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

October 21, 2014 / 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.

October 15, 2014 / 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

October 9, 2014 / 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.

Figment the Magic Sleep Dragon

October 7, 2014 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Peter Pan may ask us to believe in fairies, but I’m putting all my bets on Figment, Epcot’s purple symbol of imagination. Because he truly can do magic. And not the cutesy, fluffy stuff – real magic, with real impact in the world. Because Figment made it possible for my kid to sleep.

As I’ve mentioned previously, Sprout was not a good sleeper. Far from the worst, but past his first birthday, he was still fighting bedtime with all his might and waking up multiple times in the middle of the night. At 10 months, he could fall asleep on his own when we left the room, but then that all went to hell when I went on a trip for work. At 14 months, sleeping through the night was still an occassion to be celebrated.

These habits started to worsen as we approached our Disney trip. While he had taken to sleeping on his stomach, he also needed me in the middle of the night to hold him. With his increasing height, these two requirements were often in conflict, resulting in random nights when it would take more than two hours to get him back to sleep. Out of desperation, I tried pulling him in bed with us, but he just took that as an opportunity to climb on Chris’s head. I was getting increasingly desperate, especially after he acted like a rabid raccoon and we had to resort to cry-it-out at my grandmother’s house.

When we returned from vacation, we had to address the issue for the sake of everyone’s mental health. I restarted sleep training, instituting a version of the Sleep Lady’s solution. While I think she seriously over-promises on results, the basic technique makes some level of sense. Every few nights, I moved further away from his crib, from the armchair to the doorway to the hallway before finally just leaving the room. I would comfort him every few minutes, but not allow him to fall asleep in my arms.

But unlike the first time I did this technique in the spring, he was still upset when I left the room. I’d be back in there comforting him every three to five minutes over and over again. We had a similar situation in the middle of the night. That was particularly rough because it was so tempting to let him fall asleep in my arms. While I could have made those intervals longer, I wanted to minimize the pain of transition as much as possible for both him and me.

This is when Figment worked his magic. I assumed a lovey was a lost cause, as we had tried a couple and he just ignored them. The Sleep Turtle had been helpful, but that helped calm him down rather than comfort him. But I noticed Figment was the first stuffed animal Sprout really showed affection towards. He hugged and even carried him around, a hilarious sight considering that Figment is about half Sprout’s height. Perhaps if he loved Figment during the day, he would help him go to sleep. The worst that could happen is that he’d ignore the toy and I still wouldn’t be getting any sleep.

Needless to say, my random hunch was far more right than I ever would have expected. The first night I gave Sprout Figment, he hugged him and closed his eyes. Just like that. There was no standing up and yelling, no angry protest, just peace. I might have gone in once to comfort him, but it was minor compared to what it had been.

Since then, Sprout has been both going to bed easily and sleeping through the night consistently. Even when he’s totally wound, he immediately relaxes when he hugs that dragon. He still wakes up once in a while if there’s a specific reason, like his leg being sore after he got his vaccinations. But those are rare and his schedule returns to usual once they are over.

Of course, this isn’t perfect. Since I started writing this blog post yesterday, he had a lot of trouble getting to sleep the last two nights. But even this is different – he was attempting to get to sleep and just wasn’t been able to. Before, he’d start wailing before I left the room; now he’ll be quiet for about five minutes and then complain once he realizes he’s having problems. The last few nights, we think it’s been teething, as he passed out almost as soon as I gave him Ora-gel.

While I can’t completely explain Figment’s magic, I have a couple of guesses. I think there’s a certain amount of newness that Sprout’s other stuffed animals don’t have. He’s seen most of those since he was born, so they became background furniture. In contrast, we got Figment just around the age where he was starting to hug stuffed animals. There’s also his size. Because we were worried about suffocation, our previous lovies were relatively small. In contrast, Figment is big enough that Sprout can wrap his really arms around him. Lastly, there’s just something in the power of imagination. I knew if I imagined hard enough, he would someday sleep. I just didn’t know I needed a mascot to do it!

Now, I’m in the recovery stage. I’m still waking up in the middle of the night even though there isn’t any reason to do so. It’s like someone who had a fire alarm go off every single night for a year. While you aren’t exactly afraid, you’re so used to being hyper-aware that it just becomes second-nature. My body is still recovering as well. The first few nights I got a lot of sleep, I was staggeringly tired. The adrenaline of the first year was wearing off and I had nothing to run on anymore. I’ve finally started catching up in the last week, allowing me to cut down from two cups to one cup a tea a day.

My little purple dragon friend, thank you for the sleep that you have returned to my life.

Old-School Childhood: Cabin John Regional Park

October 3, 2014 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 9 Comments

Old School Childhood_ Cabin John Regional Park

I’m a pretty radical progressive in a lot of ways, but I have serious nostalgia for a lot of kids’ activities. I believe children should spend lots of time exploring and that playground equipment is meant to be used “creatively.” I’m also a fan of kitschy stuff from the 1950s and 60s. So it warmed my heart to visit Cabin John Park last weekend with Chris, Sprout and my in-laws.

Cabin John Park is old and shows it. While the surrounding area is one of the richest regions in the country, you wouldn’t know it from the park. It’s neither shiny or trendy. Which is not to say that it’s dilapidated. Rather, it feels worn and comfortable, like a well-used armchair.

Continue reading →

Family Biking O’Rama

October 1, 2014 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

As I’ve found out through my Kidical Mass rides, family biking is probably the toughest nut to crack when it comes to encouraging cycling for transportation. All of the usual barriers – being and feeling safe, having enough time to cycle, carrying needed gear – are exaggerated to the nth degree. Then there’s the sheer logistics of carrying kids on a bike, as well as the physical strength needed to drag that extra weight. So I was thrilled that the Washington Area Bicyclists’ Association, as part of their Women and Bikes initiative and promotion of Kidical Mass, held a Family Biking Workshop last weekend. Besides picking up some tips for my own use, I’d like to run a similar workshop for Kidical Mass Rockville in the future.

I was a little surprised when I showed up 10 minutes late and I was the first one there, but we ended up having a small crowd. Before the workshop, I had the chance to meet Megan, my counterpart for the DC Kidical Mass rides. She’s been doing both family riding and Kidical Mass rides much longer than I have, so I was eager to hear her insights. The President of WABA’s board also attended, who I’m sure is quite familiar with biking in general. But judging from the snoozing infant strapped to him in a baby carrier, family biking appeared to be quite new.

In her presentation, Megan ran through the many issues unique to family biking, including equipment, weather, napping and snacking. Both I and the general audience found the equipment section the most helpful. Although we have a trailer, I haven’t been the most satisfied with it. Because he can’t see anything, Sprout doesn’t like it, which eliminates most of the benefits of bringing him on recreational rides. It’s also very isolating for him – he can’t really hear me and once he starts talking, I won’t be able to hear him either. If we have a second kid, we’ll run out of space in the trailer and have to deal with two squirmy kids rather than one.

Megan from Kidical Mass D.C. shows off her Yuba cargo bike, with two kids seats, "monkey bars," panniers, and a rain cover.

Megan’s Yuba set-up, complete with rain cover and monkey bars

In contrast, Megan’s set-up appeared to solve my safety issues with bike seats while allowing her kids to enjoy the scenery. It also seemed more convenient than the trailer, which setting up is a multi-step process. She has a Yuba cargo bike fitted out with kid-friendly accessories. She has a bench-style seat for the older kid and a traditional bike seat for the younger one behind it. She had installed “monkey bars,” aluminum railings that encircle the back seat area. Along with providing a place for the older kid to hold on to, they also protect the kids from hitting the ground if the bike tips over. She also provided a perfect solution for my other issue with cargo bikes – that they don’t fit in our shed. Because she lives in an apartment, she stores her bike outside. To protect it from both the weather and prying eyes, she covers it with a motorcycle cover. It was a solution that was absurdly simple, but I would have never considered.

It will still be a couple of years before we switch out the trailer for a cargo bike, but the discussion definitely sparked my imagination. Especially because she said they’ve actually come out with better options since she bought hers, like the Xtracycle Edgerunner, which further minimizes the center-of-gravity issues.

Much of the equipment discussion centered around the options for electric-assist, which interested me a lot less. Because Chris is the main caretaker and not an avid cyclist, I suspect we’re never going to bike for transportation with Sprout enough to make it worth it. Similarly, I think that’s too much of a leap for most suburban families to even mention if I was to do a workshop in Rockville.

Other sections brought up a few different points I had never considered. On a bike, not only do you need to deal with the mess factor for snacking, but also the possibility of the snack gumming up your gears and wheels. Megan recommended Graham crackers as a healthy and safe option. We also discussed what age kids can start riding their own bikes. She recommended kids start on a balance bike between two and three years old. As I was planning on getting Sprout a balance bike for his next birthday, I think that will work out perfectly.

It’s easy to feel unusual for bringing little kids on bikes, even in the cycling advocacy community. So it was great to talk in person to other people sharing some of the same challenges. This was a bit of a test case, so I think the next time around we can attract even more participants. The D.C. area actually has the greatest density of Kidical Mass rides in the country, which in and of itself is quite an accomplishment.

It will take a lot of work to make sure the next generation has access to safe, useful bicycling infrastructure and is educated on how to use it. But engaging them and their parents while they are young is a good start.

Hanging Out with My Favorite Little Guy

September 26, 2014 / 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.

Guest Post at Rants from Mommyland

September 25, 2014 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

I’m super excited today because I have a guest blog over at Rants from Mommyland, one of my absolute favorite blogs of all time. Seriously, I have a total blogger crush on Lydia. I read the blog’s entire archives while I was nursing Sprout and it helped keep me sane in the dark hours in the middle of the night. She has a fantastic series called “Domestic Enemies of The…” highlighting the challenges facing mothers in all sorts of situations. I’m honored to be the latest in that series with Domestic Enemies of the Working Wife of the Stay-at-Home Dad.

Here’s the first paragraph:
I’m proud to be married to a stay-at-home dad. But it definitely comes with its pitfalls. While I’m so glad that I get to go to my job every day while my husband enjoys taking care of the baby and cooking, we’ve faced our share of Domestic Enemies.

Read the rest over at Rants from Mommyland!

Art in the Ordinary Moments

September 22, 2014 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

Art is good for kids and kids are good for art. While art usually hasn’t treated kids with a lot of respect, Mary Cassatt is one of the few artists who portrayed children in her art in an less-restricted manner. So when I saw a poster about an exhibit of her art at the National Gallery, I was eager to go.

What I like the most about Cassatt is that she painted people as they are, not how she wanted them to be. Historically, art has portrayed children as small adults, stuffing them in tiny formal clothes in stiff positions with blank or very serious expressions. (In some medieval art, baby Jesus is outright creepy.) Many of them look like zombie children or possessed dolls. In fact, a critic contemporary to Cassatt said that most artists of the time put mothers and children in “stupid and pretentious poses.”

In contrast, Cassatt – like many of the Impressionists – was interested in painting “real people.” Cassatt’s paintings often capture children’s lack of decorum. In what’s probably her most famous painting, Little Girl on a Blue Armchair, a young girl is dressed in her Sunday best and absolutely sprawled out on the living room furniture. With her dog perched on a nearby chair, she looks out at the viewer with a relaxed but vaguely bored look: “What? I’m comfortable.” From her pose to her expression, she’s the opposite of a proper Victorian lady, but so much like the little girls we know in real life.

Another famous painting, Girl Arranging Her Hair, shows a teenager in her dressing gown, fussing with her long hair. What I found particularly interesting about this one is that Cassatt doesn’t paint her as conventionally attractive. In fact, she’s a little homely. But Cassatt finds beauty in the ordinariness of her face and the task at hand.

The exhibit also displayed a number of her lesser-known pieces, particularly a set of prints done in a Japanese woodcut style. My favorite of these was Maternal Embrace, which shows a woman hugging an older infant to her chest. The baby is naked, as if he or she has just come out of the bath. The mother has her arms tightly wrapped around the child, her eyes closed and head resting against the child’s cheek. It captures a moment of deep intimacy, of what I imagine to be a mother contemplating how much she loves and cherishes her child. The baby is big enough to hug tightly but small enough to be vulnerable – perhaps around 4 to 6 months. The print resonated with me, because that was a time I particularly enjoyed with Sprout. He was smiling often and giving real emotional feedback. It captures a moment that truly reflects my lived experience, in a way that art rarely does for me.

Cassatt’s empathy for children was even reflected in her art supplies; the museum had a set of her pastels on display. When she had moved on to other mediums, Cassatt gave them to one of her friend’s daughters. The accompanying plaque quotes the recipient as saying that as a little girl, she had no idea what they were worth, so she just used them to create her own art. I suspect that was exactly what Cassatt intended with the gift.

Seeing these images of children sparked my thoughts about how we portray children today. Children are portrayed more now than in any period of time, between digital cameras, smartphones, Facebook and Instagram. While the mere act of photographing our kids may inspire them to ham it up and be less genuine, I do think that most photos try to depict children’s lived lives, just as Cassatt did. Of course, they usually show our kids’ best side and not all of the whining, but they aren’t trying to turn our kids into people they aren’t.

Instead, I think sometimes where we – and I definitely include myself here – go wrong is how we interpret other people’s photos. It’s so easy to look at other people’s photo sets and forget about the 10 photos they didn’t post where their kid wouldn’t sit still or was hitting their sibling or was complaining about goodness knows what. It’s easy to forget that these are just snapshots into people’s lives and even messy places can look beautiful with the right point of view. We long to have our lives look like other people’s, forgetting that we have our own moments of honest beauty, even if we didn’t have the camera ready at that moment. Or we get mad at other people’s lives being “perfect,” even if they never claimed such a thing. We try to compare our families to fictional people that exist only on a screen. It’s like being mad at the Pinterest moms that do everything – we don’t know the whole story and it isn’t fair to either of us. Instead, we need to extend grace to ourselves and each other, finding art in the ordinary.

Art is just one way to express beauty. When we portray children, we should make it as true to them as possible, but also remember we’ve only captured just one moment of many.

We'll Eat You Up – We Love You So

The Adventures of a Mom Just Trying to Make a Difference