Sprouting

Mateo has been working really hard on the Headsprout reading program over the past few months, and having a lot of fun, too. We've been doing it every day before naptime. I do it with him on weekdays and he and Sacha do it together on weekends. He asks for it every day and seems to be having fun as well as learning a lot. I can hardly believe it, but he's almost finished the program. There are 80 lessons and he did number 76 today. We hit a point right after lesson 40 when the program stepped up a notch in terms of pace and difficulty and we wondered if it might be getting too challenging for him for right now.

Then, he seemed to hit a tipping point and during the last couple of weeks he's been picking up learning new words and skills like crazy. It reminds me of when he was learning to talk and he went through that developmental stage where they learn like six new words a day. Yesterday, he read a Headsprout story called "Mars, the Fourth Planet." Even though Sacha and I have been right there with him from the beginning, watching him read now still just blows us away. From what I understand, this program is supposed to take kids to the point that they can start reading beginning reader books and continue their learning that way. That does seem to be what's happening.

The thing that makes me happiest about this whole experience is that he can read some books and stories himself now, generally with us sitting with him and running our fingers under each word, and that he loves it. Sacha, in her teacherly way, got a bunch of books from the library that are about at his level and so he has fun stories that he can read and build confidence with. We're not quite sure what we'll do after he finishes Headsprout, but I think a celebration is in order! And then hopefully a lifelong love of reading after that.

Vacationing

We got back on Saturday evening from our Arizona vacation. Last night and today, Portland decided to welcome us back with a wind storm and torrential rains. Thank you, Pacific Northwest.

With the caveat that traveling with small children brings with it a level of exhaustion unknown in pre-kid days, we had a full and fun vacation. My parents, bless their souls, arranged for us to stay in a suite at the hotel, so that we had two (huge!) rooms and one (huge!) bathroom in which to spread out. By putting Mateo in the sitting room, ourselves in the bedroom, and Natalia in the palatial bathroom, we all had sufficient distance from each other that we all mostly slept through most of the nights. Here are Grammy, Tali, and Teo chilling on our fashionable couch:



We got in on Wednesday night, and the desert air worked its magic on Sacha and I and our colds almost immediately. In fact, it dried us out so well that we thought we had been cured until we returned to the wet air of home and resumed coughing and blowing our noses again. Or did we just catch another cold? Let's hope not!

While in AZ, we spent lots of time with Grammy and Grandpa, my sister, my brother and his girlfriend. It was wonderful to spend time with everyone while simultaneously enjoying the gorgeous weather and the sun. I think the best part was watching the kids play with everyone and soaking up all the attention from people who loved them. We played in the hot tub, ate good food, went to a local park a couple of times, attempted to attend a baseball game with the kids, with limited success, and Sacha even sprung me for two evenings so I could spend some time with the adults after the kids went to bed.

Here are Grammy and Te Te playing in the park:


One of our favorite parts of the trip was Saturday afternoon, when we all went to the civic center park after the game and everyone just wandered around and chatted and played with the kids before dinner. And, of course, we had fun celebrating my sister's upcoming 30th birthday later that evening!

The kids, shall we say, experienced the vacation in different ways. Mateo acted as if he had been injected with rocket fuel! He was going full blast from sunrise to sunset, although thankfully he stuck to his nap schedule, which saved our sanity. We finally clued in to the fact that we could put on a video for him when he woke up at the crack of dawn and buy ourselves another 45 minutes of sleep. He was SO EXCITED to see everybody and to check out all the new things around him that he just wanted to go go go go go the entire time.

Here are the kids in the hotel restaurant, checking a massive mirror:


Tali was a little more uncertain of her surroundings and spent a lot of time begging for her ba-ba (her binky) and her blankie. By a lot of time, I mean a LOT of time. We let her have the ba-ba for the first couple of days and then started rationing it more, but you'll notice that she has it in all the photos!


I think her favorite part was playing in the water in the hotel hot tub. I give major props to Megan, my brother's girlfriend, for coming prepared with some fun pool toys just for the kids. The kids went nuts for them!

We were sad to leave the family and the sun, but also happy to be back home, even with the rain. Mateo welcomed us back to reality by waking up last night at 3:30 am and staying awake until 4:30, and then springing to life at 6 am after his mama had finally fallen back asleep. To give him credit, he actually woke up to take himself to the potty, which was great, but then he just could not get back to sleep. Always with the post-travel sleep disturbances, that one. Anyway, we're hoping to get back into our normal routine soon! And, also hoping for a little more sun in these parts sooner rather than later.

Auction Strategy

We went to Mateo's preschool auction tonight and had a lovely time. About half way through, I was ready to leave and not feeling too social, but then we ended up having a lovely time chatting with some other moms, and I got my second wind.

The auction was quite fun. I decided to use what I have learned in this book I am reading called Yes: 50 Scientific Ways of being Influential at the auction. (It's a fascinating book that I highly recommend.)

Anyway, my strategy was to talk with Alayna and rank our top 6 items. Then, we decided how much money we wanted to bid total. I then bid all of that money, right at the beginning, on items numbered 4, 5, and 6. I figured that it was highly unlikely that we would get those items, but at the very least we would drive up the cost by bidding at the beginning of the auction, and increasing the desirability of the items. (The more people bid, the more popular the item, the more people want the item.)

It worked like a charm. As those items got out of our bidding range, I went towards the items I wanted, and in the last 10 minutes bid for our #1 item, which we won!!! In all, we only spent $7 more than we planned on bidding, but helped raise the bidding price on quite a few different items.

I love having a strategy!

What did we win? Four hours of home organizing and a fabulous shirt for Alayna, and a fantastically fun evening.

FYI If you are ever selling on ebay, it turns out that the lower the starting bid you place, the higher the item tends to sell for, because more people bid, making it more popular, and therefore more desirable resulting in a higher price. If you are buying, I recommend using an auction sniper business that places your bid in the last second of the auction! And that is it for my random thought of the day. . .

Calling my immune system...

I can't even believe this, but I have another cold. The thing about the first year of school being rough on the immune system must be true. I thought we'd get out of it since Mateo is only in school two mornings a week, but I guess that was wishful thinking. Bleck. I know life isn't fair, but this is so not fair! At least one member of our family has been sick for the last month straight, if not longer.

Anyway, despite me sounding like a frog again, the weather has been beautiful for the past few days and we've been enjoying it. The kids and I are planning to spend some time "watering" the front yard after they get up from their naps. I'm sure they will mostly be watering themselves, but I hope the plants get a little, too!

And, in about an hour, Sacha will officially be on spring break! Wahoo!! We're planning to spend the first half of the week staycationing at home, and then we're going to Arizona with my family for the second half. We're looking forward to enjoying the sun and family time both here and there.

Here are some recent photos.

Right after naptime, we had a party in Tali's bed. The only guests were Mateo, Natalia, and Blankie.



Yesterday, we took advantage of the nice weather to take a park trip sans 20 layers of jackets. Only, it was much windier and colder than we had anticipated when we got there, so I made a quick trip home for one more layer for everybody. The kids monopolized the swings for quite awhile, and then played on the big slide and the play structure. This park is the location of our local farmer's market in the summer, and we're all looking forward to when it starts up again.

Climbing up like a big girl....



and sliding down like a big boy...


"Come on, Mom, let's gooo!"

Rockin'

After a busy and fun weekend, which included...

Friday night dinner with Uncle Galen and Megan,

a fun breakfast and park playdate with preschool friends,

a birthday party for the newest 3-year-old in our crowd,

the Shamrock Run 5K with 20,000 of our closest friends (I ran while Sacha and the kids cheered everyone on),


coloring some Easter eggs way early,




two breakfasts out at the same cafe,

a visit to Apa's new apartment,

Sunday dinner with Apa,

two episodes of Big Love, Season Three,

and poor Sacha being sick all weekend with a sinus infection, which is now having its butt kicked by antibiotics...

...we had a somewhat more mellow morning this morning. We had our last music class of this term and then spent the rest of the morning with friends at a park in the sun! It was soooo nice. We stopped by the store on the way home and, as I was bringing in the groceries after depositing the kids in the front room, I walked in to see this. These kids are my favorites. I just can't get enough of them!

Packing peanuts, play babies, jumping, and a water feature

My mom shipped our stroller back to us after we forgot it at their house, complete with a big box full of packing peanuts. It arrived yesterday, just in time to provide entertainment to our poor stir-crazy kids, who had two sick moms who were running on fumes. They had a great time rolling around in this box for what seemed like an hour.


***************************************

We get these little reports from Mateo's preschool every Tuesday and Thursday, telling us a little about what he did that day. For the last couple of weeks, his "favorite part of the day" section has said: "Playing babies with my friends." I asked his teacher what they did when they played babies and she said that it involved a lot of calling the doctor to say that the baby was sick. Then, they apparently use a soup ladle to administer copious amounts of vitamins to the sick doll, and then put it down for a nap.

The teacher said she thought it was very Portland to be giving so many vitamins that they fill up a soup ladle, and I had to agree! Anyway, this coincides with Mateo's recent interest in putting his stuffed animal friends down for a nap. Just like when he goes to bed, he sings to them and then lies down next to them for a minute while their music plays. His little froggy is on the couch and Olin, the stuffed bunny, is on the cushion on the floor.


***************************************

Have I mentioned how crazy in love with our cat we are? We love our Yarn! Here's our not-so-little feline family member recently. She knows exactly when the kids go to sleep and comes trotting out right on cue, looking for a lap.


************************************************

We recently got a membership to the local children's museum and Sacha and I have each taken them once since then. Here are the kiddos playing at the water feature. This is going to be a staple of our winter activities next year, I can already tell. We'll just have to bathe in hand sanitizer after we get home.


*************************************************

Finally, Natalia has learned how to jump! After intently studying Mateo jumping for, well, her entire life, she figured out how to do it. It started with her hopping off the ground with one foot while keeping the other firmly planted on the floor. Now she can really do it with both feet. It is very cool. In this video, we're at the end of a lot of practice jumping, so she's a bit disheveled! We finally convinced her to wear a barrette to keep her hair out of her eyes, but they don't always stay in very well. Here's the jumping girl!

Gender

I was supposed to go to this parent event at Mateo's preschool last night. Every month, they have something called Journey of Learning, in which the director chooses does a presentation on a topic and parents show up to learn and discuss. I've never been to one, so I thought I would go this month. This month's topic was on gender differences in preschool, which certainly covers a lot of ground. Unfortunately, I didn't end up going after all, because I have the cold from hell (which the rest of my family also has, although to lesser degrees, by this point) and, last night, it decided to add a fever to the rest of my other lovely symptoms.

Anyway, I've been mulling over the topic of gender and kids for the last, oh, three and a half years, and I was hoping the preschool event might help me organize my thoughts. However, since the kids are napping and I can't seem to nap even when I'm sick, I thought I'd write down some of my perspective even though I didn't make it last night.

When I was in my social work master's program, I did one of my internships at a center that worked with homeless youth and transgender adults. It was a bizarre combination of populations, although there was some overlap, but that experience, combined with knowing other trans people and possibly growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, has led me to some fluid ideas on gender. While there are obviously differences between men and women and boys and girls, I think that the differences within groups are just as great, if not greater, than the differences between groups. I also think that the messages people get from society, from birth and even before, play a huge part in their gender expression.

I say this knowing that Sacha and I have played into many gender stereotypes with our kids, both consciously and unconsciously. We've tended to dress them both in mostly gendered clothes ("boy" clothes for Mateo, "girl" clothes for Natalia). We try to stay away from the most egregious offenders (ie, "little football star" or "mommy's princess" outfits), but it's still obvious that they're a boy and a girl from looking at them.

We also keep Mateo's hair mostly short and Natalia's hair longer, although they'll get to choose this in the future and Mateo has already expressed a preference for short hair. (We had a long talk about how some girls have short hair (ie, Mama) and some boys have long hair, and how he could have whatever length of hair he wanted, at which point, he said "I like short hair. Can we go get my hair cut?")

At least for me, a lot of this gender stuff is influenced by being a two-mom family. I seem to put extra pressure on myself to make sure my kids look normal, because our laws say that Sacha and I aren't normal, and because otherwise people might think that gay parents just don't get it or that we're not raising them to be good men or women or something.

With that said, we've tried to approach the idea of gender consciously, and have tried not to assume that Mateo or Natalia will like or not like something just because of their gender. They both like to play with various toys (trucks, puzzles, stuffed animals, musical toys, etc) and look at all kinds of books. They both like to ride their bikes, go to gym class, go to music class, play at the park, etc. Neither one of them seems like a stereotypical "boy" or "girl" to me. They just seem like kids.

I have been surprised by the comments we've gotten on gender, though, since the kids were born. These have come from people of all walks of life, and from our very progressive city to other places farther afield. First, there were the comments that people use almost unconsciously when you have a new baby: "What a big boy!" or "What a sweet little girl!", or "Look how strong he is already!" or "Look how delicate her fingers are!"

Then, there are all the ways in which people identify and encourage the ways in which our kids are doing things that associate them with being a boy or a girl. "Look at Mateo playing with that truck! See that truck, Mateo? We should take him to a construction site sometime." or "Oh, Natalia just picked up a cute shoe! She must love shoes! Watch out for that one when she's 13!"

And, finally, the most common conversation of all, the one in which someone tells us that there's no use in trying to raise kids to determine their own likes and dislikes without regard to their gender. It goes something like this: "Well, boys and girls are just different. They just are! I know. I tried to raise my son/daughter to be gender neutral (always said in a funny tone) and he just took the dolls I got him and started shooting things with them/she just took the trucks I got her and tried to feed them a bottle!"

Obviously, people will believe what they want and there's nothing I can do about it, but that last statement gets me every time. Yes, of course there will be kids that fit the stereotypes about their gender. I just think the whole question of gender is far more complicated than just tossing a doll to a little boy, who is already swimming in a sea of gender expectations and messages, and then judging the whole thing to be a failure if he doesn't immediately start putting it down for a nap. And, to then take that one example and use it to make assumptions about all of humanity.

It reminds me of this brief talk I had with a dad I had just met when Mateo was about 20 months old and Natalia was a newborn. This dad went on and on, telling me about how his son was just "all boy." Normally, I go out of my way to avoid confrontation, but I was feeling cranky and sleep deprived and so I said, "oh, well our son loves the color pink and flowers right now!" (Which was true.) The dad looked at me and then said that, actually, his son was really obsessed with pink, too, and that it seemed to be his favorite color. He had been just going with the social norm of emphasizing the parts of his son's behavior that said "boy" while attempting to ignore the ones that didn't fit his vision of having a son.

This is why I've generally avoided conversations on gender and kids. I just get frustrated and have a hard time expressing myself. And, it's why I was looking forward to going to the event last night, because I thought it was high time that I practice talking about these things instead of just fuming about them!

Here at home, though, I feel pretty happy with how we're raising our kids in terms of gender. We're just learning as we go, but I hope we're sending them the message that they can act and play and be how they want to be.

Lately, I've been working on letting go of a lot of my preconceptions about what boys should wear. Girls, I have no problem with. I like the idea of Tali wearing a wide range of clothes. With Mateo, it's been more of a struggle to let him wear some of the clothes he obviously loves, which include a lot of clothes we have for Natalia when she gets older. I go back into the "boys should wear this" thing in my head very easily. However, I've been working on letting him choose what he wears and on being okay with what he chooses. After all, whether he wears a striped shirt or a pink butterfly dress, it means nothing about what kind of man he'll grow up to be. He's going to be a great one, no matter what he's wearing.

Ugh

Well, I think I spoke too soon on the sleep thing. Mateo actually slept pretty well last night, and took a couple of good naps this weekend, so hopefully that will continue. Behavior issues haven't exactly abated, but I guess that's life at this age. Not be left out, however, his sister was up three times last night, which is not usual for her. We all seem to have gotten a cold, and have spent the weekend wiping various noses, so maybe that had something to do with her not sleeping. Of course, me being up half the night trying to get her to stay asleep probably helped her health, because she got more sleep, but it made mine worse! Poor Sacha has it the worst of all of us, so she spent most of the weekend trying to rest and recuperate so she can go to work tomorrow.

Anyway, outside of all that, we had a pretty good weekend. The kids and I hit two different parks yesterday, and we got to hang out with my brother in the afternoon, which was great. The weather yesterday was absolutely glorious. Just perfect. Today, the kids and I went out and got a bunch of annual and perennial flowers for our garden. We all worked on planting them when we got home, and they look great! We had our usual Sunday dinner with Apa tonight and now we're going to crash and dream of being less stuffy tomorrow. Here's hoping!

Click on the heart...

Sleep, again

Who knows what started it - perhaps our recent trip, or being sick for a week - but poor Mateo seems to have entered a rough patch again. Not knowing much about kids before we had them ourselves, one thing I definitely did not know was how much they cycle through delightful and difficult phases. I've seen this happen with our friends' kids, too, so I know it's not just us! Of course, it's not like it's all one or the other. Any day is filled with good and not-so-good moments. But, as Mateo approaches the rumored-to-be-difficult age of three-and-a-half, things have taken a turn for the, well, behaviorally challenged.

Since we got home from our trip, sleep has been on shaky ground. He's been waking up at 5 am raring to go, begging for a nap by naptime, begging for bedtime by bedtime, but not able to stay asleep long enough to get the rest he needs. I'm sure that accounts for much of the up and down behavior he's been experimenting with, too, but that knowledge doesn't help much in the moment!

Earlier, after a wonderful morning of going to the park, playing inside, and having a picnic lunch on our deck, naptime rolled around and he turned into Tantrum Man: screaming at the top of his lungs, running through his sister's room, refusing to use the potty, and so on, before finally calming down and falling asleep next to me before I even finished reading to him. I think he is really overtired, but it's hard enough to get him to sleep his regular amount of hours, much less try to catch up. Last night, to add insult to injury, he was up wailing in the middle of the night and not wanting to go back to sleep or be left alone in his room. Let's cross our fingers that this isn't the start of a new pattern, because one time is sometimes all it takes to change his idea of normal!

I know this will pass soon enough and we'll hit a delightful phase again. It's just kind of a bummer to go from things being great to everything being an excuse to test Mama and Mommy as much as possible. And, I have to admit that after nearly three and a half years, I'm tired of sleep being shaky ground still. I'm glad that we're at the point he sleeps pretty well when everything is going normally, but throw in even a little bit of change and everything gets knocked off kilter quickly. I look forward to the day when he (and we!) can go to bed at night easily and wake up in the morning at a reasonable hour with no returns to consciousness in the middle!

Math

Sacha has been on a district committee for the last several months, helping decide what math curriculum the district will adopt next year. It's been quite a process. Notice the past tense in those last two sentences? That's because it's finished! Tonight was the last meeting. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that she sought out being on the committee and I think it was well worth it in terms of building connections and helping influence policy and such. However, math committee days have been very long ones for everyone and I'm a teeny bit glad that the whole thing is over! And, just in time for spring. Yay!

Kid camera

I just downloaded the photos from Mateo's camera (he got a kid camera for Christmas) and I just have to post some of them. Here's a selection, taken by both the kid himself and by his parents. You may or may not be able to tell the difference.

TOO BRIGHT! WHY DID I POINT THIS TOWARD MY FACE AND PRESS THAT BUTTON ON TOP?


A photo with Grammy, from slightly farther away:


The 3-year-old stops to pose for a photo:


He loves to take pictures of half of our faces. I'm guessing I had just gotten up!



Sister and Apa playing with couch cushions:


Doing Headsprout with Megan:


Not sure who took this, but this girl was very proud to be playing the harmonica:


Either Tali is deep in meditation or mid-tickle or just too close to naptime. In any case, the blanket beneath her is really called Blankie and is an extremely important member of our family.


This is my favorite. In one picture, we have a smile, a deadpan stare, and a tantrum.