The Small Family     

Good health has almost returned to the Small household! Theo is all better, save for a very slightly runny nose. I’m almost better, save for swollen glands and a bit of congestion. And Chris is crabby about the fact that he’s still sick, but he is improving, thanks in no small part to his new best friend, the nasal irrigation system. (Ha ha, couldn’t resist! After shuddering and telling me that the thing looked gross, he finally agreed to buy one and try it last Sunday, and he’s been rather hooked on it, even asking me, “How many times a day am I allowed to use this?” He he he he he….)

Alas, the weather during the week did not cooperate with our improved health, so we were stuck inside a fair amount. Luckily, Theo and I had a new adventure this week: Flip 2 It! My Mom bought Theo a gift certificate for four weeks of classes (held once a week) at Flip 2 It, a gymnastics place. At his age, it’s a mommy-and-me tumbling class, much like what he goes to at Little Gym, but with slightly more direction. We had a good time. The gym itself is huge--about four times the size of Little Gym. And they had several big trampolines, which Theo loved! So he really enjoyed that. What he did not enjoy quite as much is that it’s a bit more structured than Little Gym. At Little Gym, the idea is to encourage your child to participate, but if he doesn’t want to, he’s perfectly allowed to roam, as they see independent exploration as a huge part of learning at this age. At Flip 2 It, they seem more inclined to want you to pick up the child and bring him back to whatever activity the group is doing--and to want him to do the activity in question. So, for example, they have a huge trampoline that spans an entire wall, and the kids were to take turns hopping all the way down the long trampoline. Theo thought this was great fun and happily hopped along with the other kids. Then they were to turn around and hop backwards, which Theo was not comfortable doing--he wanted to continue hopping forward, and he got rather upset when the teacher picked him up and turned him around.

So…we’ll see how it goes. On one hand, I know that eventually he’ll need to learn to conform to more structure when he’s in a school environment. On the other hand, he’s not even three years old yet, so a huge part of me enjoys just letting him explore what interests him. I always encourage him to try what the other kids are doing, but if he prefers to explore on his own, I’m totally fine with that, particularly at his age. He does tend to be quite independent, and he often prefers to try new things after he has watched other kids do it and they have since moved on to other things. Perhaps the perfectionist side of him coming out--he likes to try new things in private first, until he masters them. I’ve watched him do this again and again at Little Gym over the past year and a half....

It was a sort of reminder, though, of just how well I think the independent learning style of Montessori will work for him. I have a feeling Mr. Independence will absolutely thrive in that environment. But, you never know. I could find out that it doesn’t suit him well at all, and then I’ll be forced to eat my words! Only time will tell…. Anyway, we will enjoy our next three Flip 2 It classes and then see whether we feel like enrolling him in more. Once he turns three (which is coming up so soon!), he’ll be eligible for some different types of activities, both through Flip 2 It and through Little Gym, as well as through the City of Roseville, so we’ll see what looks promising and fun for him then.

As long as I’m on the subject of independent learning, the little guy surprised us the other day. Chris and I were talking in the living room, and Theo was playing with one of several stuffed pugs we have lying around. This particular pug is holding a heart in his mouth that says “Puppy Love.” As I mentioned in a previous blog, Theo has been very into spelling everything lately and telling you what it spells (which is almost always something that he wants or something somewhat related to the object). So when we heard him spelling, “P-u-p-p-y,” we didn’t think much of it…until he announced, “That spells ‘puppy’!” I looked at Chris and said, “Did you tell him how to spell puppy?” He replied, “No, did you?” Nope. Yet somehow, he knows how to spell “puppy.” I don’t know how, because he never calls dogs puppies--he calls them “doggies” or “pugs,” but never “puppies.” The only thing I can think of is that he remembers that some months ago I told him the letter P starts words like “puppy,” and so when he saw the P starting the word and knew he was holding a stuffed dog, he made the connection. Still pretty amazing to me!

So, along with the fun developments in the toddler world, there are, of course, the challenges. Chris and I normally work on one major thing at a time with Theo. For example, when he was just becoming mobile, it was not touching the stove knobs to our gas stove, which he was forever turning. (He even successfully ignited a burner once! Don’t these things have safety measures on them??) When he got a bit older (from about 15 months to over two years), there was the long, slow process of teaching him not to hit. Then there was the swearing phase. And now…the interrupting phase….

All along the way, we work on smaller things, too--for example, saying please and thank you, treating the dogs kindly, sharing, etc. But we usually focus on one major issue at a time. For one thing, I personally think toddlers have a lot to learn in a short time. I mean, they essentially have to learn all about how to go from being cavemen (I got this term from a parenting book I love--I didn’t make it up, but it’s rather appropriate if you know toddlers!) to becoming domesticated, polite little members of society. And when you’re two years old and learning all about the giant world around you, it’s a lot to learn all at once--overwhelming, perhaps! But the second issue is that I didn’t have a child to spend all my time harping on him; I had a child to enjoy him. Theo is a very stubborn personality, so he’s not one of those children who quickly learns that he shouldn’t touch X, Y, or Z and then respects that--it takes a long time of repeatedly enforcing something before he finally stops testing the boundary. I think he learns what he’s not supposed to do quickly, but he is just bound and determined to push and push and push to see whether he can get Chris and I to give in, and it takes a very long time before he gives up. So if we tried to enforce the entire human code of social conduct at once, you can only imagine what our house would sound like: “Theo, don’t touch the stove! Theo, put down the remote! Theo, don’t hit Daddy! Theo, cover your mouth when you cough! Theo, say please when you want something! Theo, you need to take off your shoes before you get on the couch! Theo, sit down!” I’d spend all my time harping at my little boy and very little time enjoying him! Further, he’d tune out my incessant nagging faster than you can say, “Toddlers like to test boundaries.”

So…one thing at a time. And right now, the social grace we are starting to work on is not interrupting. Oooh, boy, that’s a tiring one! Theo was a little on the later end of starting to talk, but now that he talks, he talks a lot, and he wants to make sure you’ve heard and acknowledged everything he has said! And a simple, “Mmmhmmm” rarely works--he wants a full verbal acknowledgment of whatever he has said. And truly, I don’t mind acknowledging him a lot of the time, because I know he is learning rules of grammar and speech in large part by listening to how I respond to him when he talks. But there are also times when I want to talk to Chris or I want to talk to my Mom on the phone, and I don’t want to be constantly interrupted. And so, we shall work on interrupting. Slowly but surely. My friend says her four-year-old is still learning that one, only now she is very polite and says, “Excuse me!” instead of just blurting out what she wants to say--but if they don’t immediately stop talking and let her talk, she just keeps repeating “Excuse me!” He he he…at least she’s polite!! ;-)

Not sure how we’ll approach this one yet, as so far, “Theo, when Mommy is talking to Daddy, you need to be quiet for moment” yields no successful results. Back to the books and my favorite mommy forum to see what has worked for other parents. This will be a long, slow one, I’m sure, as in a two-year-old’s world, whatever is on his mind is absolutely of the utmost importance, and he must tell you RIGHT NOW!

So what’s on my mind right now that I must tell you right at this minute?! How about our latest “homemade” endeavor? We got a bit off track during the holidays and our busy work time/illnesses, but we did do some fun homemade stuff this week. First off, I made homemade cupcakes for Valentine’s Day. And realized that I am a Valentine’s Day lame-o, actually. Chris actually planned ahead and got me a Valentine’s Day gift three days ahead of time (chocolates from a delicious chocolate shop in Sacramento--yum!--and a bouquet of red tulips), but I was a slacker who waited until Valentine’s Day itself to do anything for him. So as V-Day arrived, I decided that I’d make his favorite dinner (lasagna from scratch), buy him a yummy bottle of wine, and make homemade cupcakes (double chocolate with white ganache icing and candied bacon). But lame-o realized halfway through her baking endeavor that she didn’t have a cupcake pan, and thus had to send her long-suffering husband out to Target to buy such a pan so she could finish his gift. Sigh….

But anyway, the cupcakes were delicious. I don’t think they needed the candied bacon (though it sure was tasty on the side!), but I loved the ganache, and it was so easy! Neither of us cares for white chocolate, so I got vanilla chips instead and made a vanilla ganache. Mmmmm!

Our second endeavor was Chris’s: homemade banana bread with almonds and dried cranberries. He experimented a bit, using whole-wheat flour and raw sugar instead of white flour and refined sugar, and it turned out scrumptious!

Our third endeavor was my idea but Chris’s implementation: homemade cleaner. I was doing a bit of reading on homemade cleaning solutions, and I mentioned to Chris that I wanted to give it a try. In the interest of (a) saving money on expensive cleaners, (b) being more environmentally friendly, and (c) ridding our home of some unwanted chemicals, Chris put together a baking soda/vinegar/water solution from a "recipe" he found online, and we tried it out in the kitchen and bathrooms. Lo and behold, it seemed to clean every bit as well as a store-bought cleanser!

A few other bits from the week… I took Theo over to visit my Mom on Wednesday (?), and her home-health nurse was there, helping her learn how to “pack” her wound herself, since the lovely Kaiser is begrudging her nursing services for the final week or two of care she requires. (This annoys me, as the extent of her care was a visit every other day by a nurse, who could repack her wound, make sure everything looked okay, and check her vitals. It took no more than an hour every other day, and the nurses were a big help to my Mom, since packing a wound is not a particularly easy or appealing task. But Kaiser decided she ought to be doing it herself now, so…sigh.) Anyway, her nurse that day, named Gayle, was a very nice woman, and Theo seemed to like her…and eventually decided that she was not Gayle, but Sam-I-Am (from Green Eggs and Ham). I have no idea why he thought this, as Gayle didn’t resemble an illustration from a Dr. Seuss book in any way, but I thought it was kind of cute, because he keeps talking about how Sam-I-Am was at Grandma’s house! In fact, Grandma is making her debut back into society on Monday by coming over to our house and going to lunch with Theo and me, and when I told Theo this, he said happily, “Grandma play with you! And Sam-I-Am come, too!” (He uses the pronoun “you” to refer to himself, so that translates to, “Grandma’s going to play with me! And Sam-I-Am is coming, too!”)

We had two fun events this weekend, since we’re all feeling considerably better than we were last weekend…and Chris and I didn’t have to spend all weekend working! On gloomy, rainy Saturday, we went to the Children’s Museum of Stockton, which Theo always loves, and he had a wonderful time. He particularly loved the grocery store, proving that he is indeed Chris’s son! And on Sunday, a pretty, sunny, cold day, we bundled up in jackets and went down to Sacramento to visit Funderland--a very small amusement park for young children. Depending on how our taxes turn out this year (cross your fingers on Thursday!!), we are trying to see whether we can take Theo down to Disneyland for a few days. So we decided to try Funderland to see whether he’ll even enjoy the rides at Disneyland this year. Last year, you may recall, he refused to go on anything. And that was fine, because Disneyland and California Adventure have a lot of places for kids to run around and play even if they don’t want to go on rides, but we did think it’d be neat if we could get him to try a couple this year. And I’m pleased to report that the trip to Funderland was a rousing success! He loved driving the cars (kind of like Autopia at Disneyland, for those who’ve been) and riding the very fast carousel--I think those were his favorites. But he also liked the spinning teacups and the train ride. He claims the airplanes were his favorite, but I think that may just be because they were one of the last things he went on. (The one we were on didn’t go up and down--just around in a circle--but that’s okay; he enjoyed it anyway.) The only thing he wasn’t crazy about was the roller coaster. He went on it, and he did fine--but he was definitely glad to get off! More than anything, I think the noise of the rattling track bothered him. He didn’t seem overly worried by the ups and downs and speed of the coaster, but he kept covering his ears when the tracks would shake and rattle. He’s been very sensitive to sound lately (which I suspect is related to this nagging cold), so I have a feeling that was what bugged him more than anything.

For those of you who might be wondering about that job interview I had, I’m happy to report that despite feeling lousy and not being overly perky during the interview, I must not have blown it--they are currently checking my references. :-) Funny how things turn out, though. I was telling Chris that I have several clients: Cengage Learning, for whom I do most of my work. The pay is decent, and I really enjoy the projects and love the people, so I’m not willing to give that up. Paradigm Publishing is another--I’ve been doing some work for them through an old contact from Prima Publishing (where I started as an editor). Paradigm’s pay is very, very low, and the projects are messy. Still, always good to have a variety of clients. And then there’s eHow. It’s very low pay, but I get paid twice a week, directly into my bank account, so I love the stability. And for a while, the articles were fun--but then I suddenly stopped getting technical articles and started getting home-improvement and education articles. These might sound like fun, but the reality is that they take much longer for me to edit than the tech articles, so I end up making a good bit less money in the long run. I told Chris I was really missing my tech articles from them, and I thought that I might drop them if I got hired by the State.

Lo and behold, this week I got an email from eHow saying that they were giving me a promotion and a 30% raise (which amounts to about $50 extra per week--not enough to retire on, but definitely helpful)! The promotion is to a team that only does tech articles, so I’ll be back to editing the tech articles that I enjoy--and I’ll get more money! Woohoo!!! Apparently the tech articles disappeared from the editing queue because eHow was putting together this team to do them--and I was lucky enough to get chosen for the team. (I threw my name in for it a couple of months ago, but when I didn’t hear back from the copy chiefs, I figured they weren’t interested, and then I forgot all about it. Evidently they were interested, but things just moved very slowly!)

So I guess, if I have to cut a client loose to make time to take on the State, Paradigm is now on the chopping block. I love Cengage, and I really like eHow, and now that eHow is going to pay significantly better, I’m not willing to give it up!

To wrap up, I’d like to dedicate this blog to the memory of Sarah Chidgey Hughes. This may sound a little silly, but she was hugely inspiring to me, even though I never personally met her. Sarah was a friend of Chris’s cousin (in Texas), and I started following her blog (sarahchidgey.blogspot.com) almost a year ago, when she was first diagnosed with cancer at age 27. Her blog was originally very inspiring to me because she was fighting cancer with so much optimism, bravery, and confidence that she was going to prevail. And even as the cancer kept returning and spreading after treatments, she was so optimistic. I followed her story as her boyfriend proposed, as they moved their November wedding up to an informal event in August so she could still have her hair when she walked down the aisle, as they had their “official” wedding in November, as she mourned missing her honeymoon because the cancer was spreading and extremely painful, and as she went home to live out her last days in February. She died on Wednesday morning, and I cried when I read the news, as did many of the hundreds of people who have followed her blog over the past year. Although I never met Sarah, her grace and courage was utterly inspiring to me, and my heart aches for the loved ones who lost her. And so, I end this week by saying thank you to someone I never met, but who reminded me just how precious life is, and how every single moment is one to treasure. It sounds clichéd, I know, but I think a lot of us could use that reminder sometimes, when we get bogged down in our problems. I’ve lived nine more years than Sarah will get to, and for that I am so very, very grateful. May you rest in peace, Sarah.