Getting To Know You

Ultrasound technology is great for practical reasons during pregnancy--to monitor baby’s growth, stay aware of complications, guide care providers--but I think the impractical psychological benefits are important, too. Even when you’re the pregnant one, the whole thing seems a bit unreal sometimes, but there is nothing like seeing your little prawn-shaped progeny on the screen to provide a reality check of the nicest kind. Not that expectant families who do not have access to ultrasound or choose not to use it are less connected to their babies, it’s just that seeing that tiny heart beating in grainy grey-scale changes things somehow. There is also the chance to wrap your head around what style of little person you’re getting before the emotional pandemonium of the delivery room. When I was pregnant with Connor, for the first six months I thought we were having a girl. Not that I was set on a girl, just somehow anticipated one. When the ultrasound revealed a boy, I had to revamp a bit, including finding a name that wasn’t Kelsey. After trying a whole list of boys’ names, we finally stayed with Connor--but it took me quite awhile to readjust. Imagine how that would have played itself out if I hadn’t had a chance to “meet” Connor on the screen. In Suzanne Williams’ Mommy Doesn’t Know My Name, one little girl gets called all sorts of sweet stuff not on her birth certificate. Maybe her mommy just needed more time to get to know her.

http://www.amazon.com/Mommy-Doesnt-Know-My-Name/dp/0395779790

http://www.suzanne-williams.com/books.html

Terror Alert

Although I fight fiercely for my kids and my causes, I’m basically a scaredy cat. Lots of things frighten me--earthquakes, serial killers, E coli, racism--and I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about things that will probably never happen. But one thing creeps me out more than the others: the dark. I am one hundred percent, bona fide, need a nightlight, can’t stand next to a bed while getting into it afraid of the dark. Even though I’m the mom now, whenever the electricity goes out, rather than confidently calling out to the kids that I will come get them (like my mother did and moms are supposed to do), I feel like curling up whimpering somewhere until someone with a flashlight finds me. Did I mention I can’t handle the dark? One particularly traumatic babysitting encounter forever sealed my fear into adulthood. Alone except for two sleeping children in a huge, dark, echoing house and getting a call from nature, I began groping around for the door to the downstairs bathroom. Finding a knob, I opened the door…to come snarling face to screaming in terror face with the German Shepherd family guard dog. It was one of the most profoundly frightening events in my memory, and I still experience the whole thing vividly on occasion. In Mercer Mayer’s There’s Something In My Attic, a brave little girl lassoes a pesky monster to get him out of her hair. I think I would have gone the fetal-position, whimpering route.

http://www.amazon.com/Theres-Something-My-Attic/dp/0140548130

http://www.littlecritter.com/about_mercer_mayer.html

Kids Are People, Too

One of the most important things parents can provide for their children is opportunity. Opportunity for the basics--healthy food, clean water, fresh air--but also the chance to grow, experience, and experiment within safe boundaries and without unnecessary limits. All parents feel the desire to give their children the broadest horizons possible, but what that looks like and how it is achieved differs. For some parents it is Baby Einstein videos and private schools. For some, it is competitive teams and tough coaches. For me, especially as the mother of three daughters, an indispensable facet of “giving my kids everything” is doing my best to make my children aware of strategies for overcoming gender bias. Which is an uphill task at times since some people don’t even believe that gender discrimination still exists, if it ever did. But attending “Take Our Daughters To Work Day” for a total of ten years with some combination of daughters, I got to experience eye-opening statements and behavior that indicate there’s still work to be done in the struggle for equality. We treat our boys and girls differently, we just do. And we have to consciously work at changing that--gets our boys in the kitchen, get our girls under the hood, get everybody changing diapers and taking out trash. In Herman Parish’s Good Driving, Amelia Bedelia, our favorite maid isn’t very good behind the wheel. Maybe if she sat on her dad’s lap as a little girl and learned the basics, things would be different.

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Driving-Amelia-Bedelia-Camelot/dp/038072510X

http://www.authorsillustrators.com/parish/parish.htm

Cute Things In Small Packages

No doubt about it, baby things are cute. Even gross things like pigs--with their scary tusks and snorty snouts--are irresistibly adorable in their miniature form. Piglets at the fair are almost as sweet as the cotton candy and funnel cakes. And baby things make us lose our minds. Many unaware shoppers have been caught off-guard in the middle of pet ownership with a scruffy dog or capricious cat that used to be a precious little puff ball in a box outside WalMart. One of the most cuteness-overload things I’ve ever seen was the koala nursery at the San Diego Zoo. And yes, it was exactly as adorable as it sounds. I was also fortunate enough to visit the Los Angeles Zoo many years ago just in time to welcome their baby gorilla, Caesar. You think of gorillas as hulking beasts with angry brows and savage teeth, but they start out like everything else--helpless infants who sleep a lot and need constant care. We filed past the nursery window gazing at the doll-sized and diapered Caesar and I realized that, whatever he would become, he was just a sweet little baby then. I recently saw a picture of the adult Caesar and he was everything terrifying a grown gorilla has to offer, but all I could think of was that sleepy, thumb-sucking baby. In Helen and Clive Dorman’s Okomi The New Baby, a new member of the gorilla crew gets watched over by his big people. That’s all any baby needs.

http://www.amazon.com/Okomi-New-Baby-Helen-Dorman/dp/B000TV9ITO

http://www.dawnpub.com/our-authorsillustrators/helen-clive-dorman/

Bozophobia

You know what scares kids? Well, a lot of things can give kids a fright--Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Halloween masks--but you know what really freaks kids out? Clowns. It’s ironic that the symbol of bigtop fun is toddlerhood’s worst nightmare, but it is. It does make sense though. Small people don’t know that clowns represent cotton candy, balloon animals and tiny cars filled with mime goodness. All they experience is giant red nose, grotesquely creepy overdrawn mouth, wild hair, baggy clothes, and a distinct invasion of their personal space. No wonder they get so upset. When Keilana was a toddler, her paternal grandmother (who was still trying to find her comfort zone as a grandparent) took the three grandchildren she had then to the circus for a special day. The idea was good in theory, but went a bit awry in practice. Apparently, one clown got too friendly for Keilana’s very strict personal boundaries and she lost her ever-loving mind. Fighting your way out of a full circus tent with a preschooler and two bawling two year-olds is not something even the most-seasoned baby wrangler wants to handle, let alone a nervous grandma. Keilana may have been young, but she was old enough to relate the story of her clown horror to anyone who would listen (and even some who didn’t) for months. It took years to recover. In Michael Bond’s Paddington Bear at the Circus, the little guy has a run-in with a clown. That’s the stuff of nightmares.

http://www.amazon.com/Paddington-Bear-Circus-Michael-Bond/dp/0060282134

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bond

Personality Plus

My daughter had purple hair for awhile. And we’re not talking about a subtle eggplant with highlights designed to catch the sun. Oh, no. I mean Easter egg in overdrive electric lavender. You couldn’t miss her. It sounds a bit odd, I admit, but if any person was meant to have doesn’t-occur-in-nature neon purple hair, it was this girl. She was stunning and unforgettable, then and even now with the color of hair God and genetics gave her. But she still stands out and always has. Part of it is that she is taller than most men she is not related to with arresting blue eyes, but more of it has to do with her actual presence. She seems to bring more to a room than most people, with too much personality for plain, too unique for usual. She leaves the house in get-ups that would get other people laughed off the street, but owns them so completely that it makes the world notice and admire. I have always admired her, too. Well, admiration mixed with a little envy--I’d love to be interesting enough to wear purple hair or fishnets and a cut up bridesmaid’s dress to the Farmer’s Market. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. In Robert Munsch’s Smelly Socks, one little girl with a big personality wants the socks she wears day after day to reflect her authentic self. I’m a crazy socks girl trapped in a plain socks body…but at least I helped Keilana escape the ordinary.

http://www.amazon.com/Smelly-Socks-Robert-Munsch/dp/043964948X

http://robertmunsch.com/

The Magic Touch

Recently, a woman in Australia got the worst news a parent can get: her premature baby just could not survive the birth process and it was time to say goodbye. After having worked on the little guy for twenty minutes in an effort to revive him, the doctors called it hopeless and handed tiny Jamie to his parents. His mother, wanting to spend every precious second she could bonding with this too-soon-gone baby, unwrapped him from his blanket and placed him next to her bare skin. She and her husband began talking to him and telling him all the things they would never have another chance to say when he began making gasping noises. The doctors insisted it was a reflex action not indicative of life, but mothers don’t spend the better part of a year literally physical connected to someone not to get a little extra insight from the powers that be. As Jamie began to show more life, his mother gave him a drop of breast milk from her finger to see what would happen--a purely instinctive action not prompted by any training, just a desperately hopeful mom flying blind. And that miracle baby opened his eyes to get a first look at the mommy who wouldn’t give up on him, even in the face of scientific certainty. In Karen Kingsbury’s Let Me Hold You Longer, a mother reflects back on the rapidly waning childhood of her little boy. For Jamie’s mom, the best is yet to come.

P.S. Check out the story from the link below...but have tissue handy.

http://www.amazon.com/Let-Me-Hold-You-Longer/dp/1414300557

http://www.karenkingsbury.com/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1306283/Miracle-premature-baby-declared-dead-doctors-revived-mothers-touch.html