lessons from foster kittens

it's ideal, really: we get the cats at the cutest, most entertaining part of their lives, then send them off to find their "forever homes." carl and i both think that "forever homes" sounds almost creepy...sort of like  the euphemism "putting to sleep," but we know that what the animal shelter means by "forever homes," is permanent adoption. They used to let people adopt the cats before they were spayed or neutered, and give them vouchers to have the procedure done for free once they were old enough. but they found that  even the free voucher wasn't enough to compel some folks to have it done, so now they won't put animals out on the adoption floor until they have been altered. so, they need foster homes for the kittens, until they reach an age and weight that will allow for the operation.



we aren't ready to have pets of our own yet, but we all love cats, so we decided to become a foster family. our first set were three boys, all orange tabbies. they were difficult to tell apart, but we found a few distinguishing characteristics, and gave them the names of the three youngest weasley brothers from the harry potter stories: fred, george and ron. these kittens were tons of fun, but they had some inappropriate suckling habits, presumably from being weaned too soon, which we found disturbing. it was a lot of work to care for them, and so much cleaning...but the biggest effort for carl and i is managing cosmo's treatment of them.



he is not mean to animals, he likes them, is interested, and generally sweet to them. but, he doesn't seem to always know the line between holding, and holding too tight, against the kitten's will until they start meowing frantically and struggling to get away. we found ourselves constantly correcting and scolding, and had to let some things go, and choose our battles.



our friend julie, who does a lot of kitten fostering, pointed out that it can be really hard for young children to understand what is appropriate with kittens, because they look so much like toys. they are small, adorable, and easy to manipulate (compared to adult cats, who typically don't put up with much). after some close calls, we learned that we really had to be present in the same room any time cosmo was interacting with the kittens. it gets tiring. between that and the constant cleaning, i was happy to seem them go when they reached 2 pounds.

a month later, i'd forgotten all the annoying parts of having foster kittens. cosmo and i responded to an email and headed for the shelter to pick up five kittens and a mama. these ones were tiny.



they could barely walk and seemed to be nearly blind. having the mama with them made it so much easier. she took care of everything, and we took care of her. for the first few weeks, all they did was nurse and sleep. they began to explore, one by one, and soon were wrestling and scampering all over the house, cracking us up with crazy antics, as kittens do.



cosmo has learned a lot about handling kittens, and knows what is allowed and what is not. but he still seems to have lapses in judgement, and we still have to keep an eye on him with the kittens. i have tried to get him to appreciate how interesting they are to watch. they do so many amusing things if left to their own devices, but he is unconvinced. his first impulse is always to pick them up. mostly, they don't mind, and i figure we are socializing them to be accustomed to children in their future homes.

the mama cat and the three boys of the litter have returned to the shelter. from what i understand, the kittens have already been adopted. we still have the two girls with us, but they will probably leave us this week. i'll be happy to have our house back, and to give it a thorough deep clean, but i think i will miss all the pitter patter and physical comedy. people usually imagine that we'll get too attached, and won't be able to give them up, but so far, we have not been tempted to keep any.

we have learned that we are not yet ready for permanent pets. we have also learned to let creatures into our home and into our hearts, and how to let them go when the time comes.

as a tribute to the latest batch, i present these portraits of the mewler family:

this is the stellar mama cat, trixie, and her daughter rita. rita is cosmo's favorite, and he refers to her as the "captain of the cuties." she is very social and adventuresome, and the smallest of the litter.

meet snape: the best at latching on, and the last to wean.

we call him zincy (after the element: zinc) a gorgeous cat, with velvety fur that matches his eyes.

here we have ginger, rita and pingu. ginger is very strong and looks like he will be a big cat. pingu has some unusual markings on her face. she loves the out of doors, and is also quite social and affectionate.


we tried to get a photo of cosmo with the whole crew, but trying to get them all together is like, well...like herding cats!

five

oh dear. the holidays are upon us, and i had really hoped to post something about cosmo's birthday before now. he turned five in november. that number always loomed, in my mind, as a huge milestone. it's the point where they move into official kid-ness. not a baby anymore, not a toddler anymore, and barely even a pre-schooler.



cosmo had a wonderful birthday. we had a nice after-school party for him, with 5 kids he chose to invite. it was hard to let go, and let him decide, but since he had opinions, and he doesn't always express preferences, i thought it was important to honor his choices...even if it meant some of my dear friends' children were not invited. gulp.



we had a low-key party, where the most exciting part turned out to be chasing each other around with blow-out noise-maker-party-favor-thingies. talk about cheap thrills! the next day, he came down with strep. the scarlet fever strain. poor little thing. he was mostly couch-ridden through thanksgiving, but was all better in time to go to TX, for an early xmas with nani and family.

this also marks the fifth year of this blog.
five years.
sigh.
'nuf said.

so far, my favorite thing about five-year-olds is the helpfulness. i was expecting this, or at least hoping for it, and, remarkably, it arrived, like clock work. cosmo has a new found interest in helping out, and the competence to actually BE helpful. i will savor this while it lasts.

home for the holidays

as excited as i was to not be traveling for the holidays, by the end of the 2 week break from cosmo's pre-school, i thought my head might explode (to coin a julie phrase). it seemed like cosmo hit some new, belligerent phase (i've recently heard the term "ferocious fours" does this ring a bell with anyone?) just as the break began. the three of us cooped-up in the house, eating holiday sweets, for days on end was not working--for any of us. the bitter cold weather wasn't exactly inviting us to leave the house, but carl and i realized pretty quickly that we had to be pro-active, and make plans to get out and do something every day.



so, when cosmo and i weren't making cookies, gingerbread houses, or this caramel popcorn; and when carl and cosmo weren't busy playing checkers, or constructing elaborate marble mazes, we took little outings.





on christmas day, we went for a walk on the clear creek trail. apparently, the 15 minutes of physical exercise, in the great outdoors was just too exhausting for cosmo, so he had to be carried on carl's shoulders for a good portion of it--until i came up with a "catch me if you can" game, and we all ran the last stretch back to the car.



we went to the wonderlab one day, and on another day, we resorted to going to the mall. the mall can be sort of entertaining, if you aren't actually shopping. i'm always up for people-watching, and we got a bouncy ball from one of the gumball-style machines, and rolled it down the ramps (keeping our eyes peeled for mall cops, of course; cosmo actually got busted for this once before). then carl and cosmo rode the escalator at macy's, up and down a good 10-20 times while i browsed the hand bag section and felt relieved that my particular taste exempts me from being tempted by high priced, fashionable leather goods.

my favorite thing we ended up doing over the break was a day trip to indy, to the children's museum. it was insanely crowded, and we, frankly, didn't plan well. we arrived, hungry, around noon, and thought we'd pop into the museum cafe for a quick bite. we grabbed some pre-made sandwiches, got through the line, and headed into the seating area.

i liked the idea of eating by the big windows, but there was not a single seat available, at any table, anywhere, in the entire (huge) dining room. it felt like i was back in the high school cafeteria, searching frantically for a friendly face, or just an open chair. we ended up sitting on the floor, by a couch, and having sort of a picnic (that's what we told cosmo, when he protested). the food was, surprisingly, decent.



it was worth fighting the crowds. we had never been before, and though we saw only a tiny fraction of the sprawling fun-land, we all had a great time. carl and i were very relaxed, and let cosmo lead the way. we started on the fourth floor, where the carousel is. we went through the mirror maze, and then cosmo discovered a holiday themed, dickensonion diorama-type-thing, where people were moving past shop windows of a miniature town, on a track, or belt. he was utterly fascinated by it. there were also kids sledding down a hill, also on a track. he could not stop looking at it, and he wanted to know where the little figures went, and how the whole thing worked, and i tried to lift him up so he could see more of the mechanics of the thing...but it was mostly concealed.



he waited patiently in line to ride the carosel, and insisted on riding it alone, then he headed straight back to that diaorama! he would have stayed there the rest of the day, but we finally convinced him to check out some other areas, and we moved to the science room. he stopped short at the entrance, where the kinetic-contraption-ball-run-machine was.



i swear to you, he was at that thing for an hour, or more. we peeled him away to move some rubber rocks around in a hopper, but he really just wanted to be at that "marble maze." it was very similar to the one they have at the wonderlab, but the input points, where the kids get to make things happen, were much more engaging and interactive. cosmo was really good at waiting patiently for his turn to move some nob, or push a button, and after he had been at one for a while, he would graciously move away for another kid to have a turn. at some point, he told carl, "i just wanna watch," and he did. forEVER.



i guess a place like this, with so many different kinds of activities to choose from, presents the opportunity to learn something new about your kid. it was one of those moments for me, where i realized that my child is his own person, with his own predilections, and passions. i've known for a long time that he likes marble mazes, but here, it was really striking to see JUST HOW MUCH he loves these kinds of things, even in the face of all this other very cool stuff. i stood there, against an adjacent pane of plexi-glass, and watched him, watching the contraption. i was as amazed by him as he must have been by that machine. i shed a few tears, and when it was time to leave, so did cosmo.

wondering

while humming mickey-mouse-club-song (ol' school), eating chickpeas, and playing with a fading balloon, cosmo drops the following questions on me:

i wanna know who i am.

i mean, how did i be this person?

how does everybody turn into people?

how do they be theyselves?

how do they grow?

all i could manage in response was to tell him that they were excellent questions.

worth it

we've made it through most of the "terrible twos" without much of the terrible part. carl and i have often remarked on the fact that cosmo does not throw tantrums. well, tonight, he did.

(self portrait)

it had to do with climbing on me during dinner, batting at my salad bowl etc. and developed into crying and screaming in his room, which is something that cosmo does very little of (screaming, in particular). i can look back on the day, and see what kinds of things might have led to this: lack of one-on-one attention from each of us, lack of adequate exercise, not eating enough "real food," any number of things. add to that, mixed messages about what constitutes proper behavior at the dinner table. the fact that we don't have a dinner table might have something to do with it. when it's nice out, we eat on the back porch, and we have a proper table and chairs. when it is too cold for that, we eat inside, sitting on the living room floor, at the pew, which is a long coffee-table sort of thing that i made from what was once a church pew. we just recently started eating at the pew again, and haven't really established the ground rules, i guess. it is also possible that these incidents can't entirely be avoided. sometimes he's just got some pent up energy, and it needs to be released, somehow.

i started by making a big effort to communicate with him, getting him to slow down, look at me, speak to me, and listen. that sort of worked at first, and i was quite pleased. then, it stopped working, and he melted into the fitful mess that is a full blown tantrum, and communication of any kind was impossible. i never got angry, i remained steady, gentle, but firm in my approach, and recognized that he just needed to find a way to calm down. eventually, he did. and we hugged, and managed to move on with the evening. he asked for some water, and then, to listen to a BBC radio program CD that we borrowed from a friend, which seemed like the right thing to do. as he was drinking the water, he looked at me and said, "you're a good mama for me." at first, i wasn't sure what he'd said, so i asked him to repeat it. that is what he said. i can't imagine he knows exactly what that means, but it sure was just what i needed to hear at that moment. what a sweetheart.

[and to that, cosmo would say, "i'm not sweetheart, i'm COSMO!"]

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.

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.

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.

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 the sudden onslaught of sleepiness. once he was out, the dentist took him back for the work. it was difficult to be separated from him, but carl pointed out that it was probably for the best.

he was still asleep when the procedure was finished, and slept for the whole ride home. he didn't wake up until the early afternoon, and was a bit unsteady on his feet. we had to keep a close eye on him throughout the evening, and he couldn't keep much down at first, though he was understandably ravenous. he did not seem to be in any pain, though he was not his usual cheerful self, and went to bed an hour early. by morning, he was fully recovered and all cosmo. he now has two silver caps on a couple of back molars, and some tooth-colored filling in the front. i showed him the silver in the mirror, and also pointed out my gold crown. i told him we call it "bling." he seemed pretty pleased with that.

in the round

cosmo's fascination with flowers has given way to an obsession with circles, balls, all things round. on walks in the stroller, he spots every single manhole cover, or water meter access point, and he wants us to push the stroller over the circle. he laughs and groans with delight. when he is walking himself, he steps on every circle he can find, and the plastic rectangle ones in the grass too. at home he has two favorite new toys, a bag of marbles and a tin full of buttons. he wants to play with them ALWAYS and cries when we put them away. "ball" is his favorite word to say, and he will point out any object in any landscape that resembles a ball.

i often catch myself trying to recreate the better parts of my own childhood. when i was a kid, my mom had a little old-fashioned marshmellow tin filled with buttons of all kinds. i used to love to spread them all out on the floor and organize them into categories, or make various kinds of arrangements. i remember really enjoying them, and i wanted cosmo to have some too. i only had a half dozen or so myself, so melanie and kate suggested that i ask friends to contribute to cosmo's button collection. i like that idea a lot, but in kentucky i found a jar of assorted buttons at a junk store, so it seems strange to ask for more since we are now button rich. however, i like the idea of buttons coming from people he loves. in any case, i was thrilled to find that he loves the buttons as much as i did (and still do) and i imagine his enjoyment of them will change over time. right now he likes to pull individual ones out of the tin, marvel and coo over them, and he also likes them in quantity...he will pour them out, and run his hands through them.

he recently discovered a grate circling a tree outside of a restaurant, and proceeded to run around it, over and over, round and round, laughing and making himself so dizzy he'd stumble. he really loves a circle, that one.

sleepy bear

it happened quickly, overnight you might say. i'd been fearing and dreading the time when i would finally find the courage to try night-weaning cosmo. you see, he's been nursing throughout the night for many months now. it hasn't been a real hardship on me. i always felt like i got plenty of sleep. but i knew, for his sake, that he needed to begin to learn the skill of getting himself back to sleep when he wakes up in the middle of the night. i also suspected that if he learned this skill, he would probably wake up a lot less. i meant to start this process a couple of months ago, but i got the feeling he wasn't quite ready (or maybe it was me who wasn't ready?) and decided to wait. one of my friends was having great success with her daughter at the time, and she's a few months older than cosmo. it made sense to me that if i could explain to him what was going on, it might be easier...he might not feel so confused and betrayed. i wanted to wait until he would be able to understand my words more fully.

so, i guess it was over week ago now, one night he woke up and was nursing, but he wasn't falling back to sleep. he was in fact, thrashing about, climbing all over me, switching breasts etc. it was keeping me up, and it wasn't working as the quick sleep aide that it used to be. so, i stopped the nursing and told him to lie down and go to sleep. he fussed for a bit, then did exactly that. he fell asleep. i was astonished. from that point on, there was no turning back. i still put him to sleep at night by nursing him, but when he wakes up, i go to him, and tell him to lie back down and go to sleep. sometimes i pat his back. a few times he cried and made the sign for nursing, once he even made the sign for "hurt" which just about broke my heart, but i felt so certain that i was doing the right thing for him. each time he cried, it was for less than a minute (often more like 10 seconds), and i just stayed with him and tried to soothe him, and he fell asleep so fast i couldn't really believe it--MUCH faster than if he had been nursing. then, after a few nights of this. he stopped waking in the night. he sleeps for 8-9 hour stretches now, undisturbed! once in a while he will cry out, but when i go to him, he is already sound asleep. i no longer need to assist him in getting back to sleep. he knows how to do it, and does it. once morning comes (any time after 6:30am) i'll nurse him when he wakes up, but night nursing is now officially in the past.

it is tempting to think that i should have tried this much sooner, but i honestly believe that the timing was just right. i don't think it would have gone so smoothly with cosmo had i tried any sooner. i knew i couldn't handle a "cry it out" approach, and i actually have done a lot of research on this topic. i know i had some fear which was preventing me from trying it, but i was also listening to my intuition, and i listened to cosmo. he changed. the previous methods weren't working anymore, so we moved on to something else.

in any case, i am so proud of him, and proud of us.

nature boy

cosmo has recently shown an interest in the natural world. maybe he just loves to take walks, and walks happen outside, and so that's where all the exploration takes place. i like to think he is becoming an amateur naturalist. he loves plants, yesterday he kept trying to hug a small rosemary bush in pearl and carrie's back yard. when he spots a flower, he is compelled to go right up and "sniff" it (which consists of blowing air out his nose while his face is pressed up against the flower). in general, he is pretty gentle with plants, he touches them carefully and gasps and makes his "oh, wa-ow" sound, as if he is simply in awe of them.

we were monitoring a gerber daisy blossom as it began to unfurl in a pot on our back patio. when it finally reached full bloom, cosmo was so taken with it that he accidentally pulled off half of the petals in his enthusiasm. i was a little disappointed at first, but quickly realized he didn't mean it, couldn't have known better, and that those petals probably felt wonderful in his fist. plus, watching them scatter before him was delightful. one way to know about something is to take it apart...examine it, play with it, and often even taste it.

i happen to be the kind of person who learns about things (still) by tasting them. if i can't figure out what something is made of, i bite it, or touch it to my tongue. i'm not usually afraid to try plants i believe to be edible, and it's a big thrill for me to forage for things growing "wild" in urban or rural environments. perhaps this is why carl got me stalking the wild asparagus, by ewell gibbons for xmas this year. i don't mind if cosmo wants to eat some clover, or dandelion, because i know these things are safe. but as carl, and anyone with any sense points out, cosmo can't know the difference at this age, and therefore should be taught not to eat wild plants--period. ok. but it seems like such a shame, and as soon as he can make subtle distinctions between shapes of leaves and shades of green, i will be teaching him to identify edible plants in his environment. i don't want him to miss out on such a satisfying simple pleasure. of course, i also don't want him to mistake poison hemlock for wild carrot, like i did in the berkeley hills in my early twenties. lucky for me i got to the emergency room soon enough, and all i had to do was take ipecac. i will definitely teach cosmo to have better sense than that.
earlier this week we went to the arboretum at memorial park. it was the first time we had gone since cosmo has been walking. he kept taking off into the brush to explore, but would get back on the path with a little coaxing. then he would run down the trail vocalizing, just to hear and feel his voice vibrate staccato in his chest with each bounce. tall pines drape the under story of the woods with their long needles. it reminded carl and i of silver icicle tinsel on christmas trees. cosmo enjoyed handling pine cones and looking at the turtles in the pond.

at the japanese garden in herman park last weekend, cosmo's favorite thing was the little waterfalls. he had a hard time staying on the path there too. he admired the flowers, and was careful not to pull off any petals.

the power of toule

i've been puzzling over this one for a while now. i had been wanting to get cosmo a tu-tu to dress-up in. he's started to take an interest in playing dress-up...he enjoys putting on different hats, putting hats on us and wearing multiple strands of shiny mardi-gras beads from last years' gay pride parade. i thought a tu-tu would be fun because it has such a fascinating texture, plus cosmo LOVES to dance. for the longest time, he would just bob up and down to music, now he runs around, waving his arms, and somehow taught himself how to spin. we almost always have music on in our house (when we aren't listening to NPR, that is), and cosmo enjoys all kinds. he'll even wave his arms around to music on the radio in the car. so, it occurred to me that he might really take to dancing in a tu-tu. but i hesitated. i thought people might think i was trying to impose my notions of gender fluidity on my one year old boy. they'd think i was setting him up for a lifetime of gender confusion. then i had to ask myself, first off, who are these "people?" not my friends. relatives maybe? the public at large? who knows, in any case, those voices shouldn't carry so much weight in my decision making about how to raise my child. i ended up coming up with a response to those voices anyway.

i remembered a favorite essay by marilyn frye called simply "sexism." it appears in her book the politics of reality: essays in feminist theory. she is a brilliant thinker, and her writing is crystal clear. my gleaning here won't do her work justice, so i highly recommend that you read this book (though some of the material is rather dated) and her more recent collection of essays, willful virgin. what stayed with me over the years, about this particular essay is this: those "people" who get so bent out of shape about dressing babies in gender ambiguous/inappropriate clothing are the very same people who claim that clear boundaries and differences between the sexes are utterly NATURAL and biologically determined. so... if these distinctions are so natural and inevitable, then why is it, that in our culture, they must be reinforced, programmed and pounded into every fiber of our beings from the day we come out of the womb? the first question asked of every new parent: "boy or girl?" if you don't sex mark your infant in the obligatory pink or blue onsie, people who meet you in the market become anxious. "how can i tell? is it rude to ask? should i take a guess?" this anxiety, this desperate need to know points to the primary place that sex distinction holds in our society...still.
i'll go ahead and quote frye:

It is a general and obvious principle of information theory that when it is very, very important that certain information be conveyed the suitable strategy is redundancy. If a message must get through, one sends it repeatedly and by as many means or media as one has at one's command. On the other end, as a receiver of information, if one receives the same information over and over, conveyed by every medium one knows, another massage comes through as well, and implicitly: the message that this information is very very, important. the enormous frequency with which information about people's sexes is conveyed conveys implicitly the message that this topic is enormously important. i suspect that this is the single topic on which we most frequently receive information from others throughout our entire lives. if i am right, it would go part way to explaining why we end up, with an almost irresistible impression, unarticulated, that the matter of people's sexes is the most important and fundamental topic in the world.(27)

small children's minds must be hopelessly boggled by all this. We know our own sexes, and learn to think it a matter of first importance that one is a girl or a boy so early that we do not remember not knowing...(27-28)

she goes on to talk about why this is.

It is extremely costly to subordinate a large group of people simply by applications of material force, as is indicated by the costs of maximum security prisons and of military suppression of nationalist movements. For subordination to be permanent and cost effective, it is necessary to create conditions such that the subordinated group acquiesces to some extent in the subordination. Probably one of the most effective ways to secure acquiescence is to convince people that their subordination is inevitable. The mechanisms by which the subordinate and dominate categories are defined can contribute greatly to popular belief in the inevitability of the dominance/subordination structure.

For efficient subordination, what's wanted is that the structure not appear to be a cultural artifact kept in place by human decision or custom, but that it appear natural...It must seem natural that individuals of the one category are dominated by individuals of the other and that as groups, the one dominates the other. To make this seem natural, it will help if it seems to all concerned that members of the two groups are very different from each other, and this appearance is enhanced if it can be made to appear that within each group, the members are very alike one another...All behavior which encourages the appearance that humans are biologically sharply sex-dimorphic encourages the acquiescence of women (and to the extent it needs encouragement, of men) in women's subordination. (33-34)

now, we might point out that a lot has changed in the US since Frye wrote this, back in the 1970s--after all, we currently have a female front-runner candidate for the office of the president of the united states. but ask yourself, what is the single most remarkable thing about her candidacy? she is a woman.

but i have strayed from my original purpose in writing about cosmo's tu-tu. i realized, finally, that my fears about imposing gender identity issues upon him by getting him things like skirts or beads (before he is old enough to choose things for himself) need further scrutiny. the truth is, i am already imposing gender identity on him every time i dress him in boys clothes. but of course that never gets questioned, because it reinforces a social structure that is widely accepted. yet in subtle (or not so subtle) ways, it contributes to social hierarchies of dominance and oppression that i am firmly opposed to.

so, the way i see it, the least i can do is offer cosmo a tu-tu.