I surely don’t know, but I guess I use this as a warning shot, of sorts, that I am more likely to sit back and let my child figure things out for himself amongst his peers. Obviously I would step in to prevent injury or to deescalate a bad fight, but I like the idea of kids experiencing gain and loss, of struggling to understand their own power. But you know what? This view of parenting may make my child incompatible with other kids (or, more likely, it may make me incompatible with their parents). He may be seen as a bully or a jerk and I might be seen as a Bad Parent if I take this tack. But I strongly believe that we learn better through experience, not verbal remonstration. Teaching when they’re ripe for it, not green, as the article discusses.

It’s going to be like trying to find firm footing in a marsh, this theory of letting my kid understand power via experience.  I suppose the best thing that I can do is ask other parents, Do you want me to step in, or can we let them figure this out? But parents I see on the playground are so quick to jump in before other parents, almost as if they’re competing to see who can be Most Involved, as if that makes them a better parent, so I can’t imagine they will respond well to my approach. And I certainly don’t argue the opposite, that neglect produces “better” or more creative children. I just want to find that middle, somewhat squishy ground where my kid can develop his understanding of power naturally, operate within the parameters of a semi-polite society, but where we his parents serve as guides, not dictators or interventionists. That balance just seems incredibly tricky, if not impossible, to find.

I know this blog isn’t a hotbed for discussion, but I would welcome thoughts and experience on this topic, as it’s one I’m just beginning to contemplate.

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You have nothing against Skunks, per se; you think some of their ideas are okay, although they seem a bit too black and white for your taste (you believe the quill is mightier than the anal gland, for example), but the Skunks you grew up with were wonderful people and you bear none of them any personal ill will. In the end, both are trying to coexist in the same general habitat even though they have quite different ways of expressing themselves.

So would you be at all suspicious when your families keep giving your child textiles with skunks on them? Bath towels, blankets, and shirts? Is this some sneaky rhetorical persuasion they’re attempting? Or do porcupines simply not have the same childish appeal and family values as their symbolic counterparts?

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My sister is the eldest. Mom only had to threaten to count and my sister would dissolve into tears. “Don’t count, Mommy! Don’t count! I’ll do it!” And after the drama subsided, she would run along. That’s probably why she practiced her music so diligently, later earning medal after medal at music festivals in preparation for a successful career in music, and why she never got suspended from boarding high school.

My brother was the middle child, and he discovered that Mom was soft enough to use fractions: “One. Two. Three. Four. Four and a half. Four and three-quarters.” Probably when Mom broke out the sixteenths, he’d go do whatever it was he was supposed to do, knowing that she’d lose her patience as the math got progressively harder. This early scientific probing into the limits of possibility combined with the mathematical education it offered is likely what propelled him to medical school and beyond.

And then there’s me. The way the story goes, my mom only tried counting with me the one time. She put a hand on her hip and held up a finger: “One.” And then I piped up, “Two! Three! Four! Five! Hmph!” and planted both hands on my hips and glared back at her, Consequences be damned. (This from the same child who cried when she wasn’t allowed to leave the table before eating her lima beans and finally, an hour later, still sitting at the table, took her dad up on his offer to “give you something to really cry about.”) My utter lack of concern for profitable outcomes sufficiently explains, I think, why I majored in English.

I bring this up because we’ve reached the end of the pregnancy countdown: The baby is forty weeks today (“Thirty-eight,” Matt would say), and I fully expected to have him by now. But it seems that he has a little bit of me in him, as just right now he’s doing a headstand on my bladder and, instead of counting contractions, he’s keeping score of his kicks to my spleen: “Two, three, four, five, hmph!”

Husband: Okay.

Me: But don’t tell her I asked! It’s not my job to pry.

Husband: Right.

[He dials, his mom answers, they exchanges pleasantries]

Husband: Chelsey was talking to her mom and they were wondering who all is coming to the shower this weekend — glarbl, glug, gulpey, oof

[Wife releases husband's throat]

The end.

I admit that a very small (teensy, really) part of my liking for the boy’s name we have mostly settled on is that it would sound great if an NFL sportscaster were announcing it as part of the Broncos starting lineup. What can I say — I have a sickness.

soon-to-be-father-of-our-child: y’know, awhile ago in a moment of angst i asked you the same thing. you said all we have to do is feed it and change its diaper, and as it grew more complicated, we’d learn what to do.

me: …

me: well…don’t throw my words back in my face!

father-to-be: obama’s a muslim!

Anyway, I gladly accepted the gift. My grandparents enjoyed collecting the finer things in life: gems and crystals, pottery, jewelry (which of course they never wore, being staunch E.G. White-thumping Adventists), and I assumed that this teapot was a treasure they had picked up on one of their many travels, perhaps in China or, given the design of the pot, England. So today, as I beheld the pile of grading ahead of me, I decided the only way through this involved tea.

I lifted down the pot and took awhile to examine it. It is ceramic and cream-colored, with a wicker-like texture (the kind you may have seen in wedding cakes frosted back in the 1980s). On its front are a few pink, nondescript flowers clearly envisioned by a ceramic artist who spent most of his time indoors. I would hazard that the flowers are something of a cross between roses and camelias, with perhaps the stamen of hibiscus thrown in for artiness.

I am very careful whenever I handle this teapot, as it has an elegant spout that pours well (something that can not be said for every other teapot I’ve owned) and I don’t want to chip any part of the squat little thing. Yet today, as I rinsed it carefully in the sink, when I turned it over I noticed the following inscription on the bottom:

So much for a family heirloom. Now instead of the spirit of my dearly departed grandmother inspiring me to finish grading, all I can think about is how overpriced and ugly nearly every Teleflora arrangment is that I’ve seen. And given the date on the stamp — 1985 — this was probably sent as a gift to my grandmother just after she’d been diagnosed with incurable breast cancer. Thanks a lot, fate.

She pointed at the wall, specifically at an indentation in the plaster that looked to be about the same size as a college dean’s forehead.

I won’t even give you the context. It’s good, but sometimes one’s imagination is even better.

In related bits, a friend introduced me to My Parents Were Awesome. While I understand that my parents were once my age (in fact, my mom and I met right about the time she was my age now), I’ve never really seen pictures of them without us kids. And now I really want to know what they were like.

In unrelated news, Jon Stewart’s Glenn Beck impersonation was downright inspiring. It’s not that he’s making fun of Glenn Beck — it’s that he’s taking every rhetorical strategy of Beck’s and illustrating how ludicrous they are: the word association schemes, the crazy diagrams, the appearance of being well-read without the information to back it up, the crying, the screaming, the hand-waving and -wringing  — all these are ways Beck tries (and logically fails) not so  much to win but to shut down arguments. That’s the  beauty of this — not that it’s funny, but that it’s true.

This week’s topic: Grandparent names. I remember when my first sibling procreated and the discussion of what my parents should be called by the impending grandchildren –

[because, y'know, "Grandma" and "Grandpa" just wouldn't do, oh no! -- grandparents these days need unique names, not unlike parents who think an alternate spelling will showcase their child's uniqueness (instead of "Michelle" it's "Meeschelle"; instead of "Susie" it's "Souziee"; instead of "Chelsea" it's...hey, wait a minute...), and that same vanity appears to affect all generations, young and old; because grandparents these days aren't "grandma," they're "gramma" or "mimi" or "meemaw"; not "grandpa" but "pawpaw" or "poppy"]

– and, figuring that what my parents’ grandchildren called them wouldn’t really affect me, I offered my suggestions: “Grumps” and “Grim.” That was probably the first time my mom was even a tiny bit glad that I’m not having children. Suffice it to say, my family went in another direction with the name choices, and I was left to my child-free devices. Little did I know that listening to the sound of my nieces and nephew calling my parents “Pops” and “Grammie Lou” WOULD DRIVE ME UP THE WALL.

[Fortunately, my personality is such that the wall and I are intimate acquaintances, so much so that my foot- and handholds are quite well worn.]

It’s not that I want every grandparent to be “grandma” and “grandpa”, nor do I think everyone should have a “traditional” (or white/Anglo) name like “Tom” or “Sally.” Far from it. But I do find the overplanning wearisome — yet another part of a child’s life decided for him or her — and I would prefer to see grandparents’ names evolve naturally. Sure, go with “nana” if a child couldn’t pronounce “grandma” and it was this cute malapropism the kid hung onto. I see no problem with that. But to purposefully decide to misspell or go phonetic — is that necessary?

Not that it matters, mind you; my parents already have their new grandparent names firmly affixed, so were the flying pigs of hell to freeze over and we to have children, they’d probably go with the names established by the more procreationally inclined siblings.

Actually, to hell with hegemony; I’ll teach my kids to call their grandparents by their first names. Ha! Take that, Bwuth and Mawy Woo.

“You like to tell true stories, don’t you?” [my father] asked, and I answered, “Yes, I like to tell stories that are true.”

Then he asked, “After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don’t you make up a story and the people to go with it?

“Only then will you understand what happened and why.

“It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”

Me, silently: Pleasedon’tsaypornPleasedon’tsaypornPleasedon’tsayporn

Dad: The Proposal.

Our friend N. visited Walla Walla, so Matt and I and C. took him on a tour of the valley and ended up at Blue Mountain Cider Company/Watermill Winery for some tasting.

We’re all very astute when it comes to wine knowledge, as you may undoubtedly infer by the photos.

Beaver came along as designated driver; later he became very smitten with a certain Minette,

but their cross-species romance just wasn’t to be as the three of us (Matt, Beaver, and me) left the next morning for Banff.

Turns out it’s 10 hours of driving plus one hour of immigration line, where some dingbat nearly rear-ended us (mainly me, as she was perpendicular to us as she backed out of her parking space and failed to notice the TWENTY CARS LINED UP behind her) and I kid you not, she stopped about an inch from my door, and only because I was yelling, “Whoa, whoa, WHOA!!”; plus one hour of road construction, which would have been improved with either OnStar or a shotgun, whichever would have gotten us away from the asshat behind us blasting the bass out of his speakers.

In Banff, we and ten thousand of our best tourist friends hiked the Johnston Creek Trail to the Lower and Upper Falls. I wanted to carry on to the Ink Pots, but having three kidlings and a reservation for High Tea at the Fairmont on Lake Louise scratched that plan.

We saw deer, bald eagles, huge trout (cutbow, rainbow, and brown), two grizzlies (or, more likely, the same one twice), elk, and a moose if you count roadkill (sadface).

We outfished my dad and brother on Thursday, catching a dozen or more fish apiece, the largest being a 23.5-inch brown trout for me and a 24-incher for Matt, which was probably the largest fish caught on the trip, and the smallest fish being a mere eighteen inches. God I love the Bow River.

We got tan.

The family got along, for the most part;  I didn’t have to kill anyone, including myself.

And then we got Lucy.

Today’s issue is brought to you by the nonverbal lungpower of my niece and nephew. They are about the same age, which is nearly 2. And it is fortunate that they are adorable and giggly most of the time, because the little bit of time they spend screaming? Well, let’s just say I could push them off a glacier and make it look like an accident.

So my theory is this: children’s lungpower should develop as they mature. Let them make low-decibel noises like cooing and giggling, sure, anytime after birth (or, what the hell, I’m not ageist: before birth, too); but the high decibel noises, i.e. SCREAMING THEIR BLOODY LUNGS OFF, that should not be possible until they’re able to verbalize what they want or need.

But, you say, how else will they learn to communicate?

Don’t worry, I thought that through, and here’s my answer:

QUIETLY.

Thankfully — for the sake of my sanity — Matt has to work until Tuesday, at best, so we’ll all have two more days of enjoying the idea of all being together before reality sets in and we actually are all together. In one house. ALL OF US: three children ages 1 to 5 — actually four, counting the fetus — and seven adults. And my brother.

This trip also involves two ten-hour drives with just Matt and me. As much as I love a good road trip, Matt does not. In fact, he gets downright cranky when I want to pull over and read the historical site signs (Cliffs Notes got NOTHIN’ on the U.S. government’s ability to condense history into one single paragraph and then engrave it onto a old-growth wooden sign). So we’ll be bringing our respective iPods and I shall attempt to wrest the driver’s seat from him so we can stop and get photos that don’t involve the mileage or odometer or other signage that includes the figure “1137“.

If everyone survives, we’ll return bruised, battered, and — most importantly — WITH A PUPPY, whom we’re picking up on our way back. Personally, I think some bulldog wrinkles will be all that’s needed to assuage my battered soul.