26 March 2007

Day care makes kids act out?

Of course I’m screwing up our kids. If I were a stay-at home mom everything (except my sanity and personal satisfaction) would be perfect. Now it appears that kids who spend more than 10 hours a week in the care of someone other than their mothers act out more in the 6th grade. So what about SAHDs or grandma? I haven’t read the study, only the news (which is an amazing fact in itself).

We all love Stella’s 12 to 20 hours a week of day care. She even woke up once at 3 am crying to go there. I just can’t think it is that bad for her. All over the world children are raised by communities of people. Even 30 years ago in this country a mother had the help of her mother or mother-in-law on a regular basis.

I’m gonna let it go.

Or not.


21 March 2007

Rain!

The rain finally did the watering for us. We put in trees and plants and a clover lawn in the past few months. It’s usually the best time in Northern California for planting- because we get so much rain. But rain has been scarce this year.

It rained yesterday- just enough to wet the roots and be reason for Stella to wear her rain boots. She stomped around in some puddles and our clover got a little taller. After 12 years in the Bay Area, I finally feel the rhythm of the local seasons. After years of needing to check the calendar to know what time of year it was, I now notice the tiny wildflowers of spring and brown hills of fall. There were many times over the last decade I would be dumbstruck on the street, smelling… fall? Or was it spring? Or thinking a summer storm was coming, but it was only the thick of summer fog lowering the sky and lifting the leaves. I would search my brain for some answer- like trying to find a lost name, just on the tip of my tongue.

My children will know these seasons like I know those of Maryland- where a tree of flames means back to school sales and crocuses don’t fool me of summer any time soon.

13 March 2007

Make the Headlines

It was a murder-suicide kind of day. The kind of day that brings out the mean mama in me, that brings me closer to other mothers of two-year-olds. You only need to say, ”It was a two-year-old morning,” and I know what you mean. It seems we’re having a two-year-old month.

Things that happen right before a tantrum:

  1. I won’t let her apply my husband’s sample of musk deodorant all over her face.
  2. She can’t get her sock on.
  3. I won’t let her take a paper bag of nails to daycare.
  4. She doesn’t want to change her poopy diaper.
  5. I won’t let her rock her brother so vigorously his head flings around over his body.
Two. It explains everything. So I call my husband and try not to sound too desperate when I ask how long until he gets home because I gave her lentils when she wanted oatmeal and the baby is crying and I’m trying to cook risotto and the ants invaded the cat food and I’m dehydrated and have a headache the size of Texas and if he doesn’t get home soon there will be a murder-suicide. He knows what I mean and steps on the gas- the other direction!