Big Families

In today's paper, this article caught my eye, And a Baby Makes How Many?

As the fifth of seven kids, I am always extraordinarily sensitive about the big family debate. Yes, I find the story of the octuplets born to a woman with six kids under eight extremely problematic. Personally, I am thrilled and overwhelmed with three kids under seven so I just cannot imagine, can NOT imagine, having more children. However, I loved growing up in a big family and I have a tremendous respect for my mom especially, but my dad as well, who did an amazing job raising us.

Both my mom and my mom-in-law, who has four children, remember(ed) a time when people had no problem stopping them on the street to chastise them about having so many kids. The idea of this vexes me beyond belief. A stranger would not criticize another's lunch choice publicly. It's amazing that someone would feel the right to comment on a far more personal and important decision. And we are not talking here about the extremes, the ethics of a fertility doctor who should not be implanting so many embryos, nor are we talking about this murky stereotype that some people have that a woman, presumably poor and uneducated, is having more kids just to collect more public assistance (which is incredibly presumptuous to assume).

My mom's standard response was, "You worry about the quantity. I'll worry about the quality." And my mother-in-law, who is amazingly kind and sweet, had a stranger come up to her, nodding in disgust at the four kids. "Didn't your mother ever teach you anything" the stranger spit out, of course, referring to birth control. "Yes," my mother-in-law responded, "She taught me to mind my own business."

Did I ever tell you that I have a great mother-in-law?

Good Stuff

I've been feeling rather gloomy lately. I recognize that it is a combination of things. The winter has been dragging on quite a bit here in the East Coast, and while I am a fan of flaky snow and warm scarfs at the start of the season-- I am well over it now. It stinks to park the car on the street, sidled up next to these huge, icy snowbanks that make you need to get the boys out on the car side of the street, always concerned about impatient drivers who just want to get past a woman helping three little fellas from the side door. I am also in the thick of things work-wise, at the height of the season, and feeling well out-of-control this first go-around. I don't even know what I don't know and that ignorance would be bliss, except that it smacks me in the face a bit too often-- when suddenly someone asks me if I've finished something that I didn't even know I was supposed to do. It makes me feel crappy to feel crappy at my job. Finally, P is off on a required school thing for five days, leaving tomorrow. The anticipation of the suckiness of single parenting this next week, as I feel the heat and weight of job expectations, as I scrape up against dirty mounds of ice and snow, just has put me over the top. The irony is that he is off to a five-day retreat, filled with quietness and contemplation, something that I know he needs and is good for him, not just a part of fulfilling his MDiv requirements. However, it feels like it is just what I need, but could no way do right now, and makes me feel bitter about his program and how it is so clearly not designed for a parent of young children.

When I am wallowing in self-pity, I often do a pretty good job of beating myself up even more but putting stuff into perspective. I am lucky to have a job, especially given the economic climate and the reality of more and more folks finding themselves jobless each day. I am lucky I have these three amazing boys and incredibly fortunate that I don't have to single parent every day of their existence. I am profoundly blessed by having this amazing partner, who is good and kind and supportive and actually feels incredibly guilty about going away for rest and retreat for four-and-a-half days.

And while I was lying like a lump in bed this evening, feeling all these things, and thinking all these things-- I realized I have touched up against some really good stuff lately. And I love sharing good stuff that I discover with people. And I felt like I should put this all in a post. So here's some good stuff that has made me buzz a bit:

1. An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. For the past few months, I've been voraciously reading YA novels. I tend to get on reading kicks-- memoirs, British/Irish chick lit, mysteries-- and I just look for more and more. I've had people ask me how I possibly find time to read. I don't even know how to answer that, except that I just do. I couldn't live without reading, and oh, how I wish I felt like that about exercise or broccoli, but I always find time to read even in just short snippets between responsibilities. Green is such a smart writer and I fell for this book and the protagonist immediately. Colin Singleton is a recent high school graduate and child prodigy, not a genius he reminds folks often, who is freaked out about losing his edge (you're not a child prodigy once you become an adult) and being dumped yet-again by a girl named Katherine. Colin and his best friend, Hassan, set out on a road trip right after graduation in that buddy bonding plot that I've seen before. However, there's tons of anagrams and a whole lot of math in this book and it's just smart and quirky and funny and like nothing I've ever read. And I secretly devoured all of Colin's thoughts because I couldn't help but think he is a bit like my own C , whom I don't dare label a prodigy, but has his own tremendous brain that gets in the way of his social connections at times. I suspect that author Green is a bit Colin-ish himself and I love the idea of this guy finding his own niche in the world. Good stuff.

2. Abstract City: I Lego N.Y. by Christopher Niemann . This collection of photos of Niemann's simple Lego creations that remind him of a much-missed New York City just got me with its cleverness. I had one of those "oh-I-wish-I-had-done-this" moments when I first saw it but I just love that Niemann did and the New York Times published it. I also just like the idea of Niemann hanging out with his three sons overseas, playing Legos in their room. Good stuff.

3. Slings & Arrows. I made mention of this brilliant Canadian television series in my last post. P and I watched the very last episode of the last season last night and this morning, we both admitted that we were in a bit of mourning about finishing it. The series takes place around a fictitious town's Shakespearean theater festival and has moments of great drama, laugh-out-loud humor, and just incredibly smart writing. The acting is top-notch and the series is such a great reminder of what good television really can look like (and a sad reminder that nothing on TV right now looks anything like this). Each of the three seasons focuses on a different Shakespeare play the company is putting up, and it was a bonus that I taught Hamlet and Macbeth, and made me yearn to teach King Lear. However, one could really enjoy this show without knowing the plays or even liking Shakespeare all that much (to start). It made me wish I had discovered the show earlier when I was teaching high school so I could have shared this gem with my students. Now, too, I want to watch everything that has actor Paul Gross in it, who just astounded me as artistic director Geoffrey Tenner, struggling with his own demons while trying to create great art and get the woman he loved and lost. Good stuff.

4. They Might Be Giants: Their kids' albums, especially Here Comes the A,B,C's and Here Comes the 1,2,3's are tons of fun. Clever lyrics. Good music that kids love and parents can stand to listen to again and again. And yes, we did just go see them LIVE last Saturday-- the boys' first ever concert. I love that from now on, now matter how old the boys get, when someone asks them who was their first concert, they will always be able to answer TMBGs! The band was amazing live, the energy awesome, horns blaring, kids and parents both stomping their feet and jumping in the air. Plus, I love them for passing out yellow foam hands with the big #1 fingers for free to all the attendees so we didn't have to be the mean parents saying 'no' to buying them stuff at concerts.


These guys (the band, not the three pictured) are nominated for a Grammy this year and I am so totally routing for John and John. Beside their CDs, it is also worth it to purchase the DVDs full of old-school animation and this good music-- you just don't feel guilty letting your kids sit in front of these videos. "Now that monkey rides a bike around with me. I named him Larry." Good stuff.

And bonus, while finding a link on TMBG, I found that on their website, they had posted the video of Bishop Gene Robinson's prayer at Barack Obama's Inauguration festivities and that just made me like They Might Be Giants even more. Good Stuff.

5. Finally, just tonight I just started reading David Levithan's Wide Awake. He's one of those YA novelists I have been recently devouring and have really appreciated his Boy Meet Boy (reading some incredibly poignant lines aloud to P) and the two novels he co-authored with Rachel Cohn, including Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. The premise of Wide Awake, published in 1996-- a gay Jewish president has just been elected. I can already tell that more Good Stuff awaits...

Reading this NYTimes op-ed piece called "Till Children Do Us Part" makes me thankful that

1. P and I discussed how we wanted family life to look like before we had kids.

2. He does the majority of the cooking and the wash (and packing the boys' lunch boxes)-- so have worked against falling into traditional gender roles.

Of course, there's no gloating here. We still need work on the hanging out together with no children present bit.  Yes, a regular babysitter and a weekly or even bi-weekly or even monthly date night would be great. However, right now we'd settle for three sleeping boys, a good bottle of red wine, and another disk of Slings and Arrows. Why'd they only make three seasons of that show?

I'm so hip

So the NYTimes magazine has a big spread this weekend about how designers are embracing the color pink in men's fashions.

Let me remind you, just in case you ever forgot, I created this t-shirt line last year: BOYS LIKE PINK, TOO.

That's right. I'm so cutting edge. So hip. Do you think Project Runway will come a'callin'?

Two things that made me laugh today...

After listening to an NPR story on the governor of Illinois's impeachment trial, C asked,
"What did he do wrong? Eat too many peaches?"

After running to the potty, F announced:
"Water just came out of my water spout!"

The w** is not for we (us)

Since the holidays, many of the boys' conversations with classmates in school seem to concern the w** or other such video-gaming systems.  C keeps trying to arrange playdates on his own, truly less interested in the kid he wants to go visit, but far more interested in the video games he might get to play when at his house.   The boys' begging for video games has increased and this weekend it reached a head when we went to a birthday party and the boys got their very first taste of actually playing the w**, not just hearing about it.

P and I have made the definitive statement, "We will not have a video game system in our home." We've heard lots lately that so-and-so gets to play w** all the time so what's the problem. We've tried to be clear that different families have different rules, but the guys are having a hard time buying that.  I think I've been called bossy more than once these past weeks.  I've decided to take it as a compliment.

Now, I am not morally judging you or your child if you make a different decision in your home.  I just know my boys.  The attention and time suckage potential for my fellows would be huge if we had a w**.  I've heard the arguments, especially around the sports, fitness, and music video games, and if that's the choice you've made-- hey, enjoy yourself.   I don't doubt that I would have a good time playing some of those games.  But I just don't need them in our house.  If the boys play the games at other folks' homes, so be it.  I won't get all up in arms about it, unless they are violent and misogynistic games and then I would have a problem-- a big one.  In the end though, this is where I stand on the video games, today on Thursday, January 22, 2009.  Who knows if my views will ever waver?

However, when I watched this New York Times video today, I can't imagine changing my mind.

So they say Pluto's no longer a planet, but...

The boys' imaginative play has a new story line.

F ran up to me this morning, hurling his body into my lap. "I arriving at Mom Planet," he gleefully announced. "I a rocket and so is C and S and we land on Mom Planet." He blasted off a few more times, projecting his body into the space around him, landing on me each time with an exuberant thud.

Ever the English teacher (no, I didn't correct his missing and misused verbs)-- I can't help but acknowledge the metaphor.