Author: Jenny

Like a magpie, I've always been drawn to things that have sparkle, from rhinestone-embellished housewares to gold lamé get-ups in second-hand stores or beetles whose metallic armors reflect in the sun. But in my interactions with the world, oh, how I can fixate on the not-sparkly stuff: ill-timed traffic lights, a web page that won't load, the impolite server. Post-pandemic, I took to saying, "Everything's broken, and nothing works." It's not good for the soul, and as a lifelong writer, I've noticed it's also not good for creativity. This blog is about redirecting my attention to what's good in the world -- seeking and finding joy in the same way I notice sparkly objects around me -- and writing about it. There is an old nursery rhyme about magpies, "One for Sorrow," which tells us a solitary magpie symbolizes sorrow, but two magpies symbolize joy. This blog is about looking harder for the good stuff. Here's to finding those second magpies.

5 Soft Milestones of Childhood (from the Momplex Blog archives)

January 30, 2013February 27, 2023 Jenny16 Comments

After the baby and toddler years, it sure seems like milestones get fewer and farther between. I have to wonder if that’s just what the baby books with the pre-filled headings would have us think. “Baby’s First Tooth” and “Baby’s First Steps” are in every one of those things. What about the other good stuff? There are plenty of other big transitions in a child’s life to celebrate! Here are just five of those “soft milestones” I’m looking forward to:

First Time Not Waking the Whole Blessed Household in the Morning. Your young child believes his body is a human alarm clock. If he’s awake, it must be time for everyone to get up! The most common methods for waking you include (a) mouth-breathing in your face, (b) jumping onto your full bladder, and (c) bombarding you with random, existential questions that have accumulated during the night. One day, he’ll just stop. You’ll wake up after your own sleep cycles end, finding him doing something you wish you’d been awake to thwart. But still.
First Time Expending Energy to Forward Own Survival. Does your child still ask you to get her a drink or snack so as not to have to interrupt her own activities, such as watching television or lounging about in a cardboard box? Measure her arms. If they’re long and strong enough to reach behind to wipe her own butt, they’re long and strong enough to reach up to the water dispenser on the fridge and open the snack cabinet. And it will happen! This milestone can occur either naturally or with some ~~angry admonishments~~ gentle guidance from you.
First Time Caring about Not Smelling Like an Old Fishbowl. Most young children are quite tolerant of their own stank and will gladly forgo wiping, bathing, and daily clothing changes if permitted. One day you’ll be making your daughter cross her heart when she says she really washed her private parts (and not with hair conditioner), and the next she’ll be hogging the shower and using Axe Anarchy for Her Body Spray.
First Time Not Dressing Like an Indigent Schizo Clown. It’s fun when kids start dressing themselves, isn’t it? But sometimes it makes you look like a poopy parent. There’s just something about Crocs-with-socks, a shirt two sizes too small, tights worn as pants, and a homemade hair-bow made of tomato tape that screams Mommy drinks! But one day the tides will turn, and you will know it by the angst-filled morning screams of, “Nothing in this closet FITS me! Aggggh!!! I HATE my life!”
First Time Understanding that the Cat/Dog Hates That Sh**. Does your family dog get that please just euthanize me now look when your young child approaches? Does your cat emit a low growl whenever your preschooler talks? Someday that kid is going to put two and two together and realize that the family pet does not like being cruddled (crushed+cuddled), being transported in the Heimlich hold, having the tail of a toy dragged repeatedly across its face well after playtime has worn out, “fetching” balls that have been thrown less than two feet from where it was standing, or in any other way being demoralized.

Crawling, cruising, first words, lost teeth—these hard milestones are exciting, but I don’t know that they’re any more important than the soft ones. Maybe they’re just the changes that happen more suddenly, so they look more drastic. If you look for the softer ones, though? You’ll see that they’re everywhere. There’s probably one happening under your roof this month. What soft milestones are you looking forward to?

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dads · discipline · husbands · intentional happiness · marriage

Forts (from the Momplex Blog archives)

January 25, 2013February 27, 2023 Jenny16 Comments

“Mom, can you help me build a fort?”

Ugh. At least once every week, one of the kids asks me this question. Whether I say yes or no, what I’m usually thinking is Here we go making my living room look like a Mumbai slum again. They usually ask after I’ve just cleaned, because as any parent can attest, there’s nothing like a clean house to spark little kids’ imagination. And by “imagination,” I mean the metaphorical taking of a toy-dump.

IMG_20130125_101552_353 — “Sure, honey, take a nap,” hubby said.

IMG_20130120_162135_754 — Same room, when I woke up an hour later. “Mom, we made a tea house!”

My husband is the fort god. He creates kick-ass multiplexes of blankets and pillows and cushions and chairs and heavy anchors that may or may not result in concussions if pulled down. The kids spend hours playing in these forts, dragging in collections of books and stuffed animals. They always have to eat in the forts, so they sneak in snack-cups full of perishables, such as applesauce or pretty much anything that can roll away. (Our holidays wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t find a petrified baby carrot while rearranging furniture for our Christmas tree each year.)

IMG_20130119_195139_083 — Dining room table, moved into corner and re-imagined as a roof, walls of blankets. See the child engrossed in a book inside the belly of this fabric condo?

I do not build awesome forts. I suck at them on purpose. I suck because I want them to be easy for lazy American children to clean up:

Honestly, last week my 9-year-old said the worst part of her day was having to go up and down the stairs not once but TWICE while getting ready for bed. She made sure I read the exhaustion all over her face, and my response—indignant laughter—totally puzzled her. For a kid who often makes our living room look like scenes from Slumdog Millionaire, she shouldn’t need me to point out the first-world luxury of having a house let alone one that requires a staircase.

My husband’s and my differing philosophies about forts are telling about the dynamic in our house. He’s helpful and patient and laid-back with the kids. He lets them climb all over his back like spider monkeys despite his herniated disk, and can be easily badgered into playing a loud game of chase in the house, a game in which he howls like a hyena and takes two steps at a time to seize his deliriously willing victims. Me? I’m the one always spoiling movie night by forbidding popcorn in the living room; the one who burns up over Jackson Pollack toothpaste scenes on the bathroom counter; the one who doesn’t tolerate so much as a smidge of backtalk or an ounce of sass. In other words, I’m the bad guy.

Before you give me an amen, before you dwell now on the times your husband indulged in being happy-fun parent while you toiled over dinner dishes and shouted at the kids to put on their jammies, just let me finish. I’m actually not complaining. Sure I’ve done my share of that, but in my heart, I’ve grown to feel yin-yang parenting is actually quite good for the kids. As long as Mom and Dad are a solid front on the big stuff, the yin-yang approach means the kids always have discipline and structure but also have a soft place to land. Besides, what comes with being the “bad guy” is that I’m also the one the kids tend to run to when they’ve had a bad day and need security. I’m honestly the goofier, wilder one in my marriage, but in our parenting life, even though I’m easily up for a fart-off or booger jokes, I think I just might be their rock. And it’s me who’s cast myself in this more serious role, because I’m wired to play it, not because my husband made me.

This isn’t about an imbalance in our responsibilities. My husband hasn’t shirked anything. I’m not picking up parental slack. It’s not a competition, and I’m not jockeying for first in a game of who’s-the-favorite. We’re being the parents we’re wired to be, and fortunately it creates balance. My kids just get different needs fulfilled by their two different parents’ very different natures. Yeah, they need to slum it with daddy, but they need their mean old mom, too.

humor · kindergarten · preschoolers · schools · sons

Why (Our) “Redshirting” Is None of Your Beeswax (from the Momplex Blog archives)

January 6, 2013February 27, 2023 Jenny15 Comments

My son, now four, was born a week before his due date and three weeks before the academic year starts. I don’t work in education and we don’t put our infants in school in Wisconsin, but trust me, there’s good reason why I took note of those three weeks. They quickly became the rest of the world’s license to have an opinion–sometimes a flared-nostril one–about our family’s personal beeswax.

Having begrudgingly “Ferberized” our colicky firstborn when she was nearly nine months of age as well as breastfed her for a year after that, you’d think we’d be used to opinionated nostril-flarers. At least in those cases, everyone was calling a spade a spade. Nobody was suggesting our sleep-training was a crazed effort to get her rested up for a career as a triathlete. Nobody accused us of making her “cry it out” so she’d have lungs strong enough to contend in the Tour de France.

I want to be clear that those three weeks aren’t the only judgment-magnet we’ve had with our second-born. After all, we didn’t circumcise the kid. In Wisconsin, that’s as suspect as not owning a Packers onesie or, worse, not teaching him to say Lambeau before he could say mama. Again, at least with this issue, we’ve all been talking about the same thing: foreskin cheese, disease-susceptibility, locker rooms, and whatnot. There was no indication from anyone that we might be leaving him uncut in a crazed effort to reduce water-drag for a future in professional swimming.

But those three weeks? That little period of time that makes him eligible for kindergarten even if he’s not ready for it? Those make people delirious. My best guess is it’s partly because the stupid term for it, redshirting, which derives from the sports world. In sports terms, these days, it’s basically about holding a kid back so that he’ll be bigger and stronger than his classmates on the field, court, or diamond. A lot of people still think that’s all it can be about. “So, is your family, like, really big into sports?” people have asked us when they get wind that we might hold our kiddo back. Really? WE are those idiots you see walking around in the opposing team’s colors, unwittingly, at the supermarket while mobs of Packers or Brewers fans stock up on jarred cheese and beer.

Every time I read an article about redshirting, the sports thing comes up. And I am so flippin’ tarrrrrred of it. Redshirting–even the word makes me cringe–isn’t always about sports. In our family, and I would venture to say in many families, it’s very simply about not sending a kid to school before he’s ready. It’s about being told by all of the education professionals we’ve asked that, if there’s any question at all, we should err on the side of holding him back. It’s about being told by all of the parents we know who’ve made the same decision that, yes, they’re so happy they held off. It’s about knowing just two families who went the other direction and are glad they did–but who also felt in their hearts that their kiddos were ready. And it’s about knowing many more who didn’t hold off but wished they had. What would you do? Actually, don’t answer me that. Because I don’t care what you would do unless you’ve been there yourself. You hear me, nostril-flarers?

Our son was diagnosed when he was two and a half with a “significant developmental delay.” Which sounds very dramatic but is basically an exacting label needed in order to qualify for certain early childhood services. Actually, because he confused the speech-language pathologist and early childhood educator who came to assess him, he was referred to a neuropsychologist. The diagnosis, if you can call it that, was “quirky” and then “significant developmental delay” (by six or seven months, according to their best estimate).

Why is he delayed? Coulda been the chronic ear infections through his first year. Coulda been a processing disorder that will make itself known later. Maybe he just wasn’t digging the tester. Hell, we don’t know. Has he caught up? Not sure. What we do know is that we’re asking all the right people for their guidance–his preschool teachers, early childhood development specialists, and parents who’ve been there. Yet their advice comprises maybe half of why we’re probably redshirting.

The biggest reason is simply that we know him best. We are his parents. We care about him most. You have an opinion about our redshirting? Got flaring nostrils about it? That’s your problem. Those three weeks are ours to do with them what we see fit. Mind your own beeswax.