"Wii" are having "fun"

The family obsession with having a Wii continues. Or should I say, it worsens. For the last few days, Pablo has been telling me all about how all his IMAGINARY friends have Wiis and how fun it is to go to their houses to play, with increasing detail etc. It must be so sad to not only have the stigma of being the only visible playmate, but also the least technologically up to date.

As of today, we apparently got a Wii at our house. An invisible one. A wobble board serves as the Wii Fit board, and various things have been used as the remote control. We just spent the last hour taking turns "playing" our favorite Wii games, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, and sometimes getting strikes while playing tennis. Don't ask me. Pablo expects me to remember what order the games are in on the various exercises you can do on the Wii, and which order new games become unlocked. My memory just doesn't serve.

One significant advantage of our "machine" over those lesser visible models is that games load really fast. We change back and forth from the game pack to the Wii Fit with no waiting for something to load, no pushing extra buttons. You want to bowl? Bam, you are there. In front of the (off) television, with some sort of remote (often a puzzle piece, since the 600 piece world map is back...) in hand. You are ready to go. Just don't forget to push the A button first. In Mauritania. Am I the only one who has a hard time finding the Wii buttons on a puzzle piece that is less than an inch in diameter? Don't worry, I have help.

6 months?!

As of yesterday, Beebz is 6 whole months old. I can't believe it. She has reached many milestones like sitting up, high fiving, passing a toy from hand to hand, saying "hi" (no, really she does! Also, possibly "ball." Pablo counts it, I don't. Of course, according to Pablo, she said "beach ball" which I think is flat out fiction. She was holding a ball and said "ba" but I don't think it really counts. She was just repeating him. Maybe.). She is closer to crawling than I want to think about. She has two whole teeth and a fancy haircut, and is about the cutest thing ever in the history of time. I am not biased, of course. What mother is?

She seems to be favoring her left hand, which is cool with me since that would even up the handedness in our family (Pablo and my partner are righties, I am a lefty). Of course, it's ok if she is a righty too. It's not like I am taping her right hand to her side or anything.

Also, I think she can solve some of our money issues. I can rent her voice out for horror movie sound tracks. She can shriek loud enough to break glass, shatter your ear drums, and bend metal, all the while grinning with delight. There has to be a market for this. Can't you see me, a stage mom, coaching my infant to give this shriek just a "little more feeling, darling!" Maybe not.

Sadly, however, she apparently didn't get the memo regarding how most babies stop spitting up by 6 months of age. I reminded her about it, and she didn't seem to care. I even showed her the page in the book. No dice. That's my little rebel.

Happy half birthday, sweetness, I love you!

No, I am not stupid, I am just YOUNG.

This was a really busy week during which we encountered more people who don't know Pablo than usual. We had meetings with both the social worker and our lawyer concerning Beebz' second parent adoption (Oh the fun (and expense) of discrimination... married people don't have to prove that they are good parents to the children they planned for, conceived, and have cherished since egghood... but that's another post.). Both of these women are kind, intelligent people who deal with children on a pretty regular basis. And both treated Pablo like a moron.

First was the sing-song voice that some people adopt due to the fact that they can't distinguish between apes and children. That one alone gets on my nerves. Then came the "Oh, no, you couldn't mean THAT" kinds of statements. At the lawyer's office, Pablo said he was 34 because that day he was PRETENDING to be 34. The lawyer replied, "Oh no, you must mean three OR four. You will get better at knowing your age when you are older." To which we all jumped to explain and she was shocked that he knew numbers as high as 34. No kidding. He is FOUR years old and freakishly bright, but I have yet to meet ANY 4 year old who can't say two digit numbers. She was also shocked he knew his colors and could read the word RED.

This is when I am sorely tempted to trot out his tricks and make him perform like a trained seal by showing off his math, reading, geography etc skills. But I restrained myself. I don't like bending to their level to make him prove his intelligence. Still, it is so hard to watch that look he gets on his face where he is clearly thinking either a) this adult is a moron or b) he is doing something wrong by knowing the things he knows. He has learned to dumb down to the level of the adults he plays with, and it breaks my heart. On the other hand, it shows a considerable amount of empathy and consideration for one so young. He doesn't want others to feel bad that they don't know the capital of Zambia. Isn't that nice?

The social worker did more damage, in my opinion, because not only did she treat him like he was dumb, she CHEATED when they played a game together. It was almost comical because she was clearly cheating, and Pablo clearly knew she was cheating, but she thought she was getting away with it. Since we play all games in a cooperative, non competitive way in our home, he thought she was off her rocker. Why cheat when everyone wins? And, oh by the way, what is cheating and why do people do it, and why did she cheat, and why did she want the game to go faster and and and and....

I feel so sad that people ever treat children in a condescending way. Even when kids don't know things, they should still be spoken to as if they were HUMAN. After all, we are teaching them how to treat those with less power. And life lesson, talking to those with less power (ie ability, strength, position, etc) as if they were stupid just pisses them off. Badly.

TWITTERING BARACK OBAMA

Did you know you can twitter Barack Obama? I mean, who gets to have the job for posting messages on the site, and how much does that person get paid?! I mean seriously, what was that job interview like? (OK, OK, I know its really just some flunky, but it’s so fun to imagine the possible specificities of this “career.”)

“Tell me, young person, can you speak in Senator Obama’s voice for 140 characters or less, updating our hip constituents on his every move? You will get paid .0001 cent per character per 1000 hits on our site. Oh, and you are in charge of coffee too. If you want, we can call you our tech-barista. Sound good? Great. Now help me figure out how to do this Twitter thing. Everyone over 40 is stumped by it.”

What really gets me is that Obama follows you too. He has a kabillion friends that he “follows” daily. Do you think our mythical tech-barista READS all these 20 kabillion twitters a day, tracking micro-trends in the Obama population? Given politics today, probably I am not too far off.

I love the guy, and I gotta say, he is a genius for making people feel in touch. You can also Digg him, Facebook him, Flickr him, and various and assorted other things that are beyond my coolness level. For the first time, we will (aka we had freakin' better) have a president hipper than me. That doesn't make me old, right? Just twitter me your answer. ;)

Tips for Grounding Step 1: Remember to do it.

We have this list of grounding tips that sits on our refrigerator. It always cracks me up because it seems at first glance like a list of how to ground your kids, but it’s really a list of ways for the parent to get more grounded (ie back in touch). It has stuff like deep breathing, counting backwards, taking a break, etc. The typical stuff. It sits there so I will remember to implement grounding skills. Sometimes. Now and then. Ever.

The fact is that when I am on I am on, and when I am off, it is nearly impossible for me to get myself back to a grounded place. I was thinking a lot about this yesterday when I was so grumpy. Writing about it helped get me over the hump of being actively insane, but the whole rest of the day I just felt spacey and not connected. I didn’t even know how to feel compassion for that, since at the time I was struggling just to stay in a sane place. Teething, tantrums, and trauma. Such fun.

Cultivating that awareness to ask the question: “Does this (thought/feeling/behavior) fit with my higher purpose?” sounds really easy. Like a theoretical diet. You know, you think about eating better and exercising and you create a whole big plan, and then when you start you feel hungry and tired and getting out of bed seems too hard and you forgot to go to the grocery and and and and and…. The diet is over before it started. Yes, theoretical implementation is easy. I have created a thousand plans and reminders for myself. I have yet to find one that really works on a consistent basis. Probably because I have a hard time using them consistently. Or sometimes starting them. Or remembering them in the moment.

Part of the problem is I still yearn for structure. Four years into this full time parenting gig, I still crave just a teensy bit of structure to my day. I still want that fictional quiet time in the afternoon and morning time to do yoga and meditate. Instead, there are diaper changes and spit up and upsets over toys being lost. And so my little routine gets all discombobulated and then I end up just going through the day, never feeling quite checked in with myself. I still can’t surf the wave of our days and let it all flow if I want to include any aspect of the day for my own recharge. If I ignore me, things go pretty well. Until I am exhausted after a few weeks of no me-time.

But, when I am on, I am on. So maybe the trick is to not fall off. Often.

And maybe to ground myself more often: “You are grounded as of this moment, young lady. March yourself into your room and don’t come out until you have taken 10 deep breaths. Good ones. NOW GO.”

The Grumps.

I am grumpy. Nothing is going to make it better. So there.

The last couple of days have been really hard. I have been grumpy and not really able to get into a better space. I know that the boyo has been a big ignorer, which is always hard to tolerate. I know that I am worried about finding another work from home job thats not a scam since my old contract has pretty much dried up. I know that my head and body hurt from muscle tension.

What I don't know is how to get out of this space. For a while I fought it. I tried talking to myself about needing to feel better. No dice. I tried chilling out and doing something fun. Not even a spark of improvement. In fact, now I feel grumpier. If there were grumpy Olympics I would win the gold. In fact, I bet I can out-grump anyone in cyberspace. So there.

I could try being compassionate to myself. No. Don't wanna. I could meditate. NO. Really don't wanna. I could do yoga. No way. Geez. If I did any of that I might get in a better mood and then where would I be?

Dang it, it's hard to stay grumpy now cause the baby woke up and is smiling at me and singing a little wake up song. Maintaining a good grump takes just the right balance and if I start noticing good things instead of dwelling on the bad I will totally lose it.

Great. Now Pablo is cooperating with me and being sweet while we play a super cool division mah jong game. Sheppard's may be the coolest site EVER for kids. The baby is giving me zerberts. Phooey. I give up. I won't be the biggest grump. Aw, man....

Halloween: It's a FROG!

Yes, Pablo wants to be a frog. But not just any frog. He wants his costume modeled after a toy of his sister's, that has chewing rings held by the feet. That are sewn together. Anyone see a problem with this? Yes, I thought you might. Serious negotiations later, he is willing to wear bracelets that are like the rings. Great. Except one is star shaped, one is square, and one is a circle. The circle will be no problem, but I am concerned about finding kid sized bracelets that are square or star shaped. He also wants the head to rattle, just like the toy. This makes me fight hard to suppress any number of jokes about making heads rattle, rocks between the ears, etc. I figure I will make a head with big puffy eyes and put bells in them. This froggy also has a crown, which Pablo emphatically DOES NOT want. Don't ask me, I just report the facts. This will be a project and a half, won't it? The big question is, sew or crochet?