Monthly Archives: May 2012

The opposite of nemesis

Transatlantic subtleties: garden vs. yard

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First in what I think will be an occasional series, to help those having translation problems they don’t even know are problems.

What I mean is, when I worked in Ireland editing content written for the US market, I felt like I had a decent understanding of American English – a working knowledge, perhaps. Everyone in the British isles has enough familiarity with American TV and movies to know that sidewalk means footpath and vacation means holiday – but there are subtleties that you don’t learn for years (like not to tell an American to walk on the pavement), and misconceptions that go uncorrected, and little things that it takes time to pick up on. I thought I’d help a nation – or two – out with a few notes on such things. (And if I’ve got it wrong, I’m sure someone will help me out in the comments.)

Today: Garden and Yard .

In the UK and Ireland, the space of your property around your house that’s not in your house is called your garden. Even if it’s paved or covered in gravel, it’s pretty much still your garden, but definitely if it’s got anything green in it. Not everyone can aspire to a perfectly manicured lawn, but most people have a garden of some sort, unless they live in an apartment. When you do things in this area – cutting the grass, trimming the hedges, picking up dog poo – it’s called gardening.

In the US, this space is your yard. If you’re doing things there, you’re doing yard work. You can have a front yard and a back yard, and maybe a deck, which would be a patio in Ireland because mostly people don’t have decks. I don’t know why they have raised decks in the US but only paved patios at home. (Anyone?)

If you call your yard your garden in the US, you’re liable to make people think you’re getting ideas above your station. A garden, over here, is something carefully tended and maintained – a vegetable garden or a rose garden, perhaps. Any Tom, Dick, or Harry can’t just think they have a garden by opening the front door and stepping onto the grass.

Conversely, if you described your garden as a yard in Ireland, people would envisage a dusty, perhaps slightly industrial, space devoid of any vegetation at all. “Yardwork” does not bring to mind pruning the roses or evicting dandelions, but something more burly and somehow metallic.

One scrubby rhodedendron does not qualify our yard to be called a garden.

So how was your Memorial Day?

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Things I would have done differently yesterday if I had an ounce of sense:

Looked at the forecast, noticed the number 93 beside the letter F, stayed home.
On exiting the metro in downtown DC, set off towards the Capitol, where there was allegedly some free music happening, rather than in the opposite direction, because after one and a half monuments, and not even the one I wanted to see (the new Martin Luther King memorial) we were drooping from the heat and the kids were demanding lunch.
Brought a packed lunch instead of a snack which was devoured in five minutes as soon as we stepped off the train, because all the food in Washington DC is on the other side of the Mall and even if you know where the cheap food court is so you don’t have to pay museum-cafe prices, (we do; it’s in the Old Post Office) Dash still won’t eat anything except bare nachos, otherwise known as tortilla chips, and then whine for the next twenty minutes because he didn’t get an ice cream for “dessert”.
Explained up front that tortilla chips don’t count as lunch, so dessert is not merited. It’s not like anyone else had ice cream either.
Made a bigger effort to get Mabel to use the bathroom at the last place we were, so that she wouldn’t spend the entire metro journey home spinning around a pole and almost firing herself off – head exactly level with chair arms – because she couldn’t sit still because she desperately needed to pee.

Things at least I did do:

Wear sunscreen, put it on the kids.
Wear a hat.
Bring water.
Bring a stroller.
Not have to watch helplessly as my child peed her pants on the train, because she held it all the way home.

Then we got home, collapsed in a heap, and made the kids watch Star Wars so they would shut up and leave us in peace. That was a good move too, but in all I can’t help thinking the day would have been better spent at the pool.

Poopy

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Poopy is the word, it’s the time, it’s the motion. Poopy’s the way she is feeling.

No, that’s a bit misleading, now that I look at my oh-so-clever quote manipulation there. I mean, I wouldn’t want you to think I was speaking literally, using “motion” in this context. It’s just that with Mabel at the moment, everything is poopy. Poopy this, poopy that, I’m poopy, you’re poopy, Dash in particular is very often poopy, we’re all poopy. Except now and then one of us might be mutton-head. (That’s a WildKratts reference. I’m told you had to be there, and I keep missing it. But she claims she means it as a compliment.)

She is three and a half, after all, so there had to be something. I think we’re getting off pretty lightly if this is the sum total of her half-year behaviour-regression thingy . She’s into calling people poopy and sometimes pinching them too, but mostly only if they’re her brother. Poor Dash is trying hard not to take it personally, but if I hear “Waaaahhhh! Mabel pinched me and called me poopy,” one more time in the next five minutes – well, it’ll be just like all the previous five minuteses.

Poopy was not a word ever bandied around in this house before Mabel heard it last summer and had a brief fling with it, but now it has returned with a vengeance. While helping at nursery school recently I heard a teacher scold one of Mabel’s classmates for saying it. His father, who happened to be there too, was shocked and wondered where he could have heard such a thing. I had to fess up that it was probably from my delightful daughter, and have a wee chat with Mabel about words we are not to use at school, to protect the delicate ears of those more innocent.

Personally, I don’t really take much issue with poopy. As bad words go, it’s pretty hilarious really, and I’d quite like to use it all the time too. Considering she has a six-year-old brother whose classmates, I know from my field-trip experience last week – know some much more serious bad words, I’m quite happy with it. But from the perspective of the other parent, I understand that I would have liked my only/eldest child to go as long as possible before hearing any of the less savoury elements of vocabulary, or even getting an inkling that words could be used like that, and I too would have been displeased if some moppet in Dash’s class when he was three was wandering around firing off such epithets at random peers.

So I think she knows that she shouldn’t say it at school, but at home it’s a bit of a free-for-all, because I really don’t have the energy to get all riled up every time the p-word is dropped; and since she’s doing it for effect anyway, the best tack is clearly firm parental apathy. I suggested to Dash, who finds it hard to ignore, that he pretend she said something nice and respond with a cheery “Thank you!”

He’s not sure this tactic is working yet, but at least it’s more fun for all of us than hearing him whine about it.


One of the few times when she’s not calling something poopy

Invisible memories

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I was taking in the washing on Tuesday when the lady next door called me over to the fence to introduce her visiting friend.

“This is June,” she said. “She’s the original owner of your house.”

Our house was built in 1967, and we’re the third owners. The people we bought it from lived here for about ten years, but we’d never met the people before that. Our next-door neighbours are some of the few original residents left on the court, having bought their house from the plans before it was even built – and chosen the only completely level yard on the street, I think (all the others have a dramatic slope either at the front or the back of the house).

So I invited June in to see what we’d done with the place, of course.

She lived here for thirty-four years. She had her four children here and watched them grow. She put in the now-horrible green carpet that we routinely abuse, and the matching wallpaper that we ripped off. She and her husband were the ones who extended the family room, and had the washer and dryer brought up there from the basement – two things I wanted to hug her for because they make my life better on a daily basis. They put in the bay window I’m sitting beside right now, that we won’t put shades on because they would hide the lovely gentle curve, even if they would also enable people to sit at the other end of the table unblinded of an evening.

She graciously admired the completely changed kitchen, the bench we put in, the new floor in the hall, but her mind was obviously on the years she and her family spent here, the times they had, the things I couldn’t see. As we parted, she wished me well and told me they were the happiest years.

I hope I have them too, those years; a couple behind me already and many more ahead, in her happy house. It’s nice to get an inkling of the history we’re barging through, as we do all the same things again with a new batch of children to grow up feeding baby dolls and scattering lego all over June’s carefully selected green carpet.

Ashes

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Yesterday, I was on fire, domestically speaking. I had felt the urge to do some housework creeping up on me, and yesterday it burst forth in a glorious bevy of industry. While Mabel was at school, I did two loads of laundry, hung one on the line and put one in the dryer, swept the downstairs floors, cleaned the bathrooms (oh so horribly overdue), cleaned the mirrors, and started on some yeast bread. By pre-dinnertime, I was juggling the two loaves of bread, a batch of chocolate chip cookies, and some quite delicious from-scratch pseudo-Indian stuff that would do two nights’ worth of grown-up dinners, as well as a corn on the cob in the microwave for Mabel.

So today, I’d probably have been all tapped out anyway, but the fact that then it turned out one ear of corn (is it an ear? a cob?) and a cookie do not a sufficient dinner make for my daughter, so that she was awake half the night gnawing on me, meant that this morning I was pretty much toast. Fried toast. Toast that is also fried, and burnt, and has had the burnt bits scraped off. The sort of toast you should probably just toss and make anew.

Then, in spite of a morning spent jumping on trampolines and playing with other people’s toys, followed by a total needle-stuck-on-record meltdown on the way home (“I don’t want to take the short cut, I don’t waaaant to taaaake the short cut, I don’t… I didn’t waaaant to taaaake the short cut,” etc), Mabel did not nap. So we got up again and made banana pancakes, she ate five, and the afternoon progressed. She had to be shepherded gently through the hazardous waters of four to six pm, and probably didn’t eat enough dinner again, but the upside was that she was fast asleep at five minutes past seven.

I’m going to bed early.

Museum

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I went on my first honest-to-God field trip yesterday, and it was a good one. Apart from the zoo, I suppose, you can’t get much more classic for a school outing than the Natural History Museum – and when your kid’s local natural history museum just happens to be the Smithsonian in Washington DC, you count yourself pretty lucky.

Because when the kids you’re chaperoning are all museumed out, after live butterflies and beetles and caterpillars, and (dead) dinosaurs and whales and mummies (yes, really), and the Hope diamond to boot, you can take them outside and let them run around on the National Mall, with the Capitol to your left and the Washington Monument to your right, until it’s time to go back in and see a few more dead mammals before the bus leaves. And they can take it all for granted, because this is just where they live, but some of us know it’s pretty damn cool.

When I arrived in the classroom in the morning, the first thing everyone did was crowd around to show me who had wobbly teeth and who had lost teeth and who had new teeth coming in. Teeth, then, are big news with the six-year-old set. I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise to me, but since wobbly teeth are still a thing of aspiration in our house, it was interesting to see the higgledy-piggledy reality up close.

I had wistfully thought how nice it was to go on a field trip while my son is still innocent enough to hold my hand in public and want to sit beside me on the bus. Not so. My hand was disengaged as soon as we got to school, and he sat up front with his friend to play finger-lightsaber battles while I sat a few rows back with the girls and discussed why other kids were sometimes mean, what the best thing to do about it was, and where babies really do come out of.

Still, I think he was glad to have me along, if only to see him hold the big green caterpillar.

Dash holds a fat caterpillar.

A post called Weaning

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Welcome to the Carnival of Weaning: Weaning – Your Stories

This post was written for inclusion in the Carnival of Weaning hosted by Code Name: Mama and Aha! Parenting . Our participants have shared stories, tips, and struggles about the end of the breastfeeding relationship.

Before I had my first child, the word weaning was not one I was familiar with. Actually, my confusion about its meaning, if I had considered it enough to be confused, was natural – on my native side of the Atlantic, they use “weaning” to mean the process of starting solids. In the US, it means the process of stopping breastfeeding.

Of course, my pre-child self would say, because those two things are the same. The baby starts eating food, so it stops breastfeeding. A simple, gradual process that will come about of its own accord.

This totally fails to take into account all the other things that breastfeeding provides for a baby, a toddler, a pre-schooler, even, that they may be unwilling to give up even when they’re happily chowing down on three-course dinners. Comfort, familiarity, a sure route to sleep, relief from bumps and scrapes and imminent tantrums.

I had my baby, and I hoped to breastfeed him for at least, I said, the first three months; hopefully six. My midwife said something about a year, but I thought she was getting way ahead of herself. I couldn’t imagine lending my breasts to someone else for a whole year. I need them back, I thought. At some point in the foreseeable future.

Well, after a painful start we were off and running, and by the time we got to three months everything was just starting to go really well. Why would I stop and mess around with formula now? Clearly, the six month marker was ahead.

At six months, he was starting solids, sure, but that didn’t make any difference to our nursing. Solids were for playing with, for finding out about textures and gravity and motor skills. Anything that made it into his stomach was merely collateral damage. On we went.

Coming up to twelve months I began to wonder how the stopping would work. I couldn’t really imagine not nursing him, because he still wasn’t very much of an eater – I met a friend who told me her nine-month-old ate three meals a day now; I looked at him in wonder to hear of such a thing – and he still woke and needed to nurse back to sleep several times a night. After some thought, I gave up on the 12-month notion.

At 21 months I decided that something had to be done, as I wanted to get pregnant again. I cut back the on-demand feeding and got us down to three times a day, then just morning and evening. He started sleeping through the night so I no longer had to nurse him back to sleep at 3am. But this kid is a breast man – he didn’t take any of these changes lightly, and as my pregnancy progressed – yes, it worked! – I’d give in to his pestering for some “side,” just so I could have a little more lazing-on-the-sofa time.

When his sister was born, we were in tandem nursing territory – another thing I’d always said I’d never do – for a while. Every time the baby latched on, her brother wanted to get in on the action, and afraid of making him resent her, I’d give in, though the sensation of two at once gave me the heebie-jeebies, to be honest. After a few weeks, I suppose, I started cutting back again for the big kid – he was two-and-a-half by now, after all. On the other hand, I was nursing one, so what was the issue with nursing the other now and then to keep him quiet too? We went back to mornings and evenings.

And there we stayed, for quite a while. When he turned four we cut out the evenings. When he turned four-and-a-half, we cut out the mornings. That was it; he was weaned. Only four years from start to finish. A simple, gradual process. Just as I had imagined. Just a tiny bit longer.

It took about a year for him to stop trying to cop a feel every time I fed his sister. I think that’s about standard.

And now he’s six. Here he’s reaching for the camera, not my boob.

Thank you for visiting the Carnival of Weaning hosted by Dionna at Code Name: Mama and Dr. Laura at Aha! Parenting .
Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants (and many thanks to Joni Rae of Tales of a Kitchen Witch for designing our lovely button):

On Breastfeeding, Weaning, and One Mother’s Identity — Jessica at Natural Parents Network has been nursing one or more of her children since 1993 – breastfeeding is wrapped up in her concept of mothering and herself. She shares her thoughts on weaning.
two tales of weaning — Aspen at Aspen Mama writes about their countdown to wean.
Wean Me Gently — Tam at Please Send Parenting Books shares a beautiful weaning ceremony.
You say potato, I say bleeeuuuuch… — Anelie at Mindcradle had read the books and knew just how to introduce her baby son to solids—unfortunately, he had other ideas.
A Post Called Weaning — (Not) Maud at Awfully Chipper writes about how weaning her son took longer than she expected.
On Weaning, Pregnancy and Emotion — Shannon at The Artful Mama talks about her mixed emotions as she allows her son, Little Man, to guide her through his weaning process.
half of her life — Staci at Springpatch Jam looks back on her nursing relationship with her first born.
Is it just this After Forty Mom or is it harder to wean when its your last? — Amanda of After Forty Mom shares her emotional journey towards the impending self-weaning of her toddler daughter.
Nursing Limits — Jorje of Momma Jorje shares how she has weaned her toddler down to minimal nursing and her guilt about the decision to do so.
Weaning Video Series #1: Preparation for the Weaning Process — Why is weaning such a taboo topic? Dionna at Code Name: Mama got mamas from across the blogosphere to start talking about weaning – on video. Come check out the first video in a series of five that she’ll be posting this week.
Weaning due to anxiety — Shannon at Pineapples & Artichokes talks about how she had to wean to preserve her mental health.
When Will I Wean? A Guest Post — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama hosts a guest post from a mama who contemplates when her breastfeeding relationship will end.
On His Own Terms — Momeeezen shares her heartbreak from when her son weaned much earlier than she anticipated.
Our Weaning Story – Sudden, Surprised, and Embracing a New Season — Weaning doesn’t always go how we imagine. That Mama Gretchen shares the story of her daughter’s sudden weaning and how she has embraced this new season of motherhood.
A Tale of Two Weanings — Valerie at Momma in Progress shares the similarities and differences of how her nursing relationships with her now six-year-old and four-year-old daughters came to a close.
She Doesn’t Remember — Alicia at Lactation Narration finds that her 6 year old no longer remembers nursing, only one year after weaning.
It’s The End of the World As We Know It — A story about the end of a tandem nursing relationship on Never Mind The Rain : A toddler moves on to a new phase in her life before mom is fully ready.
A Natural End To Our Breastfeeding Relationship — With two self-weaning children, Jennifer at Our Muddy Boots does not know when the end will come, but that it will be natural and without regrets.
Child-Led weaning: It’s Not Extreme; It’s Biological — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children explains why child-led weaning is based on biology rather than social constraints.
6 Years of Natural Weaning in 5 Steps — Jess at miniMum shares how and why she let her first child stop when he was good and ready.
Is This Weaning?: A Tandem Nursing Update — Sheila at A Living Family bares all her tandem nursing hopes and fears during what feels like the beginning of the end for her toddler nursing relationship.
Memories of Weaning: Unique and Gentle — Cynthia at The Hippie Housewife shares her weaning experiences with her two sons, each one unique in how it happened and yet equally gentle in its approach.
Weaning Aversion’ — Gentle Mama Moon shares her experience of nursing and unplanned weaning due to pregnancy-induced ‘feeding aversion’.
Three Months Post-Mup: An Evolution of Thoughts On Weaning — cd at FidgetFace describes a brief look at her planned (but accelerated) weaning, as well as one mamma’s evolution on weaning (and extended nursing)
Weaning my Tandem Nursed Toddler — After tandem nursing for a year, Melissa at Permission to Live felt like weaning her older child would be impossible, but now she shares how gentle weaning worked for her 2 1/2 year old.
Every Journey Begins with One Step — As Hannabert begins the weaning process, Hannah at Hannah and Horn ‘s super power is diminishing.
Reflections on Weaning – Love Changes Form — Amy from Presence Parenting (guest posting at Dulce de Leche ) shares her experience and approach of embracing weaning as a continual process in parenting, not just breastfeeding.
Weaning Gently: Three Special Ideas for Success — MudpieMama shares three ideas that help make weaning a gentle and special journey.
Guest Post: Carnival of Weaning — Emily shares her first weaning experience and her hopes for her second nursling in a guest post on Farmer’s Daughter .
12 Tips for Gentle Weaning — Dr. Laura at Aha! Parenting describes the process of gentle weaning and gives specific tips to make weaning an organic, joyful ripening.
Quiz: Should You Wean for Fertility Treatments? — Paige at Baby Dust Diaries talks about the key issues in the difficult decision to wean for infertility treatments.
I thought about weaning… — Kym at Our Crazy Corner of the World shares her story of how she thought about weaning several times, yet it still happened on its own timeline.
Celebrating Weaning — Amy at Anktangle reflects on her thoughts and feelings about weaning, and she shares a quick tutorial for one of the ways she celebrated this transition with her son: through a story book with photographs!
Naturally Weaning Twins — Kristin at Intrepid Murmurings discusses the gradual path to weaning she has taken with her preschool-aged twins.
Gentle Weaning Means Knowing When to Stop — Claire at The Adventures of Lactating Girl writes about knowing when your child is not ready to wean and taking their feelings into account in the process.
Weaning, UnWeaning, and ReWeaning — Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy discovers non-mutal weaning doesn’t have to be the end. You can have a do-over.
Prelude to weaning — Lauren at Hobo Mama talks about a tough tandem nursing period and what path she would like to encourage her older nursling to take.
Demands of a Nursing Kind — Amy Willa at Me, Mothering, and Making it All Work shares her conflicted feelings about nursing limits and explores different ways to achieve comfort, peace, and bodily integrity as a nursing mother.
Breastfeeding: If there’s one thing I know for sure… — Wendy at ABCs and Garden Peas explores the question: How do you know when it’s time to wean?
Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Two, Three? — Zoie at TouchstoneZ discusses going from 3 nurslings down to 1 and what might happen when her twins arrive.

A quick run down

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Time Mabel went to sleep last night: 9.30 pm
Time Mabel woke up last night: 2.30 am (that’s actually quite good, you know)
Time it felt like it took to get her back to sleep: 2 hours, give or take (that’s not good)
Time somebody decided to ring our phone before changing their mind: 5.15 am
Time I actually got up: 6.45 am
Amount I felt like running a race: Not even a little bit
Time I left the house: 7.10 am
Time spent loitering around once I’d attached my number to my t-shirt with safety pins and my chip to my shoe: 30 minutes
Time the race started: 8 am
Number of runners who streaked ahead of me very quickly: Most of them
Number of walkers still behind me: A few, I hope
Number of runners who passed me clearly already on their second lap while I was still completing my first: About 6
Number of times we went around the lake: 2
Number of fluffy ducklings I saw: 6
Number of chipmunks who dashed across my path: 1
Number of toddlers who mistakenly thought I might be their mama: 1
Number of times I did not stop running: Any
That is, because the former seems ambiguous, amount I walked: 0 cm, inches, meters, rods, poles or perches
Number of family members I was delighted to see as I rounded the final bend: All 3 lovelies
Amount I was surprised to find I could speed up to make a big finish: Quite a bit
Number of kilometers I ran: 5, Baby

This is me approaching my waiting supporters
(I don’t know what the guy in the grey is doing, but he’s going the wrong way.)

Where are my bonbons?

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I have been thinking it’s Friday since Tuesday, and it’s still only Thursday.

It’s not even as if we’ve had a particularly arduous week, or that last weekend was in any way weekday-like, but this particular five-day set seems to be dragging its heels, at least in my head.

My house is a mess, because I can do (partially) clean or somewhat tidy, but not both at the same time. I can keep the kitchen clean, the fridge somewhat stocked, and the laundry up to date, but not the bathrooms scrubbed too.

(When we arrived in the first of our three hotels on our recent California trip and looked in the bathroom, Mabel marvelled at how shiny and white everything was. A girl could get used to that sort of thing, if she never had to keep it shiny and white herself. When I got back into our own car at the airport, I have to admit it looked awfully dusty compared to the enormous rental vehicle we’d been driving for the previous few days. And then the added exertion of having to lift one’s foot to the clutch and actually change gear… sigh. But I digress.)

Mabel was amusing herself nicely this morning, and at one point I found her lying on her tummy on the hardwood floor.

“I’m just blowing a dead bug across the floor,” she told me.

Time to sweep downstairs too, maybe.