Child Poverty And The Myth Of Supporting "Family Values"

"To us, it's just how we live. You don't get to make choices in how you live."

Challenge your members of Congress to live for a week on a poverty line budget.  No cheating, and no help from any food stamps or food pantries since they feel that their budgets need to be cut.  See if they can survive it (and no cheating by snacking on fancy canapes at lobbyist-paid cocktail parties and junkets, either!).  

The switchboard on the Hill is (202) 224-3121. The nice folks on the line can connect you to your Senators and your Representative.  Raise your voice.

Right now in the United States, a child is waking up with an empty stomach and no food in the house to help fill it.  He woke up the same way yesterday, and will probably wake up the same way tomorrow.  He goes to bed hungry, he wakes up hungry, day in, day out.

He is three, and he knows nothing else but that this as his life.

He didn't ask to be born into this family.  He is not getting remotely enough nutrition to feed his growing brain, and because of the nutrient deficits, his brain is not developing its maximum potential...and will not if things do not change.

He starts his life out behind the curve, because poor nutrition for his mother while he was in the womb already put his brain development as well as his systemic development behind the curve.  If he is to make up any ground and catch up with his peers, he needs a healthy diet of fresh fruits and vegetables and good proteins and foods with omega-3 fatty acids.

Imagine being that child.

The food stamp program, or SNAP, helps to cover this gap for millions of children in this country every single day, children who did not ask to be born to a family living in poverty.  If the House GOP gets their way with the current Farm Bill, millions of children will have that safety net ripped out from under them.  I say that giving lip service to "family values" in your stump speeches while pulling the floor out from under the children who most desperately need help is a pretty piss poor way to walk your talk.

The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation just completed a broad study of the impact of these proposed cuts and their broader budgetary and social implications.  The consequences are starkly dire for the nearly 5.1 million people, including a whole lot of desperately hungry children out of the 16 million living in poverty right now in the US of A, who would be cut from food assistance at a time when poverty issues for the poorest of the poor are reaching crisis levels in this country (via the NYTimes):

The I'm Bored Jar: Revised

This is a re-post of this, with some updated ideas for the list of things to put in the jar.  The Peanut and I added some new sticks for this summer -- thought folks would like an updated listing for their jars as well.  Enjoy!

As of yesterday, we hit that point in summer break -- one week into it, mind you -- where the cries of "I am sooooooooo Bored!" had already begun.

Yesterday afternoon was a bit rainy and gloomy, making outside play a little dicey which was a big part of the problem.   Perfect for springing my master plan for summer amusement.

Luckily, this year I had a secret weapon:  I found the idea for an "I'm bored" jar on Pinterest -- from the blog Shaydes of Life -- before the end of school.  With a little searching, I found several more iterations of the same theme bouncing around Pinterest, and had pinned several more blog posts and similar ideas for just such a moment.

I had also picked up a couple of packages of jumbo craft sticks -- they come 75 to a pack for less than $3 at most WalMarts and craft stores.  We already had a large jar that was just gathering dust, having been recently emptied of its contents when I cleaned out a cabinet upstairs.  We also had some ultra fine tipped Sharpie markers, and various cardstock paper scraps that could be fashioned into a label.

It really isn't a lot to get this started:

The Disney Game

Our family has been playing a sort of variation on twenty questions for years to make waiting in lines or dealing with delays a much more amusing time for The Peanut.  It occurred to me the other day, as we were playing it yet again waiting for a table at a restaurant, that this might be a fun idea to pass along for other families, too.

Here is how we play it:

One person thinks of a character from a Disney movie.  It can be classic Disney, newer Disney, or Pixar, or even one of the Pixar short films.  But we do try to stick to cartoons or movies where there is some level of animation (say Mary Poppins, Pete's Dragon, or Enchanted, for example).

Once the character has been selected, everyone else gets to guess who it is.

We generally begin with a clue that goes something like "this character is ____________."  This can be hairy, stinky, green, crazy, evil, covered in spots, slightly coated in mucus, whatever...but the fill in the blank part needs to be something descriptive and just obscure enough that it doesn't give it away from the get go.

Growing Up

As hard as it is to say, our little Peanut is growing up. 

We had such a great time on the beach together during our recent trip:  hunting for shells, laughing at the antics of the dogs chasing seagulls on the beach, giggling at the funny little sandpipers, and trying to spot dolphins as they appeared and disappeared in the waves closer to shore.  It was wonderful.

Reconnecting is always nice. 

Being able to do so away from the day-to-day rushing is so much better.  Not having a myriad of distractions and an endless "to do" list of things that need to be done right now lurking in the background makes having those longer conversations or quiet walks along the shore or in a nature preserve or any number of other wonderful things we were able to do while we were away so much more meaningful on so many levels.

It got me thinking about how we might better do that on a weekly basis at home as well.

Building An Enthusiastic Reader

This morning, The Peanut woke up for school when her alarm went off, brushed her teeth, got dressed, fussed with her hair a little bit...and then crawled right back into bed to read for another half an hour.

Her father, thinking she hadn't gotten up at all, rushed upstairs to get her moving only to find her nose completely buried in the Percy Jackson series.  Which is how she was last night, too, when we had to make her turn her lights out and go to sleep.

It really is every parent's dream to build an enthusiastic reader, isn't it?  But how do you do it?

I don't have the answer for every child, but in terms of my own child I do think this was key:  we have been reading to her and with her since she was tiny.  We never went anywhere without a book -- in the diaper bag, in the back seat of the car within reach of her car seat when she was younger, all over our house in every room, fairy tales on my kindle, good stories crammed on her bookshelves in her own room...first in board books and later in regular books and then on her own kindle.

We wanted her to know that reading is important to us, so that it will also be important to her...and from the earliest age. 

Both of us are big readers -- we read every night before bedtime, and have made it a point to let The Peanut crawl in bed and read with us fairly often.  Also, during the summer on hot and humid afternoons when being outside in the sweltering haze is miserable, she and I will crawl onto the king-sized master bed and enjoy some reading time in the air conditioned splendor together.

Also, each summer, The Peanut and I pick out a book to read together -- something that might have been a big reach for her when she was smaller, but that was a wonderful story.  One summer it was The Cricket in Times Square -- we happened to be taking a trip to New York City that summer, to tag along with daddy to a conference, and I wanted to introduce her to the hum and rattle of the city and the subways before we got there. She loved it, and we spent the time in New York periodically looking for lost crickets, which was very fun indeed for wee girlies.

Another year, it was The Borrowers, a story that I highly recommend reading aloud together. At the time we read it, the vocabulary would have been well past where The Peanut was, but by reading it together she got a wonderful story and a built-in personal dictionary and context explainer right there in the chair next to her, and that was both handy and cozy.

Microscope Morning

We spent a big chunk of yesterday cleaning off The Peanut's desk.

It had become piled with a variety of things -- American Girl doll items, detritus from the last school year, random magazines, craft supplies and el cheapo plastic toy bits from who knows where -- and was really unusable as a desk since there was no real space to put anything.

Earlier in the week, we had purchased another plastic organizer with drawers from Lowes.  This one had all large drawers, instead of a mix of small and large like the one I used for my school library organizer.

And it fits perfectly on the back of her desk.

I let her pick out the patterned paper she wanted to use for drawer colors and we put together a desk supplies organizer for her.  Once it was done, we started clearing off her desk and putting away various and sundry bits and pieces into the drawers which we then labeled with the label maker (her new favorite toy).

The "I Am Sooooooo Bored" Jar

UPDATE:  Revised edition is here, with a list of 150 ideas for the jar.  We added a few more for this summer.  Enjoy!

As of yesterday, we hit that point in summer break -- one week into it, mind you -- where the cries of "I am sooooooooo Bored!" had already begun.

Yesterday afternoon was a bit rainy and gloomy, making outside play a little dicey which was a big part of the problem.   Perfect for springing my master plan for summer amusement.

Luckily, this year I had a secret weapon:  I found the idea for an "I'm bored" jar on Pinterest -- from the blog Shaydes of Life -- before the end of school.  With a little searching, I found several more iterations of the same theme bouncing around Pinterest, and had pinned several more blog posts and similar ideas for just such a moment.

I had also picked up a couple of packages of jumbo craft sticks -- they come 75 to a pack for less than $3 at most WalMarts and craft stores.  We already had a large jar that was just gathering dust, having been recently emptied of its contents when I cleaned out a cabinet upstairs.  We also had some ultra fine tipped Sharpie markers, and various cardstock paper scraps that could be fashioned into a label.

It really isn't a lot to get this started:

Summer Reading

It is the first full day of summer break for me, having finished the year with meetings and a very nice luncheon yesterday.

This is what The Peanut has been doing with her morning thus far.

I know. 

We have spawned an avid reader and it is awesome.  I cannot begin to tell you how happy this makes me, that she has her nose in a book whenever possible without having to be prompted or forced into it.

When asked the other day how she became such a good reader, her reply to another adult we know was instructive:  "It's what we do in my family.  We all love to read."

Mom Angst Grows As Summer Break Looms

Today is the last day of school for The Peanut.  Ahead, the long summer break stretches before us like an inviting oasis of awesome.

At least, it does for her. 

Until the "I'm bored" portion of the summer sets in, anyway.  Which is inevitable about 3 days in, I fear.  (Anyone else's kids get there at the speed of light despite having a bazillion things to do in their own houses, too?  Crazy.)

For me, though?  I'm having a little bit of mom anxiety this morning.  We have reached that age where she has begun to assert her own, individual sense of self into the mix with ever increasing intensity. 

But I fear that I am not equipped to handle this stage very well. 

The Perils of Baby Bun Head Week

It is once again dance recital week.

Which, at our house anyway, means that mom obsesses about buying hairnets so that The Peanut's bun doesn't look malformed due to momma's lack of hair skills.  And lots and lots of bobby pins to get us through the various practices, dress rehearsal and performances.

This week is likely to be a whirlwind.  As any dance momma can tell you, costume and hair changes at light speed are not for sissies.

As a parent, I think you almost get as nervous for your child -- maybe even more -- than they do for themselves.   Funny how that works, isn't it?  Parenting is a constant balancing act of trying to not over-do it at the wrong time, but trying to not be too detached when hovering might be needed.

Now that The Peanut is headed toward the tween stage?

I'd never admit it out loud, but I'm way, way off balance trying to navigate the choppier waters of "I can do it myself" land.   Where did the time go?

It was much easier when a burp and a good nap pretty much solved most problems, wasn't it?

This week will require me to boldly go into the land of tightly pinned bun head.  Once more to the breach, stiff hair gel and small rat comb in hand, bobby pins at the ready. 

Wish me luck.  Someone keep some margaritas on hand, in case of emergency...

Playing With Color

While The Peanut was home sick last week, I re-discovered something that I absolutely love:  coloring.

It's funny how you can pick something up that you haven't done in years and have so much fun with it, isn't it?  We colored a LOT while watching movies or just listening to music.  She found it a soothing way to keep from scratching her chicken pox, and I found it a nice creative change of pace and a good way to relieve some of my mommy tension while she was so sick.

We both had a blast spending time together, sitting side by side and sharing crayons and colored pencils.  I had forgotten how fun it can be to bring a little black and white picture to life with a little color.

How had I forgotten how fun that is?

Several years ago -- before The Peanut started school, actually -- I had gotten myself an intricate coloring book of springtime designs by Ruth Heller on an Artist's Date when I was trying to kick start my creative juices via Julia Cameron's Artist's Way.

Somehow, though, this coloring book got buried in a drawer (during some whirlwind "company's coming" clean-up spree no doubt)...and only got unearthed again, years later, this past week.  Which I think may be the most symbolic representation of my creative fits and starts and my difficulty with putting my creative needs on the front burner ahead of family and everything else in my life.

It is what it is, right?

But the thing is, once I rediscovered this coloring book?  And then started coloring in it?

I had a BLAST.

Confessions Of A Hair Challenged Momma

Once again, it is the day of dance class photos and I am in a panic.

I have a confession:  I am horrible at doing my own child's hair. 

And I mean really horrible...as in, I completely suck at it.

My whole life I have been hair challenged, unable to whip my own ginormously challenging mane of rambunctious waves into anything resembling an orderly coiffure.  As I've gotten older, I've gravitated toward more easily wrangled haircuts and, more recently, miraculously found a genius stylist who can cut my straw and spin it into well-managed gold.

But my daughter's hair?

It is the exact opposite of mine.  Stick straight and fine rather than hefty and wavy.  Even though she has a lot of hair just like her momma, it is impossible to keep in any sort of tidy order because it all likes to fly away all over the place.

Last night, it took me over an hour just to get her wet hair up in those evil foam curlers so that she could wake up with a halo of curly ringlets.  My hope was that the curl would relax just right by the time pictures rolled around this evening.

But, alas, I am curler challenged.

Life's A Happy Song? Strategies for Sick and Rainy Days

Just needed a little Muppet pick me up this morning.  From The Muppets.

Woke up to a foggy day outside, and still no let up on the chicken pox for The Peanut.  Our house is a germy pit of despair for a wee girlie who just wants to go back to school. 

So we continue to muddle forward slowly, hoping that they will begin to dry up at some point in the near future. Being a parent with a sick and stir crazy child at home can be tedious and exhausting for everyone, especially mom.  (I am so there this morning, let me tell you.)

I've been sitting here wracking my brain for things to do with the sickly wee one that don't involve a lot of energy expenditure, and here's what I've come up with for us for the next few days:

-- Coloring:  We always have a stash of coloring books, crayons and colored pencils on hand because you never know when a sick day/snow day/torrential rain in the summer day will show up.  Diversionary tactics are my friend.

-- Reading:  The Peanut has already read 4 books in the last 4 days.  Okay, sure...two of them were Goosebumps books, but the other two were the first two books in the Sisters Grimm series which we are both absolutely loving right now.  (Highly recommend the Sisters Grimm for the kids or grandkids in your life!)

Trove of New Fairy Tales Discovered in Germany

Turns out that the Brothers Grimm had another colleague who was also roaming the German countryside collecting folk tales and fairy tales.

The story of how these came to be lost is fascinating stuff all on its own:

Von Schönwerth compiled his research into a book called Aus der Oberpfalz – Sitten und Sagen, which came out in three volumes in 1857, 1858 and 1859. The book never gained prominence and faded into obscurity.

While sifting through Von Schönwerth's work, Eichenseer found 500 fairytales, many of which do not appear in other European fairytale collections.

Apparently, all of his research on all of these tales had been sitting in the back of some vault at a university gathering dust for all these years.

See?  It does pay to do some Spring cleaning after all!

One of the things I have loved most about getting my new Kindle Fire for a Christmas present this year has been how many fairy tale collections I've been able to load on it. No matter where we go -- endless doctor's office waiting room time, bedtime on a trip, boring intermission at a play -- I have fairy tales at our disposal to read to The Peanut.

It.  Is.  Awesome.

I always take a book along with us to the doctor's office -- have since The Peanut was tiny -- so that the waiting room isn't meltdown central.  But with my kindle, I have a plethora of stories to choose from because I've uploaded several of the "fairy books."  Remember those from childhood?

The Blue Fairy Book was always one of my favorites because it has East of the Sun and West of the Moon in it, along with a number of other old favorites told in ways that aren't the child-sanitized Disney versions of the stories.

Arrietty Is Well Worth Seeing!

We finally got out to see The Borrower Arrietty yesterday afternoon. The Peanut and I loved it!

This is definitely one we will want to see again!

When we heard that Studio Ghibli was doing an Arrietty movie, we were thrilled.  Miyazake's storytelling is always full of wonder, and this movie lived up to our expectations with it's gorgeous artwork and attention to the little details.  Especially by leaving Arrietty's spunk intact.

We read The Borrowers a couple of years ago together as our summer reading, devouring a few pages at bedtime and a chapter here and there in the afternoons on rainy weather days.

I highly recommend choosing a longer, more difficult storybook like this as a family summer reading project with your kids.  The Peanut and I do one every summer and we both get a lot out of just sitting quietly and reading out loud together.  Not least of which because I get to revisit some of my old favorites as she gets to know them for the first time.

Postcards from Science Central

The Peanut woke us up on Christmas morning a little before 4:00 am ET with the cry of "Santa's been here!"

We mumbled to her that she needed to take her stocking and go back to her room until at least 6:00 am...and, miracle of miracles, she did. 

It was a Christmas of science-y goodness at our house, as Santa and his elves brought her a microscope and a number of prepared slides.  We were in nerd heaven for over an hour yesterday looking at paramecia, silk worms, salt crystals, and anything else on an already prepared slide.  It's funny how two nerdy parents can go right back to their love of all things science, too, given a glimpse of an amoeba under a perfectly adjusted magnifying lens.

She also got a number of books on the ocean and dolphins, playing into her current obsession with becoming a marine biologist.

*sniffle*

Our girlie loves science and studying animals.  How on earth did we get this lucky?

Don't get me wrong, there were also games and a new doll and lots of other just for fun and totally non-science presents.  We want to encourage her, not shove her, with learning gifts.  But thus far, over the stretch of yesterday and this morning, the science things are the clear favorites.

Life is good here.

Under The Microscope: A Present Dilemma

The Peanut has asked for a microscope for Christmas this year.  That's our science girlie!

But it has lead me down an endless path of researching what might or might not be the best options for a microscope that would allow our daughter to explore, but would not be so sensitive that it would break in the first week. 

It's a tough question, with a lot of opinion and review pieces abounding, but not a lot of real, hard data to back them up.

I stumbled across a basic "what to look for and what to avoid" post from PZ Myers at Pharyngula which was very helpful.  But I'm still struggling to evaluate best options given that trying something like this out before purchase where we live in WV is not at all a likely prospect.  (Shopping in the boonies has its disadvantages.  SIGH)

So I'm asking for a little help out there:  anyone have a particular brand/style/model of microscope that would work well for a precocious 8-year-old?  Something she could use for both slide viewing (compound) and also basic "object under the microscope" (stereoscopic or dissecting) viewing as well?

Nature Girl

Our daughter is seriously intrigued by science, and it is an interest that we try to encourage whenever and however possible.  We try to watch a lot of nature shows with her, because animals are hugely popular in her world at the moment.

Ditto for dinosaurs.

We watched a National Geographic documentary last week on paleontologists and how they study fossils -- from finding a skeleton in Mongolia to its transport back to the US to be assembled and studied at the Museum of Natural History in NYC.  (Since we visited there a couple of  years ago, it was very exciting because the dinosaur exhibits there were a huge hit, and you got to see a brief glimpse of them in the documentary.)  It was fascinating to watch the start to finish dinosaur discovery to assembly, and even more so to see how mesmerized she was and curious about so many of the things that occurred.

The whys and hows are really interesting for her, and her love of learning continues to grow -- which makes us really, really happy.

Faerie Tales: Good or Awful Parenting?

Our daughter has a vivid imagination.  And for the whole of her life, we have let her run with it wherever she wanted to take it.

When the new mulch outside out front door began sprouting little rings of mushrooms, she decided that there had been a fairy festival.  We made up stories for days about how fun it must have been as the rain continued, and new "faerie rings" of mushrooms kept popping up all along the perimeter of our house, culminating in a huge one out front.

Those were some seriously busy fairies, let me tell you.

And, to be honest, we both had a blast making up stories about them for days on end.  Especially me, because I got to see the world through the eyes of a child all over again.

Imagination is such a fun thing when you are young and so willing to believe in any magic that might come your way.  We truly do try to let her stretch hers as much as possible -- mostly because we both know what happens when you get to be an adult and life beats all the funny little imaginary wishes right out of you.

But at some point, how much of it is helping the imagination and whimsy and magical thinking to thrive?  And how much is just outright fibbing to your child?

I struggle with this.  Here's a case in point:

Lost In The Land Of Reading

Yesterday evening, I went up for bed and saw that The Peanut's light was still on, even though we'd sent her up to bed a little over an hour beforehand.  I opened her door and poked my head in to see why on earth she was still awake.

She emerged from her pillow and blanket nest and smiled at me.  When I asked why she was still awake when it was getting late and she had school in the morning, she said:

Sorry, mom.  I didn't know what time it was.  I was lost in the land of reading.

It was at that moment that I knew I was succeeding on some level as a parent.  You have to love that, don't you?