Things my husband and I argue about

Ever since I was a little kid I have had an issue with shouting. I don't like certain noises, and shouting gives me a headache. I particularly don't like shouting indoors, and to be even more specific, shouting from one room to another is up there with the best, we are talking migraine noise level capacity. It is not so much the volume, but the fact that it usually requires a response from me, who is in the other room, and I have to strain myself to get heard and that takes physical energy and boom! - there you go - bring on the headache.
It also implies that what you are doing isn't that important since if you don't want to shout back, you have to stop what you are doing and walk away from it in order to keep up the conversation. It is a disrespectful interruption when in reality, all the person needed to do is to walk over to you, like you would in any other civilized situation and talk to you in a normal voice.

This morning I was in the bathroom doing my beauty regime (one layer of mascara and a pimple squeeze) whilst talking to my husband when he suddenly leaves the room and disappears upstairs.
- Oh, and another thing! I hear him shout down the stairs.
- Uh huh.
No response. Of course - he's upstairs. But I am not leaving the mirror. The pimple needs covering up, he knows where I am. To talk to him I would have to walk out of the bathroom, through the bedroom and out in to the family room so that I can communicate up the stairs which feels like an unfair amount of interruption on my behalf since I only have two minutes to get myself presentable before I have to take off.
He shouts my name:
- Honey!?
- Yes! I shout back as loud as I can. Not annoyed, just to mark: I am down here - love of my life.

And there it is, the headache, in my head, and the sulky mood, coming towards me with in shape of my husband thundering downstairs.
- Well, forget about it, then. If you're gonna have an attitude about it, I'm not going to tell you.
He's saying this in a normal voice, speaking slowly and clearly, whilst standing outside the bathroom, to make sure I can really hear him.

Food

I am not seriously worried about this, so please don't start talking "eating disorder" after this post. It's not that, it is just a very, very annoying habit of talking and being preoccupied, and therefor forgetting that you don't have three hours to finish your school lunch.
Kate has come home with a more than empty lunch box several days in a row now. At first we kind of let it slide, because we don't like making a big thing out of food, but yesterday she was completely listless at pick-up, complained about a headache and went straight to bed and fell asleep when we came home.
So we needed to have a big talk. About food, energy, growing, staying healthy, and the relationship between them all.
Not the first time we have done this. Will it be the last....?

Spring time

There are only a few more weeks of school and after that we have a nice, long summer vacation to look forward to. When I grew up this was usually my favorite time of the year. Spring had arrived, the trees were green, everything was in blossom, it was getting warmer, the evenings lighter, and there was a general feel of mellowing out, taking it slow and hanging out.
But since moving to Norcal, where we have no seasons, just different shades of fog and sometimes rain, I don't get that feeling of excitement and anticipation, mostly because I forget what time it is, there are no daffodils to remind me....


There are so many things I love about living out here, but clearly defined seasons are one of the things I miss the most.

play date

When I was growing up in the 70's (oh yes, back in the days) I lived in a very safe neighborhood with a nice park right opposite my house, and lot's of children. We used to play everywhere, for hours, without our parent's really knowing where we were. As long as we kept our curfew and didn't break anyone or anything, we were good. The group of kids where very diverse. It was boys and girls, different ages, from different socio-economic backgrounds. Siblings and only children, they goody two-shoes and the ADD's, all playing together, having fun and working it out as we went along. As I said, we were not particularly supervised and sometimes I think our parent's would have gasped in horror if they knew how we resorted to solve some of our more intricate personal or practical issues. But we did OK. And it was part of growing up.
The important thing to remember here is that our parents usually sent us out to play because they had jobs to do, or dinner to cook, or they simply didn't feel like entertaining us and was going crazy because of the noise level.

Today, we don't send children out to play because we need time, instead, the playdate has become yet another thing to cram in to our already busy schedule. it needs to be planned, scheduled and organized with a level of invention and creativity that surpasses even the most clever of pre-school teachers.

I find that we focus to hard on shaping experiences that won't actually provide anything to our children's well-being. We try to hard to find the perfect friendship-match. We select and choose their friends based on soccer-skills, number of siblings, or which company the parent's happen to work for. After a certain age boys have to play with boys, and girls need to stick with girls. We ferry them from one organized activity to the next and cramp in 15 minutes of climbing time on the play structure in between. But most importantly: we don't just let our children get on with it.
I am sad to see that we try to lay it out for them, nicely presented, all details taken care off, without even thinking about whether this is actually going to benefit our kids or not.
I know that today's society looks different from what it did 30 years ago, I appreciate that we can't just open up the doors and let the kids run around to the same extent as we used to do, but why make it any worse than it already is?
Why does every playdate have to planned down to the last cup-cake? Why do we have to organize everything according to a set schedule all the time?

When Leo was born I couldn't keep up with the level of energy required for some of Kate's more elaborate play-dates and so I made an unconscious decision to just remove ourselves from the play date scene. These days, playdates look like this: drop them of at our house whenever you like, and pick them up whenever you like (without pushing it too far....). Please prepare your child that there will be no organized fun or scheduled activities, nor will I step in as play-mentor during the inevitable times of temporary boredom. Your child should be positive, and not expect anything beyond normal dietary food-staples on the snack plate, however, should he/she wish to add a little sugar on top, a nice word goes a long way.
Feel free to reciprocate the invite and in return: my child does not expect miracles!

I haven't been able to write for a while but I will be back next week. Until then I leave you with these very wise words from Kate:

Nothing is impossible, except for some things.
Like, it is impossible for ice-cream not to melt when you're eating it in the sun.

Oh my, oh dear

The sun is coming out and Kate needed shorts. I take her to Gap and tell her to pick out a bunch of shorts that she likes and then we can try them out to find her one or two pairs that fit.
She goes for denim, the skinny, knee-length one's with little sparkles and embroideries on. They are all very cute, and very cool. She's beaming on her way to the fitting-room.
- You're the best mummy! I love you so much! she says. You let me pick my own clothes instead of telling me what to wear.

I smile, but inside I'm shaking.
It won't be long before this changes. Very soon we will have blazing rows about her dress-sense. She will express herself through clothes more than now, in a more intense way, and I will only see negatives.
I treasure these moments for now.
Kate, you are always going to be my little girl, but soon there will come a day when you will hate me more than you can possibly imagine.

Reading that will make you see red - if you are a woman, that is

Amnesty International recently released a report claiming that two to three women die every day in the US due to pregnancy and birth-related issues. It also claimed that pregnancy-related complications leading to near death - "near misses" has risen by 25% since 1998.
Not surprisingly, minorities such as Native and African American, and women in low-income groups are most affected.

The reasons are many, but none of them acceptable to a first world country as the US: health-care being one of the main culprits since it is leaving many women without of with inefficient pre-natal care but other reasons, such as Doctor-lead deliveries which are resulting in a larger number of inductions and c-sections than necessary are also significantly increasing risks of failure and putting far too many women at risk before and during birth.

So, add to this, insufficient maternity leave and expensive childcare, where does this leave US on the map for good places to be a mother? Number 28, according to a report made by Save the Children. It is interesting to note that 4 of the top 5 countries are Scandinavian (Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Denmark).
It is something to think about.

Taking Kate to her swimming lesson on Saturday mornings has become an issue of some arguments between me and my husband. It is something about having to wait around with the other parents that always puts us in a bad mood. Their kids are pushy, spoiled, whinging and bratty. They scream, talk back to their parents, and have pushed Leo of a play-structure more than once without ever getting reprimanded.
But the parents also seem to all come from a Stepford suburb.They are so far from natural, down-to-earth, chilled and laid-back that it is exhausting just listening to them interact.
To them, swim lesson seem to be a drill, a military operation, that needs to be managed and controlled by carefully used encouragements from the pool side.
I don't know why they need to use "the voice", why they have to talk REALLY LOUDLY or why they need to pronounce e-v-e-r-y- s-i-n-g-l-e word r-e-a-l-l-y- s-l-o-w-l-y.
Y-o-u-'-r-e k-i-d w-i-l-l u-n-d-e-r-s-t-a-n-d y-o-u - n-o n-e-e-d t-o s-h-o-u-t!

Then I realized, after having had a dad shout in my ear while he was talking to his daughter:
- You did some awesome up-faces today! Boy, it sure is crowded in here. Hey sugar-top. Let's go put on your bright sparkling t-shirt, sweet girl, and go have some fun in the park.
The sentence reads very innocent, I realize that. But add to that a voice so animated, so over-the-top-enthusiastic and so incredibly fake, you will wish that you were very far away.
There is only one place he could've picked it up from:
By watching Clifford the Big Red Dog.
Please - parent, don't copy your kid's cartoon. It's a children's show. Not a lesson on eloquence.
Use you're own language, and talk to your children like they are normal human beings - because they are. They live in the real world, amongst real people and you are not part of some dream-land fairy tale cartoon where you get to talk in a mock voice. Be yourself!