mamajoan

So I started a new blog. It's not meant to replace this one, because I think of livejournal as the place where I write about the minutiae of my daily life, random things I think about, etc., whereas the blog is for writing about books that I'm reading and what I'm thinking about them.

Here's the link to my book blog in case you'd like to check it out.

I see that I forgot to post here on Ruthie's birthday. Well, uh, she had a birthday. :) Now She Is Six! And a very volatile six, I might add. Ruthie has a lot of what her preschool teachers used to call "strong feelings." Lately, everything is about fairness with her. If her brother gets a particular treat and she doesn't, it's not fair. It's still "not fair" even if she got a treat yesterday and he didn't, mind you. It's also "not fair" that she is expected to pick up her clothes off the floor, flush the toilet after she poops, sit down and eat when dinner is ready, etc.... I struggle so hard not to say "well, life isn't fair," because I remember how much I haaaaaaaaaaated it when my mom used to say that when I was a kid. :P But sometimes, what else can I say?

But Ruthie is also delightful and loving and smart and funny. If you aren't following me on Facebook, you're missing out on TONS of funny things that she says. I should really go back through those posts and copy them out to somewhere I can hang onto them, because man, she is a veritable fount of hilarious sayings lately. I'll just copy-paste the latest one:

This year, for Little League, Isaac has to wear a "cup" to protect my future grandchildren. ;) This morning he tried it on for the first time, and put his jeans on over it to make sure they fit. Then he was knocking on it with his knuckles and laughing at the sound it made, and Ruthie goes, "You have a penis drum!"

Ruthie loves to draw, and to make stuff out of paper. She is endlessly creative with markers, scissors, paper, and tape. She loves to sing and dance too. Recently she had a bit of a cold, and was using a lot of tissues during the night, and since her bed is a mattress on the floor, it wasn't convenient for her to reach the trash can. So she got a small basket (from some toy) and put a plastic bag into it for a makeshift garbage receptacle. I was really impressed with that ingenuity, where some kids might have just resorted to tossing their snotty tissues on the floor. ;)

Anyway, she's a great kid and I'm constantly amazed and delighted to be her mom. :)

Overdue update

I never posted about Thanksgiving like I meant to. It was a bit weird this year. On Thanksgiving morning we got a call informing us that my great-aunt Lil, the wife of my grandmother's brother Joe, had passed away during the night. She was pretty old and had been frail for quite a while, so it was no enormous surprise and indeed a bit of a relief in some ways -- particularly, at least she didn't die after Joe had left to come here for Thanksgiving, right? He already felt guilty enough about leaving her behind.

Anyway, so it meant that our Thanksgiving dinner had three fewer people than expected, because of course Joe didn't come, and neither did his son and daughter-in-law. Of course, we still ended up with like a dozen people at the table, and it went pretty well overall. There was a decent amount of vegetarian food and Isaac even tasted several things he had never tried before, including the vegetarian lasagna that a cousin made, which he liked enough to ask for seconds. Have I mentioned lately that Isaac is finally coming out of picky-little-kid mode and showing more and more interest in trying new foods? I am really pleased about that. Of course, all Ruthie would eat was bread *roll eyes* but whatever....

Before the meal, while we were hanging out at mom's house, mom realized that the cousins who were now not coming, were the ones who were supposed to bring dessert. So mom whipped up some brownies and I whipped up some cookies while Isaac watched the football game, heh.

Anyway, so it wasn't the Thanksgiving we were expecting, but what can you say. As the relatives of my grandmother's generation are dying off, so are the last vestiges of the Thanksgiving traditions that I've loved for so long. It's time to start forging some new ones, then.

Speaking of new traditions, I decided to celebrate Hanukkah a little more this year than we have in the past. We have a beautiful menorah that my mom gave me a while back, so we lit the candles together every night (except the night we were at Brian's, which I'll get to in a moment), and we played a bit of dreidel, and my idea was that on each night we'd read a special story -- I had gotten a book of Hanukkah stories, with eight stories in the book (one for each night), but as it turned out the stories were a little too advanced for the kids so I gave up on that after the first couple of nights. Oh well, it was a nice idea anyway.

I also decided to give the kids one gift on the last night of Hanukkah, instead of one for each night (because we're also going to be exchanging gifts on Xmas and that would just be too much). So I gave them jointly a DVD of Billy Jonas singing his songs. We love Billy Jonas, and recently got to see him perform live, so the kids have enjoyed the CD, although some of it is hokey. Ruthie got a big pleasant surprise when we discovered that he does a cover of "Rockin' Robin" on the DVD -- she loves that song! :)

And now it's December and things are getting very busy. Last weekend we went to a Christmas caroling event in Boston with 3,000 other people (see story here) and a birthday party. This weekend we have my brother metafrantic's birthday dinner, then our chorus concert on Sunday. Next weekend we have another chorus event, and then it's Xmas! ZOMG! What happened to my year???

I posted the other day that I had decided to contact Isaac's teacher and guidance counselor for help dealing with Isaac's feelings about grandma having cancer. I don't know whether I adequately expressed in my previous post how much I have been worrying about Isaac. He is not a kid who talks much, or willingly, about how he feels; any effort to draw him out just shuts him down further; so it's hard to get a measure of what's going on with him.

( The incident that made me realize that Isaac needed some help )

Anyway, so after all that happened, I emailed Isaac's teacher and the guidance counselor at his school. The guidance counselor wrote back saying that she would talk to the teacher and they would work with Isaac in the classroom. I almost burst into tears when I read her note, which was how I knew that I had been more worried than I realized too!

My mom also put me in touch with a woman she used to work with, who now works at a different hospital, whose specialty is helping kids cope with having a family member with cancer. I had a phone conversation with her the other night and it was very helpful. She gave me some perspective on how Isaac is doing and how I'm doing handling it with him, that made me feel a lot better about it all. She also gave me a book recommendation, which I'll check out, although I'm not really the "advice book" type. It can't hurt though, I guess.

Yesterday I also finally heard back from Isaac's teacher (note to self: email is not the best way to get her attention ;) ). She left a longish message on my answering machine and also sent me an email. The gist of it was that she has noticed some changes in Isaac's behavior and will talk to him. She has just gone through some similar stuff with her husband; he had some kind of cancer and I believe he had chemo as well, so she said she would talk to Isaac about how she felt and how their teenage daughter felt about it too.

She also said that a girl in the class had her grandmother die last week (which I knew about) and that it seemed to have brought up a lot of sad feelings for a lot of the kids in the class. And apparently another kid in the class has a little sister in the hospital. I asked Isaac about this and he was aware of it and said that the kid is "sad pretty much every day," but as for what's wrong with the little sister or how long she has been in the hospital or any of that, he didn't know.

So, this teacher certainly has her hands full! I hope she can handle it all.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I'm feeling better about it all now.

I also try to keep reminding Isaac that he can ask me anything, and talk about how he feels at any time. So last night, out of the blue, he asked me, "Does someone die every second?" I said that I don't know about every second, but people are dying all the time. "So someone is dying right now?" I said yes, somewhere, someone is dying right now. Probably not anyone we know. Somehow this led into a discussion about people who live a really long time, and I mentioned that the oldest person in America recently died, and he wanted to know more about that, so we googled it. Isaac was pretty fascinated reading about the life of that woman. He particularly found it amazing to think that she lived through part of the 1800s, ALL of the 1900s, and part of the 2000s. Wow. I find that pretty amazing myself!

Also I forgot that I wanted to link you to this article from the Cambridge Chronicle about our choir, the Cambridge Community Chorus, which is performing our Twentieth! Anniversary! Concert! on December 13th. My mom and I are quoted in the article, because we have been with the chorus since the beginning as a mother/daughter team, from when I was a teenager in high school with pink hair until now when I'm a moderately more mature mom with kids and a job and graying hair. So it makes a great story.

And if you live in the Boston area you should really come see the concert. We are doing our 20th Anniversary performance of Handel's Messiah on the 13th, and then we're doing Beethoven's 9th on the 20th which will, of course, be awesome. You can check the website (linked above) for details. Except not yet because I'm the webmistress and I haven't updated it yet. Oops. Check back tomorrow. ;)

The latest "news" as of yesterday is that a new study has found the rates of single motherhood in the USA rising dramatically over the past few years. As of 2007, it's estimated that nearly 40% of all babies being born in the US are born to unmarried women. Significantly, this includes women who live with partners but simply haven't chosen to get married. Also significantly, the data indicates that the fastest-growing population of single moms in the US are not teenagers but women in their 20s and 30s. In particular, growing numbers of women are choosing to have babies on their own, and this seems to account for the increase, even more so than teen pregnancies (which, in fact, some sources suggest are on the decline!). Not too surprisingly, the decline in societal stigmata associated with single motherhood has led growing numbers of women to choose that path for themselves.

This Washington Post article discusses the findings, and does I think overall a fairly decent job of presenting the issues and factors surrounding the increase in single motherhood. But one thing really stands out for me, and that's the way it presents the oft-heard notion that children raised in single-parent households "tend not to fare as well in many ways."

Leaving aside for the moment the question of what those "many ways" are, and the alarming vagueness thereof, I find it interesting that the paragraph about two-parent families being better comes immediately after a paragraph talking about the lessened social stigma of single motherhood. Yet, the authors don't seem to want to (or it doesn't occur to them to) draw any connections here, or to question where that established wisdom comes from.

To be specific: If social acceptance of single motherhood is on the rise, and the so-called "research" finding that single motherhood is bad for kids was done when social acceptance was much lower, then maybe, just maybe, there's a correlation which means that the said research is flawed now. Maybe, just maybe, societal attitudes toward single motherhood have an enormous impact on how well kids do in school and life; and thus when those societal attitudes change, maybe the research and assumptions need to change too.

Let's say you're a single mom in a culture where single motherhood is reviled (like, say, the USA circa 1965). How does this affect you as a person, as a parent? Well let's see. Due to social stigma, it's hard for you to find and keep a good job; thus your income is low. There aren't many public-assistance programs for you to lean on, either to help pay your bills, or to help further your education so as to make yourself more employable. It's hard for you to form a social-support network because your friends, religious community, family, etc. are all shunning you. And since you have to work your ass off all day at a crappy low-paying job, you don't have the time or energy to help your kid with his/her homework, or even maybe to spend any quality time with him/her.

Do you see where I'm going with this? I'm not saying that all the problems a single mom faces can be solved by increasing societal acceptance. But many of the factors that put the child of a single mom at risk are related not to the fact that mom is single, but that she isn't getting good support from society.

Furthermore, many of those factors just don't pertain any more when the mom in question is a single mom by choice (SMC). If mom is well-educated, has a sizeable nest-egg saved up, is well-established in a good job that pays her highly, and has a well-established network of friends and family she can turn to for support -- most of which are usually true of the average SMC -- then her kid is likely to do well, regardless of how many parents are in the family. And this mom is the kind of mom who, according to that WashPost article, is driving up the single motherhood rates the fastest.

In conclusion: We need to take another look at the too-often-cited idea that a single-parent household is just automatically less good for a child than one with two parents. If social acceptance of single motherhood is increasing, and more and more women are choosing single motherhood for themselves, then we need to stop leaning on the facile stereotype of the single mom as young, poor, nonwhite, and a shameless drain on society's resources. (This article from the AFP has some interesting things to say about recent research finding that most single moms in fact are white and live in the suburbs.) I think it's unfortunate that the WashPost article presented most of the facts so well, and yet let the bit about two-parent households being better for kids sit there unchallenged and unexamined. I'm willing to bet that the data just don't support that any more.

Thanks whuffle for pointing out this interesting experiment or test or meme or whatever it is. You listen to 26 little musical clips and try to identify which are played correctly and which incorrectly. Very neat. I got all 26 right, of course. Hey, that degree in music theory has to come in handy at least once per decade, right?! ;)

Also of interest, or LOLworthy, perhaps, is Santa's gmail inbox. hee hee. I love this one.

Also LOLworthy, I thought, was this screen shot that I took of news.google.com earlier today. :)

I just noticed that LiveTwitter hasn't been posting my tweets for the past few days. Well, you haven't missed much. The job is still okay, I still feel like crap, there's construction in the floor above the office which is noisy and not playing nicely with the sinus headache. The kids continue to be adorable and say hilarious things.

I'm disgruntled because I found out that my health insurance via the recruitment agency won't kick in until Jan 1st, contrary to what they had led me to believe; which appears to leave us uninsured for December, which makes me very anxious. But unfortunately I haven't been able to do anything about it yet because I don't have enough voice right now to make a bunch of phone calls.

On the plus side, I got a bunch of unemployment checks (they finally approved me and sent my checks for all the weeks that I was eligible for, all at once) which is good. you know, money. etc.

and now, I gotta get to bed. urgh.

You know, I know it isn't entirely fair to call out the pundits on CNN for whatever they might have said at like 11:55pm on Tuesday, when they had been at it nonstop for the entire day, and the results were in, and we were all just waiting with bated breath for PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA (frisson!) to come out and speak. Still, one of them, and I'm pretty sure it was Anderson Cooper but don't hold me to that, said something really dumb that I just have to post about.

I don't have the verbatim quote, but it was something to the effect of, "a lot of people may be wondering now how America could elect George W. Bush in 2000, and then turn around and elect Obama in 2008." *facepalm*

( In which I expostulate on this at length )

So: How did America elect Bush in '00 and '04, and Obama this year? It boils down to this. Bush won because we had to pick someone, and he was handy. Obama won because we needed someone, and he is the someone we needed.

I also highly recommend maggiesox's post, here, which beautifully sums up how most of us liberals are feeling right now, and why we just can't stop weeping with joy.

A few people asked for the recipe of the granola bars I made last week, so here it is on allrecipes.com. I added flax seeds and chocolate chips, and omitted the raisins. The comments have lots of good ideas of how to modify or vary the recipe -- I definitely want to try adding sunflower and sesame seeds, decreasing the sugar, replacing some of the oil with applesauce, and maple syrup instead of honey. Among other things. ;) I'll also make them with wheat flour next time -- I used white this time because I had some left that I needed to use up and it happened to be exactly the right amount.

I note that several of the reviews referred to the bars as crunchy while others said they were chewy. ??? *scratch head* When I made them, they came out chewy, which surprised me because I expected crunchy. So I don't know why some people are getting crunchy; maybe baking longer? But if I had baked any longer, they would have burned -- already were dark around the edges. Maybe that's the effect of the flaxseeds; they do make things brown faster. I dunno. Anyway, I like my granola bars chewy so it's okay with me. But if you try them, let me know what you find. :)

Okay! Okay! After two dozen posts on my flist about it, I get the hint that this Dr. Horrible thing is, you know, maybe kind of a little bit cool and maybe I should think about checking it out. So the kids and I watched the first two parts.

I'll say more later (like when I don't have two kids yanking on my arms) but for now, just this: All you johnny-come-latelies who aren't watching "How I Met Your Mother" and are just now discovering that Neil Patrick Harris is teh awesome? I laugh in your general direction. I got on that train like two years ago. If the man weren't gay I'd quite possibly be stalking him (yeah, in my copious free time...).

Anyway, and for those who were surprised that he can sing? You must check out this YouTube video immediately: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhXsJjVdj1E

You're welcome.

Hey geek parents! The ThinkGeek "input/output" kid shirt is on clearance for $7.99 (in 2T and 3T) or $12.99 (infant sizes).

If you're not familiar with this awesome shirt ;) it's yellow and on the front it says "Input" with an arrow pointing up, and on the back "Output" with an arrow pointing down. ;) Here's a picture of Ruthie wearing it:


And here's the link if you wanna snap one up for your spawn ;)