Social Reproduction...

Or, the struggle is (semi) real.

Or, on raising feral boys.

Oh, hey. How's by you? Remember me?  **I** don't.  I feel no shame in saying that the last two week's have ROCKED me.  And you know what?  It's 10pm on a Friday night.  I stayed late at work to sort my emails, get up to speed on files that I had been neglecting, made a task list for next week, and otherwise, set myself up for success.  Came home, ate a healthy dinner, banged off a batch of Thomas Keller Oreos.  Put the kids down to bed with minimal fuss.  Did a long stretch while listening to a podcast (this one, if you're interested, which I kind of adore), had an even longer epsom salt bath while catching up on my Book Club reading, and I'm listening to the Anderson .Paak album in preparation for tomorrow night's show while catching up on my online shopping and getting ready to blow the dust off my keyboard and do some serious, processing, practice writing in the form of a blog post...WHEN A GIANT FUZZY BUGGY (I think they're called house centipedes?) just scurried down my shoulder and arm and disappeared into the couch crevices.

LIKE, REALLY.

I get it, universe, I'm f**king done.

First days. A wave of shiny, scrubbed, beaming kid faces junking up my FB feed and I'm yelling at all my kids in an increasingly frenzied tenor: "HURRY UP WE'RE GOING TO BE LATE" and I made a commitment to taking the Big Yam to school for his first day of grade 1, even though my manager was kind of being not chill about it when I gave her the head's up on Friday before the long weekend.

Grade 1 is a big deal.  They go from being in the idyllic world (Songs of Innocence) of the kindergarten playground/pen...separate recesses, separate lunches...to the gen pop (Songs of Experience).  The yard is BIG.  EVERYONE is there.  The first day was chaotic.  A teeming mass of confusion and scared looks.  And I couldn't even watch him go in.  I had to leave him there as soon as I found his teacher and hop on my bike and haul a** to work, because...I don't even know why.  Because I needed to be reminded that leaning in is hard?  Because I sadistically wanted to carry with me all the day the memory of his little clueless face in that gongshow sea of heightened emotions?  No wait, it's because I had to work on an RFP for procurement.  Right.  Of course.

I mean, he was fine.  I didn't get my first day photo.  The world didn't end.  Mom guilt is real.  And look, the Dotytron is ONIT.  You know that package of about 29 different forms that comes home on the first day?  Lice checks and snack programs and media releases and codes of conducts and classroom procedures and school procedures and signing up for a million different ways of being contacted (text message, email, app, phone, passenger pigeon, parchment scroll, cuneiform tablet)...he did it all, bless him.  He packs the lunches, most of the breakfasts, supervises piano lessons, starts dinner, and does most of the homework supervision.  I couldn't do it without him, as evidenced by the fact that last night, when he was at school late because of curriculum night, the entire house dissolved into a mess of uneaten dinners and unorthodox tv-on-a-school-night, and the twins rolling around naked on the back deck in two (!) giant upended bottles of bubble solution, and a whole lot of stern shoutiness (from me, obviously).

Anyway, we collectively got rocked the last two weeks.  Downside to being a professional cottager, I guess?

When we came back from the house in Prince Edward County, we rolled into town, unpacked, started laundry, began the slow process of putting our lives back together, and met my mum at Petit Potato for dinner.  Petit Potato pros: extensive menu of Asian desserts, most of which you don't get outside of Taiwanese snack bar type places; we get 10% off there thanks to my Congee Queen loyalty card; the space is nice.  Petit Potato cons: the non-dessert items are kind of meh - I'd rather go to Phoenix or a dedicated ramen shop for ramen.

People go to Petit Potato because of their "giant toast" which is in fact, the giant-est, rendition of giant toast that I've ever seen.  They pride themselves on this giant, 18" stack of soft, white bread, that has been toasted, the innards scooped out, cut, buttered and toasted to buttery-crunchy-crouton-y perfection and then the whole thing is stacked and slathered with whipped cream and ice cream in various flavour permutations.  They're famous for the mango but I find mango puree cloyingly sweet so we got the Oreo flavour to appease my kids.  Anyway, the Dotytron ordered ramen which was good, but not exemplary and I had the Japanese "omurice" which is Japanese-style English food and consisted of an omelette, wrapped around fried rice, with some kind of protein (in my case, pork tonkotsu) and a slathering of decent (read: from the Glico box) Japanese curry.

My kids needed massive appeasing because after a whopping 15 days away from regular life and "Lord of the Flies days" and general abdication from any semblance of a routine outside of being a beach bum, they got smacked in the face with the "giant toast" of reality sandwiches (I'm quite proud of what I did there).  I remember when we were sharing with Momma D and Ehdmo, at one point, as the twins chased each other in endless circles around the main floor of the country house, screaming at the top of their lungs, Momma D turned to me and said, exasperated, "IT. IS. QUIET. TIME. THEY SHOULD BE QUIET RIGHT NOW." And I was like, "IF I COULD MAKE THEM BE QUIET, BELIEVE ME, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS PURE AND GOOD IN THE WORLD, I WOULD."  (except not quite like that).

Later, when the Roomie and the rest of the gang had joined us, there was a moment when she came down and was super-freaked out at how hard the twins were hitting each other and wrasslin': "It just seems like they're being very rough with each other.  Is it normal for them to slap each other?"  Now, I know the Roomie.  She's a sweet, classic hippie.  I get that.  I really do.  But I ALSO get that I felt incredibly judged by this perception of my children as violent.

I carried that with me for quite a few days.  And it all came to a head at Petit Potato.  The kids were fractious and non compliant.  The food took too long and we ordered the wrong things.  The meal was unpleasant on all counts and all the hissing and threats and hauling stiff bodies out to sit in the car didn't make a lick of difference.

I was done.

And then...and then I sat with it for a few days, and really looked at my kids.  I looked at how sweet the Big Yam is with little ones and how caring and helpful he is.  I looked at the fact that the twins NEVER, EVER (*knock wood*) hit anyone other than each other, and how the majority of their time they're rolling around on the floor wrestling and grunting like a pair of labrador retriever puppies, and I settled on this: the twins are rambunctious kids.  That's who they are.  They have a lot of kinetic energy.  I don't know where it comes from, I don't always know how best to serve it, but I know that this is them, and they will tussle, and they're not unkind and they dish it out to the people they think can take it (each other).  They only very, very rarely hit us, or any adults, really.  They don't hit other kids.  They are two exuberant, slightly wild boys, and I don't know where they came from, but they are ours and we're doing the best we can with them.

Things I want to always remember:

Twin B clumping down the stairs with the iPad, unsanctioned, under his arm, repeating the mantra, "Please say yes, please say yes," which he does sometimes before asking the question he wants the yes, to.

Dr. Rei going into the dining room at the cottage and I overhear her say, "Twin B!  Where did you get that?  Should you be playing with that?" and Twin B replies, "Don't tell my mom. Don't tell my mom. Don't tell my mom."

Twin A doing the entire opening sequence for Sponge Bob Squarepants, complete with growling pirate voice.  Hearing him try to say, "absorbent and yellow and porous is he..." is a gift.

Walking the Big Yam to school and the ridiculous conversations that ensue.  Most of which requires me to say "Uh-huh" "wow" "really?" at appropriate intervals during an interminable Minecraft-related monologue.

Week 3 folks!  We made it!  Stay strong!  I will try to post more regularly.  I have many, many things to share.

Fin.

On raising a weirdo

or, potentially, weirdoes.

The Big Yam last week: "Sometimes at school, my brain shows me pictures from last year, and I don't want to see them, but they go wherever my face goes."

Me and the Dotytron: "What."

LOL.  This kid, man.  This kid, who comes home from school periodically and will say stuff like, "I didn't play with anyone.  No one wanted to play with me," and then I drop him off at school and everyone's like, "BIG YAM!!!"  "Over here!!!" and I ask him, "Who is that?" and he's like, *shrugs* "I don't know."  He's such a little weirdo.  Such a clueless, lost-in-his-own-world weirdo sometimes. I find it very believable that he might be so immersed in his own world of play that he ignores kids trying to play with him.

When I came back from my trip, the Big Yam spent the weekend punishing me for leaving by being a giant beast.  Screaming, disobedient, obstructionist, difficult to the extreme and basically the worst version of himself, which in turn, made me the worst version of myself.  This Maclean's article on "The Collapse of Parenting" had already made the rounds and we had already fielded significant looks from our respective mothers about our "parenting" (or perceived lack thereof).  I ended up listening to this guy on the CBC and that Maclean's article is pretty terrible in the way it misrepresents him.  First of all, I'm not sure he's entirely qualified to talk about it, being a family physician (and psychologist, but whatevers) and second of all, the approach that he espoused on the radio was "strict but loving" which is what the Dotytron and I generally aspire to, and have actually been told we're more on the strict end of the spectrum.  This guy's approach seemed to come back to common sense stuff - like, putting the family back at the centre (don't overschedule your kids), limit activities, eat dinner together, not everything is a consensus, etc., etc.  We've heard it all before, and yet...sometimes it feels like nothing is working!

That weekend when I came back from my week away wasn't great, I'm not gonna lie.  I ended up screaming my face off and hauling the Big Yam's butt upstairs and dumping him on his bed when he was screaming at me and hitting me in the face (which is no easy task because he's pretty much 7/9ths my size at this point) and I also stuck him in the basement bathroom with the lights off (he can reach the lights but was too busy losing his s**t to remember that) when I caught him kicking Lindsay in the head.  At the same time, I tried the progressive discipline thing, I tried mirroring back his feelings, I gave him opportunities to express himself in a more constructive way, but at a certain point, after 15 minutes of this in a grocery store when your kid is sitting on the floor and freaking out, there is a point where you have to hiss at them that they are embarrassing themselves in front of everyone.  Or is there?  I dunno.  I'm just trying to muddle my way through!  What would YOU do?

Shortly after, we ended up having another bad weekend where the Dotytron and I were both stressed from work and brought it home and just weren't up for 15 minutes of variations on, "I know you're mad, but your behaviour is inappropriate, if you want to go up to your room and scream there, you can and come back when you're ready to talk..." and we both snapped more than a few times.  That night, I resurrected the "fireside chat" model, and I had a talk with him, starting with apologizing for raising my voice.  The worst part?  When he said that: "When you scream at me it makes me more mad and I can't stop being mad."  Way to cut to the heart of me, Baxter.  So we talked about how screaming is not an appropriate response to being mad and that if he does want to scream, he can do it in his room and we'll give him one warning and then if he still screams we'll take him up to his room but we won't be mad when we do it, etc.  I think we might have gotten through?  Who knows.  It was definitely worthwhile to have the conversation just to be reminded that my losing control was feeding into his loop of losing control and it wasn't helping anyone.  Things have been better since the chat, but he's still an emotionally volatile weirdo.  Not sure there's anything that can be done about that.

I also take solace in JJ telling me that she heard from a psychologist that some kids need to be yelled at because it kind of snaps them out of their inward cycle.  It's the equivalent of a bucket of cold water to the head.  All justifications aside, the fact that my kid could self-identify the effects of us raising our voices is enough incentive to make adjustments to the way we handle outbursts.

It's just not very easy, this whole, raising people thing.  Making sure you're strict but loving and you preserve their weirdness but also allow them to buck convention.  Imagine if your kids end up basic? How often do you think that happens?

The twins are at the stage where they have cottoned on to how boss it is to sleep in your parents' bed and actively campaign for it, every night.  Twin B will go from punching me in the face and then laughing uproariously and otherwise being a complete and utter maniac and then at night, he's the softest, sweetest little bag of smushes - it's like all the fight just exhales on a breath at night.  He insists on having us lie next to him on his floor mattress, and then he turns to face you, throws an arm around your neck to pull you in close, and then presses his face against yours.

On to other weirdoes.  Am **I** a weirdo for feeling the hots for Zayn Malik?  Or, a 2016-Grammys version of Justin Bieber? The one with the voice of an angel and who was part of a hype-inducing Jack U performance at the Grammys?

I'm just already getting excited for an EDM show this summer, and I just don't care who knows it.  Being able to party with my brother who is 10 year's younger and his girlfriend and get messy to top 40 EDM is a pretty fun outlet for my pent-up dancing desires.

This weekend was kind of insanely busy - I loved every minute of everything, but I could have used a touch more downtime.  Friday was the Big Yam's parent-teacher interview and then I did a million errands and then took the Big Yam to a skating session with his homie.  The good thing is that I learned that I'm actually NOT a terrible skater.  I can do it.  I just get shook and too much in my own head.  This time was way better.  Saturday we had another Big Yam homie over, then we packed up and visited friends in KW and then came home and hosted another group of the Dotytron's musician friends.  One of whom had just finished treatment for Hodgkins.  Can you imagine?  I can't.  It takes my breath away.  I can't imagine how scared and scarred and freaked out I would be.  This is happening now.  You read stories of people your own age who are getting cancer and some of them make it and some of them don't, and while it's rare, it's not freakishly rare.  We are moving into that cohort.  We are not young anymore.

That digression notwithstanding (if you want more catch-your-breath-at-your-own-mortality material, read this stunning article in the Guardian), it was actually a great hang.  One of my god-Dotytrons was there.  He's a ginger, which I never thought would be appealing, but him and Domhnall Gleason are turning me around.

Saturday we took the kids swimming, where we learned conclusively that Twin B has NEGATIVE instinct for survival/self-preservation.  There was a ramp into the pool and he would RUN across the deck and then start trotting down the ramp, his eyes alight and his mouth open in big, belly-chuckling glee, even as the water is coming up over his head.  He will no-look jump into the pool and just trust that everything will turn out alright.  It's terrifying.  We spent Saturday and Sunday with my family, doing a delayed Xmas and then came back on Sunday, did a quick tidy of the house, and then hosted our favorite non-blood family, the Dr. Rei-Hans.  I couldn't think of a better way to spend my Family Day then sitting in the basement playing Super Mario Brothers with those guys.  My heart was filled to the brim with love this weekend, even if the Dotytron and I did nothing to observe Valentine's Day, other than get into a heated exchange about whether Kendrick Lamar's first album was "commercial."  Ain't love grand?

Multiple, multiple, book reviews coming at you soontime!

Fin.

Deoxyribonucleic Acid

As a birthday present to the twins, and to ourselves, we went out and bought a DNA test for the Wonder Twins.  Almost everyone who met them didn’t believe that they were “identical” twins (in twin talk, the technical term we were given for our guys was “monochorionic [subset of monozygotic – one egg – means they share a placenta] diamniotic [each in their own amniotic sac]).  They came out looking very, very different (refresher below), with Lindsay always kind of looking like a party turtle and the Quincess always looking like a sweet, introspective little elven scholar.   So we threw down for a DNA test, swabbed their cheeks, mailed it off, and the results are: 1,678,126,819:1 that they are identical twins, and the probability that they are monozygotic came back at 99.999999%.

CRAZY.  That means if one of them committed a crime they could pin it on the other one.   AND NO ONE WOULD BE THE WISER. 

 Pensive, and tired at their brother's spring concert, where the music teacher likes to do the annoying thing of using the kindergarten kids as pawns to keep the parents there for the whole show.  It's the worst.

The other night, in bed the Dotytron asked me which one of our kids was the least like us.  Whenever we do this exercise, we always think about our answer, then simultaneously blurt it out on the count of 3.  For some reason, this practice has facilitated decision-making in our household for years and years.  When you’ve been together as long as the Dotytron and I have, and your pheromones are all mixed up, funny things happen where you start singing a song out loud at random and the other person had just been singing the previous line, IN THEIR HEAD.  It’s probably a mix of biology and culture – we’re moving in the same milieu and that has to have an affect the way our synapses fire and the degree of overlap in our frames of reference.  Anyway, on the count of 3, we both blurted, “Lindsay.” 

Afterwards, I felt SO BAD.  This DNA testing exercise taught me that biology and genetics are just one part of the equation.  Maybe they would have looked identical if Lindsay hadn’t been fatter or if Lindsay hadn’t been sitting on Quincess in my womb or if Quincess didn’t have the stiff neck (torticollis) and the head flattening and the small ear.  There were so many environmental factors that changed the way their shared DNA expressed themselves in physical traits, why wouldn’t it be the same for other traits?  Like their personalities?  From the day they were born we’ve been boxing them into little categories – Quincess is the quiet, cerebral one, Lindsay is the boisterous, kinetic one, and if you’re painting with a spray gun then yeah, maybe that’s all true, but then you create this world of comments and expectations and immerse them in it and maybe they start to become what you say they are, not because they were like that intrinsically, but in the same way those Japanese cube watermelons grow into the box they were put into.

I don’t want to do that to my kids.  But is it inevitable?  In the same way that living, loving, and being with the Dotytron for almost 15 years has made us into this freaky mind-melding machine?  Maybe that’s just what it means to be in a unit – regardless of the relationship.  You start a new office, you take on some of the attributes of the work culture there.  You’re in a marriage, you start to absorb the other person.  You make a family, and the electrons that are moving around each person’s atomic core, their intrinsic, unchanging and unchangeable selves get swapped with everyone else’s electrons and that’s what holds the structure of your family in place – these atomic bonds (grade 11 chemistry is really reaching here, it’s been a while).  Maybe that’s what happens.  Maybe that’s inevitable.  Maybe.  I just want my kids to be able to grow into whatever shaped watermelon they want to (within reason). 

An early birthday celebration for the Wonder Twins

Family bonds came to the fore this past weekend.  We went down to Geneseo and my mom came down and so did my brother, Bruce Wayne.  It had been a while since we’d all been there at the same time and it was so fun.  We were only missing Big D and my littlest brother.  I love my family. 

 

My mum. "STEEEEEE-RIKE!"

The idea was to spend the weekend in Geneseo betting on ponies at the Belmont Stakes (which we did last year on the babies’ birthday, and won 10-1 odds on our winning bet) and hopefully pad their RESPs like we did last year.  Well, last year we bet against the favoured horse and we did the same this year, although we shouldn’t have, given that the odds were favoring American Pharoah 3:2.  Anyway, we tried to get all fancy this year and ended up losing so we’re going to regroup, and next year, just place a simple bet on the horses who have names that we like. 

We also celebrated the Wonder Twins’ actual birthday down there, and ate a lot, and hung out a lot, and I picked up the best muumuu of life that I bought off of Etsy that has upped my happiness quotient by about a million.  This mission also included us delivering our queen size memory foam mattress to my sister, which was no small feat and involved me going into beast mode, wrestling the mattress out of our bedroom at home, down the stairs to the main floor, and then holding  it in place in the most ungainly fashion while we wrapped it in duct tape.  Then we smushed it into the trunk of the van.  It was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.  Never underestimate what I’m capable of in beast mode.

Brothers in batik

The Wonder Twins at 2.  SO MANY WORDS.  Lindsay picks up a new word or five a day, seemingly.  He loves our neighbour, Grace and her daughter, Evelyn, whom he calls Ev’lee in the sweetest voice.  When he goes outside he asks, “Gayce?” and then when he sees her he goes running over with his bow-legged leprechaun run and gives her a giant hug.  It’s pretty sweet.  We hear a lot of “self!” and he’s very independent and wants to try doing new things and loves pretending to skip and jump rope.  He finds Quincess pretty funny.

 

Quincess Harry Potter

Quincess isn’t picking up words as rapidly as Lindsay (or he might be, but doesn’t like saying them aloud), but he is full of jokes, one of which consists of saying: “hot dooooooog” whenever I ask aloud what we should eat for dinner and then cracking up.  He’s a scrawny little muscleman and loves to hang off of things and be a pretend gymnast.  He generally practices safety and asks for “hand” when he goes down the stairs.  His little voice is the so sweet and dear and when he does something funny he has a way of darting his eyes from side to side rapidly to gauge the audience reaction that’s so funny.  He’s a little imp in every respect. 

The two are starting to become more aware of each other and it’s the most heart-warming thing listening to them giggle and chatter and screech when they’re about to go down for a nap/bed.  In the pic above, you can see how charmed Lindsay is by Quincess and vice versa.  Lindsay does bully Quincess a bit but Quincess gives back what he gets almost as often.   Quincess loves eating sweets and basically smashes cake into his face as fast as he can, whereas Lindsay shows great enthusiasm for cake, shouting, “CAEK!?!!?!  CAEK!!!” whenever he sees one, but being highly tentative and not very interested in eating it.

At this age, they’re both better eaters than the Big Yam was, probably because their diet is strictly controlled by me.  They love rice and pasta of all varieties. 

This summer, barely started as it is, has been a good one so far.  We went with our neighbours to Doors Open Toronto and checked out a subway repair yard and best of all, the RC Harris Water Filtration plant, which is a beautiful art deco building that was featured prominently in Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of the Lion.  Public infrastructure should always be so beautiful. 

Neighbours and buds since birth

 We took JJ and S’s kids out with the Big Yam for a night out to give their parents a break.  We got tickets to a U of T astronomy “planetarium” talk and ate a dinner of hot dogs and French fries and then got ice cream from Sweet Olenka’s in Kensington market.  Just look at this adorable crew:  

We’ve been outside playing almost every night the weather permits.  The kids are knocking on each other’s door, lollipops and freezies are distributed, whatever the reigning street craze (currently jumping rope and double dutch) has to be explored with parents AND kids joining in.  Last night we got most of the kids going in some whiffle ball and because I find making giant bubbles one of the most relaxing experiences (it’s my version of tai chi), we had that going as well:

We are going on a long weekend camping trip with our neighbours.  I know, I know.  It sounds like hell, but I think the kids will enjoy it so much it’s hard to say no.  Plus, it’s a good chance for us to practice camping and try it on for size in a low stakes way before we invest in full-on portage-style outdoorsing. 

Last week we had our friend Pingy in town and so we got to have dinner with her and the Roomie and the Roomie’s new baby twice in a week.  There were long, long group therapy sessions about intensive mothering and domestic distribution of labour and how the Roomie and I are controlling freaks (what L’Armi calls “faux easygoing”) when it comes to anything in the domestic sphere and division of labour. 

This past spring was often…tense between me and the Dotytron.  The Dotytron thinks that I finally reached my breaking point or the point at which the amount of things on my plate finally overwhelmed my superhuman coping/organizational/project management capacity.  A Master’s degree on mat leave?  No problem.  Massive kitchen and bathroom reno with 3 kids?  I got this.  Massive reno, 3 kids, financial constraints, and a new, challenging job?  THAT DOES IT.  I had nothing left in me to give, no more softness or patience and it showed.  I didn’t want to have conversations – I was in full military delegation mode and my expectations were high and tolerance for deviation from my expectations nonexistent. 

Anyway, now that the renos are mostly done, we’ve bought a replacement Captain Save-A-Ho (who is LITERALLY a replacement Captain – we bought the same car, but like, 5 years younger [still minimum 8 years old though] and a manual version), and summer and its languid promise of beach days, cottage vacays, and Micelli Mondays, I’m much more relaxed (or, as relaxed as I get) with only two major stressors on my plate (new job – to be discussed in the future, and the kids…always the kids).

While visiting my sister I was my niece’s “running buddy” on a 5km race she did.  I had fully intended on getting some practice runs in beforehand, but it didn’t happen.  I’m proud to say that I finished the 5km (letting my niece set the pace) and didn’t feel the need to stop, or walk, and could have gone faster and made better time (but I’m not a jerk – this was about my niece, not me) after almost a full year of no running.  My working theory is that I because I generally handle stress well, my body is pretty conditioned to be in flight or fight mode so my ticker is either in a) good shape or b) in brutal shape from unnecessary wear.  I’m proud of my niece for finishing a 5km (something I didn’t do until I was in my early 30s) and it inspired me to get my butt in gear and start running again, if only so that I can justify to My Fitness Pal all the pies I plan on making/eating this summer.

I’ve been slacking on the food pics lately.  Don’t think this means I will EVER STOP POSTING FOOD PICS.  I’ve been food pic strong for forever!  OG food pic proponent! 

Seized soft shell crab season by the..shell?  These are fried, and put on olive oil toast with old bay mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, bacon, and sliced tomatoes with boursin and Hawaiian black pepper

Roasted asparagus, proscuito, poached eggs and hollandaise toast

Black bean burgers with red pepper feta dip

We made ravioli one night - ricotta pea in a pancetta sauce - time consuming and semi-worth it

Papardelle with scape pesto, a fried egg, and pine nuts.  

One of my favorite Hawaiian meals: moco loco.  Spam, on white rice, topped with a fried egg and canned gravy.  Delicious.

Me, and my muumuu, and my favorite wiener dog smyzeing his eyes out

Fin.

Intensive Mothering

I’ve had a lot of thoughts this past winter (long, cold, insular winters are conducive to thoughts) on the topic of intensive mothering (long, cold, insular winters when one has three young children and is project managing a renovation and starting a new job are particularly conducive to thoughts on intensive mothering).  This concept has been kicking around since 1996, when academic Sharon Hays wrote about it in her book,  “The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood” (accompanied by this amazingly dated picture):

What is intensive mothering?  Here is a description pulled from the abstract to Hays’ paper: “an ideology that holds the individual mother primarily responsible for child rearing and dictates that the process is to be child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive” (emphasis mine).  

Now, almost 20 years later, as my Facebook feed explodes with discussions about vaccines (populated mostly with commentary from women, natch), and as I see the endless stream of weird questions on this “Ladies with Babies” forum on Facebook filled with my cohort (mostly women in their 30s, educated, living in downtown Toronto, newish parents) – “Question: when to give my daughter eggs?”  “Felix has a weird speckled rash and mostly runny, green poos that resemble a verdant forest on a Bon Iver album cover - thoughts?”, and after my ill-fated experience on the parent council at the Big Yam’s school, it is evident that intensive mothering is still a pernicious and pervasive ideology - one that is contributing to gendered labour inequities in the domestic sphere and hindering women’s progression in the workforce.

I think we all know intensive mothers.  As progressive as I am, it is impossible for me not to fall into a certain trap when it comes to household domestic division of labour.    Part of the problem is me – being an insane micro-manager and type A.  I know of a few other relationships where the male counterparts in the couple fulfill the role of making sure that everyone is fed, clothed, and happy, but in the intensive mothering sense – which means enrolled in programs, eating organic food, dressed in the proper pediatric-approved shoes - that work still falls to the women.  In the vast majority of my experiences and observations though, even if the guys do the laundry and the cooking, the thinking about the kids is disproportionately borne by the “mothers.” 

In my own house, this manifests thus: the Dotytron is responsible for packing the Big Yam’s school lunch, but I still take a second look to make sure the Big Yam gets vegetables AND fruit, and I’m the one who manages the grocery list and notes which mini yogurts the Big Yam prefers.  I don’t think the Dotytron has ever, in his going on five years as a parent, ever bought our children a stitch of clothing, or expended a nanosecond of time thinking about what season we’re going into and what the kids have to have in their wardrobes to be sartorially prepared.   The Dotytron has never scheduled a doctor’s appointment or a specialist’s appointment for our kids.  Jobs that he does do, have been assigned to him, by me.  Yes, he does the cooking at the end of the day, but it’s from a recipe that I’ve laid out for him, with ingredients that I prepped (by waking up at 5:30am, most days), and from a weekly menu plan that I devised, with groceries that I planned for and stocked. 

The bar for fathers is deplorably low.  I’m reminded of this as I read through the proofs of my friend JJ’s forthcoming book on the topic of food and femininity.  In the introduction, she states: "We demonstrate how the organic child ideal is informed by neoliberal notions of individual responsibility, positioning mothers as personally responsible for shielding their children from the risks of the industrial food system. At the same time, we argue that critics must not dismiss food-focused mothers as neoliberal dupes. Maternal discourse is constituted through neoliberal logics, but is embodied and enacted through food traditions that have deep roots within feminine and maternal identities." 

Women are responsible.  Do you ever hear of people judging and shaming middle and upper-middle class dads for feeding their kids Gerber baby food (the horror?!)? No.  Women are the ones who are guilted and shamed.  Just like when I’m at a family event with the kids and older women feel the need to tell me what I should be doing or how I should be raising my kids and what I’m doing wrong.  It’s all on the mom, man.  It really is.  When it comes to “voting with your dollar” on the world you want your kids to inherit, it’s women making those consumer decisions. 

It’s a lot of pressure being responsible for waging war on capitalism and the industrial complex on your own.  I would LOVE to be a dad – where you get daps for carrying a diaper bag and being able to put your kids to bed.  That would be awesome.  If that’s all I had to do when I was home, and I didn’t have to spend any time negotiating “work-life balance” and making sure that I had a handle on 4 people’s lives (5, if you include the Dotytron), then I would be freaking Executive Director by now. 

I love my partner, but sometimes he has to be reminded that I don’t exist to facilitate his life, which it can sometimes feel like.  The pressures put on mothers and working mothers is indeed internalized externalized pressure – we are complicit in an ideology that serves to subjugate us.  I could easily just not care.  But, I do care and the general tenets of intensive parenting are valid. On the nights when I’m not home and the Dotytron has to pick up the Big Yam from his karate class (as an aside – the first time we watched him at karate class was worth the price of the class alone.  It is ridiculously adorable how uncoordinated our eldest is), the Dotytron’s default dinner is a walk-in special (large pepperoni pizza).  I don’t want my kids to eat pepperoni pizza and Habitant pea soup (which is what the Dotytron assures me would happen if I ever actually made good on my threat to give up on the menu planning and food prep) every night!  That’s gross!  What JJ’s research shows is that even when men are the “foodies” in a relationship, it tends to be reserved for the “special” cooking.  The entertaining, fussy kind.  The everyday cooking and the thinking about nutrition and the like fall on women, more often than not.   

I don’t have any easy solution for this problem, but I know that I grew up in a house where my mother was a working mother who categorically did NOT practice intensive mothering.  She was largely absent and preoccupied with running her own law firm.  My stepdad, Big D, did all the grocery shopping and laundry and dotes on my mum.  Cooking was largely hived off to the nannies my mum hired to look after us.  I’ve never talked to my mum about it, but I don’t think she’s ever felt an iota of guilt (I’m so sure of this, that it’s why I’ve never talked to her about it - there just isn't a need to confirm what I already know).  There are models in my life for an unabashedly career focused mother.  I don’t necessarily want to be the mum my mother was, but I don’t think I have to shoulder the burden of the pressures of modern mothering myself.  It’s nice to be able to give a form and language to the oppression of intensive mothering – to be able to name that which I am casting off. 

It is difficult to be a socially conscious, environmentally driven, health-minded and reflexive person in society.  It is extra hard when you’re doing all that, working, and trying to be and create that culture for your children.  It’s exceptionally hard when you do all that, and you’re the kind of exacting, psycho, obsessive perfectionist like me.  I don’t make it easy for myself, but I can choose to say no.  I can choose to not let the state off the hook for collective social action.  I can choose to ask for and be gracious in the face of help.  I can choose not to do it alone.  I’m not sure if the model to aspire to is intensive parenting instead of mothering, but I know that I don`t have to die on the sword of social consciousness on the battleground of my children.

Diversion – how was your weekend?  I had a fantastic weekend, starting Thursday night with a lovely dinner in advance of Dr. Rei’s birthday at Sukho Thai.  This resulted in the following hilarious exchange when we some Chinese guava candies were presented with our bill –

Me: “You should try one, they’re good, Benoit in my office has a bowl at his desk.”

Dr: “Who?”

Me: “Benoit”

Dr: “Did you say, Benoit???”

Me: “Yes”

Dr: “Wow.  Benoit, huh, hmm”

Me “…”

Dr: “Benoit… “

LOL!  She was clearly very impressed with Benoit, based solely on his name, the way Jordan Peele’s character is so taken with a Continental breakfast offered at his hotel, because of its Continental-ness:

Then I had book club at my friend Judith’s gorgeous, detached, GIANT house close to Dufferin Grove park.  A house on the corner of my street recently listed in the $900s.  It had previously sold 2-3 years ago for $640-$700.  The house is the same size as mine, but detached, and a corner lot with two parking spots.  However, it is next to a rooming house and the back side is subsidized housing.  It also faces a main street.  The Dotytron has been very quick to quash  my dreams of capitalizing on my unseemly willingness to invite chaos into our lives with big renovations and real estate speculation, so I don't think it's in the cards for us, given that I refuse to pay a million dollars FOR MY OWN HOUSE.  Basically, if I'm buying a million dollar house, it's going to be for something that is not a detached version of what I'm living in.  I definitely would want a significant space upgrade.  Dotytron is insisting that Lil' Ugmo is the house they're going to wheel him out of when he's 99, so it is what it is.  No real-life Monopoly for me. 

J's house was so gorgeous though.  It is giant, close to Dufferin Grove park, old and untouched but liveable.  There are so many delicious details about it (servants stairs - which are not savory from a supporting-slavery ethical standpoint, but are a lovely architectural detail in a house), stained glass, dark beams on the ceilings. 

Anyway, Thursday was a good night.  Friday I came home to a Micelli Monday in full swing with Lolls and SMckay and baby Sheaslounge and my gaggle of adorable goofs and it was so nice.  I love coming home to a full house.  We made a delicious dinner and then hung out and it was delightful.

We watched the Amy Schumer Friday Night Lights spoof on football rape and about died laughing.  It is incisive, and funny, and cogent:

Saturday was our usual errand morning - dropping off the Big Yam at Chinese School. Two weekends ago he had a recital that we missed because we had no idea and had made other plans (we are the worst).  We felt EXTRA bad when I found out from my neighbour that during the Big Yam's class, a kid PROJECTILE VOMITED on the very last note of the song.  It was classic!  BEST POSSIBLE KID RECITAL OUTCOME!  I saw the video - the kids went screaming off in every direction.  It was chaos.

While the Big Yam is at Chinese school we do the grocery shopping and take the babies to a park where they give us multiple heart attacks.  Quincess Leia is pretty good, Lindsay is fearless.  I caught him mid-step about to go down the fireman pole, completely oblivious, just in the knick of time.  He has no self preservation instincts.  This makes both babies considerably more sure-footed than the Big Yam (who gives a hard no to anything remotely dangerous - see exhibit A, this photo from his first real roller coaster at Disney), but it also makes for a non-relaxing time at the playground:

Side eye to the MAX.
 

Quincess has been so sweet and loving lately, it's the best.  He throws his arms behind him when he runs and frequently runs into a room, arms behind him, gives us a signature Quincess crinkle cut eyes (his expressions are all about his ability to manipulate and scrunch his eyes suggestively) look of mischief, and then turns on his heels and runs out.  He is the sweetest little thing.  I was standing in the kitchen the other day and he came up and flung his little arms around my legs and gave me a knee-height full body hug, and then ran away with his arms behind him.  He's definitely a mama's boy, which is nice, since as far as Lindsay is concerned, the Dotytron is both baba AND mama (he uses both interchangeably to ask for the Dotytron, inquire about his whereabouts, request cuddles).  He's a baba's boy like you wouldn't believe.

Ever since Momma D's birthday party, Joni's "Big Yellow Taxi" has been on heavy rotation.  Lindsay's sweet little voice is the best thing.

This is my 4th baby.  He is the sweetest little goofball.  Look at him!  Those eyebrows!?  That round little noggin.  He kills me.

 The Big Yam is so funny and also filled with sweetness.  He went to a friend's house the other day and his friend's mom relayed this exchange to me:

Big Yam, upon walking into their house, "Whoa. This house is really small. Hey, we have two cats too! Except one is dead."

Mom: "Oh no! What happened?"

Big Yam: "Um. He just went to the vet and died."

LOL!!!

He has this hilarious friend at school, Frank, and the two of them just constantly make up ridiculous in-jokes and weird sayings.  The newest consists of running around singing, "Have a jolly, jolly Christmas!" and then claiming, "Me and Frank made up that song."  Also, there's this:

I'm not sure when "Mama Mia" gets employed and under what context, but as a "bit" it's so random, I love it.

We did an escape room with some of our high school buds on Saturday and then had dinner with them after.  I can't believe it's been TWENTY YEARS since high school.  I was looking around the table at dinner and was kind of floored.  So much history there!  So many experiences.  I still don't feel a day older than I was then.  I don't feel like I'm coming up on forty (!!!) at all.

Good friends, good times.  Sunday was a visit my Poh Poh, Yummy Market, dinner with my mom day.

This weekend is another good one - dinner and a movie with JJ, the Discerning Coyote, et al tomorrow night, then a friend's birthday party on Saturday, then friends over on Sunday for dinner and more hangs involving cute kids and people I've known forever (girls from my cooking days).

Fin.

Mama Guilt

Guys, I just noticed after watching the Lindsay "Whoa" video posted the other day that the Quincess reaches his little hand out for a chance to crack the egg and I didn't even notice because I was so focused on recording Lindsay's reaction.  UGH!  I'm stewing with guilt, here.

I'm also stewing with guilt because I was a total psycho and was mean to the Big Yam when I was at the end of my rope and he had a deuce-related semi-accident.

Those are recent parenting fails I've experienced.  Me when I'm not at my best.  Ugh!  Why am I the worst, sometimes?!

I planned an outing with a neighbour earlier this week.  Our local library was holding a "Star Talk" with a professor from U of T's department of Astronomy and Astrophysics giving a short introduction on how to navigate the winter night sky and then a chance to look at Jupiter and its moons through some cool telescopes. In my head, I pictured the Big Yam sharing my enthusiasm for a learning experience, marveling at the cosmos, providing examples of his brilliance and his ability to formulate an oh-so-cute "question" for the professor.  What I got was: him winking his eye and holding it about 6" away from the eyepiece of the telescope and complaining that he couldn't see anything, hucking chunks of ice off the platform onto the sidewalk, tittering with his friend and distracting the audience during the Q & A, and then refusing to pick up and put on his coat/hat/scarf/mittens.  It was a real treat.  Then, when he came home, he kicked one of our cats in frustration and we had to put him to bed without stories.

On the plus side, **I** got a lot of out the talk and it wasn't the most egregious example of a planning outing gone astray, but it wasn't the best.  I get that he's a kid, and his days are long, and he's tired, and his life is full of upheaval and he's not great at regulating his emotions.  I'm TERRIBLE at regulating my emotions.  Half my life is spent atoning for my inability to regulate my emotions.  It's such a poor use of time!  The Big Yam is trying on a bunch of new stuff and I get that.  He's learned that saying something/someone is "stupid" is not acceptable in our house and he's been trying some 4 year old rebellion on for size.  We told him that if he wants to use "bad" words, he can go up to his room and close the door and practice saying them up there.  I also gave him the option of going outside on the weekend, shoveling snow, and shouting his "bad" words as loud as he wanted.  He took me up on my offer, which resulted in some hilarity.  A kid out back, bundled up, screaming, "YOU'RE STUPID!!!" as loud as he can must be a pretty funny sight for our neighbours.  Anyway, we all just try to do better the next day.  That's what I tell him during our fireside chats, and that's just what we all have to do.  You get up and you try better the next day.

Does this mean that when you are doing the bedtime routine after a day when you haven't been your best, and your kid turns to you all drowsy and smushy and gives an umprompted, "I love you" that your heart doesn't try to fly out of your chest while you simultaneously squirm with how undeserving you feel of that gift after your wretchedness?  No.  But you take that squirmy discomfort and you go to sleep, get up, and try again, for better, the next day.

Yesterday was Chinese New Year.  I took the day off of work and went up to Markham to hang with my mum because a) the cousins were in town and the Big Yam loooooves hanging with his cousins; and b) our power was going to be shut off in our house all day (on one of the coldest days of the year!) so I needed somewhere to take the kids.  The power was shut off because when we dug down the basement my once-chest-height electrical panel was now unreachable and for SOME REASON the Electrical Safety Authority thinks that's a safety risk.  Pfft!  So I dressed up the kids in chinoiserie and we went up there and ate lunch and hung out:

COME ON, right?  So cute!  I got hosed on the outfits at Pac Mall on the 

weekend, but it's so worth it.  

The Big Yam and Little little cousin are so funny together.  Little little cousin calls the Big Yam, "See-O" and they were working together on this lift-the-flaps alphabet puzzle type thing.  Little little cousin goes: "You should do 'S' See-O because it's in your name."  Big Yam, "No it's not!"

We went to visit my grandma at the nursing home.  Best group shot of life for the following reasons: a) Quincess' face/expression/puffed up hair, b) Lindsay's muscle-man shoulders from his outfit being bunched up, c) the level of colour coordination and balance in the picture is amazing.

Usually when you put them down for a nap, there's at least 10 minutes (and sometimes, up to a half an hour) of this kind of giggling, gabbing, and chicanery.  So cute.  These guys love a classic "smush your face against something see-through" gag, hard.

Tonight I'm rolling solo with the three while the Dotytron gets his tattoo coloured.  Even though I did it twice a week (and more) on mat leave, rolling solo with the three now always fills me with a faint dread.  We have been SO SPOILED having a nanny!  It's insane.  We have gone soft.  Friday night rolling solo is way more manageable though.  It should (will) be fine.  I'm not actually concerned, but there's always a bit of "How am I ever going to fill the TIME?!"

Thank god for Friday Night Movie Night and a fridge full of delicious Congee Queen leftovers.

Fin.