Better living through bribery

Thea hasn't been going to bed on time for weeks. She'll find any excuse to get out of bed, and will only be coaxed back if one of us stays with her in bed until she falls asleep. Sometimes it's quite sweet. We lay in bed talking about our days with our foreheads pressed together until she drifts peacefully to sleep. But sometimes she wants to play, and I feel a little like I'm held hostage by a sweet, cute, angelic little terrorist.

I told Thea we'd buy her a special present if she went to sleep on time for an entire week, and so far it's working. She wanted a toy bird we were going to get for Tina after she killed the bird on Sunday, but I knew Thea only wanted it because it was a little like an owl Dash has that she fell in love with a couple months ago. I've been looking for it for ages, and finally found one on eBay. I hope it gets here before her week is up!

Pho-ing good lunch

My phone's camera lens steamed over a little. So. Pho-ing. Good.

UPDATE: Yes, Alanna, I know; nobody cares what I had for lunch!

Love this time of year

Last night we had dinner at our new picnic table with friends. The kids sat at the little table and fought Tina for their hot dogs; the grownups sat at the picnic table Todd just built. Our magnolia tree is blooming, so the air was fragrant as well as warm. This is definitely the part of living in the suburbs that rocks.

What am I allergic to?

I've had itchy eyes and cold symptoms for about two weeks now, about the same length of time we've had Tina. I really hope I'm not allergic to the dog. If I am, unless my throat starts to close, I think I'm just going to have to learn to cope. Thea calls Tina "my sweet little girl," and Liam pats her and says "Dog!" proudly. They both argue over who gets to throw her balls, and kids and dog line up excitedly at the door when we're about to go out. What kind of mother would I be if I took that away?



Speaking of Tina, she caught and killed a bird on Sunday while Todd was out playing music with some friends. (I have no idea how she managed to do that, but someone did tell Todd that Treeing Walker Coonhounds can actually climb trees.) I freaked out when I saw her gleefully rolling in it and dragged her inside immediately for a shower. Dogs can be so gross!

While I was struggling to get Tina into the shower, I said out loud to myself, This would be a lot easier with the leash. Without me having to ask, Thea ran into the dining room and grabbed it off the credenza for me. I was so impressed! Then she stayed over my shoulder cooing to Tina, "It's alright, girl, don't be scared. Mommy's not going to get soap in your eyes. She'll be careful. Oh, my poor sweet girl, it's alright!" (This is very close to what we say to Thea when she's getting her hair washed.) Liam, meanwhile, took the opportunity to unspool the toilet paper from the roll, flush the toilet several times, and pull the towels off their bars. El destructo!

Playing haus

Our friends Emmaly and Sabrina came over for brunch today. Sabrina is from Germany and so Emmaly is being raised bilingual. (I know, you can barely see Emmaly in this picture. Trying to get all three kids in the same spot was a task.)

Spring!

Finally.

Um, wait ... what?

(Clearly it's Video Friday.)


Natasha Bedingfield
"I Wanna Have Your Babies"


Indian Thriller


Top That

Something to celebrate

My student loans are officially paid off. Cheers!

Happy clouds, happy clouds

From Molly-o's blog, this was amusingly accurate:

What does your drawing say about you? The results of my analysis say:

You tend to pursue many different activities simultaneously. When misfortune does happen, it doesn't actually dishearten you all that much.
You are a thoughtful and cautious person. You like to think about your method, seeking to pursue your goal in the most effective way.
You are creative, mentally active and industrious.
You feel morose and are prone to lethargy.

If you're interested, go take the test before you look at my drawing.

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Done? I know, I know, it's hard to control the mouse and your picture looks awful. Whatever. Here's mine:

Liam is 16 months old!

This is a fun age. Liam is more verbal every day, learning words like "Woof" and "dah" (both mean "dog"), and he has perfected the art of the toast. Every night at dinner, he'll hold up his sippy cup and say "Ch-!" for "Cheers!" It's awfully cute.

The toy Liam loves most right now is his ball. It's soft cloth, so he can sleep with it, and he takes it everywhere with him. Thea loved balls at this age, too, but Liam seems especially fond of them.



He's also very fond of Mommy, and if I'm around him, he wants to be held NOW. It can be exhausting, but someone reminded me a little while ago that eventually I'll embarrass him and he won't want to be seen with me; I should treasure this time while it's here.



It's all tears and trauma when I'm not holding him, but his mood improves immediately when I pick him up.



He loves having a dog, and pets her very gently. He's also good about sharing breakfast. Liam's favorite thing to do is go out in the yard and throw Tina's balls. Thea loves it, too. We have lots of balls outside so the kids don't have to share.

Rethinking Clinton and Obama

I realize that expecting a politician to answer every question the way I would is ridiculous. There are lots of statements that need to be finessed for a general audience. And I understand that sometimes questions are asked that require a bit of thought, and an off-the-cuff response can send politicians down a path they'd rather not tread. Still, I'm terribly disappointed in Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

When asked point-blank if they agreed with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace's hopelessly regressive and inflammatory comments that same-sex relationships were immoral, they were equivocal. They dodged and evaded, and only after pressure from gay rights groups did they say, No, I don't believe homosexuality is immoral. How hard was that? Do you believe Jews are immoral? Do you believe equality is optional? Do you believe we should hand over the keys to the country to right-wing nuts? You don't have to think about it for a while. The answer is no. You say no. The next leader of the free world says NO.

Also interesting, from yesterday's Salon.com War Room:

So which leading Democratic presidential contender has shown the small amount of courage to say, right out of the box, that Pace is wrong and that homosexual relationships aren't immoral? That would be John Edwards. CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Edwards Tuesday: "In your opinion, is homosexuality immoral?" His response: "I don't share that view. And I would go further than that ... I think the 'don't ask, don't tell' [policy] is not working. And as president of the United States I would change that policy."

Two cool things

Two things that I finished yesterday and thought you should check out (if you haven't already):

I loved Amy Sedaris's book I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, which Heather bought me for our birthday. I had wanted to get a copy of it anyway, but what's better than a free book?

It was very charming, written in the style of the '50s hostessing books I collect, but with a modern snarkiness that people my age can't get enough of. Even better than the party tips, though, were the pictures. They're gorgeous in a kind of surreal, "Valley of the Dolls," first-hour-of-an-acid-trip way. I want to buy another copy so I can rip the pages out and hang them in frames on my walls.



We also finally watched This Film Is Not Yet Rated last night after having it languish on our DVD shelf, effing up our Netflix queue for almost a month. (It's ridiculously hard to find time to watch a movie start to finish these days.) The film is a documentary about the MPAA rating system and the "guardians of morality" who rate movies, and was interesting, funny, and shocking, though not really surprising.

The new dog

So, as you probably know, we've been talking about getting a dog for several months now. We (and by "we" I really mean "I") researched countless breeds and interviewed dozens of dog groups and shelters on specific dogs as well as on how they test for things like food aggression and sociability.



When we first heard about Tina, I knew she was great on paper. A four-month-old, house-trained, social, submissive Walker Coonhound mix (a breed behind Pomeranians in a 24-year study tracking dog attack deaths and maimings in the U.S. and Canada) (thanks again, Akio!) taken from a rural Virginia shelter as a tiny puppy and fostered in a home with kids and other dogs. Even the name is a little perfect because Thea's going through a phase where she names everything Tina, Deena, Gina, etc. (Personally, I'd like to call her something else, but Thea is adamant about keeping "Tina". I've even tried giving her a last name, like Fey or Turner; no go.) But I was really surprised when, after I had been chasing Liam around the dog adoption show for what seemed like an inordinately long time, I found Todd saying with a big smile, "Great news! We can take her home today!"



I thought we were still in the interviewing stage, but okay.... This is one of the many reasons why Todd and I are perfect for each other: I do an obsessive amount of research, and before I can get mired in overthinking an issue, Todd says, "We have all the facts; let's do it!"



So far, Tina has been a really easy dog to live with. No accidents in the house, no aggressive tendencies apparent at all, no barking, and she sleeps quietly all night in her crate at the foot of our bed. We're enrolling her in basic obedience training in the next few days, both to train her on things like walking on a leash and to train us.



She's young and a little mouthy, so we gave her one of the kids' old teething toys to play with. It's a bunny with a squeaky head, crunchy ears, and a rattle inside the belly. I'm impressed; so far she hasn't disemboweled it.

Word

Even though this was written by Ed Hamell a couple days ago, it could have been written by Heather and Todd in 1992. Heh.

Here's a single off Hamell on Trial's "Songs for Parents Who Enjoy Drugs":

Watching Maisy

What I mean is, dog tired

Exhausted

Tina

International Women's Day

Today is International Women's Day, and the cool kids at Taking Place have declared it Blog Against Sexism Day.

Here are some sobering facts from the UN:

• Violence against women is the most common but least punished crime in the world.
  
  
• It is estimated that between 113 million and 200 million women are demographically "missing." They have been the victims of infanticide (boys are preferred to girls) or have not received the same amount of food and medical attention as their brothers and fathers.
  
  
• The number of women forced or sold into prostitution is estimated worldwide at anywhere between 700,000 and 4,000,000 per year. Profits from sex slavery are estimated at seven to twelve billion US dollars per year.
  
  
• Globally, women between the age of fifteen and forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die as a result of male violence than through cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war combined.
  
  
• At least one out of every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Usually, the abuser is a member of her own family or someone known to her. Domestic violence is the largest form of abuse of women worldwide, irrespective of region, culture, ethnicity, education, class and religion.
  
  
• It is estimated that more than two million girls are genitally mutilated per year, a rate of one girl every fifteen seconds.
  
  
• Systematic rape is used as a weapon of terror in many of the world's conflicts. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 women in Rwanda were raped during the 1994 genocide.
  
  
• Studies show the increasing links between violence against women and HIV and demonstrate that HIV-infected women are more likely to have experienced violence, and that victims of violence are at higher risk of HIV infection.

And from CARE, a humanitarian organization working to fight global poverty:

• Each year, more than 500,000 women — at least one every minute — die from pregnancy-related causes. The vast majority of these deaths occur in developing countries. An African woman's lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes is one in 16; in Asia, it's one in 65. In Europe, it's one in 1,400.
  
  
• Women now account for almost half of all cases of HIV/AIDS. In countries with high prevalence rates, young women are at higher risk of contracting HIV than young men.
  
  
• Of 876 MILLION illiterate adults in the developing world, two-thirds are women.
  
  
• Of the more than 600 million school-age children in the developing world, 120 million primary school-age children are not in school; 53 percent are girls.
  
  
• In higher education, the level of women's enrollment equals or exceeds that of men in western Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and developed regions outside western Europe. But in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia, women's enrollment continues to lag behind, with 44 and 38 women per 100 men, respectively.
  
  
• In Africa, women account for more than 60 percent of the rural labor force and produce 80 percent of the food. A shifting emphasis on cash crops for export means more work for women, as they also must grow food for their families.
  
  
• Women produce half the world's food, but own only one percent of its farmland.
  
  
• Self-employment, part-time and home-based work have expanded opportunities for women's participation in the labor force but are characterized by lack of security, lack of benefits and low income.
  
  
• Half of the world's refugees and displaced people are women and girls. As refugees, they are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence while in flight, in refugee camps and during resettlement.

Native Laboratories

Check out Native Laboratories by our good friend and Unola member, Kade Twist. I love this piece, which was bought by my alma mater, Arizona State University, for their museum's permanent collection:


just as i am, mixed-media installation (prosthetic leg, projected text, sound). exhibited in various configurations. note: the text shown is displayed in cherokee syllabary.

The museum itself is gorgeous. Kade and Andrea were married in the shadow of that museum, and I used to work there when we lived in Arizona. Best job ever. I spent my days painting walls and building pylons, and got to help install exhibits by artists like Nam June Paik and Jenny Holzer. Good times.

Anyway, well done, Kade! We're so proud of you.

Where's Liam?

You can see more photos from Saturday in the Rock-n-Romp group pool on Flickr. I think this is Emma about to rush the stage. That girl is going to be a rocker.

Pretty in pink

After petting dogs on Saturday at a shelter show near our house, we went to Rock n Romp. I had a blast, but Thea was a bit crabby and thought the music was too loud. I showed her and Lila how to put tissue in your ears to block out some of the sound, which cheered her up a little. Ultimately, though, her mood was shot the night before when she woke up every hour and had trouble getting back to sleep. The bands that we did see before having to leave were great. One of them was made up of, I'm not exaggerating, 16-year-olds. Todd grilled them after their set on how they got into music so early: they're all kids of musicians. I'm sure you can see the wheels turn in Todd's head from where you're sitting, too.

Today I had an infant and child CPR class. I probably missed more questions than I really should have for a multiple choice test that included questions like "When should you call 911? (a) Head cold. (b) Minor bruising. (c) Kid won't eat dinner. (d) Kid stopped breathing." I blame it on the fact that the video we had to watch had odd, distracting details that I couldn't quite get past. For example, the car mechanic who had the heart attack? Why did his and all his colleagues' jumpsuits have "Hudson Career Group" on their sewn-on name-tags? And why did they hire a Paris Hilton look-alike for the construction site accident? And did the instructor really just say, "The men's room is down the hall; the females' room is next to it"?

Since I neglected to take pictures of the cuteness that was rocking preschoolers, here are some from tonight before bed:







Why do Liam's pink leopard-print pajamas make me think of Mick Jagger?

Random weird fact of the day, and random pictures

Dr. Ruth Westheimer was a sniper in Israel for Haganah, an underground Jewish military organization. No, really!

And, because I know it's all you really care about (I'm looking at you, Heather):




(This picture was pre-haircut.)