First things first - I know you all have been buckling under the anticipation of finding out the true nature of the filling inside this deep fried goodness. And so I tell you now that that, my friends, is your basic deep fried Oreo. Yep. Oreo…fried. Gross, huh? Well, I ate them all. It was so bizaare I just had to share it. Sorry the picture clue of Sam in the pumpkins threw some of you. I was just trying to convey that we were at one of those pumpkin patch farms when we discovered the deep fried Oreo. And those two pictures are the only ones worth sharing because the place was a freakin’ mob scene.

For several weeks I’d been envying all your blog posts with your children frolicking among the pumpkins in fields of green under the blue, cloudless sky, so 2 weekends ago I insisted we give it a try as well. This was more like frolicking among fields of humans amidst a grey, smokey cloud. Seriously, are we not past the whole smoking around children thing? Guess not. The lines for things like hay rides and pony rides were hours (note the plural ’s’) long, so we couldn’t do much in the way of activities. We tried to take Sam to the playground area where you had to pay to get in, but that lasted maybe 5 minutes due to the extremely dense layer of children writhing around everywhere we stepped. And so we made out with our two pumpkins and our deep fried food. While Hubby waited in line to pay for the pumpkins Sam and I watched a guy and his girlfriend inspect and take one of the pumpkins from the little photo area that the farm had set up…while someone was taking their child’s picture. How’s that for class? Have I painted a vivid picture of this experience yet? Next year we’ll be driving to a farm further away from the city, I think.

Today we’ll be attending a costume parade with the moms and kids from “the club.” I totally half assed Halloween this year as far as Sam’s costume. You know what though, I kept my eyes open for costume possibilities and even did some active searching and I’m telling you I did not see a single thing that my kid would keep on his body for more than 30 seconds. With all the fluff and fur and padding and synthetic fibers there was just no way. Plus there’s the issue of budget. For a while Hubby and I brainstormed ideas for costumes I could make. We almost went with a vampire costume for him. He’d wear a t-shirt that said, “I vant to suuck your boooob,” on it and on the cape the name “Lactacula” would be printed. After a little while it didn’t sound like such a great idea as I envisioned the 3 year olds asking their moms about it and the moms not laughing but glaring at me. So in the end I decided to go simple and get him something he could play with after Halloween, unlike the skunk costume from last year that is now our cat’s bed. I also figured the more toy-like his costume was the more likely it might hold his interest for the duration of the parade. So Sam will be a construction worker this year. I got him a Bob the Builder toolbelt and hard hat and he’ll wear his jeans and a plaid shirt. Of course, the flannel is going to end up being too hot for him to wear this afternoon since it is almost 70 freakin’ degrees here today! I expect the shirt will be shed early on, as will the toolbelt and hat if this goes anything like the test run last night, leaving Sam to do the parade in his t-shirt and jeans. Impressive, I know.

As for tonight I’m not sure what to do with him. I had hoped that he would get to put candy in the buckets/bags of the kids that would come to our door, but the neighbors say the kids in our buildings generally leave our apartment complex and head over to more residential areas. I know Sam could care less about trick or treating, I just thought he might like to look at other kids in costumes. Maybe we’ll go take a walk through one of the neighborhoods so he can see. And after he goes to bed I’m sure Hubby and I will be enjoying any one of the fine Halloween flicks to be aired on tv tonight.

In other news we have a second word: “cah,” sometimes pronounced “gah.” Apparently my son is from Boston.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

Labels: Holidays

Here’s a little quiz for your Thursday enjoyment. See if you can answer the following.

1) Remember I mentioned I was going to be writing a book? Well I’ve been doing some planning for it, outlining plot and such, and also choosing character names. After long, long consideration I decided on the two names for the main characters, who will end up in a relationship for most of the book. So I wanted the names to not only fit what I envision for each character but also work well together. When I finally chose them I was very pleased with myself and promptly wrote an email to Hubby listing the character names, but as soon as I wrote them next to each other I realized why I thought they sounded so good together, as well as why I can’t use them. The names were Lil and James. Why can’t I use them?

2) What do you think this is?

I’ll give you a hint about where we were to help you out.

What is he pointing at? That one’s hypothetical - I have no idea.

3) This is related to number 1. What was the name of a fairly jockish and popular but nice guy in your middle school or high school? I don’t want the name of the jack ass who thought he was too cool for school. I want the name of the down to earth guy that seemed to get along with most everyone and was genuinely kind to even the people that weren’t jocks or popular or whatever. See how I use you all?

Labels: Holidays, Pictures, Toddler

I’ve always associated my Dad with the outdoors; he’s just an outdoorsy type of guy. Growing up, if my father was not at work then he was probably out in the yard doing an array of gardening tasks and projects. I never understood what he could possibly be doing to pass so much time.

When I picture my childhood I envision our back yard when we lived in Maryland. It had a treehouse and a trapeze that my dad built himself. And it was full of trees and leaves and secret places. That yard was my absolute favorite place to be. I ran around pretending to be Wendy, Dorothy, Sheena, a fairy, a gelfling, a unicorn, anyone or anything I wanted. My dad would walk around the yard with me and point out the things I’d miss, like a snake coiled up a few feet from where I’d stepped. He’d drive me around on the lawn mower down the hill in the grassy part below. This will sound strange, but I did this meditation thing back in my theater days where we envisioned ourselves in a safe space and I automatically saw myself back in that treehouse.

When I got older and we lived in a different house things were different. I didn’t want to go outside. It was all about locking myself in my bedroom, shutting out the light as much as possible and blasting some awful hair band. My dad would force me to go out back and do yard work under threat of grounding or losing my phone. I hated it. I hated weeding and planting and whatever else he had me do, and I was certain that absolutely no other kid my age was being forced to do manual labor outside – I, and I alone, was being tortured. I started to dread any Saturday in which the weather was nice because I knew I’d be forced to “go out and enjoy it.”

As the weather gets colder here I’ve been watching my plants out on the patio freeze and slowly droop. I contacted my dad back in the summer to get his advice on what to plant out there and discuss how to do it successfully. My potted caladium and coleus had tripled in size by week 6. I was left wishing for a yard in which I could start a real garden, a place that would support perennials, and wishing I’d paid more attention to everything my dad taught me. Hubby and I are starting to look into buying a house this spring and my number one priority for looking at a home is for it to have a yard. I want Sam to have his own place outdoors where he feels free. Right now I do my best to get him outside as much as possible to parks, playgrounds, or the arboretum. I look forward to seeing what my dad has done for Sam in his new woodsy backyard in the mountains where he and my mother recently retired. I know it involves a play area with tree stumps, and holes and crevices especially good for inhabitance by elves.

Every weekend Hubby and I try to figure out what we should do with our free time with Sam. Hubby lists possibilities as they come to mind and quite frequently, if the weather is nice, every indoor suggestion will be met with a disdainful, “There’s no way we’re doing something inside. It’s a beautiful day and I intend to enjoy it.”

Happy Birthday, Dad. Hope you have fun out in the yard today.

Labels: Birthdays

Well, I think I scarred my son. Ever since the incident with the train table last week I have been walking around the house and finding scenes like this:

And this:

Clearly this boy has been wronged, be it by me, by 4 year olds who don’t like sharing, or by their negligent parents, the boy has been wronged.

My poor little train conductor. Will he ever recover?

I did take him back to the train table a few days later where he played happily with a two year old whose mother kept reprimanding him for absolutely nothing. He still threw a tantrum when we left despite the fact that he’d already gotten bored with the train and was just walking around. I don’t feel so bad anymore. And I am armed and ready for the next bully. Now if only my son could get some words so that I could arm him as well. Thanks for all of your input.

Labels: Pictures, Toddler

I have a hard time admitting this, but I have learned something about myself over the course of the last few months. I tend to get incredibly indignant about the way other people parent their children when it comes to protecting Sam. When I take him out to a playground, a store, a playgroup, what have you, I am right there with him when it comes to interacting with other kids when it looks like there might be trouble. I am there helping him to share and trade toys back and forth, to make sure no one gets pushed away from the steering wheel and that everyone gets a turn. I cannot tell you how often I find I am the only one mediating though, how often other parents stand their and watch their child take a toy, slap Sam’s hands, push past him, and they do nothing. It makes me want to scream, say something rude, or glare until my eyes pop out and/or their head explodes. I never, in actuality, do more than glare mildly and then complain to my husband. Here’s an example:

Yesterday was dreary and threatening to rain so I decided to take Sam to the Barnes and Noble because they have a train set there, and I thought he’d like it. When we arrived there were two older children already there so I decided to take him over to the story area to play on the stage for a while. When it was clear that the parents of these kids were camped out for the day I decided to let him go over and play. The other two kids proceeded to take train cars from him, gathering them up so that they had them all, and repeatedly stepped between him and the table so that he could not come near. The girl even started to say something to him about how he was too young to play there until she saw me looking at her. Their parents did nothing. They sat in their chairs reading. Personally I do not feel comfortable being the only one to mediate in a situation like that when the parents are RIGHT THERE. Sadly, I decided that Sam and I needed to leave because I was afraid he was really going to get pushed over and his lack of train cars was starting to upset him. Of course, when I picked him up to go he threw a HUGE tantrum and would not stop screaming no matter how I tried to appease him. We ended up leaving the store with him flailing in my arms and sobbing. I felt awful. And yet I do think he needed to be removed from the situation. He was going to have a tantrum anyway if he kept having his cars taken away or it could have been worse with two older kids who specifically did not want him there and two parents who wouldn’t even look up from their reading material.

I left with him feeling that we’d both been bullied. I was so pissed that our afternoon had been ruined, at least that’s how it felt. I understand that kids will be kids. They don’t have to want to play with him. They don’t even have to be good at sharing. But they do need to have parents that will supervise enough to let them know that pushing him away from the table is not acceptable. I really need some advice here because I feel like I find myself in this situation over and over again. What am I supposed to do when I am standing there watching a kid be mean to him and their parent does nothing? I mean, clearly these two parents had brought their kids there to play with the train so they could check out for a bit, and I understand the need to check out every so often. And I know their kids were older and maybe they don’t really need to deal with this stuff very often anymore. But wasn’t this a good opportunity to help their child exhibit some patience with a younger child? Or was I just totally wrong to take Sam somewhere to play with a train where there might be older kids in the first place? I really don’t know how I should have handled the situation but as I wiped tears from his eyes and put him in the car I knew that somewhere along the line I had not made the right choice, because he didn’t deserve to miss out on something he liked due to the behavior of everyone else. And I know that I get angry and am frustrated by situations like this frequently.

So tell me, am I expecting too much from other parents? Am I totally overprotective/overbearing/over-involved? Would you reprimand another person’s child if they didn’t? Would you feel comfortable sitting there and mediating while the other parent did nothing? Do you avoid these situations altogether? Do you try and let your child be independent and fend for himself until the bad thing happens rather than removing him in its anticipation? Honest answers please - I’m at a loss.

Labels: Mommyhood, Tales, Toddler, Toys

We all had a vision of how we would parent before we actually had kids. My vision involved homemade baby food, cloth diapers, co-sleeping through the night, etc. Oh, how things change once the baby arrives. Things seem unrealistic, expectations are lowered, we feel some guilt but not enough to change it. Part of my perfect vision also involved no tv watching for Sam. Before he was born I didn’t understand why anyone would want their baby watching tv, and I admit that I saw it as a type of laziness in parents. Then Sam came and I needed a way to fill up hours and hours of time, just the two of us. When he was very young he was all colic, all the time, so tv wasn’t an issue. Eventually though he settled and every so often we had some down time by watching a Baby Einstein video. As he got a bit older it turned into the occasional episode of Teletubbies, and as of late Sam has discovered the joys of Elmo while mommy has discovered the joys of getting to take a shower while Elmo babysits.

It was never a lot of tv, about half an hour so that I could get ready for the day. And maybe if he wasn’t feeling well and wanted to cuddle on the couch…and maybe if he needed to be still to settle down for a nap…you get the picture. And I did this, knowing full well that the American Academy of Pediatrics did not recommend any television viewing for children under the age of two. And I did this knowing why they would make that recommendation. Certainly nothing good was coming from Sam’s tv viewing other than some down time for me. He wasn’t learning anything from it since we all know babies learn by doing, not by watching a 2 dimensional screen. I could see him sitting there totally zoning out as I thought to myself, “this is not right.” He was engaged but not in a good way. When asked if he wanted to watch Elmo though, he would smile and run to the tv waiting to see his friend sing that incredibly annoying song, and he would dance, which I could rationalize as “interaction”. And so I continued - a bit of tv, every so often when I needed it, like to shower for 5 minutes without Sam standing there opening and closing my shower door. I had become that “lazy” parent but I didn’t care, not enough to change it anyway.

About a month ago a writer on Slate suggested that there might be a possible link between the increase in children diagnosed with Autism and the rise of tv viewing among children in the past 25 years. On first read I thought the idea was interesting, but not very convincing. He had very little in the way of hard evidence to support this theory and acknowledged in the article that it was little more than speculation. I actually was a little pissed off by the article after thinking about it a bit because I think it’s dangerous to insinuate that Autism might be linked to something that a parent can control when you have no evidence to support you. Parents of Autistic children, I am sure, already beat themselves up enough wondering if they did something wrong or could have somehow prevented this from happening to their children. For us, it hits close to home because my husband has two autistic half brothers. The idea of my Mother-in-law berrating herself for letting her boys watch too much tv was too much, especially if there was no basis.

Yesterday a follow up article was posted on Slate discussing a recent study done by Cornell University, potentially linking Autism to tv viewing by children under three. If you’ve not yet seen this article you really need to go and read it (it links to the previous article I mentioned above, which is also worth your time to read as it gives a lot of background on the potential connection between the two). Reading it was enough to make me jump from my seat, grab the remote and delete every episode of Teletubbies and Sesame Street we had. The researchers are not suggesting that tv is the sole cause of the rise in autism, but they, and the writer, believe there is a link, that it is one factor among many. What it comes down to for me is this: no one knows the real cause of autism and why it has become so widespread, but this study has found that tv might play a role, potentially a big role. And since I already know that tv does nothing good for my child and that his time would be better spent doing…well, just about anything else, then that’s enough for me. I find the article to be extremely compelling in its case against tv for children under the age of three, not perfect, not without holes in the argument, not to be taken as fact without further scrutiny, but compelling, compelling enough to make me stop doing something that I know wasn’t really good for my child anyway. And so the Teletubbie and Sesame Street season passes have been cancelled and the remote has been hidden. We are officially a no tv household, at least before Sam’s bedtime we are - Hubby and I are working hard to get through the first season of Lost on DVD and there’s no way we’re stopping now! I think it’s a good decision whether or not this study proves true (and there is already some major backlash and criticism of it). Sam and I have already had more tickle fights, read more books, and done more dancing than we would have on a regular morning. The question is: how am I going to get my shower?

Labels: Bloggy Stuff - Memes/Links/Business, Learn More Every Day

So I think I’m going to be all daring and try and write a book. For quite some time, since the days where I taught in a middle school, I’ve had an idea for a novel for young audiences. I never really got anywhere with it, some character names and a written and rewritten first page that I didn’t even end up saving. But as of late I’ve been kind of flailing around, wondering what the heck it is that I’m doing with myself and what I intend to do with myself in the future. I must admit I need a little more than what I’ve got going on right now. It’s not that I don’t find being a stay at home mom to be fulfilling…well, maybe it is. Maybe that’s exactly what it is. I think right now I am lacking goals of my own, and that’s hard. So when Heather over at One Woman’s World posted about National Novel Writing Month it was perfect. It’s time to get down to business and try to write this thing to see what comes of it; hopefully it will be more than 1 page this time.

I apologize in advance for my intended lack of blogging for the next month or so. Honestly I’ve been lame anyway when it comes to posting and commenting, as you may have noticed. Perhaps it’s time for a little blogging break. I don’t mean I’m going to disappear or anything. I think I’ll just post a little less often and relax about that, rather than feeling like it’s “been 3 whole days and I HAVE to get a post up.” No I don’t. Blogging is not an obligation – remember that all you blogging ladies because I know how hard it is to get caught up and then it’s not fun anymore.

Today I wrote the first page or so (again) and I have to say it was amazing to do something that had nothing to do with Sam. It was bizarre and weirdly exciting. I kept feeling like I should stop and write a children’s book instead so that I could somehow relate what I was doing to him. But I didn’t, and for half an hour I did something of my own. So for all of you out there who have ever had the inclination to try and write more than your blog, join me and go on over to the NaNoWriMo site and sign on up.

Labels: Bloggy Stuff - Memes/Links/Business, Writing