Monday, April 2, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Blahg
Here's a pet peeve: People who come to their neglected blogs to blog about how guilty they feel for neglecting their blogs.
Here's a confession: I feel kinda guilty for neglecting my blog.
There's no shortage of hilarity here to blog about, so why the silence? Honestly, here's a part of it: I'm not great at writing about the non-hilarity, so when my thoughts are consumed by something other than oh-my-god-my-kids-are-freaking-hilarious, I tend to sit on my hands. And so it has been since the Trayvon Martin homicide. So, so, so many other people have expressed my worries so much better than I can. But here's the short of it: It sucks—absolutely sucks—that my 6-year-old son needs to learn that he cannot behave in the same ways as his white friends and siblings if he wants to stay alive and out of jail. That he needs to know that even though we know what a good, smart, freaking hilarious kid he is, others might look at him and see a threat. That his jokes might not be seen as jokes because people will distrust him. That my sweet little boy, who agonizes with guilt when he steps on ants, will be seen as dangerous because of his beautiful brown skin.
I can't even begin to express the anger, the outrage, the sadness, and the despair that this realization causes me. And what's worse is that I didn't know it, didn't truly believe it, until I was the one with blood on the line. Sure I knew, intellectually, that there was disparity and that it sucked and that someone sure oughta do something about it. But until it was my very own child—my imperfect yet perfect love—whose humanity people would be doubting, I didn't really feel it. I consider myself an empathetic person, but my heart just never quite understood. Not until it split in two five years ago and half of it started walking around in a tiny brown body.
We live in a pretty diverse little neighborhood, by choice. We love it. But not too far away is a new-urbanism neighborhood in which I have lots of friends. It has oodles of lovely qualities, but diversity is not among them. I'm a part of the moms' online forum for that neighborhood, mostly because it's a great place to look when I need to buy used kids' gear. In the past two years, I have seen numerous messages on the group that are straight-up racial profiling broadcasts (eg, "Suspicious man walking down my block! Lock your doors!"). When the poster is questioned (if it even takes that—sometimes it's right there in the original message), that "suspicious man" is always a person of color. A few times the wives of these "suspicious men" have sent messages to the group expressing their outrage, their humiliation, their sadness over the fact that their husbands have been harassed—sometimes even detained by police and questioned for hours without the courtesy of a phone call home—because some lily white family in this lily white neighborhood has seen them not as neighbors and fellow parents, but as outsiders, threats.
Usually these outraged emails are met with disgust from other community members and calls for action, tolerance, understanding. But there also usually the "better safe than sorry!" contingent who feels racial profiling is a small price to pay if it might, by chance, prevent a crime.
Easy to say when you're not the one being detained for four hours. When you're not the one calling all the local hospitals to find out if your husband has been hit by a car, since he never came home from walking the dog after work.
It's this, these thousands of tiny cuts, that attack black men's humanity every single day. Not in ways that make the news, not in ways that generate millions of petition signatures, not in ways that land them in morgues. But it's this that skews our society and creates two completely different sets of rules, realities, and possibilites: one for the privileged, and one for everyone else.
And it haunts me that it took this
for me to truly see it.
Here's a confession: I feel kinda guilty for neglecting my blog.
There's no shortage of hilarity here to blog about, so why the silence? Honestly, here's a part of it: I'm not great at writing about the non-hilarity, so when my thoughts are consumed by something other than oh-my-god-my-kids-are-freaking-hilarious, I tend to sit on my hands. And so it has been since the Trayvon Martin homicide. So, so, so many other people have expressed my worries so much better than I can. But here's the short of it: It sucks—absolutely sucks—that my 6-year-old son needs to learn that he cannot behave in the same ways as his white friends and siblings if he wants to stay alive and out of jail. That he needs to know that even though we know what a good, smart, freaking hilarious kid he is, others might look at him and see a threat. That his jokes might not be seen as jokes because people will distrust him. That my sweet little boy, who agonizes with guilt when he steps on ants, will be seen as dangerous because of his beautiful brown skin.
I can't even begin to express the anger, the outrage, the sadness, and the despair that this realization causes me. And what's worse is that I didn't know it, didn't truly believe it, until I was the one with blood on the line. Sure I knew, intellectually, that there was disparity and that it sucked and that someone sure oughta do something about it. But until it was my very own child—my imperfect yet perfect love—whose humanity people would be doubting, I didn't really feel it. I consider myself an empathetic person, but my heart just never quite understood. Not until it split in two five years ago and half of it started walking around in a tiny brown body.
We live in a pretty diverse little neighborhood, by choice. We love it. But not too far away is a new-urbanism neighborhood in which I have lots of friends. It has oodles of lovely qualities, but diversity is not among them. I'm a part of the moms' online forum for that neighborhood, mostly because it's a great place to look when I need to buy used kids' gear. In the past two years, I have seen numerous messages on the group that are straight-up racial profiling broadcasts (eg, "Suspicious man walking down my block! Lock your doors!"). When the poster is questioned (if it even takes that—sometimes it's right there in the original message), that "suspicious man" is always a person of color. A few times the wives of these "suspicious men" have sent messages to the group expressing their outrage, their humiliation, their sadness over the fact that their husbands have been harassed—sometimes even detained by police and questioned for hours without the courtesy of a phone call home—because some lily white family in this lily white neighborhood has seen them not as neighbors and fellow parents, but as outsiders, threats.
Usually these outraged emails are met with disgust from other community members and calls for action, tolerance, understanding. But there also usually the "better safe than sorry!" contingent who feels racial profiling is a small price to pay if it might, by chance, prevent a crime.
Easy to say when you're not the one being detained for four hours. When you're not the one calling all the local hospitals to find out if your husband has been hit by a car, since he never came home from walking the dog after work.
It's this, these thousands of tiny cuts, that attack black men's humanity every single day. Not in ways that make the news, not in ways that generate millions of petition signatures, not in ways that land them in morgues. But it's this that skews our society and creates two completely different sets of rules, realities, and possibilites: one for the privileged, and one for everyone else.
And it haunts me that it took this
for me to truly see it.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Uber-carnivore
I have screwed this kid up. I tried to raise him vegetarian, but once he made the meat-animal connection, I let him make his own choices about meat eating. His choice was an enthusiastic, "More, please." The result is the worst of both worlds: He can't stand the taste or texture of meat, but he desperately wants to be a meat eater.
Enter processed meat.
This child has a passion for unidentifiable meat products that makes me fear for his future. We never serve them at home, but if you invite Sidamo to a party, you might want to put the Li'l Smokies on a high shelf.
The other day our organic grocery delivery service was having a sale on relatively un-gross bacon, so I thought I'd get some for Sidamo as a treat. We had breakfast for dinner, and he enthusiastically ate all the bacon he was served. And then had seconds and begged for thirds (I drew the line). We didn't realize it, but there was one piece of bacon left when he started his dessert—a chocolate brownie. I was talking to Greg and we didn't notice what was happening until this was already well underway:
A bacon-brownie sandwich.
Please pray for his arteries.
Enter processed meat.
This child has a passion for unidentifiable meat products that makes me fear for his future. We never serve them at home, but if you invite Sidamo to a party, you might want to put the Li'l Smokies on a high shelf.
The other day our organic grocery delivery service was having a sale on relatively un-gross bacon, so I thought I'd get some for Sidamo as a treat. We had breakfast for dinner, and he enthusiastically ate all the bacon he was served. And then had seconds and begged for thirds (I drew the line). We didn't realize it, but there was one piece of bacon left when he started his dessert—a chocolate brownie. I was talking to Greg and we didn't notice what was happening until this was already well underway:
A bacon-brownie sandwich.
Please pray for his arteries.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
An outsider's perspective
We've just hired a wonderful nanny, Mary Beth. Today is her second day, and I'm enjoying overhearing her and Nora's interactions. As I've noted, Nora sometimes throws people for a loop.
Somehow, Nora got it in her head this morning that she needs to earn $4 to buy a gumdrop, so I gave her some chores to do. She has been chattering about the gumdrop, and the money she's going to earn, as she's doing all this. I just overheard her say (again), "Yeah, and I'm going to earn FOUR DOLLARS! And I will buy a GUMDROP!" Mary Beth said, "You're pretty excited. Do you like gumdrops?" Nora: "No."
Somehow, Nora got it in her head this morning that she needs to earn $4 to buy a gumdrop, so I gave her some chores to do. She has been chattering about the gumdrop, and the money she's going to earn, as she's doing all this. I just overheard her say (again), "Yeah, and I'm going to earn FOUR DOLLARS! And I will buy a GUMDROP!" Mary Beth said, "You're pretty excited. Do you like gumdrops?" Nora: "No."
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Fort Bunk
Over the summer, we did a relatively minor basement renovation to accommodate the baby then known as Filbert. We transformed what was a pass-through/office into a proper bedroom for the big kids, and what was Sidamo's room became the baby's room. It required moving some walls, installing new flooring, adding closets, etc. Oh, and 19 trips to Ikea. I exaggerate, but not by much.
The kids love, love, love their new room. They had both been sharing Nora's old room on the main level, which is now my office, because Sidamo didn't want to be downstairs by himself. We put a lot of effort into making their new room fun, to make up for the fact that it's in the dungeon. One of their favorite features is the bunkbed fort we made for them.
We made the curtains out of plain white sheets, which we tie-dyed. Using about a million rubber bands and as many marbles.
While we were at it, we also dyed their duvet covers and all their stained white shirts.
The kids love the results, as you can see.
Their favorite thing to do is hide in their forts with piles of books and read with the illusion of privacy.
The curtains are attached—Nora's to the bed itself, Sidamo's to the ceiling—using the Kvartal system from Ikea. Total cost for the project was some where in the $60 range.
The kids love, love, love their new room. They had both been sharing Nora's old room on the main level, which is now my office, because Sidamo didn't want to be downstairs by himself. We put a lot of effort into making their new room fun, to make up for the fact that it's in the dungeon. One of their favorite features is the bunkbed fort we made for them.
We made the curtains out of plain white sheets, which we tie-dyed. Using about a million rubber bands and as many marbles.
While we were at it, we also dyed their duvet covers and all their stained white shirts.
The kids love the results, as you can see.
Their favorite thing to do is hide in their forts with piles of books and read with the illusion of privacy.
The curtains are attached—Nora's to the bed itself, Sidamo's to the ceiling—using the Kvartal system from Ikea. Total cost for the project was some where in the $60 range.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Like, for instance
This photo from the gathering this summer at the lovely Cathy's house (photo credit: Jayme) pretty much sums Nora up. After eating an entire bowl of watermelon slices that had been put out for a group of a dozen or so adult humans, Nora got to thisclose to finishing the watermelon slice she's holding in this picture before handing it to me, loudly declaring, "Eck, I don't like watermelon."
Hair products used in this photo: dirt, sweat, watermelon juice
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Character
Oh Nora. She is, as everyone who meets her points out, quite a character. I do sometimes joke that her incessant, stream-of-consciousness, often nonsensical chatter drives me to drink (umm, it's a joke. really.), but it's such an integral part of her hilarious personality that I wouldn't have it any other way. This girl really and truly is hilarious. I love trying to imagine what she'll be like as a teenager, college student, adult, but it's a little hard to picture.
Totally easy to picture, though, is what she'll be like as a crazy old lady. Because she kind of is one already.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Germs
It's mid-February, and I am already so, so very over winter germs. The big kids, being at two different schools, have brought home approximately a kazillion bugs over the past couple of months (none of the nasty stomach stuff, luckily, knock on wood). I don't think there's been a single week since maybe October when we've all been healthy. The baby has been spared so far, but now he's sick too. I don't know if our pediatrician is especially cautious or if this is protocol with young babies, but the after-hours on-call nurse had me bring him into the ER last night because he had a fever of 100.5. He and I were there until 5 a.m., he was diagnosed with a cold, and we were sent home. On the way to the ER my mama instincts were telling me to just turn around and go home, thinking that what he really needed was rest and not tests (ooh, I'm gonna have to write that one down). But I didn't, because of course if something went wrong and I hadn't followed medical advice, I would have felt awful. And better safe than sorry and all that.
But we're both still exhausted, even after getting in a good nap this afternoon. He's doing fine, other than wanting to pummel me with his tiny little fists 10 times a day when I need to do the nasal saline/suction routine. Poor guy. He's sleeping a ton, and of course I just want to sit next to him with a mirror under his nose to make sure he keeps breathing. Mamahood.
Oh, and he pooped on my hand while I was taking his temperature. So yeah, I'm ready for the germs to get on out of here. Anyone else?
But we're both still exhausted, even after getting in a good nap this afternoon. He's doing fine, other than wanting to pummel me with his tiny little fists 10 times a day when I need to do the nasal saline/suction routine. Poor guy. He's sleeping a ton, and of course I just want to sit next to him with a mirror under his nose to make sure he keeps breathing. Mamahood.
Oh, and he pooped on my hand while I was taking his temperature. So yeah, I'm ready for the germs to get on out of here. Anyone else?
Sunday, January 22, 2012
He smiles!
I dare you not to eat him.
He gave us his first smile the day after his one-month birthday, but he's still very stingy with them. I finally caught one on camera phone today. How stinking cute is this guy? Ayayay I just can't stand it sometimes.
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