You can have it all

I've mentioned before that while pregnant I read a great book, and one of the things it says about parenting is that you have to realize, as a parent, that you can have it all, maybe, but you definitely can't have it all at the same time.

But what if you get it all at the same time?

On this blog we have periodically gotten very oratorical about politics, so you all know where I stand. I want to bracket my political inclinations right now and say that--I don't agree with her, a lot of her opinions and decisions make me VERY ANGRY--but I am really feeling empathetic about Sarah Palin right about now.

I don't fully know how to say what I want to say carefully enough--I am not trying to be offensive or argumentative, here, but just to notice that most of my closest mama friends have a very difficult time balancing work and self and mothering. It's tough. Even if you believe that it is important to balance those things, that you could not be good as a mother if you denied your need to be an individual and a professional, it's hard. I'm going to go on the job market this year without a major publication, and that's partly because I chose to spend my afternoons with my son rather than writing, and that was a really good compromise for me, but it was indeed a compromise. Most people I know are negotiating a similar balancing act--you keep your balls in the air, but you know none of them are flying as high as they might.

I normally have a sense of what I want in my life: that my professional life is important, but not the only important thing, and that I don't want my professional life to require me to neglect the other things I love.

I know that, but would I really turn it down if Harvard called and offered me a job? Would I really say no, even if I'd be ambivalent about all the work it would demand?

What if Harvard called, right after I'd just had a child with special needs--needs even more special than the needs of my other four children? What if Harvard called when my oldest daughter needed me more than ever?

What if Harvard called and said: we're calling, but we might never call back? What if Harvard called, and you thought you could really do some good, but weren't sure you could really do all that good right now, but maybe you'd just have to try, because this is your now, this is your moment, this is the time when life invites you and your babies and their babies onto that american idol stage?

A lot of attention has been paid and will be paid and should be paid to Palin's judgement in the next few months. I am not, right now, interested in evaluating the judgement she showed in making her choice. What I just want to say is that this moment in Sarah Palin's life is like a crystallized version, is like the reductio ad absurdum, of a decision all mother's face. It is absurd to be in her position; it is stranger than fiction, it is so hyperbolic I can almost not believe it's real, and that's not even counting all the weird Alaska-moose-cubing bits.

So I empathize. What I will have to decide, this year as I think about my own career, is whether I sympathize. I will be interested to watch as America judges the judgement of a mother, trying to have it all on our most public stage.

What a strange strange moment, when conservatives argue that a mother of five is qualified to be VP by VIRTUE of her mother-of-five-ness, while even liberal mothers wonder if really this is the level at which you say, you can't really have a professional career at this level, with this kind of family situation. We're all reaching the limits of our ideological foundation. Watching her extremity, we are all stretched too far.

Licking the beaters: a living tradition

Riding Mower, people!

What sound does a squirrel make?

Actually, that is not precisely my question, as I have heard a great number of squirrels make a great deal of noise. Just yesterday, Elliot and I had a long conversation of sorts with a squirrel on our back porch, who was mad at us because we wouldn't leave and allow him to dig up my flower boxes in peace. It is our dialogue with him that provokes my question, which really is something more like, "how would you transcibe the noises that a squirrel makes? What is the correct squirrel onomatopeia?"

I think they actually make three noises. They do a "tcktcktcktck" thing which reminds me of the cartoon Riki-Tiki-Tavi; while they do this one they often wriggle, like they're doing a squirrel-version of the dolphin kick, that also seems rather mongoose-ish to me. Also, they kind of growl. That's easy, like "grrrrr" but really low. But then, the screeching sound they make? How would you transcribe that? Like, "ReH! ReH! REE!" Is that it?

It's funny that squirrels aren't really in our cultural repetoire of "animal noises." Farms and safari trips seem to have the lock on animal noises, while your average urban dweller is excluded. But I think we need to remedy this gap, because after dogs and cats squirrels are the animals Elliot interacts with most often.

In other news: it is Kate Mann's birthday! Happy Derbay Kate Mann! Elliot is excited to sing to you tonight! And! It is my parent's THIRTY-EIGHTH wedding anniversary! That is a lot of years, people. Let me take this public forum to say: thank you so much, mama and papa, for being such great examples of how to make a happy, sustaining family. Elliot and I are both forever forever grateful.

Just fyi

if you are interested in seeing a little video featuring some HAPPY HAPPY SPLASHING ELLIOT, you can do so right here.

Elliot LOVES THIS.

Sarah made an observation I think is spot-on: if there's one thing that has an incredible, almost unseemly power over the child's mind, it is the Brand.

The Brand is a pattern -- a personality -- waiting to be recognized & come alive in different guises, in different media, on shoes and buses and food boxes and videos and toys. You can put the Brand in your mouth or on your head or in your pocket or on your feet.

What Elliot wants is to connect dots. He wants to recognize patterns and bring his world into focus. That is one of his most acute needs and we see him working on this project daily.

What Brands are is dots waiting to be connected. I think of them as ikons -- in the old religious sense. They have power!

Fortunately, I trust the Pixar people with this power. I think I like Wall-E almost more than Elliot does. (But Elliot gets to wear the Wall-E shoes.)

brief update, with documentation

So lately I've been trying to teach Elliot to say, "I'm volatile!" Because all of a sudden, Elliot is kind of volatile. Brandon says that, despite my obvious hilarity, I'm not really doing Elliot any favors here and should probably instead teach him to say something useful and communicative, like, "I'm frustrated!"

I agree to a point, except I'd say that what's new and interesting for Elliot these days isn't frustration, which is old news, but volatility--that is, being really loud and pissed in the face of frustration. We hear, "aaaAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!" noises around here a lot more than we used to. I think it is a taste of two-dom to come. We'll see.

So, there's the volatility--that's real, that's something that's going on. But mostly, you guys, our life could be a big documentary called "why toddlers are awesome," or, "why it's worth it to have children," or, "you too can live on sesame street." Elliot is so chatty and fun right now, and he just goes around petting zoos and block parties and backyards befriending people left and right.

Like here's one story--a couple of weekends ago we were at this sidewalk restaurant thing (with TJ; hi TJ!) and Elliot kept wandering over to the doorway of the neighboring store, a place called "His Stuff" which sells fancy gay men overpriced t-shirts and jeans (basically). Elliot was attracted to the music wafting from open door, some club beat, "uhChaUhChaUhCha," etc. He stood there in the doorway dancing for a while, before he looked down and noticed that several leaves and some dirt had blown into the doorway. "Dirty," he assessed. So he came back to the table, grabbed his broom (we had just purchased it, but now we do often take it with us in case of emergency sweeping needs) and started sweeping the entryway. "I cleaning!" he said, still shaking his wee booty. The staff should there bewildered for a while--what do you do at the fancy gay man store when a toddler decides you're not keeping the place clean?--before reaching the obvious conclusion that they should start dancing too, which they did.

I mean, really! I don't even know what to tell you. And it's not just Elliot, it's all of his peers, too, it's this magical not-quite-two time. It's like he's in his own toddler movie, a new genre closely related to the musical comedy, or like he's a very young mary poppins or something. He runs fast, he talks about cows and garbage cans, he dances on the beach.

Are you looking for something to read?

No, I know, you're not. You're eagerly awaiting the new Twilight novel, out tomorrow. But, okay, when you are done with that (say, Thursday) you will be ready for some new weekend reading.

Might I suggest this children's fantasy novel, also out tomorrow, written by my friend Marie?



Marie and I went to college together, where we had many many adventures, and talked about many many books, and have recently gotten in touch again after many many years. While I have not yet read this new book, this book that Marie has written, here's what I can say to recommend it: Marie is hella smart; Marie has an accute eye for small magical details; Marie crafts deliberately and with love; Marie writes from the heart and always has. So I think this book is worth recommending even apart from the friend connection.

The other reason to read it now is that I suspect, I suspect, that this book and its sequels (FSG is putting the next one out next summer) are going to be...big news. This is just my guess. But wouldn't that be great? If the Kronos chronicles turns into the next Harry Potter, and you get to be all, "I read it when?" Won't that be fun?

And, if you buy it, you'll get to see the pretty real cover, not that nasty bitmapped thing I seem to have pasted in.

Most awesome photo in the history of the world

There's a whole backstory of city summer fantasticness to this photo, which we will perhaps document later, but I just had to post this right now because THE WORLD SHOULD NOT WAIT for the chance to see this photo, this brilliant photo, of my son nudely and with terrific focus serenading the world with a randomly acquired hot pink guitar.

Breakfast of Champeens

This morning Elliot had a little tantrum for ten or fifteen minutes (because we didn't let him go to the basement), which was finally concluded by rummaging around in the cupboard (angrily) and discovering some jars of baby food (disappointing). My suggestion that he might like to eat the baby food seemed to change the mood. And that is why, for breakfast today, Elliot had pureed turkey sweet potato dinner over a year old.

Trip to the Wasatch Mountains

We've posted a bunch of pictures from our trip to Utah on our flickr page.



The mountains were green, the weather was clear and warm but not too warm, the lake was not really too cold (it is snowmelt remember), and it was so nice to get to spend time with both sets of Elliot's fine young grandparents -- we are fortunate to spring from such folks. He also checked in with Honorary Aunt Rusti and Course Marshal Uncle Ken, Sloan and Lucas (see them being as cute as humanly possible in this hammock), etc.


And of course, he loved meeting and discussing his "Aunty Pammmm-uh." Unfortunately, we didn't manage to take any pictures of them TOGETHER, but maybe someone else has that on their camera?

In Passing: "5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do"

So, this isn't the promised wealth of pictures, but it's interesting. It's a 10-minute TED talk about how our particular culture of "safety" can actually make life more dangerous for children, and also considerably less interesting.

This grabbed my attention immediately because I had just been talking about how my parents were very successful at doing something similar--that is, introducing me to "dangerous" things in a way that made me convinced that being "safe" with them was a cool and worthwhile, rather than boring and irritating (as safety rules often seem to be).

Some of my earliest memories are of going off the diving board with my Dad. I felt completely secure and excited and proud to be able to swim in the deep end, dive down to touch the drain twelve feet deep, do flips and handstands, and looked with complete scorn on kids who would run at the pool, which was a surefire way, I knew even then, to fall on wet concrete and whack your head, and thus was dangerous--unlike what I was doing, which was exploring something powerful--water--in a way that made me respect that powerful things become dangerous when they they are not treated safely.

I had similar experiences watching kids exhibit what I considered to be completely stupid behavior with fireworks--which I set off in great and terrific abundance every summer, always being careful to fulfill a whole series of safety precautions. For me, these precautions weren't about fear, they were about power, the power of fire, which I only was able to harness because I knew what it meant to be safe. Those kids running around with tiny firecrackers, set off wily-nily--I knew they felt cool, because they held them recklessly in their hands, too close and too long--but to me, they seemed powerless. They were stuck with boring fireworks completely out of their control, while I, who took the time to erect a safe platform, water bucket near by, and a safety plan desivised in (what felt like) collaboration with my folks, was allowed to use my long careful matches to send great blooming explosions high into the night sky.

I guess the point is that sometimes safety means removal--taking away a potentially dangerous thing. Certainly that's often true. But sometimes the safer route is actually exposure, and experimentation, and opportunity. Sometimes the safer route is, as the speaker cited says, playing with the fire rather than pretending there's no flame.

Well, we've been gone for oodles

And soon we'll post some pictures here of Elliot at the cabin, in the lake, in the hammock, on a boat, on his "bike," running up an down the hill, using his dump truck from Rusti sometimes as a dump truck, sometimes as a vacuum cleaner. Sometimes doing a finger-wagging dance to "The More We Get Together" and sometimes to "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Sometimes he announces "Mama's Hard Core!" though, I admit, usually only with proding. More often he announces, of his own accord, "Everybody's okay!" and he's right, everybody is, and then some.

Preservatives and Food Colorings

On the food beat, there was a significant study that came out last fall about a link between preservatives (& food colorings) and hyperactivity in kids. This was reported in the British medical journal Lancet, which also means something. As someone who at least moonlights as a professional scientist, I can tell you that there's a big difference between studies that show a clear cause and effect relationship -- which this one does -- and studies like this one on kids who go to day care. That's a study that doesn't show much of anything at all: no clear cause, only a small effect. Journalists, unfortunately, generally report all studies on the same level.

Sodium benzoate in particular was tested in the Lancet study, and found to cause clear hyperactivity effects. Eat chemical ==> get hyper. So today while Elliot was helping himself to gobs of hummus with a tiny fork, I checked the ingredient list, and sure enough, there was sodium benzoate. Not all the hummus at the supermarket has preservatives in it, but this kind did.

It's not that I stopped the boy in mid-bite, but I did make a mental note. There are lots of kinds of hummus on the shelf. Just get the one with none of the weird chemicals in it.

We got in the habit of looking at ingredient lists when Whit and Jen were around last year, and Jen was saying, "Why the hell are there so many ingredients in Cheerios?" And we were like, Dude, don't worry about it. It will be fine.

And it probably will be fine, either way. But they have a good point. There just don't have to be that many ingredients in any food product -- food is not that complicated. But the point is also not to become superstitious or frightened. I'm just going to buy different hummus from now on.

Elliot's current fav.

I like it too.