anything once: planning ahead for a toddler activity

I love doing activities with Eiley. We enjoy reading, looking at plants outside, singing, hanging out in the Eiley-sized pool in the backyard, playing games, etc. So maybe this first sounds like it's reaching, but it was a medium big deal to me because it required forethought. I mean, we went to a store, returned from the store, filled something with water, opened a freezer door, put something in the freezer. That's effort.

I'm starting to realize that this post is proving my lazy nature, but I am pressing on despite all of you judging me. 

Here's the activity, which I found by googling "art activities for babies":

1. Purchase popsicle molds. Really, this could work with straight up ice cubes, but the popsicle molds have handles so there's no risk of your kid getting frost bite or cranky. I bought mine at the 99 cents store. 

They look like little closed umbrellas!

2. Fill the popsicle molds with water and stick them in the freezer.

3. Once they're frozen, remove your ice pops, and use them to draw on the cement outside.

An alternate to this is putting Jello powder on a paper and letting your kid use the ice pop to make the color brighten on the paper, but that sounded like it would require clean up. I'm not that advanced yet.

Here's how it turned out:

1. Eiley enjoyed taking the pops out of the mold and putting them back in. Over and over and over.

2. Eiley and I both enjoyed feeding the ice pops to Buster. Can you imagine wearing a thick black sweater in 80 degree heat? We were happy to cool him off, and he thought he was sneaking a treat. Sucker.

Poor puppy!

3. I enjoyed writing on the ground with the ice pops, although the markings would evaporate in mere seconds. 

In conclusion, this was a simple, fun activity, even though Eiley in no way participated in the manner whatever website I found the idea on intended. And there was zero clean up. I suspect this first of planning ahead for a toddler activity is one I will repeat often in the next few years, and I'm cool with that.

happy birthday, tabitha!

. . . and then my life flashed before my eyes

I'm a little slow to jump on board, but I loved the posts by Emily and Jenna on ". . . and then my life flashed before my eyes" and so, without further ado, or too much thought (it is supposed to be a flash after all), here's my own list:

• doing the Cotten Eyed Joe (with Emily and others) up on stage at the President's Inaugural Ball in front of the entire extended Westmont community
• washing students' feet when I was a Westmont staff member
• nursing Sofia in the middle of the night when she was about a week old and seeing her eyes look into mine for the very first time
• standing by my Dad at 2am when he was on the phone with the hospital who was about to tell us whether my sister had survived a tragic bus accident in Colorado
• running in the rain with Manny one night during college when the power went out and the entire town of Montecito was in total darkness
• dinner at the Nadlers' with the entire Spring Break in the City crew, standing in their driveway with Manny with a huge rush of wind swirling around us. 
• standing in the back of the Fairmont Ballroom on my last night working for Breakthrough, watching Cory Booker invest genuine interest and enthusiastic high fives into our students before receiving a bouquet of flowers from my beloved CEO, Mialisa, on the center stage. 
• wearing the hugest, goofiest grin of my life while my jaw was dropped throughout the entirety of Cirque-du-Soleil, next to my dear friend Charity
• jumping up and down in my driveway in 5th grade when I got a piece of writing published for the first time, and feeling so excited to tell my great-uncle, my pen-pal, who was also a poet
• sobbing on the very very hard floor in our Berkeley apartment after a very long day that bled into the wee hours of the morning of loading up our moving truck the last night we lived there, grieving the separation from a place where we'd started our lives together.
• Manny rolling around on the floor/ground, tickling Sofia, the both of them laughing up a storm

• the candle-light vigil for my sister and the other victims of the bus accident, held in the art gallery where my photo series of crosses was on display
• walking along the beach at Renwali in Sri Lanka before dawn, watching the huge waves of the Indian Ocean crash alongside me
• sitting with a 4th grade client during a time of fear for him, hearing him tell me about how God was bigger than anything he could be afraid of
• K playing with water in the sink at his school
• Manny requesting "our song" during the dinner portion of a Westmont formal, standing up beside our table, and dancing with me while everyone else was still eating
• driving around Houston, windows down, praise music blaring, and singing with my sister at the top of our lungs, while some unsuspecting passenger(s) sat awkwardly in the back seat
• walking across felled trees that served as make-shift-bridges across the water and through the woods at Little Creek Hollow
• tending to my transplanted potted trees I'd grown from seeds on our little front porch in Houston
• climbing up the steps to the graveyard where Van Gogh was buried with my grandparents, passing the church he famously painted, and surveying the fields and view out over the town of Auvers Sur Oise
• walking through the headstones for the tenement yard in Trenchtown with a Rastafarian friend who pointed to all the friends and even the brothers he'd lost in local gang fights
• worshipping around some picnic tables, surrounded by grapefruit orchards in Texas, during a mission trip to Mexico.
• sitting on a couch all alone on my wedding day while everyone else rehearsed, journaling about how perfectly happy I was right at that moment 
• Sofia falling asleep on my shoulder in the plane, during a hard day of travel

• kneeling in the mud, weeding the lavender fields with my dad, in the rain
• getting drive-through for dinner with my cottage-mates, wearing our PJ's and bathrobes, when the rain knocked out our power
• Sofia dancing vigorously to the ABC's with a giant one legged stomp and arm flail

• twirling with Sofia
• sitting on a porch, watching the world go by with Sofia and Manny

photo by: Manny Reyes

. . . and if I think about this any more, it'll be a meditation, not a flash.

Any others have some flashes to share? 

five goals for the next three months: an update

Last month, I wrote out five goals for the next three months. I'm about a third of the way in, so let's see how I'm doing:

Make FIVE phone or skype calls to keep in touch with long distance pals.
I'm slightly behind on this one already, but I do have one skype call under my belt. 

I skyped with Shep, Tab, AND Heidi. So if I end up not meeting my skype/call goal, I'm totally going to justify this one call as 3/5 of this goal.

Have FOUR new anything once experiences.
Also slightly behind on this one, though I've had one already, and I'll have one next week.


Write THREE posts per week.
On average, I'm meeting this goal. Mostly because Mikkele said she didn't think I'd meet this goal and I took that as an extra motivation. Thanks for not believing in me!


Complete TWO works - hopefully finish the play I've started and write a children's book or even just a poem.
I'm totally failing at this one, though fairly often if I'm in the car and the radio is off, I'm brainstorming a children's book. That counts as a step toward the goal, right?


Move into ONE apartment, for goodness sake.
The plan is to meet this goal in the first half of October, skating in at the deadline. 

Movie Review Monday: The Artist

Honestly, The Artist looked a bit dull to me, and I probably wouldn't have considered watching it if it hadn't won the Academy Award this year. However, since I am married to an actor, love films, and it did win the Academy Award, I was practically required to see it. I grabbed it from the Redbox on Thursday, and Jeff and I watched it that evening.

It was delightful.

Thoughts:

1. There was almost zero speaking. There were almost zero sound effects. Yet I was engrossed in the story the whole time.
2. The girl who played Peppy Miller was enchanting, and that is not a word I throw around lightly. She somehow made a whistle, a blown kiss, and a wink adorable when it should have been obnoxious. Plus she made me wish I lived in the 20s because I loved her wardrobe.

Photo borrowed from filmjabber.com

3. My initial reaction was that the film showed the fleeting nature of fame. Jeff's initial reaction was that the film showed the history of the demise of silent films. I like it when there are multiple clear themes in a movie. It could also be argued that this is a love story between a man and a woman, a story of loyalty between a man and his dog or a man and his valet (played by James Cromwell who I cannot separate from Babe, and I always always always imagine will say "That'll do" at some point in all of his performances), the story of a woman's rise to fame, the story of the rise of talkies. Pick one, they're all in here.
4. Jean Dujardin won the Best Actor Oscar for this role. At the beginning of the film, I didn't get it. Sure, he's charismatic, and there's something to be said for a current actor mastering the style of a silent film actor, yet I was unimpressed. But as the film plodded on, he showed more and more range. By the end, I was thoroughly impressed and decided that maybe the Academy knew what they were doing this year. I mean, they could have just given it to him for his ability to pull off the caterpillar 'stache. That alone is impressive.

Bravo, good sir. Photo borrowed from billdesowitz.com.

5. Puppy!

I make a very good point here. Photo borrowed from The Telegraph.

In conclusion, two silent yet enthusiastic claws up! Thanks for calling this to my attention, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Have a good fight

Boy, have Manny and I been having some good fights lately! So good, I just need to encourage you, too, to have some good fights. Have some good fights if you are parents, have even more fights if you are a married couple without kids, have even more fights than that if you are an engaged couple, and for couples who who pre-engaged, y’all need to have the most fights of all.

Years before I even knew Manny, I learned that married couples take seven times as long to get through a fight as pre-married couples. The idea is that once you're legally/emotionally/physically/spiritually bound on that new level, the stakes are so much higher that fighting becomes seven times as tricky. 

Of course it’s not good to have a bad fight, where things go unresolved or people are left wounded at the end. But a good fight should help air some inner truths or frustrations hiding below the surface of your relationship so that you can figure out how to operate better together. A good fight should end with you owning a bigger piece of your partner's operating manual, more information on what their needs and/or dreams are and what you can do to help meet and or realize them. A good fight is one where you can hold onto the awareness that you are actually on the same team. I believe good fights will give you great tools and insight in how to better love and serve your partner so that while your future will not be fight free, it can be more intimate and uplifting and you can better help one another realize your best selves. So going forward in this post, know that I am referring to good fights. 

I almost made a point of picking fights with Manny while we were engaged. That made for a tough season in our relationship, with the logistical stress of wedding planning, the emotional pressure of preparing to be married, then the relational tension of fighting fairly often. While I feel no desire to ever be engaged again, and I might instead advocate simply having the courage to have the fights that come up rather than picking fights, I am grateful for those fights we had. We got several big issues clarified that served us well into our marriage. We fought about things like whether or not to budget, how to interact with each other’s families, how our cultural backgrounds were different, and how dishes should be washed. After all of that out of our way, our first year, which many people warned us would be the hardest, felt like a blissful extended honeymoon. 

The point was not to have a marriage without fighting, let me be clear. While it was a pleasant and largely fight-free first year, to this day, more than seven years in, our fights are one of the aspects of our marriage I remain most grateful for. 

So that worked out great. But no one thought to give us the advice to get as many married-couple fights in as possible before a child was in the picture. If a married fight takes seven times as long as a pre-married fight, I'm going to estimate that a parents'-fight takes about a million times as long as a childless-married-couple's fight. Ok, I don't know what the actual ratio would be, I’d be interested to find out if anyone knows of any such data.

With a child in the picture, not only have the stakes been taken up another notch, but also you have to add in the factors of exhaustion, limited windows of opportunity, and the fact that most of your time together includes a little interrupting machine who makes it their mission to be sure you never get to complete a full sentence in one breath. (maybe that’s why I overcompensate by writing impossibly long sentences) It is not so much that the fight itself takes longer, it’s that opportunities to work through a fight are so much harder to find. The frustrations simmer, boil, and then explode to the surface before you have a chance to address all your feelings or concerns in a more peaceful way.

While I am a big believer in being sensitive to the impact of what you say and how you say it in front of your child, I am also a believer in letting your child see you fight. (again, remember I’m referring to good fights here) For one thing, you don't often have the luxury of choosing when your fights will come up. And if your child sees the conflict open up, but then never sees it resolved, how will they know that things are okay between you, and how will they know a healthy way of resolving conflict themselves? So if your child is going to be present while you fight, I think you should use that as an impetus for self-control in your tone, words, and attitude towards your partner, which in general is not a bad rule when engaging in conflict. And you should use that as motivation to work towards authentic reconciliation in your child's presence. (For more complete and educated thoughts on this, see John Gottman's books on parenting/children)

Manny and I have been having some of the most productive fights of our relationship lately, and I am SO grateful for them! Maybe it is the realization of how efficient we have to be in our fighting, or the external control factor (Sofia) pushing us to be more civilized and constructive, or just the reality that we've been at this for nearly a decade now and practice makes for better fighters (certainly not perfect ones).

We've gotten to a place where we can trust that the other is in it for the hard times as much as the good, so it is safe to air out our grievances. We've had enough fights to start learning that it is ok to face the discomfort of discord, and in fact that walking through that discomfort yields a happier ending than pre-maturely cutting off the conflict. We've practiced changing our behavior based on what we learn in the fights enough that we can make an assertive request for the other to change without resorting to the sarcasm that comes from hopelessness and only makes the fights more destructive and the ability and motivation to change so much harder. 

I guess the general rule is to fight while you can. Speak your suggestions and requests when that’s what they are, before they grow into demands laden with hurt. Be humble but honest about your needs with the person you choose to trust to meet those needs. And share your playbook as you learn for yourself how you operate, because remember, you’re on the same team!

I know I'm not an enjoyable person to fight with. I know that this concept of good fights is 99% counter-intuitive. And I know that having the courage to enter into a good fight is really scary. I count myself immeasurably graced by a husband who would love me in this way. We didn't start out this way. This is a measure of our growth as people, as a couple, as a family. I just feel too grateful not to make a big statement of gratitude to him. 

I have to thank you, Manny, for the great fights we've had in the past several months that have pushed us towards a better life and a deeper love. The evolution of your approach to fighting demonstrates to me an incredible selflessness and love that I know I do not deserve. I have to thank you for each good fight that gives me more courage to enter into the next conflict with real hope for positive change. I hope I can change for the better, love you more selflessly, and help you find the satisfaction of your needs and the realization of your dreams that proves to you that all our fights and vulnerable conversations are well worth it. 

Dear Husband,

I love you and I am grateful that I get to fight with you.

Love,

your Wife.

Dear Lobsters,

I wish you all some good fights.

Love,

Zoe

Movie Review Monday: Dark Knight Rises

Miracle of miracles, Manny and I got to see a second movie in a theater this calendar year ! Thanks, Sissy, (that's my "Sissy," Lauren, btw, not Jenna, who is most often referred to as such on this blog) for pushing me to get the babysitter and go for it, and for paying for the babysitter to boot! I feel like I'll need to watch it a few more times to really appreciate it, but here are some of my current thoughts:

I'm a huge fan, so no disrespect, but Joseph Gordon Levitt finally looks like he aged past 11. Congratulations on graduating from puberty Jo! ;) He was so great in this film.

image taken from here

Speaking of looking old, I rather like how old they made Christian Bale out to be for this role. Having ogled him since Newsies, it was a little shocking to see him look all wrinkly, but I think his having joint pain and reclusive tendencies really helped humanize him and expand on the theme of "anyone can be Batman."

image taken from here

I was embarrassed by how giddy the boy-toys in this film made me feel. They were just cool. Batman's new "not a car" looks like some sort of flying cockroach.

image taken from here

The Dark Knight was going to be pretty near impossible to follow, and when I saw trailers with Anne Hathaway, I got a sour feeling in my stomach that disappointment was going to be inevitable. But she actually fit into the role quite nicely and really enhanced the film, rather than totally detracting from it as Katie Holmes had in Batman Begins. Ugh. I'm still mad at Katie for that one. Way to go, Anne!

There is a twist towards the end that I felt like I should have been able to see coming, but it still managed to totally catch me off guard. Instead of humanizing the villains in the slightly more obvious way as he did in the Dark Knight, Nolan kind of went around through the back door this time, and it surprised me with such punch that I could not hold back tears. Impressive.

Debatably cheesy one-liners abounded. I look forward to watching this a few more times to really appreciate a few of them though. The only one I was able to hold onto was,

"This only gets fixed from inside the city."

I thought that was a great picture for those of us who aim to be "helpers," thinking we can disregard the strengths or desires of the person or people we're aiming to help. On individual, group, and large scale levels, change must be born from within. 

My mother-in-law recently shared some wise advice with me about parenting. She had read that "parents don't actually want what is best for you, they want what is safest for you." Wo. That cuts to the quick. As a parent now myself, one of my hardest jobs is relinquishing the desire to be a constant safety net. And it is amazing what my child, and I myself, can do when we have to rise ;) to the occasion. I don't want to give too much away in case you haven't already seen the film, but I do think it illustrated something of this point in a poignant way.

Not quite so shockingly amazing as Dark Knight, but completely entertaining and worthwhile. He had a few rough starts in his career, but after this one, I decided, as a rule, I will just have to see all Christopher Nolan films made into the future. I must also note that it sure seems like he's found his preferred cast. So it still gets 2 claws up from me. Have you see it, Lobsters? What did you think?