Under a rock

Can we just talk about how far under a rock I have lived for the past several years? Because it's a long way. The trouble with living under a rock is that you don't know you're there because if you knew about the popular culture things you'd missed, well, you wouldn't have missed them. To put things in perspective, I still think Adele is new and trendy, and I've heard of Scissor Sisters but I don't think I've ever heard them. It was sheer luck last year that I ever managed to know about Gangnam Style and Gotye and Call me maybe.

But still. There was the Miley Cyrus thing, which I heard about because it was all over my Twitter and my Facebook feeds, but I'd never heard of this other person in the striped suit that she was lap-dancing all over (much more briefly, in fact, when I finally watched the clip today, than it was made out to be by all the scandalized media outlets). And then I found out his name was Robin Thicke and that he used to go by the stagename Thicke, which I dunno maybe I'm old but that just sounds like a terrible name to me.

So I'd seen reference to his song, called Blurred Lines, which sounded to me like something ponderous and worthy like Tubular Bells (not that I've heard that either, to my knowledge, but it's all instrumental, right? Not right?). And I saw the lyrics to it somewhere and it was all terribly misogynistic and horrible and not something any right-minded feminist could condone.

Then a couple of days ago in the car, completely unrelatedly, I happened to swing by a radio station that was neither Classic Rock nor Classical NPR, and I heard an eminently summery catchy tune. I tried to remember the words so I could maybe find it again, but they seemed to be something awfully generic about a "good day" and "having fun" or whatever. I was afraid I'd never manage to remember, and, as predicted, by the time I was home I had no idea what I'd heard.

You can see where this is going. On a whim this afternoon I put "Blurred Lines" into You Tube and discovered that the nasty lyrics and the catchy tune went together like carrots and peas. And then I watched the video and was duly apalled by all those women cavorting in flesh-toned dental floss without a single underwire between the lot of them, while Mr Thicke remained fully clad, letting us know exactly what he thinks a good girl does. Gross. I feel yucky.

The thing is, if you watch the Jimmy Fallon version, the lyrics aren't nearly so egregious. Could we all just agree to do that, and maybe Thicko (as he'd be known in Dublin) will learn the error of his ways?

Back to school in America

This week the lovely Irish Parenting Bloggers, my soul sisters (and brothers) (but mostly sisters), have been discussing the annual financial burden of sending your kids back to school, even in a country where most primary (elementary) schools are state run and therefore "free". I offered to talk a bit about our experience, for the sake of comparison.

This is our third year in the American public school system - something I never expected to encounter at first hand, and a prospect that felt very daunting when Dash entered kindergarten. (Kindergarten is the first year of elementary school for most children here, and they start when they've turned five.) Apart from the mystery that was the PTA - that's the Parent-Teacher Association - I had to navigate the unknown perils of the school supply list.

It was all pretty easy, as it turned out. Of course. You get a list of things to buy before the year starts, and you go to Target or Staples or the supermarket and buy them. In Ireland, cynical me says, the shops would put up the prices of all these things in August, but around here they tend to have at least some of them on sale, and each state even has a tax-free week or weekend at the end of the summer when you can buy children's clothes and school supplies without the usual added sales tax (that's like VAT).

Our list this year, just out of interest, looked like this:

• 1 large book bag
• 1-inch white hard binder
• 12 no. 2 pencils, sharpened
• 2 glue sticks
• 4 composition books
• 1 pair of children's safety scissors
• 4 pocket folders
• 1 box of crayons or coloured pencils (no more than 24)
• 2 small pencil sharpeners with cover
• 1 pack wide-ruled lined paper

There are other things they note would be nice to have donations of, such as copy paper, more crayons, index cards, tissues, and liquid hand soap, but that's the basic list.

The first year I obsessed over whether we were meant to label each item with his name, and if so whether we had to label every single pencil and crayon or just the box, and so on. This year I just put them all in a bag and brought them in. I don't actually know whether my son uses the specific items I bought or whether they are all stored together in the classroom and then doled out as the children need them - it doesn't really matter. I bought the nicer crayons and the brand-name pencils because I like those, but if he ends up using someone else's not-so-spendy supplies, that's the luck of the draw.

As far as back-to-school costs go, that's the lot. Done for about $50. I didn't count.

Our school doesn't have a uniform at the moment, though it is being considered. Several of the local public elementary schools do, and I assume it would be something similar - a simple outfit that I could buy in Target or from Land's End (for instance) depending on the quality I wanted and how much I had to spend. They don't have crests or whatever it is that made my Irish school uniform so terribly expensive and only available from the secret special room at the back of the second floor in Arnott's of Henry Street.

Books and workbooks are all provided at school. They never even come home, so I don't see them and know very little about them. There's no extra photocopying charge, no not-actually-voluntary contribution, and no extra fundraising commitment. If you join the PTA you can volunteer some hours of work at the used bookstall at the upcoming Labor Day Festival, or help organize the 5k race they do every year, or help out at the Scholastic book fair later in the year, for instance, but it's not mandatory and it's easy to help without writing a cheque. (Though cheques are always welcome.)

I'm not counting things my son would need anyway, like new winter shoes and clothes and a coat. He's pretty well set for the coming season as far as that goes, thanks to my affinity for the thrift store and my habit of stocking up on higher-end things (like a good coat) when end-of-season sales happen. I got him a really nice winter anorak last spring that will do him for the next two years, at least. His backpack is still fine, though he may need a bigger one by next year.

We are designated "walkers" because we live within a mile of the school. If we lived further out, he could take the big yellow school bus. During the year, the teachers will probably send out requests for additional supplies - last year they were always running out of glue sticks and pencils and whiteboard markers. The PTA will run a coat drive when the weather gets colder, and I'll probably pick up a decent-quality kid's coat at the thrift store and bring it in, to be donated to a child who might not otherwise be warm and dry all winter. The school provides lunches that can be bought at a reasonable price, and these are free to those who need them. Children can arrive early and eat breakfast at school if that's arranged for them. There is a limited amount of before- and after-care available, but you have to be lucky and get randomly selected from all the applicants to benefit from that.

Schools vary from district to district, from county to county, and from state to state. You can decide to send your children to private school, of course, or you can choose the location of your home because of the school district it feeds into, if you're in a position to do so. But our middle-of-the-road school has such luxuries - as any Irish state-funded school would probably see them - as a librarian (sorry, that's a media specialist), a counsellor, several special education teachers, a psychologist, and dedicated music and art teachers.

There are many things that are far from perfect with the American school system, with my county's school system, and even, maybe, with our school. But from where I'm sitting, I have to admit that it seems like a pretty good bang for my buck.

If you're interested in reading more about the cash crunch many Irish parents find themselves in at this time of year, here's a handy infographic. And take a look at the other contributions to this conversation (I'll update this list as the week progresses, so come back again):

The Clothesline - It All Adds Up
Wholesome Ireland - School Expenses
The Mama’s Hip – Homeschooling haul and chatter
Learner Mama - Back to school - A costly business
Musings And Chatterings – Crests and costs – starting big school 
The Serious Wagon - Back to School Costs 
Dreaming Aloud - Changing Gear
My Country Girl Ramblings - Back to School The Hidden Costs
Jazzygal - Back to school costs (a lot)

Moments in independence

On Thursday, Dash rode his bike the half-mile to school. When Mabel and I showed up in the car at 3:20 to pick him up, I'd forgotten that, but it was no biggie - we can put his bike in the back. Except he didn't like that idea, and Mabel had already enraged him by telling him about the lollipop she got from the lady in the bank.

( Me: You don't have to tell Dash about that lollipop.
Mabel: Yes I do. )

So I told him that he could ride his bike home and we'd take the car and meet him there. At first he was wary. He thought it was illegal.

"I can't do that. You're not allowed let me."
"Yes, you can. I am."
"But the rule. I'm not eight."
"The rule says you can't stay at home alone until you're eight. It doesn't say you can't go home on your own. I say you can. I trust you to be a responsible cyclist."

He was pretty stoked. Off he went. There are only two places where he has to cross the road, one of which has a crossing with signs and stripes on the road, and I think I was the only car he encountered on the way.

The same thing happened the next day. I'd let him come home on his own every day, but I like seeing the other moms at pickup time.

--------------------

On Friday, Mabel and I went to the mall. Oh wait, first I have to tell you how that works.

Step 1: Order a couple of next-summer things for the kids on clearance from Land's End. Include a pair of trousers that probably won't fit for yourself, just because you can. 

Step 2: When trousers arrive, ascertain that they are indeed mom jeans, look horrible on you, and you don't like the colour anyway. No biggie, because you can easily return them to Sears and thus not pay any postage. 

Step 3: Go to Sears at the mall. Return the jeans. 

Step 4: Pass unavoidably through the kids' section of Land's End in Sears. Find two pairs of summer leggings on sale and an adorable dress at 25% off that you and Mabel both just love. 

Step 5: End up spending more than you got back.

This right here is why the economy is doing just fine. Anyway. After that whole debacle/triumph, we had some lunch at the food court. Mabel got pizza and then we moved over to the next food outlet so I could have a tasty hummus/chicken/chickpea wrap thingy. This left me with two trays and only two hands. So I put both drinks on my tray and asked Mabel to carry hers (with just a paper plate holding the pizza slice). She demurred.

"I can't."
"You can. It's just like carrying a plate, only bigger."

She gingerly reached up to the tray and put her hands on either side. She lifted it down and carried it to the nearest table, as I carried the other tray beside her. The pizza slid a little on the plate, but nothing disastrous happened.

After we'd eaten, I asked her to clear away her tray. She picked it up again and I showed her how you have to let all the paper on top slide into the trashcan while keeping hold of the tray, and then put it on top. She could just about reach the pile of trays on the top, on her tippy toes.

As we walked towards the toystore she said quietly, with a smirk, "I'm a little bit proud of myself."

Acclimatization

Things your child will want to do when they come home from school for the first few days of the new term:

• Fight with siblings
• Fight with you
• Ignore your pleas to sit down and do their homework
• Eat a lot of snacks
• Complain about the quality of the snacks
• Not eat dinner because they're full of snacks
• Demand a sandwich at bedtime because now they're starving
• Watch TV
• Jump off the coffee table, repeatedly
• Jump from the sofa onto the coffee table, repeatedly
• Fall off the coffee table because you told them to take their socks off, but did they listen?
• Languish on the floor, too exhausted to place one piece of lego on another, calling you to come and do it for them
• Drop their backpack on the floor and then claim that it's lost forever
• Leave their backpack in the car and claim it's lost forever and that it's your fault
• Well obviously

Things you will want to do when your child comes home from school for the first few days of the new term:

• Tear your hair out
• Cry
• Drink heavily

Remember, it's a phase. Things will settle down. Everything will be okay. Eventually, they will move out and allegedly then you'll miss them.

Slippery slope (A grammar rant)

You know what annoys me?

Well, okay, plenty of things. The sun is too sunny, mosquitoes bite, I have no cookies in the house and yet can't bring myself to make any because then I'll eat them all; but no, something else.

The plural of euro, that's what.

I know, I just lost most of you. Never mind. Come back tomorow, I'll talk about kids or something.

The euro is the currency of many countries of Europe, and has been for several years now. It was introduced in Ireland only a few months before I left the country, which is why I still have to hunt and peck in my purse to find the right coins whenever we're back there. At the time I was fully and gainfully employed as an editor - in a whole department of editors, no less - so the issue of how to properly refer to the new currency was discussed in a professional capacity, as it were.

We looked into it. It was discovered and agreed upon that the official word was that the plural of euro (in English) was to be "euros." Sensible and obvious, since to make a plural in English we pretty much always do just add an s, especially when the singular ends in a vowel.* 

So why is it that, since that time, the entire country of Ireland decided, en masse and seemingly of its own volition, with no editiorial consultation, that if you had ten of these new units of currency, you would not have ten euros? No, no, of course you wouldn't. You would have ten euro.**

I've tried to be good. Lord knows, I've done my damndest to hold the line, even from this distance. I talk about euros whenever I can, even in Ireland. All it has done is to make me sound like one of those crazies who insists on saying "fort" instead of "fortay" because it's a French word, not an Italian one. (This may be another argument for another day.)

Apparently, much as has recently - heinously - happened with the definition of literally - about which I am figuratively hopping mad - common usage has triumphed and what was wrong has become acknowledged as right just because it's what most people do.

I hate that. Talk about a slippery slope. One minute it's euros, the next minute people will be advertising banana's and apple's and how its over their in the lady's department and nobody will know where they stand and they'll have to abolish the apostrophe all together, as well as common decency and saying thank you and not farting audibly in public.

*Collins still says this:
euro. (n.d.). Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. Retrieved August 20, 2013, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/euro

** Dictionary.com is a flipping flip-flopper that refuses to have an opinion, so it says that the plural is either euro or euros.

Life with Mabel

Life with Mabel has been really quite peaceful of late. I just wanted to acknowledge that, because sometimes when times are good you are still complaining about the little things that are bugging you, which are in fact mere buzzing mosquitoes rather than circling hyenas or angry tigers, so you forget how much worse things could be.

I happened across a blog entry from earlier this year and was really surprised by how far she's come in a short time. Some random highlights might include the following:

• She is outside right now and she has her shoes on. What's more, she put them on herself, voluntarily and without being told, before she left the house.
• She isn't hitting people for fun and/or profit these days. She's not even hitting them out of rage very often. She hasn't bitten anyone for almost a year, so I think I can actually declare that horrible phase over. If you have a biter, take heart. And buy them a chew toy.
• She sleeps all night some nights. When she wakes up she goes back to sleep quickly if someone just lies down beside her. She goes to sleep at bedtime with a story, not nursing. Okay, so 9:30 pm seems to be her natural bedtime right now, but I'll take it. Begrudgingly. (That one's a very buzzy mosquito.)
• She walks places, for a reasonable distance, without demanding to be carried. As recently as last Christmas she was still very much not wanting to walk anywhere, but it changed like flicking a switch. I'm not saying we'll take her on a three-mile hike any time soon, but there's been a distinct improvement. I think, in fact, it might be time to sell the stroller, which is only being used to turn upside down and play rocketships with these days.
• She puts the toothpaste on the toothbrush and brushes for herself before letting me take a turn, and then she rinses and spits and doesn't swallow the toothpaste just to annoy me any more.

In two weeks she too will be back at school, and I should be savouring her last year of nursery school, before next year's big upheaval of kindergarten. She's worried about going back to school, for nebulous reasons that she refuses to pin down, but which all come down to the fact that it's not at home with me. She probably doesn't like being told what to do at certain times, she is not a big fan of cleaning up, and she is not the gregarious people-pleaser her brother is. School is not her natural element as it is his. I anticipate some difficult mornings, again, as usual; but I know that she'll be fine, that the teachers love her and know her and will take care of her, and that overall she'll thrive there.

She's growing up, our baby girl.

Love of Blog

I heard someone say today that she doesn't read mom blogs. "Because they're all do this and do that, and I think when you're a new parent the last thing you need is more people telling you what you should do."

Valid point. But I think maybe she's seen the wrong blogs.

I would hate anyone to think my blog is telling people what they should do. I really hate to think that I might ever come across as sanctimonious or superior or smug.

Blogs, if you find the right ones, bring your village to your living room. They validate your parenting decisions, they back you up, they open up the world. They give you a sense of perspective, they give you feedback; they are a pillow to scream into and a friend to vent to and someone else who's been there before. Or someone to assure you that nobody has ever been there before because nobody else has your child. Blogs are your teabreak and your water cooler; your snarky friend, your hilariously foulmouthed friend, your beautiful friend, your brave friend, the friend who makes you snort coffee out of your nose.

I could not have made it through the first seven years of parenting without blogs. And I wouldn't try to make it through the rest without them either.

Vision therapy update

Dash has been doing his vision therapy for a while now - a half-hour session twice a week, with "homework" every day. We have had letter charts and arrow charts and number stars taped to the walls, and he has been pointing or reading or dancing or whatever he's meant to do, morning and evening. Sometimes getting him to do it is just like school homework all over again, but he does it, and we hope it's helping.

He'll have another assessment midway through, and I'll be interested to see if the numbers have changed. One thing about this process that I like is that the results are measurable; we're not just wondering if his reading has improved, and if so if it was going to do that anyway. Of the barrage of tests he did at the beginning, we were provided with a list showing the range an average 7-year-old's results would fall into, and then where his results were. Those aspects where his were below that range are the things his therapy focuses on, and when he's re-tested we should see the difference.

We have at least continued with his daily twenty minutes of reading through the summer, even if other plans to beat summer slide, like daily copying out of a morning message, never got off the ground despite my best intentions and his avowed cooperation. This morning he actually continued past the timer's beeping so that he could finish all of Green Eggs and Ham. Admittedly, the plot twist was not unexpected, and he's well able to read all the words; but because he knows it so well he was happy to keep going and - for the first time ever - I heard him read with expression instead of just stumbling over one word at a time. I don't know if the vision therapy has anything to do with it, but I was pleased.

The optometrists had given us, with Dash's report, a list of accommodations we could ask for at school, such as sitting closer to the front, not being asked to copy from the board (changing focus from far to near is a problem point), getting some extra time for reading or writing assignments, that sort of thing. I was called in for a meeting this week to discuss these, and I was very pleased with the way things went.

I met with his teacher for next year, the principal, the guidance counsellor, the head of special ed, the school psychologist (didn't even know we had one) and one other person, and it was mostly just a great opportunity to tell these people - most of whom had not dealt with Dash before, though I bet they'd recognize his big grin - who my son is, what a great kid he is, how much he loves school, and what's going on with his vison right now. They were all open to learning more about how they could help, and we had a great discussion. I left feeling really positive about the school and its staff, which is a lovely way to start the year off.

In a most amazing coincidence, Dash's best friend, daughter of my best friend (known in these parts as Helen's Mom), has some of the same vision problems. There are just two days in age between her and Dash, and though we don't see her so often any more, we spent much of the toddler years together at playgroups and playdates and library storytimes and the like. Helen (not her real name) is also a bright kid struggling more than you might expect with reading, though she's reading at or slightly above grade level. Our story was ringing so many bells with her mom that she got Helen tested too, and vision therapy is probably in their future.

Which makes us wonder whether there was something in the water at all those playdates. Or maybe it was the extended nursing. Dun dun dunnnnn. (THAT WAS A JOKE. I WAS JOKING. I SWEAR I WAS JOKING.)

Butterfly days

Bare shoulders, freckled (mine). Sunkissed legs, growing longer (hers). A constant anthem of "I'm hungry." (Two growth spurts, ongoing.) Huge butterflies on the orange flowers, they flip and flutter past in yellow, blue, and black; no longer a cause for excitement, taken for granted in these late days of summer.

We're sick of sunscreen and mosquito bites. We yearn for structure. We need a more pressing reason to get dressed than the fact that we've run out of frozen waffles again. The summer is done for. It's dead and dusted and we're apathetic and dusty and ready to move on.

What will I keep in my heart from the summer my children were seven and four? Turning 40, going to BlogHer; baseball games and campsites and cold-pressed coffee. I feel like the summer didn't have a theme, a particular game played or toy loved or achievement unlocked. It was the summer Dash started baseball and vision therapy, the summer Mabel got Rapunzel and learned to swim, the year we all went to Ithaca and that I went to Chicago alone with several thousand other bloggers. The summer I had a purple bag, the year Dash had silver trainers and Mabel wouldn't wear shorts. 

I sometimes feel we're not doing America right, especially in the summer. We don't grill enough, we rarely dine on the deck (because of the mosquitoes and because bug spray worries me as much as the bites do). My children do not gorge themselves on berries and watermelon and corn on the cob and as a result I spend a lot more time denying access to ice-cream than enabling it. We haven't been to the beach once this summer, and the single attempt at seeing a family movie was aborted before the trailers were over. We went camping but never lit a campfire, the kids didn't love summer camp, and once again we did not grow any vegetables of our own.

Maybe next year we'll do it better. In the meantime, the butterflies are beautiful.

Points of things

Sky, sea, land

Tomorrow is the first day of the last week of the summer holidays. Mabel doesn't go back to school till after Labor Day, but Dash starts second grade on August 19th. The second-grade thing isn't phasing me, but the fact that the summer is almost gone is a bit stunning. This year seems to be going faster than any one before. If this keeps up, by the time I'm in my eighties, I imagine days will fly by like seconds. No wonder my mother is confused.

I partly feel like I'm just getting back into the groove of our nice laid-back summer (after the disruptions of going away, two weeks of camp, and then BlogHer) but on the other hand I'm looking forward to a bit more peace and the opportunity to throw away some of all the crap that's been piling up around here. Because apparently I can't do that when the kids are in the house.

I went to Target on my own for an hour yesterday and realised why I like shopping: it gives me a chance to center myself and plan things, whether it's figuring out what might help for organizing the house a little more (I bought an in-tray!) or deciding what I want to, um, invest in this autumn. (Found a dress I want as a shirt, decided to e-Bay a bag I never use and buy one I fell in love with in Marshall's; also tried on boots, but that's not relevant ahem as I was saying...)

I thought I'd missed my Dad's birthday and blamed it on the fact that apparently now I only know it's someone's birthday when Facebook tells me about it, and my Dad (needless to say) is not on Facebook. But then I realised I just had no idea what the heck date it was in August, and I hadn't missed it at all. So that's good.

I might have a freelance editing job lined up for when the kids go back to school. You might not get so much blathering from over here if I find I'm actually working instead.

In the last week both kids have started swimming underwater, Mabel for the first time ever and Dash for the first time since a little last summer. My kids have never been those ones who don't seem to notice whether they're on top of the water or the water's on top of them - they would always crane their necks to keep their faces out of the water, even with goggles on for extra protection. So to see them whooshing around underneath all of a sudden is pretty cool. I told Mabel I didn't do that till I was twelve, and she was well chuffed.

Technically, I finished the 30-day shred yesterday. That is, it was the tenth day I've done the level-3 workout. However, I did take off about ten days in July when I was sick and then away, and almost another two weeks from BlogHer until yesterday, and I spent a few intervening days working back up to it by doing levels one and two a couple of times. I don't feel any different, though it's not as hard as it was at the start, so I must be at least a tiny bit fitter and stronger. Dash says I look taller, which has to be a good sign. The scales still say I'm a few pounds lighter even though at no point did I stop eating all the muffins I usually eat. I will try to keep going until I get totally bored or something else happens or they go back to school and I try running again.

Since we didn't do anything today, here are some photos from last weekend, when we took in some history by going to Fort McHenry in Baltimore. A decisive battle of the War of 1812 took place in Baltimore Harbor, and as the poet Francis Scott Key watched to see which flag would be flying over the fort as dawn broke the following morning, he wrote what would become the lyrics of The Star Spangled Banner.

Teeny little flag up high; huge enormous flag down low

Walking the battlements

Ancient history

I like Connie Willis. If you've never heard of Connie Willis, well, you're just like the guy in my local bookshop, except that you probably don't work in a bookshop so the fact that she's a really great and popular and quite prolific fantasy writer is not a travesty. But he, he was a travesty. I don't know why Books-A-Million is still alive when all the Borders Books in the area have closed down.

Anyway. This is a very long lead-in to what will probably turn out to no longer be a remotely funny anecdote when I finally get around to it. And I'm not there yet, you'll have to wait.

I don't get in a lot of reading these days, and when I do it goes in fits and starts. It's usually an author I know and love, because I don't have the patience right now to try out books that might be anything less than great. I'll happily re-read old favourites rather than attempt something new - hence the total revisiting of Harriet Vane and Peter Wimsey's relationship earlier this year. But I discovered that Connie Willis had written a new* book - in fact, two - and put them on my birthday list. B gave me Blackout for my birthday, and I saved it to read on the way to BlogHer. I finished it last week and discovered that it's not so much the first in a series of two, as half a story, the other half of which is another whole (even fatter) book called All Clear. So of course I had to get my hands on All Clear ASAP, without even waiting for Amazon.

This is why we ended up visiting two bookshops in two days, and why Dash ended up getting two new books in two days, even though there's a perfectly lovely library with plenty of reading matter right there in our town. (Mabel also got one new book.) The first bookshop didn't have any Connie Willis at all (see above), but Dash still had to get something, and he chose a National Geographic Kids book on tigers. The next day in a much better-stocked Barnes & Noble, he picked up a National Geographic Kids book on Martin Luther King and was all excited, so who was I to deny my son the reluctant reader such an educational item?

[Here, just to keep up the thrilling suspense (ahem), let me mention how great those National Geographic Kids books are. Dash is a bright, curious kid with a great vocabulary, but his reading level is not high. So trying to keep him engaged with a book that's easy enough for him not to stumble over every word is often a struggle, because so many of the first readers are insultingly simple. He likes the "I Can Read" superhero books, and they are at a good (easy) level for him, but he also has a selection of the National Geographic ones, and those are what he looks for now in the bookstore.

]

Oh God, now I've built it up so much that I'm afraid to tell my piddly little story.

Anyway.

Schoolkids in America know all about Martin Luther King. The Civil Rights Movement is heavily featured in kindergarten, if not before. Even the nursery-school attendees know about him, thanks to Martin Luther King day in January every year. As an Irish schoolchild, I did not have Martin Luther King anywhere on my radar, but I must have heard his name somewhere along the line.

So at the start of secondary school (seventh grade) our history teacher began by looking at the pictures on the front cover of our textbook, Renaissance and Reformation, I think it was called, and asking if anyone knew what was depicted. Looking at a drawing of an oldy-timey man with long hair hammering a scroll to a wooden door, something I had seen or read elsewhere came back to me, and I tentatively raised my hand.

"Yes, Maud?"
I was diffident but smug: "Is it Martin Luther... King?"

As I said the first two words, it had occurred to me that there was often another one appended. Adding the "King" was an afterthought, really. I thought it would make me sound even cleverer.

Sadly, one word makes all the difference. My teacher went from admiration to amusement in the space of that single syllable. (Though really, she should have been doubly impressed: I knew two historical people, after all, even if I didn't realise it myself.)

This morning I was recounting the story to B, who somehow had never heard it before. Dash wanted to know as well. "You knew about Martin Luther King too?" he asked, incredulous.

Whereupon B had to get all smartypants: "Martin Luther King TWO? There's a sequel? 'He's back and he's mad.'"


*New as in three years ago, apparently.

Boob psychology

I'm still thinking about breastfeeding, given the week that's in it. (Actually, August is National Breastfeeding Awareness Month in the US, so I can go on and on with this.)

I've always wondered why the Irish have such terrible breastfeeding rates. Because we really do. According to the ERSI, just over half of mothers (56 per cent) currently initiate breastfeeding in Ireland, compared to 81 per cent in the UK and over 90 per cent in Scandinavian states.* Only 22% of babies are still breastfed at 3 months, with that number dropping below 10% by 6 months. In the USA, by contrast, almost half of babies are still breastfed at 6 months** - no small feat considering how many of those mothers had to go back to work and start pumping milk from as soon as six weeks post-partum.

In the wonderful personal accounts the Irish Parenting Bloggers have been sharing this week, one thing has stood out in my mind: the lack of support they've suffered from many of the health professionals involved in their babies' births. But associated with that is the way several of those mothers found it hard to speak up when faced with terrible treatment, because they didn't want to be a bother to anyone, and because the nurses they encountered - mostly nurses, it seems - made them feel that they were causing trouble. Causing trouble by asking for pain medication. By asking for help with latching the baby on. By asking to have their crying baby picked up and given to them after a c-section.

I understand this mentality, I really do. I don't like bothering people. If I'm a patient, I want to be a model patient. I want to be the one who is no trouble. (Look how proud I was of actually asking questions, way back in my first pregnancy.) I want to get the answers right, so that the doctor/nurse/professional I'm talking to approves of me and decides I'm a nice girl.

What the hell? Who worries about being a nice girl when she's having a baby - which is pretty hard and important work, ya know? Well, apparently I do, and I don't think I'm the only one. Did my mother make me this way? Was it mentally beaten into me, and into her, and her mother before her, that good girls didn't make trouble? I would go so far as to say that, though of course there are people of every level of assertiveness all over the world, in Ireland we perhaps have more non-assertive people/women than in other countries.

Perhaps we even like the martyrdom, just a tiny bit. It feels good for your soul, doesn't it? Hedonism is definitely bad, so putting up with hardship and not whining about it must be good, right? Oh dear, this is getting awfully Catholic.

Whatever - my pop psychology is based on no actual research. But the fact stands that given the vulnerable situation of a mother at the exact time when breastfeeding begins, in the midst of pain and unfamiliarity and at the mercy of the "professionals," the Irish tendency to "offer it up" works against many people.

Maybe, just maybe, this aspect of the Irish national psyche has something to do with the low rates of breastfeeding. Maybe many mothers who really wanted to try to breastfeed were sabotaged not just by the system but by their own innate disinclination to speak up for themselves, because they didn't want to make trouble.

(A doula is really helpful here. One major job of a doula is to advocate for her client when her client is in a vulnerable and unfamiliar state. A doula knows what's going on and how the system works, as well as what the mother wants. If you are pregnant in Ireland, I would strongly advise you to look into getting a doula.)

The thing is, I know that every single mama can and will advocate for her child. Every mama, Irish or otherwise, is a mother bear, a lioness, a spitting, snarling tiger mother if you threaten her child, or fail to help her child, or let her child be in pain.

So I would say to you, expectant mothers of Ireland who are planning to breastfeed (and anywhere else they like to breed nice girls): find that righteous anger, access your deep but vast recesses of self-assurance RIGHT NOW. Use it for yourself right at the start of your child's life, to ensure that you get what you need to begin breastfeeding the way you wanted to, the way you know will work best because you've done the research even if the person talking to you has not. Advocate for your baby. Because breastfeeding isn't just about us, it's about our children.

This isn't the first time I've tried to get to the root of the Irish breastfeeding problem. This is what I wrote four years ago. 

*Source: http://www.esri.ie/news_events/latest_press_releases/breastfeeding_in_ireland_/
** Source: http://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/data/reportcard.htm#Indicators

A singular sensation

A strange thing happened when I came back from BlogHer. I felt very small.

Not that I go around feeling like a great lumbering giant every day, but I usually feel comfortably right-sized in my space. But at the start of last week I found myself looking in the mirror and thinking I was a mere wisp of a thing; that a breath of air would knock me over; that I was lacking weight, significance, heft.

Small in a not-good way, then. Maybe it was the exhaustion that hit me when I got home, a combination of post-excitement, post-travel tiredness and a bit of an extended hangover. Maybe it was because I'd hung out with some women who were taller and bigger than me - but that was by no means the majority. At 5'4 and a US size 8, I'm pretty much average, and certainly not tiny. I am not a wisp.

I think perhaps it was a physical manifestation of the fact that I'd been such a small fish in such a huge pond at the blogging conference. I don't mind not being in the limelight; I don't want to be top of the heap. I have very little ambition, and I'm fine with that. I have no illusions that my blog is secretly a Big Deal. I don't think anyone's going to jump out of the alcove and present me with a trophy for being the biggest little blogger that could, I really don't.

So I don't know why, honestly. It was an odd and unsettling sensation. But I'm happy to say it's wearing off, and I'm feeling pretty much normal again.

Which probably means I should get back to that 30-day shred thing if I want to keep fitting into my size 6 Gap jeans. (Which we all know are just like size 8s anywhere else.)

The accidental extender

It's World Breastfeeding Week (yay boobs!) and the Irish Parenting Bloggers, of which I am a proud member, are doing a blog march in its honour. This is my contribution, and I'll add links to everyone else's as the week progresses.

August 1st: Wholesome Ireland and The Happy Womb
August 2nd: Office Mum and Awfully Chipper
August 3rd: Wonderful Wagon and It Begins With a Verse
August 4th: Glitter Mama Wishes and Ouch My Fanny Hurts
August 5th: Debalicious and Mind the Baby
August 6th: My Internal World, Musings and Chatterings, and Mama Courage
August 7th: The Nest, Mama.ie, At the Clothesline, My Life as a Mum, and Learner Mama

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If you've been reading my blog for a while you may be familiar with my breastfeeding story; indeed, you may be rolling your eyes and saying, "There goes Maud with her boobs again." If so - well, sorry about that.

When I had my first baby, my husband and I were living in southmost Texas, which is not a place that most of you have even considered might exist. I certainly hadn't, until we spent two years there. We didn't have any friends with young children, we didn't associate with any babies or children, our families were an ocean away, and my babysitting years were far in the past. But we'd been married a year and I was 32 and I reckoned it was time to have a baby.

I did put some thought into it. I researched getting pregnant, and read pregnancy blogs, and checked babycare books out of the library. Pregnancy was achieved pretty much according to plan, which was wonderful, and I tried not to buy All The Stuff, because we had a small apartment and would be moving back up north when the baby was four months old.

My breastfeeding plans went like this: I wanted to, if I could. I hoped to get to three months, six if possible. Having a baby older than six months was not something I could conceive of at that point anyway, so there was no point looking any further ahead.

Perhaps I owe some of my success with breastfeeding to my midwife, who was a very down-to-earth person. As soon as I'd delivered the young master, she unceremoniously leaned over me and squeezed a nipple, hard. Somewhat to my surprise, creamy yellowy stuff came out. "You're fine," she announced, and observed us as I brought him gingerly to my breast and saw him latch on like a pro. I was only in the hospital for 24 hours, and I don't remember the nurses being either helpful or a hindrance, except for the way they had to wake me up every couple of hours to tell me to try to nurse my baby. We would both have preferred to stay asleep, thank you very much.

Nursing in the first few days was difficult because the baby was still very sleepy (duh, newborn) and a bit jaundiced, and my milk had not come in. The pediatrician told us to supplement with formula and wake him to feed every two hours. I was adamant that I would not have my breastfeeding plans derailed by a doctor I didn't particularly trust anyway, so we alternated breast and bottle, and I let my husband do the bottle feeds so the baby only ever got boob from me.

On the morning of the fifth day we were at the pediatrician's office for a check-up. As we waited to be seen, the baby latched on - and didn't come off for 45 minutes. Apparently my milk had come in. I was pretty relieved.

Latching on was fairly excruciating for the first weeks. I found a lactation consultant, who took a look and said the baby had a perfect latch. She sold me a nipple shield and a manual pump, both of which were more trouble than they were worth. I just decided that the people who said "If it hurts you're doing it wrong" didn't have my baby, or my boobs, and kept on keeping on, wincing and swearing freely at the start of each feed. Gradually the duration of the pain diminished and after about six weeks it only hurt a lot on the left side. After another week I was relatively pain-free, and from there our nursing relationship took off.

I had no support, really, from the people around me; though I had invaluable help and advice and a cheering section on the Internet. But the corollary of that is that I had no detractors either. There was nobody telling me they thought I probably couldn't do it, that I should just use the free formula I'd been sent home from the hospital with, that my nipples were too small, or too flat, or too pink. I was already a stranger in a strange land, so I felt no urge to conform to peer pressure and do what others were doing. The rates of breastfeeding in south Texas are not good, so I assumed from the start that I was an outlier - a rebel, if you like. It was sort of liberating. In fact, I never had anything but supportive comments from those who did go out of their way to talk to me about breastfeeding.

We got to three months, moved north to Maryland, and went on gaily to six months. I became brave and then brazen about nursing in public - the mall, the park, the bus; McDonalds, poker night, the supermarket; whenever, wherever. At six months there was no question of weaning: why would I make my life more complicated, with all those bottles and warming and measuring and mixing? Starting solids was a little daunting, and Dash was never a big eater, so it was reassuring to know he was still getting plenty of good nourishment straight from the source.

Coming up to a year, I began to wonder when my baby would begin to wean himself, and how he would magically start eating all the food he'd need to replace that milk and keep growing. Gradually it dawned on me that he wasn't in any way ready to wean yet, and that there was no need to. So we didn't.

I never intended to be an extended breastfeeder. I certainly never intended to tandem nurse. I didn't think I could possibly nurse through a second pregnancy. If you'd told me in those early days that my baby wouldn't wean till he was 4 and a half years old - well, to be honest, I might not even have started. But things don't always turn out the way you think they will. It was always easier to keep going than it would have been to stop, so we just did. I also had the support of two of my best friends, one nearby in real life and one in the computer, who also found themselves nursing preschoolers without necessarily having planned to. Feeling that I wasn't the only crazy person in the world doing this made a huge difference.

My first baby is seven now. His little sister will turn five in November, and she still partakes of the boob first thing in the morning. It buys me a few more minutes in bed, and apart from her habit of volubly declaring her love for the boobies in front of company, the fact that I'm still, technically, a nursing mother doesn't impinge on my life at all. Mostly, I forget that it's even a fact, until I have to check a box on a form at the doctor's or something. We'll probably stop soon.

Probably.

Nursing Mabel at 22 months

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If you're interested in reading more of my breastfeeding, extended breastfeeding, and tandem nursing story as it happened, click the links in the tag cloud.

BlogHer '13: But Maud, how did you FEEL about it all?

View from my room on the 21st floor

Can I squeeze one more post out of the BlogHer experience before you're all sick to death of the subject? It's just that I have more things to say about it. I'm still processing the whole weekend, but I also want to write it all down before I forget.

When people in Chicago heard it was my first BlogHer conference, they would say, sympathetically, "It's all a bit overwhelming, isn't it?" But honestly, I didn't feel overwhelmed. It was exhausting, but I didn't realise that till I came home. I did burn out a bit on sessions, but I could cope with that by simply not attending the last one I'd tentatively put on my schedule for the day.

When I went to University College Dublin (17,000 students) from my high school of 300 (which is a normal/medium size in Ireland but tiny by American standards) the same thing should have happened: I should have been intimidated and overwhelmed by the size of the place and all those people. But I wasn't. I found my place and I slotted in, and it felt right straight away.

Maybe it's because I like big cities or maybe it's because I'm halfway between intro- and extravert, or maybe it's because as an only child you're often plonked into situations among many adults you don't know and expected to just entertain yourself quietly until everyone's ready to go... or maybe it's just me. I'm generally content to quietly put myself somewhere and watch what's going on, even if what's going on is positively enormous.

Day one: Not overwhelmed

And BlogHer is pretty enormous. There were about six thousand attendees this year, I was told. The giant hall at the conference center in Chicago full of round tables did elicit a small gasp when I saw it on the first morning, while juggling breakfast plate and coffee cup and quasimodoed by my laptop in my shoulder bag. Imagine your debs (if you're Irish), or a sit-down dinner at a wedding, and then multiply by a couple of hundred, and you have some idea of the scale.

But after breakfast and the keynote speeches, we all broke off to go to our sessions, as if after an English lecture in Theatre L you went to a Spanish tutorial (if I may continue with my UCD reminiscences), and then you were in a room with only fifty or a hundred or maybe ten other people, depending on what you chose to attend. In fact, the whole experience was a little like university, distilled and then concentrated and then scrunched up into two very fast days.

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I may have arrived with some notion that all the business cards I handed out would translate instantly into new loyal readers, perhaps catapulting me into fame and fortune; but the sad truth is that the "big" bloggers, even the ones who might have my card now, are too busy tending to their own empires, and their own real lives, to take the time to read and love and then blogroll little ol' me.

That's okay. I can't please all the people all the time, so I'd better just please myself. That's why I went to the session called The UnMarketing Manifesto, why I went to the writing panels. My blog's purpose is to make me a better writer; that's why I started it, and I don't want to lose sight of that in all this friend-making kerfuffle.

The truth is that I probably won't end up adding all the cards I got to my blog reader, even though I'm following everyone I met on Twitter. And they won't all add mine. And while it's nice to be told that I'm a nice person, or that I'm fun to hang out with, what I really want is to hear that someone enjoys reading my blog.

Am I weird? Is that not, um, normal? Oh well. Thanks for being one of the ones who's reading.