The Night We Finally Did Cry-it-Out

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

So far, this winter has been absolutely bonkers. Coming off of hosting Thanksgiving for both sets of parents, we drove to Pittsburgh for my work, and then the week after, I was off to Denver on another work trip. In between, we had two kids’ birthday parties and a puppet show. Needless to say, this seriously messed with Sprout’s schedule and head. Unfortunately, it had the worst consequences at night.

In September, I truly believed our sleep problems had come and gone. After the chaotic schedule that was our vacation, we had settled into a regular rhythm. We had one tough week where I would let him cry for five or six minutes at night, go in his room, hug him for a few minutes, put him down, and repeat until he fell asleep. But once that week ended, he’d curl up in bed clutching his stuffed Figment and sleep through until the morning.

Then came the molars. Known as the most painful, unpleasant of all teething, the resulting headaches prevented him from falling asleep on his own. When the Oragel wore off four hours after his bedtime – always around my bedtime – he would wake up screaming. Hating that my baby was in pain, I’d pick him up and cradle him on the big chair in his room.

Of course, now that I had broken the routine (again), I was doomed to repeat history. Even when his teeth weren’t bothering him, he’d wail like a banshee when I tried to put him in his crib. I tried the “every five minutes” tactic, but he just got angrier each time. I’d finally acquiesce, settling down in the chair so he could fall asleep on my lap. In the middle of the night, he would wake up and expect me to hold him on my lap, just like at bedtime. Waking up once a night soon turned into waking up twice and soon enough we were back to the hellish schedule we had months ago.

I tried different tactics to varying degrees of success. We slept on the couch, which worked once. One night, I brought him into our bed. That worked twice before he decided it was more fun to crawl on our heads than sleep between us. Unlike kids that just want a parent in close proximity, he specifically wanted me to hold him in my arms sitting up. (It seems like Lydia over at Rants from Mommyland had the same problem.) Despite the absurdity, I was willing to put up with it until December’s chaos was done. We would start over in January.

Then I left on my Denver trip and it really went to hell. Sprout was very unhappy about daddy putting him to bed, even with my mom visiting as back-up. One night, he woke up at 3 AM and screamed whenever they tried to put him down – for more than two whole hours. Unfortunately, my return didn’t improve the situation. One weekday, I had to go to the office the next morning after being up in the middle of the night for two hours.

At that point, Chris declared the situation unsustainable and unacceptable. Sprout was no longer an infant. He had the capability to fall asleep independently – he had previously and still did during naptime. He even had some comprehension of other people’s needs and the fact that we need to avoid hurting people. We needed to set some boundaries and teach him that mommy is not his personal pillow.

Unfortunately, we only saw one choice – cry-it-out. While variations on the Sleep Lady technique had worked previously, they just pissed him off now. If possible, we wanted to avoid him degenerating into angry rabid honey badger mode. He would certainly be angry if we ignored him, but at least he wouldn’t think we were taunting him.

I hate, hate, hate the idea of cry-it-out. I had sworn that I would never, ever do that to my child. That I couldn’t possibly listen to him cry like he was in pain. That I wouldn’t let him stand there like an abandoned orphan.

But then I did – and it was terrible.

Even though I could hear him through our walls, I still kept the monitor on at night. I cringed at every cry. I wept into my pillow, asking Chris, “Why are we doing this? He’s scared, he’s sad, he’s lonely!” He’d reassure me that we were doing the right thing, we had tried everything else, Sprout was choosing not to sleep and he was just throwing a major hissy fit. Most importantly, he told me that Sprout still loved me and that I loved him.

The first few nights were the worst, with him yelling on and off for more than an hour at times. All of us were strung out on sleeplessness and stress. It took about a week – with part of it away from our house – before we restored our previous status. The first night he went down with minimal fussing, I released a huge breath. The worst was over and we would all be the better for it.

Every night is a new challenge, a new opportunity. I know there are some nights he’ll still wake up. Once he’s consistently sleeping through the night, I’ll go in to comfort him without making a routine of it. Once he switches to a toddler bed, I can definitely see him climbing into our queen-sized bed and squishing us. But I am never ever using that chair as a bed again.

A Day at the Museum

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 6 Comments

The New York State Museum in Albany was one of my favorite places as a child. Despite the fact that my mom is a teacher and deeply devoted to education, I dragged her there so many times that even she started getting sick of it. While it’s far from a world-class museum, it has a lovely diversity of exhibits, including large dioramas of taxidermied animals, rock and minerals displays, histories of New York’s Native American tribes, and a tribute to New York City. So when my mom suggested bringing Sprout there over Christmas break, I thought it was worth checking it. Even though he’s was too young to read the placards, we thought he would enjoy looking at the exhibits.

We headed to Albany on Monday morning, walking to the Museum through the huge underground Concourse. I pointed out to Sprout the huge abstract art covering the walls, thinking he would like the giant multi-colored snake and interlocking black and white shapes. However, he was more interested in the noisy construction equipment than looking at modern art. When we finally arrived at the museum’s front doors, we discovered that the exhibits are closed on Mondays. While we considered detouring to a different museum, we ditched the entire thing and headed home.

The day after Christmas, we decided to give the New York State Museum another try after a play date with one of my mom’s friends’ kids was canceled. This time, they were actually open.

We started off with the Adirondack exhibit. Sprout was fascinated by the majestic stuffed elk in front of a running waterfall, although I couldn’t tell if it was the animal, the water, or the coins in the pool that kept his attention. We spent about 10 minutes looking at that single display and he still kept trying to go back when we tried to leave. However, not all of the animals were nearly that popular. Looking skeptically at both the moose and the mastadon, he wouldn’t get too close, wary of their size.

On our way out of the Adirondacks section, we came upon the Children’s Discovery Center, which I had forgotten about. When I was a kid, it was filled with computers that allowed you to play Odell Lake (a game where you played a fish trying not to get eaten) and other vaguely educational games. When hardly anyone had a home computer, those black and green screens were the height of excitement. As many kids now have their own iPads, the Center has since gone in the opposite direction. Everything was touchy-feely, with the only screens being those showing a microscope close-up of insect mouthparts. Like our local nature center, they had animal furs, skins, bones, and fossils to touch.

They also had a small collection of wooden puzzles, animal puppets, and dress-up costumes. Playing with one of the puzzles, Sprout brought one piece over to the middle of the floor, near another, slightly older boy. The boy must have been playing with the same puzzle earlier, as he immediately shouted, “Mine!” in typical toddler fashion. While the little boy’s dad was in the middle of telling him that he had to share, Sprout did something surprising. He went back to the puzzle across the room and brought back a different piece for the boy to play with. When the kid kept whining, he brought over the entire puzzle to share. It was such a kind gesture; I was so proud of him for being generous when he didn’t have to be.

Next up was one of my favorite sections of the Museum – the area on the Iroquois Native American confederacy. While these days it looked out-of-date and probably had some level of cultural insensitivity (I didn’t have time to read the placards), at one point, it did spark my interest about a culture very different from my own. The heart of the exhibit is a large replica of a longhouse. While visitors can walk through much of it, the end of it is blocked off and has a diorama of people listening to a story around a fire. With its poor lighting and audio narration, entering that longhouse felt a little like stepping back in time to me. Creeping into it slowly, afraid yet still very interested, I think Sprout understood a little of that feeling. As we left, I explained to him that descendants of these people are still around and continue to use some of the costumes for ceremonies. While I know he didn’t understand my explanation, but it was important for me to say it anyway. I want him both to know about the history of a variety of ethnic groups as well as understand that history is more than just a story in a book – that these people still exist today and the events of the past reverberate through our modern day.

Next up was the New York City exhibit, which was a bit of a mixed bag. He loved the subway car parked in the middle of the floor, giggling as he ran in and out of it. Although we’ve been on the D.C. Metro many times, he clearly didn’t make that connection that they were the same thing. Obviously, we haven’t made the jump from generic “train” to “subway” yet. He was pretty indifferent about the Sesame Street display, only interested by the historical clips they were playing on a dinky TV. He could have cared less about Oscar the Grouch being there in person. For obvious reasons, we skipped the September 11 exhibit and finished off with a walk through the room of historical fire trucks. As he took in the 20 pieces or so of huge shiny fire equipment, his eyes went wide. While many of them were both practical and decorative, a silver one that could have been Cinderella’s carriage was actually used only in parades.

We wrapped up our trip with a ride on the museum’s historic, restored carousel. While not as bright or elaborate as some, its horses were truly lovely. Although we’ve been in carousels elsewhere, Sprout had clearly forgotten those experiences, because his mouth dropped when his horse moved upwards. As the ride spun faster and faster, he gazed at the cranks spinning round and round that move the horses up-and-down. I definitely knew he enjoyed it when as soon as it stopped, whiny grousing commenced. Fortunately, we had a built-in reason we couldn’t repeat the ride – the carousel is so fragile that they only run it every 15 minutes, saving both the historical landmark and parents’ sanity.

Reflecting on our day, I realize how drastically different my experience was before and after having a child. I used to read every placard, trying to imprint the information into my brain. This time, I had neither the luxury of time or focus to do more than skim them. Previously, I meandered from exhibit to exhibit, lingering on those I found particularly interesting. Now, I followed Sprout from place to place, letting him take the lead.

This is not to say that we’ll stop visiting everything but kid-oriented museums. In particular, I know the New York State Museum so well that there was nothing I would have gained from a close reading. There’s still plenty of places that I’ll want to do more than skim and I believe it’s important to show him we love to learn as well.

But it does mean that the way I approach museums – even the most beloved of them – will radically change. And that’s quite alright with me – seeing my inquisitive little boy learning right beside me brings new meaning to the whole experience.

The Best of 2014

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

2014 was a good year for me. I started to feel comfortable as a mom, had a very busy but productive year at work, and went on a lot of fun day trips with Chris and Sprout. It wasn’t without its frustrations and challenges, especially feeling inadequate as an adult and the discouraging state of current events. But New Year’s Eve makes it a great time to look back at my entries and posts from this year that chronicled both the ups and the downs.

WordPress gives you a “Year in Review” that shows your top entries for the year, all of which I thought were strong as well. They run the gamut from how a Doctor Who episode helped me with my fears about motherhood to how an emergency root canal exposed our economic privilege. So if you’re just showing up, here are the entries that got read the most this year:

Then there were a number of posts that weren’t the most popular, but I personally liked. They ranged from angry ranting about societal issues to a celebration of a local park. Some I thought were particularly well-written while others I was proud of the fact that I could be that open and honest (ahem, Breastfeeding Week).

I also had the opportunity to guest post at some really great blogs, so here were a few in case you missed them:

Then there’s the Twitter. Compared to many, I don’t tweet that much and most of them are links. But I did have a few short, funny observations throughout the year about my everyday life that I’ve gathered into a Storify post.

With that look back, I’m hopeful looking forward into 2015. I hope you join me for the ride!

Halfway through the Dark – Traveling Home for Christmas

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

In the midst of winter, we rage against the darkness with as much love and joy as we can muster, celebrating with family and friends. I celebrate Christmas, but it is only one holiday among many, whether it is New Years, Solstice, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or earlier in autumn, Diwali. We prepare ourselves for the coming cold by surrounding ourselves with light. This year, our family was so fortunate to be surrounded with love, even when we stumbled a bit.

Unlike many families, Chris and I never had to worry about sharing Christmas between two sets of parents. As we were high school sweethearts, our parents still live four miles apart. For the past several years, we’ve actually done a joint holiday, where we open presents separately at each house in the morning and then all have dinner together. This year, we stayed at Chris’ parents house for the whole week, along with his sister and brother-in-law.

But unlike previous years, we had a toddler. While Sprout was in our midst last Christmas, he was barely sitting up, much less mobile. He required constant supervision, but at least stayed where you put him. Last Christmas Day, we were able to prop him up in a laundry basket while he looked adorable in his little Santa pajamas. This year, he was everywhere all at once all of the time. Between the relatives and an endless parade of guests (Christmas Eve, Christmas dinner, the day after Christmas), plus the tree and decorations, there was a palable sense of excitement. Needless to say, there was none of his normal interest in sitting quietly by himself flipping through a book.

Adding to this chaos was a number of non-human friends. My sister and brother-in-law brought their schauzer puppy, Jasper, who is about half Sprout’s size. They became fast friends. Sprout would slowly pet him on the back saying, “Niiiice” in a tone that my sister-in-law likened to Borat. While he did become bolder over time, I was proud of how gentle and kind Sprout was to Jasper. Occasionally the constant petting became a bit much, but in general Jasper was very tolerant and enjoyed Sprout’s company. One of them was almost always following the other around. When I took Sprout over to my parents’ house, Jasper was genuinely excited when he returned. He was even protective of Sprout, barking when he thought he was doing something dangerous.

The other non-human friends were a bit more – mechanical. My mother-in-law loves singing animatronic Christmas decorations. In addition to her “people” (little synchronized carolers), a singing stuffed Santa, a set of Disney characters playing instruments, and a penguin, she bought Sprout a singing Christmas tree that was about half his height. To the tune of Rocking Around the Christmas Tree, it bounced, its mouth moved, and its little lights blinked. It was cute the first few times. On repeat number 10, it became intensely grating, especially when Sprout turned on all of the singing creatures simultaneously. It also bothered me that they mesmerized Sprout even more than TV. We hoped Jasper would attack them and force a retreat, but he seemed to enjoy them as well. Which meant the rest of us either had to tolerate the same recorded songs over and over and over again or whining that we hid the toys on him. We settled on some combination of the two, along with a heavy dose of distraction. Even my mother-in-law became sick of them eventually – it took a toddler for her to realize that someone could love her “people” even more than she did.

While Sprout was wonderfully careful around the dog and fragile decorations, we started to see some of the fabled toddler defiance emerging. He began saying “No!” with a snotty edge in his voice and a pout. He degenerated into mini-meltdowns a few times, both conveniently in public, at restaurants. Thankfully, getting away from the table helped calm him down significantly. I know that won’t always work in the future, so I’m working on my bag of tricks, including deep breathing (for him and me).

I couldn’t blame him for being on a bit of an emotional roller-coaster – everything was so confusing. After an absolutely bonkers December with the first two weeks spent traveling, we bopped from house to house several times over the course of the week. On the way there and back, we slept over at my aunt’s house. Once we were in upstate New York, we spent half of the time at my in-laws and half the time at my parents’ houses. And we weren’t alone in those places. As Sprout is starting to be afraid of strangers, the crowd of unfamiliar extended family and friends must have been disorienting. Considering how much was new and overstimulating, he did extremely well.

With all of the other thrills, he wasn’t that excited by Christmas Day. He’s too young to enjoy anticipation, so unwrapping presents confused him. His very first present was a Little Tykes slide and once he saw that, he wasn’t interested in sitting still enough to open anything else. To him, the wrapped presents were just fancy boxes.

Eventually, he did open them all with a bit of help. I wouldn’t say otherwise (of course), but I was extremely pleased with what everyone got him. While I wrote a list, I knew folks were going to buy items that weren’t listed. Fortunately, all of our relatives stuck to giving the types of toys we value – active, creative, practical, durable, and not electronic.

Chris and I chose to make the trek up to the great, cold north so that we can spend it with our family and old friends. It was worth every mile.

Why I Will Never Buy Elf on the Shelf

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 12 Comments

The Elf on the Shelf is more than just an annoyance – it also promotes a lot of terrible values. Here’s why I will never buy Elf on the Shelf. 

Why I Will Never Buy Elf on the Shelf (Photo: Picture of the Elf on the Shelf with a No Sign Through It)

Wandering the bookstore in December, looking for gifts, I really hope that my four-year-old doesn’t notice – or at least doesn’t care about – the Elf on the Shelf prominently displayed by the check-out counter. While I know it’s a beloved tradition in many families, I kind of hate the thing. Besides its aesthetics, it stands for a bunch of values that are the opposite of what I want to teach my kids.

For those who have had the good fortune of avoiding the Elf on the Shelf, it’s stuffed elf that comes with a book. The main idea is that the Elf is a spy for Santa who watches the kids all day and reports back every night. Each morning, the parent puts the Elf in a different place, some of which involve increasingly complicated scenarios. While I normally love toys that come with books, the only thing the Elf on the Shelf is good for is these hilarious photos that reveal the Elf in some very compromised situations.

Here’s why I will never buy the Elf on the Shelf:

Continue reading →

Envisioning the Future of Family Bicycling

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Being in the middle of a burgeoning movement is exciting; being in the start can be pretty lonely. Fortunately, the bicycling for transportation movement in the U.S. is starting to embrace its more youthful sibling, the family biking movement. Last weekend, I attended the Washington Area Bicyclists’ Association (WABA) first D.C. area Family Biking Town Hall.

The event began with participants rotating through a series of stations, each inviting our input on a different subject. The topics ranged from ideas for the perfect family biking event (my favorite is the ABCs of Family Cycling) to best blogs for family cycling. They even asked to how to make the 50 States and 13 Colonies Ride more family-friendly. I think my best input was the important advice to try equipment with your kids before you buy it, so you don’t end up with a trailer your kid doesn’t like, as we did.

Besides the stations, I was glad for the opportunty to connect with some biking folks I haven’t seen in a while. While I expected to see the leaders of the DC and Gaithersburg Kidical Mass rides, I was pleasantly surprised to run into a prior member of the Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee who as far as I knew had disappeared off the face of the earth. As it turned out, he had been a little closer – in Colorado, on a contract. Previously, he had helped us run bike rodeos for kids, so I was glad to see that he was still engaged in youth education. Sometimes, this city is so small and so full of talented, passionate people.

The WABA education director than gave a brief presentation that led into the main discussion. WABA acknowledged that they had been remiss in the past when they had frequently ignored the needs of families. One of the main problems is a simple lack of experience – only 1 of their 13 staff members has children. Considering the average salary of a staff member of a small non-profit and our local living costs, this fact didn’t exactly surprise me. Nonetheless, he said that WABA has realized that family cycling is “bleeding edge” and wants to ensure DC is one of the leaders in this next big step forward. While they can’t dedicate any specific staff members to the issue, they hope to integrate families into their current efforts and start some new family-oriented programming in the future. They finished with a pitch for their holiday party, which unfortunately reinforced their focus on young 20 and 30-somethings, as it was at a bar on a weekday night. At least they’re honest about their room to improve.

The discussion began with a broad visioning effort to describe an ideal family-biking location, then quickly broadened to include infrastructure needs, advocacy efforts and resources.

One thing everyone could agree on is that we want family bicycling to be normal, the way it is in Amsterdam and Japan, land of the “mommy bike.” Whether it’s pediatricians, drivers, or even other cyclists, we’re sick of people second-guessing our parenting and transportation decisions. As Megan from Kidical Mass DC said, we’ll have reached our goal “when people bike with their kids who didn’t bike before” simply because it’s the easiest, cheapest, most sustainable way to get around.

We also universally agreed that there’s a lack of centralized resources on family biking for current and expecting parents. While there are some home-grown blogs and a smattering of articles, there’s nothing that can walk people through all of the possible equipment, its advantages and disadvantages, and the process of actually choosing which one would work for them. One of the participants imagined a future where expecting parents learned about family biking options before they arrived at the hospital, just as they do now with car seats.

A desire for more protected bicycle infrastructure that is segregated from traffic was another common theme. What works for an experienced cyclist won’t necessarily work for a mom on a bakfiets maxing out at 10 mph or an eight year old on her own bike.

We also discussed the need to include parental voices in the policy conversation. One woman from Fairfax bemoaned the lack of female representation on bicycle advisory committees, as women are more likely to bring up issues relating to families. Fortunately, DC actually has strong representation in this category – the heads of both the Rockville and Arlington groups are women and at least half of Rockville’s committee is – but we can always do better. Another major problem is that a lot of the city meetings where people give testimony are very difficult for parents of young children to attend. WABA seemed interested in helping people know when and how to submit written comments as well as gathering testimonies to present at city hearings.

While none of this will happen overnight, it was encouraging to connect with other folks concerned about the same day-to-day issues and see a (bike) path forward. I’m excited to see what WABA will do with our input.

Unfortunately, almost every time I attend a family biking event, the commute reminds me of how far we have to go. The original plan was for Chris to drop me off after church and then drive home for Sprout’s nap. I would then get a Bikeshare bike and pedal two miles to the most convenient Metro station. The first hurdle was that the two closest Bikeshare stations were completely empty, forcing me to walk more than 1/3 of a mile to pick one up. Once I finally checked out my bike, I pedaled toward the National Zoo, only to find out that the road looping up and around the zoo was closed for construction. As the only other option was miles out of the way, I ended up walking my bike all the way up the zoo’s main path, which is a mile-long hill. It was only until I reached the parking lot that I was able to pick up a road. I ended up only biking a half-mile of the 2 mile trip, making it take more than twice as long as it should have.

Even though I don’t haul Sprout everywhere by bike (yet), I look forward to the day our vision is fulfilled and owning a cargo bike will be just a normal as owning a minivan is now.

A Puppet Show for the Tinest of Tots

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

When I was a little girl, my mom brought me to the summer home of the New York City ballet every year. At a young age, Chris knew the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack and was in three high school plays. So it was inevitable that we were going to introduce Sprout to the theater. I found the perfect opportunity at a local children’s theater company, which puts on shows for little ones called Tiny Tots. The shows are a half-hour long, the lights stay on, they understand if you have to leave in the middle of the performance, and tickets are only five bucks a person. As I wanted to do one, single family holiday activity before Christmas, their presentation of “Nutcracker Fantasy” was perfect.

Evidently, we weren’t the only parents with the same train of thought. There was a whole mess of toddlers (clearly the correct word for a group of toddlers) with their parents in the theater’s lobby. They were quite well-behaved, even when we had to wait in line to get in and again for the show to start. The theater was small, with a carpeted floor with a single long step across the room and bench seating along the wall. The stage was simple – curtains on the sides and a draped balustrade along the back.

As everyone finished settling in, our puppeteer came out for a brief introduction. Explaining that he used to work on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (!) and The Muppets (!!), he said he was familiar with all sorts of puppets. While describing the difference between mouth puppets that talk and marionettes on strings, he demonstrated of how to construct a muppet of the Nutcracker King. It was a nice introduction to the kids who had only seen mouth puppets (otherwise known as muppets) and held everyone’s attention while they seated a few more families.

He then moved on to the actual show, which mainly consisted of the fun dance parts of the Nutcracker. One marionette was a snow lady with naughty little snowflakes that ran away. A poofy poodle juggled snowballs. A Chinese acrobat did flips and balanced a plate on his head. Individual round, green puppets (“I think they’re trees?” I whispered) came together to form a Chinese dragon. A turtle on roller skates jumped and flipped. Elegant plants swooped to the famous Dance of the Flowers.

As his background would suggest, the puppeteer was very talented. His fluid, tiny gestures made it appear as if the puppet itself was doing all of the work. Even though they didn’t speak, each character had a distinct personality and interacted with him in their own unique manner.

Each section followed the same pattern, so it was easy for the little ones to follow along. The puppeteer gave a short introduction to each character, often referring to them as “my friend.” He then brought out the marionette, who did some sort of trick. In several cases, the character was “not very good” at the trick, so they had to try it a couple times with the puppeteers’ encouragement. While most of the puppets’ incompetence was on purpose, one of the dog’s strings broke and a snowball actually fell into the audience. In the end, the character succeeded at the task and moved off-stage. Each vignette was only a few minutes long.

Despite the simplicity of the set-up, there seemed to be a level of confusion among the adults. I heard at least one person say, “Where’s the Nutcracker?” I suspect there were also some parents who agreed with a Yelp review that complained you could see the puppeteer. Neither of these things bothered me though. The plot of the Nutcracker is notoriously thin and toddlers wouldn’t be able to follow it anyway. While some of the characters weren’t in the original story (I don’t recall any frogs on roller skates), the kids didn’t seem to care. Being disappointed at seeing the puppeteer I think is due to a bit of a lack of imagination on the adults’ part. I’m not a great puppeteer and I’ve had children much older than toddlers talk to a puppet I was controlling as if I wasn’t present at all.

In contrast to their parents, the kids were totally mesmerized. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a group of calmer, quieter non-sleeping toddlers. Sprout watched the whole thing on my lap, thoughtfully chewing on his hand. The kids started getting a little antsy towards the end, but even that was limited to a few comments and squirms. Parents in the audience only brought a few kids out into the hallway, which was impressive for a packed house.

Overall, I was quite impressed, although there were a few things I would change. The design of the Chinese acrobat puppet played off unfortunate racial stereotypes. While I understand that communicating facial features of people of color can be particularly challenging in a puppet, I wish it wasn’t so Fu Manchu-esque. The other thing that grated to me just a bit was that the puppeteer was somewhat demeaning to the puppets who didn’t “want” to try their trick. As the characters were a bit kid-like, I thought he could have a more encouraging tone.

Considering that the show was a great introduction to the theater, Sprout loved it, and it was cheap, we’re sure to be back to the Tiny Tots show in the future.

Partying with the Other Cartoon Mouse

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

From reading parenting blogs, there appears to be a trifecta of parental hate: Calliou, glitter (the herpes of craft supplies), and Chuck E. Cheese. So when Sprout was invited to his first proper kid birthday party at Chuck E Cheese, I was intrigued. I loved the place as a kid, but I was a kid then, so what did I know? I found that while it wasn’t as bad as everyone says it is, it was rather mediocre – somewhat fun, no more and no less.

Although Sprout hid behind my legs when we first arrived, processing all of the action, he moved on to the toddler rides soon enough. Much like the their bigger cousins at Disney World, he showed much more interest than enjoyment. His little face showed rapt attention, his eyes concentrated and mouth neutral. It wasn’t that he disliked the rides – when we lifted him off one, he’d tap the seat and look at us, asking to put him on again. Instead, he was focused on absorbing and making sense of the experience. He requested going on the tiny carousel and the creepy clock swing so many times that we had to take a break for our own sanity. I have no idea how on earth they could be fun, but I am clearly not the target audience’s age.

Of course, the other essential part of the Chuck E Cheese experience is the games. Which – and I know this makes me sound hopelessly old, boring and nostalgic – were really disappointing. A few classics were present: driving games, basketball, and my old favorite, skeeball. They had a baby basketball game, which after the Thanksgiving playground incident, I knew Sprout would enjoy. As we handed him balls, he gently placed them in the basket. It was absolutely adorable.

But most of the games weren’t worth wasting free tokens on. A few were cutesy one-shots, where you had 1 level that took 30 seconds and couldn’t progress to the next level without putting in more money. No marathon sessions of side-scrollers like the old days. But even worse, the large majority of “games” were kiddy slot machines. They just dispensed tickets instead of money. They required little to no skill, offered a single chance, and promised big prizes with low odds of winning. Instead of a place where you could play with your friends to accomplish a goal (even if it was an inconsequential one), these games have turned arcades into casinos! I don’t want Sprout feeding my money into these machines, I don’t want him to be isolated, I don’t want the plastic crap the tickets pay for, and I definitely don’t want him gambling. I was very glad he was too little to pay notice to these games – I’ll take the baby rides any day.

About halfway through the party, the staff members pulled us together for pizza and the Chuck E. Cheese show. The pizza reminded me of the “good pizza” in the elementary school cafeteria. The birthday cake itself (not from Chuck E. Cheese), was simple – sandy tan frosting – but toy tractors on top turned it into a perfect tiny construction site. The rock-star themed show consisted of a costumed staff member “jamming out” with the birthday kid. The birthday boy – who had just turned two – had no clue about the symbolism but had a grand time anyway. He loved the inflatable guitar and crown, even though he had difficulty understanding, much less following, the instructions of the Chuck E. Cheese staff member. Under her beaming smile, you could tell she was the tiniest bit exasperated with trying to get a two-year-old to play along with a party template designed for an older child.

Standing around the pizza table was the first time all of the adults attending the party were in the same place. Before that, we were following our kids around the ride/game area, ensuring they didn’t put anything weird in their mouths or push other kids. Now, we were so physically close that normal social graces would require us to converse. But anything with multiple toddlers doesn’t fall within the bounds of normal social graces. Instead, we ignored each other, focusing on our kids eating without causing a disaster area. I kind of wanted to talk to people, but didn’t even know where to start. The only person we knew was the birthday kid’s dad, which Chris met at a Halloween party at our town’s community center. Instead, Chris and I talked to each other and watched Sprout eat his pizza cheese-first.

In the end, we cashed in our few tickets for stickers and headed home, having survived our first trip to Chuck E. Cheese as a family.

The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh: Won’t You Be My Visitor?

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 7 Comments

I am a huge museum nerd. As a kid,
one of my favorite destinations was the New York State Museum. When I travel, I usually visit multiple museums at a location. So I was very excited to introduce Sprout to his first museum experience. While we had brought him to art museums before, they were much more for our enjoyment than his. Even though we live in the museum capital of the world, they’re all designed for folks much bigger than him. As it turned out, having first real museum experience at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh was just right.

Pittsburgh has never struck me as a tourist destination, but I had to go there for work anyway. As I’m also traveling this week, Chris and Sprout came with me so I wasn’t absent for two weeks in a row. As it turns out, Pittsburgh actually has a wealth of cool, unique museums, all of which are very different in form and function from the Smithsonians.

I’ve been to a number of children’s museums, but Pittsburgh’s was easily one of, if not the best, I’ve ever visited.

One of the things that really set it apart was its focus on integrating art into the play space. For example, it had a whole exhibit called Tough Art, a series of pieces designed for children to touch and interact with. One piece was a metallic moon with stars that played different musical tones if you touched the moon and one of the stars at the same time. At first, it seemed like the same person needed to touch the moon and the stars to get it to work. But much to my delight, we realized that wasn’t quite right – multiple people could make the elements sing, but they had to be touching each other for the harmonic resonance to vibrate through their bodies. Holding hands, Chris, Sprout and I had a blast, working together to reach the furthest star. Another part of the exhibit was a series of white poles with colored spotlights that refracted off them, making your shadow shift between multiple colors as you moved. I don’t think Sprout noticed the colors, but we loved watching the rainbow of light as he ran loops around the poles.

Art was integrated into the regular exhibits as well. The Waterworks floor, which had water tools and toys for kids to experiment with, includes a piece simply called Rain Shower. Even the toddler area had visually sophisticated art as decorations, with stained glass pieces giving the area a fairy-tale feel.

Besides being interactive, the museum’s approach to art had two more unique facets – its invitation to children to think about the art as well as create their own. Many of the pieces had captions, just like in a regular art museum, but at a kid’s literacy level without being over-simplified. In the Makespace, kids can use sophisticated tools they may not have access to otherwise to create objects that meet at the junction of art and science. We didn’t visit that section because Sprout was too little, but I look forward to it when we visit in the future.

The other exemplary aspect of the museum is how it managed to have activities that were appropriate for, appealing to, and respectful of a variety of ages. For example, Sprout’s two favorite exhibits were a giant Lite-Brite board and a machine inspired by the bounce pattern of a Superball. For him, the Lite Brite board was awesome because not only did it involve sticking pegs in and out of holes, but the pegs glowed when you put them in! For me as an adult, it was still fun to arrange the pegs into different space-agey patterns. The Superball demonstration had a series of balls on poles that dropped in a wave when you pulled a lever. Sprout loved pushing the balls in place, pulling the lever (which he figured out from watching the museum guide) and watching the balls fall, bouncing up and down. He actually worked quite hard to push the balls into place – the only reason we helped was because we lacked the patience to wait! As he got older, I could see this exhibit still being interesting, for the way it illustrates the pattern of a wave.

Much of this understanding of and respect for children’s needs stems from the museum’s patron saint – Fred Rogers, who was a major influence in its founding and design. While he’s gone, his spirit very much remains in the museum’s special appreciation of children. Sprout had a wonderful time and was especially engaged by some specific exhibits. While would have liked to stayed longer, I was so glad we were able to introduce him to the joys of museums through the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.

Thankful for All of Our Families

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

We have so much to be thankful for. That’s never been more apparent than this past Thanksgiving, when we had not just one, but two different feasts with our church and biological families.

Usually, we trek home to upstate New York for Thanksgiving. But as it takes us close to 10 hours to get there and we’re going home for Christmas, we had no desire to make that drive twice in a month. Plus, a quirk of bad work scheduling means that I am traveling the first two weeks of December.

Instead, this year our parents came to us. I’m an only child, so it was simple for my mom and dad. For Chris’s parents, it was a bit more complicated – his sister lives in Las Vegas. As they couldn’t be on two coasts simultaneously, we delayed our Thanksgiving until Saturday.

Nonetheless, we carried out some Thanksgiving traditions on Thursday. Chris baked off Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, a treat his family has every holiday. We plopped on the couch for the Macy’s parade, which enthralled Sprout. He grooved to the Broadway numbers, tried to lift his leg like the Rockettes, “toot toot”ed at the Thomas the Train balloon, and loved the Sesame Street float.

With the afternoon free, we joined our church’s Thanksgiving dinner. We have one every year for congregants who aren’t leaving town, along with any family or friends they bring. This year, it was Chris, Sprout and I, my parents, another couple from our church with a small child, my pastor and his family, and one of my pastor’s homeless friends. The table was full of conversation and laughter. One of the more amusing incidents was my pastor’s son describing an imaginary Blue’s Clues parody that involved Blue rabidly attacking the videocamera and Steve using Slippery Soap to take a shower. While it was pretty funny, his dad shut it down before it got even longer and more inappropriate.

After dinner, several of us participated in the nerd-traditional post-meal activity of playing video games, namely an eight-person game of Super Smash Brothers. I couldn’t figure out where my character was half of the time, but it was a lot of fun. While the babies couldn’t play, they kept busy building towers out of Megablocks. Later on, we put them on the piano bench and they played the cutest little duet I’ve ever seen. While it sounded like a modernist sound piece, they were tapping on the keys rather than banging, which was impressive for a couple of toddlers.

That night, we pulled out the board and card games. After a couple games, my dad headed to bed while Chris, my mom, and I stayed up with a bottle of red wine. Although I had earlier insisted that six bottles of wine was too much for the weekend, I was clearly wrong. A couple of glasses each fueled a conversation about drunken escapades, poorly thought-out decisions, and other quirks of adulthood that was so engaging that we completely lost track of our game of 500 Rummy.

My in-laws arrived on Friday night, making the party complete. I’m extraordinarily fortunate to have a great relationship with them. As Chris and I were high-school sweethearts, I basically grew up with them.

Despite all of the company, I was relaxed. While I sometimes get defensive when visitors help with the dishes or clean my house, I accepted the assistance. As the grandparents adored playing with Sprout, I was happy to give them that time. At work, I’ve been sprinting from one project to another, so it was good to physically and mentally rest.

Thanksgiving dinner was similarly lacking in disaster. The menu was fairly traditional – turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, canned cranberry sauce (with ridges, of course), Crescent rolls, green beans, corn, and carrots. As it was the first Thanksgiving we ever hosted, we made some compromises – my family’s sweet potato casserole instead of his apples and yams, his canned cranberry sauce instead of my cranberry jello mold. We made about a million trips to the store and ran the dishwasher about 10 times, but that happens any time Chris takes on a big cooking project. The only thing that didn’t go quite according to plan was that for all of our existing kitchen equipment, we had to buy a turkey baster after the bird already went in the oven.Our Thanksgiving turkey.

We even had time for some family activities. Heading over to the park, we found out that Sprout is very interested in basketball but tragically a little too short to play it yet. Our park has a “funnel ball” game, where you toss a ball up into a big funnel and it falls out of one of three holes. The adults were playing it, although we weren’t very good at actually getting it in the hoop. After watching us, Sprout took his ball, walked up to the pole supporting the funnel, stood up on his tip-toes, and threw it as hard as he could. Which was about three inches. And then he did it again and again. He was convinced that if he just tried hard enough, he would get it in. When we lifted him up to help him out, he was just pissed that he was still too short to get it in the funnel. He finally got so frustrated that we had to move on to a different part of the playground to prevent a full-blown tantrum. I had to admire his can-do spirit though.

The last day, we went to the National Zoo to see their Christmas light display. Needless to say, it was far more successful than our last trip there. While many of the exhibits were closing when we arrived, we saw some animals who are often hiding in the heat. Sprout watched the furry beaver intently as it ambled along and then splashed into the water. As he woofed at the wolf, it sulked by and then cast an intense gaze on him. He also liked the farm animals, especially the huge Holstein cow who had an astoundingly low moo. But his favorite part was the holiday train display, where he just stared at the three levels of trains going around and around and around for a good ten minutes.

I’m so grateful that I could spend the holidays with so many people who are both weird and wonderful.