parenting

A Few Recommendations for Interacting with Me While Pregnant

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

I wrote this a while back, but haven’t been able to post it until now. Fortunately, a couple of these no longer apply – the doctor lifted my restrictions about a month ago, thank goodness.

Maybe it’s my badass attitude. Or maybe it’s the fact that I obviously respond with my lunch order when you ask “Do you know what you’re having?” Either way, I typically haven’t had a lot of strangers interact with me during my first or current pregnancy. Nonetheless, if you run into me, here are some rules for dealing with me while pregnant. While these rules aren’t universal, I’m pretty sure they apply widely beyond my personal situation.

1) No comments on the size of a woman’s feet. During my first pregnancy, I had some serious fluid retention. Towards the end, there was a single pair of stretchy shoes I could wear, which my feet overflowed out of like muffin tops at the end of each leg. If someone’s feet are twice as big as usual, believe me, she already knows it.

2) No saying “Oh, you’ll have your hands full!” Personally, I’ll respond poorly if you comment about how two boys will be so difficult for me to handle. For one, I’m not the primary caregiver – my husband is – so he’ll be the one juggling it the most. Secondly, my kid is the toddler version of Mr. Rogers; he loves button-down sweaters, enjoys quietly looking at books, and actually shares with other kids. Rather than having my bubble burst, I’d prefer to delude myself that our second kid will have a similarly calm demeanor. Similarly, no one else wants to hear about how their life is going to be a living hell – that’s what “You’ll have your hands full!” is the nice version of.

3) No donations of maternity clothes unless requested. I deeply appreciate the generosity of the many women who passed on maternity clothes during my first pregnancy. I appreciated the actual styles of said clothes far less. While they may have been attractive on some pregnant woman somewhere, they certainly weren’t on me.

4) No touching. This is pretty much a gimme, and yet some people just don’t seem to know (or acknowledge) it. Friends and family are an exception, but only if if they ask first. The only person who’s totally exempt from this rule is my toddler son and even I’ve yelled at him a bunch of times not to sit on / hit / squish / climb on his future brother. Good advice for life, really.

5) No horror stories. During my first pregnancy, I was a bit of a Smug Pregnant Lady at times. While I was nervous about becoming a mom, my pregnancy was pretty damn easy, all things considered. But this time around is different. Due to some heavy bleeding that sent me to the ER early on, I’m more wound up than a yo-yo on Adderall. I know a number of women for whom things went Very Badly and am perfectly capable of coming up with plenty more horrifying scenarios myself. And I know I’m not the only one. Neither I or any other pregnant women need your idle comments to feed our nightmares.

6) No saying “But it’s for the best” or “It’s all worth it” when we describe our restrictions. Due to said bleeding, I have some substantial restrictions on activities. Whereas during my first pregnancy, I walked a mile to the train every day, biked into my first trimester and was a yoga die-hard, this time I’m not allowed to walk for more than 10 minutes without sitting down. Taking away my main form of stress relief was awesome. In addition, I’m not allowed to lift my two-year-old (too heavy), which is super exciting when he plays the “I’m going to lie on the floor like a dead fish game” when I’m trying to put him in bed. Of course, following the doctor’s orders is for the best – I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise! But that doesn’t negate the fact that the restrictions still suck. I know plenty of women who have much more severe restrictions. If I or any other pregnant woman is complaining, please just sympathize.

7) Don’t treat us as some special category, but just people who will be having a baby in a couple of months. (Except for giving up your seats on the subway – that you can still do, thanks.)

Anticipating a New Member of the Family

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

My family of three is soon going to be a family of four. That’s right – I’m pregnant! I’m actually in my third trimester as of this week, but for a number of personal reasons, preferred not to reveal it on the blog before now. I’m due in April, about two months before Sprout’s third birthday.

To answer the first question everyone asks, it’s a boy. We didn’t have a gender reveal party or anything like that – I don’t like putting that heavy of an emphasis on gender – but I also don’t like being absurdly coy. So Sprout will be having a little brother. Chris suggested Sprig for his blog nickname, but I think that’s a bit derivative.

And to answer the second question, no, we haven’t decided on a name yet. We didn’t reveal Sprout’s real name to anyone (yes, that is a nickname) until our baby shower, so it’s about the same timing. Of course, that hasn’t stopped both Chris and my mother from making endless, unrequested suggestions, just like last time.

Besides picking a name, our other major priority is making sure the kiddo has somewhere to sleep. When Sprout was born, we put a bunch of stuff that had been in his room in our “office.” Even when we finished the basement, we didn’t stop cramming random stuff in the “extra room.” But now it’s no longer quite so “extra.” Unfortunately, it currently houses my dresser, Chris’s dresser, a giant desk, and a ton of random crap on the desk and floor. All meaning there is absolutely no room for a baby, much less all of his required equipment. My project for January is to totally clean out that room, so we can then fill it again with the baby’s stuff.

Fortunately, there’s very little we need to buy. Sprout’s crib converts into a toddler bed and he’s keeping his rocker, so we’ll need additional ones for the new baby. But almost everything else will be hand-me-downs from Sprout.

Besides sheer logistics, we’re preparing for the new baby in other ways. Sprout is now quite familiar with the fact that his brother will be arriving in the spring – or because he’s still pretty hazy on the seasons, when it gets warm and the trees start budding. I plan to go on maternity leave for two-and-half-months, so I’m trying to gets as much at work done ahead of time as possible. Unfortunately, communications is an unpredictable beast, so they’ll just have to figure how out to handle random media inquiries and needed talking points while I’m out. I’m quite fortunate that all of my leave is paid, a combination of the federal government’s fairly generous leave policy and the fact that I’ve been there nearly eight years.

As for the blog, I’ve been thinking of some special posts for that time, as writing is very difficult when holding and/or nursing a newborn. I’m looking at running some profiles and welcome any suggestions for guest posts!

Lastly, there’s my psychological preparation. While we’ve done all this before, having two kids is fundamentally different from having just one. Plus, this child’s personality is likely to be quite different from Sprout’s. Unfortunately, this isn’t an area I can turn to my parents for help on – I’m an only child.

Over the next few months, I expect to dive into all of these issues a bit here. While this isn’t going to become Pregnancy Central, I will have a number of posts on some of the challenges I’ve faced already and issues in the future. I invite you along for the journey as our family moves into its next stage!

My Best of Twitter 2015

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

I know I’m behind the curve posting my best-of yearly posts the second week of January, but we had a surprisingly busy two-weeks off Christmas holiday. All of that gift-wrapping, food eating, museum visiting, and Internet browsing doesn’t just do itself. As you may have noticed, from the sidebar, I’m on Twitter, posting @storiteller. Most of the time I post links to articles on social justice, bicycling, and other political issues, with a smattering of parenting commentary. However, as not everyone is on Twitter and there’s just so much traffic, I wanted to highlight some of my favorite tweets about parenting this year. (Yes, it only goes back to June – I guess I tweeted so much that Twitter cuts off by that point.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2015 With My Two-Year-Old

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

In my late 20s, years seemed slip together, distinguished mainly by what vacations I took or other special events. But as a parent, the transition from one year to the next feels much weighter, with time measured in huge milestones in your child’s life. While I usually reflect on major milestones on Sprout’s birthday, I liked Mommy’s Shorts reflections on her six year old for New Years.  Plus, Chris and I were just reflecting about how much Sprout has changed over the last year.

2015 with my two year old

This year, Sprout learned to –

Talk and actually have conversations: At the beginning of the year, he had a handful of words, with his communication virtually all non-verbal. After his language explosion just before his second birthday, he had a much bigger vocabulary, but still lacked the grammar and understanding to put it together. But in the last six months, he’s turned into a little conversationalist. He can tell you a bit about his day, narrate what someone else is going to do (we got a multi-part explanation of Chris pouring his cereal this morning), and describe the plot of a book. He even makes jokes, which at least he thinks are hilarious. Before his bedtime, we always ask each other what our favorite thing was that day. Invariably, he answers, “My favorite thing was going to the park,” even when he knows perfectly well we didn’t go to the park that day. When we reply, as we always do, “But we didn’t go to the park today,” he just giggles.

Make-believe and tell stories: At the beginning of the year, he loved to listen to us tell stories, but didn’t have the language skills to do it on his own. Now he regularly makes us pretend food in his kitchen, including tea and apple cider. He takes it quite seriously too – he was clearly hurt the other day when he “made” me coffee the other day and I reminded him that I don’t like coffee! He also loves pretending to talk on his play phone. The other day we had a series of conversations where he talked to different relatives who were all coincidently played by me. On storytelling, he’s already picked up on our “There once was a boy named Sprout” structure. Just out of the blue one day, he told us “There once was a boy named Sprout and he loved cake.” Not much of a plot, but it’s a start! To encourage his storytelling skills, I bought him this neat deck of cards for Christmas. While he can’t use them on his own yet, he seems to enjoy making them up with Chris.

Identify his alphabet, numbers, and colors: While we don’t super-emphasize the academic stuff, we do have a bunch of alphabet and counting books. Reading the Dr. Seuss ABC book so many times (even with its made-up words) seems to actually sunk in a bit.

Sing and (sort of) make music: This child loves to sing. (Unless it’s actually in music class, of course.) Chris and Sprout have now been attending Music Together classes for over a year. While we signed him up just to get some socialization in, it seems he’s actually picked up some musical skills, including a sense of rhythm. Considering I played saxophone for eight years and still have trouble keeping a beat, I’m quite proud of him. More importantly, he really loves music. He can sing a bunch of songs (including House at Pooh Corner, albeit garbled) and when he doesn’t remember the lyrics, just sort of says “la la la.” After we put him to bed tonight, he sang “Mary Had a Little Lamb” to his stuffed animals. He got a mini-drum set and kid’s “saxophone” for Christmas and they’re some of his favorite gifts. Earlier tonight, he was pretending to use a microphone and declared, “Needs more…saxophone!” As my love of music has brought me joy in good times and comfort in difficult ones, I’m so glad that I can share that with him.

Show emotions clearly: For quite a while, Sprout’s emotions were surprisingly hard to read. When he didn’t like something a lot, he let us know, but it was difficult to tell the difference between enjoyment and tolerance. These days, he smiles and laughs easily and often. Similarly, he definitely lets us know exactly when he doesn’t like something with a series of “No no no no nos!” He’s still a serious, focused little boy when there’s something he’s really interested in or in a new situation, but he’s not like that all of the time. Earlier, we could have urged him more to show emotion, but I’m glad we respected him where he was so he could feel free to become himself.

Form opinions on things: So many opinions. It takes 15 minutes to get him dressed because he wants to pick out his own clothes, resulting in some hilariously mismatched outfits. He knows what toys he enjoys the most, especially that great love of trains. He even has specific, quirky opinions on music – he’s requested Bob Dylan several times lately! (Mr. Tamborine Man, specifically.)

Run and climb: Sprout adores running, especially around the house and at church. (The long hallway at our church with a ramp and water fountain at one end is irresistible.) While he’s still cautious, he can scramble right up the cargo net at the playground. He has an absurd amount of energy, so that I actually fall asleep on the couch some nights after putting him to bed, even when he’s chatting to his animals for the next hour.

This year has been challenging, demanding and wonderful. Watching Sprout not just grow up but grow into himself is such a privilege as a mom. I can’t wait to see what happens this year.

 

Trains, Dance Parties and Veterinarians: The Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science and the Saratoga Children’s Museum

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Spending two weeks with your extended family for the holidays is lovely, but you really need to get out of the house sometimes. That’s why when we were recently in upstate New York, we brought Sprout to not just one, but two different local museums. Unlike the New York State Museum, which was a staple of my childhood, I wasn’t intimately familiar with either of them. Both the Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady and the Saratoga Children’s Museum had been completely overhauled since I had visited them, with the Saratoga Children’s Museum moving to an entirely different location altogether. In contrast to sharing my favorite experiences with Sprout, these museums provided chances for us to explore them together.

GE electric car

GE’s all-electric car.

The Museum of Innovation and Science is a bit of an odd duck. Schenectady is home to General Electric’s research division, so it has a deep regional history. In addition to a historical exhibit on important local discoveries, it also featured a large section on MRIs and an all-electric vehicle GE built in the 1970s.

But the museum doesn’t limit itself to its geographic location, touching on space missions, alternative fuels, renewable energy, fluid dynamics, and random “sciency” things like giant Legos. It had some terrific hands-on demonstrations, including ones where you control a mini-tornado and become part of a giant Green wallcircuit. The museum even had one of the very few things I remembered from childhood, a phosphorescent wall that left your shadow “imprinted” on it after you moved away. Sprout seemed to understand why it was neat, but was not impressed enough to stand still for it more than once.
Only one thing and one thing alone seemed to truly impress him – a huge model train exhibit. As the seasonal display, it was prominent at the very start of the museum. Sprout immediately clambered up on one of the stools nearby and watched it intently, as if anything was going to change in the hundreds of times the trains went around the tracks. Model train carnivalAdmittedly, there was plenty to look at. In addition to a normal town setting, there were two carnivals with tiny moving rides, a river with sea monster Champ, an ice skating rink, a train with an aquarium in it, and oddly, an oil refinery.

During our first round of train-watching, he parked himself in front of one of the carnivals, staring at the red and blue trains chugging around. We managed to drag him away to see the other exhibits, but he soon remembered his purpose and literally ran back to the trains. The second time, he practically cemented himself in front of the oil refinery section, a location that baffled and saddened my eco-justice warrior heart. Later on, I figured out that he just really liked watching the trains going in and out of the tunnel, a fact I picked up on after hearing him talk about the tunnel for the 10th time or so. Fhew – parenting crisis averted.

Between the two spots, we spent a full 45 minutes watching the trains go around and around. We tried to talk to Sprout, but the conversation rapidly devolved into him repeating the same observations over and over again. Rather limited subject matter. My mom, ever the extrovert, tried to engage the crusty old volunteer manning the display in conversation. However, he was hilariously uninterested in discussing much of anything, responding with dry, unhelpful, succinct replies.

While the featured exhibit was clearly the star of the Museum of Innovation and Science, we had nearly the opposite experience at the Saratoga Children’s Museum. Sprout was only somewhat interested in the event we went for, but enjoyed the rest of the museum heartily. With our friends unavailable on New Years Eve and no desire to tromp around in the cold, we thought we’d try something more kid-centric. Last year, Chris and Sprout attended a noontime New Years Eve count-down at our local nature center, and enjoyed it a lot.

The Saratoga Children’s Museum’s New Years Eve dance party seemed to fill a similar niche, wrapping up at the terribly late hour of 3 pm. Like any good New Years party, it had music, balloons and funny hats. Sprout gravitated to the crafts table, whereby the magic of glue sticks, glitter, and an enthusiastic toddler turned a mere sheet of construction paper into a big mess. He also wanted one of the golden crowns, which surprised me because he generally doesn’t like hats. It turned out he only liked the idea of it; Chris wore it the rest of the day, jauntily perched upon his head. While we danced a bit to disco music, we mainly threw balloons at each other and played a mini-basketball game. Overall, Sprout was a lot less interested than I thought he would be. He adores dancing at home, but just wasn’t that interested there. (He loves singing at home, but doesn’t sing in music class either, so maybe it’s just a private vs. public preference.) Instead, he wandered out the door after less than a half-hour. On the other hand, he did mention the dance party several other times that day.

Fortunately, there were plenty of other things to do at the museum. The very first thing he headed for was a fake fire engine, which was rather funny considering he refused to get on a real fire truck when visiting the local firehouse the day before. The upstairs also had a play veterinarians’ office, grocery store, bank, school and diner. While Sprout’s little too young to understand the bank and the school was cluttered, the diner and vet’s office were just his speed. He eagerly listened to the stuffed dog’s heart with the stethoscope and stabbed it with the toy needle. While I love that he loves animals, I really hope he doesn’t start asking for a pet!

Downstairs had the ever-popular train table and giant bubble ring, along with some more locally-oriented exhibits. One was a mock-up of the real Congress Park in Saratoga, where Chris and I had our first kiss. Along with a scattering of puppets, the “play version” had animal costumes where kids could pretend to be a bug in an exoskeleton. Sprout was tickled at pulling the sides of the ladybug around him, especially when I put the bug-eye glasses on him.

Trolley ticket boothBut the most unique thing was a large model of the trolleys that used to transport people between Saratoga and neighboring towns. The museum cleverly had a ticket booth with different colored tickets matching your destination. Sprout reveled in sitting in the driver’s seat, taking tickets, turning the wheel and saying “all aboard!” It was challenging coaxing him away from it so other kids could take a turn.

Because I didn’t have a lot of expectations either way, the only disappointing thing about both museums was that my dad couldn’t fully participate. Because of a torn ACL, he didn’t come to the Schenectady museum at all and spent the time at the Saratoga one sitting away from the action. There’s no way in hell he would have danced – my wedding and his own were the rare occasions that happened – but he would have been able to interact more if he wasn’t stuck sitting the whole time. Fortunately, we had a lovely lunch at a nearby restaurant beforehand, so we had quality time together there.

It was good to return home and rediscover some little gems that I would have never gone to as an adult. I’m glad to see the area surrounding my hometown is still serving its youngest residents well!

Highs and Lows of Christmas Vacation

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 6 Comments

Our Christmas this year involved two whole weeks with extended family. With annual leave I had to use by the end of the year, Chris, Sprout and I visited upstate New York from the weekend before Christmas to the one following New Years. My parents and Chris’s parents live within five minutes of each other, making it easy to visit both in a single trip. They also know each other quite well, so they enjoy doing things together. But while we had a wonderful time, not everything went holiday perfect.

High: Having lots of time to participate in holiday activities around the region. From riding on the Polar Express to visiting the train display at a local museum, we got out of the house quite a bit.
Low: The fact that my dad was stuck on the couch most of the trip. Three weeks ago, he stepped forward while playing Pickleball (aka old folks tennis) and felt a pop in his ankle. A visit to the doctor revealed that he had partially tore his ACL, a devastating injury even if you aren’t a professional athlete. To recover, he had to be completely off his feet for two weeks and then have another two months in a stabilizing boot. So he was totally out-of-commission for most of our trip. While my dad is a quiet person, he nonetheless has a calming, light-hearted presence that was sorely missed on our outings. Even when things don’t go as planned, a well-timed, ridiculous comment from him can make me laugh. Plus, I hated that Sprout couldn’t spend that quality time with his grandfather. The one upside was that Sprout was remarkably understanding of the situation. He loved snuggling up on the couch to read books with his Pop and was great about not touching his ankle.

High: Cutting down the Christmas tree. One of Chris’s family’s long-standing traditions is to cut down their own Christmas tree at Bob’s Trees. As we didn’t get a tree for our house this year, I wanted to bring Sprout there to carry on the experience. Because my dad was out of commission, Chris’s parents were kind enough to come with us. We tromped out to the woods, the ground barely coated in snow. My parents had picked out and marked the tree weeks before, so we didn’t need to walk to kingdom-come to find a decent one. After chopping down the tree, we walked back to the car singing Christmas carols, child and adulReindeert alike garbling most of the lyrics. In the farm’s indoor snack bar, we sipped hot chocolate, gazed at their Christmas tree and checked out their igloo made of recycled plastic bottles. Back outside, we said hello and waved to their two reindeer, who looked bored and sleepy. That night, Sprout declared that seeing the reindeer was his favorite part of the day.
Low: I left some key details out of the above description. While everyone else was cutting down the tree, I had to go to the bathroom. By the time I caught up, they were dragging it to the car. About halfway back, Sprout declared he wanted to carry the tree. He then immediately rejected every branch we offered for him, instead screaming like he was possessed and flailing all of his limbs. Any attempt to connect with or console him was met with further flailage. We finally picked him up, deposited him in his car seat, and restrained him enough to snap him in. Thankfully, changing the scenery and situation gave him enough space to calm down.

Christmas tree 2015High: Decorating the tree. My parents have a wonderful collection of Christmas orn
aments, each of which have personal meaning. Pulling them out and recalling how or why we got them always brings back a slew of memories, from the Baby’s First Christmas ornament from the winter before I was born (my grandmother got it on sale) to a crab ornament from Ocean City this year. Because my mom used to call my dad Pooh Bear, we have a large collection of Winnie the Pooh ornaments that Sprout adored.

Low: Scrambling to ensure Sprout couldn’t touch the delicate ornaments and repeating “Don’t pull ornaments off the tree” a million times.

High: Having Sprout be incredibly well-behaved at the surprisingly long Christmas Eve Mass at Chris’s parents’ church. He actually said “the big church!” was his favorite part of Christmas Eve that night.
Low: It was a long service, topped by a heavy dose of Catholic guilt in the priest’s homily.

High: The joy of Christmas morning. Our family is pretty non-materialistic, but Christmas is the one time of year we buy each other things. Chris loves the “cornucopia” of piles of presents spilling out from under the tree and both sets of grandparents go a little over the top. Sprout was also much more aware of the idea of getting presents this year than last year and reacted with a new enthusiasm. At the same time, he doesn’t have overblown expectations, so he actually appreciated everything and didn’t show disappointment the way older kids sometimes do.
Low: There were so many presents that Sprout actually got a bit bored about opening them by the time we got to my in-laws’ house. Instead, we opened the rest of ours while he played with some of his new toys. I also ended up with a ridiculous number of hand towels as presents. That’s what I get for mentioning that we needed more of them.

High: Playing with all of our presents. The presents we bought Sprout enabled lots of new experiences: we played Sprout’s first game together (the Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game), put on a show with his new puppet theater, and watched him “ride” his new stick horse around the house. The adults even got to enjoy our presents – we listened to the soundtrack to Hamilton, the rap musical about the Founding Fathers, and played games we gave each other, including Love Letter and Tokaido.
Low: Fitting all of the presents in the car was like a version of Tetris inside Tetris where you crammed smaller shapes into bigger ones and then all of the big ones into a giant box that’s a really weird shape. Priuses aren’t meant to carry this much stuff.

High: So much wonderful food. Both my mom and mother-in-law make way too much delicious food for holidays, leaving us with days after days of left-overs. My mother-in-law also decorates with candy; her living room houses several bowls of dark chocolate and M&Ms throughout December.
Low: The fact that I kept eating all of said food way past the point where I should have stopped.

High: Incredible amounts of time with our family. Chris and I are both very close to our families and of course, our parents love spending time with their only grandchild. Sprout also loves spending time with them – he runs to their front doors and greets them with huge hugs. Quality time was at an all-time high, especially with baking. He helped Chris’s mom make apple pie and sugar cookies, rolling out the dough, placing the apples in the pie, and cutting out the cookies. He and my mom made a gingerbread house, which he was particularly keen on after the tenth or twentieth time they read the Gingerbread Man and Jan Brett’s Gingerbread Baby. While he loved rolling out the dough, he was surprisingly uninterested in decorating the house itself. While my mom was encouraging him to stick Frosted Mini-Wheats on the roof as shingles, he was much more interested in eating Reeces Pieces instead. Gingerbread houseOther unintended consquences of said quality time was him learning the Beans, Beans The Musical Fruit song from my mom. Thanks, Mom.
Low: I’m a bit of an introvert at heart, so constantly being around people was kind of exhausting. Shuttling Sprout between the two houses and managing all of the necessary logistics (bedding for naps, cups/utensils for meals, etc.) further exacerbated that issue. I was so preoccupied with fulfilling everyone else’s plans that I completely forgot about a lunch with a former boss that I hadn’t seen in years. In addition, all of the attention made Sprout a little spoiled in the short term. Between mid-day cookie snacks and infinite affection, he reacted much more poorly than usual to the times he needed to do something that he didn’t want to. “Nope!” was his favorite phrase for the last few days of the trip.

High: Dancing together at my in-laws house. As mentioned previously, my mother-in-law has a large collection of singing Christmas decorations. Sprout’s favorite ones this year were a set of Disney characters that play different instruments. He’d say, “Mommy and Daddy (or Grandma and Grandad or Aunt Melissa and Uncle Steve) dance to Mickey,” then drag us over to the table and then press one of the characters. We’d then join hands and trot around in a circle, like a weird version of square dancing. At the end, he’d yell “freeze!” and we’d stand still with jazz hands or something equally absurd. It was the sort of thing you’d only do with a child, but be so glad that you were. His smile was enough to keep me dancing for a long time.
Low: We did end up listening to the Disney characters at least 50 times.

High: Having lunch with a number of our high school friends. Chris and I were high school sweethearts and are still close to a number of our friends from that time. Fortunately, we were able to get a number of them together, including one we haven’t seen in nearly a decade and has almost no online presence! True to character, he announced an absolutely outrageous plan – setting the world record for sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in the smallest sailboat ever. Even our friends with less over-the-top ambitions had much of their lives to share that just aren’t the same discussed over social media. We enjoyed each other’s company so much that we stood outside the restaurant for a half-hour after they closed. It was one of those times you reconnect with people in a way that has instant intimacy. We still trust each other with the deepest parts of our lives, no matter how physically far apart we are.
Low: The only disappointing thing was that we eventually had to leave. Also, we couldn’t bring Sprout along because it was in the middle of his nap. (Considering our friends’ propensity for swearing and Sprout’s mimicry, that probably wasn’t all bad.)

High: Being able to sleep in because I didn’t have to go to work.
Low: There was nothing bad about this at all. I did stay up too late, but that was fun in its own way.

High: We got snow a few days after Christmas! It actually accumulated on the ground and everything. Not a White Christmas, but close.
Low: It was sleeting that morning, making it way too slushy to play in. We also forgot that Sprout’s snow boots from last winter don’t fit anymore and there was no way he could go tromp around in the snow in sneakers.

High: Seeing a weirdly elaborate holiday light display put on by a local business. My father-in-law said it attracts so much attention that there have been a number of accidents from people slowing down too much or pulling onto the shoulder. To avoid that fate, we pulled into their driveway and walked around. Seriously, this thing rivals ZooLights for the sheer amount of lights. This photo is just a fraction of the display.Lights display
Low: Man, it was really cold out.

I hope you and your families had a great holiday, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or just New Years Day!

Always Be Yourself. Unless You Can Be Santa; Then Be Santa

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

How can anyone dislike Santa Claus? However, my relationship with him as an adult is a bit ambiguous. While I hate lying, I’m a storyteller at heart. I hate the modern-day commercialism around Santa Claus, but love the magic of the toymaker myth. So I thought I was going to have a lot of heartache about how to treat Santa Claus when Sprout got old enough to understand him. But I think I’ve come upon an approach that makes sense – emphasizing the idea of Santa Claus as a character rather than an actual person.

Always Be Yourself. Unless You Can Be Santa; Then Be Santa-2

It certainly helps that Sprout is the most familiar with Santa as a character rather than a real person. We already read about Santa in books, from ones as simple as Biscuit’s Pet and Play Christmas to as weird as Lemony Snicket’s The Lump of Coal. The un-reality of Santa is emphasized even more by the fact that Santa isn’t even human in all of the books – in Pete the Cat Saves Christmas, he’s a cat, and Merry Christmas, Ollie! features Father Christmas Goose.

Through these stories, we can talk about whatever parts of Santa we want to, instead of the dominant cultural version. We’ll emphasize the idea of Santa as a generous toy giver who brings gifts because he loves people, just as we give each other gifts because we love each other. (And to tie to the actual religious part of Christmas, because people loved Jesus and brought gifts to him.) We won’t touch the “good girls and boys” nonsense with a ten foot pole because I’m already ideologically opposed to using toys as rewards.

Now, distinguishing between a character and a real person sounds terribly naive when talking to a two-year-old. But while little kids have difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality, it doesn’t mean that they’re incapable of it. Contrary to 1960s British “moral campaigner” Mary Whitehouse’s position, kids back then did not actually believe that Tom Baker (then playing the Doctor in Doctor Who) was actually drowning for the entire week between a cliffhanger and resolution. Even Sprout, who is only two, knows that characters in books are not “real.”

So when it comes time for him to find out that Santa isn’t a “real” person, I hope that this approach allows us to acknowledge the fundamental fiction of Santa while maintaining the magic and spirit. An excellent book for doing this, which is also had the most heart-breaking first chapter of anything I’ve ever read, is The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, by Julie Lane. (There’s a couple of other books of that name, but this is the best, obviously.) The beautiful part of it is that it roots Santa Claus and the traditions associated with him in tragic, beautiful, real world (albeit still fictional) circumstances while maintaining a little of the mystery.

Besides “Santa as story,” I think it’s also important when the time comes to provide some explanation as to why we’ve been pretending to be Santa this whole time. Fortunately, even that’s rooted in an idea that Sprout understands – cosplay! Because of our foray into costuming for Baltimore Comic Con, he already understands that sometimes adults wear costumes and pretend to be characters because it’s fun. Clearly, people dress as Santa because everyone wants to be him. People dressed as Batman or Groot aren’t actually Batman or Groot, but it’s fun to pretend we are. And who wouldn’t want to be Santa? He gets to give out presents, eat cookies, ride on a sled pulled by flying reindeer, and only works for a month a year (I assume production at the North Pole starts in late November).

No matter how we get there, I want to teach Sprout that we are all Santa for each other. While there’s no single jolly old man in red dropping off presents, we can act in that spirit by giving each other gifts and reaching out to those in need. Instead of Christmas becoming an orgy of consumer receiving, we want to frame it as a gentle season of generosity. And if I can teach him that, the magic of Santa will always be in his life.

Making the Most of A Very Furry Christmas and Thanksgiving at Sesame Place

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

Making the Most of a Very Furry Christmas and Thanksgiving at Sesame Place. (Photo: Very large statue of Elmo dressed as a toy soldier.)

While bringing a toddler to Target while you’re heavily pregnant can be an adventure in and of itself, our family longed to find something a little more travel-oriented. Simultaneously, we wanted to avoid a giant influx of toys at Christmas. To us, spending money to make memories via experiences is more valuable than a huge pile under the tree. (Even if my husband does love the visuals of that huge pile.)

But where could we go in the beginning of winter that was kid-friendly, relatively near Washington D.C., and not staggeringly expensive?

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A Time of Giving Thanks

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Thanksgiving is a love or hate it holiday, largely depending on how you feel about your family. While I disagree with my extended family about many, many things – shockingly, not everyone shares my very liberal views on politics or theology – I both love and genuinely like them. So having most of my extended family together on my mom’s side this Thanksgiving was pretty awesome.

Both of my parents are from northern New Jersey, land of traffic and Wawas. While they high-tailed it for upstate New York, many of my relatives stuck around. When I was a kid, we’d always make the three hour trek down to my Aunt Linda’s house for Thanksgiving, bringing my mom’s signature dishes of mushroom dip and cranberry mold.

Thanksgiving at my aunt’s was the host for a variety of “coming-of-age” experiences. In my late teens, I realized I was seeing my extended family get seriously tipsy for the first time. They were drinking port and playing a movie trivia game when my conservative uncle imitated the bit in Ace Ventura when Jim Carrey talks out of his butt. Although I couldn’t drink, it felt like I was getting initiated into an odd, vaguely uncomfortable club. Similarly, a visit a few years ago revealed how big the gap between my viewpoint and others were when a simple conversation about my job steered into a comment about young-earth creationism in literally one sentence.

Since then, Chris and I haven’t been back up there often. It was difficult to leave the D.C. area between his work schedule and a new baby, and when we did, we’d go up to our hometown. But since Chris’s parents were visiting his sister this year and we didn’t to drive between 6 and 10 hours to Albany for a long weekend, New Jersey made a lot of sense.

In some ways, it wasn’t all that different from when I was a kid. The trip was about the same length and I sat in the backseat. However, instead of reading quietly, I was throwing random entertainment sources in front of Sprout. At various times, I sang at least ten verses of Old McDonald, drew random letters on his knock-off Magna-Doodle, discussed the intricacies of Elmo, and switched between reading Kakfa and the Little People Let’s Go to the Farm book.

Arriving there, we experienced an outpouring of hugs and kisses from the relatives, to which Sprout responded with shock. While he knows my parents, being in a new place with a lot of new people dazed him. He wasn’t upset, but whenever anyone asked him a question, he’d just stare.

That all changed by the time Thanksgiving dinner rolled around the next day. Having everyone around was obviously far more exciting than eating turkey or carrots. He chattered away, keeping a running tab on dinner. My mom exacerbated the situation by giving him a serving of cranberry mold right off, which is mostly sugar with a little bit of cranberry. Although he did ask for it, once he had a bite, there was no hope of getting real food into him. (No grilled cheese, but this comic rang true to me.)

The excitement extended far beyond dinner. During dessert, my cousin, his wife, and their kids came over, who Sprout has never met. At 9, 7, and 1 1/2, they meshed well despite the age gap. Sprout delighted the older ones by repeating anything they asked him to (“Holy Moley Spicy Guacamole!” was a favorite). He didn’t get along quite as well with the little one – he was surprisingly jealous about his books and there was a shoving incident over a kids’ couch – but it was about as good as we could expect with toddlers. Everyone cracked up as we shared family tongue-twisters like Stella-Ella-Bella-Henusky-Steina-Schawba, supposedly the name of my great-grandfather’s girlfriend (presumably before he married my great-grandmother). My mom added onto it by telling the older kids to say, “One smart fellow he felt smart,” which was simultaneously horrifying and hilarious for the 9 year old boy. (Say it out loud.) I’m sure his mom was thrilled.

In addition to the second cousins, we had the rare opportunity to see both of my grandmothers on the trip. While Sprout had met them both before, he was too little to remember. One of them, who lives in Florida, has been at my aunt’s for the past several months recovering from a paralyzing case of the shingles. Although Sprout cried last time he met her, this time, he smiled and even kissed her several times. She worried that her oxygen tube would scare him, but he took pride in helping move her tube under the couch so that people wouldn’t step on it.

While my other grandmother is possibly in better physical condition, she has severe Alzheimer’s and lives in an assisted living facility. My dad, Sprout and I visited her there, where she was already sitting in their spacious, well-lit common room. Already a bit nervous, I was further disoriented by the fact that even my dad didn’t recognize her at first. While she was gaunt, it was the empty look in the eyes of a once vibrant woman that made her appear so unrecognizable. But once we introduced ourselves, she focused and we started to see her past self a little. Conversation with her was forced, of course – we needed to constantly remind her of who we were and details of our lives. It wasn’t as disorienting as I thought it would be, but it was still sad. Nonetheless, I’m still glad we went – even if she didn’t remember it, she clearly appreciated us being there in the moment. Fortunately, Sprout didn’t catch on to the underlying sadness – he was too distracted by the TV playing the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and the residents playing Bingo with candy corn. It’s always a relief to me when his joy brings light in difficult situations.

From the youngest to the oldest, being with our family members was truly a cause for thanks.

Up, Down and All Around: Baltimore’s Children’s Museum, Port Discovery

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Most museums don’t have multi-floor climbing structures running up their middle. Then again, most museums aren’t designed for patrons under 10 years old. But Port Discovery, the children’s museum in Baltimore, has a great variety of exhibits for kids of all ages. With Chris’s parents in town, we were lucky enough to visit the museum this past weekend.

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