To My Daughter On Her 1st Birthday

Lovely Ava. You are beauty embodied.

When you were a newborn, I used to stare at your balled up little fists and whisper, "Open your hands to the world, Baby Girl. Open your hands and reach for anything you want in life."

It looks as if my prayers will come true. I don't know what your future holds but I do know that you are a little girl with determination and tenacity. You open your hands to explore your world every day and it makes me so proud.

Mothering your big brother has taught me that infancy goes all too fast. So while you are still my little baby girl, here are the things that I want to remember the most about you.

• Your smile. You love to smile and you have a darling dimple under your right eye when you do.
• You wake up in the middle of the night mad as snakes. That smile is nowhere to be found. You want milk, a clean diaper, and to go back to sleep posthaste.
• The way you point with such determination to the things you want. When I pick you up out of your crib you point to the rocking chair so declaratively that I can hardly refuse. 
• You are a good eater! You took to finger foods far better than your brother ever did and I am proud of your adventurous palette.
• Your vocabulary! So your first word was Dada. You say a lot more than that now including Mama, which melts my heart every time I hear it.
• You want to walk in the worst way and get angry if we aren't holding your hands around the clock to help you. You cling to our fingers and wonder around the house as if you own the place.
• You are completely enamored of your big brother, if not a little aggressive with him. You like to pull his hair and bang on his head if he comes too close but he is sweet with you and usually tolerates it. Except when he doesn't. He has been known to snatch toys right out of your hands and sometimes throw them all too close to your face. I have a feeling you'll be telling him how you feel about that soon enough. 
• You don't care much for dolls or princesses but you sure do love your brother's superheroes! 
• You wear it well! Mommy chooses your wardrobe with care and precision. I dress you like a proper little lady, although I choose very little pink. 
• You give open mouth kisses, or none at all! Big, wet, and unapologetic. 

 I love you so, Ava Girl. 

To My Son On His 2 1/2 Birthday

My big boy! Today you are 2 1/2 and I can't believe how independent you have become. I love you more every single day, even though you are bossy and don't like my singing. 

I can hardly remember a time when I couldn't communicate with you so comprehensively! Which is why I want to make another list of all of the things that I don't want to forget about you at this age. 

• You need help getting settled onto the potty but once you are on, you put your hand out and tell us "I need privacy!"  
• You can identify most of your emotions such as: "I'm mad!" "I feel frustrated!" "I got a little scared." I secretly love the last one because it means that you are going to climb into my lap and put your head on my shoulder. 
• You like to sing to yourself in the mornings. You are well versed in all of the common nursery rhymes but you've made up a particularly funny one called "I am Miles Morris." 
• You love to dance but your dance is more of a bunny hop/run across the floor. 
• You really hate Mommy's singing. When I start to sing, you yell, "Don't sing that!!" 
• You call your sister Baby Goyl, Pretty Goyl, or Ava Goyl, which is your adorable way of saying Girl.
• You are an amazing traveler! You have been to Canada, Germany, the Dominican Republic, Hawaii, Florida, California, Arizona... and you have handled each and every flight and time zone change effortlessly. I'm so proud of your resilience and spirit of adventure. 
• You love oatmeal, pancakes, and Nutella sandwiches. Whenever you are asked what you want to eat, the answer is always "Nutella sandwich." 
• You remember really specific details of various events but you always references them as happening "last night." 
• You gave up the pacifier about 2 months ago and were very easy going about it. You weren't ready when Ava was born but when Daddy asked you to give it up a few months ago, you readily agreed. 
• You love wood puzzles, IRL and on iPad. You also love your wooded train tracks and can play quietly by yourself with them. I watch you figure out their configurations with pride without you knowing it. 
• You love to make your sister laugh. 
• You take toys away from your sister but when you do that, you replace it with something you don't want to play with. We're working on that. 
• You can partially dress yourself and feed yourself too but you still like me to feed you when we are at home. I know it is a bad habit that I indulge you but I also know that you'll outgrow it all too fast so I abide. 
• You can be combative and logical. The other day when I confronted you about not napping at school you looked me straight in the eye and said, "You know what? Just don't talk about my nap, okay?" 
• You have tried many times to fly and climb the walls like superheroes. You were not discouraged by your inability to do so. 
• You cried during Dumbo when the elephant visited his mother in confinement. You said, "He wants his Mommy back." It was one of the most touching moments I have ever seen and I was so proud of your ability to empathize.  
• You love going to the movies with your Daddy. 
• You still like to be held and I love hearing, "Pick me up!" 
• You are cautious and safe. You don't take risks like climbing things or touching hot objects. You get a very serious face on when you say, "I have to be very very careful!" 
• You think you can see through walls. You lean in and squint extra hard and tell me that you have X-ray vision like Superman. You also think your hands emit "repulsor technology" like Iron Man. 
• You can name every superhero and their alterego and like to play a game where we name them off and say whether or not each of them fly. 

Son, I love watching you grow into this person. It's a pretty great person. Happy 2 1/2 birthday. 

Raising Boys

A friend recommended Raising Cain: Protecting The Emotional Life of Boys. I am about one third through.

I can't stop wondering at how our society is simultaneously patriarchal and yet unfriendly to men. The authors are therapists who have worked with troubled boys in public schools. They paint a picture of small but consistent subtleties that isolate boys from learning, punishing them for their natural instincts to play faster and learn slower than girls. These boys learn to think of themselves as unsuccessful in organized institutions and behave as the "problem kid" that they have been labeled for the remainder of their educational career. 

Is this not also an important step towards preventing school violence? Understanding the "emotional miseducation" of young male students? 

The authors point out that toddler girls are more likely to understand their own feelings and acknowledge them, using words like "love," "sad," and "scared." Young boys feel the same things but are seldom given an explanation for these feelings. They are taught to mistrust and ignore those feelings, to the detriment of themselves and anyone who will ever love them. 

This is an important read and I'm glad it was recommended to me. I intend to bring it up on this week's MommyBeta podcast but in the meantime, here are a few more poignant excerpts that stuck with me:  

• "Stereotypical notions of masculine toughness deny a boy his emotions and rob him of the chance to develop the full range of emotional resources. We call this process, in which a boy is steered away from his inner world, the emotional miseducation of boys. It is a training away from healthful attachment and emotional understanding and expression, and it affects even the youngest boy, who learns quickly, for instance, that he must hide his feelings and silence his fears." 
• "If a boy this age were unable to decipher the alphabet or read any better than this, every adult in his life would recognize that he needed help. But emotional illiteracy is so pervasive among boys that no one notices until something drastic happens. It takes a schoolyard shooting, a hole kicked in a wall, a drunk driving arrest, or a suicide for a boy’s emotional needs to get anyone’s attention." 
• "Many men readily acknowledge that the generalization is true: they do prefer to avoid emotional people and situations. That doesn’t mean, however, that men lack the “wiring” for expressing or understanding emotion. Newborn boys, on average, are actually more emotionally reactive than girls. For example, studies show that baby boys cry more than baby girls when they are frustrated or upset." 
• "As much as she would like the school environment to be just a place where instruction and expectations present both boys and girls with the same opportunity for success, the fact that it’s clearly easier for girls to adapt to it means that, in some unseen way, the expectations reflect girls’ abilities and sensibilities. This is the reason that David Trower, the headmaster of the all-boys Allen Stevenson School in New York City, says, 'If boys need the protection of the single-sex environment at all, they need it most in elementary school because of the developmental disparity.'"
• "Studies that track children’s development through the school years suggest that, by the third grade, a child has established a pattern of learning that shapes the course of his or her entire school career.1 We see this clearly with boys: the first two years in school are a critical moment of entry into that world of learning, but boys’ relative immaturity and the lack of fit they so often experience in school set them up to fail. Many boys who are turned off to school at a young age never refind the motivation to become successful learners." 

More to come as I finish this book. 

Dis-United

I was all set to rant about my unpleasant experience with United Airlines today but the company has had a pretty rough day already and I figured that screaming on my blog would only be cathartic for me. So I'm going to try to be constructive. 

My main complaint is that flying on United with a family is just downright unfriendly. Here is a summary of how it was so sucky this trip to the Bay Area with my 2 1/2 year-old son and 8 month-old daughter. 

• No guaranteed seats together. This is a new policy. If I were flying with my husband it would be inconvenient but with a toddler it is impossible. How can I let my 2 year-old sit in a row with two strangers!? When I booked the flight I called to request seats together and even offered to pay a premium but I was told that my only option was to upgrade to the emergency exit row for $70 per ticket. 

Me: Do you know that children are not allowed to sit in the emergency exit row? 

Phone agent: Oh yeah. Okay well then there is nothing we can do. Just ask some people to move when you get on the plane. 

I worried about this for weeks leading up to the flight knowing I'd have to beg a stranger to sit in my crappy middle seat. I called the airline again the day before the flight with the same result. I also asked every desk and gate agent I could find to help but no one would. They all told me the same thing: No ma'am, nothing we can do. Just beg for mercy from your fellow passengers. 

Luckily it worked out that I was able to switch with a kind soul but this is not a permanent solution. This was dumb luck.

United, plain and simple: this sucks! You've been able to fix this in the past but you are now simply unwilling? Why??   

• No preboarding for families. This is also a new policy that I don't understand. Why not give young travelers a little extra time? I have A LOT of gear that I lug with me to accommodate my two little ones and that gear makes our flight a smooth sail. But I need time to deal with all of that stuff. I need time to break down my double stroller, set up my CARES harness, get myself seated with the baby in the Ergo, pull out the iPad for the flight, get a nursing cover, etc. Giving me a few minutes to do this without other passengers waiting impatiently in the aisle just makes sense! It keeps me from holding everyone else up!

• No stroller coverage on domestic flights. This was my final straw today. We had a pretty smooth flight from San Francisco to Newark but when we arrived the sun hood on my Mountain Buggy Duet was broken off and the bent frame was tossed on the floor next to my folded stroller without explanation. I was directed to a baggage claim service desk where an agent inquired about the price of the stroller and its age. This is an expensive stroller but having a double helps A TON - especially since I flew the first leg of this flight alone without my husband. When I told her that it was not yet 4 months old and costs just under $600, her response was this: 

Agent: We suggest you travel with less expensive strollers because we don't cover them on domestic flights. 

I was dumbfounded. So if it were cheaper it would be okay for you to break it?? And is it any of your business how much it costs anyway? I choose the best products in order to make my travels easier - is that any of your business? Why kind of response is that?? 

I wasn't asking that they replace the entire stroller - just the sun hood, which costs all of $45. She said that she would look into sending us a replacement. She was kind enough, giving me a claim number and her contact information, but I was still dumbfounded by this policy. 

We may break your stroller so make sure it's cheap, parents! Oh and screw you for traveling with little ones too. 

Now I don't want to scream about how unacceptable this all is. I think thats pretty obvious. And I will vote with my dollars. In April Virgin America begins service out of Newark and then I will take my regular cross-country fares elsewhere. 

To their credit, United has responded to my Twitter ravings with offers to help. But it shouldn't come to this! These cold, unfriendly policies have really alienated my family and - I don't mean to brag - but we are seriously THE easiest travelers you can imagine. My kids never cry on planes, they don't kick seats, they don't have fits. They know the drill. They play with their toys, watch movies on iPad, sleep, and eat their lunches. They are seasoned travelers. We make it very easy on the airlines that accommodate us. Problem is: they don't make it easy on us. And they so easily could by throwing out the policies that alienate and starting with a new policy. It's called customer service. 

Demagogue On The Shelf

Demagoguery. That's what I think of this whole Elf On The Shelf charade. It's fear mongering. 

I'm a little late to the game but my son was too young for it last year. We decided to play this year and ours arrived yesterday.

The idea is for this little snitch elf that you give a name - ours is Dino - to act as Santa's tattle tale. You place him in random locations in your home and tell your children that he comes back every morning after snitching their behavior to Santa Clause.  

The hiding part is fun but pretending that Dino is watching out for bad behavior, in my opinion, reinforces bad behavior. We use Positive Discipline in our home so constantly pointing out bad behavior that the elf would have to report was bringing more focus on bad behavior. 

I also don't like having to threaten my child with something I'm not really willing to follow through with. 

Oh if you don't get your coat on Dino will have to tell Santa and Santa won't bring your presents!

You better eat your breakfast or Dino will tell Santa! 

Now really, am I going to withhold presents on Christmas Day because of this? No.  

This feels so manipulative. 

We went along with it for about two hours. By midmorning I told my husband Clayton that I was not down with this. He agreed that it felt odd to be using such threatening language with our son in a way we usually do not. And in his words: 

"Does it teach him that he doesn't need to be good the rest of the year? Won't he think, 'Well the Elf is gone so I can be a little shithead'?" 

You may be thinking, "Oh knock it off, it's just a game." Perhaps. But if I follow through with the game then I'll have to parent with negative reenforcement which is not my style.  

We decided to ease up on the threatening-to-tattle-to-Santa part and instead pretend that Dino is a friendly Christmas visitor who likes to tell Santa how much our children have grown and changed in the last year. Besides, my two year-old is scared enough of Santa Clause -  no need to give him another reason to dislike the dude if he thinks that he sends creepy little elves to spy on him!