Friday night – dinner out with Steev and Kit; our kids stayed home so it was a grownup thing. Sheesh, it’s become a distant memory, the wretched aspect of small-childville when the only people who would help look after your little ones were other (very frazzled) mamas with young babies or people you had to call and arrange and Pay and sometimes they cancelled etc. What a bunch of bullshit. Anyone reading here who might breed: please consider either being able to afford regular babysitting (in addition to the expense of the meal/moviedate/whatevs) or, if you’re like Ralph and I – scrabbling to pay the bills At All – just be really pissed and resentful, for years, at the lack of village life in our culture. Anyone reading here considering not breeding, make friends with a family and get comfy with their kids so maybe you can help them out a little.
But anyway. Dinner was very lovely even though the restaurant was busy and we waited and waited for our meal. I don’t mind when it’s good conversation.
Lunch: a noodle and tofu soup with veggies, onigiri. My family loves onigiri but Ralph and Phoenix prefer not to have any nori. With the home-canned tuna canned right of the docks in Westport, it’s a delicious meal indeed. & yeah, here comes the Rooster.
Last night the kids pulled an overnighter gaming with people from all over the planet; I awoke to their laughter at 6 AM and found them tucked in their bedroom at their netbooks, chatting and playing with those little cartoon bubbles and birds over their heads – entirely blissed out. I put them to bed where they fell asleep promptly and slept in. When they awoke we were socked in with snow. They ran outside all bundled up, having snowball fights and introducing the kittens to their first snow and whatnot, while Ralph and I cooked up their very late breakfast.
It’s the earliest snow most folks ’round here can remember. It was here and gone but I think we’re going to get more.
Tonight we gassed up at the Y then headed to Aberdeen for groceries and some crafting supplies. The town was quiet; not many people out. It was nice.
The snow (such as it is, which isn’t much) shut down Ralph’s campus until 10 AM tomorrow; he’s happily staying up and working on a side project while I bake rugelach in preparation for Thanksgiving (tomorrow: a deep-dish apple pie and securing beef and lamb from Western Meats).
For now: some hot water with lemon and knitting… still trying, and failing a bit, to rest up and recover from this cold.
Rugelach! It’s what I order from my sister for my birthday every year! Cinnamon rugelach from Zabar’s in NYC!
Oh, and I’m the village. Yeah me!
I’m so there with you on the childcare issue. We have a function to go to in mid-December and we had to ask Scott’s mom to come from Pittsburgh to stay with kids, planning it 2 months in advance to make sure that she’d be available. But Scott got me concert tickets for Christmas and the concert is on a Monday night in January and my mother-in-law has already said she doesn’t think she’ll be able to make it, so now I’ve got to save up some cash to pay for the babysitter plus find someone I can trust. I need a village. I wish people understood how much we all are dependent on each other.
Oi, the babysitting. I’ve just given up on going out sans kids for the next five years. My parents come to town only rarely, so when they showed up last weekend I barely saw them on my way out the door… alone… I mean, with my husband. It’s hard to trust strangers and I don’t know any parents who are willing to watch two extra kids (all my friends are still on their first). It’s a total bummer about that damn village.
@Kidsync
Mine turned out pretty good! I need to put it in the freezer instead of nibbling on it.
@JJ @Jen
Please do not get me started on the village. I know you don’t come here to read me rant and rant. I’ll say one thing: the lack of neighborly help and community pro-baby/child attitudes (not to mention competences – so many people have no idea how to care for a small child!) reifies the idea babies/young kids are SO MUCH work and that parenthood is some kind of hellish experience, har har (sadly I contributed to this in my own blog, back in the day, because I didn’t know enough to know I wasn’t being supported properly!). We know parents/carers of very wee ones, esp. mommy-parents, are underslept and stretched thin but God Forbid we learn how to help them in meaningful ways. (Then occasionally I read an article where a toddler got somewhere in a library and a kind person returned the toddler to the mom and then some commenter says, “Lady, we are not your babyisitters” and I think, quite eloquently, FUCK YOU. When you got on this earth someone(s) wiped your bums and fed you up – when you’re sick someone will do it again, when you’re ailing and aging someone will do it again, give me a break that you’re some awesome island and when a woman has progeny she has to perform some massive acrobatic juggling act with perfection, 24/7).
This mini-rant sponsored by not enough coffee, a cold, and a dentist appointment.
I am proud to say Ralph and I have and still do take in other people’s kiddos. Sadly my “competence” has not always been that great, just like anyone else. My willingness is there. Problem is, many of those with small children feel they are “putting you out” to even ask, or have you watch the kids. SO MANY PARENTS don’t ask for help. But really, why would they given our cultural concepts?
As for you ladies… hang in there as best you can. Babysitters, friends, other moms, village or no – our young baby/child time is precious and you have big clanging brass balls (ovaries?) to be doing what you’re doing. Please give yourselves some credit. I didn’t give myself enough credit. Let me bestow much much credit upon you two now – and any other hardworking parent/carer reading.
@Kelly
That cold must be a rough one. I don’t look anything like k8.
🙂
@Kidsync
Oops! Nice misread.
You should still try rugelach, though.
“We know parents/carers of very wee ones, esp. mommy-parents, are underslept and stretched thin but God Forbid we learn how to help them in meaningful ways.”
Exactly. I was at Panera Bread the other day and it was busier than usual, so we ended up having to sit outside. I put T in a high chair and G at the table, gave them their milk and fruit and told G to stay put while I got the food. I went back inside, got the food (3 trays) and brought it out, only to be confronted by 2 plain-clothes cops! They were lunching there and saw G get down from the table to chase an errant grape – right into the street-area of the shopping plaza. Female cop confronts me and tells me about it, shames me for leaving the kids for 45 seconds. When I comment that it would be nice for people to simply help without judging, male cop feels the need to show me his badge – about 3 inches from my face -and re-emphasizes his role as a cop. Conversation then ensues with me trying to get them to understand that their approach to me was wrong – i.e., I’m already upset because she went in the road and that they already had done the intimidation thing by telling me they were cops PRIOR to telling me what had happened, thereby making me more upset. Female cop then pulls out the “you’re a bad mom because you left them alone and that’s a crime” and offers the solution of “don’t come here when it’s busy” (’cause obviously my kids and I have no right to eat at lunch time) “or have someone bring you your food” (because even though they had a line out the door and not enough people working, and despite the fact that it isn’t a table-service restaurant they would have responded to that request). Right. If that were the case, someone would have held the fucking door open for me when I was pushing the high chair with my son in it out the door to the sidewalk seating.
Whole-grain Jeebus, Jen. How I hate to read stories like that. Because they’re true. And how my stomach sinks because A. that’s the reality carers of small children (who are mostly grownup ladies) deal with ALL THE TIME and B. no one else gives a shit much and C., well, I’m just so sorry. Who wants to be confronted with such asshattery. By cops no less (as if the silent glares etc. of strangers is much better). And by the way, he showed you his badge as PROOOOF (with four “o”s) he was an Expert and you were a piece of crud neglectful mama.
I have had one negative cop confrontation with a child unattended. And precisely because I didn’t get down on my knees and kiss his holster and admit I failed and had let my child be in ZOMG SO MUCH DANGER? – He reported me to CPS as being “unconcerned”. I don’t have words for the bullshittery of someone who could have a conversation with me about my kids and then come away thinking I was an “unconcerned” mama. And don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t rude to this man. I just didn’t agree he was Right and I was So Bad and Wrong and reportable and Thank You Sir May I Have Another? So I tell mamas, if you grovel it might get it easier. For better or for worse. Of course then these strangers and Authorities walk away feeling justified… but then again who knows what could possibly check that kind of ignorance (which is in my view based out of a deep fear many feel when it comes to children).
Funnily enough when I told this story (about my experience) to my friend F. she *tsk’d tsk’d* me and told me I should play [racially insensitive term meaning someone who grovels to The Man, F. is black] to cops, because they have so much power. Then a couple days later she got accosted by a cop for some B.S. and she totally argued with him! Loudly. And then I laughed at her and reminded her of her policy. But it was kind of a painful, bitter laugh because… if The Man wants to, The Man can win. [ sigh ]
P.S. I have had mostly awesome interactions with cops. Just a few bad ones. Mostly I think cops seem alright, just like most of everyone else.
Jen, I’m sorry, and I wish I would have been there in the crowd because I do stick up for little ones and carers of little ones. And I would have held the door open for you.
This makes me think of the times that M. and I do “movie night”. We are grateful that our local Harkins Theater has a play center. For the cost of a child’s movie ticket, they can hang out with staff members and other kids playing with toys, boards games, video games and can even watch movies on DVD.
For me, the fun part is the 30 minutes or so that we sit in the theater with Kylie before dropping her off at the play center (kids can’t be dropped off any earlier than 30 minutes before the movie starts). It’s not that we don’t want Kylie to watch the movie with us (well sometimes it is if we think the movie might scare her), it’s just that she gets bored and prefers to go to the play center. Anyway, when we go to watch movies like Hangover or something equally appalling, we get the rudest glares you can imagine. You know the kinda glare that says, “How dare you bring such a young child to a movie like this! What kind of parents are you?” Then, when it’s time for her to go to the play center, I make sure that everyone hears me announce to her that it’s time to go to the play center. Then I watch as those glares disappear and all of their faces change to helpless jackasses just like in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons (I tend to have a vivid imagination). It’s priceless.
Now that I read through that again, it sounds like a mean way for me to entertain myself. I guess I just get tired of the glares and fight back when I can in a way that makes me smile. It’s not very productive, but makes me feel better. 🙂
@Kidsync
Next time stand up and announce, “OK Kylie, I’m going to go buckle you into the car. Mama and I will be back in a couple hours” instead.
Good Lord, I love how people love to judge what parents let their kids watch. My kids have watched stuff I’m sure all those ass-faces would love to screw up their mouths about and my kids haven’t evidenced Unholy Demon behaviors. The only reason I haven’t been recipient of the public hate is it costs about $30 to watch in a theatre and we have bad theatres anyway, so the viewings of “Reno 9-11!” are in our own home. (P.S. great opportunities to talk about race relations, sex, mental health issues…)
In Port Townsend there was *briefly* this little shop that did the “parents night out” bit and hosted kiddos. It was more than a movie ticket tho’ – about $30 for two kids, but the proprietress did fun stuff and served great food and the kids loved it. We were tighter in PT so we didn’t do it often, I think twice. Still, it was great and I wish there was more stuff like that! Our local library ran a kid movie during our showing of Vertigo – very cool.