Smrt Lernins

Tank has been in a mood this week. Argumentative, defiant, downright rude. The weather has been lousy, he’s feeling cooped up, and I don’t think he’s feeling great, but that’s still no excuse for being the bear he has been.

Yesterday, Babypie colored a little on his picture with a marker. I immediately moved Babypie to another seat (and, since I was asked about it, yes, I did scold her and tell her to color on HER paper, not Donovan’s), wiped up as much marker as possible, and offered to get him a new picture. That was not enough to address the insult, apparently, because as soon as I walked back out of the room, he slapped the marker from Babypie’s hand, knocking her from the chair, where she hit her face, bit either her tongue or the inside of her cheese, and started sobbing as she bled from the mouth.

When told to go to his room, Tank refused. He only went under threat of having his box of markers thrown away, and once he was there, he spent the next half hour screaming that if I thew away his markers, I wasn’t his mom. “You’re not my mom! You’re a monster! You’re a bad mom!” Thanks, kid. Well, he finally got calmed down, came out and apologized to Babypie for hurting her, and all was fine.

Fast-forward to today. He and Babypie were watching some math song videos on the computer. He asked to play computer, and I told him he could have a little time on PBS or Poissonrouge.com, but that was it. He told me that was not it, that he was going to play Pet Society or Bloons and there wasn’t anything I could do about it, so I turned the computer off and sent him up to his room to get himself calmed down. No, he would not get calm! I’m the worst mom ever! I am not his mom! He doesn’t want me to be his mom!

I said, go up to your room, or I’m coming up and bagging up your stuff (the only thing that really works for him). Nope, not gonna do it. I got a kitchen bag and put in his bugs, dinosaurs, etc. and while I was doing that, he kicked me, and told me I wasn’t a mom, I was a monster.

I almost lost it. Vision going red. I felt myself want to just slap him, so instead, I picked him up and plunked him down on the bed and screamed, “A monster? I’m a monster? I’ll show you a monster!”

And then I started roaring and running around with my arms over my head, screaming, “ARRRR! I’m a MONSTER! A MONSTER!” I hopped up and down. I growled at him. I grabbed him and tickled him. I threw his blankets up into the air, all while saying, “I’m a monster! Grrrr! Arrrr!”

Tank was looking at me like WTF? but he did stop yelling and pitching a fit. I went out of his room then and just ignored him until he was calm enough to talk to me. He then went calmly up to his room and stayed there while I finished taking care of some stuff. I gave him back his bugs and dinosaurs and we put them back where they belonged. He’s in fine spirits. I think he possibly thinks I’m crazy, but I didn’t do anything I regret (except accidentally stepping on Buddy the dinosaur and breaking his head off).

Sometimes, being ridiculous and over the top is the only acceptable alternative to selling them on ebay.

Poor Buddy! I know exactly how you feel.

I’m so glad that people like Ken Ham exist, to make sure that we heathens can learn the valuable lesson that not believing in [his specific flavor of] God leads to violence, lack of compassion for our fellow man, and an overall absence of morals. Without billboards, how would we non-[or wrong denomination of or too liberal of]Christians ever understand what we’re missing out on!

Personally, I’m pretty darn tired of being told that, because I’m not [evangelical/conservative/specific denomination of -- take your pick] Christian, that I have no “moral convictions.” I have many moral and ethical convictions. I have a strongly developed sense of right and wrong, of just and unjust, of good and evil, and also of what parts of your life are my business (how you interact with me or others, for good or ill) and which parts aren’t (what you believe in your heart/mind, what you do with your body, what you do in your bedroom). I’m a moral individual, but my morality doesn’t including hating you on spec, devaluing your life because of what you do or who you love or what choices you make for your body, or threatening you (either directly, with violence, or indirectly, with vengeance from some divine origin).

I’m terribly afraid of the pervasiveness of the belief that a person can only be moral if s/he does believe in a very specific and narrow set of ideas, if s/he does feel that hate towards the Other (only they don’t say they hate YOU, see, just your “sin”), if s/he does think the ones who don’t believe as they do are going to burn in hellfire. Is that what morality is? Really? Frankly, I don’t see how teaching children to hate [gays/women who want reproductive freedom/abortionists/other races/other religions/other nations/insert your threatening Other here] instills the sort of morality that would keep the boy in that billboard from pulling the trigger. In fact, I think that flavor of morality — the one where only your morals are “real” morals and only those who believe in them are the “real” and worthy people — is exactly the thing that encourages the more mentally-fragile among you to pull the trigger.

Christianity isn’t the sole source of human morality. Believing in God doesn’t prevent violence. It doesn’t stop crime. It doesn’t magically make a person or group good. On a grander scale, look at history and the atrocities done in the name of one [big G or little g]od or another. On a smaller scale, Officer Daddyman arrests people every week who believe in God, who have tattoos of crosses/Jesus/Mary, who attend Church, who use the Bible as the basis for hatred of specific groups or justification of certain actions, who think it’s ok that they act like total douchebags in their life because they’ll reap a divine and heavenly reward simply for believing in Jesus. Morality/ethics can find their origin in faiths outside of Christianity or non-religious spirituality, in cultural and social roots, in familial teachings, from individual or shared experiences, in an inherent and biologically programmed sense of right and wrong that we are finding that even small babies possess. We don’t all need to include Christian “character building” curricula into our homeschooling lessons in order to raise children with strong moral conviction and good character.

Morality can (I argue that it must) be flexible; what is wrong for my situation may be right for yours. Morality must change, too. Morality has to grow up. It can’t be as simple as “my God good, your God bad, so my way good, your way bad.” As our humanity evolves, our morality must evolve with it, changing to include a world much larger than the narrow and tiny set of experiences and values in which we were each, as individuals, raised. As we ascribe more humanity to the Other, the ones not exactly like us, our morality has to expand to include them. Morality, ethics, values, and collective humanity are all much, much too large to fit onto a billboard.

Only those with an exceptionally limited worldview would even try.

The homeschool community as a whole is hugely obsessed with “parents’ rights.” It’s primarily from the conservative Christian set, but there’s also a group within the Libertarian-leaning community that pretty strongly rejects the notion of children having inherent rights (over those of the parent) that should be legally outlined and protected. The HSLDA has a whole section devoted to parental rights. Any attempt to establish rights for the children are dismissed as “attacks from the left.” As you can imagine, the UNICEF Convention on the Rights of the Child is incredibly threatening to a group of people who believe that their children are, in fact, their property to do with as they will. That concept is at the center of the Pearls’ teachings — children are property, your property, and you can beat them into whatever shape that most pleases you.

Of course, it wasn’t that long ago that majority of people thought of women as property (many, as the above-mentioned Pearls, still do). It wasn’t that long ago in US history that black people were treated as property. Or Chinese people (who built the railroads? wasn’t well-treated, enfranchised workers being paid a living wage). Sharecropping was by and large another form of slavery, aimed at a socioeconomic group rather than a racial group (I come from some hardscrabble folk, myself). Humanity has a pretty ugly history of treating specific subsets of our number as property; part of our upward movement towards education and cultural enlightenment is, theoretically, that we stop doing that. With each group that seeks enfranchisement (or even the simplest and most basic of human rights), however, there is always a group that wants to keep that from happening. How sad that the group most invested in keeping children from having these basic human rights would be comprised almost entirely of parents.

“But s/he is MY child!” That’s the argument parents use for everything from cutting off healthy body parts, to custody/visitation, to “using the rod,” to indoctrinating children into harmful or hateful beliefs. Well, s/he may be your child, but s/he isn’t your property. If a person could ever be called property in good conscience, surely your child is the property of him/herself alone. You have the (very, considering a full lifespan) temporary care and keeping of your child’s body, but you do not own him. Incidentally, that a governing body would outline the rights of a child in law or policy doesn’t mean the government owns your child, either, any more than the Constitution means the government owns you (if anything, it shows how very clearly the government does not own you), so you can drop that particular argument. It just makes you look ignorant.

Last March, blogger DaMomma wrote an incredibly poignant and insightful (and yes, rather inciteful) post on the (non-)rights of parents, which I hope you will all read and take to heart:

DaMomma’s Parents’ Bill of No-Rights

I don’t have the right to see my child.

I have the sacred obligation to be available to her for nurture, comfort, discipline and guidance regardless of whether it is convenient for me.

I don’t have the right to be included in all the decision-making regarding my child.

I have the obligation to make my child’s needs my first priority and to evalute her needs without regard to my own stake. I have the moral duty to be the advocate of her interests, even if they may conflict with my own.

I do not have the right to make my child’s medical choices.

I have the obligation to use my status as an adult to seek out all the professional care my child needs, and to provide it. I am duty-bound to educate myself on health conditions my child has, and to advocate for her until she is able to advocate for herself.

I do not have the guaranteed love of my child.

I voluntarily made an 18-year commitment to be responsible for another person. I am owed nothing in return. My child did not ask to be born, and is not responsible for the decision I made to bring her here.

I am not entitled to respect.

I am obligated to teach my child boundaries, rules and limits — so she can function in the world, so she is tolerable to others. I have a duty to teach her how to behave. I earn my child’s respect.

My child is not an object to which I may claim ownership.

She is a human being with thoughts and feelings. My childhood is over. My time of being the priority has passed. Whatever I did or did not get is something I must address for myself. It is separate from my child. She is entitled to her own time of nurture, protection and joy and I am obligated to provide it.

I am not entitled to a return on my investment.

I am obligated to work hard every day to provide for my child’s material needs (including some of her wants) regardless of whether she sees me, likes me, or behaves in a manner of which I approve.

Your kid isn’t a pair of shoes or a belt.
Your kid isn’t a car or a bicycle.
Your kid isn’t a dog, a car, or a parakeet.
Your kid isn’t a house or a plot of land.
Your kid isn’t a houseplant or a field of wheat.
Your kid is a person and you do not, cannot, own a person. His rights supersede your wants.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Babypie has discovered makeup. In the past 7 or 8 days, she has sneaked into my bathroom twice to get into my makeup and also discovered a lipstick that Daddyman’s mom left down in Captain Science’s room. In just over a week, Babypie has:

1) Painted her hair with clear glitter nail polish
2) Colored her forehead with a deep rose colored lipstick
3) Made up her entire face with cream shimmer blush and Bare Minerals eye color.

She pitched a holy fit each time the make up was removed (or a removal attempt was made, at least). When asked if she is beautiful, she puts her hand up by her face and poses. Girl loves makeup. Fair enough. Tank loved body art and drew pictures all over his entire body quite a few times — and when I saw entire body, I mean it, from his hair to the soles of his feet, and all parts in between (including his genitalia on more than one occasion).

Here’s my little Tammy Faye Baker in the making:

My children received many, many wonderful gifts this year. After all, they had my parents, Officer Daddyman’s mother, and my grandparents here to make sure they reached their maximum holiday capacity. The snow (the kids’ first white Christmas) and the fulfillment of their wish lists led Tank to randomly and passionately exclaim, “Best. Christmas. EVER!”

Tank’s favorite present was a giant wooden yo-yo. Captain Science’s favorite was a Fushigi anti-gravity ball. Babypie’s favorite gift was her Bitty Baby.

A little back story on the Bitty Baby: During the summer, we attended a friend’s birthday party. One of the other children in attendance had the blonde Bitty Baby. Babypie grabbed a hold of that thing and carried it around the entire party, protesting vigorously when the doll was extricated from her grasp (and by “prostesting vigorously,” I mean, “shrieking ‘Mine! MIIIIINE! MY BABY!’”). When Nana received an American Girl catalogue, Babypie pointed her chubby little finger at the Bitty Baby page and again stated, “Mine!” She specifically wanted the dark haired baby.

Well, Christmas rolled around, and of course, Nana gave Babypie the dark haired Bitty Baby. Babypie loves her baby. Loves, loves, loves her. She named the baby Water (because of Baby in the Water, also known as Ponyo, I’m sure). We change Water’s clothes (for bed, for waking, for leaving the house) and her diaper (sometimes ten times in a row, with Babypie checking it and declaring “Boop!” in between), we give her ninnies (sometimes I “nurse” her, sometimes Babypie “nurses” her). Water is carried around everywhere. I made a special bed for Water using an empty gift basket, a flannel doll blanket, and the doll quilt Nana made to go along with Water (matches Babypie’s quilt).

Everything about Water is awesome and perfect and good, except…

Her eyes close. And it freaks Babypie out.

It didn’t bother her at first. She was fascinated by Water’s opening and closing eyelids, kept poking her in them. Some time yesterday, however, Babypie decided that Water’s eyes must never close. Not ever. Not even a little bit. “Do you want to put Water to bed?” now results in a screamed, “No! No! No!” I have to ask if Water needs to go to bed sitting up (“Yesh.”) and position her so her eyes don’t close. Water “sleeps” with her eyes open.

I don’t know what to say about that, except that babies are weird.

Babypie. Water in a basket. Cuteness.

Officer Daddyman learned a saying at some point in his law enforcement career: You either write the ticket or chew the ass.

What does that mean? Well, for a cop, it means that when you pull somebody over for doing something stupid and breaking the law, you either ticket them for it or lecture them sternly about it, but you don’t do both. Write the ticket or chew the ass; it’s poor form to do both and cops who do are one the kind of guys (or gals) who just reinforce that cop=jerk stereotype in so many people’s minds. With both the ticket or the lecture, the person breaking the law is receiving the negative consequences of stupid and/or illegal actions. Punishing them with both the fine/potential jail time of a ticket AND a fussing-at is just mean.

Daddyman has pointed out that this is also an excellent philosophy by which to parent. As a parent, when your kid does something stupid, you either mete out consequences (or discipline or punishment, however you term it) or a lecture, but if you do both, it’s overkill. I confess that I am sometimes the parent who both writes the ticket and chews the ass, because, well…I’m wordy and can’t help but chew the ass. It’s an areas I’m working on.

Of course, the real question is when to write the ticket and when to chew the ass…and whether or not I can recognize which one I’m choosing before the horse is already out of the barn! If Captain Science is lollygagging through his school work and misses out on going somewhere fun as a result, he’s already received his consequences; he doesn’t need a lecture on top of it, so I need to make a point of not making some “See? Now you’ve missed out! If only you’d…” talking-to on top of it. If I’ve just given him the “respect your mother” lecture after he’s said something rude, I can’t turn around and send him out to run two laps to burn off the sass. That’s a good thing about viewing my parental responses to infractions in light of choosing ticket-writing or ass-chewing: it forces me to take a moment to decide whether natural consequences will ensure, whether those will be noticeable enough to make a difference to the kids, and whether those are serious enough to drive the point home. Sometimes I write the ticket. Sometimes, I chew the ass.

Write the ticket or chew the ass: a parenting (and policing) philosophy to live by. I do discourage you from bringing this up with your local law enforcement the next time you get pulled over, however, unless you’d really like to get BOTH.

Or your delightful darling angels? You know, whichever.

In the great tradition of easy Monday night dinners, I’m going w/ the old standby of the broccoli, ham, and cheese ring — only because my large baking stone was ruined w/ soap, I actually did two braids instead and put them on a cookie sheet. I think the original recipe is from Pampered Chef, but at this point, I just toss the ingredients together however I feel they need to be proportioned any given time.

I use, give or take:

One package of frozen chopped broccoli, thawed and warmed
One package diced ham (or about a cup)
One cup of shredded cheese (you can use cheddar or whatever; I used Mexican four-cheese blend)
Tablespoon or two of dijon mustard
1/4 to 1/2 cup of mayonnaise (enough to get a decently scoopable consistency)
Two packages of crescent rolls
A little onion powder

If you want to minimize your family’s fat intake, use low fat crescent rolls and reduced fat mayo. I want my kids to have something to complain about when they’re older, so I like the full-fat variety. Hell, I’d stuff some extra butter in it if I could get away with it.

Smoosh everything but the rolls together. Seriously, that’s it. Put filling inside of rolls arranges in some sort of order.

You unroll the rolls and either make them into a ring like this or a braid like this or two smaller braids (which is what I did tonight), one per package. Drop the filling in big ol’ dollops into the middle of the crescent rolls, fold them up to whichever shape you’re shooting for, and bake the whole shebang according to the package instructions of the crescent rolls, usually around 375 degrees (350 convection). Takes anywhere from 20 to 35 minutes, dependent upon your oven and how you arranged your rolls.

Eat, enjoy, revel in your mixing of food groups.

Today was Captain Science’s 10th birthday. I’m a little less emotional this year than I was on his last birthday, I think because 9 really felt like the “halfway to adulthood” point and that was a lot harder than the “double digits” thing. Still, it feels like each birthday comes faster. Each year passes a little more quickly than the previous year. Captain Science felt like a baby forever; Tank was a baby for a middling time; Babypie’s infancy was over in a breath. Now all three of them seem to get older exponentially, not in a proper one-year-at-a-time fashion.

They’re born, these tiny little creatures, and then you blink and boom, they’re sitting, crawling, walking, talking.

Blink. Toddlers.

Blink. School age.

Blink. Puberty is right around the corner.

I’m afraid to blink, because before I know it, they’ll be grown and gone.

Every blink is a tremendous leap of faith that you’re not screwing it up horribly. It’s a prayer that you and your child make it through to that next blink mostly intact, mostly sane, mostly happy, mostly moving forward. Parenting can seem like one of the poorest investment portfolios, because, if we do it right, we aren’t the ones who see the “return.” We don’t see the outcome, at least not long-term. I know that’s how it should be, but 18 years seems too short a time to adequately prepare your children for another 50, 60, 70+ more years of life. I think, as a parent, you wish you could see ahead to the end, make sure you’re doing the right things so that it will all turn out ok for your kids. Maybe if you knew what they’d come up against, you could better prepare them to face it. You do the best you can with what you’ve got, but you never really know if it’s good enough.

Am I really preparing Captain Science to be ready to face the world more or less on his own in only 7 or 8 more years? Am I teaching him enough? Instilling the right habits? Modeling the right kinds of friendships and other relationships? Loving him fiercely enough? He’s suddenly closer to being a man than he is to being that tiny baby I brought home 10 years ago.

How can any parent really be up to that task? How can we make them ready for adulthood? How can we make ourselves ready for their adulthoods? I guess we can’t–not really. We just have to try our damnedest to get them through one blink at a time.

Here’s a hint…he might just be turning 10 at 2:34pm today!

I am thankful for Babypie, my only girlchild, my beautiful 20-month-old spitfire.

I have always wanted a daughter. I think it’s a testament to how close I am with my mother and how many wonderful memories I have of mother-daughter activities. I knew from the moment I got pregnant with Babypie that I was carrying the little girl I had hoped for; I felt it in my very soul. My pregnancy with Babypie was difficult — no complications, but constant exhaustion, nausea, no appetite. Her birth, even though my labor was only about 6 1/2 hours long (making it my second longest or second shortest, depending on how you look at it), was the hardest of my three children’s. Her right hand was up by her ear the whole time, a position we call “Babypie phoning it in” and which she still does when she is sleepy, and I had horrible back labor, my first experience with that particular hell. She finally came out, all 9lbs 4oz of her, and was so red and round and squishy that I dressed her in strawberry prints from that day forward, my little Strawberry Pie. Her nose was absolutely pug; she looked like Piglet from classic Winnie the Pooh, and in the video Daddyman took of us immediately afterbirth, I kept saying to her, completely thrilled, “You’re so funny-looking!”

Her nose is still a little pug, but she doesn’t look like Piglet any more.

I think, after Tank, God or the Universe sensed I needed an easy one. Babypie was the easiest baby. She was born sleeping at least 5-6 hours each night. She nursed like a champ. She was alert and interested in everyone, but not fussy or discontent. She enjoyed being held by all her family members, brothers included. She was smiling within moments of birth, usually in response to familiar voices. I had a hard recovery and it took me a while to feel “right” again, but Babypie was so sweet and snuggly and easy to care for that I didn’t have any additional stress or strain due to caring for her. She ate and grew and got ridiculously fat and developed three enormous dimples in her cheeks, plus a scrumptious cleft in her chin. I dressed her in lots of pink and strawberries, because she was all mine and I could do ridiculous things like that.

She kept on growing and growing. She started learning all manner of things in leaps and bounds. She didn’t talk quite as early as Captain Science, but was still saying a few words by seven months old. She sat a little later than Tank, crawled at roughly the same time, but learned to walk at nine months old, thanks to Patchfire’s daughter, Purple Child, who is (also an early walker) four months older and Babypie’s best friend. Babypie would pull up on PC and “cruise” along with her while she walked. Thanks, PC! I was not at all prepared for a baby of that size to be walking around, but Babypie is her own person and doesn’t really care if one is prepared for her accomplishments or not. She kept on walking, kept on talking, and her vocabulary expanded so quickly that I eventually stopped keeping track of all her words — she simply said too much.

One thing about Babypie: Babypie is fierce. A former friend once made a snide remark about certain people not realizing their children look mean in pictures. It wasn’t hard to figure out who she was talking about — I don’t think we had a picture of Babypie for months where she didn’t look like she was baring her teeth and possibly about to bite someone. It wasn’t hostile, though. Her smile was just as fierce as the rest of her. Her big white teeth and rather broad mouth made her huge smile into something of a savage smile. Nothing stops her. Nothing slows her down. No one is more determined than my Babypie. She’ll take a tumble and keep going. She can do anything the boys can do, whether she can actually do it or not. Her battle cry is, “And ME!”

She’s also a snuggler and loves her Mama (and especially her ninnies). One of her favorite people in this world is her great-great-Aunt Elaine. She loves going to visit Nana and Papa. She adores her brothers and her Daddy. We went through a bad couple of weeks where she refused to go to bed until Officer Daddyman was home from work, meaning midnight or later. She “calls” her Daddy on her play cell phone and has long conversation with him. She gives him commands that he usually follows. Babypie is the boss of everyone. She was born to be the boss of everyone and she doesn’t understand why everyone can’t understand that. “Yesh!” and “No!” are staples in her vocabulary, because they are words of command/direction. Despite her bossy fierceness, she’s also the prissiest little thing, with this funny little prance-walk-strut that she does when she’s feeling full of herself or wearing her pink princess dress with the giant fairy wings. She’ll run around in her fairy dress with a sword in one hand, a car in the other, and her water bottle and her baby doll stuffed down the front of her shirt. That’s just how Babypie rolls.

Nothing about this fierce girl has been a disappointment. She’s a delight and a joy nearly every moment of the day. Sure, she’ll run me ragged and exhausted, but she’s so funny and entertaining while she’s doing it, I hardly notice how tired I am until we both drop. She has the best sense of humor, tells little baby jokes, makes up funny stories (sometimes about Beasts that poop in her pants), wants to be involved with everything we’re doing. No baby could be more fun than Babypie. She is the perfect compliment to her brothers. They’re a perfect unit of three, even when they fuss and fight and squabble. She brought something to the dynamic that can’t be replaced. She’s Captain Science’s ally, Tank’s sometime-nemesis, and they are both her heroes.

She’s the daughter I always longer for and more, my amazing number three, my boisterous yet dainty Strawberry Girl. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be the mother of this child.

All my babies — I love them equally and in their own special ways. None of them is like the other, but they are all treasures to me. I have never done anything as meaningful and rewarding as being their mother. I can’t imagine I ever will do anything better than that.