iPhone Haters Gonna Hate, Sanctimommies Gonna Sanct

So this kind of thing keeps coming across my transom:

https://www.facebook.com/marshall.miller.988/posts/565842876759721
http://www.kveller.com/blog/parenting/dont-text-around-your-kids/

And I have this to say:

Dear other parent who has no idea what I'm doing on my iPhone:

I was awakened at 5:00 this morning by my beautiful toddler, who snuggled up next to me and wanted to nurse. Though I am happy to do this, I did wish for a few more minutes of sleep. The cozy cuddling of infant nursing has given way to the very physical, wrestling-like version of the same activity, and over the next hour and a half, I was able to lightly snooze for about twenty minutes at a time between her kicking me, accidentally biting me, and reaching up to hug me and kiss my nose. I didn't know I could feel so simultaneously overjoyed and miserable.

When my older child woke up, I got us all dressed, which involved wiping a poopy butt while a little foot was playfully stuck into my ear, nose, and eyes in time to a really hilarious song that was being made up on the spot. At the same time, a four-year-old was balancing on a twirling egg-chair while tugging on my shirt for balance. The two-year-old then shrieked "NO!" at every clothing option until she finally acquiesced to wearing the dress she wore yesterday. The four-year-old has been regressing as the two-year-old has become more verbal and assertive -- understandable, and age-appropriate, but tough to deal with. So rather than snapping at her for her babyish behavior, I then dressed her as she wished, playfully pretending she was my little baby so that she could feel like she was getting the attention she craved.

Yesterday, we had a doctor's appointment where I learned this older child has significant hearing loss in one of her ears due to the fact that she was born prematurely; my task today, while my kids are in my care, is to follow up with her pediatrician, make an appointment with an ENT who is difficult to reach, and research whether and how her hearing aids can be covered by any kind of insurance. I am also going back to school, but didn't get into the program I had applied for, so I am trying to figure out if I can still get a job in my new chosen field without this particular masters program. Also, the car is in the shop.

But I don't want the kids to be stuck in front of the TV all day while I take care of this growing list of tasks, so I took us all out to the park so they could run around and get some exercise. I packed nutritious snacks, bottles of water, extra diapers, both Princess kick-balls, and the backpack so that the toddler can nap if she needs to while we're out.

Now, I am finally sitting down for the first time today. I just realized that though I brushed the girls' hair, I forgot to brush mine, and it's still in the beauty-salon clip that I stuck it in when I woke up. And, with horror, I'm also realizing that I didn't brush my teeth. I am dying for a second cup of coffee, but I'm not supposed to have too much because I have high blood pressure from two bouts of preeclampsia. So okay, I'm settling into a park bench, my ears attuned to the girls in case they start shouting at each other.

So now I am doing a little research on my phone. I am emailing links to their dad, who will follow up on some of this research between tasks in his own day. I am calling their doctor and waiting for call-backs. I am trying to plan the weekend, when my step-kids will be here. I am coordinating the preschool fundraiser on Sunday, because our budget requires that we use a cooperative preschool.

When I'm done with that, I might also be doing a crossword puzzle. I might also read the library book on my Overdrive app. If I had a magazine open in front of me, you wouldn't think twice about it.

I assure you: I pay LOADS of attention to my children. At 3am, as their father sleeps through noises louder than a hurricane, I am propelled out of bed to soothe away a nightmare. At 6am, I'm floating fitfully through half-sleep as two children pretend I am an igloo (I have no idea how this would work, but it gives me the weirdest dreams). At 9am, I'm showering with the door open and my head out from under the water so I can hear them. And so on through the day.

So if I'm taking a half hour to check things on my phone, dial back your judgment and pay attention to your own kids. Quit projecting on me. Sorry you feel like such a lousy parent yourself, but that's not my problem. Believe me, if I watched every second of your day, I could find plenty to write nasty posts about. So stuff it in your diaper genie and go do something to make the world better instead of writing toxic crap for others to post on Facebook.

And if you're a guy writing this crap, let me punch you in the taint, give you a nipple-twist, and slap you awake five times a night and THEN see if you still have the same big mouth.

P.S. And if I were paying attention to my child at the playground, you'd write some equally crappy blog post calling me a helicopter mom, so I really can't win. Which is why I have stopped trying to please strangers like you.

Love ya! Not really!

Is French Parenting Better? No, It's Just Frencher.

Posit: Bad manners are good for you. 

Much has been made lately of Pamela Druckerman's recent book, Bringing Up Bebe, a collection of completely subjective and unsubstantiated anecdotes about how placid and polite French children are as compared to the wild hellions of the USA. People have been going nuts over this book. Less nuts than they did for the Tiger Mom's book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, but that's to be expected; the Chinese version of this story enumerates a series of humiliating battles that sound downright abusive to our gentle ears. The French version just scolds us for being crappy. Sorry. Crappé.

The Tiger Mom book I just wrinkled my nose at and moved on. I read The Joy Luck Club. Hell, at my last job I could peek over the top of my cubicle and see my pal Cindy, proud product of Tiger Parenting, who also went to an Ivy League school (a better one than mine, even). There we were, at the same crappé workplace, both avoiding college reunions because we were supposed to be better and brighter by now. I'm okay with not being so tiger-y. Besides, though I've seen the angry responses to Amy Chua's book all over the interwebs, I also live in San Francisco, where every neighborhood has its own Chinatown, and nobody -- nobody -- fawns over my kids like the Chinese grandparents I meet on every walk. So stuff it, Tiger Mom who wasn't even advocating for this approach in the first place.

But the French stuff worried me. I love good manners. One of the first things I noticed about my husband -- after his glorious mess of hair, tree-like height, hilariousness, and that other thing I shouldn't mention on a mommyblog -- was his gentle, unobtrusive Midwestern manners, still in place after twenty years' exile. He didn't even notice that he automatically walked on the correct side of the sidewalk. I swooned. Meanwhile, tell a nine-year-old today that he should "be a gentlemen and let ladies go first," and he'll treat you to a polemic on feminism and the gilded cage of chivalry. Just because they're right doesn't mean they're not annoying. I readjust to explain manners in a non-sexist way; I haven't succeeded yet.

Bottom line, my kids are annoying in restaurants, though I'm pretty good at getting them under control. However, the online world being what it is, I know what many childless people think of even the best-behaved children, and have witnessed the sneering and judgment that goes on constantly even when a kid's meltdown is entirely age-appropriate and developmentally necessary. I know, frig those a-holes, but whatever, I can feel their glares burning into me when my kids do normal kid stuff. Should they be standing still, hands clasped, in two straight lines like Madeline?

Fortunately, I have French friends! At a rare evening out, I leaned across the table and quizzed my favorite one whose daughter spends summers in France and the rest of the year in Marin. It's true, she told me: her daughter eats leeks in France, mac and cheese here in the States. She behaves like a lady in France, like a hellion here in the States.

Why? "Because she can," my friend stated. "It's true, the demands on children in France are greater. Wherever you go, everyone has the same standard, and you stick to it because it's supported at every contact point." She really talks like that. She's a fancy business lady. "Here, it's different, so they are more free to act like themselves."

Oh, wait, what was that? Was she really saying that having worse manners is a good thing?

"Look what you grow up to be," she said. "Would you rather be restricted by society's rules, or bravely striking out to be an individual?"

Well, when you put it that way.

I'm not trying to say one way is better or worse. That's what Druckerman did, and it sold books but is a cynical and idiotic way to look at parenting. I'm saying, when things are different, there might be valid and positive reasons for their differences, and considering those differences in depth is more productive than just crapping on one or the other.

I have another friend who stopped bringing her daughter to rec center classes because she didn't like her being taught to docilely line up and follow a teacher's orders blindly. She hated that rote passivity. Of course, she'll encourage her daughter to behave in school up to a point, but she also recognizes that as adults, as long as we're wearing pants and not punching anyone, our society values and requires brave individual thinking. Not to get rich. But to be a good person.

It all reminds me of when I first moved to the west coast and thought "this whole place was settled by cowboys!" and longed for the stuffiness of my home, which was settled by a bunch of Puritans bent on being holier than everbody else. I had to laugh at myself. I suppose it's the same thing for Europeans: America was settled by a bunch of lunatics, and here we are, 400 years later, still acting out.

So okay. American kids might not have perfect manners, but mine will have the best ones I can muster in the circumstances. And in the meantime they'll benefit from those other imperfections, the ones that make people move here in the first place. I'm okay with that, too. 

And as for eating leeks, my friend said that her mom has an astounding garden, and that eating food that came from the ground is part of her daughter's daily experience. Freshness and earthiness are a pretty stellar combination. And it's true -- when we get our CSA deliveries, the girls will demand broccoli right out of the bag, because they can tell from the almost-spicy, almost sweet crunch that they were picked that morning. (Well, all they can tell is that it tastes good; I fill in that information myself. It'd be better if they could see it for themselves, but in a parallel balancing act of cost and benefit analysis, I elect to stay here in the teeming urban center that is Bernal Heights.)

Where The Wild Sendak Is

The internet has exploded with Wild Things today, but that's not my family's touchstone. For whatever reason -- either because the fundamental truth of Where The Wild Things Are is that our unmanageable emotions sometimes take us away from those we love most, and it's up to us to tame them and find our way home all alone, or just because it's got monsters in it -- Penny rejected the universal favorite after a brief and intense initial romance.

Instead, the one she requests most is the one where the main character remains safely home throughout his journey, In The Night Kitchen. The more I read it, the more I'm inclined to agree. Of course I will always adore Wild Things. I have faith that when Penny's older, she'll imagine her room sprouting into sylvan splendor, door jambs growing bark and leaves weighing down boughs suddenly spreading across the ceiling until there is no room, only forest, dark and foreign and safely far away. And whether or not she can handle the story, she still loves to sing our Rumpus Song, a chanted rhyme I came up with because there are no words in the wild rumpus section, and we wanted something to do besides yell "Yay! Rumpus! Woo-hoo! The rumpus! Yippee!" for six pages. You're welcome to borrow it. It goes like this:

Rumpus, Rumpus, staring at the moon
Rumpus, Rumpus, don't end too soon (turn page)
Rumpus, Rumpus, swinging in the trees
Rumpus, Rumpus, doing as we please (turn page)
Rumpus, Rumpus, stamping on the ground
Rumpus, Rumpus, Wild Things all around.
RrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRUMPUSSS!!!!

I got a video of Penny singing it for you, but missed the first line and didn't have time to re-record before ballet class.

But In The Night Kitchen is even richer, in many ways. I love the way I can pore over each page, reading the names of the products and wondering which are real and which are friends of Sendak's. Imagining the flavor of tas-t-kaks. Finding, with Penelope, the items we recognize from our own kitchen: the whisk, the beaters, the wooden spoon. The beautiful details of a Brooklyn brownstone pictured as Mickey falls through his dream: a chandelier, lace curtains, dark-wood moulding. And oh, the absolute delight when Penny sees a picture of Oliver Hardy out of context and shrieks "Mama! MAMA! The baker from In the Night Kitchen!"

And we didn't have to make up a chant for this book. Rather than letting the images do the talking, Sendak let the words themselves expand to fill entire pages. The first time Penny and I read this at the library, I recited the familiar words: "Milk in the batter, milk in the batter, stir it, scrape it, make it, bake it," and paused, wondering if I was actually hearing the echo of the words back through my own childhood. But no, the sound was coming from the mom a few tables over, who couldn't help joining in the chant even though she was ostensibly reading Thomas the Tank Engine to her son. It's that familiar. It's that addictive. "I'm not the milk and the milk's not me! I'm MICKEY!"

Of course the horrible irony is that Penny is at the age to reject Wild Things out of fear of the feelings she is learning to control, and I am at the age to reject Night Kitchen out of fear of the news Sendak was repressing when he came up with the images. I always felt there was something unsettling and hidden about the yellow star on the box of salt, about the oven, about the Oliver Hardy moustache, and the Sendak exhibit at my beloved Contemporary Jewish Museum confirmed it: the childhood Sendak overheard news of World War II, understanding almost none of it, and Mickey is that childhood self making sense of the images and scraps of information he couldn't comprehend.

None of us can comprehend it. That's why the book holds such power. That's why I can't stop looking through it even as I want to fling it across the room.

I generally wrinkle my nose at public keening over a celebrity death (last week's mourning of MCA of the Beastie Boys notwithstanding). In general, I hold that if someone lived a good long life, and was clearly tired and ready to go as I believe Sendak was, it's churlish of me to demand that they stay here just out of some distant affection and desire to have them on the same earthly plane. But oh, this stings. I harbored the fantasy that Penny and Abby and I would sing the Rumpus song to Sendak one day. That I would get to tell him yes, I agree, the Spike Jonze/Dave Eggers movie of Wild Things is not for children, and it's perfect, and I watch it over and over, without a kid in sight. That I would thank him for the window into my own childhood soul, and the reminder to peer through his books into my kids' souls, so that I don't forget that their fear is real, and that it's okay.

But of course, that old curmudgeon never wanted to hear that from us parents. We pissed him off, he was impatient with us, and who can blame him. He wanted to be left alone and to see his partner Eugene again. And now he's done it, sailed away over a year and a day, and he won't be coming back.

And that's why, thanks to Maurice, we have cake every morning. Shema.

Here's a first: Calling 911!

I've had the conversation with Penny about not sticking giant things in her mouth and cramming it full of bread, or ribbons, or her sister's feet, about a million times. I did not specifically tell her not to cram Legos in there, but I guess I should have.

I was making dinner on Thursday night when I heard Penny wail. Not something that gets my attention, actually, because it happens every 30 seconds, like an oversensitive fire alarm when you're frying chicken -- but this time it sounded more frantic than usual, so I stepped out into the living room to find she had wedged a rather large rectangular lego into her mouth sideways, so that her mouth was jammed open. She wasn't in danger of choking, but nothing I did could loosen the lego, and her jaw was locked in this horribly uncomfortable position, her cheeks stretched and tears streaming down her face. I held her in my lap and tried to calm her down enough to work it loose but she was just screaming and began to gag on her own spit and tears. Argh.

I felt a bit alarmist, but called 911 because, you know, better safe than sorry. The operator was really, really nice. "That's her screaming?" she said. "Well, so that's actually good, we know she's breathing." She listened as I tried to calm Penny and said I was doing great, that I was calm and that was the best thing, which is the kind of praise I lap up greedily. I heard the sirens arrive downstairs and told Penny "they're coming to help you, honey!" and -- you know what happened next. The damn thing popped out of her mouth and into my hand!

The paramedics, 5 of them, came up the stairs, and I said "Yay, here come the fireman guys!" so she wouldn't be scared. They took one look at her and could see I wasn't calling just to be alarmist; she was still quite panicked, and her huge eyes just goggled at them. Her face was still red, her eyes sorta bruised from the crying and screaming. My landlady flew in in a panic, and reminded me that she's a nurse, I should call her too. Then her oldest son came in and she scolded him for not asking permission to enter. "Here's the rule," I told her. "If paramedics are coming into the apartment, you're invited."

Anyway, they looked her over and pronounced her fine; she didn't even seem to have lacerations inside her mouth. We're planning to make a lego-shaped cake for them -- they are just up the street and had left dinner bubbling on the stove. I want to include a copy of the article i did for Scholastic Math about firehouse cooking, if I can find it.

The best part was that the whole time, Abby was never scared. She's such a little joy-bubble. The more Penny panicked, the more Abby tried to cheer her up, frantically making "Dee dee dee!!" noises and goofy faces. And when I got off the phone with 911, Abby repeatedly picked the phone up, dialed random numbers, and handed it back to me. She had to help. She had to fix it. She's such a dear.

I am so, so glad this was not more serious. Obviously, it's now a funny story, and I am so grateful for that. And for the quick care from the SFFD. My heart goes out to any parent who has had to make that scary call and hope for the best while putting on a brave face for an ailing kid. Sheesh! More grey hairs!

Wordless Wednesday: Sisters