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Jan. 19th, 2009 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickA different, more enthusiastic tow company has removed the car stranded in the woods. Yay! And it still runs! Yay! I went to the eye doctor with grandma and Jackie and Tess today. (Heather was home sick with stomach flu or something so didn't get like a day off. It's not a day off if you're barfing.)
Tess and I played in the snow at the doctor's office, twice. We spent some time inside warming up between snow outings, too. While we were inside, we practiced our inside voices. Not well, but we tried.
In the office, we played hide and seek with her hat.
We did finger games (I put my hands in assorted positions and she tries to make her hands match... from Hook 'em Horns through all the numbers to everything but the bird. Peace sign. OK. Two thumbs up! That kind of stuff.) She had fun with that and it's pattern matching and doesn't require any materials. (Dot to dot and coloring and whatnot takes materials, the which we didn't have. We didn't have any kid books. We didn't have any kid songs. The closest I have to "kid songs" on my mp3 player is Beyonce's Single Ladies, which she finds catchy for about thirty seconds. Interestingly, Tess listens to music in foreign longer than she listens to music in English. She was rather taken with Cowboy und Indianer, too.)
We counted the people in the waiting room. Repeatedly. Most of the people at the office are old people because this is the retina specialist and mostly he treats folks with age-related macular degeneration. I'm not sure how they felt about being counted, but what the hell. Counting is lots better than screaming with toddlers.
We got drinks from the water fountain.
We looked at people coming into the office and people leaving the office. "Okay, Tess, some people are leaving. Does that mean we will have MORE people here after they go, or FEWER people here after they go?" (She got that one right every time. People arriving means MORE. People leaving means FEWER.)
We talked about numbers. "Is six more than eight?" "Is five more than three?" She got all of those right, too. Kid should have no fucking problem with greater-than and less-than problems later in life. (I hated those problems mostly because we had to draw the greater-than and less-than signs and mine were never pretty or even. For some reason, I worried about this rather a lot at the outset. However, when I gave up on having pretty, even signs and just made readable signs, solving single number inequalities became a trivially simple waste of my time.)
Tess knows all her colors and can usually do the difference between "car" and "truck" so that you can say 'Okay, how many blue cars are there in the parking lot?" and get a reasonable answer. We did that, too.
In a magazine, we counted four feet and I asked how many people that was. She didn't know. So, we lined up our feet and counted them. four feet. She didn't really get from that that if you saw a picture of four feet, there would be two people involved, but the illustration (ad for earplugs for sleeping) was not the best because the feet were all jumbled and stuff. Oh, well. There will be time for division later, I have no doubt.
We talked about waiting our turn and taking turns. (That's why some of the people get to go back and other people have to wait more. They're taking turns and being fair.) We talked about why grandma was at the eye doctor, which opened the door to "Is that person sick? How about that one?" So, y'know, "It's not polite to ask why other people are at the doctor, Tess. That's their private business. Not everybody here is sick. We aren't sick, right, but we're here anyway. It's like that for some of these people, too."
It was kind of amazing to hear all sorts of things about fairness and being equitable to one's fellow man and respecting other people's privacy coming out of my mouth. Where the hell did that shit come from? I'm honestly not that well socialized. I don't go about regarding my fellow man with cheerful and evenhanded respect. Is this lying? Y'know, I think it is. How much of parenting is lying? (Answer: Seems like a lot. I think they may be important lies, though...)
Tess will be three on the first of March, so the games we played were not inappropriate games. If Tess was, like, twelve or something, I would not have had to entertain her because she'd have spent the time texting on her cell phone about what a fucking dork I am. There will be plenty of time, in the future, for her to roll her eyes and tell all her age mates about my dorkitude. Right now, I can open fruit snacks and know things to do without toys for an hour and a half at the eye doctor's office.
After that, we went to lunch at the Olive Garden in State College and then home again, jiggety jog. At the Olive Garden, Tess had spaghetti, which she adores. However, it's not a neat process, her consumption of spaghetti, so we went to the bathroom for some washing of hands afterward.
"What does that sign say?"
"Women. This is the Women's bathroom."
"We can't go in the Men's bathroom?"
"No. That's for men."
"Why can't we go in there?"
Fuck. I can't answer these questions. "We're not men. We don't go in the men's room. We're women so we go in the women's room." There isn't enough granularity for conversation with a not-yet-three kiddo to go on about "hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society."
ARGH. ARGH. ARGH. I'm perpetuating a social structure that I don't approve of. ARGH. I'm building in gender identity. Like, y'know, installing it like an aftermarket mp3 player for a car. WTF? How did this happen? I was heading for handwashing. I was all set for running water and soap and towels and I wound up in fucking gender identity.
It's the walls in my head damn it. I feel like the chipped Spike, for fuck's sake. (Been reading Spander, as I mentioned. One of the things I love about fanfic is diving into a fandom and letting all the show-specific cliches wash over me. It's fun to see what people pick up on and use as their shorthand to build a world similar to but not exactly like canon.) ARGH.
I can't give the snarky answer, either, which would be "As you know, or should know, Tess, all men are sickos and perverts, beasts of desire held back by a thin veneer of civility. They would, of course, be powerless to resist your ravishing and womanly three year old body should it wander alone into a men's restroom. If I went with you, neither of us would be safe. Should you survive the encounter, you'd be ruined for any man afterwards because women are pretty much a single-use product. All women (except lesbians) need to ensure that their single worthwhile use is by a man who will be too honorable to discard them after taking his pleasure and their virginity. They need to pick the sort of man who will feel duty-bound to remain with his defloweree until death or a handsome divorce settlement -- that way everybody will get to spend his or her blissedly short life wrapped in the comfy pink pillowy fiberglass insulation of societal obligation. You don't want to miss out on that by going into the men's room, right? Or... are you a lesbian?" She doesn't do sarcasm yet. (Hell, I know a lot of grown up people who don't do sarcasm yet.) Sarcasm is for later. So I didn't say that. I did think it, though.
I gave the only answer I could give. "It's the men's room. We are women so we go in the women's room." It's not an answer, it's a Just-So answer. I used to hate, hate, hate when I got Just-So answers from my parents. Now I'm handing 'em out. I don't know that it's useful to give the correct answer in Just-So format and then provide the framework to support the answer later. I know, I know, it worked for Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid but that was a movie.
Also, I know that OF COURSE you can't let your toddler run around looking into bathrooms on her own... because the responsible husbands and fathers and boyfriends and brothers and uncles who deal with other little girls are obviously, well, sickos and perverts, beasts of desire held back by a thin veneer of civility when it comes to your kid. ARGH. Y'know, if this is civilization, ya'll can keep it.
Tess and I played in the snow at the doctor's office, twice. We spent some time inside warming up between snow outings, too. While we were inside, we practiced our inside voices. Not well, but we tried.
In the office, we played hide and seek with her hat.
We did finger games (I put my hands in assorted positions and she tries to make her hands match... from Hook 'em Horns through all the numbers to everything but the bird. Peace sign. OK. Two thumbs up! That kind of stuff.) She had fun with that and it's pattern matching and doesn't require any materials. (Dot to dot and coloring and whatnot takes materials, the which we didn't have. We didn't have any kid books. We didn't have any kid songs. The closest I have to "kid songs" on my mp3 player is Beyonce's Single Ladies, which she finds catchy for about thirty seconds. Interestingly, Tess listens to music in foreign longer than she listens to music in English. She was rather taken with Cowboy und Indianer, too.)
We counted the people in the waiting room. Repeatedly. Most of the people at the office are old people because this is the retina specialist and mostly he treats folks with age-related macular degeneration. I'm not sure how they felt about being counted, but what the hell. Counting is lots better than screaming with toddlers.
We got drinks from the water fountain.
We looked at people coming into the office and people leaving the office. "Okay, Tess, some people are leaving. Does that mean we will have MORE people here after they go, or FEWER people here after they go?" (She got that one right every time. People arriving means MORE. People leaving means FEWER.)
We talked about numbers. "Is six more than eight?" "Is five more than three?" She got all of those right, too. Kid should have no fucking problem with greater-than and less-than problems later in life. (I hated those problems mostly because we had to draw the greater-than and less-than signs and mine were never pretty or even. For some reason, I worried about this rather a lot at the outset. However, when I gave up on having pretty, even signs and just made readable signs, solving single number inequalities became a trivially simple waste of my time.)
Tess knows all her colors and can usually do the difference between "car" and "truck" so that you can say 'Okay, how many blue cars are there in the parking lot?" and get a reasonable answer. We did that, too.
In a magazine, we counted four feet and I asked how many people that was. She didn't know. So, we lined up our feet and counted them. four feet. She didn't really get from that that if you saw a picture of four feet, there would be two people involved, but the illustration (ad for earplugs for sleeping) was not the best because the feet were all jumbled and stuff. Oh, well. There will be time for division later, I have no doubt.
We talked about waiting our turn and taking turns. (That's why some of the people get to go back and other people have to wait more. They're taking turns and being fair.) We talked about why grandma was at the eye doctor, which opened the door to "Is that person sick? How about that one?" So, y'know, "It's not polite to ask why other people are at the doctor, Tess. That's their private business. Not everybody here is sick. We aren't sick, right, but we're here anyway. It's like that for some of these people, too."
It was kind of amazing to hear all sorts of things about fairness and being equitable to one's fellow man and respecting other people's privacy coming out of my mouth. Where the hell did that shit come from? I'm honestly not that well socialized. I don't go about regarding my fellow man with cheerful and evenhanded respect. Is this lying? Y'know, I think it is. How much of parenting is lying? (Answer: Seems like a lot. I think they may be important lies, though...)
Tess will be three on the first of March, so the games we played were not inappropriate games. If Tess was, like, twelve or something, I would not have had to entertain her because she'd have spent the time texting on her cell phone about what a fucking dork I am. There will be plenty of time, in the future, for her to roll her eyes and tell all her age mates about my dorkitude. Right now, I can open fruit snacks and know things to do without toys for an hour and a half at the eye doctor's office.
After that, we went to lunch at the Olive Garden in State College and then home again, jiggety jog. At the Olive Garden, Tess had spaghetti, which she adores. However, it's not a neat process, her consumption of spaghetti, so we went to the bathroom for some washing of hands afterward.
"What does that sign say?"
"Women. This is the Women's bathroom."
"We can't go in the Men's bathroom?"
"No. That's for men."
"Why can't we go in there?"
Fuck. I can't answer these questions. "We're not men. We don't go in the men's room. We're women so we go in the women's room." There isn't enough granularity for conversation with a not-yet-three kiddo to go on about "hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society."
ARGH. ARGH. ARGH. I'm perpetuating a social structure that I don't approve of. ARGH. I'm building in gender identity. Like, y'know, installing it like an aftermarket mp3 player for a car. WTF? How did this happen? I was heading for handwashing. I was all set for running water and soap and towels and I wound up in fucking gender identity.
It's the walls in my head damn it. I feel like the chipped Spike, for fuck's sake. (Been reading Spander, as I mentioned. One of the things I love about fanfic is diving into a fandom and letting all the show-specific cliches wash over me. It's fun to see what people pick up on and use as their shorthand to build a world similar to but not exactly like canon.) ARGH.
I can't give the snarky answer, either, which would be "As you know, or should know, Tess, all men are sickos and perverts, beasts of desire held back by a thin veneer of civility. They would, of course, be powerless to resist your ravishing and womanly three year old body should it wander alone into a men's restroom. If I went with you, neither of us would be safe. Should you survive the encounter, you'd be ruined for any man afterwards because women are pretty much a single-use product. All women (except lesbians) need to ensure that their single worthwhile use is by a man who will be too honorable to discard them after taking his pleasure and their virginity. They need to pick the sort of man who will feel duty-bound to remain with his defloweree until death or a handsome divorce settlement -- that way everybody will get to spend his or her blissedly short life wrapped in the comfy pink pillowy fiberglass insulation of societal obligation. You don't want to miss out on that by going into the men's room, right? Or... are you a lesbian?" She doesn't do sarcasm yet. (Hell, I know a lot of grown up people who don't do sarcasm yet.) Sarcasm is for later. So I didn't say that. I did think it, though.
I gave the only answer I could give. "It's the men's room. We are women so we go in the women's room." It's not an answer, it's a Just-So answer. I used to hate, hate, hate when I got Just-So answers from my parents. Now I'm handing 'em out. I don't know that it's useful to give the correct answer in Just-So format and then provide the framework to support the answer later. I know, I know, it worked for Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid but that was a movie.
Also, I know that OF COURSE you can't let your toddler run around looking into bathrooms on her own... because the responsible husbands and fathers and boyfriends and brothers and uncles who deal with other little girls are obviously, well, sickos and perverts, beasts of desire held back by a thin veneer of civility when it comes to your kid. ARGH. Y'know, if this is civilization, ya'll can keep it.
