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.