Wishful thinking, Berkeley, CA.
We had some folks over the other day for a caroling party (see 6 of 31, which provides a visual of but one of the dozens of merrymakers, an old friend without whom the halls would have been a whole lot less decked). Somebody saw this little chalkboard in the kitchen and remarked, “Ah. To set expectations?” To which I said, “Yeah! Of me!” When The Mrs is off at a rehearsal through the parental swing shift — which is multiple times a week, many many weeks of the year — I sneak a peek at this cheat sheet about every fifteen minutes from sunset ’til the last moppet is decisively tucked in.
Parenthood requires (/builds) a great many skills: inventiveness; patience; flexibility/improvisation; patience; a high tolerance for bodily fluids of all kinds; a ready playfulness; a clear bead on one’s values; an ability to articulate those values in comprehensible terms to people ranging in age from 2 to 18; a preference to teach rather than to boss; patience; a sincere respect for the autonomy of one’s kids (see K. Gibran on this one); the capacity to remember that after all is said and done, they still fall asleep hugging stuffed animals, useful to bear in mind when they’re trying hard to act older than they really are; the ability to distinguish between a kvetch-cry, a psychic injury-cry, and a mortal pain-cry; patience.
I feel pretty good about most of these items. Which is to say that even if I don’t have a grip on them at least I have a grasp of them. With the sad caveat that menopause can place my access to the best of these at arm’s length from time to time. (When the going gets rough, the girl child has landed upon the magic words: “Baba, don’t be a grumpy muffin.”)
Well THAT sure was creepy
A brief non-photographic aside here to note that we all — or those of us checking in here from late Saturday afternoon ’til around about Sunday evening — just got taken on a nausea-inducing roller coaster ride. Thanks to the diligent efforts of various of the late night and weekend techies at my stalwart webhost, Acorn Host, this mild-mannered parenting blog is no longer host body to a cranky screed by some overseas hackers with too much time on their hands and too much bile in their — wherever it is that bile collects. In their innards.
By the way, if at any point in the future the URL that’s home to this mild-mannered parenting blog deals you out something suspiciously resembling a cranky screed by overseas hackers with too much time on their hands and too much bile in their whatever, please be assured that (a) while I might have an odd sense of humor from time to time, it is not that odd, and (b) the fine folks that host this mild-mannered parenting blog and I are working ’round the clock to fix it.
Before I return to the calm of the daily photo posting, which I will in a moment, I want to thank the half-dozen or more LD readers and friends who either shot me an email or Tweeted me that something was fishy and then kept me company while I fished the fish out. I likened the feeling, last night on Twitter, to the neighborly love you’d feel when an asteroid drops down in your front yard and folks come out in their fuzzy slippers and robes and offer you a cup of tea (spiked!) and scratch their heads alongside you as you all take in the smoldering mess. And I also want to thank the fine folk at Acorn Host for their hard work cleaning up that mess: Arthur B., Gordon M., Jane W., Phil Z., and Victor T.
I asked Jane, who was the first to graciously put some nice LD wallpaper over the mess left by the bilious biley chaps, whether she and Acorn Host’s boss Emma could share a favorite charity so’s I and any other grateful LD community member who wanted could send some appreciation. Here’s what she said:
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