Separation Anxiety

When I was growing up, I knew two things for sure: I would be a mom and I wanted to have a career, too. To practice for all the small people, I started babysitting professionally when I was nine, learning crowd control, patience, and other kid-specific tricks I still use to this day. I always thought I would have a lot of kids--like ten or twelve--until I got one child…and realized that is a lot of kids. I never knew another human being could captivate your heart and soul so completely until I brought my Keilana into the world and developed a mother instinct that wouldn’t quit. Ever. While I was waiting for Keilana to show up, I just assumed I would spend my maternity leave getting to know her and recovering, and then she would go to childcare and I would go to work and everything would be modern and peachy. Then the day came when I woke up early, dressed in my work clothes, packed the diaper bag, got my baby ready to go out the door…and burst into tears. Put my makeup back on, put my baby in the carseat, drove to the babysitter…and burst into tears. Forgot about the makeup, turned my sweet girl over to people I trusted completely, drove to work…and burst into tears. It pretty much went on like that all day. In Sarah Albee’s Elmo’s First Babysitter, Elmo gets used to being away from his parents. I wonder how they handled it.

http://www.amazon.com/Elmos-First-Babysitter-Jellybean-Books/dp/0375811494

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Sarah_Albee

Travel Plans

I read an article recently where a columnist took the Eat, Pray, Love, travel-and-find-yourself concept to a new level. It seems her editors thought the way to rope in the fans of that book and its subsequent film was to send a willowy, blonde writer (not unlike Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the travelogue sensation) to a foreign locale (not dissimilar to, say, India or Italy) for some self-discovery. Sounds pretty familiar so far, but the twist in this case was that she wouldn’t know where she was going and wouldn’t have access to any travel guides or professional advice--she had to plunk down in the middle of some place chosen at random, rely on friendly locals for help and her own wits for navigation, and write about her experience at the end of her month in limbo. It’s certainly an intriguing proposition, but also scary as all get out in my opinion. I suppose many people would look at her interlude as an adventure--taking off into the unknown and carpe dieming the heck out of life. They would be right, of course, but I must be a bit too much of a homebody (or, more likely, control freak) to imagine undertaking such an excursion without having indexed and cross-referenced my own personal copy of the Lonely Planet Guide for the area. But not everyone is like me. In Susan Rich Brooke’s Elmo’s Colorful Adventure, Elmo takes off for far-flung parts on the spur of the moment. He sure is brave.

http://www.amazon.com/Elmos-Colorful-Adventure-Other-Reader/dp/1412701627

http://storyreaderbooks.com/

It's Complicated

You’d think being a teacher by profession would make you a natural for teaching your own kids. While it’s true those called to teach have a certain approach to the world inevitably shared with the children they’ve brought into a family, the complicated nature of formal teaching (and the complicated nature of parent-child relationships) can challenge even the most skilled educator when it comes to their own small people. Much like any part of parenting, each parent has to choose a method that works for them. Sometimes you can teach any kid anything--except your own kid. I tried to work in Keilana’s classroom from preschool all the way through sixth grade, and we never could quite make it work. There was something about my presence in her learning domain that just brought out the most frustrating aspects of our relationship. Connor, on the other hand, would completely revert to earlier days and spend the whole time being my “baby” instead of branching out and participating. Addison, my strict little fraulein, had/has such a need for control, that having another person telling her what to do during the learning process was one person too many. So, despite having taught over three thousand other peoples’ children, the first three of mine have been unimpressed with my academic credentials. And now there’s Scarlett. We’ve been working together a lot lately and I think it’s going pretty well. In Susan Hood’s The Schoolhouse, Elmo and the Sesame Street crew go to school…without their mommies.

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Sesame_Street_School

http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=148275

Come And Play

I wish some imaginary places really existed. I’d like to sip a cool drink under a parasol at pre-war Tara. I’d like to get my eyes dyed to match my gown in Emerald City. I’d like to hood slide in ’70s Hazzard County. And I’d really like to be daring in my smartly tailored Federation uniform on the bridge of the Enterprise. But perhaps the one make-believe place I’ve wished I could visit most is that diversity-embracing metropolitan melting pot Sesame Street. I wish I could buy candy at Hooper’s Store and that Mr. Hooper was still there to sell it to me. I wish Maria and Luis and Gabi were my brownstone neighbors. I wish I could hang out on the stoop on bad days and out-grouch Oscar. I wish Scarlett could play fairies with Abby and basketball with Miles. I want Snuffy’s eyelash secrets, Ernie’s optimistic outlook, and Guy Smiley’s enthusiasm. I want to live in a neighborhood where numbers and letters and learning are important. Elmo lives in a place like that and sometimes I get jealous. He’s relatively new to the street, showing up in the ’80s almost two decades after Big Bird first napped in his giant nest, but has been thoroughly embraced by the house that Henson built. In Shana Corey’s Where Is Elmo’s Blanket?, the little red monster spends a day visiting his friends until he and blanket are reunited. Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Elmos-Blanket-Nifty-Lift/dp/0375801383

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/media.jsp?id=304

The Potty Dance

Potty training is the bane of toddler parenting. Much like the end of pregnancy has to be really unpleasant to make labor even vaguely worth considering, two year-old diapers become gross and tedious enough to make the often frustrating and seemingly endless experience of potty training worthwhile. It is the very definition of not fun. Even if you are lucky enough to get a kid who will co-operate fairly well, everybody else is tripping over each other to criticize, critique, expound and advise. Not to judge, naturally. Always with best intentions, of course. But, still…Yeah, right! Potty training is one of those times when other people make it clear on a regular basis that they feel you are doing a poor job in comparison to the paragon of effectiveness they were and their method is. No matter when you start training, their well-adjusted child was ready earlier. Any problems you encounter are a mystery and completely foreign to them. Regression and set-backs were never an issue for their self-assured and confident pee-pee prodigy. And accidents were unheard of. In short, if you and yours don’t sail smoothly through the toilet training process, it is because of some personal deficit or character flaw and never because learning to use the potty is just a complicated and emotionally taxing suck-a-thon. Maybe Kelli Kaufmann could playfully write the whimsical sound-story Potty Time With Elmo because she’s never had kids. Or maybe she just went a little batty during toilet training. It could happen.

http://www.amazon.com/Potty-Time-Elmo-Liittle-Sound/dp/141273486X

http://www.amazon.com/Interactive-Play-Sound-Blues-Room/dp/1412733294

In Living Color

Not all the books we’ve chosen for this project are profound works of literature at first glance. Many of them are pretty standard toddler fare dealing with the basics of letters, numbers, shapes and, most often, colors. Color is one of those things that, once you learn it, can be easy to take for granted. As we read Elmo’s First Book of Colors today, I went into color-noting mode for the first time in forever. I started hearing it in language more frequently than I remember. People are tickled pink and white-hot angry. You know a lot about the people around you (or think you do) just from hearing whether they identify with red state or blue state ideology. And since environmental issues are center-stage and Earth Day is so near, everyone and everything is going green. Clothes that are happy colors can lift our spirits and the colors we wear can define us. New Yorkers stereotypically wear black. Fast women wear red. Girls wear pink. Boys wear blue. And brown wants to know what it can do for you. Hair color can literally change our personalities. Think of the brunette Norma Jean versus the blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe. I’ve been every hair color on the spectrum in the last ten years from Wonder Woman black to Dangerous Liaisons blonde to an unfortunate and temporary eggplant. I hadn’t thought about the effect of color in my life for a long time before Elmo gave me a nudge. Thanks, Little Monster!

http://www.amazon.com/Elmos-First-Book-of-Colors/dp/B001GA9J32

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Elmo%27s_First_Book_of_Colors

Puppy Love

Scarlett has only lived in an apartment. Her backyard is a tiny cement patio bordered with about five feet of scrubby grass. There’s no room, or even allowance, for most pets, especially dogs. Although both Nick and I had dogs growing up, since we aren’t planning on moving (or being able to afford moving) for quite some time, it seemed Scarlett would not experience all that comes with sharing space with man’s best friend. And then, when Scarlett was a year old, her Grandpa Dan brought home a little blonde bit of scruff and needle-sharp puppy teeth named Abbey. Scarlett was a baby who didn’t realize how hard you can squeeze a puppy. Abbey was a baby who didn’t realize how little force it takes to knock down a toddler. Somehow it worked. They have a very interesting relationship of antagonism and attachment that seems more sibling than owner and pet. Scarlett insists on putting Abbey on the leash and “walking” (which sometimes resembles dragging) her, even in the house. Abbey gets jealous of the attention Oba and Grandpa pay to Scarlett, and steals binkies every chance she gets. They are lucky enough to play and fight and grow together while we are lucky enough to watch. In Susan Hood’s The Furry Arms Hotel, Elmo and Baby Natasha play hide-and-seek with a little black puppy who may or may not be in any one of the many environmentally-diverse rooms. Only Natasha finds him, ‘cause babies are meant for each other.





http://www.jacketflap.com/persondetail.asp?person=148275

http://www.amazon.com/Sesame-Street-Susan-Hood/dp/B0006RW6YU

Shhhhh! Baby Sleeping....

In How To Eat Fried Worms the main character, who has bet he will consume a worm every day for a month to get the money for a much coveted mini-bike, almost gets tricked into not making his midnight deadline because he is out on the town having fun. He remembers in time, wakes the neighborhood to witness, swallows a worm whole and barely squeaks in before the stroke of twelve. It was like that here today, but no one ate anything dug up from the yard. Scarlett’s grandma, Oba, came to take us to dinner and a dance performance in another town--both of which were very enjoyable, but left us with one sleepy baby on the return trip. I started to panic and was seriously contemplating either keeping her awake until we got home or pulling a “fried worm” and rousing her with the express purpose of reading her a book before putting her in bed so I could write about it. Have I lost my mind?! I am happy to report (and you are no doubt relieved to hear) that I did neither. I have chosen to review a book Oba (mostly) read to Scarlett earlier in the day while we were trying to bring her down from her televised Elmo fix. We didn’t stray very far though, since Scarlett got to hear about “please” and “thank you” and “nice to meet you” in Elmo’s Good Manners Game by Catherine Samuel. After yesterday’s disappointment, it seemed only fair.

http://www.jacquesdance.com/articles.html

http://www.amazon.com/Elmos-Good-Manners-Sesame-Street/dp/0375804137

Bait and Switch!

You know how sometimes you make a choice thinking it’s a good one and then, halfway through, you can’t remember why you ever thought it was a good idea? That happens to toddlers, too. Scarlett loves Elmo, but not in a healthy, public-television-is-good-for-my-developing-brain kinda way. No, you could more accurately call Scarlett’s relationship with the scruffy red muppet say-his-name-before-I-open-my-eyes-in-the-morning obsession. Scarlett wants all Elmo, all the time in multi-media format--she watches him On Demand thumbing through an Elmo’s Good Manners board book while singing along with him on Sesame Street.org as she waits for the day’s new episode to start on PBS. I’m telling you: obsessed. So, when given a choice of books to read for the night, she went, like a guided missile, for the Little Golden Book I Think That It Is Wonderful and Other Poems From Sesame Street, thinking, naturally, that Elmo would make an appearance. Sadly, the book was published a year before her dad was even born in about 1 B.E. (Before Elmo), meaning that, even though she asked for him multiple times per (rather boring) poetry-covered page, there was no Elmo to be had. This did not sit well, and neither did she. Before I could even finish reading the one about being new on the street, Elmo’s erstwhile love was signing and saying, “done.” I’m going to count it because I had the best intentions, but she may think twice the next time she gets lured by the siren song of Sesame Street.

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/I_Think_That_It_Is_Wonderful_%28book%29