parenting

This is one of those stories that I’m hesitating to tell because I’m afraid of being accused of bragging. My almost 4-year-old built this:

Then my husband said, “This looks like the Trojan Horse.” (Well, actually like the Tojan horse with its foal.) We didn’t quite remember the story of the Trojan Horse, so of course we looked it up. Then, because that’s the way those things go in our house, my husband fetched his copy of the Ilias. In German though, not Greek, we don’t go overboard with this. My husband began reading a passage out loud and our son said, “And what happened next?” … “And what happened next?” … “And what happened next?”

Storytelling time (and before breakfast as you can see by my husband attire).

And then the Greek made war with Troja. And the Trojans didn’t want the Greeks to come into their city. Then the Greek built a big wooden horse. The Trojans took the horse into their city and then the Greek opened the gates from within.

“And what did Helena do then?”

Does anybody know the answer?

Yesterday was the first teaching day for me after summer break. I already complained about summer vacation, but I really have issues with transitions. I realized that when I read Christine Kane’s essay about this and also Liz Strauss’.

So we had a little ritual to mark the beginning of the school year. On Sunday we opened a bottle of champagne and sat down to talk about what we did during the last weeks and what we’d like to do during the next weeks. I feel much better because of this.

So, what happened? My son got a cold. First sniffles, then a mild fever then we thought he’s better already and then it got worse. Monday night he woke at half past two in the morning, couldn’t get back to sleep, kept us all awake, until my husband went off to the guest bedroom and I pulled out the anti-pain-medication. The child slept, in my bed and managed to take up two thirds of it. I don’t know how he does it.

Yesterday, of course, all my plans were automatically canceled, I became nurse to a miserable child. Other people tell tales of miserable children, clingy and – miserable. Mine becomes clingy and – very angry. He spent most of the day restless, talking without a stop and throwing one tantrum after the other.

When I looked for something to help him, I took out my books on homeopathy (yes, books not book). And I think I’ve found something for him.
But homeopathy won’t help me with my time and energy management issues. While I long for the structure that my teaching days give me, there actually is less time to accomplish anything. So on my to-do-list is:

• fix new shelves to wall in living room
• transfer video recorder and television set to new stand
• layout and print new flyer to attract more singing and piano students
• entertain my son, who’s staying yet another day at home due to his cold
• send e-mail to banking guy to alter something on the mortgage
• give a singing lesson to a new student
• write new blog-post
• do grocery shopping
• do two or three loads of laundry
• and, most important, practice singing, piano and guitar.

Funny, isn’t it?

Okay, I’ll practice in the evening. I’ll do the grocery shopping after the singing lesson, when my MIL can babysit.

(Short break, while I look for my son, who is playing in the garden.)

Son still there. Phew! E-mail sent, blog-post written.

(I promise another one titled “Do what you want or surrender” the next time I can hear myself think.)

Technorati Tags: cold, teaching, to-do-list

Well, I’m a little late, but I’ll do it anyway. Miss Zoot went to BlogHer 06 and came home with questions that she wished she had asked. So now she did it online. And the masses answered. I have been thinking about being a mommyblogger a lot lately. There is no such thing in German BTW. I would have said that I’m a mommyblogger wholeheartedly. Even ‘though I despise the label “mommy”. I don’t allow my son to call me “mommy” (that would be “Mami” anyway). He may, and should, call me “Mama”, and everybody else on this planet may refer to me as his “mother”. But then I thought about the last time I have written about things motherly on this blog. It has been a long time. I posted on diapers three months ago. I’m not writing letters to my son, recording his milestones here or posting pictures. But on the other hand, even ‘though I’m writing about the things that are foremost on my mind, being a mother is now a part of me that I can’t leave away. It’s like being a woman. Giving birth has changed me. Regardless of what happens or what I will be doing, I’ll be a mother forever. (And I can never forget the fact. Especially now, when I’m typing this while my son is busy making LEGO-food for me. (You’re asking what LEGO-food is? I’ll show you. Musli, an apple, a sandwich in front of a soda pop, a piece of cucumber, and two very hard boiled eggs, hence the blackness.))

But back to my starting point. The questions:

1. Do your kids know about your blog? If they’re too young to know, do you plan to keep it open to them as they get older?
My son is 3.5, so even if he knows that I have a blog, he doesn’t understand it. I’ll keep it open to him.

2a. If so – do you worry they may get embarrassed later? What would you do if they asked you to stop writing about them? What would you do if they wanted you to take it down all together?
I don’t worry about him getting embarrassed. He’ll sure be. I don’t know, if I would stop writing about him, but I only blog about my life anyway. If he objected to a given post, I’ll give him the chance to add to it maybe, or alter it. I don’t know, if I’d take it down. It’s my blog. He’ll be free to make his own, where he can write anything he wants.

3. Do you think our kids will appreciate the archive of their childhood? Do you wish your parents had done the same?
I think he’ll eventually appreciate it. Though it’s not exactly an archive of his childhood, but of my life at this time. I wish, my parents had kept an archive. We have only a few photos, one or two anecdotes, and my mother remembers almost nothing. My father was out working. I’d love to be able to read diaries or to have scrapbooks.

4. Do you go back and re-read your past parenting milestones? Do you realize you forgot a lot?
Since I started the blog only half a year ago … When I’m reading my old journals, I see that I’m forgetting much of the details, but not much of the emotions and main problems at any given time.

5. What about your children’s friends/teachers/moms-of-friends? What if they found your blog? Do you tell your child not to tell anyone about it or are they free to talk about it? Do you worry their teachers or other parents will think it’s weird?
I haven’t told any of those people of my blog yet. But more out of the frustration that almost every person I told about it said, “What is a block?” “Why are you doing this?” “Ha?”. If they found it, I don’t think it’d bother me. I have made the mistake of telling my students that I have a blog, and ‘though I didn’t give them the URL, there were people arriving at this blog by searching for my full name and blog. So I suppose some of my students know, where to find me. I don’t think, they’d be reading this for long. I assume, they’d find it boring. Some of my friends know. No, a lot of my friends know, but only a few are reading this. My parents are the only ones that I didn’t tell. And I asked my sister not to tell them too. She’s reading the blog, BTW, and when I met her and started telling my bra-story, she was the first one ever to say to me, “Oh, yes, that was funny. I read it on your blog.”

I quit worrying if people think that something I do is weird. A lot of people think that I’m weird, no matter what I do. And I have an excuse. I’m an artist.

Technorati Tags: blogging, BlogHer, mommyblogger

I suppose there might be people asking themselves, “Why is this blog called “Diapers and Music”, when she isn’t writing about diapers, or music?”. Well, the answer is a little complicated. I never intended to keep this blog. I opened a blogger account just to show my husband, how easy it is. He was in the process of getting his own website and I thought he needed something to make people return. Like a blog. And I thought it might be fun to have one myself, since I enjoy reading blogs so much.

At the time that I opened up my blog, diapers were foremost in my mind. Not because there were loads and loads of them, like diapering three kids under the age of four, but because my son wanted to get rid of them. A year ago he decided to get diaper-free. Hurray, you’d say. But not if you’re the one to wash dozens of soggy pants and underpants and socks and sometimes whole outfits. Every day. Okay, not every day, because we don’t have that much outfits. But it became real stressful. Is he gonna pee? Does he need to go potty? Or not? Do I force him? Am I allowed to restrict his strive for independence? Only when there’s only one dry pair of pants left? Is it okay to hang up soggy pants and underwear to dry and then let him wear it again? How long can a two-year-old last without going potty? (Answer: longer that you think, but not long enough to avoid the soggy pants)

Sometime around July I decided to relax. I said to myself, this is his concern. His responsibility. And I made a deal with him that he had to put on diapers when there was only one pair of pants left. This went very well, especially since it became warm enough to let him roam the garden butt-naked. Then we had little, ahem, turds on the lawn. I thought, he’d never get it. But then he got it more often than not. With the pee. Poop was another matter. And I heartily dislike poopy pants. You know, a poopy cloth diaper is much easier to treat than a poopy jeans. Believe me.

Then I promised him a sticker for every poop that got into the potty, and voilà! everything went fine. Tada!

I’m just thinking about this whole thing, because there’s a new diaper-related problem. I even wrote an e-mail to Moxie about it. And she answered! (My question is the second one.) So there might be diaper-free times ahead. Well, there sure will be. Only very few kids go off to college still wearing diapers at night.

But what to do with the blog? Should I change the title? Or is it okay to leave the diapers in it as a pointer that this is a “mommyblog”? And then go on posting little essays on cloth diapers from time to time?

Feel free to leave comments.

I’m feeling ambivalent towards Mother’s Day. That’s nothing unusual for me, ambivalence seems to be built in. Like all children I made little mother’s day gifts in kindergarten and school, tried to make breakfast in bed for my mother, and to be real thankful for all that she has done for me. Still having troubles with thankfulness, ‘though. Secretly I always thought I’d do the same if I were in her place, and I never felt that she was especially self-sacrificing.

The ambivalence should have vanished when I became a feminist at age twelve and decided to stop celebrating mother’s day, because it’s reactionary, a florist’s chain invention, and because Hitler made it popular in Germany. Since then I have been giving my mother a “I think mother’s day is reactionary and commercial, but my best wishes anyway”-speech for mother’s day. This simplifies the question of gifts enormously.

A lot of women say that they only appreciate what their mothers did for them, when they have children of their own. I can only say that I’d do the same for my child as my mother did for me. Maybe more. In contrast to my mother I have the advantage of being able to continue working for pay and of having a husband who does a lot for his child too. (The more reason to think about this year’s father’s day, a day that I thought to be complete nonsense.)

What’s really strange about this whole mother’day thing is, that it’s really, really important to me that my son’s giving me something. The first sign was my disappointment, when my husband didn’t give me flowers for my first mother’s day. Not that I’m thinking he should give me flowers on mother’s day, since I’m not his mother, but acting for our son… So I bought myself flowers. And was quite embarassed about feeling offended. The next mother’s day we went to a florist together to buy flowers for my mother-in-law, and I told them to pack a rose for me, too. On our way home we debated my ambivalent feelings.

Since then it’s going better, the child’s in kindergarten and has been in playgroup before. In playgroup they made littler cardboard-flowers, and the children got greeting cards with little poems. When I read mine, I cried! My husband went to get his mother’s flowers without me and when he came back, he sent me the little one with a flower pot. (Soooo cuuute!) This year I got my present for mother’s day on Friday (The child could’nt wait.) He made it all himself. With an almost recognisable dandelion. I’m so proud. The card says that he loves the most about his mom: going for walks. This is what you get, when your child has to participate in your walking workout routine.

Today I phoned my mother because of mother’s day. Before I got to wish her the best, she wished me a nice mother’s day. Um. Sometimes I think I should buy her flowers.

There is one thing I’m understanding better, since being a mother myself. Now and then my mother tells the story of my birth. It was quite dramatic, I was six weeks early, my mother was at home all alone, without a telephone, and didn’t know what happened. I was born on the way to the hospital in an ambulance. Then I was immediately transferred to another hospital. This took place at the end of the sixties. Parents were not allowed in the baby’s ward. No touching, nothing. How hard it must have been for my mother to see her little premature baby only through a window, I only understood, when, 35 years later, I couldn’t sleep in the hospital, because I had allowed the nurses to take my baby away for the night. And it wasn’t for a few hours for her, but for a few weeks.

It was this, she had meant when she said, “It’s completely different when it’s your own children.” She meant this overwhelmingly big feeling, love that’s bigger than your own life. And it’s quite inapprehensible to feel it for somebody, but it’s totally inapprehensible that somebody feels it for you. But it’s certainly true.

I don’t know whether you have noticed it too – people don’t talk to babies or toddlers. Well, most don’t, but I do. I was reminded of this just yesterday, at a family get-together. The toddler (15 months old) wanted to have cookies. The cookies were standing right in front of him. His mother said “No cookies!” to the adult holding the toddler. (She’s one of those “no sugar nor white flour will touch the lips of my baby”-mothers.) But of course, the toddler wanted them. Desperately, being really angry. I looked at him and said sternly, “You know what, toddler, you can scream as much as you want, but you won’t be getting any more cookies. Sorry, but your mom said no.” He immediately stopped screaming and looked at me like “What did just happen?”, and I realized that nobody had talked to him as if he were a real person for the whole day. He was yanked away, things were put out of reach, people were talking about him, but he was almost never addressed, and nobody explained anything to him.

Apart from my mother and me. This is not a single occurrance, I observe it all the time. A friend of mine (not a very close friend) and her fifteen month old were at our place. The toddler was with me, the mother at the other end of the garden. Toddler says, “Mamamamamamamam.” I said, “He’s saying “Mama.” Mother says, “Oh no, he also says that when he’s hungry.” So what? He’s fifteen months old. Mother, food, being hungry, being tired, that’s all connected for him. But these parents are giving their children the message that the children are stupid. That their wishes and feelings don’t count.

That makes me real furious. Okay, sometimes I felt like a fool, blabbering away with my baby. We’re out, he’s in the stroller, and saying “Da!” and pointing. And me, “Yes, that’s a nice flower.” Sometimes I’d imitate his sounds just for the fun of it. And because I respect his urge to communicate. Now that my son is three, he’s an amazing talker. Big vocabulary, very articulate, quite good grammar. I don’t know whether this is because of all the talking, but I didn’t do it to boost my child’s language skills. I did it because it seems natural to me, and because I see children as real persons.

I believe that even babies understand more than they can express. What Moxie writes on babies and sign language makes perfect sense to me. I think that it’s hurtful for a person (even one that’s only a couple of weeks old) to tell her (not directly, of course) “You’re stupid. I’ll only talk to you, when you’re all grown up. Try to point out something to me, I won’t be listening anyway.”

I have been accused of trying to turn my son into an “anti-social super-brain”. By a person who thinks that you can be too intelligent. I don’t think that one can be “too” intelligent. I believe, intelligence can be boosted only so far. But it can be dampened. As can be the urge to communicate. (By the way, the only thing I do to “boost” my son is listen to him, when he talks, and answer his questions as good as I can. I’m not the one with the flash cards or anything.)

But talking to your baby or toddler seems to be very odd behavior. Imagine my delight when I went to a party recently and almost all the parents there talked to their babies. Like “I know, you’re hungry right now, you’ll be getting your bottle soon. See, the water is already boiling.”

I don’t know, why I’m spending so much time around people who make me feel really weird.

Oh, they’re family.