The Things We Negotiate

For the most part when Wrigley wants to do things herself, I let her. She makes her own cereal, pouring the milk directly from the carton and makes herself all sorts of food. She zips up her own coat even though it takes about 12 miszips and an hour for her to do it (okay, I admit, some days I say cheerfully, "oh let me get that," and I zip it before she has a chance to protest). She gets to spill a little of the flour and the salt and the water and the rest of the ingredients when we bake. Today at lunch Wrigley wanted to pour the syrup on her peanut butter pancakes (yum!). I draw the line at syrup. While any spill would probably not be much more than the few drips that happen when Ed pours his own syrup, I can envision the table, chair, floor and two people irrevocably sticky. I let her know that she could pour her own syrup when she's a teenager. Wrigley says, "hmmm, I think nine would be a good age."
"That sounds good to me," I tell her. We'll see when she's nine.

A Winter Pair

DSCF1634
Originally uploaded by skwirler.

These guys are headed off the home of our three year old neighbor. I haven't a real clue about embroidery, but I like the embellishments I did on these clothes. I am such a perfectionist; I just about never like anything I make. These two are no exception. I made the man doll several months ago, and the woman this week. I accidentally made the woman a smaller size. Grrrr. Seems so sexist to me. Oh well. After I give them away, I won't have to think about it any more!

Sunshine

I like the rain. We chose to move to Portland for the very good reason that it rains here a lot. We have just had a very long string of consecutive days of rain. I didn't really pay attention to how long, but there was talk about a record. I like the moisture in the air, the great and varied colors of gray in the sky. I love the downpours. When we first moved here we were a bit disappointed in the quality of rain. We added to our vocablulary "misting," a rain less than a drizzle, but more than just fog. Somebody we knew said that in other parts of the country, the weather tries to kill you (lightening, tornadoes, hurricanes..), but in the Northwest it just tries to bore you to death. If that is what it takes to get all our shades of green, so be it.

Well good long periods of rain also help me to appreciate the sun. It finally came out yesterday. We opened all the curtains in the house, and it shone in all the corners. Marble napped in the warm light. The sky was blue blue blue. Wrigley and I drew her first hopscotch board.

Fact v. Fiction

Christmas has come and gone, and we made it through another year without having to deal with "The Santa Question." However, listening to other people grapple with this question has made me realize that kids can't necessarily tell the difference between true stories and made up stories. So Wrigley probably thinks that all those people we read about in stories - Harold and his Purple Crayon, Peter in The Snowy Day, even Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel - are real people.

The same is likely true for the bedtime stories I tell Wrig. Over the past year at bedtime, I have probably told Wrigley 300 different crash stories - airplanes, trains, cars, farm accidents, penguin crash stories, octopus crash stories (you read that right - octopus crash stories) - and in each and every one an ambulance comes to the rescue. Lately, I've been telling stories about planes that get lost, end up in outer space, and crash into planets. On each different planet, the residents of that planet come to the rescue (or become part of the crash; we like big crashes in our family). On Mercury, the people look like silver strings. On Jupiter they have one eye, two noses, and three mouths. On Venus, their eyes are shaped like hearts. After a week or so of space crash stories, she has these various people memorized.

So: if, in the future, on some standardized test, the state asks her what the people on Mars look like, she'll know they have pink skin and yellow eyes (I just asked her that, by the way, and she does know). But if they ask her to tell fiction from non-fiction, she might struggle with that one.

Apparently, this means she's almost ready for her bachelor's degree.

Woo Hoo Oregon!

Dear George W:
Keep your paws off our blue state's rights.

NY Times Article
This is just patronizing
Scalia said the court's ruling ''is perhaps driven by a feeling that the subject of assisted suicide is none of the federal government's business. It is easy to sympathize with that position.''

I thought states' rights were a conservative value.

Dear Moderate Republicans and Dems:
If you consent to the Alito nomination, Dubya will have 4 in his corner for Executive Privilege.

Sip 'n Wash

Wrig very much enjoys inventing and naming things. For several days she'd drop what she was doing to suddenly run into the bathroom to both get a drink and wash her hands.

Here are some other pictures that have been up on Flickr for a while but not yet posted here:



(falling) Tree Pose


Father Daughter Dance

Bubble Wrap Wins!

Conversations You Won't Often Have with a Four Year Old from Arizona

D: Was it raining while your guys were playing outside?
W: It was ... it was ... Is drizzling lighter than sprinkling?
D: Um, yeah.
W: Then it was drizzling.

An Ending

We've made many many parenting choices along the way that I never knew we'd make or even have to think about. In general our philosophy is something like, "we'll do XYZ (breastfeeding, co-sleeping, no TV, etc...) until it doesn't work for any one of the three of us." This is better known by the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." For the most part this serves us well.

Over the past year Wrigley has been nursing first thing in the morning only every once in a while. Sometimes it was every day for a week, then not at all for a month, then every other day for a while. It has been sporadic. And often I'd ask in a surprised voice, "There still milk in there?" And Wrigley would tell me, "Oh, yes, still milk."

Until last week, when we had this conversation:
M: No milk? (I could tell.)
W: no, no milk... Why did your boos (you don't always get to pick the name of thing when you have a child!) stop making milk?
M: Well, I think that because you nurse just a little bit every once in a while, they stopped.
W: I don't think that is what happened. I think your boos don't like the food you eat, so they stopped.
M: Really?
W: No, I don't think they like tomatoes.
M: Tomatoes, huh? What do they like?
W: Green beans. Maybe a green bean sandwich. With turkey and cheese. Rice would be okay.