seven and a half

seven and a half, originally uploaded by Hollis Queen.

he's one amazing little unicorn

Sammy in the Sky

sammy in the sky is honest and healing in it's treatment of what the loss of a beloved friend means to children. it's the right book at the right time for our family as we anticipate the departure of our sweet girl casey sometime in the not so distant future. artist illustrator jamie wyeth, son of renowned american master andrew wyeth, matches the mood of barbara walsh's story well with his watercolors. i especially like the obvious nod to mary badham's scout finch wyeth gives the narrator. there's something comforting about having scout along on another journey through the terrifying truths that pepper the adult world. little scout's difficult yet thoughtful path toward understanding the incomprehensible will break your heart all over again.

five alarm burner

I've realized lately that I am raising the human boy equivalent of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. The Dude's comic sensibility and timing are pretty advanced for his age. Let's just say that if he were to POOF! into an episode of That 70's Show, my baby's comments would regularly be punctuated by a backup chorus of "Burn!" a la Michael Kelso. For example, The Dude has taken to sauntering over to grown men and saying, "Hey, man. Nice dress." When he tried it with me I said, "Thanks! I'm a girl so that wasn't insulting." To which he answered, "Oh. Hey, Mom. Nice hairy chest!" Burn!

And though you have to give him credit for being so savvy (and savvy it is, considering his age---however what is savvy at 4 is not so savvy at 13, but he's way ahead of the curve here), it can be obnoxious and we all know it is bound to backfire soon since he is ONLY FOUR and has zero understanding of where and when his gifts are deemed inappropriate.

I don't want to stifle his funny-bone (as if I could) but goddammit! he will eventually be embarrassing me bigtime with this baloney. But then, he is so very entertaining and much of his identity is tied up in how funny he is. So, I am torn. But I guess I'll have to let him hone his skills. He'll realize what boundaries he shouldn't cross sooner or later, like most comedians do. Maybe after he gets punched in the face a few times by kids who don't find him very funny. In the meantime, I'll just sit back and continue giggling with my little Triumph.

2nd Grade Comedian

The Unicorn and I have been reviewing a lot lately to make sure he's prepared for the first day of school on Tuesday. This exchange occurred yesterday, while blowing through some 1st grade flashcards. I think this smartass is ready for school, alright.






Me: (holding up a card that says "CAME")
Unicorn: My girlfriend comes to the Jerk Festival with me.
Me: (laughing) Try again.
Unicorn: OH! My girlfriend came with me to the Jerk Festival.
Me: Good. (holding up a card that says "WILL")
Unicorn: Will you go to the Prom with me? Or shall I say.... Jerk Festival?
Me: Good! (really laughing now and holding up a card that says "FIND")
Unicorn: (shrieks) I can't find the Jerk Festival!

goodbye, summer

so long, summer. you've been good to us this year. thanks for the good times.

seeing through new eyes

I just realized something that should have been obvious to me long ago. Obvious because, after all, I do spend most of my time with The Dude and The Unicorn and I think I know them better than just about anyone. But I guess I don't, because looking at this photo now all I can think is, "How could I have missed understanding which of my children needs more help fortifying his self-confidence?"

I was looking at this photo and thinking about how great it is that The Unicorn (right) is so comfortable in his own skin despite the fact that he is so very different from most kids his age. And even though he's busily bubbling through life unaffected and seemingly unaware of his challenges I find myself super protective of his psyche, terrified that someone will put out that spark he has. Terrified that one day he will lose his fearlessness and the love of life which is such a big part of him. Terrified that one day he will think that being unique is a bad thing.

Then I looked to the other side of the photo at The Dude, my little man of steel. A child overflowing with cool and masculinity, seemingly impervious to pain and famous for his F.U. attitude. I chuckled to myself about how only The Unicorn is holding a balloon in the picture because moments before this photo was taken The Dude had refused to accept a balloon because "balloons are for babies" and then spent the next two hours staring jealously at the bobbing green thing tied safely to The Unicorn's wrist. And then it hit me. The Dude is the one who is actually shy, slower to warm up to people, more anxious when he is the center of attention. The Dude already cares about peer approval and about this or that being too babyfied for him. He's already told me he wouldn't wear a certain shirt because someone might laugh at him. Lightbulb! How did I miss just how much The Dude needs me to be there reminding him not to let anyone (including himself) put out his spark, to make certain that he never forgets how great he is just as he is.

Ugh. Being a mom is hard. All the cliches are true. There is always something new to learn. You never quite have it figured out. You can't parent any two children the same way. Your kids teach you as much about the world as you teach them. Being a parent will help you discover a lot about yourself. The only way to parent effectively is to question yourself and your viewpoint regularly, then adjust as needed. You must grow with your children. And now here's another cliche I've found to be true: Clarity is best achieved using the eyes of an outsider.

I'm so sorry Dude. I missed that catch but I'm back in the game and I won't drop that ball again.

Thinking of having kids? Do this 11 step program first.

Lesson 1
1. Go to the grocery store.
2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home.
4. Pick up the paper.
5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2
Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their...
1. Methods of discipline.
2. Lack of patience.
3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.
4. Allowing their children to run wild.
5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.
*Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3
A really good way to discover how the nights might feel...
1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)
2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
4. Set the alarm for 3AM.
5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.
6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.
7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.
9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)
*Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.

Lesson 4
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out...
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.
4. Then rub them on the clean walls.
5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.
6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5
Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.
1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.
*Time allowed for this - all morning.

Lesson 6
Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don't think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
Leave it there.
2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.
3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7
Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8
1. Hollow out a melon.
2. Make a small hole in the side.
3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.
6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.
*You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9
Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you're thinking What's 'Noggin'?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10
Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying 'mommy' repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each 'mommy'; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11
Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the 'mommy' tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

(i did not write this, but i wish i knew who did. best internet writing find of 2011 so far.)

someone has little brother syndrome

this was filmed about a year ago, on the first day that the unicorn had ever worn heelys. not much has changed in the kids' dynamic since then. actually, have they even changed their clothes since then?

my latest endeavor: fuckyeahtantrums

parenting FAIL

yesterday, as The Unicorn and i were visiting with some neighbor friends, a man on a Segway came gliding down our street, which has never happened before. we see them all the time cruising around downtown near the Canal Walk, but just never before while standing in front of our own home. so naturally i thought, "gee, i bet The Unicorn will think this is cool!" and called attention to it. no way, jose. instead, at the exact moment that the Segway was positioned precisely in front of us and just as the gentleman controlling the contraption waved at my tiny, beaming, beautiful boy-child, The Unicorn yells this: NERD ALERT!!!!
(okay, mom. you were right. there, i said it. i should never have encouraged my children to partake in my all-time favorite past time, drive-by-scene-assessment, even though nothing is cuter than a tiny toddler voice calling out strangers for ridiculosity in short, one or two word statements. )

he grabs life by the balls, people.

it blows my mind that it took so long for this kind of unbridled joie de vivre
to send us to the orthopedic specialist.

the dude, thrill riding, a month past his 2nd birthday
and with broken bits at nearly 4.

Charley Harper at CMoR

Noodle & I swung over to CMoR today to take in the just-opened Charley Harper exhibit. Beguiled by the Wild is on loan from the Virginia Living Museum and on display through October 15th. But I have no idea how you'd know that since the museum has done little to hype what could be a really great asset to their representation of the facility as a "museum" and not as a playground. I found out about the exhibit quite by accident while nosing around the register as I was waiting for someone to check us in last week. Even within CMoR itself, there are no signs advertising the event. Seriously, none of the parents I spoke with at CMoR today had any idea the Harper show is currently hanging in a room just off the main lobby of the museum. Which is such a shame....especially in a city that houses a renowned art school. VCU's graphic design students should be required to view the show, but I doubt they even know it is in town.

The Dude and I were the only folks in the room for extended periods of time during each of our visits to the exhibit today. Which was great for us, but really just made me bummed out because the collection is really cool and nobody is seeing it. Noodle definitely dug the art and had a story to tell about each piece he viewed. Harper's minimal realism translates well with children, who also seem to share his innate ability to simplify the complex in their own art.


The exhibit's interactive art stations make the experience more child friendly and the art easier to discuss with younger children. See the otter? What shape is his head? And his body? A rubbing station gives kids the chance to make their own Harper "prints" to take home and a tabletop filled with tangram pieces encourages young artists to make their own art using simple forms. The Dude had a great time using the tangram pieces to recreate the animals in Harper's work and got frustrated as hell by the alphabet puzzle.

So, now you know about the Charley Harper show on display in Richmond. My job here is done. Please do yourself a favor and go see it.

eating animals

The Dude: (pondering the B&B Seafood Crab Shack on Williamsburg Rd.) Momma? Why do people eat crabs?

Me: (gasp! finally! a vegetarian teaching moment! how do i handle this?) Well, because humans are at the top of the food chain. People can choose to eat animals or not to eat animals.

The Dude: (peering up through his too-long bangs, head slightly tilted in full-on pondering mode) Oh. Mommy? I wanna eat a horse.

Me: *sigh*

AWOL

i've been absent from Blogger recently. i've been crushing on Tumblr. i'm digging tumblr's clean lines, simplicity, and ease of use. i'm not abandoning this blog, just planning on using it diefferently in the future. stay tuned. in the meantime, you can find me here.

summertime music

fostering an understanding of friendship

i've been pondering a lot in the past few days about friendship preferences. we've reached a new stage in my kids' lives. they've begun decide who they do and do not wish to have as friends. as parents, we want our kids to enjoy the company of other kids....kids they know from school, from the neighborhood, random playground playmates, and children of our close friends. but after a certain age, our children begin showing preferences in choosing who they wish to spend time with as well as voicing who they no longer want to have as a buddy. knowing this, when is the right time to allow your child to decide against seeing certain kids socially? for me, the answer is this: as soon as your kid is old enough to articulate the WHY.

before this shift occurred, it was easy to plan get-togethers and play dates around which moms and dads the mister and i wanted to hang with. the kids, we figured, would just be kids and play happily with any other small humans, and as parents we'd simply chalk personality clashes and disputes over toys and whatnot as age-appropriate behavior.

however, lately, i've seen our kids on both sides of the to-friend-or-not-to-friend dynamic. the unicorn plays better and enjoys himself more with certain kids as does the dude. then there are kids who don't appreciate one or both of my kids' ways of doing things. whatever. we just limit togetherness with those kids to little contact and hope that over time things will even out and playing together can resume. there's no sense in setting our kids up for hurt feelings caused by being shunned by someone they consider a friend.

and when it happens in reverse, when one child (or both children) tell you they no longer want to be around certain playmates, what can you do but respect their choice? by ignoring a child's concerns we run the risk of injuring the trust we've been busily building with them since birth. if we ignore their feelings, we only condition them not to come to us for support and guidance---and there's no way i'll risk that.

i'm not saying that the first time your kid comes to you complaining of being treated unfairly or feels snubbed or isn't getting enough time with the coveted toy of the moment you jump in and protect your kid by pulling him away from the play date. that solves nothing. children learn valuable social skills through playmate interaction. give and take, turn-taking, consideration for other peoples feelings, fairness, self-expression, cooperation...the list goes on and on. a parent's role in helping the young child forge friendships is to set our kids up for success, not failure, and to be there to help them try again when they do encounter setbacks.

so my game plan is this: to continue truly listening when my kid expresses how a particular friend makes him feel, in hopes that understanding and perspective is all he needs to keep the friendship intact. but when appropriate, support and respect his decision to not continue the friendship. as adults, we know that friendships are selective by nature, so why should it be any different for our children? there are so many ways to begin exploring the understanding of what being a good friend means. but it is equally important to recognize the natural happiness that comes with finding real friendship when you see it, and knowing when you don't.

i see the funniest shit in my front yard.

cause if you stay with us you're gonna be pretty kooky too

thanks for staying in our lover's story.
cause we believe in you.
david bowie....kooks

What to Do? Review: CMOR Short Pump

Yesterday, The Unicorn and I ventured deep into the darkest depths of Richmond's suburbia to check out the Richmond Childrens Museum's new Short Pump location.


The space itself is very Short-Pumpy, a fluorescent lighting filled retail space located within the heart of one of those a pre-fab "town center" areas cropping up across America at the moment in an attempt to make suburbanites feel less like they are missing out on a rich cultural life by their choosing to hunker down in little boxes all the same.





Unlike Downtown Richmond's CMOR, the new location caters mainly to parents of very young children. All areas of activity stress the importance of play-based learning and parental encouragement. The neat and tidy main room contains all of the basic areas of interest to kids under the age of 6: a water play area, a dress-up stage, a small & safe pirate ship to climb, a "sandbox," a small playground, as well as a special area for kids under age 2, and an electric ride-on train. Electric ride-on train? Yup. It departs every half hour, giving 3-4 minute rides for around 15 minutes, which is genius. If they didn't make it stop service periodically, the kids would want to do little else. Plus, its a great way to teach kids about waiting in line and taking turns.

All this is great for the preschool set, but children over the age of 8 appeared to be bored to death, spending their time in the well-stocked art studio when they weren't sulking near their parents and begging to go home.

Moms, Dads...prepare your older child for what's in store before you take them. Nothing can ruin your outing like a bored kid with a chip on his or her shoulder. Talk up the art studio and if they aren't into it, leave your big kid at home. Trust me.



But for kids under the age of 6, and especially for parents of multiple children in that age range, the new CMOR is brilliant. Because the entire museum is contained within one large room, children are easier to keep track of---which is handy dandy if your kids are like mine and always split up on you the minute you enter a public place. Kids were visibly enthused by the ability to bounce from activity to activity without hovering parents making sure they stay close or stay right beside siblings. We were there for over two hours and I didn't ever hear a panicked mother or father searching for a lost kid....and I see that all the time in places you'd least expect, like every time I go for groceries at Kroger. To me, this is the real selling point of the new location. Freedom is fun, and the kids were drinking it up.

perfect music for summer driving

thank you, danielle, for putting this on your last mix.