Explaining the world: Act Two, Just us Boys

[In case you missed it, Act One: Manikins]

Act Two: Just us boys

Monday, JB went for a follow up ENT appointment.

He was so good. So tolerant of people sticking things into the holes on his face. So willing to listen. So "Chill-ax" for a 2.5 year old. (This is a new thing we are saying around here... the other day JB told ML to "chill out" and Katy and I thought that sounded a little harsh even though we knew it came directly out of our mouths, so we started saying, "Chill-ax".)

The audiologist left the room after her initial round of tests and my son and I were left alone together. I was quiet, a little zoned out. Even though I expected nothing but good news, I was a little stressed coming in that we might be told his tubes were not in place. I was enjoying the peace of knowing that was not the case. JB was swinging his legs gently; looking around the joint. He asked me what a few things hanging on the wall were: oxygen, suction setup, electrical outlets, decorations. Then he slapped his hands on his lap and said in a sort of sigh, "Two boys."

"Two boys" He repeats, as he looks up at the ceiling and down the opposite wall.

"Hmm?" I snap out of my mental vacation, but have no idea what he is talking about. "Who?" I ask. "You and ML?"

"NO," he replied with increased urgency: "Two boys! You and me."

Oh.

I look at our matching jeans. Both wearing boots. The LLBean coats I'm carrying around: One is red and tiny- a miniature replica of the green one that keeps me warm, yes- but more importantly, it's pockets eliminate my need to carry around a "purse" or bag for the winter.

I smile to myself as I consider exactly what characteristics that he might associate with "boyhood". I certainly still dress pretty tom-boyish compared to a lot of women out there, but I'm pretty big chested and don't really see myself as someone who would be mistaken for a boy (by adults).

"There are two of us, but Mommy's not a boy." I tell him.

He brings his hand to his mouth and cracks up because he thinks I am kidding: "That's silly, Mommy."

I laugh because because his giggles are infectious and because we have taught him to be comical and to assume that we are joking with him and to recognize teasing and appreciate a good joke. Last week I did something he thought was funny and he told me I was "hilarious"...

Katy and I have talked to JB about the "penis and vagina" thing as a way to differentiate between boys and girls, but that day in the ENT's office, no one was naked... and people are not always going to be naked when we are looking at them to decide if they are boys or girls; and gender is so much more complex than that.

The truth is that we have a lot of friends and family that fit into very stereotypical "girl" and "boy" labels. But we have a lot of friends and family that might blend or blur those labels either in the way they dress, or keep their hair, the way they act, the jobs they do, or the hobbies they enjoy. And frankly, I'm much more intrigued by his perspective. I'd rather spend this time learning the things that he thinks make someone a boy or a girl (for my own curiosity's sake) than drilling into him that girls have penis' and boys have vaginas (Strike that, Reverse it: I wrote that wrong, but I think I'll keep it wrong to let you measure how close that statement comes to making your head explode.)

"No it's true," I tell him. "Mommy is a girl and you are a boy. Mommy and Mama have two boys, you and ML, but we are both girls." He looks at me with a crooked smile waiting to see if I'm serious or not. Then we review the boys in our life and the girls in our life. He's fine with it. No more commentary. No questions. No discomfort. And a practically alarming lack of "whys" considering how often that word normally pops up in any discussion with him.

We finish the visit and he charms everyone with ongoing cuteness. On our way home, we stop at the mall and at one point run into a sales woman with a 1/2 inch long horseshoe shaped mustache. She was wearing a skirt, a v-neck shirt that advertised a push up bra and an ample bosom, and a pair of fashionable, women's high-heeled boots. She was working at Lord and Taylor and even my "well-educated, feminist, homosexual" brain was wondering if we were being "Punked". The mustache grew down beyond the corners of her mouth and the hair was dark and grew thickly. She did not seem to be old enough to be menopausal. I mentally applauded her courage. This juxtaposition of gender characteristics is rare in salespeople; and whatever the back story, she must face a fair amount of public scrutiny.

A different kid, a different day, a different moment, JB would have would have been all over this. He would have pointed to her and asked me about her "whiskers" because he is exceedingly attentive to details, incongruencies, and is generally curious about facial hair. But that day, he was totally un-phased.

Later, we're driving home after picking up ML from day care. JB and I pepper him with questions he can't answer, "How was your day, ML?" "What did you do?" "Did you have a good day?" "Are you hungry?" As we turn onto our street, JB sighs a satisfied sigh, like he just ate a good meal with some buddies and says, in his singsongy way that turns 2 syllables into 6: "Three boys..."

I laugh out loud. "Three boys? In this car?"

"Yes-" he starts to say, and then, "Nooooooooooooo..." his cooing elongates the word as if that is necessary to cover the mistake. He remembers: "You are a girl mommy."

We have a lot more conversations ahead of us. There will be a lot of car rides and times waiting together in offices and late night chats about the differences between boys and girls... And what it means to be a girl or to be a boy... And how to satisfy and combat the associated expectations of those labels... And why there is not a dad in our house and what that means and how that feels.

There will be a lot more to come about how some people are girls and some are boys and some are both and some look like one but feel like the other. There will be a lot coming up about how the world has generally treated girls and boys, set them apart, set them up to compete, and sometimes hurt each other or hold each other in contempt. We will have to discuss how history has sometimes been cruel to both genders and things can still be unfair and hurtful. There will be a lot about what it means to be a real man and how being tough and strong sometimes means standing up for yourself or others, and sometimes means holding someone while they cry, and sometimes means walking away and refusing to fight. There will be a lot about what being gay means and what being straight means and what being bi- means and how sexual orientation is different from gender identification.
O.
M.
G.
We have a lot ahead of us in explaining this part of the world... but for now, I don't want him to care too much or even know too much about the difference. Right now, he is perfect not really understanding. We just have to give him a little so that he gets enough of it "right" at school that no one calls DCF on us!

I smile into the rear-view mirror: "I am a girl who loves my boys," I tell them.

Rough few days

The week has been hard already and the snow is coming now.

Snow is not a metaphor... I really mean "snow" as in "wintery mix" that will either bury us or miss us completely- we won't know until it is over this weekend. The weather people are way off their game this year.

I am hurting from a lack of sleep. I stayed up Monday to write that post and then was up most of the night with both kids and in the morning I felt like I might not make it. The boys have been needy and I have been short tempered at times. Tuesday's drop off left my nerves shot because I spent an hour rushing them (esp JB) out of the house. Rushing the kids is my least favorite part of parenting (though fingernail and toenail trimming run a close 2nd)... but there is really no way around rushing them sometimes. I tried not to cry on the drive to work, but a few tears did leak out.

Last night I got a few hours of sleep and woke up feeling better. I even worked out tonight, so I am feeling NOT as much like DYING as I was the day before... But JB was sent home from school after vomiting. And ML slept fairly well last night, so tonight will likely not go as well. Both kids have terrible coughs. They are drippy messes and i wouldn't be surprised if JB's stomach thing is merely associated with mucus production and inadvertent digestion of said mucus. I say that now fully aware I may be cleaning vomit and/or diarrhea and changing sheets before dawn. Now Katy seems to be coming down with something. None of us really felt like eating diner. She asked for a protein shake and we gave JB a few sips of that with some pedialite. ML ate almost as much as either of them in the form of drippy rice cereal.

The wife and I have tickets to see a show in NYC this weekend (Christmas gift from my sis and Bill- who have agreed to also take our kids for 2 nights.) We have been looking toward the weekend like it is a drink of water and we are in the desert, but if JB is actually sick (there seems to be 2 bugs going around day care: a real 24 hour GI bug and then the "your kid puked at day care, but went home and didn't seem sick at all pseudo-bug") and/or if Katy is sick, the weekend might not be a weekend at all but just a drive in for a show.

I hope not. I'm really looking forward to spending some alone time with her and perhaps getting 8 or so hrs of uninterrupted sleep.

Explaining the world: Act One, Manikins

So this is the thing about becoming a parent...
A thoughtful individual plans for it, but it is exceedingly difficult to imagine how it will manifest itself... or when.

This week has been full of heartwarming and amazing interactions with JB that have kept an exciting and startling notion ever-present in the frontal lobe of my brain. Namely, this: On a daily basis it is our job to EXPLAIN the ENTIRE WORLD to these kids. I cannot tell you how many times in the last 2 weeks I nearly died: D.I.E.D. at how cute and smart our 2 (and nearly 1/2) year old is. No offense to ML. I'm sure he will be as heart-wrenchingly glorious, but from my perspective 2 and 1/2 is where most of life gets taught and (for better or for worse) in a tentatively adorable way, gets regurgitated back.

I've been listening to a lot of "This American Life" lately, so this post is going to be broken down into 4 posts and/or 4 Acts.

Act One: Manikins

So Saturday is the day we (JB and I) go to gymnastics. He started going with my sister during ML's illness. He went 3 or 4 weeks in a row when she was taking care of him and at that point we just signed him up. When he started, he couldn't jump (2 feet simultaneously off the ground) and he wouldn't do the stretches (instead just stubbornly standing with his hands clasped behind his back, staring down at the mat like a very tiny Rainman while everyone else did the warm up stretches.) Now, nearly a 1/2 a year later, he has all these moves and stretches and so much more control over his body. It is really impressive and it is really sweet.

This week after gymnastics, I had a lot of errands to run, so I called Katy and told her that JB and I were headed out into the world. He got a haircut, we got a bagel, and then went to a few stores to look for clothes for him and some other things.

He seems to really like shopping. I don't mean that he wants to buy things, he likes to go out into the world and look at things and ask what they are and what they are for, and listen and look and (sometimes) touch. I mean he is a bit of a "student of life" and there is no better way to learn about life in a capitalisitc society than hitting the shops. He understands that we go into stores and the "stuff" contained within isn't "ours" unless we buy it. This took a little bit of time to get him to understand and now even though he doesn't really understand about the different costs of things, he knows that we go to work to "bring home the bacon" and that the stores just don't give you what you want... unless you give them some money or a credit card. He understands there are different kinds of stores and will ask if we say we are going to a store: "Grocery?" or sometimes, "Which one?"

Sometimes while shopping, he asks if we can buy something; but he's just as likely to point to something in a store and ask us to "look at this, Mommy." or ask, "What is that?" or tell us what something seems to be to him: "That looks like Lion King, Mommy."

He was super sweet when I took him into an electronic/game store. Browsing for our barely played Wii, i let him roam fairly untethered around looking at the covers of the empty game cases. At one point, he crawled half his body under a shelving unit and I looked at him like, "What the hell are you doing?!?" He wiggled out and presented me with a penny that he had just rescued from what was sure to be a losing battle with the nozzle of a carelessly run vacuum: "Here. I found this, Mommy."

Then in the second hand store, he tried on all the shoes I asked him to and he begged for the 4 sizes too big "Lightening McQueen" rain boots.

At the party supply store, he turned into an 80 year old (easily thrilled) woman before my eyes: Every new color of table cloth and decorative cup was like a miracle to him. "Mommy. Mommy. Look. Look. I wanna show you something... look, blue cups!!! Mommy. Mommy. Look, Green cups!! Ma. Mommy. Pink cups!!!" I was snickering and giggling, and laughing through the entire store. There were life size M and Ms that almost sent him over the edge. There was a wall of Mylar balloons that nearly blew his mind. There were FORKS IN EVERY COLOR!!! When we went down the aisle that had "themed supplies" he found a "Cars" plastic platter, chip and dip holder with Mater and Lightening McQueen on it. He held up the platter near his tiny head, and tilting it up toward me he whimpered: "Mommy, Look!!! This is Adorable!!!"

The entire time we were in there, he didn't ask to buy any of this stuff. I know b/c I was so in love with him during this outing that if he had desired a package of cups in every color, they would probably be in our basement right now...

He just seemed to be enjoying the fact that it is all out there to look at and see. Truth be told, this is a lot of what shopping is to me too. Sometimes I want to go out and spend money. But more often than not, I can walk thru a store like target, fill up a cart and slowly unfill it as I approach the checkout. Just looking around at all the shit that is out there, is fairly satisfying to me.

Last stop was Gap. I had to return a gift that was purchased on line and it took a long time to get a store credit b/c the computer kept just wanting to credit the card that was originally charged. JB was getting a little rambunctious and at some point I turned my attention to him. He looked at me and then at these two manikins nearby. After several moments of eyeballing the manikins he said, "What that mommy?" I explained what they were and the name: Manikin. I explained what they were for: to display the clothes and that they weren't real, they only existed so that people could see how the clothes look when they get worn. JB asked me, "He going somewhere?" I was perplexed for a few seconds until I grasped his point.

"No," I replied. "That one is wearing a bag, and that one is wearing a coat. They are dressed to look like they are going somewhere, but they don't leave the store. They don't walk or move. They aren't real."

He thought about this and asked a follow up, "They just pretending?" I agreed with that assessment and re-iterated the purpose of manikins to display clothes. Then he looked around the store with the confused and somewhat horrified expression of someone who wakes up to a world he barely recognizes:"Mommy, they everywhere."

I could seriously have died. He slays me. In the 3 days since the eye-opening discovery of manikins, JB cannot stop talking about them. And I too am forever changed. They really are kind of creepy. The ones in Gap don't even heads. and if you go into a store like that and you are just looking around with the intention to notice such things, they really ARE everywhere.

But more importantly, How cute is this kid?

The kind of snow I love

It snowed last night and until about 8pm tonight.

It snowed 2-3 times more than it did last week when the entire state was shut down... But nothing was shut down. The commute home was a little messy. But JB got to "hunt" plows- which is what we call it when he scans the roads and shouts, "PLOW" every time he sees one; and when he stops and asks, "What's that noise?" after he hears anything in the distance that could be even remotely compared to a plow.

This is the kind of snow I love- fluffy, light, but with snowball/sticky properties. The kind that sticks to every branch of the trees; winter-wonderland-esque. Truly beautiful and amazing- the kind of snow that makes you want to take your kid sledding- if he weren't afraid and crying anytime he accidentally touches the stuff...

In a related story, our driveway is HUGE! 9 inches of fluffy-sticky snow is (well let's just leave it at) a lot! I was out there for 2 hours and the "heartbreak" (that's what we call the chunky, heavy snow excrement that the plows dump where the driveway meets the road) nearly killed me. For the last 15 minutes, the only think that kept me from leaving a snow barricade at the end of the driveway was hearing myself shout, "LAST CHANCE WORKOUT" every few minutes as if Jillian Michaels was telling me I couldn't give up and go in...

I was not impressed with the neighbors... 2 guys out with their snow blowers took 20 minutes of their lives to clean up their driveways while I was almost dying- approaching the 90 minute mark with my shovel. There was no offer of assistance with the heavy snow... Maybe they didn't see me. Or they thought I had a snow blower since I was throwing the snow so high and so expertly. Or they didn't hear me grunting and sniffling (possibly over the sound of their own whistling).

Words to live by

My friend- Laurie's dad died a year ago today.
She shared with me an email she sent to her siblings this morning asking them to join her in visiting memories of their dad and the things they learned from him.

Here's her list:

- Always root for the underdog, “Go Saints!”
- Be proud of driving an old car
- Dress conservatively while you act radically
- Make a contribution to the world
- Change the world for the better
- Believe in science
- Human beings are flawed but we still love them
- Strive to find out what makes people “tick”

It touched me, this list.
Each are things I want to teach my kids.
Each are things I'm proud to have been taught along the way.
RIP, Wagner - still touching the lives of people that never even met you.

Constantly entertained by big brother

ML loves watching JB.

And sometimes JB will perform for him too.