Velveteen Mind

In a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

   

   

   

   

 

 

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Toddler Politics and Fridge Stocking

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You Loot, We Shoot

Three years ago today, Hurricane Katrina demolished the Gulf Coast.  We lost everything we owned, save for three days' worth of clothes, one guitar, a handful of photos, and our lives.

We evacuated ahead of the storm, as we always do and always will.

We had no idea what Katrina had wrought until a few days after she was gone.  The video below is of us at Maguire's parents' house, blissfully ignorant of how our lives were changing as we sat in the dark. 

While we played with a 13 month old Q, our home was going under water.  It was being battered and blown to bits.  His toys were being submerged and smashed and dragged out to the Gulf of Mexico.  His Christening gown, passed down from his great-grandfather, worn by his grandfather, by Maguire, and then by him, being swept away. 

Every photograph and journal I had saved so carefully since elementary school, warping and floating away.  The photos from college, where Maguire and I met.  Our wedding.  Our honeymoon.  The photos of me pregnant.  The photos and videos of Q's birth.  The videos of him learning to walk and talk...  all gone.  And we had no idea.

 

Night of Katrina from Megan Jordan on Vimeo. 

 

What Katrina left us was the gift of charity.  The importance of family and friends.  The impermanence of the material and the futility of regret.

As I sit here, hurricanes are forming to the south of us.  And yet we remain.  We will evacuate, but not before protecting all that we have rebuilt.  All that we have fought for and struggled to call home again.

But we will evacuate.  And with us, we will take our most precious gift from Katrina, our son Goose.  Because one other possession Hurricane Katrina took away from me was the illusion of control.  Had it not been for her, I would not have released my need to plan every moment.  I would not have opened my carefully guarded life to the unexpected gift of the right baby at the wrong time.

Thank you, Katrina, you complete and utter wench.

But Gustav and Hanna? 

Stay off of my property because looters will be shot.

And yeah, that's my dad.  And, yes, he will shoot you. 

~~~

Feed readers, if you don't see the video, be sure to click through.

~~~

Related Posts:

Victor Vito (our Katrina story)

Camille was a Lady, Katrina was a Bitch (on the 2nd anniversary)

Hierarchy of Suffering (why being a victim is a waste of energy)

Resilience or Defiance: on the Third Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

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Supernanny Don't Fail Me Now

Goose turned two in July.  Since then, he has welcomed the "terrible" with open arms.  He has become a yelling, pouting, hitting, throwing, crying, stomping cliché.

In turn, he has turned me into the clichéd fretting mother, constantly wondering where I have gone wrong and how I can save him from himself.  Looking for stopgap solutions so that we can all just make it through the day, for crying out loud.

When, in truth, what I need to do is back away, put the cookie back into the cookie jar, and let him work his way through it on his own.  Tough love and all that jazz.

But damn if that isn't hard.

Goose started attending preschool two half-days a week this month.  Nicely coinciding with that was the introduction of separation anxiety that arrives so conveniently at his age.   The result is an undercurrent of mutteringly-hostile "I no go school" chants under his breath any time I look like I might put shoes on him.  Or brush his hair.  Or look in the direction of the garage.

A weaker mother might give in to his sad eyes and pouting lips as he proclaims that he is, in fact, ready to go back to bed at 7:45 a.m. because he "no go school."  A weaker mother like, say, his father.

But no.  We are going to tough this out.  We are not going to decide that he's just two and doesn't really need to be in preschool, anyway.  That he can stay home another year and risk even having a spot in the impossible-to-get-into preschool that we love because they are not overly competitive or encourage over-scheduling.

We are not going to decide that this is too hard for Goose.

The surest way to make life hard for your kids is to make it soft for them.

I have said that before and I'm saying it here again because I need it as a reminder.  I will not bail out my kids just because they are uncomfortable.

But damn if this isn't hard.

None of us likes to see our children struggle or in pain.  Particularly if we can help them.  But by helping them, by bailing them out, by protecting them from disappointment, what are we truly accomplishing in the long run?

We are depriving them of pride.

I used to watch Supernanny all the time.  One of my favorite episodes focused on a mother that had slept in her son's room every night since she brought him home from the hospital.  Take that a step further and you realize that she had not spent the night in bed with her husband since she brought her son home from the hospital five years earlier.

Not that she hadn't tried.  She had tried to persuade her son to sleep alone, but the resulting tantrums and visible emotional pain were too much for her to bear.  So she caved.  Night after night.  She caved.

Needless to say, this kind of weakness extended into other areas of their life to the point that they had to bring in Supernanny, Jo Frost. 

One of the first things Jo did was walk the mother through getting her son to sleep through the night alone for the first time.  Her technique is simple and boils down to that after some measure of comfort, you simply return them to bed each and every time they try to leave the room and you do not engage them.  After hours of this tortuously stoic approach, I'll be damned if the little boy didn't sleep in his bed alone.  For the first time in his life.

The next morning, he entered the kitchen and displayed something his mother had never witnessed so purely before:  pride.  He was proud of himself for having slept by himself. 

Despite all of her best efforts to protect him from pain and discomfort, his mother had been surely succeeding in doing one thing that would last longer than any amount of comfort that her presence in his bedroom could provide: She had been depriving him of pride.

This realization was stunning, to say the least.  It was also not nearly as dramatic as I am making it out to be, but it dramatically impressed upon me the importance of allowing our children to, in essence, learn how to fish rather than giving them a fish.  Regardless of how hungry they may appear at that moment.

So tonight, when Goose came out of his bedroom in tears for the fourth time in as many minutes, I caught myself engaging him.  I was literally in mid-comforting hysteria (you know the kind, as you are on the edge of breaking down but don't want to let them know that you might have to throw them out the window), when I stopped mid-sentence and saw Supernanny in my mind. 

Crazy as that sounds.

I stopped talking, or, I should say that I stopped pleading, closed my mouth, scooped him up, delivered him to his bed, and walked out.  I only had to do this one more time and as I sit here, he has still not left his bed.  Sure, there was some sniffling, but if you can't handle some sniffling and mumbling about "no, Q's bed!" and "no go school," then you might want to reconsider having that second or third child.

...

Wait...

...

Well, I'll be damned. 

I just heard Maguire, my husband, leave Goose's room. 

A weaker mother would have snuck in there and lain on the floor until Goose fell asleep. 

I appear to have married a weaker mother.

I'll be damned.

Consider this to be continued...

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Engaged and Underage: Toddler Love and Dancing Pigs

My oldest son recently turned four.  For all practical purposes, he is a man now.  Or so he would have us believe.

Apparently, he is getting married soon.  I thought I had at least fourteen more years with him, at the very least given that we do live in Mississippi, but we have had a good run.  It would be disingenuous of me to act surprised at the news of his impending marriage, though, as I clearly should have seen this coming.

(Up until this point on my blog, I've always referred to my oldest son as "Pants."  This is short for Mr. Pee Pants, which is something we've called him since he was a baby, a play on an Aqua Teen Hunger Force character called MC Pee Pants.  But men shouldn't be called by baby names such as "Pants," so before I tell you the story of how he came to become engaged, I think the time has come to change his "blog name."

Pants, my quintessential first born son, full of entertaining quirkiness, endearing with your quiet loveliness, I hereby christen you with your new blog pseudonym:  "Q." 

Jot that down folks.  We don't do reminders around here, mostly because I forget to, a la Sweet Valley High intro chapters about the characteristics of Elizabeth vs. Jessica.  Pants is now Q.  Done.  Blog magic, no legal forms involved.  Now back to the story of how my baby became fodder for an MTV reality show.)

While blogging doing housewife-ish things the other day, I overheard Q and his younger brother, Goose, arguing in the kitchen over a toy.   Q ultimately cornered Goose against the cabinets and said, "Just listen to me.  You should give me [the toy] because I'm going to have to leave you some day." 

Goose responded in his best Toy Nazi tone with "No toy for you!"  He's two, but he has a keen sense of pop-culture humor. 

Q then calmly explained, "Look, some day I'm going to get a girlfriend and I'm going to have to leave you.  Now just give me the toy and we'll play."

How little time we all have together.  Thank God Q is here to remind us that someday soon he'll choose hooking up with his girlfriend over playing with his baby brother.

Good grief, people.  I about fell out of my chair over the dishwasher when I heard his Imminent Girlfriend Warning.  He was so serious and I swear to you, Goose eventually bought the argument!

I had almost forgotten to remember that we had best all bend to Q's wishes because we are going to miss him when he's out macking on the ladies, when he offered another reminder the other day. 

Q goes to a local Montessori school three days a week, so Goose and I were picking him up the other day and loading the circus that is our family into the car when Q broke the news...

Q:  "I asked Evelyn to marry me today."

Goose, don't say he didn't warn us.  Like three days ago.

Me:  Really?  Evelyn, huh?  What did she say?

Q:  She said yes.  We are going to get married outside.  I really love her.

Me:  Yeah, that Evelyn is something else.  She's really pretty, don't you think?

Q:  Yes and she can run fast.

Had I known that running speed is how men choose their wives, I would have spent more time in training.  As it is, I don't think I even owned running shoes when I met my husband.  Ah, the "what if's" of life...

Me:  So, who is paying for this wedding?

Q:  Pa will, but you and Dad can come, and Goose.  And Cittie and Granddad.  And Ghee.  And Luke. 

Goose:  I want to party.

(note:  This sounds like an entirely coherent contribution to the conversation, but Goose is two and once he caught on enough to realize there were invitations involved in whatever it was we were talking about, he was up for any party.)

Q:  You can dance with Dad, I'll dance with Evelyn.  Goose can dance with his girlfriend...  And then I'll hire a dancing pig to sit with her mother.

Me:  Evelyn's mother?

Q:  Of course.

Ah, of course. 

My little man, Q.  He has already caught on to the delicate nature of the relationship between son-in-law and mother-in-law.  I have to say, setting her up with a dancing pig right out of the gate is one way to set the expectations for a relationship.

Q:  No, actually I'll get a dancing monkey to dance with Goose.

Goose:  "A pirate says 'Arrrrrrr!'"

The end...

Good grief.  I really am a mom.

Conversations like that make me think I should stop lacing my coffee with LSD.  How else do you explain these conversations with toddlers? 

The funny thing is, if you are a parent, the progression of that conversation probably not only made sense, but sounded familiar.

Welcome to toddler parenthood.  Leave your disbelief at the door.  Dancing pigs are real and like going to weddings just as much as the rest of us.

And don't forget the dancing monkeys, too.

Arrrrrr! 

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