Bedroom Redux

Since Aunt Natty's been staying with us, obvious problems with storage and space issues became manifest. Our apartment used to look like this. Lately, things have been much more problematic, however.

A friend posted our local message board that she had an armoire for sale for $25 and I was lucky enough to be the first person in line for it. It was intended for a computer hutch, but I thought it'd be more useful as a place to keep games and craft supplies to be easier accessed by all. I picked it up yesterday with my friend, Henry. Then I spent the whole day rearranging and cleaning the boys room. I wish I'd had the foresight to paint the walls!

Aleks now has a place to draw.Closed:
The teepee was relocated to the corner it used to be in.
Aleks made use of the desk right away.
Up top are games with lots of pieces that I don't necessarily want out all at once (thinking here of Bastian's tendency to dump and the fact that we regularly babysit a two-year-old, good at the same).
Aleks' art supplies and books he uses for inspiration.
On the bottom are the big puzzles and games. The left bottom basket is all Playmobile toys. On the right are all the action figures and "guys."
The side cabinet has books, Aleks' money and collections. The spray bottle is for humidifying Esteban's aquarium.
The boys now have their very own junk drawer! Perfect for the odds and ends no one quite knows what to do with (hello, Pokemon cards).
A drawer just for Play-doh and clay.
Aleks' drawings and paper.
A tour of the rest of the room... The aquarium has its own pedestal now, beneath my wall of narcissism.
Wall items were relocated and the pirate flag and treasure map went up for the first time.



We still have the Christmas lights on the bed. It's a nice nightlight.
The games were all stored in the closet and became totally inaccessible due to sharing the space with Natalie.
See what I mean?

March 6th - Bowling and Shopping...

We had a birthday party to go to. We got ready a few days beforehand, making a cape and a recycled plastic bag bag to gift it in. This was all composed of materials I had lying around. I like presents that can be made for no money.
Bastian modeling it.
The plastic bag bag. To make, see here.
The birthday party was at a bowling alley.
Personally, I like the shoes.

Aleks didn't bowl much and had a hard time with knocking pins down, which made him feel kind of upset. He was sort of bummed out the whole time we were there. The place was a bit overwhelming. I don't know what was up with him. He agreed that the place was too much, so that maybe made him uncomfortable. Still, it was fun.
Bastian had a good time.


When I was getting Bastian dressed in the morning, I realized that everyone's shirts had suddenly gotten too short. Pants too. So we went to the mall after the party to buy clothes. Aleks listened to Harry Potter. Big surprise there. Bastian got some jeans. First we tried them on. My kids are so small. Some 4s are too small for him, but the Gap 4s are perfect. Which probably means that we'll just need size 5s next fall. Dang kids and their weird growing. Bastian will be 5 in May. Surely he's going to grow up a bunch at some point here, right?
We had intentions of getting Aleks new shirts so Bastian could just inherit Aleks' 110s because he's in 100s right now, but apparently now that it's all of the first week in March, long sleeved tees are unnecessary. Grr...
This is my fabulous life:
Bastian checks out his butt.

Honest About Doubt

I have a tendency to be really honest. Sometimes this gets me in trouble. Most of the time though, it's just a thing. A lot of people really appreciate it. They like that I am able to say out loud what so many in my situation feel. They like that I call things what they are and that I'm not afraid to speak up. I started thinking that there is more to it than that though.

Being honest, for me, is about being real. Being honest also entails saying things suck sometimes. It's about calling a spade a spade. Being honest about both the positive and the negative aspects of anything, or even about ambivalence or confusion, means that I am taking the time to sort it out. It means that I'm doing my job to be skeptical and scientific and to ensure that I can trust or to weigh risks and benefits.

Saying it out loud is just how I cope. My method of figuring things out, of processing, is to talk. By writing or by speaking, I need to articulate all the sides that I can see and find the right words to specify and to clarify as much as possible. This is how I can find a way to get comfortable with gray areas, with things that are sometimes one way and sometimes another: I have to say it. For my own sanity, I must figure it out and go through the possibilities or voice clearly that there may be other options I haven't considered. I need to know that something might change. It must be said.

So I must be forthright about my life. I must all the time, at every turn, at every sinking feeling that everything is all wrong to every screaming fit that too many video games or movies are destroying the brains of my children to every pang of guilt that I am lazy and good for nothing - I must stop and try to figure out what is true and what is right.

When everything is good, it is easy to feel that all is right with the world and with our lives. When everyone's getting along, when I have lots of energy, when we get to be outside in the sunshine all the time, when our creative juices are dripping projects all over the house like so much water, when no one's sick, when Papa cooks dinner every night happily, when the house isn't too trashed, when we get lots of time with friends - those are all the times when feeling that what we do is not only right and true but morally just comes easy peasy (of course, what we do is not morally just for everyone, it just feels so good sometimes that it might as well be).

When things are hard though - and they very often are - then it becomes complicated and every nagging doubt surfaces and gets under my skin. Then, if I have a particularly bad day, it can dig way inside and practically break my heart and crush me with the weight of distrust and confusion upon me.

These days, things are very hard. It is late winter here. It is cold. Even with the sun shining gorgeously the last few days, there are still five feet piles of snow on either side of my driveway and a foot still on the lawn. Jon is teaching five days a week. When he's not teaching, he writes lectures and grades papers. When he's not doing that, he sometimes watches basketball, but mainly does weird running around to arrange graduating in May. He also is editing his dissertation to prepare for his defense.

Due to his schedule, this is the first time that I've been solely responsible for the upkeep of the house, the car, the bills, the shopping, the children, plus all meals. That may not seem like much to other mothers, but for us, we've always strived for a more equitable breakdown of household dealings, so I usually never made dinner and he always helped with cleaning. I'm also still doing volunteer work with our Food Co-op. There's a very nasty chance I may be the next board president in a few weeks. My sister is living with us, so there are five of us in 900-some-odd square feet. She works a lot. She does do a lot of the laundry. I still put it away. We've been sick off and on for more than a month.

I could go on and on. There is much more to complain about. When things get hard like this, sometimes I shut down a bit. I get sucked into fruitless activities after not enough sleep from staying up too late to blow off steam. I waste whole days arguing pointlessly with people on the internet, intermittently cleaning, feeding, encouraging children to do something, kissing boo-boos, giving baths, changing shirts, putting in laundry, doing more dishes, making cups of tea, staring into space, paying a bill, returning an email, picking up five hundred blocks from off the floor, getting weird goo off of weird places, answering phones, sitting on hold for doctor's offices, making appointments, forgetting to make appointments until it's too late, and all the mundane details of living and running a life for four people. I don't get dressed until late in the day. Aleks will put on a movie, then build with Lego bricks, then go back to the movie, then switch to a video game, then talk to me while sitting upside down on the couch, then get a drink of water, then play the video game again, then draw five pictures, then ask me in very long sentences while I am in the middle of reading something about something I don't understand and only half listen to for which I then have to stop reading and back up and apologize and listen before explaining that I don't understand and I don't know how some monster evolves into some other monster. Meanwhile, Bastian steals the laptop from Aleks or makes guys and blocks and Magformers fight on the couch while he leaps and somersaults over and around them.

All day, it seems, we do...not much of anything in particular. One of my big fears creeps in then. Maybe...maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'd be a good, holy mother if I could just get it together to get up at a reasonable hour, not stay up late, get us out of the house and doing...stuff, get us around other kids more, join the homeschooling co-op (that I have zero attraction to), enroll in something (that I can't afford), and get the kids away from those hateful, awful, brain-melting media devices (well, computers - we have no television).

I have read that using electronic media devices pretty much programs your brain, or, well, forms your neural pathways to using electronic media devices. You make your brain do it more. Like a pattern. Or an addiction. This can make it harder to sleep. It can make it harder to make your brain do other...stuff. It occurs to me that maybe we use media devices kind of a lot. Maybe I should prevent that more. Before I get to whether or not we do in fact use media devices kind of a lot, there's two solutions for how to achieve prevention. One, I can somehow get it together to be a good, holy me, despite any and all stress in my life and simply take the responsibility and initiative to make us do other...stuff. Or two, I can send the kids someplace for someone else to have that energy where they can do other...stuff (and possibly gain unintended side-effects of that place and those people that I may hate and have to, like, do something about, which means still energy placed on making other...stuff happen).

Neither of those options sounds particularly appealing. I find it really difficult in general to drastically change one pattern of behavior let alone all of them all at the same time. So maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. Do we overuse electronic media? The honest answer is probably sometimes. I'm not worried about overusing music or books. Those are "enlightened" (read that with an eyeroll) forms of media. Movies and video games are another matter. I have a lot of conflicting information about these though.

I know plenty of men (and a few women) who love video games and have spent hours almost every day since childhood playing them. They are all able to have conversations, complete degrees, hold down jobs, and clean up after themselves, generally. The studies say that video games are damaging to children because they expose them to things that are not age-appropriate, prevent them from healthfully following other pursuits, increase their exposure to advertising, encourage consumerism, and create sedentary behaviors that lead to obesity, heart disease, and early death.

Movies, I love. I would watch a movie every day if I could find the time. I'm certain that my children would too. They probably do. But they watch no television whatsoever and they almost always leave the movie to do other things. They really do self-regulate in large part. They watch movies over and over again so that they don't need to see every minute. Aleks usually has to go draw something that popped into his head in the middle of a film. Lately, he'll listen to Harry Potter, draw, and have a movie on. Sort of how I write on six Firefox tabs, make a cup of tea, sit on hold on the phone, and clean up a mess all sort-of simultaneously.

Thinking about the neural pathway issue, the only real concerns I can see is the sleep issue and addiction to electronic media or the internet- which psychiatrists have not determined to be real just yet, despite the new DSM. Sleep could be a serious issue, especially given that Aleks has never in his life gone to sleep easily. Since we introduced books on tape, actually, it's gotten a lot better. So, hrm... Maybe that neural pathway issue isn't something to really bank on as an inevitability. Especially given that we do lots of things other than consume electronic media.

The next possible concern regarding electronic media usage, would be sedentary patterns of behavior. If I look at myself, I know that I don't lead the strongest example there. We hike and we walk with some frequency during the summer, but during the winter, we become very sedentary. Very indoorsy. Very tired and lazy. Nasty hobbitses. Um... I mean...

It seems I've hit on something. Perhaps the thing to do is not to entirely uproot our existence on the basis of shame and guilt, but maybe to move my body. A family yoga class, regular swimming, a weekly hike, or even a daily dance party would likely help me feel a lot better about almost all of that. At least until the next time I think we're watching too many movies or playing too many video games.

Media is not, of course, my only concern. It is usually the most pressing one given my conflicting feelings about it. The other is something that I had articulated before in the unschooling community to much of nothing: the concern was dismissed and laughed at.

Recently, however, I found (at ChezZoo) this phenomenal, hour-long (I'm warning you now) lecture from Astra Taylor, a grown-up unschooler, who also brings up my concerns. Now I have someone who is far more impressive than me - a mere mom in danger of becoming a co-op board president- to argue my point for me.

Ms. Taylor brings up a couple of points that are clear (if you ask me) issues with or downsides to unschooling. First, there is the matter of unschooling requiring a parent at home. The problem with this is that it's always the mom. Now, in my own circumstance, there are a lot of reasons why I'm the at-home parent. I'm certain that that's true for most unschooling families. All of the unschooling moms I know were practicing some style of attachment parenting when their children were babies and stayed home with them to maintain breastfeeding and to foster a strong bond and sense of trust with their child. When it came time for schooling decisions, it made sense to continue with the already established routine. This of course makes logical sense.

The problem is that unschooled children are going to see a stay-at-home-mother as the familial norm if this is what they're exposed to again and again. This means that by being limited in our options for families, we're limiting the choices of future generations. If all they know is moms-at-home in order to achieve unschooling, then pursuing a career and unschooling for a mother looks highly improbable. In fact, unschooling without an at-home mother then looks likely impossible. It sets up an unnecessary (or undesirable) dichotomy: unschool with an at-home mother or don't unschool at all (i.e. send your children to school).

The second major issue with/downside to unschooling is that it's largely something that fairly well-educated people of some means (middle class, generally) are able to do. This means too that most of us are white. It begins to mean that unschooling is something for the elite. It is not a choice that people of lesser means (who cannot afford or arrange a parent at home) can make.

This is somewhat unavoidable. Unschooling is certainly not a mainstream concept, so not many people have ever even heard of it, let alone considered it. If folks did start unschooling without a parent or other care provider at home, they'd be accused (perhaps rightly so, depending) of neglect. Given that our society has a vested interest in the well-being of children, this makes sense. No one wants ill to befall children due to a desire to keep them out of school. On the other hand, again, without diversity in the unschooling community we start to see a white-washing of this sliver of culture.

It is true that unschooling parents are likely to have more opportunity to expose their children to diverse groups of people compared to schooling families -particularly in age-range, I find - but when they convene with other homeschooling or unschooling families, the options are clear again and again: white, middle class, educated folks, different in details, surely, but largely very similar in cultural identity.

I cannot see what there is to be done about either of these issues, but as a feminist, and as someone who is anti-racist and seeks, always, to widen possibilities for my children, I find these trends unsettling nonetheless. I suppose the thing to do is to just keep talking it out. With them, with each other, with this blank field of html...

Campus Discovery

What...what is that...thing on the hill?!? That big pile of snow? Stomp. stomp. stomp...
Well. It looks like...a pile of snow with a hole. It's like a big round snow fort.
Oh. Right. Like an igloo.
Let's check it out...





Back out again...
It's like the opening credits of Indiana Jones and the Lost City of Shangri-La.
The snow all around it is almost gone from the digging and building.
Art students are pretty awesome. Where they found time to build the dang thing is beyond me. I hope they got credit.

Another Busy Day

Aleks had a dentist appointment. I like our new pediatric dentist. He's good. And efficient. His office looks out onto a small wood, which looked nice in the bright sunshine with the carpet of snow between bare trunks. In the sunlight, at least, winter looks okay.Aleks of course had his Harry Potter going. Then we were off to meet a friend at the zoo.
The Rainforest building at the zoo is two stories tall. One option for getting to the second story is to climb through a treehouse. It has a nice spiral staircase inside.

The tropical birds were out in plain view today. These are Scarlet Ibis.
This is a Roseate Spoonbill.
I am really quite fond of the world's largest rodent (not technically Morgan Sterns execs, as my friend suggested), the capybara.

For some reason, every time we go to the Rainforest, my camera battery dies. Which it then did. Right after the Capybara.

We saw the orangutans, the otter, the Francois monkeys, the leaf gecko (still stuck to the glass of his aquarium), the giant python, the dwarf crocodile, the Gharial , the Red-Flanked Duikers, the porcupines and the exhibit explaining the destruction of the rainforests. Aleks wasn't feeling well and Bastian ran off several times, so we did not stay long, though.

Back at home, we made vegetable soup for dinner, which we ate with some of the organic artisan bread from the West Side Market. Then we made dragon eggs and sewed a cape for a birthday party on Saturday.

A Special Message from Bastian

First of March and Positive Thinking

A day of running about. First, the boys played video games. I washed dishes, made coffee, got everyone out the door. Took Papa to school. Then we visited the West Side Market.
We bought sausages and pork chops, handmade perogies (plain potato and potato and sauerkraut)...

organic artisan bread... I thought at first the image was a skeletal hand, which seemed cool and scary, but it's a sheath of wheat. Oops.

The boys picked out lemon and orange San Pellegrino sparkling drinks. We sat in the car while they drank them and I spoke at length with my friend Barbara about the relationship between radical unschooling and Positive Thinking (more on this at the end).

Then we picked up Papa from school. Stopped at the Food Co-op. Stopped at the pharmacy. Dropped Papa and groceries back at home.

Went to see Planet 51 at the super-duper cheap seats (half off $1.50 on Mondays = $.75 = sweet deal).

This theater was clearly some awesome new multiplex 20 years ago. I can tell by the tile.
And the neon.
Friends met us there, so after the movie, we played (and pretended to play) arcade games for awhile.


Then home. Then quick dinner. Then more media. More Harry Potter. More video games. More movies. Continued to read The Hobbit in graphic novel form to Bastian for bed.

Then, late at night, I finished my Food Co-op newsletter and wrote this lengthy diatribe about Positive Thinking, which may or may not be coherent or what I really meant to say. Enjoy...

There is something about Positive Thinking that has bothered me for quite some time. It wasn't until recently that I began to see it as a pervasive urge in our culture that might be a little misplaced. I'd always been skeptical about Positive Thinking. It always felt wrong, like something I couldn't wear. I simply don't roll that way. I'm a little bit rock n' roll. I like to drink beer and curse loudly. I don't really live on an organic unicorn farm, though I do like to play like I do.

I believe strongly in certain things -like being a responsible citizen of the earth and trying to allow my children the room to be who they are - but no matter how hard I try, there's some sort of bitterness I can't shake. What I've read about being a good, holy, gentle parent tells me that this is bad. I've read that the best way to be is giving, loving, joyful. Always. I've read that if I'm not doing that all the time, it's because I'm not trying hard enough to let go of fear, doubt, and anger. I've been told by books and internet personalities that the right thing to do is look at the wonder and awe of the universe and accept and embrace that it is all there for me, and for my children, should I choose to forget fear, forget anger, forget the manipulation and coercion I was inevitably raised with.

But the thing is, I believe in being a responsible citizen of the earth. So, the whole universe being there for us to embrace makes no logical sense to me. I cannot manifest endless material goods simply by faith that the universe will provide. I cannot simply think positively in order to deal with the huge stressors that are part of my daily existence under the endless reign of the PhD. I personally require a lot more than thinking positively. I need to do hard work to figure out what I can do about the circumstances I've got and more than that, figure out what I can do to help those who have less or change the world to make sure there's plenty to go around. These actions require a little bit of worry, frustration, and fear to motivate.

I also worry that maybe being positive all the time would not in fact be good for my kids. Aside from the fact that I know it's not a reasonable possibility, my sitting around feeling guilty about failing at constant optimism expressed in a thousand tiny interactions with my children certainly would only increase negative emotions, thereby creating a vicious cycle in which my negativity feeds on my negativity, or so goes the story about the tireless act of keeping positive. I'd be no better off then.

What I really need is not a constant thrashing about trying endlessly to be perfect, whether self-delivered or swallowed up in a church or conference setting. Rather, I require tools for working. I require conversations that do not emphasize the magic of life, but examine how to deal with all the bad shit in it. In fact, it would seem to me that the absolute truest test of authentic parenting is not how you phrase joy and butterflies-out-the-butt at children who are screaming and whining about some THING they wanted that went wrong, but rather how you make use of both their intense emotions and your own.

Sometimes it's important that I freak out too. Sometimes I need to throw a tantrum. No amount of good-jobing myself is going to fix that any more than it would fix my child. Sometimes, shit is shit and should be recognized and appreciated as such.

Ultimately, I think it's better that I get to be who I am. I can actively work to be a better, more caring, compassionate, hard-working, intelligent, thoughtful, pragmatic, dedicated, fun, loyal person, but "positive" doesn't really crack the top ten adjectives that describe, to me, a virtue. Positivity, as an objective trait, feels naive to me. I am wary of it. I'd rather be smart than optimistic, any day of the week. Plus, watching me grapple with remorse over and learn to deal with all the crummy crap that I do is good modeling for my children in other virtues: forgiveness, acceptance, grace, love.

I remain dreadfully imperfect, but it's my messiest attributes that are the cross-weaves of my greatest strengths.