Invasion of the dolls

Yep, this holiday we were invaded by dolls! Disney dolls, crocheted dolls, fisher-price dolls - the cuteness is terrifying. Our favorite ones were the hand made dolls. L crocheted a Chu Totoro and a Sho Totoro for A-chan and they are so incredible! My mother crocheted her a Hello Kitty doll with changeable dress and ear decoration which is just too cool. A-chan was delighted with all of the above.

The Totoro dolls got to go on a trip to see M,F & E and she hugged them the entire time we were in the car (an hour each way). Hello Kitty got to go to the grocery store and ride on the big girl cart with A-chan who had to make sure that I remembered to belt Hello Kitty in tight. The Fisher-price castle-dwellers and the Disney princesses are enjoying life in the castle together (or alternatively on the windowsill where they can see the deer who come by every day.)

And don't forget the R2 figure that Santa left for her...he's always saving the princesses, the poor prince never gets a chance! Ketu had to deactivate the button that made R2 make sounds cause they scared A-chan (why did they have to put the screaming on there?!). Now A-chan has Han Solo, Chewbacca, a Stormtrooper and R2. Not sure who's next, maybe 3PO. In any case her play table is a multicultural tangle of dolls, that's for sure.

Holiday in Review (PG Day 5)

Some things went really well and some went horribly bad. I'm going to give my performance this holiday a 5, Ketu gets an 8 and A-chan gets no rating because she's way too young for me to be worrying about things like that! The fact that we were all sick during the entire week of the holidays made everything polarize. The good things were brighter and the bad things were so dark that they depressed us. My worst failing this year was trying to do too much and not being organized enough. Ketu did a great job of playing with A-chan and keeping her occupied while I did major cooking streaks. A-chan refused to eat or drink for three whole days during which we panicked and got entirely too frustrated over trying to make her get enough fluids, etc. Next year I need to be more organized and less chaotic. We need to remember that if we're pressuring A-chan too much then no one will have a good holiday. It's up to us to relax and chill when she's in a bad mood...who cares if the presents get opened a day later if it means we're all happier during it!

Family things are pretty confusing for us. We're both the black sheep of our families and don't feel that we fit in. I think this year highlighted that issue in very strong tones and makes us wonder what we need to teach A-chan about family stuff at holidays and how. Issues like: we don't understand when to give presents and when not. People that we've never exchanged presents with have suddenly shown up with presents for us in hand and us going, 'huh? but...wha?" Family that we thought were only giving presents to A-chan gave us presents too, leaving us feeling like cads for not having anything for them. Other family gifts are tantamount to exchanging cash in envelopes (they give us cash, we give them gift certificates) which leave us baffled about why we're still doing it. How do we talk to family and friends about giving gifts so that we know for sure what we're doing instead of wandering about blindly? We don't want to be rude or to offend people, but we're clueless! And we don't want to pass that uncluefulness on to A-chan. She deserves to know the societal rules and mores that govern gift giving and other holiday traditions.

Exclusion (PG Day 4)

One of A-chan's christmas gifts from friends made us stop in our tracks and begin to analyze some of our decisions about what she can and cannot be exposed to. The present was a set of Disney princess figures. Their girls were delighted with them and started playing with them immediately whereas A-chan went, "hmm. Here, you can have them." That was because she had no idea what they were - she'd never seen a Disney movie, had no clue who any of them were and though she thought they were pretty she couldn't tell why the other girls were so fascinated with them. Her obvious confusion sent us a very clear message. Although we have a very strong aversion to Disney and almost all of their products, it's not fair for us to keep A-chan totally ignorant of something that is pivotal in the culture of America's children. We don't want her to feel excluded from the things that other children are excited about, even though we personally can't stand the things...

So we sat down and watched Mulan with her (or rather Ketu did while I cooked) so that she would have some frame of reference for the gift and be able to socialize at least in some part with the other girls. We might eventually introduce other Disney films (and I'm sure that at some point we will have no say in everything that she watches...) but for now we are going to stick with the one where both parents are alive and together. However, so as to provide more culturization for her we will probably be reading the books about some of the other princesses. But we want to avoid most of the films for as long as is humanly possible. Our objections being that A) in most of them there is no true sense of family and not even both parents, B) the violence inherent in these films is abhorrent and gratuitous, C) they are waaaaay too loud to be broadcasting in our house and shouting at our two year old.

In the same vein we have a Midwinter tree, which is a christmas tree that we renamed :) Even though we are not Christian and do not wish to participate in Christian holiday traditions...I don't want her to feel excluded from something that all of her friends and acquaintances from here on out will be experiencing. So we intend to keep some of the more secular parts of the American midwinter holiday such as the tree and santa while we also celebrate Pancha Ganapati. I hope that this will give her a sense of belonging when the traditional decor comes out all over the country instead of making her very very confused. There is also a personal reason to keeping the tree and santa/snowman decorations - that I remember them fondly from my own childhood and I don't think that I could give them up. There is nothing better than a beautiful lit tree in your living room during the darkest part of the year.

Pancha Ganapati Day 3

Some wonderful things happened today! A-chan succeeded in putting on her shoes all by herself for the first time. She also learned to climb up on her rocking unicorn all by herself after watching a friend do so. She'd never tried before cause I don't think she had any idea it was possible. We finally got to go see the Holiday Lights thingy at the park tonight. But the best part of all was having P, C and their girls come for a visit. We had a great time and A-chan did too! I tried another experimental recipe and it came out extremely yummy. I didn't really do anything for today's 'goal' as it was related to co-workers and professional relationships which don't apply in my case as a housewife and weaver. Although in some respects I suppose Ketu is a co-worker since he cleans all the catboxes and takes out the trash, all the icky stuff that I can't do. Hmmm. I made him a yummy dessert, does that count?

Another happening today was the cancellation of my family's holiday visit which I have mixed feelings about. I'm glad not to have them coming because A-chan and Ketu are still sick and she gets very upset and stressed around them. Warning: rant ahead. All the nice things that happened today were a very needed balm to the continued fighting between myself and my mother. She deliberately did something with A-chan today that I had specifically asked her not to do and given her reasons why I didn't want her to. Not only did she not respect my wishes but she tried to keep it a secret and then argued with me about it when I found out. And she wonders why we won't let her babysit?! When she won't even respect us enough to do as we ask about minor things, how can we trust her about larger things? My relationship with her was not exactly perfect before, but after I got pregnant it went downhill fast. It's like becoming a grandmother short circuited her brain or something. Another example: I mentioned on the phone last night that A-chan hadn't been eating well because she was sick, that she was only interested in eating raisins. This morning my mother had gone to the grocery store to buy citrus fruit that she knew A-chan liked to help her get well. I thought it a nice gesture and so agreed to let her drop it by. What confounded us was that she didn't just drop by, she stayed for over 2 hours! Didn't ask, just came in and took over. And then the incident I alluded to earlier happened. I got angry but was still civil. Ketu applauded my self-restraint.

The questions in my mind: Have any others had their mothers go bonkers when they became grandmothers? Am I just being too sensitive and should let it all go? Is it better to try and work things out or ignore things that make me mad...or is it more harmful to A-chan to continue the relationship without at least trying to stand my ground on important issues?

Pancha Ganapati Day 2

Today was just as miserable as yesterday :(

Instead of family strife we had The Funk. Some horribly insidious cold-like infestation has taken up residence in Ketu and A-chan, and no one has been happy today. Other than that it wasn't such a bad day, just unpleasant.

I tried to keep to the 'goal' for day 2 of the holiday and for the most part did a lot better than yesterday, but not as good as I'd hoped. I got side-tracked trying to call a friend that I haven't heard from in about 8 months only to find that her phone had been disconnected. And since worrying is not only a preoccupation to me but an art form...I spent the afternoon trying to track her down to no success.

A-chan enjoyed an outing to the grocery store with her Da, chattering about seeing bicycles and riding in the buggy before they left and being pleased about both of those things on her return. Being very sick and not at all happy this morning she didn't want to help with Pancha Ganapati celebrations. She was, however, extremely interested in the sweets. I'm not going to worry too much about one day of unhealthy eating where she refused almost all of dinner (Her Da got her to eat a whole thing of green beans, the fruit she ate on her own) and gobbled up the desserts. That's what holidays are all about, right?

Pancha Ganapati Day 1

Yesterday was the first day of the Hindu midwinter celebration Pancha Ganapati. It is a five day festival that celebrates the god Ganesh in Pancha Muhka form (Basically that means 5 headed.)

Here is a lovely photo of our holiday shrine. Unfortunately both Ketu and A-chan were sick and not feeling up to much in the way of celebrating. A-chan helped decorate the shrine and had a good time carrying the grape fruit from the kitchen and putting them in place.

So far this year I haven't set a very good example for A-chan...the 'goal' for the day was to resolve family issues and resolve strife in the family to make the coming year a better time for the whole family. I think that I did pretty much the opposite today, getting into a small-ish fight with my mother over the holiday gathering and later on getting mad at Ketu. She definately seemed to notice that there was extra tension between my mother and I when she came over last night and I feel really guilty about that. Oh well, there is always next year to be a better role model?

At least she got a huge kick out of the Indian sweets that I made, particularly the Shagarpare (the diamonds in the picture) which is basically flattened out donuts and very yummy! The funny thing is that I think she will enjoy the grapefruit more than the sweets.

Waking up to music

A-chan woke up while singing the abc song this morning. It was the cutest thing ever. I think she actually awakened around v & w, then clapped at the end. Ahh, what joy a happy morning wake up can bring to your day!

Today was also the first day that she took ornaments off the tree (other than candycanes) to play with them. A pipe-cleaner wreath that we'd made at the Humane Society's open house was the first victim, then a snowflake. The most fun thing was the little red elephant. It's actually a keychain that we bought in Thailand, but I thought it would be a neat midwinter tree ornament. She really enjoyed bouncing it on the floor and saying "e-phant go walking" or "run fast!".

The Lecture

Mata's glasses have been borrowed for a lecture. We think it was about better methods of pacifier protection, but we're not sure. It was very complex. :)

Counting to 40

Our evenings are probably pretty boring to anyone else. We don't have cable or any TV hook-up though we do watch 1 hour of a DVD with dinner each night. We don't have an x-box or anything resembling one, although we are considering getting one. Of course we've been considering it for about 3 years now...

The nightly routine generally includes either 1 hour of anime or sci-fi, something that isn't too scary or disturbing for the munchkin to watch. Lately this has been Star Trek which she seems kind of bored by unless Q shows up and then she's riveted. So when boredom struck this evening we fell back on an old favorite: the count & jump game.

The game consists of A-chan jumping and the two of us counting her jumps. Tonight we got all the way up to 40 jumps at a time! I think we counted to 40 about 20 times, though, during the course of the hour that she wanted us to continue. It was very silly and lots of fun. We clap and yell yahoo whenever we get to 10, 20, 30 or 40. We speed up the higher the count and she tries to keep up, but ends up giggling too much and has to stop.

Has this game helped her counting skills? We honestly don't know. But she loves it! She gets so excited about it and kept asking us to count when we'd gotten all tuckered out and tried to stop. The amount of giggling from the count & jump is almost equal to being tickled!

Words of the week #4

Very tasty
Delicious
be careful, dada, fall off get broke-it
draw last night, snowman lights
watch out

The Power of Positive Suggestion

On friday we called to make a doctor's appt for A-chan whose eye was all puffy and itchy and red and icky. All weekend we worried about it and how it looked and how much it was bothering her. Also of note was the night I gave her plastic candy canes to put on the midwinter tree and the gigantic amount of glitter that came off on her hands requiring emergency hand washing every five minutes so that she wouldn't get glitter in her eyes when she rubbed them. (Ketu eventually moved them up to toddler un-reachability)

Most of Sunday we spent telling A-chan that tomorrow morning we would go to the doctor. He would look at her eye and make it all better. Amazing enough she held still and let him look not only at her eye but in her ears and nose and mouth with no fighting or struggling. We got medicine and came home happy campers ready to medicate at the first notice of rubbing and itching. What has been very interesting is that there has been no such activity since we returned from the doctor. It's not red, it's not puffy, she's not rubbing it and in fact seems to be in such a better mood that we can't keep up with her.

So now we're wondering: did we not need to go at all or did having the doctor look at it fix everything just like we'd said it would? Should we just try and wait it out in the future instead of making an appt? (assuming there isn't a fever or other obvious doctor-needing symptom of course) The same thing seems to happen to the cats. We make an appt for whatever problem that is occuring but by the time we get to the vet it's disappeared!

Here is a picture of one of A-chan's activities on Saturday: The Blaze Hat.

Vegetarian rant.

"Star Trek is boring, guys. Hey, what can I get into over here? Look at me, wheeee!"

This is going to be a vegetarian rant. Because we are vegetarians and I received an email today that made me feel very disappointed. And I worry about A-chan being a vegetarian child in the future and being discriminated against. Yes, I really did say discriminated against for being vegetarian. Not in any overt way - certainly nothing like asian americans or other ethnic ancestored people experience. (for examples of what i'm talking about visit Mama Nabi's Hwe blog or The Lotus Life blog) This is more of a 'gosh, vegetarians want to be able to come here and eat too, fancy that!' type of discrimination. An almost unconsious non-recognition of vegetarians and their lifestyle is way too common. Perhaps it's just that way here in Georgia, but come on - our town even has two dedicated vegetarian restaurants!

Let me get back to the point...I received an email today about the upcoming Burns Night Dinner. Last year we had worked with our scottish country dance group to create and host the Burns Night dinner: it was a potluck affair and very low key. We were delighted at the chance to join in the entertainment but be able to bring our own vegetarian renditions of old scottish dishes. (We were not the only vegetarians in attendance, either) This year's Dinner is a high-class affair ($25 a head) with authentic scottish dishes catered. I read the announcement about 3 times, hoping that "vegetarian alternatives available" might magically appear somewhere on the page. I feel...disappointed, left out, sad and discriminated against. I might feel a little different if the people involved had not been our friends for a while and knew last year how we felt at being able to enjoy Rabbie Burn's b-day celebration with everyone else. This year it seems that they deliberately didn't include anything vegetarian. of course, it probably isn't intentional, but more of the unconscious, "you wanted to come? but we're having haggis" attitude. Yes, we could go and spend $75 for all three of us. But if we're not eating any of the meal that's a pretty darned high price tag for a two hour gig.

I'm extremely sad about the whole thing. For a year I've been looking forward to going to this celebration. We had so much fun last year! And A-chan enjoyed the heck out of it last year. She loves bagpipes, she loves to see other men in kilts besides her da, she loved the dancing and the harps and the fun. And she won't get to enjoy any of it this year. What other things will she be unwelcome at in the future? Are we being bad parents for raising her vegetarian, against the grain of most of the populace of this country? Heck, you can get vegetarian food at Burn's Night celebrations in Scotland! But not here.

Okay, rant over :)

Oh, the pain!

It was my folly to let A-chan pick out a book for storytime this evening. Storytime preceeds bedtime and was already late because of the grocery store run, then bath time. So at 11:30 A-chan picks out the "Happy Baby Words" book. And then wants us to spell out each and every word in the whole book. And tell her the color and name of everything in the book. By midnight we were both yawning our heads off and she was still going strong. I kept telling Ketu to skip a page, please! But she knew what was next and would get upset if we skipped anything. I swear it was a trap to bore us to death!

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that she is so bright. I just couldn't handle the spelling bee at midnight after a long day. Our schedule is kind of strange since Ketu and I both work from home. Technically Ketu works for a company in CA, but I think we live on Hawaii time instead of CA time. We usually get up at 9:00 am, A-chan gets up at 10:30 am. A-chan usually goes to bed at 10:30 pm (with a 2 hour nap around 3pm) while we go to bed at 2:00am.

Words of the week #3

I love you
is!
bye bye dada, miss you, see you get home
christmas tree
movie (instead of video which she's known for a long time)
what time is it?
wednesday bath night is!
fat, fat, FAT! (from Kiki's Delivery Service)
oh, I see, yes
right now
Oh hi there, good morning
pickle scarf, I make ( in relation to her snowman lunch with a pickle for a scarf. she ate one piece and replaced it with another pickle.)
Dada make christmas tree
Mata, a-chan, dada kiss after hug
Oh no Purrpurr, I sit on you
do tai chi (pronounced tai cheep), yahoo!
Hi there, good morning, how are you?

Unspoken codes

The singing jawa
Originally uploaded by natakiya.

It's interesting how we have sets of silent codes with A-chan. She knows that if she wakes up early in the morning and Mata is still in night clothes that it isn't time to wake up. Generally she will recognize this and go back to sleep easily, or be ready to get up if I'm dressed in day clothes.

She has a code for us, too. If her stuffed animal lovies are on their tummies in her bed she is ready for a nap. If they are face up, however, it means she doesn't want a nap. Sometimes her code can work against her, though. We can ocassionally turn over the lovies to the 'sleepy setting' and convince her that they want to nap, wouldn't she like one too?

What's in the basket?

What's in the basket?
Originally uploaded by natakiya.

When I cleaned out the closet yesterday I found the perfect toy for both cats and toddler! The simple basket may look humble to most, but the amount of fun that can be had from one is exhausting. Aha! It's also the perfect thing to sleep in. At least, if you're a cat it is. But if you're a toddler, it is an even better toy with a cat sleeping inside. Because then you get to play the 'how many things can I pile on top of the kitty before it wakes up and leaves' game!

A-chan & the umbrella

A-chan & the umbrella
Originally uploaded by natakiya.

A-chan loves to play with her dragon umbrella. Particularly to jump with it like Totoro does at the bus stop.

The Stuck Syndrome

Today was such an incredibly better day than yesterday. There was a nap taken by a certain little girl and that made my day for certain! My mother came for dinner this evening and as always A-chan was enthusiastic about the idea until Amma actually showed up when A-chan became all shy and clingy.

Later in the evening A-chan decided that National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation was rather more boring than was advertised and went on a lie-down protest in the middle of the dining room floor this evening. For about 10 minutes she chanted "no video" to the house at large and kept asking Ketu to come and pick her up.

Finally, her protests were effective and Ketu was dragged down onto the floor with her. He was on the floor in the living room, though. When next she asked for him to pick her up he replied with, "I can't right now, I'm stuck. Maybe if you come and help me up I can help you up."

With that she happily said, "'kay!", jumped up off the floor, ran over to give him a hand up. Once he was on his feet she ran back to her spot, promptly laid back down and waited for him to come help her. It was just so cute! We couldn't help laughing. She was in a much better mood after that too.