Friday baby-blogging

Some long overdue kid pictures from the last month or so. I tend to get way behind in processing photos, but a few real winners is a good motivation!


Obligatory pic in Easter finery, although I missed the cute egg-hunting action shots...


Not an Easter egg, but a giant "dinosaur egg" at the zoo playhouse.


Apparently a froggy gullet is an ok place to be...

Poor widdle corporations

Thank goodness our current Supreme Court is there to protect them from any disturbance or unhappiness! Wouldn't want them to have to watch where they're putting their feet down all the time... [head-desk]

(via digby)

A playground for grown-ups!

At least, that's what this parkour practice city feels like to me. Man, those people are athletic, and this stuff just looks like a whole lotta fun!

(via kottke)

Link dump: parenting-related

Arranged loosely by age of child...

• Enough With the Breast-feeding Wars!

  It's a measure of how crazed we have become on this topic that just saying, "It's not such a big deal!" is a big deal. Our culture is hung up on mama's milk, and the undercurrent is: Why should anyone consider what is best for the mom when the baby's whole future is at stake?

  If only sanity had a chance!
  
  
• Why Preschool Shouldn't Be Like School -- figuring things out trumps having it explained every time. More in a similar vein: Let Preschoolers Play!
  
  
• Stealing from Kids, Part II -- we can't forget to teach minimal self-sufficiency.
  
  
• A mom comes up with a project in which her kids can earn badges for mastering skills around the house, from pumping up a tire to sewing to reading a map. Fun and empowering!!
  
  
• Mother of all recessions -- finances are forcing some women off the "mommy track" and back into the workforce, which may be just as well... (a friend of mine is quoted here! :)
  
  
• Outrage of the Week: Mandatory Fingerprinting for Little League Vols
  
  
• Slut-Shaming on the Playground -- it's never too early to counter antifeminist memes
  
  
• TEDxObserver talk on kids and privacy -- Cory Doctorow reassures and challenges parents whose kids are online.
  
  
• Suicide-Proof Your Teen (as Much as You Can)
  

Not what you'd like to see reported

...about police anywhere, let alone many places!

Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists as the greatest threat to the American public.

When civil liberties extend only up to the point where you get arrested (rightly or wrongly), you're not living in a civilized nation. These guys in New Orleans make the 1980s LAPD look sort of mannered!

Friday giggles

This tot has a seriously delirious giggle. Apparently he loves bubbles and his dog does too. Hard to beat a good time for all!

Putting kids in perspective

Just love this piece on the myriad responsibilities that a 9-year-old can take in stride, loving the tasks and the importance of helping out (and keeping her family's farm running).

Because they can, if you just let them. Because sometimes a job well done is a reward unto itself. Because it feels good to be a family member, instead of just a dependent. Because everyone wants to walk strong and smart and confident in this world.

Kids need to play, but they need to feel that they're doing things that matter too. We need to remember that they can manage a lot more than we sometimes think...

Quote of the day

Now winter, the winter I am writing about, begins to ease. And what, if anything, has been determined, selected, nailed down? This is the lesson of age – events pass, things change, trauma fades, good fortune rises, fades, rises again but different. Whereas what happens when one is twenty, as I remember it, happens forever. I have not been twenty for a long time! The sun rolls toward the north and I feel, gratefully, its brightness flaming up once more. Somewhere in the world the misery we can do nothing about yet goes on.

- Mary Oliver

(via whiskey river)

Keep saying it until we no longer have to

Adobe's entry in the It Gets Better movement. Man, so much experience of "if I could just get through this part..." -- we need it to get better today so everybody can "give future you a chance"!

(via NowThis)

Why I love the Internet

There are, of course, many reasons, but the fact that there's a wide outlet for specific kinds of inspired ridiculousness is definitely among the top arguments. Ah, happy Friday!

(via kottke)

A smaller heap of links, of the cheery and interesting variety

Because apparently I barely remember how to blog anymore. Sigh.

• New poll: The public trusts EPA, loves the Clean Air Act, and wants Congress to butt out Please make air standards stricter!
  
  
• Anthony Weiner Sarcastically Mocks GOP NPR Defunding Bill because surely there's nothing bigger to worry about!
  
  
• Illinois abolishes death penalty (calls the system broken)
  
  
• SXSW 2011: The internet is over -- technology moves out into real life
  
  
• Awesome Augmented Reality App Could Save Librarians Hours -- can analyze a bookshelf photo to find books that are out of place
  
  
• A little video on how to iron a shirt efficiently and effectively.
  
  
• Some crazy concepty art/shoe designs that I'd never want to wear but couldn't stop paging through.
  
  
• Toilet paper tubes repurposed as works of art (not unlike diorama Easter eggs).
  
  
• A flowchart to help you determine if you’re having a rational discussion (in case you need moral support for walking away)
  
  
• A photo that asks the impoderable questions... or something.
  
  
• Along semi-similar lines, a touching regret letter from spoon to fork.

Is it Friday yet??

Quote of the day

The truths we have come to understand need to find their visible expression in our lives. It is not enough to be a possessor of wisdom. To believe ourselves to be custodians of truth is to become its opposite, is a direct path to becoming stale, self-righteous, or rigid. Ideas and memories do not hold liberating or healing power. There is no such state as enlightened retirement, where we can live on the bounty of past attainments. Wisdom is alive only as long as it is lived, understanding is liberating only as long as it is applied. A bulging portfolio of spiritual experiences matters little if it does not have the power to sustain us through the inevitable moments of grief, loss, and change. Knowledge and achievements matter little if we do not yet know how to touch the heart of another and be touched.

- Jack Kornfield

(via whiskey river)

What's wrong with this headline?

Budget talks come down to abortion

Quote of the day (Twitter edition)

Impressive that our expectations of government have shrunk to "don't shut down" and may still be unmet.

pourmecoffee

(retweeted by Medley)

Now, isn't that better?

I think what we all need is a cute sleeping puppy to distract us from the fact that our government is about to go to hell shut down. Awwwwwwww......



If that isn't sufficient to stop your head-banging, try this huge gaggle of additional cuties. Now, aren't you feeling all warm and fuzzy?

Link dump: latest outrages edition

• Ohio Town Sees Public Job as Only Route to Middle Class -- too bad that their legislators are trying to gut that option too
  
  
• House Agriculture committee: Cut food assistance, but keep farm subsidies Sigh.
  
  
• Buried Provision In House GOP Bill Would Cut Off Food Stamps To Entire Families If One Member Strikes -- unreal.
  
  
• Republicans want 'In God We Trust' emblazoned on 9,000 federal buildings, cost could top $100m -- of course, see the two previous...
  
  
• Retired General: Republicans Making Nuclear Terrorism More Likely by cutting our programs to help countries like Russia get rid of heaps of nuclear materials
  
  
• Cuts Weren't Enough -- GOP plans to phase out Medicare, so they can stop being annoyed at how successful and popular it is
  
  
• The Death and Life of the Democratic Party -- the withering of unions has pushed the party into the arms of big business, leaving it torn about its principles; see also this cartoon. Sigh.
  
  
• Boehner’s Tough Spot Hides Democratic Ideological Giveaway -- more evidence that the Democrats no longer even see themselves as standing for something
  
  
• Epic irony: Mideast moves forward while America moves backward -- a grim compilation of the war on women's rights, in particular. Related: No justice on earth until there is justice for women -- seems an obvious point
  
  
• Obama administration curtails rights for terror suspects -- same as the old boss?? See also US military's "gratuitously harsh treatment" of Manning condemned by NYT, WaPo, LAT, ACLU and Clinton To Congress: Obama Would Ignore Your War Resolutions -- it all makes me want to cry.
  
  
• TOM THE DANCING BUG: U.S. Bombs U.S. Schools -- kind of sums up my frustrations with our involvement in Libya
  
  
• How a lie enters the political bloodstream -- important piece about how journalists set the terms of acceptable versus fringe debate

  What's key to understand about this model is that what ends up in the various spheres has very little to do with empirical or logical merit. These are not truth categories, they are categories of practice, shaped by social forces. In other words, they are deeply, intrinsically political, though "objective" reporters seem almost incapable of recognizing that they are engaging in political choices.

• Weak Job Market Forces Maine Legislator to Leave the State -- their legislature is part-time, so reps really "feel the pain" just like their constituents!
  
  
• Speaking of Maine, Maine Governor Orders Mural Depicting Labor History Removed From Labor Department -- these guys really take Orwell to heart!
  
  
• Who Screwed the Middle Class?

  A lot has happened over the past 30 years, but if you're looking for a single political sea change that's had the biggest impact on middle class wages—more important than union decline, more important than NAFTA, more important than the end of Glass-Steagall—it's the political consensus that underlies the Fed's reluctance to allow labor markets to stay tight enough to generate wage increases in the real economy. And it's something we're seeing all over again right now, as the DC chattering classes have almost unanimously decided that inflation is our real enemy right now, even though core inflation is running around 1% and unemployment is still near 9%.

• Beware the Vultures -- our policing of parents is making their lives almost unworkable.
  
  
• TSA to retest airport body scanners for radiation -- some have shown 10 times more radiation release than we've been promised so often is harmless. But you can trust the TSA!!

If only...

There are many times when we wish "if only" -- if only smarter people were in charge, if only the media focused on what was important, if only politicians would worry about jobs and not the deficit, if only America appeared to be true to its ideals. Well, having written that list, it's a bit anticlimactic to append the two links that sparked it, but here they are:

1. I wish smart econ bloggers were in charge!

   In a rational world, there should be no discussion of the deficit as policy. Team D and Team R would present their competing visions for what the government should spend money on, and where that money should come from. ... Ideally, we'd have one party that thinks we should spend a bit more on things like social safety nets, and do so with more progressive taxation, and one party which thinks we should spend a bit less, and with more regressive taxation, and the voters would have a reasonably clear choice.

   Sounds like crazy socialist Euro-think!


2. I wish that people wouldn't fantasize that Presidents can fix everything!

   The federal government is full of smart, competent, persuasive people working in a system that prevents them from rapidly addressing even the problems with obvious solutions. Let’s see some realistic thought experiments that address that.

Well, at least there are some homework projects for the industrious among us to contemplate and maybe even work on...

Quote of the day

No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile.

-- Mark Helprin
via Mrs. Gamely, in Winter's Tale

Top books of 2010, Speck edition

Speck goes through cycles of having us read to her a ton versus showing interest only at bedtime, but a few books seem to transcend her general pattern to become repeat entertainments all by themselves. Three books really stood out in this category during this past fall and winter, to the degree that I thought they deserved some public recognition.

1. The top of this list would have to be Llama Llama Misses Mama by Anna Dewdney, a book that describes a little llama (star of several other books) on his trepidatious first day at preschool, initially so overcome with missing his mama that he's unable to participate in any of the fun taking place around him, but eventually getting sucked in by the kindness of the teacher and kids and having a good time. Top quotes: "Don't be sad now, little llama! It's ok to miss your mama. But don't forget: when day is through, she will come right back to you!" and "Llama Llama, please don't fuss; have some fun and play with us!"
   
   I initially got this book from the library to help introduce Speck to the idea of preschool, to help her visualize what might be there, how she might be scared and/or might have fun. I thought it might give us some entries to talk about that stuff, and indeed it did, much more than I anticipated. She asked about the line "Mama Llama goes away; Llama Llama has to stay", and we developed a set of discussion points such as "mama has to go to work" and "preschool isn't for mommies!" We talked about the little llama turning away from games and fun, and how he was missing out on possibilities. We speculated that he probably didn't really "hate that book" but was just feeling grumpy and unwilling to give it a chance. We grinned over the way he shouted and dropped his crayons when he saw his momma returned to pick him up, and laughed when she tried to fit inside the playhouse. Most amazingly, we read this book over and over, day after day, exhausting our library renewals and then getting it out again and repeating the process, long after Speck had made her own successful transition to preschool, long after I should probably have already bought the book but kept imagining we'd be done with it soon.
   
   Reading this book (and the next) also became linked to having a snack of matzohs and cream cheese in the afternoon; either could suggest the other. But there was never a single pass through this book. It's been at the library for a month or two now, but writing this has made me realize that I should probably go and get it out again and see what new tidbits it might have to offer...



2. Next up is Night Shift, by Jessie Hartland. This is a rare case where I brought home a library book whose illustration style (something like chaoticized child's drawings) I actively disliked, because it seemed like a neat topic: what sorts of work goes on around a city in the evening hours and overnight, that you never get to see? We visit boat captains moving freight, a museum guard listening to a late-night DJ, and donut bakers getting their wares ready before dawn, among many others. It's long (which appears to be a draw for Speck in certain moods), but offers nice linkages from one player to the next to pull us along until the late-nighters and the early-morningers all meet at a diner for breakfast.
   
   Anyway, she loves it, and it's another that has been read and read until her parents nearly groan to see it coming out of the pile. But there's lots of detail and silliness to pick out along the way, as well as questions to ask about how the world works -- why is there less traffic at 2am? why do the bridge painters paint around a hawk's nest? etc. Speck particularly likes following some oscelots from their shipping crates to their cage in the nocturnal section of the zoo, through various edge-of-the-action cameos (and maybe a diner outing at the end). Anyway, the book has won me over, what with all the rereadings and examination of details, and I now look upon its multicolored pages with affection.



3. Finally, we made a great find in The Year at Maple Hill Farm, by Alice and Martin Provensen. I thought that this might be kind of a stretch for my 2-year-old when I brought it home, but she was entranced with it immediately and had us read it obsessively until she had memorized whole sets of the shorter descriptions. It talks about the months and seasons of the year by way of how they affect the activities of the animals who live on a farm, with horses feeling frisky in the spring and roosters dealing with the indignity of moulting, and does a good job of evoking the seasonal sensibilities of life on a farm without the need for a treacly or historical patina.
   
   The book is full of detailed drawings and quirky barnyard personalities, which later led us to visit the also-wonderful Our Animal Friends by the same authors. Both books treat the animals and their readers with great respect and a little wry affection, and will offer more to readings at subsequent ages. These books were recently reissued in softcover (after original publication in the 1970s, I think), and we quickly bought both, although not all of the color is perfectly reproduced from our well-worn library copies. I look forward to Speck's viewing this one as one of her old friends.

Latest shadenfreude

I'd like to be a bigger person, but for now I'll have to live with the fact that this story just made my day. Can we be done with this "I'll show you mine if..." crap already?!?

(via HunterDK's Twitter feed)