my hero

in case you didn't get a chance to see this on PBS friday, i've copied it for you here:

May 2, 2008

BILL MOYERS:Welcome to the Journal.

I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam, "Who's telling the truth over there?" "Everyone, he said. "Everyone sees what's happening through the lens of their own experience." That's how people see Jeremiah Wright. In my conversation with him on this broadcast a week ago and in his dramatic public appearances since, he revealed himself to be far more complex than the sound bites that propelled him onto the public stage. Over 2000 of you have written me about him, and your opinions vary widely. Some sting: "Jeremiah Wright is nothing more than a race-hustling, American hating radical," one viewer wrote. A "nut case," said another. Others were far more were sympathetic to him.

Many of you have asked for some rational explanation for Wright's transition from reasonable conversation to shocking anger at the National Press Club. A psychologist might pull back some of the layers and see this complicated man more clearly, but I'm not a psychologist. Many black preachers I've known — scholarly, smart, and gentle in person — uncorked fire and brimstone in the pulpit. Of course I've known many white preachers like that, too.

But where I grew up in the south, before the civil rights movement, the pulpit was a safe place for black men to express anger for which they would have been punished anywhere else; a safe place for the fierce thunder of dignity denied, justice delayed. I think I would have been angry if my ancestors had been transported thousands of miles in the hellish hole of a slave ship, then sold at auction, humiliated, whipped, and lynched. Or if my great-great grandfather had been but three-fifths of a person in a constitution that proclaimed, "We the people." Or if my own parents had been subjected to the racial vitriol of Jim Crow, Strom Thurmond, Bull Connor, and Jesse Helms. Even so, the anger of black preachers I've known and heard about and reported on was, for them, very personal and cathartic.

That's not how Jeremiah Wright came across in those sound bites or in his defiant performances this week. What white America is hearing in his most inflammatory words is an attack on the America they cherish and that many of their sons have died for in battle ? forgetting that black Americans have fought and bled beside them, and that Wright himself has a record of honored service in the Navy. Hardly anyone took the "chickens come home to roost" remark to convey the message that intervention in the political battles of other nations is sure to bring retaliation in some form, which is not to justify the particular savagery of 9/11 but to understand that actions have consequences. My friend Bernard Weisberger, the historian, says, yes, people are understandably seething with indignation over Wright's absurd charge that the United States deliberately brought an HIV epidemic into being. But it is a fact, he says, that within living memory the U.S. Public Health Service conducted a study that deliberately deceived black men with syphilis into believing that they were being treated, while actually letting them die for the sake of a scientific test. Does this excuse Wright's anger? His exaggerations or distortions? You'll have to decide or yourself. At least it helps me to understand the why of them.

But in this multimedia age the pulpit isn't only available on Sunday mornings. There's round the clock media — the beast whose hunger is never satisfied, especially for the fast food with emotional content. So the preacher starts with rational discussion and after much prodding throws more and more gasoline on the fire that will eventually consume everything it touches. He had help — people who for their own reasons set out to conflate the man in the pulpit who wasn't running for president with the man in the pew who was.

Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering Catholic-bashing Texas preacher who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee's delusions, or thinks AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right. After 9/11 Jerry Falwell said the attack was God's judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.

Jon Stewart recently played a tape from the Nixon White House in which Billy Graham talks in the oval office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he knows in his heart that they are undermining America. This is crazy; this is wrong -- white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren't.

Which means it is all about race, isn't it? Wright's offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He doesn't fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone's neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettle some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship. We are often exposed us to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen anything like this ? this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner before our very eyes. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said "beware the terrible simplifiers".

abundance

inside our refrigerator sits half a quart of red delicious strawberries. they've been on sale at the grocery store for the last few weeks. i love strawberries. they have been one of my top favorite foods since i was a very small child. i'm not going to eat the strawberries in the fridge tonight, though i surely want to. i have some chocolate sitting on the spice shelf that would go nicely with those juicy, slightly tart, beauties. no, i am not going to eat them. i'm not going to eat them because cosmo also loves strawberries. we have such a hard time getting him to eat enough, and he gets excited about fruit of any kind, especially berries. i just don't have the heart to eat them, when i know how happy he will be to see them in the morning.



it's part of the mythology of motherhood that we make sacrifices for our children. mom always serves herself last at the dinner table, claims to like the parts of the chicken with the least meat (so the rest of the family can have the best pieces) etc...i haven't really experienced this aspect of motherhood myself. i was completely ready to have cosmo when i did, i have no regrets, or resentments. i embrace the changes in my lifestyle that resulted from becoming a parent. it feels to me like everything got better when cosmo came along. i also haven't really noticed the extra cost of having a child, or at least not as much as i was warned i would. as i said, cosmo doesn't eat much. sure, i am more likely to by high quality, organic, hormone-free dairy and eggs, whole grain cereals and breads for cosmo, and of course, those things are more costly. he does grow out of clothes rather quickly. but between gifts, hand-me-downs, goodwill, yard sales and children's resale, we don't spend much on his clothes. i'm aware that as they get older, the costs increase, but so far, i feel like the gain far out-weighs the cost. in fact, there is no way to measure it (the gain).

in other words, i'm not a martyr-type mom. and yet, i almost never eat bananas anymore. i know i always used to. i lived alone for most of my adult life. i bought bananas every week, and they never went bad. i ate them. i like them. what's not to like? they're healthy, sweet, filling, easy to deal with. but now, i don't eat bananas. cosmo usually eats two of them before he even gets out of bed in the morning. he'll eat a few more throughout the day. carl has a banana for breakfast, as a late morning ritual. we buy 12 or more at a time, almost daily! we have been known to make trips to the store, just for bananas (and maybe half and half). i don't usually eat them, because i want to make sure there are enough for cosmo and carl. it is a strange feeling. i'm not used to it--this whole "caring for others before one's self" it's new to me. i think i like it. maybe even more than strawberries.

last week cosmo and i picked violets to put in our salad. there were plenty of those, and i ate my fill. so did cosmo.

how does YOUR garden grow?

cosmo is helping me in the garden. we were getting ready to sow some seeds in a salad box, and i was listing what we might plant. the conversation went something like this--

me: spinach...
cosmo: spinatch...
me: lettuce...
cosmo: lettut...
me: maybe some onions?
cosmo: maybe so'onons?
me: and...what else should we plant?
cosmo: coyotes...

he said it like it was part of the list, with the same intonation, as if it were just another seed to plant. i started cracking up, and couldn't imagine how he'd come up with that. he must have overheard carl and i joking around earlier about using coyote piss to scare off rabbits...

springtime song

cosmo works on a favorite rhyme.

happy easter

six word memoir

robin at the other mother tagged me with a meme. the assignment is as follows: tell your life story in 6 words. i often fantasize about writing a memoir. i keep lugging around those boxes of old journals, correspondence, date books, and other precious mementos. i call it my archive, and always justify hanging onto it by claiming, i'll need all of it for my memoirs. a couple of things keep me from doing it. one, it is a big scary project. i often take on big scary projects, but i rarely get very far with them. and now, since the recent hullabaloo about "fraudulent" memoirs, i also worry about people poking around to fact-check. some of the stories from my life are hard to believe. "verification" could be tricky.

but here i have the chance to start it, and to complete it tonight. very satisfying. it was harder that i thought it would be. below is what i settled on:

if
only
i
could
forgive
myself.



the six word memoir rules are:

1. write your own six word memoir.
2. post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.
3. link to the person that tagged you in your post.
4. tag five more blogs with links.
5. leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

i tag:
michael
texta
dodaddy
kate
le binky bitch

sleep, again

the last time i wrote about cosmo and sleep, i believe i was bragging about how he falls asleep on his own, in his room, with the door shut. that lasted a few months. at some point, having us outside of his room became a focus that prevented him from just relaxing and falling asleep. he would keep calling to us, asking us to put the covers over him. so one of us would go in, put them back on, say good-night, and leave the room. he'd kick the covers off again, and call out for covers. if it wasn't covers, it was something else. he kept getting up, and then getting upset, so finally i just decided he'd get to sleep faster if i just went ahead and laid down next to him. we have been doing that for a while now. sometimes carl does it, mostly it is me. the other night it seemed to take forever for him to fall asleep, and i found myself feeling impatient, frustrated and resentful. so, we decided that meant something needed to change. our ultimate goal for bedtime goes something like this: bath, teeth-brushing, pajamas, stories, kisses and hugs, light out, carl and i leave the room and go about our business around the house, cosmo lies in bed awake for a while, talks to himself, sings (when he is older, reads), and then falls asleep on his own. i don't want him to be dependent on our presence in order to fall asleep.

so, we are always working towards that ultimate goal. last night, i let him know ahead of time that we would be trying something different at bedtime. i told him i wasn't going to lie down with him. it seemed to help, because he had no problem with it when the time came. i stayed in the room, but sat near the door. he said a few things, asked for covers, then pulled them up himself. he settled down quickly, and fell asleep in about 15 minutes. tonight went exactly the same. let us hope this trend lasts.

spring fresh

the wonderful thing about living in a place with seasons is that just as you are beginning to tire of the way things are, they change. august and september were really hot and unbearable. then, autumn winds blew in, the air turned crisp, leaves fell off the trees. snow is beautiful and fun to play in, but the cold gets old too. i'd been getting a bad case of cabin fever, and then...miraculously, signs of spring start popping up around the yard. we've had some warm days this week, spending more time outside. the park was absolutely mobbed with people yesterday afternoon. we all had the same idea: what a gorgeous day, let's go play!

i thought spring might be a good time to give my blog a new look. i've wanted to customize it since the day i started it. today, i finally took the plunge. the header image is from one of cosmo's water colors. i still hope to do some tweaking, but i am happy to have made the changes.

i also started a garden blog.
enjoy.

equation

one little yellow bouncy ball +
one rather narrow kitchen +
one two year old boy =
SO MUCH FUN!



he played this non-stop for a good 30 minutes (which is the equivalent of hours in toddler time),
and his excitement did not wane. i tried, in this video, to capture his funky leg moves as he chased the ball across the floor, but some things just don't translate.

what did you do with your extra day?

i was hoping to write something up about leap day. about how, for the last leap day, some friends and fellow activists and i attempted to organize a public-space reclamation project by making art, sharing music and food, engaging in guerrilla gardening, and gathering without a permit in a little sliver of a city park in the heart of houston's montrose district. about how it rained cats and dogs for the entire day, and still, a few dozen folks turned out and gave it their best, and how my life was forever transformed by the experience--and how i have reason to believe i wasn't the only one.

on this leap day, however, after spending a quite lovely and relaxing day with my little family, i find that i have definitely come down with the respiratory cold/flu bug that's been going around, and i'm pissed because i already had a cold this season, and now i have days of feeling run down and snotty ahead of me, and so, i just don't feel much like writing.

hope yours was good.

crank it

i have blogged about making pasta before. we haven't done it in awhile, not sure why exactly, since it is pretty easy, and very tasty. i decided to make some sunday. after i got the dough ready, and was setting up the hand-crank machine, cosmo came in and wanted to "see."



i showed him how to crank the handle, and he really got it, so we let him try it with the dough. he did great! he stood up there on that stool and cranked for 30 passes of rolling, plus 6 passes with the cutters. it was a lot of work, and he did all of it. all we did was guide the dough, and hang it up.

we don't have the elegant hanging area that we did at our old place, so we had to resort to hanging the noodles in the bathroom, which worked fine, and cosmo thought it was pretty funny.


he seemed really proud of his work, though sadly, he didn't eat much of the cooked noodles.

(BTW he's wearing pajamas in these photos because he was a little under the weather, and hadn't been out all day)

that's where

in an earlier post i mused about where a maple cutting board might hide. i stumbled upon it a couple of nights ago, in the closet where the furnace lives, which kind of doubles (triples?) as an overflow pantry and broom closet. i had put it up there, months ago, to hold a bowl of rising bread dough, because it seemed like the warmest place in the house. of course, upon removing the bowl of dough, i completely forgot that i had ever used the cutting board for this ingenious purpose, and when searching for it, i know i looked in that closet, but i guess i didn't look up.

i still have not recovered that jar of honey though...

what i don't say

i've been thinking about the way i write on this blog, what i write about, and, more specifically, what i don't write about. i don't mention the fact that both of us will be unemployed come june, and that we don't have a solid plan. i don't write about how complicated it is to deal with cosmo's biological father, and how conflicted i feel every time cosmo and i leave carl to go visit him and his family. i rarely write about my political convictions, how disturbed i am (on a daily basis) by the war in iraq, and the many crimes of the bush administration. i haven't mentioned who i plan to vote for in our primary in may. the blog is focussed on cosmo, and on being a mom, but i don't share my thoughts on the really heavy parts of motherhood, either.

in general, i hesitate to get too personal. i guess i am still getting used to the public nature of blogging. i actually don't mind much what strangers reading this might think of me, but i do care about what my friends think, and i have a hard time being open and vulnerable, in the same way, with anyone who knows me, who might be reading this blog. i don't know if i want everyone to know how insecure i feel about the thought of pursuing a career (finally) in architecture, and what a struggle it is for me to begin to put together a portfolio of my work. it is hard to admit that i still haven't lost the extra "baby weight," and how jealous i am of my friends who have. i don't like to expose how judgmental i can be about others (especially other parents) or my issues with comparative self-esteem.



i've kept a journal since i was 13 years old. for 27 years, writing has kept me sane, and helped me work through many difficult emotions and circumstances. but journal writing is private. and i still haven't worked out what it means to share my journal with the world. in fact, i can't do that. i still keep a journal, but it rarely makes it to the blog.

what's funny is that i find that the blogs i enjoy reading the most are the ones that dare to get personal. i want to hear the rants and complaints and self-effacing humor. it can make for really interesting reading. of course, it can also be tedious and self-indulgent. maybe that is what i fear?

i'd love to hear from others on this topic (whether you blog or not).

from the mouths of babes'

all three of us went through the cold cycle in recent weeks, which means there was a lot of coughing and sneezing. since we habitually "bless" cosmo any time he sneezes, he learned to say "bless you" to us too. however, when cosmo says "bless you" it comes out "bock you" which is hilarious, but doesn't sound quite like a blessing.

bock you too, cosmo.

my bragging post

let's start with me.
i discovered that i can patch wool sweaters with felt! it is so easy, and looks pretty good. i don't knit, so i've never been able to repair knitted clothing before. now, using the simple needle-felting technique, i've patched my favorite wool sweater, a friend's wool gloves and carl's "ol' greeny." it is not a perfect patch, but it looks better than a hole. it feels great to give these treasured items another life. here's a before and after:



next, there's carl.
carl gave a public talk at IU last week, as a visiting professor in the history and philosophy of science department. our neighbor babysat so i could go the the colloquium. carl was great. i was able to follow along through details of 6th century christian philosophy, and he made it interesting and compelling to listen to. he's really good at what he does. i can see why his students get so psyched about aristotle, or the history of skepticism. it was fun to see him up there being carl, talking like carl does, about things we don't normally talk about.

finally, cosmo.
besides being incredibly sweet-spirited almost all of the time, he has also learned his whole alphabet! he doesn't really sing the ABC song yet, but he has known all 26 letters since some time before xmas. the motivation came from him. he's been very interested in letters for a long time (maybe it was our fridge magnets, or sesame street?), and now he can identify and name each one consistently. his current favorite letter is W. he finds letters everywhere, and when we are reading, he'll point out all the letters in a word, and then say the word, but only if he already knows what it is, like YELLOW, or BLUE in a book about colors. still, i like to call it pre-reading. he's known his basic shapes and colors for a long time now. he really likes triangles, and will make the shape with his fingers. in my last post, i said that blue was cosmo's favorite color, but lately he seems really into gray (must be an architect's child). he can count to thirteen, though he often tries to skip over 5. he wants to count everything. i'm very impressed with all this, because it is not something i expected. when he showed an interest, of course we nurtured it, but it just seems to be something he is into. he also enjoys jigsaw puzzles, and anything involving searching and matching.

ok. i'll stop bragging now.

some/thing blue

this is the last in the some/thing blog party series, and mine has focused on toys.



i got the idea to make a bean bag game for sylvan for his birthday, and i let cosmo try it out first. he enjoyed it so much, i made one for him. i painted the box all blue, because it is cosmo's favorite color. he likes it, but gets frustrated if he can't get the bean bag in the hole every single time.

carl and i have much more patience. we have had several tournaments of our own in the evenings after cosmo has gone to bed. first one to get 21 wins, but you have to win by 2. it is challenging, and surprisingly fun for us. something about the bean bag, it just feels good in the hand. cosmo always asks us to "opent it" because he loves to play with dried beans.

i have really enjoyed participating in this series. it has pushed me to post daily, and i've checked out a lot of the other participating blogs. hats off to robin at the other mother, for such a great idea.

some/thing borrowed

day three in robin's party, which, by the way, is in celebration of "freedom to marry week."

a couple of weeks ago we babysat our next door neighbor sylvan for part of an afternoon. it was the day after his third birthday, and so he brought over one of the presents he got: two toy monster trucks. cosmo and sylvan played with them a bit, and even had a little squabble over one of them, but ultimately sylvan was more interested in exploring cosmo's toy collection, so they were put aside. when sylvan's dad picked him up, they accidentally left them behind.

later that night, after cosmo was in bed, carl and i found ourselves setting up ramps with books, revving up the trucks and letting them loose to collide into each other. they are not the kind of toys i'd think to get for cosmo, but boy, did we have fun with them! these things are light and springy, with rubber tires, they climb walls and flip and crash.

it must have fulfilled some lost childhood fantasy of mine. i wasn't a super girly-girl as a child, but i didn't really play with cars and trucks much. i remember one time, getting a hold of a metal pick-up truck of my brother's, and playing with it all over the living room floor for hours. it sticks in my mind as this wonderful memory of discovering that something i wasn't used to playing with, that belonged in the domain of boys, could be really enjoyable. i've always carried around a slight feeling of regret, that i didn't do it again. well, not until my late twenties, when i worked construction and got to drive around a real live bobcat skid loader in the mud once in while.

we reluctantly returned the monster trucks to sylvan the next day.

some/thing new

the second installment for robin's some/thing blog party.

one of the gifts cosmo got for his belated xmas was a little people zoo. he got it from the same aunt who gave him a little people garage last year. the zoo is part of the next level in the fisher price collection, i guess, which means it has "educational value." there are 26 animals, each with a letter printed somewhere on its body. it comes with a mat, and various molded plastic zoo props. printed on the mat is a path with each of the letters of the alphabet, and a picture of the animal. when you press the A spot on the mat, it says "A" then, " Alligator begins with A" if you press it again, it makes an alligator sound. for animals that don't make recognizable sounds, like giraffes, there is a munching sound, or, for the x-ray fish, swishing water. there is also an image of water on the pad, which makes a splash sound when pressed.



my complaints about this toy are many. first of all, the design flaws: 1) most of the animals do not fit into the little alcoves carved out in the zoo structures (the jaguar, the one exception, is pictured above, peeking out of the "tree"). 2) if you line up all the animals in order, on the path on the pad, they barely fit, and it is almost impossible to use the animal itself (as intended) to press the button. this leads to mild frustration for two year olds. 3)the plastic waterfall is almost useless. animals don't slide down it in a satisfying way, and though it kind of opens, and animals can drop down into it, most of them get stuck. annoying. 4)there is a little perch on top of the main structure that opens up, but it's not clear why, and no animal can fit inside. the thing that bothers carl the most is that some animals have other little animals attached to them, but they can't be removed. for instance, there is a bird on top of the hippo, and the penguin has some baby penguins permanently melded to its body. this asinine feature is in keeping with the other little people, who have things like wrenches in their hands, or cell phones, depending on which set they came with.

as xta has already pointed out in her post from last year on the subject of little people, these figures are fat. the animals are chunky and, in my opinion, overly cute and cartoony. they don't teach the child much about animal identification. it's not that i think all representations in a child's world of objects should be realistic. i really appreciate a lot of the abstract and imaginative renderings in many of the children's books we have, and cosmo's favorite plush toy is a piece of toast with arms, legs and a big toothy grin. but i really believe there is more value in playing with animal figures that look like animals instead of marshmallows with smiley faces. case in point: ostrich. one of the most important features of an ostrich, for distinguishing them from many other birds, is their wacky proportions. they have these rather large bodies, stretched out necks, tiny heads, and long skinny legs. not according to fisher price. just take a look at their version of an ostrich. sorry to belabor the point, but an ostrich does not have short chubby legs--by definition!



cosmo has another collection of animal figures that justin gave him last year. they are much more realistic, and cosmo has enjoyed many hours of play with these, and, i'm sure will continue to incorporate them into his "work" for years to come. as a comparison, here is the ostrich from that collection. it looks kind of like an ostrich. weird.



for his part, cosmo likes the little people zoo just fine. in fact, he plays with it a lot. he has tried to put each and every animal into the little tree alcove, and seems sad that only one of them fits inside. he likes the letter aspect of it, because he's into letters right now, and he's enjoyed arranging, directing and pretending with small figures for some time. but i feel certain that he'd like it just as much if the animals looked like...well, animals.

some/thing(s) old

robin at the other mother had an idea for a series of posts she's calling some/thing. anyone who joins in will write a post today about something old, tomorrow on something new, and the next day something borrowed, the final day, something blue. i like the idea of "community blogging," so i'll give it a go.

my series centers on toys.
we celebrated a late christmas, with cosmo's relatives in wichita falls. as usual, cosmo was inundated with new toys. i hate to be ungrateful, but i often don't agree with their choices, and it annoys that they don't consult with me, or if they do, they ignore my suggestions and get him something they think he should have. they all seem to be in competition to get him what will instantly become his "favorite toy." one of his aunts this year was fretting over what to get him, though she had already told me she had some of her old toys she wanted to pass on to cosmo because her daughter wasn't into them. i tried to tell her that those old toys would be perfect, and she should not bother to go out and get something new, but of course she did. i guess she doesn't think it's right to wrap used things in pretty paper. she gave cosmo 3 new toys, beautifully wrapped, and then off to the side, she handed me this cardboard box full of fisher price little people (and accessories) from the 1970's. how could she mistake the real treasure here!?!



cosmo likes all the stuff he got. at first i thought he liked the vintage little people best of all, but now i have to admit that isn't really true. it is true for me. when i hold those small, minimalist renderings of human beings, the guy with the green peg body, and the sort of balding head, i am taken back to my childhood in such a visceral way. it's as if these little bits of plastic are a part of me, due to the countless hours spent imitating and constructing worlds for the characters, in the yellow trim house we had for them. cosmo's aunt gave us items that i didn't have as a child, (a wind up music box ferris wheel, for instance) but they still feel familiar to me. the graphics are the same style as the yellow trim house, and i wouldn't be surprised if one of my friends had some of this stuff. the ferris wheel doesn't work reliably, but it is still a lot of fun, as are the buses, cars, and playground equipment. the buses have strips of thin masonite against the wheel axles, which produce a satisfying rattle, and make the people go "up and down," (just like the bus song). i believe i am even more appreciative of these relics from the past because i truly despise the updated versions of fisher price little people. but i'll save my tirade for tomorrow's post. in the mean time, you can check out what xta has to say on the topic.

cabin fever

since indiana has a proper winter, it is often too cold to spend much time playing outside. cosmo really needs physical activity every day, as i think most kids do. so, we enrolled him in a swim class at the YMCA, which he and i really love. he is learning to relax on his back, blow bubbles, and he paddles his arms and kicks like a pro.



cosmo has also invented his own form of daily exercise: he runs laps around the loop of rooms that we call home. i learned about the power of "broadcasting" from our friend jane, in houston, so i act as the announcer at a race track with the sole contestant being cosmo. i narrate his journey down the hall, round the bend, through the kitchen, across the living room and back to the hall. we sometimes count the laps, he'll often pause to jump over a threshold, plunk a few keys of the piano, or touch the bird poster.




this is a nightly, pre-bath activity, so as he makes his laps, various articles of clothing are removed until he is finally a naked streaker on the track. he loves this part the most, and will just keep running lap after lap, grinning, laughing, wearing himself out. for the final few laps, carl picks him up and he runs in air, "ladies and gentleman, our contestant is now airborne, he can fly! the crowd goes wild!" the whole affair concludes with a splash into the tub.

into the void

...Before I'd traveled half a block
i spied the needle Mother dropped
(mending my dress two nights before--
we'd searched for hours on the floor),
the card that always disappears
(we haven't played Old Maid for years),
pennies I'd carried in my shoes,
the silver dimes I always lose,
bread crusts I'd hidden, hard as wood,
the puzzle pieces gone for good,
things worn or wished on, old or lost,
roses astonished by the frost,
the snails and numbers, stars and sheep
my mother counts to fall asleep...

from The Tale I Told Sasha by Nancy Willard

we always seem to be losing things: a couple of cosmo's DVDs, countless marbles, mittens and socks, carl's favorite wool sweater "Ol' Greeny," which we eventually found. for a while, a Microphone's album was missing from it's jacket, but we discovered it later in another record sleeve. some of these things are obviously easy to lose, but a jar of honey? most puzzling is the medium-sized maple wood cutting board, which has been missing for a month. it's a small house, with not a lot of nooks and crannies, and we have searched every conceivable place it could be, on numerous occasions. where does a cutting board hide?

harmonious

cosmo spontaneously grabbed the harmonica as he took to the keys today. this was my favorite of the clips i shot.

if you haven't already, you can see more videos here.

downward frog

cosmo put these frogs in the downward-facing dog pose. it is one of his favorites. he puts his playmobile figures in this pose sometimes too.

cookie doh

as some of you know, i struggle with nostalgia. i am aware of its dangers, and i know to be suspicious of it when it pops up. but sometimes, i cave in. and having a child allows me to indulge in certain behaviors i had shunned in a previous time. things like celebrating xmas, for example. with cosmo i find that i want to recreate the warm and wonderful parts of my childhood. when i was pregnant, one of the first things i did was order children's books on ebay, from parent's magazine press from the 1960's and 70' s. books i had as a child. i also purchased a bunch of cookie cutters from a yard sale one saturday, with tish and michael, when i was 8 months pregnant. i was dreaming of making sugar cookies with my child, like i had with my mom. last year, i made cookies and crackers with those cookie cutters, and i just couldn't wait 'til the day when i could do this with cosmo.

that day came today. he helped every step of the way. he broke the egg into the dough, and offered to taste test throughout the process. he said he was scared of the mixer, but he didn't really act scared. he stuck with me. we put the dough in the fridge while he took his nap, and i told him as he was laying down that we'd be making cookies when he got up. the first thing he said when he woke up, rubbing his eyes, was "cookies." so we went right to it. i rolled out the dough, and he and i cut out the shapes, and put them on the cookie sheet. he has a stool to climb up on to see what we are up to in the kitchen, and he always wants to be in on it. he'll start dragging the stool over to the counter, saying "see! see!" he really loves to watch popcorn popping through the glass lid.



cosmo, naturally, loved the cookies, but he practices moderation, and we still have some left. i'm pretty sure he liked the process of making them.
for me, it was a dream come true.

white christmas

like last year, we traveled to denver to visit carl's family. we woke up on xmas morning to a fresh blanket of snow. it was so beautiful, and the snow kept falling for most of the day. cosmo helped carl shovel the driveway, and we did a little sledding in the street.

dominoes

cosmo kept saying "da-no" for dominoes, and we were getting confused, so i tried to teach him how to say the word. here's how it went...

mama: cosmo, say "dah"
cosmo: dah!
mama: ok, say "me"
cosmo: me!
mama: good, now say "no"
cosmo: no!
mama: great, now say "dah me no"
cosmo: mommy no!

funny how those words just roll off the tongue...

making marks

i've been giving cosmo more opportunities to express himself visually. we have a nice space in the workshop for him to paint, and in the house he works with markers, chalk and crayons. one day last week his drawing took a dramatic turn. he went from large open swirly-type gestures, to making small careful shapes and slow lines. i think it was a one-off, i haven't seen him draw quite like that since, but it was really interesting. maybe these examples demonstrate what i'm saying. the one on the left is typical of what cosmo does with markers.

musgrave love

our farmer's market is closed for the season, but they had a special scaled down version out at musgrave orchard just a few miles from town. we drove out on a frosty morning to check it out. there wasn't much produce available, (compared to the regular market) but it was nice to visit the orchard. we took home a bag of apples and i made this pie.



it was possibly the best pie i have ever tasted.

"two"

cosmo turned two on the day after thanksgiving. he was thrilled to have his beloved uncles ch. and h. visiting from houston. carl made his now-famous-pumpkin-bread in a cake pan, and we topped it with whipped cream and a few blueberries. i couldn't find the birthday candles, so we had to use some household/emergency ones i had in the cabinet. he managed to blow them out this year, i think. or, maybe i was too busy snapping photos to actually witness that for myself.

two also happens to be one of cosmo's favorite words right now. he pronounces it really well, and uses it to indicate most quantities larger than one.



two is also the number of fish oil tablets that cosmo gets to take each day. i was concerned that cosmo might not be getting enough omega 3, 6 & 9 fatty acids, which are said to be important for the developing brains of small children. so, i got him some fish oil supplements designed for kids. they are similar to a vitamin e capsule, and they burst in his mouth when he bites down on them. i tasted one, and it did not taste good. they have some lemon oil in them, but it does not mask the nasty fish oil taste and odor. surprisingly, cosmo LOVES these. he knows that he gets two, and he gets all giggly and giddy when we hand them to him, and chuckles as each one pops inside his mouth.
"how many do you get cosmo?"
"two! tee hee hee"
he refers to them as fish, asks for them every time he sees the bottle, and gets upset if we refuse (because he has already had them that day). luckily, offering a clementine instead is enough to get him to forget about them...for a little while anyway.

time for weaning

i've been wanting to write about weaning cosmo, but i also wanted to wait until i was out of the hormonal chaos that followed. i just looked back on a couple of journal entries i wrote in the midst of it, and decided that might be the best way to tell the story.

sept. 30 2007
sunday

it seems at though the time for weaning cosmo has arrived. i am having a lot of trouble letting go. i just don’t want to cross that bridge. it is so sad for me…sad in a way that i can’t quite articulate. it is not rational. i know he’s growing up, i know that the nursing relationship changed a long time ago, and i feel now that what little remains is holding him back. it is confusing and upsetting and unnecessary. the only reason we are still doing it is because of my fear of letting go. just now, when i thought of not nursing him for his nap tomorrow, i felt so sad, that today was our last nursing. i wanted to find another time to nurse him before that, so that could be our last time. i may do that, just to have one last time of looking into his eyes from that vantage point. a farewell. the end of an era. these kinds of transitions are always hard on me. i’ll get through it, but i need to honor my feelings, and spend some time reflecting.

later…

well i just spoke with christa about it. i called her. she was wonderful and perfect. i told her the story of when i stopped nursing cosmo at night. how he hugged me so tight for so long and we cried and laughed and he seemed to know what it meant. she suggested that i find some way to mark, and celebrate this moment. so, i was thinking that since i want to have one last farewell nursing, we could make it be something special and unusual. that way he won’t be confused, think we are going back to night nursing or something. maybe we could go out to lake griffy and take a walk in the woods, and i could just stop and sit down with him and nurse. i know i would love that, and i bet he would too. it would also probably be brief, since he’d be interested in other things.

oct.7, 2007
sunday

we went out to lake griffy that afternoon. after throwing rocks into the lake for a while, we headed into the woods, on one of the trails going up. when we got to the top of the hill, carl and i scouted for a nice place to sit. i chose a big tree to lean against. i sat down and invited cosmo over to nurse. he was surprised and enthusiastic. i held him across my lap and he had one eye looking up into my face. i remembered all those days and nights in the great green chair, when we were both new to all of this, and how overwhelmed i was with love for him. like nothing i’d ever known. this beautiful baby and me-- learning to trust each other, building this bond. the stillness…

i started crying--really all out bawling. carl was next to us, he was tearing up too. cosmo looked up into my face, i smiled at him, he smiled at me and then he reached up and touched my tears with his finger. he paused from nursing for a moment, and put his finger in his mouth, tasting my tears. then he giggled a little and latched back on. i laughed too, and cried a bunch more.

we were there under the tree for a good 20 minutes or so, then i got him interested in something else, and we easily transitioned out of our final nursing time together. i was so happy that we took the time to do this. i really needed it. i continued to be weepy about it all week, but cosmo seemed to be ok. he asked a few times, still asks occasionally, and i remind him of the time we took a walk in the woods, and nursed and i cried and he tasted my tears, and there were flickering leaves in the trees overhead that we both marveled at. he remembers, and he reenacts the scene. he does the sign for crying and says mama. he makes the sign for nursing and tears and then he puts his finger in his mouth to lick off the tears. it is so unbelievably sweet i wanna cry every time i think of it. he will sometimes just tell the story, spontaneously, other times, if he asks to nurse, i just say, “no, remember? we don’t do that anymore. remember our last time, in the woods?” and he’ll finish the story.

we hug a lot more now. i like that.

this picture was taken that day at the lake.

one of the most amazing changes since weaning has been how well cosmo sleeps, and how he falls asleep. he now falls asleep all on his own, in his own room, with the lights out, and the door closed. after his bath, we read stories and then he turns out his lights. he lays down and often says "night night mama." i kiss him goodnight and leave the room. we found that closing the door helps make it dark enough that he won't be distracted (it was actually his idea). at first he would walk up to the door and call for me a couple of times, i'd reassure him through the door, then he'd go lie back down. but after a week or so of that, he now just stays in bed and falls asleep. incredible. he has also slept for 12 solid hours for the past 2 nights, but i don't expect a trend like that to last.

laurie's dream

our dear friend laurie in brooklyn sent this to me in an email yesterday:

I had a dream about you...You and me and Cosmo were on the subway and Cosmo fell down. And I chased him down the aisle, but he wasn't scared and you weren't scared either, because he transformed into this perfect little ball and rolled down to the end. I could see his blonde hair flapping as he rolled. Like a perfect little ball. then when we caught up to him he was laughing and so were you.

bling

after much research and deliberation, we took cosmo to a dentist in terre haute to have some dental work done. we traveled an hour and a half outside of bloomington because no pediatric dentists in town offer sedation for little ones. if a child this young is not sedated during dental work, then they are held down, strapped to something called a papoose board, or otherwise restrained by force. carl and i knew we couldn't handle that, and it seemed dangerous and impractical. i guess sedation can be risky too, but this dentist and his staff are trained for emergencies, and in 18 years of practice, he has yet to have one. it was not general anesthesia, but rather more like a drug- induced deep sleep.



it went really well, considering. we had to get up well before the rosey-fingered dawn and drive in the dark, and cosmo couldn't have anything to eat or drink (including water!) after midnight the night before. that was tough. i 'm not accustomed to denying cosmo water or food when he asks for it, and though we explained, he couldn't really understand. i brought my laptop, and we distracted him from his hunger pains with a little baby einstein. that worked pretty well (let's hear it for novelty!). the waiting room was all ours at such an early hour, and it has a lot of fun things to do. once he took the meds, it was a short time before he started acting woozy. we took him into a darkened conference room, and i held him and soothed him while he whined and squirmed and fought against th