Playroom Day

As you may have read on the blog before, we spend every Wednesday morning at our friend Kevin's playroom. We love the playroom. It's huge, much bigger than the playroom in our building and there are tons of fun toys. Yet with all the time we've spent here, I've never brought my camera. This morning my friend Catharine came with her son Sorin so it seemed like a good time to bring the camera. Here are my favorites of the day.

Jill plays ring-around-the-rosie with Jamie, Kevin, Katie, and Erika

Snack time in the playroom. We instituted snack time recently because otherwise it becomes an all morning buffet. It still didn't stop Erika from getting a box of raisins out from the bottom of Katie's stroller...
Lunch time for Katie and Sorin at Erika's house.

Dressing up for the laundry

Katie and Ania were getting ready to do her laundry - quite a production when you live in an apartment building with a common laundry room - and Ania got me to come see Katie. Katie decided that she had to dress up to do the laundry. She put on a dress and her favorite hat, a necklace, a bracelet, a purse and her best flip flops all for the special event of doing the laundry. It was pretty hysterical. She's so girly.

Today I took Katie for a quick stop at a suburban supermarket. In the city, we go food shopping with her in her stroller so she never sits in a cart. So besides the trips to Target, sitting in a cart is a fun novelty for urban Katie. At one point she was sitting in the basket of the cart and crushing the few groceries we had. I got a little mad and told her that she had to stop that. Katie immediately recognized I was mad. Her response? "I love you Mommy," in a sweet sing-song voice.

We're at Aunt Rachel's cool!

We finally made it to Aunt Rachel's pool yesterday. It was warm, but not a true swimming day because it wasn't sunny so we had the whole pool to ourselves. Katie didn't seem to mind that the pool was cool and we had fun. We bought her a swim vest for additional bouyancy and she liked it a lot. Here she is in the swim vest

It's worth mentioning that Katie also went swimming in an outdoor pool last weekend at her friend Ariel's family's country house. Without a camera, I felt a little lost not being able to blog the small and large events in her life. I also know that other parents don't try to capture all the minutia of toddlerhood. I think my friends and family are used to my picture taking and they like looking for themselves on the blog. There were many moments last week that I felt were worth documenting - I loved seeing Katie play with my cousins, for example. But post-funeral or shiva didn't feel like an appropriate venue (although one might argue that in other cultures it's very appropriate and commonly done). So anyway, we'll just have to see my cousins another time - and Ariel, we'll catch you at our next playdate.

Little Miss Chatterbox

Have I mentioned lately what a little chatterbox Katie is? Katie's fond of a non-stop narration of what she's doing and she's also known for bursting out into song spontaneously. I'm a Little Teapot is her current favorite. We're always amused by what comes out of her mouth. For example, tonight in the bath tub she was pouring down her cheek. "Why are you doing that Katie?" "Because that's what I do."

Sunny day with Oma

Friday was a beautiful sunny day and we sat outside with Oma. Katie is very into her Clifford puzzle and must have done it about 20 times. It's a cute 9-piece puzzle that's reversible, so Katie, in her narration, said "first I'll do the yellow side, then I'll do the blue side." The proud great-grandma watched and said, "I'm kvelling." It's really a treat for all of us to be outside - Oma because she doesn't get out that much and us because we've been lamenting the lack of backyard this summer.

In memory of...

Katie went to a funeral yesterday. It wasn't another first experience for her (that was Peter's grandfather when she was 4 months old), but another life cycle event that reminds us about the importance of life, friends, and family. My Uncle Alan died on Monday. His health has not been good over the past few months, but no one had expected him to die just yet, especially when his father lived to be 100. I realized that I don't have a picture of Uncle Alan so I thought I'd share this one from my grandfather's 99th birthday party, August 2003. My cousins Illyse (white shirt) and Matthew (right) are Alan's children and Jill (black shirt) is Matthew's wife. [Illyse is a very loyal Urban Meadow fan]. Next to my grandfather is Sophie, his fantastic wife of almost 13 years. We hope to go to Florida soon to see her.

It was definitely a debate about whether Katie should go to the funeral. Clearly she wouldn't understand what was going on and we suspected she wouldn't be quiet enough to be respectful (2-year-olds are not known for respect, I remembered this the other day when she tried to knock Meadow with the broom). Yet we felt that death is part of life and there's no reason to separate her from that, especially when her presence might be a comforting reminder of the continuity of life in the next generation. I debated this with my friend Sara who is both the daughter of a rabbi and the wife of a rabbi, as well as a Jewish educator. She explained to me that probably from the time she was Katie's age her parents took her to funerals of the older congregants who sat in the back of their synagogue and gave her candy, so she grew up with an understanding of death and that it was a natural part of life. It was a beautiful and eloquent e-mail and I have to thank her for that.

So back to yesterday. Peter sat with Katie outside the service - he could hear what was said but no one could hear Katie. And we all went to the burial together in Brooklyn. It was a very old Jewish cemetery and it was right next to the elevated train. Katie got excited each time a train came by and said "The subway! The subway!" I really think Katie added some light to a sad day. Back at Susan's apartment, Katie kept herself busy in the other room coloring and doing her favorite Clifford puzzle and I'd like to think that she was a pleasant distraction for Susan whose grandchildren couldn't be there. And everyone mentioned that Katie was so good. I'm taking her back tonight for shiva and I'm hoping her behavior continues, especially because it will be late.

A few words about my uncle. My cousin Matthew had a beautiful eulogy for his dad, just as he had for my grandfather 2 years ago. He said my uncle was an imposing figure - very tall and large with a loud voice. I found this very intimidating when I was little and really preferred to be around my Aunt Judy. Alan was very smart and shared many of the same interests with my grandfather and my dad - music, reading, and politics (Kaplan men don't quite make it to the tennis court you know). He did all the obligatory uncle things for me; he even came to my college graduation - because our family had gone to his children's graduations years before. I can't imagine that entire family had any desire to spend the weekend in Providence - and I did not blame them in the slightest - and they were there anyway. Thankfully he and Susan welcomed Peter into the family even with his differening political views. And Jill & Matthew's wedding was the first Kaplan family occasion I took Peter to.

Aunt Judy died when I was 9 and I have very fond memories of her. Judy's nephew was at the cemetery yesterday. We're the same age and he grew up in Illinois, but I remember many different occasions we played together when he visited NJ. Isaac and I had not seen each other in 24 years and it was nice to see him so many years later - both of us grown and married with the children the same age - and now he lives in Park Slope (just like Knuffle Bunny). I have to say that it was almost like visiting a past life in that way, especially because I think Isaac's mom looks like a much shorter version of Aunt Judy. Susan, Alan's wife, has been in my life since about the time I was 12 and is a wonderfully warm person and I know that we'll continue to be part of her family.

So I'll end now with my favorite Uncle Alan memory. In 1985, my dad was in a terrible car crash. He skidded and hit a bus head on and shattered his hip. After a long recovery, he was back at work. The night before his first post-accident trial, my dad was very nervous. He hadn't been in the courtroom for a while. My uncle came over and spent many hours that night sitting at the kitchen table with my dad, going over the trial and what my dad was going to say, boosting his confidence and making him feel better about the next day. I was about 11 at the time and it made an impression to me. Uncle Alan's presence showed me that even as an adults, siblings, especially big brothers, are there to support you.

Hilary & Rohit visit

Part of our busy weekend last week included a visit from Hilary and Rohit, in from DC. It was nice to see them again. We saw them at their wedding in Belize and at Laina & Jed's wedding in Seattle, but they finally had a chance to hang out with Katie ( "Ah - hem. Me too," says Meadow). They are wonderful toddler and dog people so both our girls enjoyed them a lot. It's kind of unfortunate that we don't get down to DC - Peter and I both have lots of friends there. Hopefully we will go some time this fall (dog sitter permitting, of course).

Here they are reading books with Katie and Meadow. Katie will read books over and over. Her newest favorite is "It's Sharing Day" a Dora book that both Peter and I have grown to detest because she's asked us to read it so many times. Being a Dora book, there are a few Spanish words. Katie now knows arroz con leche and abuela and will explain that they are going to Dora's grandma's house and need milk and rice to make rice pudding. And Katie's been correcting my pronounciation. She says "it's not OU-UR, it's OUR" and that the animal in Eric Carle's Polar Bear, Polar Bear, is "not a hippotamus, it's a hippo" and "it's not a 'stricter' [boa constricter] - it's a snake!"

Rainy Day

It's a cold and rainy day for August in NYC. Here's Katie dressed in her raincoat and matching boots. She's so excited to wear her boots, she's known for wearing them around the house with shorts. Because of the rain, Katie and Ania are headed out to the children's museum. They are taking the bus which is always a fun adventure for Katie. Katie said she didn't want to go to the children's museum, she wants to go to the "Dora Museum." The children's museum has a whole floor devoted to Dora and we were looking at pictures of it from her birthday this morning. So I guess she just doesn't want to go to the usual exhibit. Katie's new thing is giving sequential instructions. "First we're going to the Dora Museum. Then we're going to the block museum." In the morning, her sequential narration goes something like this "First I'll get out of my crib. Then you'll change my diaper. Then I'll have breakfast. Then I'll get dressed. Then I'll play with my puzzle."

We're going to our cool!

Slightly updated Katie pictures - Aug 5th. We took Katie to our pool - or "cool" as she calls it. Because she put on her bathing suit, she insisted on bringing her watering can to the pool, and of course the sunglasses added to the effect. It's funny that she figured that you need the same thing for the pool as the beach (though she didn't ask for sunscreen).

As you can see, our pool has a slightly oppressive swim cap rule. Katie said "I go swimming with my hat!" It's not that it's bad to wear caps, they do cut down on hair in the pool, it's just that it's not very comfortable. We gave Katie the comfortable lycra one so we have to invest in more for the rest of us. We certainly don't use the pool as much as we should, but that'll be something to work on in the future. It is kind of nice to just take the elevator upstairs to a huge pool.

Dungeness Spit

Okay - Camera is officially broken. In this age of planned obsolescence, it probably doesn't pay to get it fixed. Sad though, isn't it.

Katie's been really funny these past few days. Her phrase of the week is "I'm doing ___ really fast." I'm walking, I'm running, I'm reading really fast!

When we went to walk Meadow today, she insisted on walking with me and taking her new stuffed Clifford in her doll stroller. Because I've been through this routine before where she takes the doll stroller and I end up carrying Katie, the doll stroller, and walking Meadow, I gave her fair warning. "Katie," I said, "if you take Clifford in the doll stroller, I am not going to carry you."

"Okay Mommy," Katie replied, "I'm not going to carry you!"

The Clifford, by the way, just happened to be at my parents' house and she seemed to really like it so he joined us back in the city. It's very much like my mother to have bought a children's stuffed animal and just have it lying around.

I'm going to try to take some new pics soon with our borrowed camera.

This picture is from the Dungeness Spit. It's the piece of land that the famous crab is named after. It was a 1/2 a mile walk down to the beach and at this point we decided that it was not worth trying to take Katie in the backpack - she'd had it with the backpack. And again, we seemed to forget we traveling with a todller, it was our 3rd stop of the day. So we practically had to drag her down the very easy trail. At one point, I was trying to get her moving with a teddy graham every few feet. It didn't work and Peter told me that it sounded more like I was trying to walk Meadow than get Katie to walk cooperatively. When we finally made it down to the spit, it was so windy we spent about 5 minutes and turned around. It was a neat thing though, here's a picture.

Care and Meadow

Katie and I were reading a book this evening when Meadow's dog sitter called. We've sent Meadow to Lori's house for every vacation possible over the past 4 years (especially since Oct '04 when our neighbor Judy moved). Turns out that Lori is having surgery and has to cancel our upcoming reservation. Oh no! I'm so sorry that Lori needs surgery and I would that it's serious because I think she would have said if it weren't. And she's such a great dog sitter, I can't imagine that she would cancel unless she absolutely had to. But it makes me realize just how dependent we are on this one woman to care for our much loved canine child. Lori lives in the suburbs, and sending Meadow there was sending her on a "real" vacation. She plays with Lori's dog Krissy and runs around in her fenced-in backyard. I like to think that the time she spends may somewhat make up for the urban part of Urban Meadow; she gets a real suburban dog's life, complete with occasional ticks (which we don't mind because we know it comes with the territory). Although don't get me wrong, I am a big proponent of urban dog life, it's just that the urban dogs with the toddler siblings that get a little "rewed" as Meadow would say. Meadow had it great before Katie was born and her pal Kobi still has it great - he has older siblings.

But where do you find care for your dog with little notice for a busy time?

Not only did this remind me on our reliance on Lori, but it also reminded me that if it's not one child, it's the other...

We have somewhat narrow parameters for dog care. We want her in a home, because that's what she's used to. And, since we don't live in a house, this means the dogsitter has to board in their house. This is more rare than you'd think in the suburbs. I know a few people in the city who take dogs in, but we really want her to have the suburban "advantages" as long as she's away. Anyway, after a few phone calls, Meadow has an "interview" tomorrow with a woman in NJ. I'm not getting my hopes up because the woman says she's psychic and it sounds like she has cats (Meadow hasn't ever really been around cats), but we'll see.

The photo is Meadow at about 3-months-old. This was 2 months before we got our digital camera so we don't have too many photos from those days to post. She was pretty cute.

Care and Katie

Well the Carework Conference and ASA are over and we're heading back to the routine. I've been really busy the past few days and Katie's had a patchwork of care. In case you don't know, I study working parents and their care arrangements (though for older children than Katie). The current literature on child care would put Katie's care arrangements into different categories, but one thing I've always had trouble with was the idea that fathers are "babysitting." A lot of the literature and survey data puts father-care into the category of "relative care" which therefore uses the mother as the norm. If you're a truly involved dad, how can you "babysit" your own child? So I have to thank Peter for taking the care shift (not babysitting!) this past weekend as well as Ania, her friend Aga, and my friend Kelli (and the UWS girls) for taking on the rest. I told Aga yesterday that when Ania came into our lives, I didn't realize that I was also gaining access to her wonderful network of friends and that is very special.

The highlight for me over the past few days was the Carework Conference. This almost biannual event brings researchers and care advocates together in a formal forum, but one without the bureaucracy of larger ones. It's a really welcoming place and I enjoy meeting the people who attend. I presented a paper on what it means to care for yourself in the early adolescent years. I call it the accidental paper - it developed when I realized that the kids I spoke to in self-care and the kids who had paid caregivers really do the same thing during the after-school hours, so it made me question what it means to "care for yourself." I got some terrific feedback. I can't tell you how great it makes me feel to hear seasoned researchers say "That's really interesting work. No one has looked at this before." Now I know it's true that no one has looked at it before - I presented this paper to try to get some ideas on the meaning of self-care because I couldn't find anything in the literature. So I find the carework conference inspiring and I just now have to turn that inspiration into a complete dissertation.

I realize that I haven't ever written about my work before on the blog - this is Katie's place. But work is part of life and carework, especially. And it's good to recognize my life outside of Katie. Since my camera's broken, I don't have any new pics of her to share (will work on that in the next day or so). I feel like I'm missing out on documenting her life since I like to blog it, but it's only been a week. And hopefully Howard will send me some pics of cousin Robin's birthday party yesterday. Katie had such a great time running around with the "big kids" - the 4-year-olds.

This picture is from the Hoh Rainforest in Forks, WA. This was July 4th. We took a walk along this path that was covered in lots of mosses. It looked picturesque when we were there, but the actual pics don't really reflect this. Katie wasn't really in the mood to pose, so Peter showed her his belly button (bebo, as the children's author Sandra Boynton puts it). So here's Katie showing off her bebo in response. The doll she has with her is a stuffed Dora our friend Jed's mom bought Katie. Susie didn't know who Dora was, she just thought it was cute. It became Katie's constant companion the rest of our trip.

Classic Katie photo

We had our friends Dave and Bess over for dinner last night. When I went to take a picture of Katie playing with the 2 of them, I was upset to find the camera was not working. So here's a classic Katie photo from their wedding in December 2005. Katie was 8-months old. It was a treat to see them - since we haven't been to DC since their wedding.

Yesterday afternoon I was busy preparing dinner so I had little time for Katie and less patience. Katie said to me, "Mommy, I'm upset. I'm not happy." She's never used the word upset before.
"Why are you not happy Katie?"
"I'm upset because you're not playing with me. Maybe Daddy's friends will play with me?"

I was really glad that Katie could express her feelings, I'm not sure that she has done this before. At the same time though, it made me wonder if I was raising a child who needed to be entertained? She will often play by herself, though sometimes for only short periods of time. It's rare that I'm so preoccupied with something that I can't interrupt what I'm doing to give her a few minutes. But still it's a good question to ponder. Do you buy all of these games and puzzles and toys only for parent-child interaction? I like helping her do puzzles and she likes making me food in her play kitchen. But isn't there a value to some self-sufficiency in play at this age?

In the meantime this morning, I was sitting at the table drinking coffee (Are you making coffee Mommy?) and Katie was in her room. I asked what she was doing. "I'm reading a book by myself."

Katie's new kitchen

I finally bit the bullet and chose a play kitchen for Katie as a birthday present from Nana & Papa. Okay, it's August, why is my April-born daughter getting her birthday present now? Well we didn't really want one for a while because I didn't think that the amount of time she would use it would justify the large amount of space it would take up. I finally gave in when she kept pretending to make "Chinese soup" in the bath and making me coffee every morning with the tea set that Jill bought her. I found the one that combined the smallest size and most accoutrements. Turns out she loves it and it fits very nicely into a little nook of her room. She says "Nana bought me a kitchen!"

You wouldn't know it from this picture, but Katie was sick. On Wednesday we were at our playgroup at Kevin's playroom and she was fine and happily playing. Just before we left, she got really cranky and didn't want to take turns. Now I've mentioned briefly before that Katie doesn't share well or take turns well yet, it's something that we're working on (but more on that another time). So I thought she was just getting tired and she was being cranky. Well when we got home and I took her out of the stroller, I thought she felt warm so I thought I'd take her temperature. It was 103! Katie is not a kid who seems to get high fevers so this was a little disturbing. The pediatrician said that a high fever virus was going around the neighborhood and Katie was just a "good Upper West Sider." She had the fever for 3 days and was better yesterday and today she developed a rash so my guess it was roseola all along.