on raising a powerful girl

so last night sho was blowing some bubbles in the yard, and she kept yelling, "POWER!" every time she waved the bubble wand around.  neesy and i started laughing: power bubbles?  really?  but that word totally sums up a lot of her approach to the world, running so fast her body can't keep up and flinging herself from tall surfaces and yelling at the top of her lungs.  POWER!

there are a couple things i keep in mind during our day to day adventures, to encourage that sense of power in my super tiny girl.

1) animals are girls too.  whether narrating the pictures of a story we're "reading" about a whale or a worm, or pointing out a squirrel doing something crazy, i am often taken aback by my initial impulse to call everything a "him."  dude, this impulse sucks.  really, the only creatures of interest are boy-creatures?  i am embarrassed to admit that i really have to fight against it sometimes.  i hope that shoshi will always discover that her imaginary friends of the tiger variety are, naturally, female badass tigers.  RAWR.

2) let her trust her instincts.  when i was pregnant, a few peeps recommended "the continuum concept" which is a book written in the 1970's by an anthropologist who lived with the yequana tribe in south america, and was fascinated by how blissfully happy everyone in the culture was, from the tiny babes to the elders.  a lot of what she wrote about is pretty well-known attachment parenting stuff, but the lesser-known parts of the book discuss the almost total lack of injuries among the children -- even though they were allowed to play with sharp knives, near open pits and rushing rivers, in an amazonian jungle to boot.  kiddos were given the space and respect to discover their world on their own, therefore their instincts about that world were honed from a super-young age.  groovy!  and: nearly impossible in our baby-proofing, fast-cars, overprotective culture!  still, i let her take a lot of risks (and play in a lot of dirt).  i try to give her the space to climb and reach and (ocassionally) fall, whenever i can. 

3) listen to her (within reason) if she says "no" or "stop."  obviously i can't always do this because the kid would never sleep (ever) or wear shoes in public places.  but if she says NO to me putting pigtails in her hair, i listen.  a girl should always feel like she has the power to say no and be listened to.

does anybody else have any "rules" they keep in mind while navigating this crazy earth, either with kiddos or without?   

weekend adventures

do you ever have one of those moments where your thoughts are floating lazily, and you have this happy leftover feeling that you know is because of something pleasant you've just thought of, but you can't remember what it is and so you sort of drift through your thoughts, knowing there's something nice waiting for you in there somewhere?   i was thinking this weekend that that's kind of how shoshi mary is for me.

i'm trying to set up some daily and weekly traditions for the little family that is shoshi and me.  i have a feeling that we'll be moving around quite a bit over the next few years before we're able to settle into a home of our own, so i would like some customs for sho to feel anchored to throughout those changes.  so far i have scrambling eggs together on saturday morning, and ice cream cones on sunday night.  any other ideas? 

all shoshanna needs is a pot of water and some bowls and ladles, and she will be happy for hours.  we went to a birthday party for one of sho's peers over the weekend, and they had this elaborate enormous plastic water table shaped like a pirate ship.  it was fascinating watching all these wild two-year olds working industriously for like an hour straight, not talking, just intensely moving water around from cup to cup.  it was a good time...but i'm also thankful that sho can be just as happy with some pots and bowls in the yard.

neesy had some tickets to "breakfast with a farmer" this weekend at a dairy farm out in the country, so off we went to show our girl some cows!  it was honestly pretty sad to see the baby cows, lying alone in their glorified dog houses with a tiny fenced-in area outside for them to stand in, while their mamas stood with swollen udders twenty yards away, unable to nurse or cuddle their newborns.  it just felt wrong to me, and it was a much-needed reminder to buy foods that are made with love for the animals who feed us.

still, it was pretty cool for shosh to see some cows for the first time in her life!  her favorite part of the day was a trough filled with feed corn and buried plastic farm animals.  she kept pulling off her shoes and trying to immerse her entire body in the sheer hedonistic pleasure that is a large trough filled with feed corn.

did you know that if you put heavy whipping cream in a jar and shake it for awhile, it makes butter?  it was an activity for kids, but neesy and were like "hell yes, we were born to shake up some butter," and shook our jars with great enthusiasm, several heads taller than all the other cream-shaking butter-makers.     

                       

it was a good weekend, and it ended with my tuckered-out little dumpling of a bed hog looking something like this:  

i was quick to join her.

fathers' day

since it's been three weeks since sho's papa has seen her or even called to check in, my mom got up with shoshi this morning as a fathers' day present to me, allowing me to sleep in til a luxurious 8:45.  heaven!  then they brought me a doughnut.  i tell you, this father gig is pretty great.

but the real subject of this post is my dad, or "chuck" as he's known to shoshanna, which still makes me laugh on the daily.  what can i say, they're on a first-name basis.

although coming to stay with my parents has been an occasional hot mess, for the most part i've been super thankful that shoshi has been given this brief stopover in the land of grandparents.  my dad jumped right on board with the whole two-year-old-in-his-house, all-the-damn-time thing.  he greets her in the morning like he hasn't seen her in days, and willingly invites her to sit on his lap at dinnertime, even though we all know that ends up with peas in your water and full bottle of ranch dressing emptied inexplicably in your lap.  sometimes it's nice just to have someone else's eye to catch and smile with when sho is being cute or weird, like how she always screams over to our very proper and sweet, elderly next door neighbor mr. sweeney, "HEY WEENIE!  HEY, WEEEENIE!"

"chuck" is my daughter's number one male influence.  (though her grampa doug is also an incredible dude, a gruff wise-cracking plumber with a secret heart of melted butter who dotes on shoshi like no other.  he installed a special toilet seat in their house when sho was a baby, so she could sit comfortably on their toilet forevermore.  that's love, man.)  because of my dad, sho sees men as steady, even-tempered, and most importantly, her friends.  they are true buddies, and it is the craziest thing watching her ride around on his back while sho pretends she's riding a horse ("hee-ha!"), because i remember doing the same thing.  he always makes her feel like a special, cool little dude who is worthy of his careful attention, even if he can't always understand what the hell she's saying or why she does the things she does (see: sitting in the dog's water bowl for the third time that morning).  he is a true friend and ally, and when you're a two year old, that counts for a lot.  (when you're a twenty-eight year old, too.)

thank you to my dad, for being sho's "chuck" every day of her life.  she and i are real lucky girls.

where we are

it is seriously so hard to snap a picture of shoshanna mary wearing clothes lately.  i'm not sure how she does it exactly, but toward the end of every day for the past month or so, she somehow finds a way to wiggle out of her clothes and ends up running merrily around our back yard, front yard, even down our steep driveway and into the neighbors' yards.  fortunately, we live on a tiny dead end street, with the added benefit of neighbors whose children used to be little nudists as well.  we still laugh about the time we answered the door to the then-three-year-old neighbor boy, standing totally naked and by himself on our front doorstep.  "hi!" he said brightly, beaming up at us. 

my dream for shoshi and myself is like that of many people my age.  i would like to raise her (and maybe her someday-siblings too, who knows) on a piece of land with a small, cozy home attached, near other like-minded families who want to share the burdens and joys of farming, raising a few animals, and living intentionally as a community together.  i'm not trying to go totally back-to-the-land or off the grid, but i would like to live near enough to other families so we could be a significant part of each others' daily lives.  i think more than anything, that tribal sense of community is really important to us as humans, and is largely missing from the way we live today.  i would love for sho to be able to run out the door and directly into the open arms of a wild little kid gang.  i would love to be able to do the same, to grow vegetables with other women and sit by an impromptu bonfire in the evenings with my friends and neighbors.

at times i feel guilty about how far away i feel from making that life a reality for my girl and me.  things are just harder when there is only one parent.  dreams get deferred, in favor of high-quality day care and rent payments and healthy food and new shoes and and and.  but what i need to remember is that where we are now is just a stop on this long, twisting path.  what the future holds is a total mystery to us all, whether you want to believe it or not. 

and what i'm finding is that this stop isn't such a bad one, after all.  because right now, my kid gets to run out the door directly into the lush flora of my mother's garden, and into the open arms of a loving little kid gang -- and more often than not, while she's totally buck naked, to boot. 

fwiends

shoshi mary was born into a world of aunties who already loved her like whoa.  when i asked her saturday if she wanted to hang out with sara, sara and rosie, she immediately replied, "HELL YEAH." [not a direct quote.]  sometimes she just randomly brings up their names in a dreamy, in-love sort of way.  this particular kalamazoo-branch of aunties is composed of women i've been friends with through so many embarassing stages of life, it's seriously amazing they don't just laugh at me every time i open my mouth.  although, i seem to remember i wasn't the only person who thought the sex pistols were, seriously, the best band ever.

shosh is the first baby of the group, but i remain confident that she will be joined by other crazy little buddies before too long.  which is why, although i've passed along boxes of hand-me-downs to five or so different families, i have also dutifully set aside the very most awesome clothes and baby acoutrements she's used thus far in her life.  it is going to be amazing to see another face in those clothes someday; a face i already love, even though it doesn't even exist yet.  which is exactly how they felt about our shoshi girl.

a true friend makes fun of you when necessary, offers a favor when you need it most, and says "godfucking dammit" when bad news strikes, the kind that makes you see just how vulnerable we all are on this planet spinning wildly through space.  sometimes all you can do is squeeze your eyes shut and hold on tight to each other.



[sara, sara, baby sho and rosie]

[many thanks to sara and jason for loaning me their camera]

summahtime

summer, it is here.  kind of my least favorite season (what up with all that relentless sun?) but so far, so good.  i've decided to take sho out of her daycare for the summer so she can spend it running around like a naked little hooligan and kickin' it poolside with the other neighborhood kids.  it was really important to my mom that she have the full-on summertime experience, so she is going to watch shoshi full-time.  yikes, brave grandma.

this is going to be a summer of big changes for sho and me, because before too long we'll be moving out of my parents' lovely house after (holy god) eight months of staying with them, and on to a future whose shape is largely unknown. i am thankful lil shoshi mama is young and laid-back enough to roll with these punches, which would be a helluva lot more earth-shaking if she was older.  but really, she rolls with pretty much everything, and everyone, these days.  the kids from the neighborhood come knocking on our door every single day, like, "can sho come play?  is she old enough for sleepovers yet?"  to see her holding court with all these kids who tower over her, you can see she really does believe she's one of their peers, a total equal in every way.  last night a ten-year old from down the street came over and played with her for several hours, went impromptu swimming (sho naked, friend in her clothes) and watched reading rainbow afterward.  total buddies.

in other news, shoshanna has her first imaginary friend, who comes to visit every night during our bedtime routine!  not surprisingly, she is a tiger.

xoxo

first haircut

when shoshi mary was born, she had a lovely full head of dark hair.  we rejoiced and said smugly, "aren't babies with hair just so much better?"  shortly thereafter, it all fell out.  (god was punishing us, you see.)  not that i cared, i was pretty much blind to her receeding hairline and male pattern baldness at that point, so captivated was i by her juicy thighs and fat, dear little head.

a haircut seemed like a very faraway prospect for my bald little girl.  but then, over the weekend when we took the two sho-adoring girls on our street to the beach and fountains in st. joe, i noticed her hair was lookin' rather shaggy.  maybe it was the boyish bathing suit she was wearing most of the time (for some reason, those bikini swimsuits for kiddos weird me right out), but she was looking like one scrappy (happy) little dude.

so last night after her bath, there was a pair of scissors sitting right there on the bathroom counter, and i just absentmindedly started trimming.  it wasn't until about halfway through that i realized my girl was getting her first haircut! 

i first cut my own hair when i was around fifteen, and the only professional cut i got for the next ten years was when i worked briefly at a fancy hair salon in san francisco.  i love cutting hair, and have given most of my friends at least one cut at one time or another, usually sitting outside, shielding our wine-filled mason jars from the falling hair with one hand.  i discovered that the secret to keeping sho still is giving her a bowl of bean soup and some chips, and telling her "giving you an awesome haircut" when she asks every fifteen seconds or so, "what doing, mama?" 

cutting hair is one of those few things for me that i can do by instinct, like i can rearrange a room's furniture or the words in a sentence.  there should be a word for the satisfaction such instinctual action brings.  not to mention the end result, a kid who looks equal parts cute and so dang grown up.

honestly though, even though i loved baby-sho, i am really coming into my own as a mother during this older phase in her life.  the "why" phase has begun and i love it.  this morning:

sho: what doing, mama?

me: making myself some breakfast, kiddo.

sho: why?

me: so i don't get hungry later on.

sho: why?

me: because then i would get grumpy.

sho: why?

me: because my body would be telling me that it is slowly starving to death and i need to do something about it, like hunt for some berries or kill a lion.

sho: (after a long silence)  okay!