Parallel play

With apologies to Wikipedia:

Parallel play is a concept from developmental psychology. It means mothers wiping off, feeding, sunscreening, locating, chasing, comforting, and/or punishing children side by side without interaction. It is commonly seen among mothers of children of ages 2 or 3 who only get to see each other once a year.

No further reports at this time as I'm still susceptible to the bends. (And actually, thanks to some very generous people, there was some group play as well!)

The politics of multiparity

A woman pregnant with her first baby is radiant, beautiful, adorable.

A woman pregnant with her second baby is matronly, serene, not disrespectable.

A woman pregnant with her third baby is a trouper, pitiable. We're glad for her that she's about to be put out to pasture.

A woman pregnant with her fourth+ baby is a sow. A breeder. A glutton. An abuser of the environment. Pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and childrearing are obviously not difficult for her or she'd have quit by now like any sane, unselfish, thinking person. All she's doing is, as I heard it described on Talk of the Nation a few weeks ago, "pop[ping] out puppies," and she needs to be publicly derided for it. (Thanks, Russ in Kansas City--your insights on Christianity were strikingly original. And Ira, the ideological balance of calls you accept on the show is a fine reflection of your journalistic integrity).

More environment, please! Oink oink oink.

Female circumcision motivated by religious belief? Hey, who are we to judge (at least in certain times and places; find on this page "genital mutilation")? The tiny minority of adherents to catholic doctrine who take babies as God gives them (which only sometimes means a lot)? Christianist militant nut jobs, and stupid to boot.

Stand by your pad

Curity Nursing Pads, you used to be cool. You never made me crinkle annoying cellophane in a sleeping baby's ear when I packed up. You were 700 layers thick and could make it through long naps and other catastrophes. You screamed to the world through my shirt, "This woman is wearing the world's most unstreamlined nursing pads because they're the cheapest, and so is she!" You had that freaky lady with the spaghetti hair baring her teeth at a pathetically uncorpulent baby on the box. Then on the other side of the box you had all those helpful directions for breastfeeding, once dramatically interpreted to unsettling effect by a certain holy man in my very own family room. I bet those directions used to help a lot of people with breastfeeding. Oh, and the box was as big as my sofa. I never lost track of that bad boy, that's for sure.

You've sold out, Curity. Now you're oval and and individually wrapped and sold in compact boxes with cross-section diagrams and arrows explaining lame things about the secrets of your absorbency, like I care.

You're still the cheapest, so you know I'll keep coming back. But you've changed, man. You've changed.

The virtues of fathers

There are many, but one that I particularly appreciate is that if you don't put anything on your blog about Father's Day, they don't care.

CSPP salutes our more rational halves. Thanks for doing business with us.

A word from our sponsor

Go here! Buy this! Then write to CPH and tell them how much you liked a certain contributor! (Adriane. And in the other book, Rosie and Julie.)

If you can't beat 'em

at least you can confuse them enough to get a few minutes' respite from the screaming.

I submit:

"QUICK!! [drop voice to urgent whisper] We have to be very, very quiet. How quiet can you be? We have to be sooooo quiet because we have to sneak up on the laundry. Shhhhh. Let's tiptoe so that we can sneak up on the laundry."

and

"WAIT! We can't cry now! It's 9:24! That means it's time to count down from ten in Spanish! That makes the dust bunnies dance!"

Yes, I'm pretty much certifiable.

Anyone have other examples to share?

Dontcha just love two-year-olds?

The Sticker Club

Welcome to the STICKER CLUB! Please send one packet of stickers to the person listed in the #1 spot below. Move my name to the first spot & put your name in the 2nd spot. Then, send this letter to six of your friends.

If you cannot do this within six days, please let my mom know because it is not fair to the kids who have participated so far. (emphasis added) Within 2 weeks, you should have received 36 packets of stickers!! (sic) It's lot of fun & exciting to see where your stickers come from and it is always nice to get mail.

Good luck and Thank You (sic) for participating in the Sticker Club!

P.S. Parents, please take the time for this cute project. It is worth it to see the smile on your child's face when they (sic) open "their (sic) mail". (sic) To make this easier, we have included a blank letter for you to photocopy. Run 12 copies of the enclosed blank letter before you write on it. Then mail it to six of your child's friends &/or relatives. Make sure to include one blank one for them to copy & send to their friends.

Friends, WHY?!?!?!?!?! I bear no grudge against the dutiful mother who sent this to me; as you can see, her conscience was shamelessly bound. But: it ends here! With liberty and justice for all!

I will purchase one packet of stickers to mail to dear little H----- in N--------- whose name is in the number one spot. I will purchase six packets of stickers, put them in six stamped envelopes, and address them in various disguised handwritings to dear little A------- in H----- whose name is in the number two spot. I will take them with me on our trip to CCA. When I run into you at the Augsburger Barbecue, I will give you one to take back to your own exotic locale for postmarking to comply with the geographic provision in the last sentence of the second paragraph.

I will put an end to this madness, and you will help me.

Who knew?

I always feel guilty for things I shouldn't, and not for things I should. One that falls into the former category is giving blood, which I haven't been able to do for 6 years now what with the perpetual parturition/lactational longevity. To assuage this misplaced guilt, I was poking around to find out about milk donation. I'm too much of a capitalist to donate my own personal self to this for-profit company, but I came across this in their FAQs and found it darn interesting:

Breast milk does have uses for adult diseases as well. People with cancer drink breast milk to calm their stomachs after chemotherapy, bolster their immune systems and help digest food. In some parts of the world, it is used for burn patients and organ transplant patients. If you are interested in donating your milk for these other uses, contact one of the 6 milk banks associated with the Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA).

Listmania

I have a list problem. I’m so compulsive about my to-do lists that sometimes my lists have lists. This doesn’t mean that I’m an organized person; I’m always losing my lists and having to make new ones, then finding the old ones and making composite lists, which cross-pollinate into third-generation hybrids. But if I didn’t write things down, I might never get anything done. There’s a serious sense of satisfaction in crossing off a task that’s been accomplished in a timely manner.

As we all know, there are few things quite so antithetical to to-do lists as newborns. After the first baby came along, days would pass and my beautiful lists would remain untouched save for the tears of frustration that stained them. I was used to deadlines and schedules, to tasking my time precisely and efficiently. Six weeks after Boy One was born, I found myself in a whole new world, alone in a house full of boxes, holding an intense, often inexplicably Angry little bundle, regarding my lists with a mixture of wistfulness and helpless rage, wondering how a 12-lb. creature could so completely prevent me from accomplishing anything.

Then my wise mother saved my sanity (at least temporarily) by introducing my desperate self to the concept of the Reverse To-Do List. Rules: everything counts. If you do it, write it down, and then you get to cross it off. If you get the table cleared after breakfast, you get to write it down and cross it off. Feeding and changing the baby count (it takes time, and no one else is going to do it, are they now?). Walking across the street to the mailbox counts; trimming Baby’s fingernails counts; bouncing the babe while pacing and singing endless hymns or crazy rhymes counts. Yeah. You get the idea. Everything counts.

The Reverse To-Do List is also helpful if one’s husband is puzzled as to how the existence of just one small baby justifies him coming home to a messy house and an exhausted, disheveled wife who rages incoherently about the fact that he will be ordering pizza if he wants to eat that night or whimpers inconsolably about the fact that she hasn’t brushed her hair or teeth yet—that week. (My husband is fortunately of the understanding variety, and has never attempted to suggest that perhaps more could be accomplished in his absence. But sometimes it makes me feel better when I can present him with a list of what’s gone on while he’s been gone.)

With a new baby in the house again, I sometimes resort again to this sanity saving trick, though I do generally accomplish much more in a day with 3 kids than I did with just one. As an example, I submit the following: a recent morning’s list that I came across while I was, uh, organizing my lists.

Call vet
Call dr. (2 calls)
Sweep floor
Spot-clean floor [notice that the floor gets 2 separate entries—it was two separate accomplishments, after all]
Fed everyone snack
Fed baby—2x [this can be broken down into individual line items if desired]
Changed baby—3x including Bowel Event of the Week (details available upon request)
Load of laundry
Pay phone bill
Clean pee off carpet (mental note to delay potty training again till I’m seriously battle-ready)
Write 2 thx
Renewed library books over phone
Put away some clothes
Cleared kitchen counter (partially)
Didn’t kill children
Didn’t even beat children

Though for some reason he seemed rather amused, the father of said children recognized those last two items as perhaps the most significant, if intangible, accomplishments of that morning, given the rather un-charming phase the Big Brothers were going through that week. And writing it down helped me realize that my morning hadn't been a total wash and that my character was developing along with my household management skills :O. Ah, the power of lists!

Sanctuary

Dr Laura says that my bedroom should be a beautiful sanctuary. I couldn't agree more. But I don't know what I'd do with the piles of junk on our dressers, or how I'd justify the expense of a not-really-necessary nightstand to replace the Walmart barstool I used as a ladder to the top bunk in college which now stands on my side of the bed, or where I'd put the sewing machine that I'm going to start using any day now. I hope our marriage survives.

The bathroom? Ha! Not only is it impossible to convince my dear children that privacy is the nicest thing they could offer me while I'm in this room with the charmingly broken doorknob, but how would I dry off without a preschooler to bring me a new towel when I've stupidly tossed the old one in the laundry without replacing it?

Church, of course, is sanctuary by definition. And yet, as we've discussed before in this cyberspace, everyone with kids is on vocational call even during that hour. I've always got someone's arms to pin down when the chalice is within striking distance. And at home, too, personal piety is sacred only in a technical sense. If someone starts crying mid-petition, it's the petition (for better or worse) that gets put on hold.

But the confessional. There is a true sanctuary. No toddler can come crashing through that door. I am so thankful for my wonderful husband who gets me to confession as regularly as possible, despite the inconvenience to him, with additional sessions whenever I request them. He sees to it that my time there is completely uninterrupted and as long as I need it to be. And need I mention that the comfort of Holy Absolution is rather singular?