serious fun

cosmo, like most toddler's, enjoys a lot of different kinds of activities. sometimes he flits around from one thing to another, barely pausing to investigate before his attention is diverted by some glint of sunlight off a speck of mylar on the floor, or a crane fly buzzing against the wall. other times, he becomes enthralled with what he is doing, and stays at it for...well, i wanna say hours, but it's more like 20 minutes or so. the only time cosmo stays in one place for hours at a time is when he is sleeping.


some activities are exciting, funny, hysterical even. like peek-a-boo with his silk curtain, or chase (he gets so thrilled in anticipation sometimes, he almost falls over). other physical games involving dancing, swinging upside down, flipping, spinning, bath time fun, or games with silly faces or sounds make him laugh uncontrollably.

but some of the things that capture cosmo's attention are not funny at all. they are quite serious. stacking blocks. nesting tin cans. playing with white beans. bubbles. looking at books. drawing. he gets a very focussed look on his face, is not easily distracted, and makes little sighing-grunting sounds of exertion, even if he is merely lifting a hollow 1 inch X 1 inch box.




in montessori they call whatever the child engages in work. in our house, we just call it serious fun.

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.

sing and sign

cosmo sung his first recognizable song! he's been humming for months now, i'm not even sure when that started, but last night i discerned a familiar tune. we were in the great green chair, listening to the news when cosmo pulled away from nursing to sing "bah beh bah bome bah beh bee bome" with the rhythm and near melody of the all things considered theme song. it's quite telling, isn't it?-- that this is his first song? yes we are a couple of news junkies, and cosmo has heard this song at the same time every day for his entire life. mostly i'm embarrassed because NPR is basically corporate media that tries to pretend it is otherwise...and we listen to it twice a day. in any case, cosmo singing is terribly exciting. he knows he is doing it, he has picked up on our delighted response to it and he'll usually try it if we sing it for him, or he hears it on the radio. i must note here, that not only has he heard it on the radio daily, he has also heard us singing it, in imitation upon hearing it, or just because it's a catchy tune. again with the repetition. it really has an effect at this age...the same thing over and over again, and suddenly they just know it.

i've experienced this in the way cosmo has learned words, and begins to associate images or objects with these words...i.e. they have meaning. he points to the pumpkin when i say "where's the pumpkin?" at first it was just things like noses and belly buttons, but now it is not restricted to objects in his environment. a picture in a book is enough. he can also make the connection between a penguin on tv and the images in his book busy penguins or the football image on the puzzle, and his nerf football. we drum on drums while we read hand, hand, fingers, thumb.

he has many words, but uses them infrequently, and hesitantly. his voice is very soft. when he does speak, he gets the cadence down perfectly, and sometimes manages to mumble complex words, which he can't really pronounce, but knows how they sound. our months and months of signing to him actually had an impact too. now that he has tasted communication, he is eager to express himself, even when his voice isn't ready. tonight he made the sign for nursing...in context! and he also makes the potty sign, and will point to a picture of a potty and make the sign. he has a sign for diaper, more, all done, hi and bye, yes and no, and one he made up for ceiling fan. he also make one up for "where is the kitty? i don't know? where did he go?" basically, any intriguing question of some sort: he shrugs his shoulders and bends his elbows completely, arms up against his body, and spreads his fingers wide (not to be confused with "hot hot hot!") when we say "splits!" he immediately slides his feet apart, and he'll push both arms out in the back if we say "wings!" he discovered these last few gestures, we simply named them.

homemade pasta!

it is not actually necessary to drape the noodles over wooden dowels, but i recently experienced the huge disappointment of failing to adequately separate the pasta before cooking it. we had made a beautiful batch of near-perfect spinach raviolis. i piled them all on a plate, and let them sit for an hour or so. we were having company, and i was so proud of us for getting all the work out of the way before brooke and dominica arrived. when we went to put the raviolis into the boiling water, we discovered that they had all melded together into one big mass of gooey pasta dough and sloppy spinach/ricotta filling. we managed to salvage enough of them to make a modest meal, but they weren't very pretty. i learned my lesson: just because the dough seems firm and dry when you are making it, it won't stay that way. mark bittman suggests the dowels, and i knew it would satisfy my old-world, rustic predilections, so, of course, i tried it. as you may have noticed, i find them to be quite beautiful.

birds and words

BIRDS

we started a tradition in our household of the "new year's drinking bird." maybe you remember these from childhood: it's has a thin blown-glass beaker sort of thing for the body, a flocked red beak and head with a hat on, and a green feather for the tail. the beaker is filled with blue fluid, methelene cloride i believe. the bird is on a pivoting stand, which makes up the legs and feet. you place it in front of a glass of water, and every now and then, depending on drafts and humidity levels in the room, it will tip forward and "drink" from the glass.how and why it works is still a mystery to me, but that's really the fun of it. if you put the glass close enough to the bird, when it tips back, the bottom of the beaker will touch the glass and go "dink." cosmo likes watching the bird, waiting for it to go, and after it drinks, he says "deeh." [trans. dink] adorable. we decided to bring it out on new year's day every year, and put it away at the end of january. a sort of post-holiday treat.





WORDS

observing as language first begins to develop must be one of the most fascinating things for parents. i am completely blown away. cosmo moves from indexing (pointing at everything that catches his eye) to pointing and vocalizing to attempting words and sounds (roar! dink.)and most amazing to me is how much more he understands our words. i am also witnessing the power of repetition. if something is present and named over and over, he learns it. if i say "cosmo, go get goodnight gorilla and bring it to mama." he will stop in his tracks, turn to where he remembers last seeing that particular book, and will go to it, pick up the book and bring it to me. he then sits down to hear the story and look at the pictures. he knows the book well, and points to characters and makes certain sounds for them. on the black page with the two eyes, he will suck in air, and say "huh!?!" with a surprised look on his face. that is what we do on that page each and every time we read it to him. pavlov's dogs? that's what it makes me think of, and it is scary. he also knows the term, concept and gesture for "hot," he waves his hands, fingers spread, and says "ha! ha! ha!" he knows to stay away, and does. all we have to say is "cosmo, hot!" and point at the object, and each time he sees the object, he will go "ha! ha! ha!"

BIRDS

carl's father made us a bird feeder for christmas. it's a really nice one, shaped like a little house, with an extended roof to cover the tray, and a little flap door on top to pour the seed in. we've seen a few birds in the brush in our back yard, including some cardinals, and i like the idea of attracting more. i thought we might need to set it on a pole at first, but i noticed a tree limb about 20 feet or so up in the pecan tree. if we could run a long rope through the Y in that limb, we could set the feeder at just the right distance from the tree trunk to keep the squirrels away, and it would hang in perfect view of our kitchen window. late in the evening, after cosmo had gone to bed, carl and i set out to do just that.

it was comical really, to see us out there with our high hopes and bad throws, trying over and over to get that twine hung over that limb. carl had the great idea of tying the twine to the end of our foxtail (a toy made of a leather ball on one end, and a long multi-colored nylon tail). it was the perfect weight, and if it should happen to stray across the property line, and hit the neighbor's minivan, no harm done. first we tried it from our upstairs neighbor's balcony, but the angle of the roof made it difficult to see, and it was an awkward position from which to throw, especially since we are both right handed. carl went first, and then decided it would be easier from down below. i gave it a try. or two. or three. unfortunately, though i could see my target, and it wasn't that far away, i couldn't get enough force behind it, and i guess i've got terrible aim. carl tried from down below. he managed to get it up there more than once, but it kept getting caught on old leafy branches, and we'd have to pull it down and start over. still though, we were getting hopeful that it was not out of the range of possibilities. finally i suggested carl try again from upstairs. i showed him the view i had, and he agreed that it might be easier. he gave it a couple of good tries, and then, at last, the foxtail ball made it through the Y! it was stuck in some light branches, but thoroughly through the big branch and so carl began to gently tug on his end of the twine.the foxtail began to slowly loosen and inch its way down. i got so excited, i started coaching the thing, and grabbed the rake and held it high above my head, ready to snatch the ball when it got close. i am sure our neighbors thought we were nuts, making quite a commotion out there, but we were on a mission. finally, inch by inch, the foxtail made it to the rake, i swung at it and pulled it down. we had our twine hung, ready for the feeder.

once we had the feeder heavy with food and swaying lazily from the tree, i couldn't stop staring at it in awe. i felt like a kid on christmas eve that night. i couldn't wait to go to bed so i could get up in the morning to see if any birds came to our feeder. i woke up several times in the night, as i am wont to do with a night waking baby, and each time i would think "is it dawn yet? can i go check the feeder yet?" it was a big disappointment to learn that it often takes a while for birds to find your feeder. we didn't have any birds at the feeder that day. or the next. or the next. but the beautiful thing about hanging a bird feeder is that you begin to notice birds. i could suddenly hear their songs all around me, and i'd catch them fluttering around in our bushes and trees. i saw at 4 cardinals in a couple of days. but none of them noticed our gift.

last night, carl spotted the first one. a female cardinal. i raced to the window to look, but it had flown off. later we saw a male cardinal on the feeder, a couple of other birds, and what we suspect is an adolescent male cardinal. it was smaller and its feathers were kind of orange and gray instead of red, but too bright for a female. i know nothing about birds really, and i doubt i'll be getting into bird watching as a hobby or anything, but i just like seeing them in our yard, and cosmo does too. he was thrilled when we showed him the bright red bird on the little house hanging outside our window. we even trimmed the foliage in front of the window so cosmo could see the feeder from his height.


WORDS

i've embarked on a personal writing project. its a memoir really, but scaled down to sized. i have three periods in my life where such strange things happened, i find it impossible to explain them fully to anyone. so that's the challenge. three stories. of course now that i've started, i realize how challenging it truly is, and not in the ways i first imagined. first of all, there's the problem of memory. i can't recall all the details, so to fill the story out, i will have to invent. i'm not a fiction writer. i know nothing about character development or dialog. so these are things i will need to practice and learn. it will be frustrating and difficult. i admire all of my friends for whom writing is a big part of their profession. it can be so excruciating. and yet, so utterly thrilling in those moments when you know you get it right. this is how anyone making anything ever keeps on going.
as anne lamott suggests, bird by bird.

what once was lost...

has now been found. united lost and found called yesterday morning to inform me that my purse has been found, with (i think) all of the contents intact, and they will be shipping it to me ASAP. i have been spared the arduous task of waiting in line at the DMV. how lucky is that?

the most wonderful time...

i had many great plans for blogs, even one including a series of photos, which i took, but never got around to posting. instead of reaching into the past, to reconstruct a moment long past, i'll write this one:


following a hurried but pleasant pre-christmas time of baking, errands and visits with dear friends, we packed ourselves off to denver for christmas at carl's parents' house. cosmo's high tops had to come off at security (don't they know how hard those things are to put back on?), but we made it through without a glitch. cosmo enjoyed running around in the airport, and slept through the entire flight. we arrived a couple of days after their first big blizzard. everything was up and running, but many travelers were still stuck in denver, and we saw some camped out near baggage claim, along with a several hour security line. we were happy to get out of there...unfortunately, on our way out, we realized i'd left my purse on the plane, under the seat. yes, i had my phone and my only id in the bag, and a bunch of other stuff that's hard to replace, but there was no getting it back. we tried over the next few days, but with all the chaos, it was hopeless.

we had a lovely christmas in denver. cosmo played in snow for the first time. of course he kept wanting to eat the snow off his mittens, but he also enjoyed sliding down a make shift slide, and helping to roll the base for our snowman.
he slipped and scratched his nose on the sidewalk, but not too bad. wasn't the first time, won't be the last...he climbed a lot of stairs, and learned to admire the christmas tree without tearing it apart.

we had to be a bit hyper-vigilant with cosmo at carl's parent's, to keep cosmo from either hurting himself, or damaging their property...honestly, it was exhausting, and we were so happy to come home. i had to go through extra screening on the trip back, since i didn't have identification. it was futuristic! i stood in a very short line consisting almost exclusively of women. i had sent my carry-on with carl and cosmo, so i had nothing on me but my clothes. i was asked to step into chamber where i heard a digitized woman's voice say "enter. air puffs are on" followed by a pause followed by intense blasts of air directed at various part of my body. then i stood there and waited for 30 seconds, until the voice returned to tell me i could now exit. a glass door in front of me opened, and out i went. that was it. some friendly guy asked me if i had anything besides my shoes, i told him "no" and that i had lost my purse. this seemed reasonable enough to him i guess, because i was not further screened. i made it through the line before carl did.

on the plane, a kind gay couple allowed the three of us to sit together, even though it meant they couldn't. cosmo wasn't so sleepy this time, but he was also terribly well behaved. upon arriving in houston at the ungodly hour of 9pm (already past cosmo's bedtime) we waited for over an hour to get on a shuttle back to the lot where we'd left our car. the driver was unfamiliar with the expansive parking lot, and a passenger had to take over the role of navigator. it was a case of the blind leading the blind, but we miraculously made it back to our car, out of the lot and safely home.

i couldn't wait to get online, since i'd been without my phone, and away from the computer, i felt a little cut off. sadly, the computer wouldn't start up. black screen. the next day, when i went to get my phone replaced, all their systems were down, they couldn't do anything for anyone. i almost cried walking home from sprint. then i felt so foolish for being so dependent on these technologies...i had to remind myself that i'd be fine. i'd have plenty to eat, and a warm dry place to sleep...it was merely an inconvenience. still, at every turn there seemed to be a further complication due to the fact that i didn't have my phone and couldn't get online...
i finally did get my phone replaced. sprint got their system back up, and i went back just in time. the next day, cosmo and i were back at IAH for a flight to dallas. we were going to see cosmo's father's side of the family--including cosmo's father himself. i'd had a lot of ambivalence about going, but had decided we would, and i was looking forward to it, in a way. there had been reports of bad weather in the dallas area, but i wasn't too worried. we catch another little bitty plane from there, to wichita falls, and i wasn't looking forward to that part. the slightest breeze throws those things into a terrifying tizzy, but i still thought it would be better than a three hour car ride. our flight was delayed. we waited a good part of the day at the gate, until they finally boarded us. once we got settled, they announced that the dallas/fort-worth airport was closed due to storms, and we'd have another update in an hour. that hour turned into an hour and a half. they started letting people off the plane. some stayed, we didn't. instead, we got in line to see if we could reschedule for the next day. before they got to us in line, the flight was canceled. we rescheduled, made some calls, and headed for baggage claim. it was good to see carl when he arrived, though i hated that he had to drive to IAH again, during rush hour. when we got home, i tried out our new pasta maker, and we had a rather late dinner of fettuccine.

that night, i woke up in the middle of the night vomiting. in the morning, i felt like hell all over. we didn't go to wichita falls.

luckily, it only lasted a day, and we got to celebrate new year's eve with friends.

the next day, cosmo got it. he's been sick of and on for days now.

we went to the galleria to get my computer looked at. seems the logic board is messed up, but if you take out the airport card, it works fine. ok. no wireless. that's cool, at least it works now!

i traveled out to missouri city to get my driver's license replaced. i pulled up, started to walk up to the building, saw the line out the door and wrapped half way across the building and, like the other white people described in one of chuck's blog entries, i turned around and got back in my car.

i'll try again monday. early.

my g-g-g-generation

last night we attended a talk at rice university--it was a teach-in actually, about the new military commissions act of 2006 (the "torture bill"), and carl was one of the panelists. cosmo didn't really comprehend the gravity of the topic at hand, as he kept interjecting with shout-outs and guffaws while one of the panelists was listing now legal interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, induced hypothermia and prolonged sleep deprivation. as our friend iris would say, wagging her finger in disapproval, in-a-pro-priate. we had to step out of the room for most of the discussion.

it was a lot more fun for cosmo out in the gallery anyway. he got to climb on the swooping forms of rip-curl canyon and, best of all, he wandered around underneath the room-sized structure made of plywood and die-cut cardboard contours. it was a perfect environment for him. there was nothing he could damage, and nothing much that could hurt him either, so he got to crawl around freely, dipping under the low spots, giggling and sucking in his breath while simultaneously vocalizing at a high pitch (his newly discovered favorite sound to make). he wasn't disturbing anyone and he was having a ball(photo forthcoming).

we went back into the classroom and heard a few minutes of carl's talk. but once he heard his voice and saw him speaking, cosmo seemed to want to go down to the front to be with carl. he squirmed out of my arms and i let him crawl on the shallow steps leading down the side of the lecture hall. the little guy just couldn't contain his excitement though. his squeals of delight were too distracting, so we went back out--this time to the lobby for some dinner. he crabbed around a polished black bench, picking up camouflaged black turtle beans off the top, and occasionally a kernel of corn, or a bright green pea.

when the teach-in turned to Q&A, we ventured back in. i heard a student in a budweiser-logo-styled-padre-island t-shirt question the optimism of some of the "older" people in the room. he said that he found no comfort in the idea that the constitution would bounce back from this most recent threat, in about 15 years or so. he pointed out that he had come of age in this [post 9-11] climate of fear and illegal, unjust war. this current [insane] administration was all he had known. his comments got me thinking about the challenges his generation faces. i began to reminisce about my own college years, and the struggles we faced, the battles we fought.

i became highly politicized around my sophomore year as an undergrad in springfield missouri [sometimes referred to as the buckle of the bible belt]. it was the mid/late 1980s, the tail-end of the cold war era. we lived in fear of nuclear war, we were outraged about the arms race, and the military spending that was stripping social programs of funding. we tried to put pressure on the government to impose sanctions on the south african apartheid regime, we tried to draw attention to the US instigated contra war in nicaragua, and we were increasingly concerned about the environment-- raising awareness and implementing recyling programs on campus. i took classes on non-violence, and the geography of the homeless and volunteered at a battered women's shelter.

today on democracy now! there was a discussion about a new film set in apartheid south africa. the discussion made me remember a night right after i graduated from college. i was out at a club with my boyfriend in oakland california (i had just relocated to the bay area). a bunch of hippies and i were bouncing around on the dance floor to the cool rhythms of some reggae band. at the end of one of the songs were these words free. nelson. mandela. all the members of the band were singing these words, over and over...free. nelson. mandela. the audience joined in. soon the entire club was chanting free. nelson. mandela. it was a beautiful moment in and of itself, but it hit me in a particularly powerful way. everything i had been doing for the past two and a half years...all the organizing, meetings, mailings, flyers, fundraisers, film screenings, marches, peace festivals, state board meetings, green conferences, trainings, teach-ins, poetry readings, soup kitchens, anti-racism workshops...it all felt sort of futile...or not? it was uplifting to finally find myself in a room full of strangers who cared about the same sorts of things i had been working for, but somehow it was unsettling to know that so many people cared, and still it went on like this. change seemed impossible. i couldn't imagine a free south africa.

within a year, the apartheid regime collapsed, nelson mandela was free, and soon the berlin wall came down as well...the cold war was over too. these things happened, but it wasn't obvious to me that my work had anything whatsoever to do with those events. the times changed. the struggles of those days are not the same as the struggles of today. and yet, in some ways, they aren't terribly different, and in some parts of the world, not much has changed (i'm thinking of the israeli occupation of palestine for example). it's not as if my activism ended once i hit age 22. today's struggles are my struggles too. but the issues we face as we come of age seem somehow...formative.

before cosmo and i left sewall hall last night, we had watched some skaters doing stunts off the front steps, danced in front of the big mirror in the ladies' lounge, and cosmo had knocked his head repeatedly (but gently) against the glass wall of the gallery. he couldn't understand why he was unable to reach the brass strip which was RIGHT THERE, no matter how many times he tried, or how far along the wall he traveled! the stickers to prevent people from walking into the glass were way too high for a baby to see.

when the talk was over, we fetched carl and walked across the campus in the rain...
wondering about the dragons cosmo's generation will need to slay.




note:this photo has nothing to do with this post. sorry for any confusion.

watched eyes never close

this is a story from a few weeks ago:

it was time for cosmo to take a nap. he had been taking quite regular morning and afternoon naps. i had noticed the night before, that if he took his afternoon nap too late, he didn't want to go to sleep around his bedtime. i had noticed two days earlier that if he skipped the afternoon nap altogether, then dinner was impossible, in fact he'd be rather fragile emotionally for the whole evening. so, i was pretty set on getting this afternoon nap in sometime between 2 and 4pm.

there is one thing that i have learned about babies in my brief tenure as a mother. they don't work on YOUR schedule, they work on their own. they aren't trying to be obstinate, they just aren't as predictable as we think they are, and the don't really have a concept of the future (i.e. if i don't nap now, i will be cranky later).

anyway, he was looking tired. we did our usual nursing session 'til he falls asleep, then bring him to his hammock bed, and put him in for the duration of his nap. i tried to lower him into the bed, but he woke up, and started wailing. i tried this a few more times, then he seemed obviously UP, chipper, and not interested in napping at all. it was a bit early, so, i thought we could just try again later. we did. same thing. no luck. so, i thought maybe if we drove to the co-op, he might just fall asleep in the car, which he'll often do if he's tired. he was bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed all the way there. i put him on my back in our new carrier. sometimes he falls asleep there too. nope. well, then, perhaps he would fall asleep on the way to the supermarket, or, IN the store if i left him in his car seat. he has GOT TO be tired, i reasoned. he did not sleep in the car, and when we got to the store, i put his car seat in the shopping cart, and it was tilted so far back, i figured he wouldn't be able to see much, would be relclined, and therefore INclined to drift off to sleep. in the produce section, he was straining his abs to lift his torso up so he could see what was going on. i actually had to laugh. he was working really hard at not falling asleep.

i noticed that i had been getting frustrated, anxious, annoyed. cosmo was not cooperating. he was not doing what i expected him to do, what i thought he NEEDED to do, and there would be consequences. but at that moment, as he was reaching, lurching and careening to catch a peek over the sides of the car seat, he was obviously wide awake, happy and curious; i realized that everything was just fine, and i was stressing myself out for no good reason. cosmo sleeps when he needs to sleep. he does not sleep on command. most people don't. and that's okay.

if i remember correctly, he got cranky and wanted to nap soon after we got home. it was too late for a nap, so we decided to just wake him up after 45 minutes. that worked out just fine. other times, he just skips his afternoon nap, and goes to bed early. it's not a big problem. recently he was sick for a week, with high fevers, and general discomfort. his sleeping schedule was all messed up. but now he's better, and things are returning to the level of routine that is possible with a 10 month old. he generally has two naps each day, he generally eats dinner around 6pm. he generally has bath and story time around 8:30, and goes to bed close to 9pm. not always, but enough to make it a pattern...of sorts, and that's good enough for us.

not long after this i found myself stressing again about night-waking, and night nursing. is it harmful for his development to not know how to put himself back to sleep by now? should he be sleeping through the night? should we be sleep training him? then i reminded myself that the way things are right now is working for me...i get plenty of sleep, feel rested each day, and don't resent the night nursing. he also seems fine, and happy with the current arrangement. he won't be a baby for very long. this precious time in our lives will pass so quickly. there is no need to rush anything, especially if there isn't a problem.

if it ain't broke...

so, for me, one of the great gifts of motherhood is learning to relax; forgetting to stress about all the things i used to think were so important and so pressing. and also, finding ways to calm down now, and accept that this is all going remarkably well. sometimes in spite of me.

comic for chuck

pincer grasp

i remember seeing ida jane on christmas day. she had just mastered the pincer grasp, and was picking up tiny objects between her thumb and fore-finger--precisely, and delicately. it struck me as such a sophisticated thing for such a young baby. she was also cruising around on two feet, moving from coffee table to couch, getting ready to walk, but i was most impressed by the pincer grasp. cosmo was just a month old at the time. his new skills included: smiling. cruising and finger foods seemed ages away. now, only 7 lightening-fast months later, he's doing those things too. i'm so proud of him. and i feel so blessed, in so many ways:
i have a beautiful, sweet-spirited child, a loving & supportive partner, strong friendships with amazing people and...starting on friday, cosmo will no longer be in daycare. i'll be caring for him during the day, for as long as we can make it work financially(probably less than a year). i remind myself everyday of my incredible good fortune. while i revel in it, i am also struck with pangs of guilt, and a feeling that it's "just not right." it's not that i don't feel like i deserve such luck, it is that i believe we all do. and there is so much needless struggle and suffering.

yesterday, on the way to work i heard a story on the radio about a lebanese family (one of three that day) who had followed the israeli instructions to flee their home before israeli bombs struck their town. en route, their car was struck by an israeli (US supplied) bomb. an eight month old baby was wailing in the background. she had suffered severe burns and other injuries. her 10 year old brother was nearby, trembling from shock--also burned. their father and uncle had been killed in the blast, the mother, i believe, was also injured. the point of broadcasting a story like that is to bring the crisis home; to make it something that everyday people can identify with. when i heard there was an 8 month old baby, i immediately put myself in the shoes of the mother. what would i do if i lived in southern lebanon, and i received the warning and instructions to evacuate or be killed? how would i decide between fleeing with my baby, or heading for a bomb shelter? especially with only 2 hours warning, knowing that everyone else would be on the road, and that roads and bridges have been bombed, or are otherwise unsafe. the truth is that i cannot even imagine. try as i might, it is impossible. remember the catastrophe on the roads out of houston when the region was threatened by hurricane rita? what a nightmare, and yet nothing compared to the 12 days of devastating bombardment and destruction of infrastructure all over southern lebanon. it is a man-made disaster on a scale that we in the US cannot comprehend. oh, but the us is sending humanitarian aid. even the vice prime minister shimone peres had the gall to say "israel will do all it can to avoid a humanitarian crisis in lebanon." how is it that you can simultaneously cause, and avoid a humanitarian crisis? i don't get it. i don't understand war, i don't get "rules of engagement," i don't understand how, as we did in afganistan, a nation can drop bombs and aid packets at the same time. call me naive, but war of any kind, makes no sense to me.



it seems criminal to celebrate the blessings of my own life, while so many lives are being strained and destroyed. i comfort myself with the thought that my happiness contributes to the overall level of happiness in the world. when possible, we create around us the kind of world we desire. my little world makes the world a better place in some small way. i have to believe that.

cosmo-a-go-go

Cosmo crawls.

It is not just a milestone. I guess none of the moments we mark and celebrate are mere milestones, but crawling is huge. Now, he can want to be somewhere other than where he is, and he can attempt to (often with success) get there. He has will, and he has motion to back it up. Right now he does not seem to have too much object preference. He likes certain kinds of things, but mostly he just seems to explore everything, and what is new is often what is most interesting. He appreciates difference.

His personality is changing too. He is becoming somebody. Somebody in particular. Cosmo. His gaze has more force, more presence than it used to.

Each moment with him is astonishing. Like nothing else, ever.

toilet talk

two nights ago i had a dream: i was holding cosmo over the toilet, or near a toilet, and i accidentally dropped him, or he slipped or squirmmed out of my arms, and fell into the toilet. though it all happened in a split second, i remember how it felt in the dream. i knew exactly what to do without thinking about it, and i did not pause --i began to act quickly. i reached into the toilet to pull him out. he was considerably smaller than he is in waking life, and part of his body had gone down into the opening at the bottom of the bowl. i had to turn his head a little to get him out, but i did manage to pull him out fast, and then i instictively held him upside down, and patted his back. he was coughing and sputtering, so i knew he was alright. i knew he was getting air. i put him on his back and started pushing on his tummy, like i had seen in a flinstone's episode as a kid. in the cartoon, the water came out of barney's mouth like a fountain. not so much in my dream, but some water did come out. i don't recall the rest of the dream, but cosmo was fine.

i know, it sounds like a really awful dream. i have had many like this one. near misses. dreams where something terrible almost happens. sometimes it involves water, sometimes it involves me leaving him somewhere, and then realizing that i am not sure if i have left him in anyone's care or not, and i am frantically trying to get back to him. in the end, he is always okay. this particular dream was different in that i felt completely confident through the whole ordeal that i could save him. i think these dreams represent (if indeed, dreams represent anything) the doubts and fears i have about parenting, and my anxiety about leaving him with others, and this specific dream is also an affirmation of the overall confidence i feel as a mother.

another toilet issue i wanted to mention is that cosmo has become quite accustomed to using his little potty chair. when we are home together, i give him the chance to use it as soon as he wakes up, either in the morning, or from naps. he almost always pees right away. i have also become quite skilled at noticing when he is about to poo, and when i bring him to the bathroom for that, he just goes! it is so cool. i haven't had to change a poopy diaper in quite a while now. hats off to miah raj and lila for the EC inspiration!
check out their green parenting blog


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strengthening the family

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