Comp Lit 101, Preschool Style

Today as we sat down to read Gabriel's rest time book, Swimmy, by Leo Lionni, he looked up at me and said, "Mommy, I think when Swimmy meets the big bad salmon fish he is brave just like St. George is brave!" We had read swimmy a couple times, but we just read our book on St. George and the Dragon for the first time today. Guess he got the idea. Not bad for almost 3 and a half, I thought, anyway!

(We've been talking about virtues and good habits, and I was wondering if it was really worth it at this stage of the game, but I think if he can identify bravery in literary form, he can understand at least in a rudimentary way what we've been talking about for "G" week this week--"gratitude" both to others and to God, mostly by working on saying thank you.)

Deciphering Gabriel

Intense, physical, squirmy, imaginative, verbal, sweet, boyish, and loud: my three-year-old son is all these and more. He is my first baby-turned-child, the first little person I am accompanying on the complicated journey of figuring out how to dwell in the world. Gabriel barrels through each stage of growth like a snowplow, strewing in jumbled heaps everything I thought I knew about both him and myself. When he was just over a year old... (Read the rest here!)

Lest I think my efforts are in vain...

Today as Gabriel, Peter and I were riding in the car to go pick up our veggies and milk from the co-op we participate in, we were listening to the classical music station on the radio. A Mozart piece came on– don’t ask me the name, because I don’t really focus on these things(!)– and I waited for a reaction from Gabriel. Suddenly from the back of the car I hear:

“Mommy! Is that your phone? Is your phone ringing?”
“No, Gabriel. That’s the radio.”
“But, no, Mommy, I hear your phone!”
“Actually, what you hear is the melody my phone plays when it rings. Mozart wrote that melody a long time ago, and now someone is playing it on the piano.”
“Is it Daddy?” [Daddy is our home’s resident pianist and musician extraordinaire...]
“No, it is a different man, or maybe even a woman.”
“Hey...Mozart! That’s like the book we read! Is this the melody he found? Is this Mozart’s melody?!”

At least ten months ago we read a book from the library called Mozart Finds A Melody. Gabriel would have been not quite 2 ½ years old. It was a rather whimsical rhyming picture book about Mozart and his pet bird, and his attempt to find a melody for his next composition. I had just grabbed it off the shelf, seeing that it looked kind of like a “living book” and hoping he might connect it to Daddy’s piano playing. It seemed way over his head at the time, but we read it a couple times and then returned it, not to mention it again. But it was there, swirling around in Gabriel’s little thoughts, and it reemerged...today!

Episodes like this make me increasingly more committed to filling my children’s hearts and minds with excellence and beauty, and more averse to fluffy cartoon characters or books featuring characters with bad attitudes, slapstick violence, or potty humor. You’d think the library would know better than to stock such stuff, but I find that 75% of the time when Gabriel randomly finds a book off the shelves, it features the above-mentioned attributes. Books can be fun without all that... Cynthia Rylant’s books are great examples. (I’ll talk more about them in an upcoming post.)

Finding living books that feed Gabriel’s mind and heart takes extra effort–in our case, I check trusted booklists, go to the library website, request the books online, and wait until they come in. Then our trip to the library is much simpler... I have a huge stack of genuinely good books waiting for me (although I always flip through them now before reading them) and we can make a short visit to the children’s section for one or two spontaneous finds. Much easier than browsing shelves with two little ones in tow!

Gabriel's First Poem, for Mommy

I love you like the sun loves setting on the horizon

I love you like the river loves flowing down the mountain
I love you like the plug loves the drain

I love you like apple pie loves icing

I love you like rain loves splashing

I love you like the sun loves the moon

I love you like hugs love kisses.

(Narrated to Mommy at age 3 years, 3 mos, while splashing in the tub with little brother Peter, in these words precisely. A spontaneous and original response--albeit in the style of a book we have called "I Love You, Good-Night"-- to a few simple words from me: "I love being a mommy to you, little boys." Gratitude bringing forth beauty. Material for later blog post indeed!)

All Hallow's Eve Adventures

Gabriel Francis is... St. Francis!

At 8:30pm tonight, as our trick-or-treating guests were heading back home, I offered them some candy for the road. Gabriel, ever on the lookout for treats, took the opportunity to help himself to yet another piece. "I'll just take this," he said, thoughtfully, "as an...appetizer."

Peter's first pumpkin carving. He was gleefully in the middle of the action all day today.

Happy Confusion

This afternoon we gathered with some good friends to celebrate a birthday. Two beautifully pregnant women were part of said gathering. Later in the evening, I noticed Gabriel patting his little round stomach and looking with satisfaction into the mirror.

I didn't really make much of it until prayer time, when we were thanking God for things that made us happy. Gabriel's contribution: "I'm happy that I'm going to have Petey's baby!"

Certainly he's got quite a bit left to figure out, given that his statement probably means he thinks his 8 mos old brother Peter is "his baby" and another baby appearing in our family who would be younger than Peter would "belong to" Peter, but we're on the right track if babies in the womb make him happy, right? :)

Man time

I caught father and son working on the car with some help from a friendly visitor--our neighbor's father from West Virginia. Gabriel was asking "what is this?" and Mr. Butch (yes, that was his name) was telling him all about it.

"Mommy, I want to pray by myself"

...and with those words Gabriel proceeded to lead a decade of the Rosary during our little Mommy-and-me morning prayer time! It wasn't perfect, but he got the idea. And totally not something I suggested. Never would have thought he'd have the attention span or interest in it yet. Praise God! So sweet.

Peter's great E.C. adventure

During my first pregnancy, I joked, I laughed, and I made fun. I had heard some talk about mothers and fathers who were so vigilant about their baby's elimination patterns that they would dangle them bare-bottomed over a potty when baby needed to relieve himself, rather than using a diaper. "Elimination communication" or E.C. it was called, and it just sounded so outlandish I couldn't even contemplate it. But then I think I inadvertently ended up doing it with Gabriel. He was 8 mos old, he was an extremely regular diaper-filler, and I decided I was tired of cleaning poopy cloth diapers. So we sat happily on his little potty chair looking at books and toys. Somewhere along the way I had glanced at a website about E.C., so whenever I sat him on the potty I also made the ASL motion for "toilet" and gave him a cue sound (a little grunt, to mimic what he usually did while going #2), hoping that someday he would associate the urge to relieve himself with that sound & sign and be able to tell me before he went. By the time he was about a year old I'm pretty sure he was running to me whenever he needed to go #2, although he never really did the sign. I could just tell by the look on his face. I don't think I cleaned a poopy diaper after about the time he was a 16 months old, although he could have been a bit older. I put him in thick training pants just before he was 2, and he seemed fine with us just going periodically to the bathroom so they didn't get wet. He is 2.5 now, and in the last couple months he's gotten pretty independent about going on his own, both #1 and #2.


With Gabriel I hadn't really read anything about toilet training...we just sort of did what seemed fun and natural and it wasn't until friends talked about it that I realized that normally one doesn't start doing this sort of thing until much later, when a child seems "ready". I am quite glad I didn't wait until later, because Gabriel has developed into the strong-personality type A toddler that would probably still be insisting on wearing diapers because that's what he is used to.

So now the big experiment is to see if the process that we went through with Gabriel will work for Peter, or what we did wasn't really that important and Gabriel just had a quirky love of using the potty at an early age. For now, I prop 5 mos old Peter on the potty and sit with him after his "wake up nurse" in the morning and after naps. We've saved a couple diapers so far, and he seems to like sitting on the potty because it actually helps him balance to play with his toys and laugh at himself in the wall mirror, instead of rolling forward onto the floor, which is what happens if I just sit him on the floor on his own. I've also been feeling a little bit disconnected from him because of all the focusing I've been doing on books and activities with Gabriel, and the potty time has provided the perfect "special time" for little Peter.

I'm sure everyone is as excited as I am about my children's "elimination story" (ha ha) so I will provide updates and anecdotes as appropriate, and field questions should they arise. :)

From Car Talk to the Trinity

(Spoken as we are driving home from dinner at Grandma's...)

Gabriel: "Mommy, what was that clicking noise?"

Me: "I just locked the car doors."

Gabriel: "Why did you just lock the car doors?"

Me: "To keep us safe."

G: "Why do you keep me safe?"

Me: "Because I love you."

G: "Why do you love me?"

Me: "Because you're my son."

G: "Why am I your son?" (Well, he couldn't quite figure out the grammar of this one but I understood what he meant when he said "why are you my son?")

Me: "Because Mommy and Daddy love each other."

G: "Why do you love each other?"

Me: "Because God made us to be like Him."

G: "Why did he make us to be like him?"

Me: "Because he wants us to share his life forever."

G: "Why?"

Me: "Because that is God's nature."

G: "Why is that God's nature?"

Me: "It just is."

G: "why is it just is?"

Me: "... because it just is."

G: "Oh. Mommy, is this the Beltway?"

Happy Birthday, Little Man!

Our just-turned-two-year-old insists that he is a "man" and not a boy, and although Michael has repeatedly emphasized to him that he is not a man and that he will tell him when he is a man, Gabriel continues to call himself by that title. Although I understand and respect the important coming-of-age implications the title implies, I was quite tempted to write “I’m the birthday man” on his birthday crown. True to form, whenever anyone exclaimed “you’re the birthday boy!!” last night Gabriel would just look at them and say “Man. You’re the birthday man.”

Although he’s got quite a ways to go before he can legitimately claim that title, I have to admit there are so many moments when I feel like he’s on to something with it, and I can’t help but smile at them. From the way he paces purposefully while talking on the telephone to someone, to the way that he animatedly discusses some of his favorite activities–grilling and lawn mowing-- with us on our evening walks around the neighborhood, he does seem like a little man.

Of course, there are many occasions when I know he’s not a little man, and still quite a small boy who needs lots of love and patience from his mommy. With the two-year-old days upon us (seems like they’ve been here for a while, actually) there have been emotional meltdowns about who will remove his shoes and when and where it will be done, about teeth brushing, outside time, and struggles with naptime that seem never-ending. But I know that this too shall pass, considering it seems like it was just yesterday that he came from the hospital and I was learning how to wash diapers and cook dinner while doing the little bounce-the-baby-to-sleep-in-the-sling dance at the same time.

My little man, how much you’ve taught me in these two years! Here’s to many more years of mutual education. :)

Along the road of motherhood

The warm weather and blue sunny skies seem like they’re here to stay, the flowers on the trees have been replaced by green leaves, but the wind is still a bit cool–it’s May, which means graduation season! We’ve been to three graduations in the past three weeks: my classmates’ from the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and family, my sister’s at Mason, and Michael’s sister at UVA. (Many congratulations are in order!) Other “May milestones” that have been added to the mix are my first “baby-out-of-the-womb” Mother’s Day as well as Gabriel’s 9 month birthday on May 17. All these piled together have inspired me to reflect a bit on the contrasts between my academic life and my life as a mother.

The graduation I attended at the John Paul II Institute “should have been” my graduation, had I continued along the traditional Master’s in Theology program path. I took a year off after Gabriel was born and will be returning to finish in the Fall semester, so I will be studying with a whole new group of fellow students. The dear folks who were graduating were my classmates during my first year of the program, people who have become the kind of friends who just “get” where I’m coming from, who I don’t have to explain myself to in moments of joy or crisis. As I was sitting there during the Graduation Mass, I did not in any way regret that I missed out on “our” second year together–instead I was realizing how much harder these last nine months have been for me than any other nine academic months I’ve ever had.

In general, I found academia to be quite “easy”–in that starting around 6th grade I pretty much understood what needed to get done and did it, and that continued the same way for the next nine-odd years of my academic career. Yes, it required some amount of suffering, self-discipline, and sacrifice, but in the end, all of that was for the benefit of my own growth in knowledge and skill. At certain points along the way–6th grade, 8th grade, 12th grade, college–I was rewarded and applauded for all of my hard work by graduation ceremonies, robes that made all my striving seem to have come to some kind of official culmination, speakers who shared wise (or not so wise) words about the meaning of it all and exhorted us onwards and upwards, awards, and gatherings of friends and family who commended me for my efforts. Not to mention all those handy lines that accumulated on my resume so that the whole world would recognize all those hours of studying, thinking, and reading.

Motherhood, on the other hand, is something I am doing without that secure feeling that I already know the rules of the game, and without knowing how things will turn out in the end if I work as hard as I should. I have some ideas about how things theoretically should go with mothering, based on my reflections on my faith, what seems intuitively right, and what seems to have worked for others. But there’s a great big cloud of unknowns surrounding all of this, because the results of my efforts are not as clear as getting a good grade on a test, and do not come as quickly. This is difficult for me, as someone who has a record of giving up on things that do not come quite as easily to me as academics. I’d like to hope that motherhood is shaping my personality for the better in this area, since I don’t think I’ll be giving up on it any time soon.

Mothering, while certainly a vocation that has filled my life with an underlying joy and peace, has also filled my life with so many little sacrifices and sufferings that are completely for the good of another. Yes, I have been doing some things here and there for the good of others much throughout all my life, but it’s been sporadic at best, limited to volunteer commitments or spontaneous goodwill towards friends and family. Motherhood, on the other hand, has put this cute (and sometimes not so cute) little person right smack down in front of me, 24-7, and much of the time I’m the only one who can provide what he needs in terms of survival, emotional support, recreation, and mobility. If I don’t do it, no one else will. In a sense, the structure of motherhood creates sacrifices that are more readily, and hopefully, more charitably made because the need is so immediate and so compelling. And for the most part, no one throws a robe around your shoulders and commends you at an official ceremony for all your hard work and dedication to furthering goodness in the world. Talk about a perfect recipe for holiness! (In all fairness, I do have to say that my husband, as well as friends and family, give me a good amount of encouragement along the way–little thank you’s and pick me ups that keep me going in the day to day life of mommyhood. I think what I’m reflecting on here is more the world at large’s recognition of the accomplishments of motherhood.)

I been pondering what a graduation speaker might say to me after these nine months of mothering Gabriel. I decided that writing a graduation speech free of cliche and worn-out sayings is task that I don’t have time for at the moment, and besides, I don’t think nine months after having my first child qualifies me as any sort of distinguished expert, even in giving advice to myself! So I’ve gone another route, in the spirit of one of the graduation speakers at UVA who went through a list of thought provoking statistics. Here are my own, roughly calculated, mommy statistics. In the past nine months, I have:

...changed (& washed & dried) 1,500 diapers
...nursed Gabriel for 700 hours
...walked 270 miles with baby G in the sling or stroller
...put Gabriel in and out of his carseat: 250 times
...watched Gabriel fall asleep: 1,000 times
...run after squirrels to amuse Gabriel: 60 times
...laughed at Gabriel laughing, smiling, or doing something adorable: so many times
...reflected in joy and awe with Michael, “I can’t believe we have a son!”: countless times

Here's to many more!