the squibix family blog

I also made myself a pirate costume. Unlike my children, I can stand still for a photograph.

I'm so happy with the way these costumes came out I'm thinking of starting a dress-up box for the kids so they can play pirates more often. Katie suggested the improvement of sewing the sashes to the vest to keep them in place. Of course! Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that? I only adjusted their sashes like fifty times while trick-or-treating. I'll have to fix that as soon as I figure out where in the house they stashed their sashes.

Though you can't tell from the photos, these costumes were the most complex ones I've made to date, even using "real" clothing patterns for the shirts and pantaloons. The fabric was rather cheap; I did it all with $20 of supplies, but then I spent $15 on the stockings to wear under the pants so I don't really feel that thrifty. (Also, stockings? WTF? Parents of girls put those things on their children all the time? It took me like ten minutes alone to get those stockings on my kids.) Dan's mom made a comment that sewing will get easier once Zion can wear Harvey's old costumes and I was like, "What are you talking about? They have to MATCH!"

After canvasing the neighborhood for candy we came back to our house for a big halloween bash. It was a bash in the sense that it was a smashing good time and also because the kids bashed the house into every kind of mess you could possibly imagine. We haven't quite dug out yet. Everyone here has a mega candy hangover. No wonder his holiday is scary!

We also saw a tree that had already been sawed apart. Harvey tried with to put his foot up on the stump, lumberjack style, but it did not yield to him.

And we saw the big big holes that the branches of the tree made when they hit the ground.

By the library more trees were down.

But the babes were getting tired so it was time to head home. We only had to ride under one fallen tree and over another to get there!

Reminds me of anther picture we have on file of a toddler in pajamas and boots.

Zion ran around after the chickens trying to pet one, but for some reason they kept running away.

He felt more in charge when I let him help get the new feed. Then they came right over to him!

I usually prefer to feed and water the chickens by myself, since it's a lot of walking back and forth carrying heavy things - not the sort of thing that could easily give a sense of prideful gratification to a small child. Also I've got into the habit of being rushed — I used to have to finish all the chicken chores before Dan left for work because after he left I couldn't put down the baby for ONE SECOND. But that's not really true these days - Zion is 18 months today, after all - and if necessary I can leave him and Harvey in the house for five minutes while I get the water and they will not scream until they vomit, they will play legos nicely.

So, I guess I could let them help me once in a while. For the sake of good parenting, if not adorable pictures.

(ed note: Thank God copy and paste worked on this, I would have had to hold my nose to re-type it.)

2 people like this. One says "Lol...so true." Another says: "don't forget about there (sic) lexus and/or mercedes are (sic) parked outside"

Now, it's not really a good use of one's energy to engage in political discussions via Facebook status updates, let alone in the COMMENTS of Facebook status updates. But since I have unlimited space here, on the blog, I'd like to shed some real data-driven light on the subject of SNAP benefits and the white trash who receive them.

1) Are you really overworked and underpaid? Maybe YOU should consider applying for food stamps. To qualify you must have income not greater than 100% of the federal poverty line. For a single person like yourself, that means you're taking home $931 a month or less. For a family of four, like us, we can make up to 200% of the poverty guideline and still qualify, that's $3842 a month. With no more than $2000 in savings. I know, doesn't it sound like living the dream?

2) SNAP benefits can only be used for food you cook at home, not prepared food or coffee or a party platter from the supermarket or anything like that. But thankfully, the DTA does not monitor the way you spend your other money OUTSIDE of the food stamps program. That $931 a month, when you're done paying rent and utilities and fuel for your lexus and/or mercedes, you're free to take it over to Marshalls and score some great deals on late-season Michael Kors. Those ugly bags are super cheap over there, I promise.

3) But as the dis-fluent commenter highlights, some taxpayers might worry that SNAP dollars are going to people who are not truly needy. Who are committing FRAUD as Sandy Martinez would have us believe in the one billion leaflets she's sent to our house this campaign season. Well, what does the research really show?

The USDA audit for 2011 showed an error rate in SNAP dispersions of 3.8%. The total amount the federal government spent on SNAP in 2011 was $78 Billion, which means SNAP fraud cost the country an estimated $3 Billion. (Those bitches driving their lexus and/or mercedes to Market Basket must be in among this group.) By contrast, the IRS estimates income tax noncompliance at 16.9%, which adds up to $450 Billion in tax fraud. For those of you who are innumerate or who read this paragraph like "cost the country an estimated BIG NUMBER... adds up to BIG NUMBER" I'll say it more simply: The overworked underpaid taxpayer is fucked nearly 150 TIMES HARDER by rich tax dodgers than by white trash pos'es.

Or to put it another way, the amount lost to tax fraud each year is over 5 times the amount spent on SNAP programs. Total.

But, you know, your scapegoat or mine.

And anyway, rich assholes don't shop at Market Basket, so they're less likely to get in your way at the checkout.

A half-hour later we had gathered all the snow things from various closets and the basement. Harvey practically leapt into his snow-pants, but Zion took a lot more convincing. Forceful convincing.

Here was Harvey out in in the first snow of the year. It was hard to photograph him standing still since he wasn't frolicking like he invented the word.

Zion was not so sure about it.

He stood in the same spot for ten minutes watching Harvey and me jump around, then he started whining to go inside.

At the very least, it's a relief to know we have snowsuits and boots that fit both boys. Zion could use a fleece hat that says on his head; maybe I'll sew one for him when I clear the mitten-making material off the floor of the office.

Oh, and hurray for winter!

There are certain things that are important to me because they are important, like faith, compassion, or environmentalism, and some things that are very important to me for no discernible reason. Taking my family to see the Nutcracker is one of those things. I have been dreaming of this since BEFORE I had children. I don't know what I imagine this will accomplish, starting an obscenely expensive holiday tradition, but the emotional side of my brain that does not respond to reason says that iT is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.

Of course it doesn't have to be this year. It could be in many years to come, with a female child yet unborn, that I sit down in a darkening theater, and as the lights go down and the music swells a tiny hand squeezes mine, a tiny voice says "Oh, Mama! It's incredible!"

I asked Harvey if he wanted to ride the train into the city to see a dancing show. I explained that we would park the car at the train station, we would ride the train for a long time, then we would walk to a theatre. We'd sit in seats facing the stage. An orchestra would play music and people would come on the stage and dance. Harvey got very quiet and frightened. Then he asked if he could ride the train somewhere else. Maybe the Children's museum.

I showed him a video clip of The Nutcracker on You Tube. He asked if he could see another. I showed him another. He asked if he could see another. I asked if he wanted to go to the show to see the dancers close up. He shrunk back as if I was asking him if he'd like to be eaten by sharks. "I just like my iPad" he said.

There are two things at play here. One is: the more important something is to me the more Harvey relishes saying No. The second is that he can't respond to pressure. Even if I don't mean to, when something is important to me I put a pressure on my line of questioning. Harvey cannot respond to performance pressure of any kind. Really. If he's singing the alphabet and stops suddenly and I say, "What's the next letter Harvey?" he shrinks like I've pointed a gun at him. And don't ask him his name, strangers on the street, or what he's got there that he's eating. What are you trying to BREAK HIM? He CAN'T HANDLE THE ATTENTION!

What to do? Well, like everything else I convince myself that it's not really important. If it were important, like faith or compassion, I would drill it into Harvey a million times a day from every angle front back and sideways so I know there's no way he'll miss it. The Nutcracker is not really that important. It's just another thing I'd like to do. At this stage in my life I don't do anything without my kids, so if I want to do something I need to make them excited about it. And if they're not excited about it there's not a lot I can do. Put it on an imaginary shelf for later or never.

At the library this evening I was flipping through a Boston Parenting magazine and noticed a Nutcracker preview at the Discovery Museum this Saturday. Where we happen to be members. I threw the paper in front of Dan. "There!" I said. "Nutcracker this weekend, free. You can't beat FREE can you?"

I asked Harvey if he'd like to see the dancers AT THE CHILDREN'S MUESUM. He couldn't argue with that one.

Dan helped spread marsh hay over the garlic while the boys and I wandered about the farm. I enjoyed messing around in an empty bee hive - I've read so much about bee keeping but never actually handled the frames before. The children liked seeing the tractor (obviously) and were amazed by the wide array of tools being stored outside.

In the pavilion where the workers eat their lunch there's some kind of swing hanging from the rafters. It sinks with a spring when Harvey gets on, so I feel like it might be some sort of scale.

We chatted with some of the farm bosses and then explored a field they are allowing to lie fallow. They preserve the soil on their 17 acres with a combination of crop rotation, soil-fixing plants, and animal assistance. I asked if they used pigs to help with some of the invasive plants species and the farmer told me, "You'd be amazed at how much poison ivy they'll eat."

Even though our children were not their happiest or walkingest selves during this trip, I found the visit to the farm incredibly refreshing. Just being on a big farm, looking out over beautiful fields and all those tool-filled junky parts in between, it breaths peace deep into the restless parts of my soul. I know some people wish they could live by the ocean, and when I visited the painted desert with Oona she said "This is MY COUNTRY!" I'm not very moved by the ocean and less so by the desert, but set me up in a nice farm field where it smells like poo and the horizon is obscured by a row of trees and I feel like I've come home.

But lest I get too wistful driving back into the suburbs, I took a picture of the chore list they had posted in their volunteer pavilion.

Spread compost in back 1/2 of middle field. Take the irrigation out. Paint composting toilets. And I shudder to think of what is indicated by the single line that just reads "barn." Yes, I may long for a farm one day, but my list of chores is plenty long as is.

The room was so packed that I was glad the program only lasted a half hour. We came ten minutes early, but even so Dan and I had to sit separately, with a child on each lap. I don't know how Harvey reacted to the dancers, and maybe it was better that I didn't see. For his part, Zion regarded the proceedings with little more than detached patience.

The storyteller did a wonderful job using pacing and inflection to make the story as magical as possible. But as she read, I noticed something. When Clara found herself in a sparkling ball gown, or when the nutcraker turned into a prince, there was an audible gasp of amazement in the room. But not from the children. The oohs and aahs came from the mothers.

Now, there's nothing wrong with a grown woman getting into a picture book. Nor is there anything wrong with a mother trying to get her child engaged in an activity that's happening now and only fleetingly. But this morning, on this outing concocted only to further my scheme of dragging my children to a nonsensical classical ballet, I worried suddenly. Are we, and I mean a societal we, are we well-meaning parents trying to concoct a magical fantasy world just so we can force our children to enjoy it? Do we want to manufacture wonder and excitement in a world where we are the chief wizard? Are we doing this to prevent them from finding magic in the real world? a world that is natural and messy and mostly outside of our control?

The Discovery Museum's stated goal is to foster learning through play, yet it is very difficult to let children play freely there. The way it's set up, in an old house with tiny rooms that can't see into each other and stairs right down the middle, a parent has to be constantly ordering and bossing to keep two children safely in sight. Also, there are precious few places for adult to sit down in the museum, so most parents end up hovering, "Did you see this? Did you see what this does? Put the ball down here. No the smaller ball. Not that one, the small one. Pick it up and put it in the chute. Look it made a sound! Did you see how it made a sound? Cool, huh? What does this one do?"

I'm not saying the kids get nothing out of it, I'm just saying they'd be better served looking at the toys on their own somewhere the parents could sit on a bench and get out of their way.

We let Harvey and Zion play in the museum for a while, something they liked approximately seven billion times more than sitting and watching dancers. Then we went outside to eat our lunch. While we were outside I noticed something. Harvey and Zion went to play in some bushes next to the picnic table. Where it was, you know, kind of dirty. Zion was trying to hide beneath the branches and Harvey was trying to climb on a limb way too weak for the purpose. And I thought: now This is wonderful. The plants that God made grow from the ground? That provide both warmth and shade and a natural play structure to boot? Do I want him to stop being amazed by these things so I can convince him that a chimera of tinsel and crepe-paper and overworked high-school students is amazing?

Because it's not. It's stupid phony cheap glitter wrapped around a kernel of beauty which is DANCE. And I don't what to share with Harvey a love of fakery or spectatorship or paying a lot of money for a fancy outing. I want to share with him my love of DANCE. I want him to know what it's like to reach towards the heavens like you're leaving gravity, to memorize movements your brain can't explain and then feel your body leap away from your brain on amazing auto-pilot, to jump and spin until you feel what joy it is to be alive... I want to give him dance. Not a nut already cracked, but the whole blessed tree.

And for heaven's sake I want to give him space. From me. Because my dreams are maybe not his dreams. And my needs are maybe too big for a three-year-old.

So no Nutcracker this year for my family. Maybe next year, or maybe I could just get the the root of my longing and take a dance class myself. With or without my children. A girl can dream.

In Harvey's case I can tell he feels a huge weight on him when I ask him to perform, either by "enjoying" something like a shared cultural experience, or by "learning" something (even just sitting in kids' church is pretty loaded for him). This is a great case for unschooling or even just relaxed pedagogical methods, though I'm taking a break from reading about pedagogy right now because it was turning me into a second-guessing judgmental asshole.

You see I can't write a simple message these days without going around the bend... must be on my period! Anyway, I just wanted to add that if you're taking your child to the Nutcracker this year I think that's WONDERFUL and I hope you really do have a magical time.

Harvey had been asking for a bag that he could use to collect leaves and sticks without getting the inside wet. So I lined these bags with some vinyl I had lying in the scrap bin. I told Harvey the bag could serve two functions, first to collect candy, and then after to collect nature treasures.

He quickly filled it with sticks and leaves, but then quickly took them out again. Still too dirty, he said, even with the easy-wipe interior.

Sewing experts will notice that the sides of the bag are a little too floppy, and I should have added a stabilizing layer. I agree. But I didn't have any stabilizer on hand and I'm out of money for crafting supplies until.... (?) These were made solely with materials I had laying around. The fleece handle was pure laziness, though. I should have used a less stretchy scrap fabric for the handle. Even Harvey complained that the handle was stretcy. All I can say is I learned my lesson on laziness this time... maybe.

On the other end of the DIY spectrum, we got some little kids craft kits from Grandpa's work. They contained all the pieces to make these hanging bats. The hard part was tracing the kids' hands for the wings and cutting them out. Other than that, everything stuck together like stickers.

I dislike craft kits as a general rule. My kids are at an age where have to do 99% of the crafting work for them, and if that's the case I'd rather work on something creative I want to do, rather than pealing the backs off of pre-cut stickers. Which is just to say I think it's not worth the money when I can jimmy up two treasure chests for free from my fabric scraps. That said, my kids LOVE pre-packed bags full of craft crap, and Harvey for his part LOVES instructions and knowing how something is supposed to look. So they had a fun time, even if it was a mama set-up, mama cut stuff, mama clean-up kind of thing.

And now that it's November, the photo is all that remains of those stupid bats. That I moved from the floor to the refrigerator seventy times before finally putting them in the trash. Hey, it's almost time for turkey crafts anyway!

Zion is in love with boxes. I was dismantling this box for the trash, and when I got interrupted halfway through Zion climbed right in. Harvey is really into tents and forts, but Zion doesn't like something over his head. He prefers to play boat while Harvey plays Arc. Then Harvey shouts, "The rains will come in! The rains will come in!" And I say Zion doesn't mind the rain and Harvey looks at me like I've never picked up a bible in my life.

We did a big furniture shift in Harvey's room this week. I guess I should say Harvey and Zion's room? Well, the shift hasn't happened in our lives yet. I tried to put Zion down for a nap in the cars bed yesterday and the result was that he didn't nap all day. I don't know when he (or I) will be ready to make the switch. It's hard for me to kick Zion out of my bed without knowing there's another baby coming soon. Still, I want to give him space when he's ready and the boys are having immeasurable fun jumping from mattress to mattress.

Connected to this, there is no more crib to put Harvey in time-out until he calms down. There are no more time-outs. Instead I have long conversations with him about how his actions or emotions affect our relationship. Sometimes it even works.

Harvey drew his first really representational picture on the little magnet board our friends gave him for his birthday. I was amazed to watch him say, "These are the legs, these are the feet" and then draw them in mostly the right place. I wonder if the paper we put down on his table shifts around too much, and that's why the magnet board is easier. Anyway, it was very exciting to me, though Harvey acted nonchalant like, I'm always drawing things, Mama, don't be so CONVENTIONAL. Open your miiiiiiiiind.

Harvey and I read half of Stuart Little during Zion's nap the other day. Just when I thought he was getting bored and not paying any attention, Harvey said, "I want an arrow like the mouse had. Can you make me an arrow just like that?"

I tried to convince him we might cut one out of cardboard but Harvey was adamant that it wouldn't do an arrow's JOB in that case. So I found a piece of dowel and sawed notches on each end and glued a chicken feather in one end and something pointy in the other (I think it was a triangular bracket to keep a picture on the wall... I don't know, it was in the box with the nails.) When the wood glue had dried I handed the arrow ceremoniously to Harvey.

"The mouse had a hat," he said. "I think we could make one with card board and felt."

I complained that Zion might wake up soon and I didn't want to start another project, but Harvey offered to help me clean the kitchen first and once he had picked up all the pens from the floor what could I say?

While I was taping the top of the hat to the brim Harvey said, "Did he have a little mousey coat?"

"Focus Harvey," I said. "Eyes on the prize. Or we're going to have a long conversation about demandingness."

Here is Harvey in his Stuart Little costume. Sans coat. And he thought the hat was fine without the felt (phew).

On the days when I'm healthy I am so awestruck that I get to spend another day with these beautiful boisterous bundles of love. Even though they now both have arrows.