I am ver-r-r-r-ry tired
Oct 22, 2004 Family
But not as tired as my sister. Her daughter, Lucia Rose, was born today weighing 7lbs 1oz. She is just beautiful! We spent the day at the hospital and so we are all of us pretty well done in!
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Tags: at the hospital
Did anyone catch that last title?
Oct 21, 2004 Homeschooling
The entry before was named after a song from the musical, The Secret Garden. There are parts of that soundtrack I like quite a bit and other parts that are just damn annoying. There is a gorgeous duet between Mandy Patinkin and Rebecca Luker that sadly cuts short (but the way they harmonize — lovely!) and I think Daisy Eagan is terrific.
(As an aside, if anyone knows of a showtunes mp3 blog, give me a heads up, willl ya? If I had the time, I’d do it myself.)
So I’ve been emailing back and forth with a friend, who is homeschooling for the first time this year, and it’s been an interesting conversation. I like to talk to people about homeschooling because it reminds me of why we’re doing it. And our conversation happens to coincide with the whole getting back to my writing roots thing that I wrote about below.
One of the reasons that I want to homeschool is that there was a lot I wanted to learn when I was little and I didn’t get a chance to. For example, I had no idea that there was any such thing as a sonnet until I was probably a junior in high school. I think that I would have liked to know about poetic form when I was first writing poetry and getting interested in being a better poet, which for me was about in third grade. (I was writing poetry before then but it was in third grade when I can remember feeling very serious about getting it right.)
Instead of learning sonnets, I was stuck learning something else. I don’t know what it was but it wasn’t what I wanted to learn. (Maybe it was that damn multiplication.) And by the time we got to sonnets, I no longer appreciated the value of learning them.
I regret that. I regret not learning about sonnets when I needed and wanted to learn about them. I regret that no one had the time or inclination to be involved enough in my learning to guide me towards something that would have interested me and benefitted what I valued — my writing.
I’m a great believer in letting kids learn by their passions. I basically think that everyone needs to have mastery over the three R’s (and mastery, I think, can mean different things for different people) and then lots of time to explore the things that make their hearts and minds buzz with excitement.
I tell Noah that the fun that he has when he’s busy with an exciting project — a new robot invention, a fort, a Super Peanut comic — is just like the fun I’m having when I’m writing.
“I’m busy with my work,” he tells me, sitting with his robot book across his lap. “I’m making plans.”
In the context of his important play, I try to point out his strengths.
“You have perseverance,” I tell him when he triumphantly shows me a building that was a challenge. “You’re willing to stick with things even when they’re hard.”
I also try to help him understand how to get around his weaknesses.
“You get frustrated when things don’t work the way you envisioned; it’s natural,” I say, my own patience tried by his fury. “Step away, take a breath and come at it from a new angle.”
Within the context of things that he values, Noah is willing to do work that in other contexts would be simply hellish. My hope is that this will teach him that learning itself is fun and that work is rewarding. I think as he gets older he’ll be able to translate this to the broader world.
The example I gave my friend was this: In college, I did simply awful in my required foreign language classes. I flunked Russian and couldn’t get past French 102. (I only passed French 101 because I took three years of it in high school.) I simply didn’t like foreign langauges and as a consequence didn’t do my homework. I mean, I never did my homework. I wasn’t lazy, exactly, I was just not very impressed with the value of learning a foreign language. (And you know what? I don’t regret this because I truly didn’t like it although I do now understand the value in learning one. I’m planning on studying Hebrew with Noah when he starts.) So what I did was change majors. I became a Sociology major in very large part because getting a BS didn’t require a foreign language while getting a BA did. However, I did take Statistics and Geology, both of which didn’t really interest me because while getting a specific degree didn’t matter to me that much, having a degree did.
What I’m saying is that we all have to do things that we don’t really like to do but my feeling is that we don’t need to be trained into doing them anyway. I would say that most children value learning for the sake of learning if it’s presented in a context that makes sense.
So here’s the other thing my friend and I emailed about. I don’t know a boy Noah’s age — give or take a year — who likes handwriting. And as luck would have it, most of them have terrible handwriting so not only do they dislike practicing handwriting but it appears that most of them could sorely use the practice. Now my thinking is that if the vast majority of boys hate it and if the vast majority of boys are lousy at it, then this says something developmentally about boys. Likely most of them are simply not ready to do handwriting.
Noah is one of these boys.
I could make him. I have made him. For a couple of months last year, we did writing every Wednesday. His handwriting didn’t improve but he started to sulk about doing it. I was completely turning him off about handwriting and I was giving him the idea that he was simply not cut out to master this very basic skill. Oops. So I quit making him. And as it turns out, he’s starting to want his handwriting to be legible. He’s frustrated when we can’t read what he writes so he’s been making more of an effort. I’m planning to re-introduce our handwriting curriculum with him (the ever-popular Handwriting Without Tears) to see if this isn’t so excrutiating for him this time around. And if it is? We’ll try again later. Or more likely, it’ll turn out that he is motivated enough to not need a curriculum.
It’s not handwriting that sticks in folks’ craws. The hard part is letting go of the idea that children should do things because, well, because they should. And many people have the same idea that my friend and I were discussing, which is that the very act of doing something horrid — or that seems horrid to the person doing it — is character building. I don’t think so; it certainly never worked for me.
I argue that children — like any of us — need appropriate motivation to tackle yucky stuff. I argue that children mostly have pretty good characters to start and it’s a matter of helping them see that for themselves.
It’s kinda like making kids try new foods: you can tell them they have to take a bite but getting them to eat the whole serving is likely to leave everyone unhappy. Of course there are parents who will serve congealed goulash over and over again in a misguided attempt to break a child’s spirit but who wants to hang with someone like that? To me, it’s the same way with learning. Try it. Try the workshop. Try the book. Try your hand at the new building toy. Try the math problem. Is it working? Why not? Does it need to work? Can we find another way to approach it?
As to sonnets? Will I be teaching Noah about them? Very likely although if he’s not too interested, I won’t fret. See, it’s not what he learns so much — past the three R’s on which all other learning rests — as the love of learning and the belief that he is naturally a wonderful learner.
Anyway. It’s time to go read to Noah so I guess I’ll sign off.
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Tags: Becca, high school, homeschool, Homeschooling, Music, Noah, Peanut, showtunes
The girl I mean to be
Oct 20, 2004 Writing
I made a decision the other day. Actually, I made a decision over the course of many days and I’m still deciding it piece by piece by piece. The decision, if I can sum it up properly, is to write anyway.
See, I’ve been in hell the past couple of years (maybe longer) as I grappled with the meaning of my writing life. I made uneasy peace with my understanding of the market in part because I am very, very grateful that I’m getting a regular paycheck from it.
But then I got confused. I started thinking that this then was success. That to be even more successful, I needed to become even more marketable. Writing no longer was worth doing unless I could justify it with a sales plan.
This all culminated with my recent foray into query hell this past spring. (Go ahead, look in my blog archives.) Ironically, as I got closer to success, the more unhappy I became.
On writing lists, there is a chasm between those who Write and those who Write for Pay. I have played on both sides of that fence and I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you’re pleasing yourself. It’s useless to argue whether or not this author or that one is a “real” writer because there is not a special place in heaven where the real writers get to hang. In other words, there is no moral superiority to being fabulous yet unpublished. I mention this because I’m not trying to play that game. It takes real talent to write things that people want to read. It’s harder than it looks to make evergreen topics look bright and shiny new for women’s magazines. Being too good for the world is, in my opinion, a sorry state of affairs.
For me personally, I am realizing that I need to return to writing Just Because and not worrying about sales so much or even at all. This epiphany was driven in large part (very large part) by the killing of my long-suffering infertility article.
It was very very sad. It was worth a good two or three weeks of sudden inexplicable tears. It was also a great learning experience.
See, my writer/editor friend, B., read the piece and one of the things she said to me was, “I can tell you’re tired of writing this.”
And oh lord, wasn’t I just. But I’d put so much work into it! I had this whole plan to pave my way to a book deal! I book I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write anymore but still! All that time! All that effort!
What I realized and am realizing is that the time and effort were worth it even though I ended up with nothing to show for it but a disgruntled, limping essay. When I first put pen to paper for that article, I was all excited but then Madison was born (remember, it was due at the same time she was) and by the time the dust settled and I turned on my laptop, I never wanted to see the damn thing again.
Back in the olden days — my green stenopad days, when I took my notebook with me everywhere, even to the bars when we went out dancing — I wrote because I loved to write. And lately I haven’t been loving the writing so much.
I thought it was good for me — all that writing that was no fun. I thought I was showing good discipline and a healthy respect for our financial bottom line. But see, I have the great luxury of a regular paycheck right now. And I have to do some not-quite-from-the-heart writing as part of earning that check. So why was I so desperate to make myself do yet more of that work? Well, because I figured that must be where my career was hiding.
In the last few weeks, I’ve been researching something that I might want to write about. Or not. But I like reading about it and dog-earing pages so I can make notes. (I read while sitting behind Madison to cushion her inevitable falls. I dog-ear so that I can record it on the laptop later.) It’s made me really happy but I felt guilty because I didn’t have anything to show for it. Mostly, I’ve been thinking about it and making notes. I have no plan. I have no thesis. I have no idea if anything will come of it. But it’s been so much fun!
I still feel absolute panic when I see people racing by me with book proposals and editorial calendars but I’m trying hard to sit on myself and remember that I can do that, too, if I want to. This is my choice. I don’t want to make excuses like about not having enough time because I know that when I really want something, I can always find the time.
I may never be getting a regular paycheck again and I may never have the luxury to revisit the green steno pad days so dammit, I’m taking advantage of it.
I’m glad I wised up and I’m hoping — my ulterior motive is — I’m hoping that I rediscover my voice because I think I lost it.
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Tags: essay, Infertility, Madison
Appearing in court
Oct 20, 2004 Adoption
Several people are mentioning that in other states, birth parents may have to appear in court to surrender parental rights. This would be true in Ohio as well except that this is why the agency records the questions. This way, the surrender is done in privacy and at the pace set by the birth parents. If a birth parent wanted to surrender before a judge, this is her choice but our social workers told us that all of the women (and occasional men) with whom they work have been happy to be able to do it privately.
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Madison’s stats and an answer
Oct 19, 2004 Adoption
Madison had her well-baby check-up today and she weighs 23 pounds and is 27 1/4 inches long although both of those numbers are suspect since she was awfully wriggly and so the nurse just kinda guesstimated. In any case, give or take an ounce or a centimeter, she’s about 75th percentile height (meaning she’s taller than 75% of the babies her age) and way off the charts for weight; she’s following her own growth curve exactly and predictably.
The doc asked if she was able to sit up “using her hands like tripods to balance.” In answer, I set her down on her tushie to demonstrate that she’s been sitting beautifully for some time. Then, just to be a show-off, she leaned forward and took off across the room at an extremely fast crawl. (Ok, so I’m lying about the show-off part. She really wanted to get her hands on the biohazard trash can in the corner.)
He was appropriately impressed.
“Are you sure she’s not nine months old?” he joked, admiring her beautiful bottom teeth.
Last week on Monday, October 8th (I’m putting this here because I don’t like either of the baby books we were given), Madison also demonstrated her newly accomplished pincer grasp by conveying a piece of fuzz from the carpet to her mouth delicately between her thumb and forefinger, complaining bitterly when prevented from completing her task. She also started pulling up and letting go, hovering for a millisecond before crashing down on her well-padded diapered bottom.
This week, she’s begun to cruise and is now clumsily making her way back and forth from end to end holding onto the coffee table. She’s not very good at it yet but she’s also not falling quite as much as she used to.
In short, she is Super Baby.
She has also become cheeriest baby in the universe, amusing herself no end in the car seat and as she motors around the room, chortling and squealing and generally being adorable.
Now, Robb asked about our adoption yesterday: “[W]as J with you? How does it all work, as it related to J?”
Good question. No, J was not with us. I’m going to try to explain this as it was explained to me although when I asked some questions of the lawyer, she just confused me more (and was rude and bored with me to boot so I didn’t nag her to make sense as much as I might have otherwise).
My understanding is that J signed over legal custody to the agency when she surrendered her parental rights at 72 hours. However, she was still considered the “parent” although she no longer had any legal rights or responsibilities as a parent. Then, as Ohio law dictates, we parented Madison for six months, which pretty much amounts to a legal trial period for all involved.
The agency submitted information to the court ncluding record of J’s surrender, (which they audio recorded in the hospital). I was afraid that they would play the recording but I was led to believe that this was part of the paperwork already filed before we got there; I’m not clear on that. Anyway, J’s surrender and our adoption are connected but ultimately separate. Basically J surrendered to the agency — and that was one deal. The agency handed physical custody over to us (retaining legal custody per Ohio law) and that was another deal. Then we applied to become Madison’s legal parents and the agency gave permission for us to do so and that was another deal.
The last thing the judge told us before announcing that he was officially making us parents of Madison, was that we needed to be clear that Madison now had no other parents. So I think that up until we adopted Madison yesterday, J may have still been considered (legally) her parent although she no longer had custody and had surrendered her rights and responsibilities. I think that this is why they issue a new birth certificate for her, declaring that I am her mother by birth and Brett is her father by birth, (which strikes us both as totally weird, I might add). Except that we all know better, legally we are — and have been — her only parents. That part’s all a bit too Handmaid’s Tale for me though, and I don’t like to dwell on it.
I could have this totally mixed up but that’s how it was explained to me.
I think that state laws vary so much, however, that our process likely has no similarity to any other state’s process. Maria (mom to Ethan and MaddyKay) was trying to explain to me how things go in Virginia and I came out of that conversation more confused than when I came in!
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Tags: adoption legalities, baby book, Brett, ctts, Madison
