Day-care or pre-school

I recently flipped through a documentary on one of the Showtime networks about elite New York City families applying to preschools. I only saw about thirty minutes of the show, but what I saw lived up to the stories I heard in Chicago about getting kids into preschools -- school visits, interviews, applications and application fees -- sounds more like college than preschool.

I haven't had this experience in Nashville, of course, but I have encountered a problem of a similar sort -- very long wait lists at all of the desirable schools. The childcare available through the hospital is supposed to be very good, very affordable, and for me and Wes, very well located (right on campus near the hospital and Peabody). The wait list there is 9 months to a year. We've been on it three, maybe four months. The list lady said there's a small chance we'll get in for the spring. Many schools in Nashville, especially a lot of the church centers, don't take children Oliver's age or only offer care from 9am to 3pm. A Montessori school nearby has a wait that is 1-2 years and costs over $10,000 for the school year. There are other centers that are affordable, look good, and have spots open, but they're in the opposite direction of campus, which means we're driving at rush hour, morning and afternoon, through heavy traffic. Suddenly the fact that we can get to work and school in under five minutes doesn't matter.

So at some point I gave up looking for "pre-school" and just looked for "day-care." Do I wish the teachers at the school were all highly trained and experts on my child's intellectual development? Sure. But I'll take a center that's safe and loving and cares about my kid's happiness. So we found a center very close by, very affordable. It caters to a lower-income bracket, which makes for a much more mixed racial and ethnic clientele -- something I really like about the place. I'm glad for Oliver to be amongst all kinds of people, racially, ethnically, linguistically, economically. It's something we loved about Chicago, something we're more conscious about in our circle of friends, and something we want to be intentional about with our child (makes sense this is part of what I'm studying in my program).

So Oliver will not be attending, as one program billed itself, "the Princeton of preschools." But hopefully he'll be happy, meet some other fun kids to play with, and I'll be able to pick him up very soon after my day is done so we can spend plenty of mommy and Ollie time together. And that might be the best part.

Where I Am, What I'm Learning

A dear friend recently introduced me to the phrase "intentional conversation" -- conversing about big things rather than the daily minutiae. Asking a loved one, "How are you feeling? What are you learning?" I try to do that periodically. Being reflective is a necessary element of effective teaching. But intentional conversation isn't just about being reflective. It's about digging deep into how you're growing as an individual.

As we near Oliver's first birthday, I've stopped to think about myself as a mother. How am I feeling? What am I learning? This has especially come to the surface recently as two dear friend near their due dates, in October and November, respectively. My relationships with them, especially with respect to their pregnancies, are very different, and that's okay. But it's make me think about parenting and mommyhood.

So here's my status as life as a mom: I love being a mom. It is as gratifying as I hoped it would be. It is, to be honest, not as hard as I worried it might be (and certainly will be at some point). What can I say -- I got a good kid. I think Wes worried when I was pregnant that motherhood wouldn't live up to my expectations, and I would find myself in a bit of a void, but it has been all I hoped and so much more. If someone asked me what being a parent was like in one word, I would say fun. Not the only word, not all the time, but by and large, so fun. People have often rhapsodized about children's sense of awe. I never totally got that working with teenagers. They're most skeptical than awe-struck. But having my own kid, I get it now. You don't remember this time in your own life to appreciate it, so I guess parenthood is a way to enjoy it.

Yet at the same time, my experiences thus far have also helped me make choices that will balance me down the road. I've made the choice to pursue a career, not just have a job, and in part that's because I see, already, how quickly my children will outgrow me. I'm such an all-or-nothing person that I would worry if I threw myself completely into my children and nothing else that I would not know who I was when they were grown and gone. This is not to say that stay-at-home moms go through this and working moms don't. I know plenty of stay-at-home moms, my own included, who had a very balanced sense of self during child-rearing and easy transition into empty-nesting, and plenty of working moms who didn't. I just know myself well enough to know that I need that something other -- not because my child isn't enough, but because I need that something other. While motherhood is something I longed for to be part of my identity, it's not "who I am." It cannot, like any other aspect of my identity, complete me. It is a huge, important, wonderful part of my life. It's just not all of it. And I wish every woman could make that decision for herself without feeling judged. I disclaim my decision to raise a child, hopefully children, and pursue a career, by saying, "This is what works for me, for now, I think." That's the best I can ever say. Who am I to decide what is right for someone else, at this moment, or to determine if they're really thinking straight.

One thing I've learned about motherhood is that there's a huge sense of being judged, and I think that's so sad. My mom and I talked recently about how great it would be for teachers, especially new ones, to constantly have an extra set of eyes in the classroom -- pointing things out, raising questions, developing awareness -- without it being evaluative. But most teachers, especially new ones, feel defensive when people make these observations. I wish moms could be eyes and ears for each other without hearing the "You're neglecting your child" behind the "It must be hard to be away from him so many hours in daycare."

I try, very hard, when I talk with pregnant friends not to push my decisions on them. One of my pregnant friends has asked me a lot of questions about books and methods and what I did and what I used. And I've happily, eagerly shared all of it because I'm so interested in pregnancy and childbirth and raising kids and love talking about. But I've tried (and hope I've been successful) to just be supportive and not pushy. I love my cloth diapers, and a few friends and family members I've shared them with have said they'd love to use them when they have babies. Great. But I'm hardly sitting here eco-damning those who don't. I wanted to experience labor and delivery without medication, and my body let me do it. Do I think less of a woman who says, "Epidural early and often"? Not at all. Don't get me wrong -- I'm human. I judge. Those thoughts of "not me, never" pass through my head. But I try to squash them, ask questions, understand, and leave people be.

What I hope for everyone, perhaps in all aspects of life but especially parenting, is that people are intentional in what they do. If you're going to nurse or not, did you make an informed decision that you think you'll be happy with down the road? If you're going to co-sleep or let baby cry-it-out, do have a rationale for why it works for you and him? And most importantly -- can you accept that no decision will be perfect, and are you willing to change your decision if you need to or you kid needs you to? I can want a career, but if something happened that truly necessitated me being home with my child 24/7, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Some things can wait, even if they'll be harder to attain later. Other things you only really get one shot at.

I might read this post in ten years and laugh at myself. If I ever come across, in this or any other post, as thinking that I have it figured out, don't let it fool you. The only thing I've figured out is that I don't have anything figured out. But I'm going to keep figuring -- thinking, pondering, reading, asking questions -- so I don't ever regret not thinking about it a little harder.

Sippy Cups and Baby Food

Oliver is slowly taking steps out of babyhood and into, well, whatever comes next. He's not toddling next, but he is truly crawling now, thanks in part to a stint at my parents, who have rugs on their hardwoods. I've introduced the sippy cup. I tried the Avent ones first, but, like our sitter's son, Oliver had a hard time with the harder spout. So I got the Nuby ones that are very soft and a bit more like a bottle. He hasn't had much luck with them. He liked to push on the spout and pour water onto the table. He chews on the handles and licks the bottom of the cup. While at my parents, he was rocking forward and backward in his seat and sloshed water up into the spout and got a drink, which led him to continue rocking to try and do it again. I haven't put milk in it yet because I don't want to waste the breastmilk. I sometimes put a little juice in and help him drink it. The water is mostly there to experiment with. He shouldn't drink too much water yet, but I don't mind if it get everywhere and I have to dump it out at the end. He definitely likes sloshing around the water in the cup.

I've also been trying to introduce more and more non-baby solids -- Goldfish and crackers and Multi-Grain Cheerios. He does very well with those -- when he's not feeding them to the dog or crushing them up in his superhero grip. I tried this week making some homemade baby food, essentially pureeing what we were having for dinner. In this case, it was baked skinless chicken breasts, zucchini, yellow squash, and tomatoes. He's had all of these ingredients before in store-bought baby food, but this he didn't like. Granted it was chunkier than what he normally eats, but he can handle that texture in oatmeal and lumpier baby food from Gerber. He would try and eat it and then squeeze his eyes shut and react to it. Eventually he refused it and did so again yesterday when I tried it again for lunch. Wes thought the tomato might have been too acidic for him, but he's had both raw and pureed tomatoes before. I'm going to keep trying the chicken but in other vegetables. I got some organic canned corn and beans to try and blend up to feed him. He has eight teeth, all in front, so I want him to get out of the runny baby food and into something thicker so he learns to chew things up. His challenge right now with some foods is more the handling of it than the eating. He has trouble getting banana pieces into his mouth, for example.

It's all very messy, sometimes frustrating, but mostly fun to watch.

Helping daddy

Wes had to cut off some nails that were sticking through into this built-in bench storage, and Ollie just couldn't stay away. There's something about hammers and hacksaws and power drills that draw him. He spent at least an hour one day just carrying around an Allen wrench. He pulled himself up to the ledge and then got up on his tiptoes and to peer down and see what was happening.

It was around this time that we took a trip to Phillip's Toy Mart on Harding Pike and got him his own soft-sided hammer. Doesn't work as well as dad's, but he enjoys toting it about the downstairs.

Up on high

Now that we have a new kitchen table that boasts benches versus chairs, I wanted to get Oliver a more traditional high chair that stands alone and doesn't take up so much room. Wes and I both really love the old-fashioned wooden high chairs, but they're very pricey, so we decided to go the uber-cheap route and get one of the restaurant-style wooden high chairs. It'll fit him until he's big enough for a normal seat at the table, and it's absent that blasted tray, which, while functional, drove me nuts.

The other virtue of this high chair for Oliver and Lucy is that there's less to keep them apart during feeding time. Oliver can reach down to share his Cheerios or Goldfish or banana puffs with Lucy -- in some cases just giving her a lick before enjoying it further himself (ewww!).

Places I have found Oliver in the last few days

It's definitely nice to have a bigger home, with lots more room for babies and dogs to play, but it also means it's easier to lose them, especially the former, in the midst of working around the house.

Example 1: A few days ago I was cleaning up in the kitchen after dinner and heard a crinkly noise, like a plastic bag. I assumed, correctly, that Oliver had gotten his way into something he wasn't meant to get into -- and boy was I right. I hunted for him in the eat-in area, the "parlor" (a.k.a. the dining room that we're not going to use as a dining room), the living room. And then found him -- on the third stair of the main staircase playing with a bag of letters/numbers for the tub. Yes, my young one has learned the joy of climbing up the stairs. His main enticement is the dog bowls, which reside on the landing where -- before this moment -- Oliver could not reach but Lucy could. So now there are baby gates stationed at the top AND bottom of the stairs. If either Wes or I forget to put the one at the bottom up upon bringing Oliver downstairs, we usually find him on, oh, about the third stair. We're learning to be more mindful.

Example 2: The very next day after the stairwell incident I was once again cleaning up in the kitchen and heard the sound of splashing water. Where had my young one gotten to? The toilet just off the kitchen. He's become very adept at pulling up now, and evidently the toilet is just the right height. (Sadly, he also practiced this trick when I used the toilet one day and left the door open. It's not easy trying to get a kid off of you so you can stand up from using the toilet -- hence the small bruise on his forehead.)

Example 3: And then Saturday. Wes and I were standing in one room or another (probably the kitchen, as it seems to be where I lose Oliver) talking and realized we couldn't see the baby. Or hear him. So we started looking. Not in the bathroom. Not on the stairwell (the baby gate was up!). Nowhere to be seen. And then we heard a slight whimpering. And then saw little tiny fingers come out from beneath the door to the master bedroom. It seems the young squire had crawled into the bedroom and then had the door close on him so that he could not make his way back out. This scene in particular cracked me up since my sister and I used to put our hands under our parents' door and yell, "Mini-fingers." Hence my response to photograph the incident before rescuing Oliver from the room.

At home, at last