My Three Favorite Hymns, in Descending Order of Favoriteness

With apologies to any of the now-bored skeptics/agnostics/atheists who make up half of my 15 daily visitors...

From the defunct indie band Pedro the Lion's EP, The Only Reason I Feel Secure.  (Well, this video is actually just David Bazan, who is still out there recording under his own name.)

From one of my very favorites, the ever-creative Sufjan Stevens.  I love me some subversive use of the banjo.

I couldn't find very many video options for this one on the web that were not vomit-inducing cheesy, but it's hard to go wrong with Mahalia Jackson, right?  The lyrics for the wonderful 3rd stanza are based on the Jewish poem Haddamut, written in Aramaic in 1050 by Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai, a cantor in Worms, Germany.

There you have it, some Monday morning hymns!

The Vagaries of Toddlerhood

Sometimes it strikes me that it must be tough to be a toddler.  So much of the world is opaque to their understanding and out of their control and mysterious; even their own emotions can be overwhelming and scary.  Mothering a toddler can be tough, too, of course, not in the least because a toddler is fundamentally unpredictable.  I think one of the reasons motherhood has been so good for me is that it has forced me to accept and embrace this unpredictability as a gift.  The capriciousness can bring me beyond my control-freak self and boring habits and grasping for the routine.  I was particularly struck by the mercurial nature of toddler life recently when Grace followed a handful of days of recalcitrancy and obstreperousness with a whiplash-inducing reversal into being all sweetness and light.

It had been a not-so-fun series of days, I will admit.  Grace didn't want to eat, or take a bath, or wear pants, or go to bed, or sit on the potty.  Mornings were particularly challenging, especially those mornings in our weekly routine where we both need to be dressed and fed and out the door by a certain time.  I watched the minutes tick away towards tardiness as this small yet contrary creature roared her displeasure with my plans for breakfast and wearing clothes and peeing before we left.  It made me acutely aware of how little control she has in her life and how I need to build choices for her into our routines, but on the other hand I do have to step up and be the mommy/grown-up-type-person.  Days like that are particularly intense because I have to be on top of my game with boundaries and consequences and discipline and all; in case you were wondering, that kind of thing isn't too relaxing.  We were treated to several choice examples of Grace's tantrum modus operandi; she runs from room to room around the house, inconsolably crying and wailing, often bawling, "I'm crying, I'm crying!"  Well, yes, yes, you are.

After days of this I was considering my options for restructuring our mornings when one afternoon, she awoke from her nap and I discovered that nefarious Grace had been replaced without any notice by charming, genial Grace.  She now wants to cuddle and "bring" me kisses, as she puts it.  She happily goes to the bathroom when asked and acquiesces to hand-washing and wearing both panties and pants.  She plays creatively, sometimes quietly and seriously, sometimes full of noise and joy.  She chooses from among offered snacks and then actually eats them.  We've had two busy mornings since this turnaround of getting out the door smoothly as she was cooperative and compliant and lovely, and we actually made it places on time.

It was such a dramatic turnaround that it made us chuckle disbelievingly, and I have no idea what caused her return to what I think of (inaccurately?) as her "normal" temperament.  The phase of the moon?  Consistency in dealing with her bad behavior?  (Ha!  In my dreams...)  Her anti-virus software finally eradicated the Perverse Bug?  Really, I don't have any clue and I don't feel a great need to know why.  I shall just chalk it up to the changeable, unpredictable labor that is life with a toddler.

The photo of Grace was turned all lovely and vintage-y via this awesome gadget I saw used on Simple Lovely, a Dallas mom's design blog.

How I Spend My Free Time

Or, Things I Have Done While Grace is at Mothers' Day Out

• Folded giant piles of laundry while watching Project Runway and The Daily Show (it never seems right to watch all those bleeped-out expletives with a toddler around)
• Worked out at the dreaded gym, as much as it has pained me to use my precious child-free time thus
• Napped, sometimes for almost the whole time she's gone
• Made phone calls, paid bills, written overdue emails
• Applied Manic Panic to refresh the pinkness of my hair (so far I've had to do this every 2 to 3 weeks after the initial bleach/color session at the salon-- annoyingly frequent, but less time and effort than a pedicure, so you know, not too bad)
• Gone to OB appointments, sometimes when I actually have them scheduled
• Done some sewing
• Shopped for groceries in a delightfully leisurely manner unfettered by an impatient, distractible companion
• Re-organized our filing cabinet
• Gone to the post office with small piles of eBay items (why am I STILL trying to get rid of stuff that we moved halfway across the country?!  Aargh, materialism, how I loathe thee...)
• Written blog entries (so meta!)

Off to the Museum

Yesterday was free-admission day at the main art museum here in town so Grace and I took the train downtown and spent the afternoon enjoying some museum time.  I had been having a particularly down day in what is proving to be a bit of a down time in general for me, so I'm glad I decided to gather the wherewithal to make the trek.  A few hours at a museum will almost always cheer me up, much like I can count on the cheering affects of re-reading Northanger Abbey or sharing a bottle of bubbly wine with someone.  It's something about the quiet, contemplative ambiance, the sense that these things on the walls and on their pedestals are IMPORTANT, and that your whole job while there is to look and think about things.  I like to think about things in a quiet, beautiful place.

We took the train downtown, which I think was Grace's favorite part of the whole expedition.  I can't say that I blame her; I too have a deep and abiding love for train and subway public transit.  I have a hard time explaining why I love them.  Part of it is that I don't particularly like driving and I definitely dislike the hassle of parking, and of course the efficiency of moving large quantities of people where they need to go in a methodical, environmentally responsible way appeals to both the eco-conscious and hyper-organized parts of me.  But more honestly, I think that my fondness for trains stems from an association that I hold between a train or trolley car or subway and a magical urban life sometime in the first half of the 20th century in which I would get to wear a fetching hat.  From this you can probably infer what kind of books and movies informed my suburban girlhood what urban life was like.

I admit that part of the expedition's cheering affect is most likely me fantasizing that I live a different kind of life in a different kind of place than I actually do-- you know, a more urbane life in a different kind of city than Dallas.  On the other hand, maybe it isn't a fantasy because I do live somewhere with a train that can take me to an art museum; perhaps I am rightfully cheered up.

If negotiating a museum with a toddler is in your future, I highly recommend taking advantage of free admission days, not only because you will save a little money but because it changes how you can approach your time there.  Toddler squawks for the ancient Greeks and Romans after glimpsing the statues from down the hall when you were in the mood for something along 18th century European lines?  No problem!  You have not invested any of your hard-earned dollars!  Toddler seems to prefer the elevator to the actual art?  Fine!  You can come back next month to see a little more!  The free admission day is once a month here and we've been several times now since moving.  There is a children's center with a few low-key activities and we usually spend about an equal amount of time in the actual galleries and in the children's area, which is totally fine.  Grace doesn't have the longest attention span and seems to handle about 5 seconds at each piece before petitioning that we move on.  Yesterday, we spent most of our time in the European galleries, also spending a little time with the ancient Romans (whose busts and sculptures always make me ponder what it means to be human in the vast swaths of history) and the Asian art (which is always one of my favorites as far as aesthetics and style).

Wretched Retch-ed

What a couple of days it has been...  There has been a stomach bug going around here and I unluckily caught it.  It has been an unpleasant time here at our household, but today I feel nearly human, just droopy and weak.  I took my whole shower this morning without crumpling to the floor of the shower to "rest" a few times, a definite improvement over yesterday.  I am eating toast and Jello without incident, and I feel like I might be able to keep Grace's TV time under the recommended 2 hours today.  (Seriously, she has been watching an unholy amount of Backyardigans and Blue's Clues as I lie doleful and insensate beside her.)  And all the burst capillaries in my face are starting to heal up-- does that happen to anybody else?  Almost every time I get sick like this, I get all these red spots from blown-out capillaries, especially around my eyes, nose, and temples.  Rob seems to think it is unusual.  Speaking of the other members of my family, they seem to be unaffected so far and I am PRAYING that the situation remains so.  Being sick is bad, but coping with a sick toddler is infinitely worse.

I feel really behind on all the normal household running stuff now.  It's amazing how things pile up when I literally do nothing useful for a while, from laundry to the mail and bills to grocery shopping to the state of my toenail polish.  Rob did a wonderful job keeping the truly necessary things done, like feeding the dog and child, and that's what's really important, right?  He's on call these days, however, so doesn't have much flexibility about the actual working full time thing.  My dad came over the first day to play with Grace for me and took her to a Chinese restaurant for lunch and three parks (yes, three! in a row!) so I didn't have to prepare food for anyone at all when I was actively being sick.  Times like this make me really glad to be close to family.

Wee unborn Violet reacted quite strongly to me being sick, which weirded me out somewhat.  She was unusually active with lots of kicks and flips and movement; normally I notice her moving several times a day but this was nearly without interruption for hours at a time.  Rob's guess is that all the stress hormones and abdominal cramping is to blame, which makes sense, I suppose.  And it's not like I was more sick than those unfortunate women who get morning sickness so badly they have to take medicine for it, so hopefully all is fine.

I watched most of the VP debate last night, curled up woozily on the couch, and I must admit that it was not the glorious train wreck of stupidity and crazy talk I was sort of hoping for.  I'm afraid that nothing in my lifetime will ever compete with the year that Ross Perot ran and Admiral Stockdale came across as impossibly confused and doddering in his debate.  Perhaps I should feel guilty about looking for delicious comedic gold in these things since these people are going to be, you know, WORLD LEADERS.  Sheesh...