Morrison Gets in the Picture

Incidentally (And speaking of Family Ties), Clio has added "Nima" (aka Grandma) to her morning round of asking for people who are not here. Shooda (aka Lucia) is the only constant, with requests for photo viewing etc. every single morning. The rest of the family list rotates, and right now Grandma Peterson is hot!

Family Ties

Last weekend, we had the pleasure of not one, but two visits: First, my cousin Patrick and his girlfriend Lauren came to brunch (Patrick is a recent grad of Notre Dame and just moved to Manhattan), then Marni came for "baby dinner" (and went out with the Mommy and the Daddy for grown up dinner- al di la, yum!) Clio took a while to warm up to all these family visitors (Marni's basically been my NY family for 10 years; I'd say she counts at this point), and our attempts at portraiture were far more successful on the adult side of things. (Incidentally, you can see Clio's full ensemble from the Home Depot excursion- minus, of course, the glam outerwear.)


Once she got used to the extra people in her house though, Clio spared no time in putting them to work. The scenario was similar with each visit: Patrick introduces this bean bag ball to Clio,

Clio throws several at once in every direction, encouraging all four adults to scatter and scuttle around like crabs. (the scuttling happened after this picture was taken.)

This even continued during the portrait sitting.


Then, Marni introduces her blackberry,


Clio gets "Clio's phone"


and Marni is forced to play "phone call" for the next 20 minutes.



(Phone call would be a lot more fun if Clio understood the concept of speaking beyond the "hello hello hello.")

Good times were had by all.

"Airplane, Here" Dyptich, 2008

Yesterday morning before going off to day care and work, Clio and I spent some time watching the airplanes out the window. What this really means is that Clio and I knelt together on the couch, eyes peeled to the sky, and every time an airplane floated into view between our house and the apartment building across the street, I would lift her up, point, and say "Clio, look!" And she would look invariably in the wrong direction, in every direction but the airplanes', and as it glided over the rooftop and out of sight, I would say "bye bye airplane," and Clio would cock her little wrist the way she does, and say "Airplane where?"

Tonight she answered her own question when coloring with crayons. (She specifies the mode of artwork production, so I might as well, too.) She drew these two pictures (simultaneously), and at several intervals, drew a swoosh, pointed, and said "Airplane here!"

You can see them, can't you?

Incidentally, she did finally see an airplane- the fifth that I spotted for her. I'm not sure who was more excited about this success.

And who knew so many airplanes flew over our house?

Heaven = Home Depot; Heaven = Clio's House of Joy

This morning we had an excursion to Home Depot.

We wanted to get Clio out of the house, and after debating all of the structured indoor-play options (most of which are untested and cost money), we figured Clio would like the play opportunities afforded by our local DIY superstore nearly as much (plus, we could get something accomplished in grown-up land.) Little did I know, Home Depot is basically Clio's idea of nirvana.

Why? Well, I'll tell you. Not only are there wide-open aisles to run along ("running!"), large carpet samples to roll against ("soft!"), and plastic deck furniture to rearrange, but there is an ENTIRE DEPARTMENT of kitchens, all with cabinets and drawers to open, none of them restricted by annoying rubber bands or other child-proofing measures. I think Clio opened EVERY drawer and cabinet in EVERY kitchen (discovering along the way where the department's staff keeps their coats, work gloves, and, occasionally, snacks). Her most emphatic gesture of love and happiness these days is to say "more" several times, while doing the sign for more with her little hands. Needless to say, we witnessed a lot of this at the Home Depot. In fact, Clio has an appetite for drawers that seems insatiable: it's lucky we discovered the bathroom aisle when we did.

Sadly, I didn't bring my camera to Home Depot (and Clio was a sight to behold: in addition to her pale pink and taupe camo pants, she selected a sweater of pastel-rainbow-hued tie-dye, radiating out from her belly like a bulls eye. With her hot-pink boots and tendency to dash across the all-gray aisles, she was pretty hard to miss).

I do, however, have pictures from Heaven vision #2. Let's just call this Clio's House (aka the Best. Christmas Present. Ever.) of Joy (aka animals and "babies").



Once she got the brilliant idea to invite Relaxing Bear inside, she realized what a great spot this would be for all the animals and babies, and started doing that "More" thing again. After creating a stuffed menagerie, somehow she found room to cram Daddy in there, too.


I was not invited. (Look at Dave's hand, closing the door. Traitor.)


(How can there be a Heaven with no Mommy, I ask myself?)

Clio and the Cat

Anne's daughter Paris recently cleaned out her childhood stuffed animal collection, and Clio was the lucky recipient of a leopard ("cat" for sake of ease), a rabbit, and an ostrich. To draw out this gift and make each one special, we have been giving them to Clio one at a time. With both the cat and the bunny, she has delighted in carrying them around, and relating their various parts to her own, as in "Cat nose" (pointing to the cat's nose), "Clio nose" (pointing to Clio's nose.)


I wonder what she'll make of the ostrich?

The Good Mother

After my own recent ramblings about the choices for women in America, I was interested to happen upon this article in New York Magazine, The Bad Mommy Brigade, which takes as its starting point the relief many mothers apparently feel from watching Britney Spear's failures with her own little boys. The author, Aylet Waldman, had her 15 minutes a few years ago when confessing in the Times that she loved her husband more than her children- and was vilified for her "selfishness" by all the "perfect" mothers of NYC.

In researching her article, Waldman takes a casual survey of her peers- middle class women in their 30s and 40s- asking them to define Good and Bad mothers and fathers. I recognized the saintly Good Mother answers for all the unrealistic, but somehow commonplace, expectations they conjure:

“She remembers to serve fruit at breakfast, is always cheerful and never yells, manages not to project her own neuroses onto her children, volunteers in the community, remembers to make playdates, her children’s clothes fit, and she does art projects with them and enjoys their games. And she is never too tired for sex.”

One of the common threads through the article is this idea that a Good Mother not only sacrifices all for her children, but she loves doing it. As much satisfaction as I get from making life good for Clio, this picture of perfection is never going to be me. (It's never going to be anyone I know.)

You know what? I wish someone had asked me to describe these roles, the Good and Bad parents, before I read the article and got someone else's ideas into my head. I have plenty of failings and insecurities, but I truly think I am a good mom, that Dave and I are good parents, despite sending Clio to day care, never cutting her fingernails, letting her out of the house without mittens, and sometimes just letting her have what she wants (even if we shouldn't). The disturbing thing is--and Waldman gets at this--if I had been part of her survey, in describing the Good Mother I bet I wouldn't have described myself.

Read the article and let me know what you think.

Shadowplay

This weekend, Clio discovered her shadow.

Dave and I each (coincidentally) spent some time outside with her in bright sunlight, and showed her the shadows we cast on the ground. For my part, I would wave at the shadow over and over, so Clio could see my actual arm, then my shadow arm, to wrap her head around the connection.

There are two large apartment buildings across the street from our house, and Clio chased her own shadow all along their surfaces; when she turned around to walk back up the little hill (casting her shadow behind her) she would cock her wrist, look at me, and ask "Where did shadow go?" making me think of Peter Pan and the lost boys, trying to recover his shadow.

I wished I had the video camera on me at the time, but we did manage to capture a few stills on the boardwalk at Coney Island:




It's so amazing to watch Clio as she begins to encounter more abstract concepts. This weekend we also went into the basement and used our webcams to talk to Nonny, Papa, Finn, and Lucia (my mom's excellent idea after Clio continued to talk about the Minnesota crew for several days running-actually, it's still going on). Clio was a little shy about the whole computer-conversing (webcams sort of blow my mind, I can only imagine what this toddler must think), but now, on occasion, she'll say "Papa, downstairs." And in a way, yes, that's where he is.