The Next Generation

I heard a story on NPR this morning with conclusions from the census data about the shifting role of women: in the 1970s, marriage was considered the surest way to financial security for women, but nowadays women are likely to be more educated and make more money than their spouses, who now, reportedly (and yes, I'm paraphrasing), get the better deal.

How funny to watch Eleri tonight as she climbed up onto a chair, toting her baby and her laptop, and proceeded to "burp" the baby while pounding on the keys. I wonder if this next generation of moms will be far enough removed from their grandparents era that both waves of feminism will be a distant memory, and expectations around work and family life will have "evened out."



It's nearly impossible for me to imagine a truly "post-feminist" world, but it may be the one my daughters experience.

Outfit of the Week

Quite possibly the cutest outfit ever.
Enhanced, somehow, by Clio's insistence on wearing the coat as a cape.

I must say, Eleri may be a close second in this round.

Two Zoos (an annotated album)

In looking at my pictures from the Minnesota Zoo, which we visited with my childhood friend Carrie and her younger daughter Greta (dedicated readers of this blog may be glad to put faces to those names), it struck me that I did not capture many live animals (except the girls) and that you would almost think that we were at some kind of indoor playground:



(check out Clio hanging on Carrie's hood ties)


And if some alien race saw these pictures of Eleri, they might think that the zoo was a place to preserve (and gawk at) machinery, trucks and gear:



In Denver, the playground theme continued:



Though we did also look at some very live, very big animals, like Giraffes, Elands, Bison, Elephants, and Camels.

Which Eleri thought was awesome. (It took her a while to figure out that these big animals were real, I think: the first one she saw was a tiger, and instead of getting excited about the big cat, she pointed to a squirrel hopping along the very top of the tiger enclosure, and made her squirrel clucking sound with her tongue.)

Somehow, the kids seemed most taken with the common duck:

Which, I will admit, were actually quite mesmerizing in their feeding frenzy:


In the Tropical Zone, the Denver Zoo has a collection of komodo dragons, which the kids found fascinating. They just sat right down on the floor and hung out.


This one brought out the frisk in Eleri, though. Clio did a better job than Dakota of managing the hug attacks, but hey, these guys are sisters.... and Dakota has become terrified of Eleri's clutches!

On Being Female

Clio has these Sleeping Beauty shoes that my parents bought her: we were all in a Walmart together last fall when staying in Fishkill, NY, for my cousin Patrick's wedding, and they let her pick out a little something as a gift. She had been lusting after her friend Elsie's various Princess Shoes, so when we saw these there was no question what Clio would choose.



But upon putting them on for the umpteenth time tonight, Clio declared: These hurt.

Well then, take them off, I said.

But mom, they're so pretty! she said, and proceeded to limp around the house.


She may even try to wear them to bed.

Final Night in Brooklyn

[an unfinished post discovered in my drafts folder]

Throughout this last weekend, I had flashes of our history on 30th street, random, compressed, floating up to me in no particular order, anchored by particular spots or viewpoints in the house: standing on the stairs, I could see Clio crawling in the upstairs hallway; in the dining room, a flash of my 30th birthday party, post-appendectomy, and the crash of the Christmas tree that had just been trimmed at our seventh--and last--tree trimming party. But Lying in our bed in our old room in Brooklyn, the rest of the house empty, I couldn't help but feel that the bed was a raft, floating in this house but also in two before it, in Park Slope and Washington Heights, and a buoy in the river of time that keeps rushing past.

This is the bed where Dave decided to go home for Thanksgiving the year his dad first battled cancer, and where I talked him out of getting there by motorcycle.

This is the bed where I sat and cried after delivering a terrible presentation (on the philosopher Deleuze, the film Hirsohima , Mon Amour, and the planning process for the Hiroshima memorial!) in Grad School.

This is where I first told Dave, in a whisper, risking everything, that I loved him.

I sat on the edge of this bed, taking off my heels, just before Dave proposed.

This is where I sat to call my parents and, tearfully, announce that I was pregnant with my first baby. And again, less tearfully, with my second.

This is where I labored with Eleri, where my water broke 20 minutes before she was born, just next door, in the bathtub.

In this bed, both of our girls occasionally slept as babies; knowing you're "not supposed to do that," this is where we lay, too tired to put them back in the cradle.

This is where countless conversations took place about leaving Brooklyn.

I wonder how many tears have soaked this mattress? If material has a memory?

In the morning, too early, we struggled from this bed for the last time, and someone came to take it away, to give to an old lady who would later send us a message to "bless our hearts."

Clio Quotes

Unfortunately, I can never remember to write down the hilarious things Clio says. (If you want a does of hilarious kid quotes, visit my friend Lizzie's blog and scroll on down to November 11: her daughter Laila has a precocious vocabulary and a knack for the literal, and her son Owen simply has a unique perspective on the world). We've been in a major "why" phase for a while, which often ends in an exasperated "because" after explaining the same subject three or four times. Lately, though, Clio hass moved from a highly annoying "why" phase into a somewhat annoying but at least occasionally instructive "what if" phase.

It goes something like this:

Mom, what if you had no mouth?
Well, I guess you'd be in trouble, because you couldn't talk, or eat, or smile.

Well, what if you had a mouth on your elbow?
Then you would have to hold up your arm when you talked, so people could hear you.

What if you had an ear for a mouth?
Then I guess you would have to listen from your face.

The questioning usually goes along a theme, and Clio seems to come up with every possible combination of asking before she exhausts her subject. (I am serving up the abridged versions).

Mom, what if you lived in a house in a tree?
You would live in a tree house.

What if there was a house on a dog's house?
You could call that a dog house. But any house is reallytoo heavy to put on a dog's head, son't you think?

Mom, what if your house had no door?
It would be harder to get in the house, because you would have to come through the window.

Well, what if you had no door AND no windows?
I guess you'd be stuck outside. Or inside, as the case may be.

What if you had no home?

And this is where this line of questioning becomes challenging, because your child thinks she is making up impossible and silly scenarios: how, exactly, do you explain homelessness to a 3 year old? You might tell her that lots of people have no homes, that some of them are cold, that some of them are sad, that sometimes they can get help. You might picture the line of people that you drive by every night on your way home for work, waiting outside Denver's Catholic Mission hoping for a bed for the night. You might tell her that she's very lucky to have such a nice home as this.

And then, your three year old might get all existential on you.

MOM! What if you had nothing?

Yes. What if?

Making Good on One "Resolution"

Get outside more.




And then enjoy inside more.


(There is a nice fire in that fireplace, I swear.)

Not a bad way to ring in the New Year, in the end.