone else that it’s somehow acceptable for me to have done wrong by giving an excuse.

 

Sometimes there’s a good story, of course.  The house might be a mess because the kids found the Costco-sized package of shaving cream.  Or the dog brought a dead rat inside.  Maybe you’re late because the baby had a blowout of such epic proportions and you’re still reeling.  Save the story.  Telling it immediately following an apology tempers the apology and makes it less valuable.

 

Similarly, it bugs me when I give someone a compliment and they say “Thank you, but…”  Like, I have a terrible habit of saying “thank you, but I still have 20 pounds to go!” whenever someone compliments me on losing the baby weight.  I do still have 20 pounds to go before I’m at pre-pregnancy weight, but I don’t need to remind anyone!  Someone just told me I look great, and I can’t just say “thank you!” and enjoy the compliment?  What’s wrong with me?

 

Saying “thank you, but…” just undermines the compliment.  It’s not respectful to the compliment-giver and it’s not respectful to yourself.  “You did a wonderful job on this (project, assignment, job)!”  “Thank you, but it was nothing.”  Oh, really?  It was nothing?  So you don’t value your effort and neither should I?  “Your hair looks fabulous!”  “Thanks, but I totally need to get it cut, it is so grody.”  (Can we please bring “grody” back as an adjective?)  Oh, so you don’t like yourself and my taste in hair is skewed?  I don’t want to send those negative messages, so I’m trying my damndest to just say “thank you!” and leave it at that. 

 

Try it this week.  Try to stop at the stop line before creeping into the crosswalk.  Try to just say “I’m sorry,” instead of giving an excuse.  Say “thank you” when someone gives you a compliment and don’t amend it with anything.  It feels good, I promise.

 

So there you have it: Amelia’s Continuous Self-Improvement Plan: Don’t Commit Your Own Pet Peeves.

Winning the Heart of My Three-Year-Old

Recent Jamie quotes:

 

Upon waking first thing in the morning, after what must have been an awesome dream: “Mommy!  Cows outside!”

 

    

Singing: “Who let the farts out?! Thbbbt! Thbbbt! Thbbt!”

 

 

Jamie: “Mommy, when I go to bed, I don’t even close my eyes.”

Me: “You don’t?  How is that even possible?”

Jamie: “I have the instructions in my head.”

 

We spend a lot of time walking to & from school.  It’s tired work.

 

Jamie, pleading: “Peeeease, Mommy, can we go to the store to get a chainsaw?”

Me, incredulous: “No.”

Jamie, whining: “But I NEED a chainsaw to cut wood with daddy!”

 

 

I am extraordinarily lucky.  I have the opportunity to own a business with my brother and make my own working hours – I have to work, but if I work hard, I don’t have to work that much. 

 

When Charles and Jamie were small, I eased them into daycare.  Neither went full-time until they were at least a year old, and I wanted to do the same with Freddie, but with one major difference: I decided to pull Jamie back to part-time as well.  Jamie and Freddie now attend daycare three days per week, and even though it’s really difficult (I sometimes have more work to do than I can complete while they’re in daycare), it’s been a positive change for Jamie to have more time with me and Freddie.

 

 

Charles is such a social kid – he truly wanted to be in daycare full-time when he was small.  Jamie, on the other hand, really likes quiet time with me, reading and playing.  He does fine in daycare, even loves some of it, but spending two (more – he’s with me on the weekends, too, of course) days at home or running errands seems to really keep him happy.  He acts out less and acts up more.  Though he still throws the usual three-year-old tantrums, they are fewer and further between.

 

There are so many sacrifices in parenting.  Jamie’s well-being is worth the sacrifice of my working hours.  I’m not saying that I’ll be able to do this forever, but for now, it’s really nice.

 

Sleep Files # “I’m Losing My Mind”

I realized this morning that since Freddie was born in July, Tony has gone on three multi-night out-of-town trips.  Whether the stated purpose of these trips is fishing, work, or “hanging out with the guys,” the real reason for leaving is to get some sleep.  Because around here, sleep is in short supply.

 

Middle of the night

 

Freddie started out a better sleeper than the his brothers and, for a month or so there, he slept 6 hours straight every night.  Even when he was waking often, I could usually get him right back to sleep after a change and a feeding. 

 

No longer.

 

The best place to sleep is on me.

 

Freddie wakes every two or three hours, gets changed, eats, and then fusses himself awake when I set him in the crib or pops his eyes open, ready to play, as soon as he burps.  Watching a six-month-old happily roll around in his crib, playing with his toes at 2 am is the pits.  I can’t go to bed because he screams when I leave the room.

 

We all need a nap.

It’s probably teeth.  Which is a short way of saying, “there’s shit-all I can do about it.”

 

Let them eat avocado.

 

Thankfully, Freddie is the third child.  This, too, shall pass.  I hope.