weekend update

I know I've said it before and I'll say it again, but it's just so very wrong that the "awake" icon is smiling. :P

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day, mateys! Arrr!!

Well, it seems that Hurricane/Tropical-Storm Ophelia went farther west than expected so we didn't get nearly as much cold rainy windy weather as had been predicted. Saturday dawned grey and dreary but not actually rainy, so we did go to the WGBH Ice Cream FunFest and had tons o'fun.

( details on that plus the rest of Saturday )

Sunday dawned bright and sunny, to everyone's surprise. ( what we did on Sunday )

So it was a good weekend overall. I also got some cleaning/tidying done. Tonight our babysitter is coming over to stay with Isaac while I go to chorus rehearsal, and since there's actually going to be another person in my pigsty, I thought it might be nice to clean up a bit. ;) I did a bit of putting stuff away and so forth. It's still a mess, but whatever... *sigh*

I also finally got around to dealing with the huge piles of clothing in Isaac's room. I sorted the stuff that's too small for him into three piles: winter, spring/summer, and stuff I don't want to keep for Cosmo. (The latter I'm hoping to donate to hurricane victims.) I also bagged up the spring/summer stuff that's too big for Isaac, that he can wear next year. I put all those things away. And I folded up all the winter stuff that's the right size for him this year, and put it in a drawer. So now his room looks pretty spacious without huge piles and bags and drifts of clothing everywhere. ;)

And that's my weekend summary. Apropos of nothing, is anyone else getting a LOT of "the system was unable to perform your operation" errors from Gmail today? Talk about really fucking annoying.

judge not, lest...

I don't like thinking of myself as the kind of parent who judges other people's parenting choices. It's true that I have strong ideas of what should and shouldn't be done in certain major areas (e.g. breastfeeding, how to put babies to sleep, discipline), but I strive to remind myself that my opinions are my opinions and someone else is not necessarily a horrible parent just because s/he has different opinions. It's not easy at ALL, but I try. Especially since my experience a couple months ago of having my parenting criticized in public by a total stranger, I'm extra conscious of that kind of thing, and I often say "I would NEVER do that."

And yet....

So yesterday we were at the playground. When we first arrived it was just starting to get dark, and there were quite a few parents and kids there. Among them were a girl of maybe 8-10 years old and her dad. When we got there she was swinging on the swings, and occasionally calling out "Hi Daddy!" Now, her dad was listening to CDs on his walkman/discman, and wandering around. Most parents either sit on a bench watching their child, or follow their child around on the playground structure. He wasn't doing either. He occasionally would sit for a moment, then get up and walk a little ways away, etc. -- This playground melts right into a large grassy field, with a low hill sort of separating them, so there's a lot of room to "get away" while your child is playing. Plenty of room, if you're so inclined, to walk QUITE far away from your child while still technically being in the vicinity.

Anyway. The whole time we were there, the girl played by herself, and the dad essentially ignored her. She got off the swings and ran around on the hills, "hiding" behind the trees, glancing over toward dad as if she really hoped he would decide to chase her. Then she spent a long time going up and down a large enclosed slide -- sometimes sliding down very fast and screaming very loudly, sometimes climbing back up the slide which took a lot of effort. (Did I mention she was kind of overweight?) And several times she seemed to get "stuck" inside the slide-tunnel, but dad was still oblivious. Once or twice I actually thought I heard her say "help" to no avail -- then she would manage to pull herself up onto the platform and call out to him, "I'm okay, it's okay," to which he was still oblivious.

And this whole time, the dad continued switching CDs in his CD player, even spent some time singing along -- and walking around, often past the hills so that he was actually fully out of sight of his child. Never mind the fact that when she was playing inside the slide-tunnel there were several times when she was inside it, not visible, for a period of several minutes -- she could have hit her head and been unconscious in there, but he never even seemed to notice.

When we left, it was dark to the point that you almost couldn't see the whole playground; everyone else had already gone. But they were still there. The little girl was swinging on the swings again and her dad was still listening to his music and ignoring her.

It just made me feel so sad, and angry, and helpless. I mean, what was I going to do, go up to him and make a comment? And become like the person I bitch about who did the same to me? Never mind the fact that she was "wrong" and I would have been "right" in talking to this dad; that's irrelevant since "right" and "wrong" are so tenuous. The guy probably think he's a great father because he takes his kid to the playground and lets her play "independently."

I don't think there are many absolutes here. I don't know the whole situation and it's not fair of me (you could argue) to judge him. But the whole thing bothers me, and probably will continue to do so for quite a while. And this is why parenting is so hard. Because you simply cannot say "I won't judge other people's parenting." It just isn't possible.

Isaac stuff

Isaac is definitely two. Lately he has discovered that you can negate something by putting the word "not" into a sentence. He is big on denying things that he knows are true, or that he doesn't want to be true. The most perplexing one is that he has started insisting that he and I are not people. He says, "Isaac not a person, mama not a person." If I say yes, we are people, he gets extremely upset. Of course I say "well, if we're not people, what are we?" but that question is a bit too advanced for him. ;)

( Isaac tests his limits and learns about his world )

Isaac is also starting to get into representative play -- I'm not sure if that's the right term -- for example, one day out of the blue he told me that "Elmo want some juice." He has a toy car with a little Elmo figure driving it. I had to get Isaac's cup with the straw attached and hold it to Elmo's mouth and let Elmo "drink." Now he wants to give Elmo a drink ALL the time. The other day at my mom's house Isaac started showing some interest in baby dolls (which mind you have been sitting out with his other toys for ages, but he has always ignored them). My mom pulled out an old toy baby carriage of mine, and Isaac pushed it all around the apartment. (I got some pictures of this which I shall post probably tomorrow.) Then he fed the baby some goldfish crackers, and later when we were looking at old pictures, he took them over to show the baby.

It's interesting to see Isaac start to do these different kinds of play. And it really highlights how idiotic gender roles are at this age. My mom was going nuts over the baby stuff because just the previous day she had had a long conversation with a friend about Isaac's love of trucks and buses and all things vehicular. My mom's friend was trying to engage mom in a discussion about whether Isaac's "boyness" was nature or nurture -- and my mom was trying to refute the very notion that these ARE boy traits as opposed to just Isaac traits. After all, says my mom, my brother was never as interested in vehicles -- he liked them, yes, but he sure didn't know at the age of two the difference between a flatbed and a cement mixer! So my mom was arguing, and I believe too, that it's got nothing to do with gender and everything to do with the fact that Isaac is just a child who likes trucks. you know?