Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Belated post

So I haven't posted anything in quite a while. The lack of posts is partly due to other demands on my time, but it also reflects that blog posts involve a certain momentum that dissipates without activity. That is, I can't remember exactly what I was writing about or what was going on in my last posts. As a result, the whole process loses a sense of momentum and continuity.

The result is that I have some stuff - pictures and movies - to post. But I have no idea what to write about. Let's see.....

Well, Margaret is interesting, as always. But Teddy is the one who is really interesting at this point. His verbals skills have progressed to the point that he's actually a functioning member of the family. At this point, he rarely babbles. Instead, almost everything that he says - and he has a lot to say - actually means something. We may be the only people who can interpret his gibberish, but it's rarely complete nonsense. While Margaret tends to say more interesting things (such as, "We don't like taxi drivers because they don't know our city!" during our taxi ride home from the airport), Teddy occasionally tosses in interesting thoughts and opinions of his own. Although such opinions are noted but rarely honored, it's still fun to see what he'll say.

Physically, Teddy is also making progress. He rarely makes clearly clumsy moves at this point. For example, he is much better on the stairs, so much so that we have considered taking down the many gates. And he loves to run. He pumps his little arms and churns his body, as if such actions will make him go faster. In the end, he may fall, but such events are less systematic than they once were. An associated development is his interest in sports - he loves soccer/futbol, basketball, baseball, and tennis. He doesn't always correctly identify the sport on TV, with confusion often arising for basketball, baseball, and football, but he's drawn to and loves to play them all. Of course, Margaret likes sports and sporting events as well, especially soccer and events associated with our hometown team, DC United, but Teddy takes his interest to another level. As with many other differences between the kids, we're not sure if this reflects a gender difference or something else.

Hmmm, what else? Can't think of much, but perhaps the following pictures and video will suffice.



Thursday, September 3, 2009

Pink princess slippers

(For folks looking for pictures, we're heading up to Philly for Labor Day weekend, so we should have plenty of pictures when we return.)

After a nasty, putrid August, the weather in DC has become much cooler and less humid in the last week. In fact, it got so cool that Margaret asked for a sweater after breakfast on Tuesday. I ran upstairs and grabbed the gray fleece sweater that I'd bought for her in a sale at some point over the summer. "I don't like that sweater. I want my pink sweater," she said, after I brought it downstairs. "But your pink sweater doesn't fit you anymore," I said, "Just wear this one." "No, I want a pink sweater." We went back and forth for a while until I finally convinced Margaret to wear the gray sweater "just this once." After we pointed out, in the car on our way to school, that both Mama and Grandma Nancy have gray fleece sweaters, she seemed to tentatively accept that the gray sweater was actually acceptable. But she didn't seem terribly happy about it.

This exchange reflects a battle that I've been expecting for some time. Apparently, kids can become very obstinate about their clothes. This behavior has been evident in our family for some time - Margaret often puts up a fight over her clothes, for no apparent reason except to reject the proposed outfit. I've also heard many stories about girls who want to wear "pink princess" outfits. (Abby tells a story about how she wore a particular cowgirl outfit for an extended period when she was a kid.) To the extent that this behavior reflects random attempts to exert control, I have little sympathy for it. After all, Teddy will say "not that one" we pull out a shirt, even if he has no real rationale for refusing the shirt, other than the fact that we proposed it. (He has no clue, but likes to use the phrases that he knows in an appropriate context. Bravo, I say, but that still doesn't make me want to honor his "requests.") But if Margaret's behavior reflects an actual shift in her clothing preferences, it's more problematic as it runs counter to a strategy that I've been using for some time. Let me explain.

Most people that I know find out the gender of their children before they are born. We didn't. Certain friends of mine found this baffling. "Why would you refuse free information?," one friend asked me (as gender determination is trivial given all of the prenatal ultrasounds). In the case of Margaret, my rationale for not learning her gender was quite simple. If we don't know the gender of the kid, then we'll receive lots of "gender neutral" stuff, including apparel and other baby items. Not pink or blue, but green, yellow or some other gender neutral color. If we were then to have a second kid, which we planned to do so on some level, then all of that stuff for the first kid would be usable for the second, regardless of the second's gender. In contrast, if we had known that Margaret was a girl, all of her pink clothes would have been useless for Teddy. As it turned out, baby Teddy ended up wearing a lot of the stuff that we received prior to Margaret's birth.

This only works for infant clothes, as once Margaret was born, the girl clothes flooded in. (It also doesn't explain why we didn't learn Teddy's gender. I actually can't explain that one.) But I've tried to keep up the basic "gender neutral" theme. Get a green shirt or plain tan shorts or simple blue jeans - Margaret can wear it now, and Teddy can wear it later. This hasn't worked perfectly as many kids clothes are too geared towards one gender or the other, but for certain items, say a red winter coat or maybe a gray fleece sweater, it has worked pretty well.

Until now, it would appear. Margaret has apparently reached the "pink princess" phase where she can recognize the difference between styles of clothes and, moveover, has clear opinions about the clothes that she actually likes. Hence, in addition to the protests over the gray sweater, we had the following exchange earlier tonight.

"Where are my slippers?," she asked.

"Your dragon slippers?," I replied.

"Yes, where are they?"

"Well, I think that they're in your shoe bin."

After digging around for them, Margaret pulled them out, compared them to her Converse hi-tops, and asked, "Are they size 7? Will they still fit me?"

"I don't know. They may be too small for you, in which case Teddy can have them. We may have to get you some new slippers."

"Can we get pink princess slippers?"

"No, I think that we'll look for more dragon slippers."

"But I want pink princess slippers!"

"But dragon slippers are really cool! Don't you want more dragon slippers?"

"No, I want pink princess slippers!"

As Abby noted regarding the gray sweater, I'm probably fighting a losing battle.