A Day at the DeYoung

Well, we had a horrendous day yesterday. Lupe is going through some sort of growth spurt or developmental change or teething or something, and was just super fussy, not letting me put him down, and never sleeping for more than 20 minutes at a time. Unfortunately, when this happens, it's Ruby who gets the short end of the stick. Yet, yesterday she was fantastic. She never really melted down from the lack of attention, and she just kept hanging around, waiting for me to be done dealing with him.

I tried to let her know how much I appreciated that she was so good and patient. So, I let her decide what we were going to do today, and to my surprise, she chose the museum. I had thought that it would be the zoo. Unfortunately, the Museum of modern Art is closed on Wednesdays, but the DeYoung, which is in Golden Gate Park and in some ways maybe a better choice for her, since even though the art isn't as good, the setting is better for kids.

In any case, the outing was meant as a reward for her, and since i had the camera and the sun was blazing so brightly, I took a bunch of pictures...

He is actually looking at me as I was holding the camera low.

I like both the the bit of hair sticking down from under the hat, and the drop of drool on the chin.

Love this, just wish the buckle wasn't there in the background.

I can't remember what she was saying, but it looks like instructions of some sort.

Pensive, glowing Ruby.

She is really into treating random inanimate objects like precious babies. Here it is a pen cap she had just found on the ground. I like the shadows and lines, though.

She was very excited about her "outfit" since although I know that she had heard and used the word before, she really understood the concept for the fist time today.

Taking a nap in the shade of art...

Compliments

By far, the most comments and compliments from random people as we tool around town relate to Ruby's hair. She turned around just as I was taking the picture, so I inadvertently got a good one of what everyone seems to love...

Short Story

I was going to call my mom to relate this little conversation that just happened right now, but I left my cellphone at a restaurant, so here it is.

I was just changing Lupe, while Ruby hovered around us. She started talking about how his belly button matches hers. Then she said, "He's white!"
Of course, I said "he's very white."
To which she rejoined, "I'm white too, just like my brother. And you're white, too."
I started laughing and said, "that's true."
Then she screamed, "everybody's white!"
I then asked, "what about Nana?"

She looked up at me and thought for a second before saying proudly, "Nana is brown."

p.s. and another quick one; as we are getting ready to leave for the museum, she is always allowed to bring one toy on any excursion, so she decides to bring a purse, then starts filling it. She tells me she's bringing the blue purse for the fifth time and I absent-mindedly ask "what did you put in it?"
She looks inside and says "all sorts of stuff."

Subscribing

I still haven't figured out how you can get an email when I put up new posts, but I have figured out how to add a list of the most recent posts to a google or yahoo desktop or other rss feeder.

If you use one of these and want to have a little reminder for new posts, look to the right, and under "Subscribe to The Basement" choose whatever feed thing you use in the "Posts" dropdown menu.

An article on the Mommy Wars

Kelly, or sorry, Tia Kelly, is part of a Mother's Group that has had a great idea; since they are all mothers and therefore don't have time to really read, they have started to give their discussions structure by reading articles instead of books. She's been sending me some of them, which are really interesting for someone in my position. The latest is this one, and right off the bat, this caught my eye,

one Harvard-grad-turned-stay-at-home-mom, [writes] on the subject of her days: "I dance and sing and play the guitar and listen to NPR. I write letters to my family, my congressional representatives, and to newspaper editors. My kids and I play tag and catch, we paint, we explore, we climb trees and plant gardens together. We bike instead of using the car. We read, we talk, we laugh. Life is good. I never dust."

Well, I could describe my days in much the same way, but as you know if you've been reading the previous posts, I wouldn't. We do do all sorts of great and fun-sounding things, and Ruby's behavior in these last few weeks has made our days so much more enjoyable (or less terrible, depending on my perspective at the moment). I have nothing if not an abundance of creative ideas, including tons of ideas for fun ways we could be passing our days.

There is a problem, though. If I had my way, our week might look something like this:

Monday: Breakfast at the cafe! Off to the playground with the prettiest moms. After nap, we go by the thrift store in search of treasure, then a quick pint at the local brewery.
Tuesday: Farmer's Market, and perhaps a ferry ride. After nap, fun with food, cooking together finding creative ways to use the fruits and veggies that came in the CSA box last Thursday.
Wednesday: Art project day! Make a book, or paint the doll house we built last month, etc. After nap, we pull out all the musical instruments or build elaborate boats or trains out of pillows.
Thursday: I go to work, Natasha packs in way too much stuff for one day.
Friday: Museum day! or the zoo, or storytime at the library. After nap, play date with juice for the kids and beer for the adults.

Unfortunately, Ruby would be reduced to nothing more than a fleshy tantrum by mid week if we were to actually attempt this kind of pace. She needs structure, with at least a couple of mornings a week of what is most comfortable to her and most interminable to me; unstructured, Ruby-centric, Ruby-directed play at home. Invariably, at some point, I can't take it anymore (much like this mom) and I start doing something non-Ruby-centric, which will inevitably lead to a meltdown of some form or another if it lasts too long. Too long, of course, is arbitrarily determined by her mood. Might be an hour. Might be two and a half minutes.

And then there is the fact that there will be enough tantrums and crying and whining on some days to make even the most fun sounding activity (The Zoo! Storytime! Boat ride!) end up becoming a stressful, tortuous odyssey that tries our patience, our love, our capacities for empathy, as well as our ability to function at all as a loving and supportive family. You know, the day when you say something that makes you think, "oh crap, did I really just say that? How the fuck did I end up being that dad? How did this happen?".

The quote above leaves all of this out. It makes parenting sound idyllic and inspiring at all times, in every single moment. I'm not saying that it isn't, just that it certainly isn't at all times. For me, at least.

Ah, well. I could go on, but Ruby just said, "Papi, Papi, Papi look at this!" for what very well may be the third time while Lupe moans because, in spite of his best efforts, he only seems capable of moving himself farther away from that coveted toy laying on the floor before him...

Nana Comes to Visit

I know it's been a while, but here are some pictures...

Ruby LOVES brewer's yeast, and will put it on just about anything. Her favorite pasta sauce is currently butter and brewer's yeast. Yummmmm

Fuzzy headed boy

Wine tasting with Papi

Being such the little girly girl

Just doin' his part

Mommy enjoying some sun in Sonoma

No caption necessary

Kids say the darndest things

Well, the kids that speak, anyway. And, sometimes, the ones that speak do things that are even crazier than what they say. We bought a new phone recently, so Ruby got to have the old one. Just a garden variety, run of the mill cordless phone. In spite of the fact that she has five baby dolls and about twenty other assorted stuffed animals, she decided that the phone was a baby, and that the cradle was it's bed. She started carrying it around lovingly, mimicking the way we carry Lupe. Then, a couple of nights ago, I go to check on her after she has fallen asleep, only to find that she is very gently and lovingly holding the phone in her arms as she sleeps, as though it were the most precious baby in the whole wild world.

I really, really wish now that I had taken a picture.

Plain old update

So, back to the kids…

The boy has graduated to the high chair, even though he hasn’t started eating food yet. Yesterday I put him in it while I was doing the dishes, and Ruby helpfully brought over every single toy he owns and dumped them onto the tray. He flailed about, knocking each item off onto the floor until he was left with just a couple that he then pushed out of his reach.

Repeat. Until the dishes were done. At the end of four days together, I was thankful that Ruby was particularly angelic yesterday. I think that the new parenting techniques are actually beginning to pay off. In addition to the positive reinforcement stuff, I have also been steadfastly ignoring her when she cries because she isn’t getting something she wants (whether it’s actually something or to do something or for me to do something). It’s been hard, because it’s been a lot of crying and screaming, and it’s really hard not to get frustrated. But the whole point, of course, is to not reward the screaming with any attention at all, so I give her much less attention than I normally would, and even try to be effusive with it when she isn’t crying.

But she is incredibly stubborn, and obviously can’t be expected to be fully in control of her emotions at this tender age. But, I can reinforce dealing with those emotions in certain ways, and so…I let her scream and don’t react, and she is starting, I think, to change her behavior.

I hope, at least...