parenting

With a Book, You Can Go Anywhere and Be Anything!

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Sprout loves books. He doesn’t read yet, but loves looking at books and spending time with them.

In fact, he can occupy himself for 10 minutes or so – a long time for a 16 month old – pulling books from his shelf and flipping through them one-by-one. He’ll stop at certain pages and focus on them, like a patron in an art gallery trying to figure out the meaning of a work. When he reaches the end, he’ll often flip back to those favorite pages, just to check if he missed something. Other pages he’ll speed past; some he skips altogether. It’s very clear he has strong opinions about what he finds interesting or not, something that runs in the family.

Unfortunately, this method of “reading” doesn’t translate well to pre-bed storytime. Often, he won’t let me hold the book or turn the pages because he wants to be in control. But I can’t read the text of the story with his chaotic jumping between pages. So we end up in an odd dance, where I try to read as fast as possible or very slowly, either skipping entire pages or repeating them multiple times, depending on his whim at the moment. In a books with rhyme schemes, I often stumble over the words because the rhythm is all off. He even flips books upside down, making it completely impossible to follow! Sometimes, I lose my patience, take the book from him, and turn the pages at my pace. Of course, he loses interest and pulls a different book off the shelf instead. His attitude seems to be: “Mommy, you can read the book you want to read, I’ll read the book I want to read.” That’s not exactly the point of storytime. So I’ve learned to adjust my reading style to suit someone whose enjoyment is entirely driven by the visuals and the cadence of my voice. Even if the story doesn’t make a lot of sense, I at least tell it enthusiastically.

In addition to bedtime, of all places, books play a major role on the changing table. He’s associating reading with pooping before he can even use the toilet! But giving him a book is the one consistent thing I can do to keep him from flipping over while I change his diaper. (Making funny noises stopped working a while ago.) To add to the benefit, his expression in the charging table is hilarious. He’s super serious, as if he’s a trader in a corner office reading the Wall St. Journal instead of a toddler with a dirty diaper flipping through a board book.

Sprout’s favorite books at the moment are an odd assortment of classics and modern stories. Most of them are not ones I bought – our families (especially my mom) have been very generous in building his library. All of his favorites are board books because we still don’t trust him with hardcover picture books yet. He’s mostly stopped munching on them (he was an actual bibliovore before), but he’s still fairly rough with the pages. We have a couple of books with inside covers that are torn because he was convinced that there was one more page to turn.

The Very Busy Spider: Eric Carle is one of the most artistic children’s illustrators ever, so this book is a pleasure to read, even for the fifth time in one night. While this one isn’t as famous as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, it’s actually more visually stunning, with each of the animals having it’s own unique combination of color and pattern. The actual texture of the spider’s web, which Sprout will show me by taking my hand and rubbing it on the page, makes visceral something we can’t even touch in real life without destroying. The repetitive structure – an animal asks if the spider wants to do something, she doesn’t respond because she’s too busy – means they you can skip pages without losing meaning, which is important with our aforementioned reading style. And it shows that spiders are beautiful, not scary! He loves The Very Lonely Firefly as well.

Let’s Sign, Baby: This one is kind of ironic because Sprout doesn’t know and probably won’t learn baby sign. Part of it is because Chris and I never really got around to learning it – teaching yourself another language is challenging enough, much less while you have a baby. Part of it is because even when we do remember to sign, Sprout isn’t looking at us, which rather defeats the point. This book has good explanations of the different signs, but I can’t tear his eyes away from the page to demonstrate them. I think he just likes the cartoons of the kids and babies.

Harry the Dirty Dog: This is one that I probably would never have bought myself, but it was my father-in-law’s favorite story when he was little, so Chris’s family bought it. The illustrations are adorable, even if the family is so 1950s suburban stereotypical. However, I don’t know how to feel about a book that says if you get too dirty, your family won’t recognize you. As Sprout gets older, we’ll stick with emphazing how good Harry is at problem solving.

The Big Red Barn: A far less well-known book by the same author as Goodnight Moon. This book about farm animals is cute, but the rhythm and rhyming structure grates on my nerves, even when it’s read correctly. It obviously has a structure, but whenever I read it, it just sounds “off.” Plus, it has the multiple ending problem a la Lord of the Rings – it should end three pages before it does. Needless to say, it’s no Goodnight Moon.

Bedtime for Chickies: This is an absurdly adorable book. It’s about three chicks that find all sorts of reasons not to go to bed, exasperating their pig, cow and sheep caretakers. The ending of the chicks only falling asleep once they are in their caretakers’ embrace hits a little too close to home, but the illustrations and the chickies’ dialogue is overwhelmingly cute.

Baby Faces: This book, which is just a series of photos of babies with captions describing their state of being (happy / sad, clean / dirty, etc) was a favorite when he was really little and has come back around again. When he was tiny, I think he just liked looking at the photos of other babies. Now, I think he’s realizing that the different expressions relate to different emotional states and finds those distinctions interesting.

What are or were your kids’ favorite board or baby books?

Food is our common ground – James Beard.

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

As a parent, I’m very aware of the messages my behavior sends to Sprout, intentionally or not. With Sprout getting more observant every day, I’ve become particularly conscientious about our eating habits, as I know how and what we eat will shape his eating habits for life.

This has become particularly important now that he thinks everything the “big people” eat is fair game. As I understand it must feel unfair to see your family members eating something you can’t, I try not to eat anything in front of him he can’t have. (Except my tea – they’ll have to take that from my cold, dead hands.) This became exceptionally obvious at my company’s annual picnic. One second, there was a chocolate-chip cookie on my plate, the next it was in my son’s mouth with a big bite out of it. Not what I had planned.

This awareness came to a head last week, with a spiritual element added to the practical one. Leading up to Food Day, my church is focusing on eating as a spiritual practice. As with most spiritual practices, the first step is increasing awareness of your current habits. As such, my pastor challenged everyone to keep a food journal – a list of the food consumed as well as the circumstances in which we ate it. Personally, I also wrote down whether the food was processed, local and/or organic.

While I normally try to be aware of my eating, it was amazing how many decisions the food journal influenced. I chose to have an apple instead of crackers. I didn’t drink the fake cappachino that’s 90% sugar water and 10% preservatives. I had a little thrill when I wrote down “locally made whole wheat toast with locally made jam,” even though it wasn’t exactly healthy. It didn’t stop me from having three desserts at the picnic (including the stolen cookie), but I did have a greater appreciation for sharing that lunch with my husband, son and co-workers.

While I’m no longer writing everything down, I’m still thinking the best way to model good eating habits for Sprout. I think the best way to do this is keep him as involved as possible in growing, choosing, and cooking his food.

Before this weekend, I hadn’t been able to get him involved in gardening, as he was always too destructive. But with the fall season winding down, I’ve started pulling out my plants in preparation for winter. As I’m usually telling him not to hurt plants, he looked very confused. He tried to help at first, but just picked off a few spare leaves. He also didn’t know what to do when the plants were too thick for him to walk through without tripping. Once I had cleared a space for him, he was much more content, sitting there and whacking at the soil with a spade. In the end, he was a dirty, happy kid, with soil everywhere from his hair to the soles of his sneakers.

While he can’t identify different vegetables yet, we’ve been bringing him to the Farmers’ Market since he was a newborn. The vendors are so used to seeing us that the one girl recognizes Sprout and asks about him. As he grows older, we’ll teach him about the different fruits and vegetables and why they’re available some times of the year and not others. Unfortunately, we’ll never be able to buy his beloved bananas (the only food he has a word for yet) there.

Obviously, we’re going to teach him how to cook. Sprout already shows great interest when anyone cooks, whining if you don’t keep him informed of what you’re doing. Chris will often pick him up to show him what’s in the pan and explain the steps he’s taking.

While it’ll be quite a while before he can touch the knives, we did get him involved in food preparation for the first time a few weeks ago. We made these date-almond-chocolate energy bites, but swapped out the wheat germ for shredded coconut. After we blended most of the ingredients in the food processor and formed balls, we let him roll the balls in the coconut. Or more accurately, throw coconut on/at/over them. He seemed to have a good time and the bites turned out to be surprisingly tasty.

Eating good food that has been thoughtfully, sustainably grown and prepared with people I love is one of my great joys in life. I hope it’s one of his too.

The Many Non-Toys My Kid Loves to Play With

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Sprout has plenty of toys. Now, he doesn’t have as many as some kids, but there are plenty to hold his attention. But despite that fact, some of the things he likes to play with the most aren’t toys at all. Some of them seem pretty boring to me, but then I’m not a toddler.

Blankets and napkins: Sprout has embraced the great joys of peek-a-boo. Before, he just enjoyed watching us disappear. Now, he finds it hysterical to hide himself behind a blanket or napkin. He’s very aware there’s a performative aspect that he’s in control of. The photos from Disney that he’s smiling the most in are the ones where he’s peeking out from a napkin. Cloth napkins are also very good for random waving around at restaurants.

The remote controls: Of course. Unlike a lot of parents, we let him play with the remotes if we forgetfully leave them on the couch. We used to believe this was harmless, until he bought Sherman and Mr. Peabody On Demand. It couldn’t even be a good movie! Now that Chris set parental standards, it’s probably harmless. As we rarely let him watch TV, he’s more interested in pushing buttons for the sake of pushing buttons, as well as the fact that one of the remotes actually lights up.

The grass and dirt: In the spring and summer, I often brought Sprout to hang out in our yard while Chris makes dinner. Even when I brought a ball to play with, Sprout usually just ignored it. Instead, he’d sit in the grass and pull it up, or pick at clumps of dirt. This happened more when he was younger, as now our front porch has more allure due to the next item on the list…

All stairs, everywhere: We are still obsessed with stairs.

Doors and gates: He loves opening and closing doors and gates. He’s not tall enough to reach doorknobs, but he’ll swing an open door back and forth over and over again. He also adores the giant metal gate at the tennis court near our playground. What’s pretty amazing is how careful he’s always been. Even when it looks like he’s about to close his hand in the door, he draws his fingers or the door back just enough to avoid it. Occasionally, he’ll use his palm to close it all of the way, shutting us out of his room. We then knock on his door and say, “Can we come in?” Even though he has zero sense of privacy yet, it’s still good to model those respectful habits. Plus, he finds it hysterical when we ask. We have a fifteen-month-old going on fifteen years old.

The doorstop: Before having a child, I never thought about doorstops. They’re so low to the ground that adults hardly see them. But they’re at just the right height if you’re a baby. Sprout has spent an absurd amount of time batting at his doorstop, listening and watching it sproing back into place. He found it even more entertaining when he was crawling, as he’s getting a little tall now to reach it comfortably. But every now and then, he’ll stop, sit down next to it and start to flick at it, remembering, “Oh yeah, this is awesome!”

Chris and I: His mommy and daddy are finally starting to become his playmates, as in someone who actually plays with you. But a long time, he treated us much more like things to be played with – like really big toys. He scales us like we’re climbing structures, twirls my hair, and previously nibbled on our fingers (although we discouraged that). He still gives us raspberries on our stomachs that make the most realistic and hysterical farting noises. But better to be a whoopee cushion than a chew toy.

Hanging Out with My Favorite Little Guy

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

Last week, I turned to Chris and said, “These days, I don’t really know what a day alone with Sprout is like.” His schedule now is drastically different from when I was on maternity leave and Chris and I are usually together on the weekends. Seeing an opportunity, he responded, “Do you want to?” We didn’t have anything planned, so I gave Chris the “day off” on Saturday and had a whole day dedicated to mommy-kid bonding.

Of course, deciding on an activity was paramount. Both Sprout and I get antsy hanging around the house, so I definitely wanted to get out. I first contemplated going to a “toddler play date” advertised on Meetup, but then realized that I didn’t want to mar it with my awkwardness of needing to make small talk with strangers. I also decided against attending a local puppet show, figuring that Chris would want to be present for Sprout’s first theatrical experience. In the end, I decided to go to a local nature center (we have a lot of them around us) that we hadn’t been to yet.

The Nature Center turned out to be even cooler than I had anticipated. The largest room replicated a Mid-Atlantic deciduous forest, with a stream running into a pond populated by turtles and catfish. Sprout loved observing the turtles from a bridge over the stream – even more than he enjoyed climbing up and down the steps. Across from the bridge, there was a tunnel with a window into the pond, allowing you to peer into the pond at eye level. Unfortunately, holding him up to the window didn’t last long because my arms were starting to give out. There was also a mysterious “cave” that required crawling into a dark tunnel. While I was totally keen, Sprout was uninterested in exploring anything he couldn’t stand up in, backing straight out of it. At least it’s something to save for when he’s older.

Another room was super old-school, with a yellowed Mark Trail comic and beaver and fox pelts on the wall. He found stroking the fur fascinating, while I scrambled to rub his hands in sanitizer before he stuck them in his mouth. Those are so old that they can’t have bacteria anymore, right? It also had a kiosk where you could press buttons to hear different bird sounds. Pushing buttons plus high pitched noises equals toddler crack.

Outside offered more opportunities to critter-watch; the Center is a rescue facility for predatory birds. All of their birds, which include vultures, hawks, owls, and even a bald eagle, are so injured that they can never be re-released. We happened to be lucky enough to be there while the keeper was feeding the vulture. I found watching the vulture methodically tear apart a mouse fascinating, but Sprout was wiggly. In only a few years, I’m sure it will hold his interest far more.

We spent the rest of the time at the Center rambling along the hiking trails. I let him walk ahead of me, redirecting when he’d start to wander off the path. Besides it being good environmental stewardship, I also didn’t want to deal with the threat of poison ivy. He’d stop occasionally to pick up a stick, look at a leaf, or poke at a stone. However, he was surprisingly focused for his age. Our time ran out before his attention span did.

The rest of the day was more pedestrian – lunch, a nap for both of us, and a trip to our downtown area and grocery store. I even made dinner! But it was good to even have that ordinary time together.

I’m so grateful that we had our mommy-son bonding time. Sometimes I get jealous of Chris because he has so much time with Sprout alone. While I wouldn’t want to be a stay-at-home parent myself, I wish I had a little more time than the hour and a half before bedtime and the weekends.

Even when I’m there and all three of us are together, Chris can unintentionally dominate the play. He tends to be a little more physical with Sprout when playing, with more tickle fights than I do. He’s also just inherently funnier, being able to make up silly songs on the fly. I’ve learned a lot about being flexible from him and I’ve become much more comfortable as a mom, but I still feel intimidated once in a while.

Obviously, Chris benefitted from this time away as well. In fact, he attended a gaming group he found through Meetup and enjoyed himself! As he hates attending events where he has to talk to strangers, much less going by himself, I was so proud of him.

So this uninterrupted time with Sprout was refreshing. I could luxuriate in spending time with him without worrying about being back in time for dinner or anywhere else. I suspect we’ll make this a regular monthly event, as it seems to be good for everyone’s emotional health.

Fear Makes Companions of Us All

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

Lately, I’ve been struggling with fear. Unfortunately, I didn’t recognize it when it affected me the most – I misidentified it as anxiety or self-righteous anger. My fear has revolved around two major themes: not being a “good enough” mom to Sprout and not doing enough to “make the world a better place.” My fear around the first issue was most prominent during our Disney trip; the second emerged while I was washing dishes last week as an extended, angry, despairing rant about climate change, poverty and other injustices. Both are always bubbling under the surface. While I don’t believe God manipulates people to send personal messages, I do believe that if people ask, God will open their hearts to help hear what they need to from the noise of everyday life. This past weekend, I had a one-two punch of those messages, leading me to realize that I need to embrace my fears rather than ignoring them.

The first blow came on Saturday night, from a marvelous episode of Doctor Who. Even though it was advertised as a “properly scary” episode, it ended up being something very different indeed. Without spoiling the plot, it was fundamentally about how fear isn’t inherently a bad thing. Fear can make us stronger, quicker, and braver; it can make us super-powered. Fear comes from the knowledge that there are things we do not and perhaps cannot understand, but that’s okay. Whether the monster under the bed is real or not is irrelevant. Fear may be our constant companion, but instead of letting it control us, it can drive us to become better people.

The second hit came the next morning in church. My pastor has been preaching on the Beatitudes and what it means to be a peacemaker in the world. Last Sunday, he preached about how love and peace need to be at the center of our lives. That although we may have fear, we can’t let it drive us. That peace comes from breaking cycles of violence, whether physical or emotional. When we have peace at the core of our being, it acknowledges the pain of others and moves out from us.

The Doctor Who episode deeply connected with me, but I didn’t know why until hearing the sermon. Putting the two together, I realized that by trying to ignore my fear, I was allowing it to overwhelm me. To paraphrase the Martin Luther King Jr. quote on this week’s church bulletin, I was trying to merely drive out darkness instead of bringing light. But there can be no known without an unknown, no comfort without fear, no rebuilding without destruction, and no resurrection without the despair of Good Friday.

By worrying about not being a good enough mom, I don’t give myself the space to make and acknowledge the mistakes that are needed to grow. By being so concerned that I’m not doing enough, I make it all about me and deny the efforts of the folks around me. One of my favorite bloggers, Phil Sandifer, says that progressive causes like feminism involve both tearing down the current systems and making new mistakes in the process. As both a parent and activist, I have to forgive myself and others so that we can all make new mistakes together.

From now on, I will try to embrace my fears, realizing that they’re an outgrowth of how much I love my son and am concerned about the world around me. Instead of being afraid of caring too much, I will try to celebrate it.

We Do Still Want to Hang Out With You – Seriously

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

A lot of people without kids complain that when their friends become parents that they never see them anymore. They stop accepting invitations and don’t invite them to their own events. But before Sprout was born, I was determined that Chris and I were not going to be those people. Even though many of our friends live on the other side of the city, we still wanted to see them.

While we aren’t perfect, I think we’ve been pretty good at following through on that commitment. This weekend, we actually spent time with our friends on both Saturday and Sunday. So to all of the folks who keep turning down invitations, I say that you don’t have to be Those Parents.

In fact, here are a few solutions to the most common challenges I’ve heard. While these won’t work for everyone, I think they could help a few new parents spend a little more time with their friends.

“You don’t want to come – it’s going to be a lot of kids.”
Possibly, but you never know unless you ask! If someone doesn’t want to attend an event, they will politely respond “no” or ignore the invitation altogether. Personally, I like inviting all of my friends – with and without kids – to parties at our house. For Sprout’s first birthday party, we rented space at a local park, which worked out very well for both the adults and kids. As he gets older, his parties will focus on his friends, but you can still have all-ages Halloween parties, Christmas celebrations or summer BBQs. For his party, I think one thing that helped was that we encouraged people to donate to the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project instead of bringing gifts. That way, my non-parent friends didn’t have to figure out what to buy for a one-year-old, folks on tight budgets didn’t feel obliged, people who wanted to could contribute, and we didn’t end up with a ton of extra toys.

“People without kids don’t want to hear me talk about my kids.”
Then don’t – it doesn’t always seem like it, but there are other conversational topics in the world! Even if you’re a stay at home parent, you can talk about pop culture, the news, politics or other hobbies. Also, I’ve found that our friends don’t mind us talking about Sprout, just as long as we’re respectful. We try not to dominate the conversation, listen to people tell stories about their own lives (including their pets), don’t imply that our lives are soooo much harder than their, and don’t make them feel bad about not having kids. In fact, our friends have had a lot of questions, either because they do want kids in the future or are just curious. But avoid talking about your kid’s poop. No one wants to hear about toileting habits – unless it’s a hysterically funny story.

“Babysitters are really expensive.”
They totally are – which is why we’ve avoided finding one so far. Now, a lot of this is due to having a supportive social circle and family, but some of it’s just flexibility. Whenever either set of our parents visit or we visit them, we ask if they can watch Sprout for the evening. While we’ve spent most of these nights on dates, we could have also used them to set up time with kid-less friends. More recently, we did a “child swap” with friends of ours that also have a baby. We took their kid for an afternoon so they could go out and a few weeks later, they took Sprout. But you don’t necessarily need friends or family to provide childcare. If you’re part of a couple, you can actually switch off between the two of you. When one of our friends sends an invitation to an evening party, we take turns as to who gets to go and who stays home. As we had a four year long distance relationship and years of opposite schedules, we’re both comfortable going to events by ourselves. It’s nicer to go to things together, but it’s better to go alone than not at all!

“Nap times are so restrictive.”
We’ve managed to phase out the morning nap, but we know well the dangers of screwing with naptime. But if your friends without kids are willing to be flexible, it’s possible to plan around them, especially on weekends. In particular, we’ve found late brunches and lunches to work well. If your kid is bad at restaurants, places with sidewalk seating tend to be more forgiving when it comes to being noisy and dropping food on the ground. While a lot of folks go to dinner too late for us, barbecues that we can attend after his afternoon nap are great. If you’re willing to host something at your own house, you can really expand the possibilities. In theory, you can put the baby down for his afternoon nap right before people come over, allowing you a couple of adult-only hours. Of course, this doesn’t always go as planned. I hosted a gaming session where I was GMing (game-mastering) and inevitably Sprout decided that was the day he didn’t want to take an afternoon nap.

“But I can’t bring my kids to a bar and adults don’t want to go to Chuck E Cheese!”
Unfortunately, they don’t make neighborhood bars like they used to. Back in the day, my great-grandmother and great-grandfather brought my mom and aunt to the local joint where all their friends hung out. In light of this loss, there are a lot of places that can meet the needs of both adults and kids. Besides the aforementioned outdoor dining, perhaps a friend wouldn’t mind hanging out at a park where the kids can play on the playground. Or you can go to the mall altogether and make a stop at the children’s area. While the summer is quickly fading, a lot of outdoor movie series show awesome family-friendly films, like Frozen and Star Wars. Local events can be perfect too – the local county fair or Renaissance Festival can be very entertaining for everyone.

Now, all of this is not to say that new parents should be solely responsible for maintaining the friendship. We ask for patience and understanding from our child-less friends. We may be a little later than usual, we may have odd stains on our clothes, we will have limited schedules, and we may sometimes need to leave to deal with a child-related disaster, whether medical or behavioral. But taking all of that into consideration, we do still want to be friends with you.

Guest Post at the Children and Nature Network

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

I have a guest post over at the Children & Nature Network! Their founder, Richard Louv (author of Last Child in the Woods), read my post on what I want to teach Sprout about nature and asked if I could adapt it for their blog. Obviously, I said yes. Their organization has a great mission – to get more kids into nature – and I’m so glad that I could contribute. I edited the original post quite a bit, so I think it’s still worth reading this one even if you saw the one before.

Go check it out: Valuable Lessons – What I Want to Teach My Son About Nature.

Faire Thee Well

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 7 Comments

Being a big dork who enjoys dressing up in costume, I love Renaissance Faires. I’ve never been hard core enough to get a season pass, but I’ve attended them on and off since junior high. This past weekend, we attended our local Faire with friends of ours who have a two and a half year old son. While Sprout wasn’t old enough to fully appreciate it, I enjoyed it and I definitely want to bring him back in the future.

Probably my favorite thing about the Renaissance Faire is how it inspires imagination. Despite being set in a pseudo-historical world, there is no question that this is pure fantasy. The Simpsons episode where they visit the Ren Faire (“Behold the mighty Esquilax, a horse with the head of a rabbit…and the body…of a rabbit!”) isn’t all that far off. For goodness sake, they sell corn dog bites and cheesecake on a stick! There’s tremendous value in learning about real history, but the Society for Creative Anachronism this is not.

But in place of actual historical fact, there exists a whimsical space for visitors to fill in themselves. In contrast to Disney (which has incredible world building, but it’s heavily controlled), participants are invited to jointly create a world with the performers. We are the rabble at the foot of Shakespeare’s stage, the lords and ladies in the Queen’s court, and the ordinary folk attending a joust. In fact, if you come in costume, you become a performer and character yourself. It was actually quite difficult to tell the difference at times!

Because of this combination of loose requirements and interactivity, the Renaissance Faire seems open and welcoming as a community. We saw all sorts of costumed attendees, ranging from people wearing custom-made elaborate corsets to a combination of mall-bought clothes that was suggestive of a pirate outfit. Personally, I wore a regular dress in a vaguely Renaissance style and a ridiculous hat. Unlike comic book conventions, where women are often accused of being “fake geek girls” if they don’t meet some vague and arbitrary level of comprehensive knowledge, the Renaissance Faire doesn’t have any set characters or standards. In fact, the booths even had a variety of costumes for sale, so even if you were totally unprepared and wanted to join in the fun, you could.

Similarly, the looseness of the world building means that visitors can remake it in their own image if they want to. So what if girls weren’t knighted at that time? They are here! So what if black and Hispanic people wouldn’t have been heavily represented in the court? They can be here! When fiction may not represent the full variety of fans, these in-person places give everyone the opportunity to step into a fantasy world and make it our own. (This is not to say there aren’t any issues with sexism or racism at Ren Faires, but I personally found it to seem like a more welcome atmosphere.).

In short, I like that I can bring Sprout to a place where imagination is celebrated by adults and all are welcome to participate in the co-creation of this shared world.

Lastly, I actually enjoy the commercial aspect of the Renaissance Faire. Almost all, if not all, of the vendors at our Faire are small producers who make their products themselves. From chain mail to swords to dresses, there was no shortage of beautiful goods. I like dealing directly with small crafters, knowing that they take pride in their products and are getting paid fairly for their efforts. As Sprout gets older, I like him knowing that you can buy toys from places other than the toy store and meet the people who make them.

Fundamentally, the Renaissance Faire is a silly place for adults and children alike to have light-hearted, imaginative fun. And it’s good that such a place exists.

A Chair of One’s Own

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Sometimes, the things that children are proudest of don’t show up on any milestone chart.

This past Christmas, my in-laws gave Sprout a little plastic, Toy Story-themed chair. He was too small to use it at the time, so we just put it in the corner of his room.

A few weeks ago, Chris texted me with the omnious words: “He’s plotting.” Sprout realized he could potentially climb up onto the chair, although he didn’t actually have the coordination to do so. More importantly, he also realized he could drag the chair from room to room, giving him a convenient but risky stepstool. As we would like to keep him from scaling the furniture for as long as possible, the chair was banished to our room.

Until I left our bedroom door open the other day. Noticing he was suspiciously quiet, we peeked in and saw him perched up on his new throne, grinning. He was so pleased with himself – and not falling off the chair – that we couldn’t help but bring it out.

Since then, he’s been obsessed with sitting on the chair, in only the way a toddler can be. He’ll climb on and off it over and over again, either crossing his legs or swinging his feet. Once he’s on it, he’ll smile and clap his hands, congratulating himself on his achievement.

In fact, he was so distracted by the chair the other night that he refused to drink any milk before bedtime. With the chair in his line of sight, he only wanted to be sitting on it. He was willing to drink his milk while sitting on it, but doesn’t have the balance to both stay upright and lift the sippy cup to his mouth. As some kind of accident was bound to happen, I put the kibosh on that idea.

His sitting preoccupation has even extended past his chair. This weekend, he loved climbing up on a short stone stoop in our downtown area and was frustrated at the one that was too tall for him.

While walking is obviously a much bigger milestone, this is just more proof of Sprout’s burgeoning independence. I think he likes the chair so much because choosing to sit on a piece of furniture without any help at all is something Mommy and Daddy do. That aspect especially revealed itself this weekend, when my parents, Chris, and I were sitting around on the couch and living room chairs. Sprout dragged his chair from across the room and planted it in our little semi-circle, ready to join in the conversation.

There’s also an element of ownership. While we think of the high chair and crib as “his,” they’re really tools for us, furniture that makes our lives easier. In contrast, his chair is definitively his – he can use it on his own without help, and no else can. He isn’t in the “Mine, mine, mine” phase yet, but I’m starting to see the start of it.

Who knew that a simple chair could mean so much?

Walt Disney World Week: That Perfect Girl is Gone

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 11 Comments

I consider myself a recovering perfectionist. But like many addicts, I’ve come to realize that I’m not as close to recovered as I thought I was. It all came to a head on the last day of our Walt Disney World trip.

As a kid and young adult, my perfectionism was focused on my academic and work goals. But unlike many people, my perfectionism wasn’t paralyzingly – it was inspiring. Each ambitious goal I reached bolstered my confidence. On the occasion I didn’t meet my goal or even (gasp) failed at something, I was reassured that I had tried my hardest and would do well in the future.

That foundation failed me the minute I became a mom. Here I was, responsible for a entire person’s life, and completely unprepared. I had read plenty of books and taken the classes, but felt totally helpless. There was no grading system providing feedback and all of the advice was contradictory, leaving me lost.

Thankfully, I grew into my role with the support of my husband and family. I thought I came to grips with the fact that I’ll never know all of the answers and what works one day may become irrelevant the next. As Sprout developed into a happy, healthy kid, I felt better about my capabilities and choices. I even wrote an post about how toxic the idea of perfection was to me.

But all of those old worries flooded back on the first day of our trip. Trying to give Chris a break from his stay-at-home duties, I sat next to Sprout on the plane. At first, I was nervous that the pressure change would bother him, as my ears always have difficulty adjusting. Once we took off and he was fine (albeit surprised), I was obsessed with forestalling any potential crying fits. After all, I didn’t want to be “that mom.” After rounds off books and the See-and-Say, about 20 minutes from landing, I finally pulled out the big gun, the one thing I’ve never let him play with – my iPhone. Even then, I was on edge that he would start screaming any moment.

The trauma of the flight over, my mood lightened a little when we arrived at my grandmother’s house. But even there held untold risks. Our house is well baby-proofed, with the kitchen blocked off and everything strapped to the walls. While my grandmother made a valiant effort to prepare for our visit, her kitchen was open and there were still a few decorations within Sprout’s reach. We had to keep a constant eye on him to ensure he didn’t turn on the stove, pull open kitchen cabinets, rip pages out of books, knock over large ceramic figurines, or any other number of potentially disastrous scenarios. The hotel room was almost as bad on the baby-friendly front, between the full kitchen and our fellow travelers’ tendency to leave the bedroom and bathroom doors open. So even when we should have been relaxing, I was on high alert.

The parks only exacerbated my worries. Sprout decided early on that while the stroller was fine for short periods of time, he really wanted to explore. As we were visiting at the height of Disney’s busy season, finding uncrowded areas was almost impossible. Even though we were tethered together, the foot traffic was way too high for a toddler to be wandering around. So I ended up tailing him by a couple of inches, trying to prevent him from: getting run over by a stroller or motor scooter, getting trampled by a pedestrian, pulling on someone else’s clothes, or stealing someone else’s stuff. As he has the walking patterns of a hummingbird, it was like constantly playing defense to the world’s shortest basketball player.

While the main roads were challenging, the lines were worse. We managed to avoid most of them, but even the shortest 20 minute ones were overwhelming. After the first five minutes, he no longer wanted to be held, and would start struggling. If I put him down, he wasn’t going to wait patiently in line. He might be content to play with the ropes or chains separating the crowd, but he often wanted to wander. I tried to corral him into walking in a circle, but he’d catch onto that tactic pretty quickly and try to slip between the legs of the people ahead (or sometimes behind) us. As I see line-cutting as a social sin, trying to keep him happy while not skipping in front of people was a tightrope walk.

Besides the difficulty of baby-proofing the world, I had a lot of self-induced stress from feeling like a hypocrite. The first instance came from allowing Sprout to cry-it-out the second night at my grandmother’s house against my ethical and practical objections. But after two hours of trying to get Sprout back to sleep and him being so worked up that he was violently thrashing in my arms, neither Chris or I could think of a better solution. Listening to him yelp like a rabid badger at 1:30 in the morning was one of my low points as a parent. Thankfully, my grandmother was on the other side of the house and had taken out her hearing aid. Later on, I felt terribly self-contradictory on the subject of naps. Before the trip, I had so self-righteously lectured my in-laws on how we were going to maintain Sprout’s schedule and be back at the hotel for a 2 hour nap every afternoon. Ha – we didn’t carry out that plan a single time. (Of course, the day my in-laws took him, they did go back to the room.) Basically, I had underestimated the room-to-park commute (30 min to a full hour) as well as how uninterested in napping Sprout would be after the waiting for bus, bus ride, and stroller walk combination. So on top of being concerned he wasn’t getting enough sleep, I felt like a twit that I had taken such a hard stand on the issue.

Adding to all of that the relentless heat, the back and forth haul to the hotel, the long nights, the fact that everything takes twice as long with a small child, and the nagging concern that our car at the airport might be totaled, I was stretched thin. We had some excellent times, but on the last day, I just snapped.

I’m not exactly sure if anything triggered it, but I had a full-on anxiety attack. The whole family – my mother and father-in-law, my sister and brother-in-law, and Chris and Sprout – were together for the day. I wanted to have fun, but variations on the same thought kept drowning out everything else: “I want everyone to have a good time – it’s the last day. But what if it doesn’t go as planned? But what if Sprout is upset? What if he starts crying? It’s all going to be my fault.” I never had that exact thought, but all of the worries were based in that single fear, drenching me over me over and over again, washing away anything else. I wasn’t totally paralyzed – I could walk and talk, but I was tense, snippy, and manic. I jumped from subject to subject, preoccupied with impending doom.

Of all things, the one thing that broke the fear’s hold on me was a roller-coaster. In fact, it was my favorite roller-coaster in the world – Space Mountain. While it had been closed earlier in the day due to mechanical difficulties, it reopened for business just in time. From the simple thrills of sharp drops in the dark to the lighthearted space travel theme, I was grinning from ear to ear. All of the adrenaline that had been pounding through my head found a release and I was more relaxed than I had been the whole trip.

But while Space Mountain relieved me of the physical tension, I was still carrying a lot of emotional baggage. Which is how I ended up ugly crying, my face full of tears and snot, belting out Let It Go in the middle of the street in Hollywood Studios that night. Sprout was on my shoulders watching fireworks, so I didn’t have to worry about him. Everyone was singing and the fireworks were loud, so no one would notice me being off-key. My family was elsewhere in the crowd, so no one was there to judge me. I could just, well, let it go.

Even though I don’t have any magical superpowers – except maybe my Mama Cape – I relate to Elsa’s journey. I can’t keep covering up my imperfections; hiding them deep down just destroys you in the end. I have to embrace my fallibility, acknowledge that I will contradict myself, and rely on the fact that sometimes I have no idea what I’m doing. When I hold on to the person I want to show the world, I give up who I really am. And it’s not just a one time deal – exposing my heart, facing the fear and letting go of my pride is a process that I will have to repeat over and over again. But I have to keep doing it because my kid deserves having a mother who is so herself through and through, faults and all.