narrating kayoz

"If millions of reinforcing signals say a woman's work is less significant, something will eventually begin to stick."

This article explains why I participated in the Australian Women Writers challenge this year.

It is also part of why I was so, so pleased with Julia Gillard's speech in parliament this week, openly accusing the opposition leader of sexism, and even more so with the subseqent interview Penny Wong gave on the 7:30 report.

In the interview Senator Wong points out that the PM being called "precious or a victim" or the equivalent is par for the course when a women speaks up against sexism, and is part of how we continue to we silence women in this country.

We need to be having this conversation in mainstream Australia. We need to be having it in the media.

'Women who do speak out—whether against sexism in the literary world or in the church or in the academy or in politics—are often accused of "whining," and then, like children, they are punished. But I am convinced the risk is worth it.

'...

'Author V. S. Naipaul recently claimed in an interview with the Royal Geographic Society that there was not a single female writer he considered his equal—not even Jane Austen, whose work he dismissed as "sentimental."...

'It might be possible to dismiss Naipaul's blatant sexism as the ravings of an arrogant misogynist if there were structural equality in the publishing industry, but there isn't. For the second year in a row, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts released a series of pie charts (the VIDA count) showcasing annual data comparing the rate of publication between women and men in the writing world's most respected literary outlets—and things don't look good for women who write.² VIDA reports that in 2011, The Atlantic published 184 articles and pieces of fiction by men and 64 by women; 18 of their book reviewers were men and 8 were women; and 24 of the authors reviewed were men, compared to 12 women. Harper's Magazine published 65 articles by men and 13 articles by women; 23 of their book reviewers were men and 10 were women; 53 of the authors reviewed were men, 19 were women. The New York Review of Books published 133 articles by men and 19 by women; 201 of their book reviewers were male and 53 were female; and they reviewed 75 male authors and only 17 female authors. I could go on. The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, The London Review of Books—all pay more attention to books and essays and articles and poems and short stories written by men than they do to those written by women.

'Gendered responses to women's writing have led several women to create alter egos in an effort to determine whether it is their ideas that generate hostile responses or whether simply being a woman with an opinion is enough on its own, no matter what they write. In "Disagree with Me—But Not Because I'm a Black Woman," Hannah Pool describes creating an online white male alter ego, Harry Pond. "I went on to a couple of threads. The opinions were my own, but the name a fake," she writes. "Unsurprisingly, Harry Pond received no racism and no sexism, in fact very little of anything by way of comment. People engaged with 'Harry' in a grownup manner, without the need for insults. Is this what it's like to be a white man? Having people accept your right to a difference of opinion?"³ In 2009, researcher Emily Glassberg sent out identical scripts to theaters in the United States, half with a male name and half with a female name. She found that those believed to have been written by women were rated significantly worse by artistic directors and literary managers than those written by men. "This was even the case when many of those artistic directors and literary managers were women."⁴

'I am beginning to understand why Mary Ann Evans changed her name to George Eliot.

'...

'[Author Dani Shapiro described] a recent post by Tim Parks on the The New York Review of Books blog in which Parks explores how "the writer's job" is currently understood and illustrates how this conception has changed over time. Parks mentions many writers—Sophocles, Virgil, Pope, Petrarch, Chaucer, Byron, Shelley, T. S. Eliot, Rushdie, Pamuk, Coetzee. "It was on second read that it occurred to me that there were no women. Not one," Shapiro said. "This was written by someone who simply doesn't have female writers as any kind of reference."

'What does it mean that a supposedly historical account of the writer's job can ignore all female writers? Most contemporary statistics suggest that women are writing more books than men are writing, and women are reading more books than men are reading, and women are buying more books than men are buying, and yet our work, our very existence, is regularly made to disappear. What effect does this erasure have? On women? On writers? On readers? Theater critic and novelist Alison Croggon writes, "If millions of reinforcing signals say a woman's work is less significant, something will eventually begin to stick."

'...

'What can be done?

'First, buy books written by women. Novels, memoirs, theology, political nonfiction, scientific explorations, poetry, history, mysteries. Put yourself on a diet of books by women and see what happens. Read them with your book groups. Review them online. Disagree with their ideas. Critique their arguments. Revel in the power of their words.'

For more (including 2nd & 3rd things to do): Sarah Sentilles: The Pen is Mightier: Sexist responses to women writing about religion.

Where is all the "men's art"?

This:

Part of the problem is when a woman writes about her experiences of trying to find out who she is it’s generally considered an insight into the female experience, but when a man writes about the same topic it’s considered an insight into the human condition (the same problem also happens for people of colour, LGBT people and other minorities, obviously.) In an interview, Heti stated, “‘Women’s fiction’ doesn’t sound like anything but a slur to my ears” and I tend to agree. This novel is important because the more books like this (and films and songs...) that are made and supported, the closer we get from moving from the idea of something being “women’s art” to it simply being “art”.

http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-culture/why-everyone-is-talking-about-this-book-20120717-227oz.html

What I have been doing lately (photo post)

Nurturing my winter tomatoes in their pot, and discovering that our front courtyard is almost frost-free (not quite though).

Watching my honey pod peas grow twice as quickly in a pot in the courtyard as the ones growing in the vegie garden out back.

And watching Mikaela at her swimming lesson, which I usually don't do as I am busy with Eliane in the shallow water. Today Chris came, since it was a public holiday, and so I was able to task him with hangin' with Elli, while I watched Mikaela. She's doing really well (which these photos do nothing to show!).

Making 'healing cabbage soup' out of the cabbage provided in my first seasonal organic box from Whole Food Central. Except when I went to put the cabbage in I realised I only had a a quarter cabbage, not a half, so I added 1/4 cauliflower (also out of the box) as well. It was okay, but I think it would have been better with more cabbage.

We ate the soup with freshly baked rolls, that I made quickly when we got home from swimming. I didn't have any time to let them rise (not even once, much less twice), but they were delicious all the same.

Learning to make my own laundry powder (and other homemade cleaning products).

And reading quite a few books (I think I am in the midst of about four right at the moment), and writing a review of this one for my commitment to the Australian Women Writers Challenge.

What I'm reading lately (or Shannon Hayes is Awesome!)

New post over at my other other blog, NK talks books, about all the books I'm reading at the moment. There seem to be quite a few...

Head on over and tell me, what are you reading?

What I'm Reading Lately, or What Happened to the Australian Women Writers Challenge?

It's true, I'm not doing very well on my commitment to review Australian women writers this year. It's May, and so far I've done one review towards my commitment, of One Magic Square, which I published over at Sustainable Suburbia. And by the way, I'm giving a copy of the book away, so if you'd like a copy, go read the review and enter the draw before the end of May.

<snip>

I am also reading several other wonderful books which are not by Australians. I love, love, love Shannon Hayes' Radical Homemakers. I just can't tell you how much I am loving it...

read more...

Let's talk about (can I put this in my title without getting a load of spam?) S - e - x

We just borrowed (from the library) Let's Talk About Sex (in the US it's called It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health which I think is a better name)and Let's Talk About Where Babies Come From (called It's So Amazing: A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families in the US, which I think is much better), to take a look at the them and see which would be more appropriate for Liam.

We've already got It's NOT the Stork: A Book about Girls, Boys, Babies, Bodies, Families and Friends, which we got when I was pregnant with Eliane, but Liam's a bit beyond that now (though he still listens when we're reading bits of that to Mikaela, and makes his own requests of what pages to read.) He's just turned ten, and I think the first of the one's we borrowed is aimed at 10+, while the second is aimed at about 7-10.

Anyway, after looking at them we really felt we wanted something in between. There's definitely some missed out of the first one that Liam will need to know in the next couple of years, if not yet, but it seemed to go into a *lot* of detail, that he just might not have the patience or interest to read yet. So we thought maybe we'd get the earlier one and give it to him now, but get the later one too and leave it on the bookshelf, making sure he knew it was there.

But. We left both books sitting out on the dining room table, so naturally he had a look at them. Would he think talking about babies was too boring? Would he think talking about s-e-x was too icky? No on both counts! And in fact, although he browsed through both, he Definitely thought the second one was more interesting. Show's how much we know!

The only thing we didn't like was there seems to be an overly strong emphasis on the physicalities of puberty and everything that goes along with it, without as much emphasis on how it feels. But, I have admit that is on browsing, it's not like we read either book all the way through, word for word (is that bad, to admit that we're giving Liam a book to read on sex that we haven't read all the way through - are are reading and talking with him as well, not just leaving him to read it on his own, though he can and is doing that as well). And over all I still think they are still great books.

Hat Tip to Dawn, who recommended these books on her old blog, This Woman's Work.

Now watch while my daily hits suddenly go up by several hundred per cent!

Jenni Overend Died

I read today that Jenni Overend died last year. The link includes one of her final poems. She was the author of Hello Baby, which was a favourite of Mikaela's when I was pregnant with Eliane. It is a wonderful book.

As well as a "celebrated children's author" she was a mother, a wife, a grandmother, and she was only 55. I know this happens all the time, but this story made me particularly sad, maybe because of her poem.

RIP Jenni Overend. I hope you are.

 

The Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge

I am joining the Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge, in this, the National Year of Reading (in Australia, that is).

Even though I've been an avid reader all my life, and have a masters degree in literature, for heaven's sake, I actually don't really read books anymore. Or at least, at the moment. Practically. But I am going to make the supreme sacrifice and read some for this challenge.

I'm only aiming for the casual "Miles" level (casual levels include Stella, Miles, & Franklin-Fantastic :) ), which means I need to read at least 6 books by contemporary Australian women, and review at least 3. That shouldn't be too hard. I will probably review them at my book blog, but I'll link to them from here, or keep a list in the sidebar or something, for accountability.

My first book will be One Magic Square, for the simple reason that I am already reading it.* After that I will find some fiction to read. I am going for the 'Dabbler' title of mixed genres. But I will probably review that at Sustainable Suburbia, rather than my book blog. So many sites to keep track of...

The stated goal of the challenge is to "help counteract the gender bias in reviewing and social media newsfeeds that has continued throughout 2011". Further discussions on this issue here, and more on the rationale for the challenge here.  They also mention that the National Year of Reading's, Love2Read "Our Story" campaign consists of 48 books, of which  only 18 are written by women. That's a pretty significant discrepancy!

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*I am reading three books at the moment, even though I know I said I don't read, but these don't really count - for starters, one of them is on my phone (Kindle for iPhone - I know Amazon is probably evil (eventually all the book links on this blog will go to either Fishpond of Booktopia or someone else), but I didn't actually buy a kindle so I'm not locked in (I have three other iPhone book reading apps), but I do love reading on my phone, when I'm nursing Elli in the middle of the night); also none of them is fiction, which is what I really mean by books.

The other two are The Must Read book of The Year (unless you read it last year) - The Great Disruption, by Paul Gilding, and another wonderful book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver.

The Kingsolver book is the one I'm reading on my iPhone, and the sad truth is that I bought it in hard copy while I was in the States, and then realised I never have time to read any more - though I am *making* time for the Gilding book (and One Magic Square is sort of  dip into book, but I will read it all in order to review it for this challenge now), so I bought it again, in the kindle edition.

Getting into the garden despite the 35 degrees!

I had my sister here over Christmas, and both her presence and her presents have re-inspired me to put more effort into the garden. Truthfully, I had already planned to find more gardening time in January. I missed the Spring plantings (with being o/s), not to mention the Spring weedings!, but I could still do some summer planting right?

I recently bought me a copy of One Magic Square by Lulu Houbein, and I was thinking, surely I could manage that. If I reclaim one square metre of my veggie garden this year - preferably next to where the comfrey and rhubarb are still going strong, so I have one edge taken care of, and only one area to water - maybe next Spring I'll manage a little (or even a lot) more. But one square metre shouldn't be too hard for now, and I could get a zucchini in there maybe (and not much else, but that might be okay).

Anyway, that is still going to be my first goal. But. Like I said I had my sister visiting. She's only owned her own place for a short time, but in that time she's done a lot more with it (food-garden-wise especially) than I have. I blame the fact that I have three children and she only has one, but since I had none when I first moved in here and she had a newborn when she first moved in there (who is now three), that's probably not the real reason. Whatever, she has done a lot, and she's done some courses in organic gardening and joined a permaculture blitz group and everything.

So when I put "fruit trees" on my kids Christmas wishlists* (wishlists are a tradition in my family), my sister immediately claimed them, and bought each of them a tree, plus a blueberry bush for me for my birthday (which is shortly before Christmas). So now I have a nectarine, pear and orange tree to find places for (that is, the kids have them, but I have to find places for them). I don't need to find a place for the blueberry bush, I've got that planned out. I plan to have a whole bed of blueberry bushes.

Not only that, but while my sister was here, we did a full garden walk around and talked through some ideas I had and she added some more ideas - plus of course we were talking where to put to the trees. And then, while we went up to visit my grandfather in Forster after Christmas, she stayed here in my house and she dealt with my over full compost bin (making all the delightful compost down the bottom accessible) and did a few other garden chores. I know, I have an amazing sister. And she has a much different work ethic to me!

So today, my first day back at home, it is 35 degrees outside (95 F) but I have spent the past week planning and dreaming and am desperate to get back into the garden. So this morning I dug some compost into my blueberry garden to be, before it got too hot. And then I couldn't help myself, I got the kids to help me move the chooks into the supposed vegetable garden. It is full of the two banes of my life, couch grass and ivy. Actually, the ivy is just encroaching, it's not full of it yet, but the grass and other weeds are spreading throughout. There is also gone to seed silverbeet and parsley, but I can live with them not self-seeding next year if the weeds don't either.

Of course, they were only in there for the day. I didn't move their house and anyway our labrador, Lochie, put a hole in the fence recently (we fenced the vegetable garden off to make it safe from him a couple of years back), so having the chooks in there today meant having Lochie locked up on the deck for most of the day (he spent some time in the chook run too, but then he started to whine, so I brought him back). And there is very limited benefit to the garden having them for a day, but on the plus side they got a lot of greens today!

Now, tomorrow Chris is off work so that I can work. In three weeks I will be back to my 'real' job in the public service on Wednesdays, but for the next three weeks I have Wednesdays to do my home work. Mostly that is meant to mean writing for Sustainable Suburbia, but I had thought I might spend tomorrow morning on garden tasks. Originally I'd been thinking maybe I could clear a metre or so of the vegetable garden, dig in some compost, and maybe plant a zucchini. But now I'm considering whether I could possibly build a small chook dome, a la Linda Woodrow, in a morning? I only need a very small one, to house three hens temporarily. Then I could have my square metre and they could gradually work over the rest of the garden, without getting into my rhubarb (poisonous leaves, and they did peck at them a big today), or my zucchini.

Mid last year I seriously contemplated getting one of these, but decided I had to learn to live within my budget instead. (By the by, that blog is now defunt, more or less, because I've lost the password and the wordpress installation seems to be buggered and won't show the captcha, so I can't get a new password. I have back ups, so I could start again and just reinstall it all, but I can't be bothered at the moment, so I'm just back to blogging about everything here. I always end up that way anyway! The main Sustainable Suburbia site is still going though.) So maybe it's time to make something myself. Or maybe not :) So that's what I'm off to do now - research the design, and make a decision.

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*This may sound a little self-serving, but aside from Eliane, who doesn't care one way or the other, my kids were really pleased with these presents. The big kids each have an apple tree that is "theirs", planted over their placenta when they were each about three or four, and one of Mikaela's other gifts was a purple flowering ground cover to go in her 'purple garden' around her apple tree. Neither kid is all that good with the work part of gardening, but they both love the concept (a bit like their parents really).

The no-cry nap solution works!

I have spent January haphazardly following my plans from the No Cry Nap Solution and (along the same lines really) the No-Cry Sleep Solution. Which actually translates mostly to doing the Pantley Pull-off most of the time, and lying down with her to go to sleep (as opposed to sitting in the rocking chair, where I inevitably end up rocking even if I mean not to) occasionally.

I planned to lie down with her more, the idea being that I could then get up and leave her, but it's actually not all that comfortable, and beside, then I can't read a book. ;-/

Anyway, for the past few days I have been succeeding in putting her down once she's asleep, and - more than half the time - having her stay asleep for a while. Most times she's woken up between 20 and 50 minutes later, but all but one time I've been able to get her straight back to sleep for the other half of her nap. And then this afternoon she slept for 2 hours without stirring!

Of course, that was 2 hours that started around the time her nap usually ends, so now at 8pm she is wide awake.* But hey, I went down and tried to gently wake her in the middle and she just rolled onto her back and kept sleeping, so what are you going to do? I didn't want to ruin her record setting effort.

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*Of course, this is not what Elizabeth Pantley recommends, she would suggest a regular nap time and regular bedtime, but we do usually do that, I swear.

The no-cry nap solution revisited (or, Wine Makes Mummy Rambly)

By the way, have I mentioned that Eliane is still a fabulous night time sleeper, but still takes about 2 hours to get down at the beginning of the (otherwise fabulous) night, and still only sleeps on me during the day? And will barely sleep in the sling any more unless she's really tired, so often only gets one nap if we're out for half the day (or she sleeps in the sling but only for twenty minutes)?

On the one hand I don't mind that much because I love nursing a sleeping baby, and she is my last one (sniff), but on the other hand I am really finding it hard to find time to do anything. Even on the rare days when I don't have Mikaela with me, if I want to get out of the house (say, to do Christmas shopping), if I also want Elli to get proper naps I have about 2-3 hours between naps to get out, and that time has to include getting organised to get out as well, because the naps are on my lap.

And, let's suppose my Mum looks after Mikaela for basically a whole day (and Liam's at school). That still means Elli's awake morning time will be taken up with breakfast and getting the kids off - maybe Chris drops them on the way to work, if I'm lucky, but more often lately I've been dropping them. By 9:30 Eliane is almost always ready - or past ready - for her first nap. Sometimes by 8:30. So most often, by the time I've got the big kids off my hands it's nap time, or maybe I've got time to make a cup of tea and get dressed.

Then Elli naps on my lap until say 11/11:30.

That gives me about 2-3 hours before I need to get her down for her afternoon nap, which is usually about 2-4 ideally. It could probably go till 4:30 without significantly effecting her bedtime routine, but Liam gets home from school (by bus) at about 3:50, so I don't like to be hidden away in her room past about 4pm.

And you can assume it takes me at least 30 minutes to get out the door after she wakes up, and that's on the days when she doesn't suddenly have a nappy blow out when we were just about to leave. And, she now needs to be fed - actual food, not just breast-milk - during the day, so allow another half an hour for that.

And then in the afternoon life is all about afternoon tea for the big kids, get dinner, eat dinner (at 5:30 or 6) PJs, teeth clean, advent calendar & candles, read to a big kid if Elli isn't waaay to tired by that time, otherwise take her to bed and leave Chris to read to both of the others. Usually I'm ensconced with Elli by 7pm, give or take 15 minutes, and there I stay for another two hours. Or tonight it was three hours...

Can you see why I don't get much done at the moment? And that's on the days when I don't have the big kids. which is at best on day/week, and not any days for the next eight weeks, because school holidays started today (although that's okay, the trade off of lazy mornings is well worth it, we are all ready for the summer holidays!)

I'm writing it out in this much detail because I often can't really figure it out myself, and also I feel like people will wonder what I do all day to be unable to get anything done. but really, that 3 hours or so in the middle of the day is the only time I have and usually at least half of that is spent holding Elli (who actually would still rather go down for a nap after two hours of wakefulness), and the rest is spent doing things for Mikaela, getting lunch, feeding Elli, maybe feeding me... or else I don't get that three hours because we spend the morning at playgroup/play-dates/swimming and by the time we get home Eliane is completely exhausted and it's all I can do to keep her from losing it while I get Mikaela some lunch and find her an activity to hopefully keep her from spilling red acrylic paint all over the carpet while I sit with Elli for two hours... (yes, that really did happen a couple of weeks ago).

Anyway, it took me three hours to get Elli down tonight (which admittedly was partly my fault because I got engrossed in a book while she was nursing and forgot to do the 'Pantley pull off' and missed the window to put her down earlier), and we had half a bottle of wine left over from my Birthday Dinner on the weekend, so now I am drinking it (since I can be fairly sure of not having to nurse Elli again at least until 4 or 5 am and more than likely not until 6 or 7) which is the other reason I am rambling... yes, Wine Makes Mummy Clever.

But I've just remembered that the whole point of this post was that Chris is taking three weeks off over the holidays and I plan to take one whole week to just focus on Eliane's nap routine. So that I am not rushing her to 'bed' when she is already exhausted, and am not concerned about keeping her asleep come what may because we've got something on later, and am following a routine, *and* practicing the Pantley pull-off so she's not falling asleep nursing and then nursing on and off for two hours. I'm hopeful that doing this during the day will also pay dividends for my night times.

I was supposed to be doing this when I first blogged about the no-cry nap solution back in about July, but I didn't because I ended up spending that week running to the hospital every day to visit my Dad. This time, an' it please god, there will be no interruptions!

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PS The photo is from September, but the only thing that's changed dramatically is she's got more hair and doesn't fit into that wrap anymore. Otherwise it's pretty accurate.

PPS I have a confession to make about the fact that I've been writing another blog! But now is not the time as that 2 & 1/2 glasses of wine have now officially gone not only to my head but to my hands, and typing is becoming increasingly difficult.

Making an Advent calandar, which will become a nativity scene (or, Advent in Australia, it's a funny thing)

My latest hand work project (and I'm not going to pretend there are a lot of them) is to make a home made advent calendar, which gradually builds into a nativity scene. This is something we have been working on in the playgroup I take Mikaela to at Liam's Steiner school - we the grown-ups that is, it's sort of a surprise for the children (though some will have been paying more attention than others).

The calendar consists of a long piece of string (a twistie actually) with 27 little packages tied to it. Each package will contain one thing to add to the nativity scene. Advent starts on Sunday 28 November this year, so that's the day for opening the first package.

The night before that, I will be setting up a little barn, made just with some pieces of bark for the roof and walls, and a few little blocks of wood to lean them on. I have a lovely piece of blue silk to set it out on. Now I just have to find a space which "can remain honoured and respected", where the kids can see and carefully touch, but where any visiting toddlers (and I'm expecting a couple in coming weeks) won't be tempted to touch too much!

Now, what will be in the packages? Well, the idea is to move through four kingdoms of minerals, plants, animals and humans (this is a Steiner concept I think*). So the first week is minerals. Stones and shells and crystals, to decorate the stable area. I have yet to scout around for these, but I don't think I'll have any trouble.

The second week is plants. So I have a few sticks of plasticine for the bases, and I plan to use some twigs and leaves and maybe some lavender and banksia flowers to be little trees and bushes.

The third week will be the animal kingdom. So far I have made a donkey and two sheep out of wool and pipe-cleaners, I have another sheep to make, and I have an echidna, a bee and a wombat, basically made out of seedpods (the bee has some yellow wool fleece twisted around it, and I will add a little white wool for the wings).

Then the last week is humans. I have Mary and Joseph already (pictured above), and half a shepherd (pictured left), and two more Shepherds to make. That leaves one day for which I will either make a star or an angel (no wise kings I'm afraid). And then the baby born on Christmas day will not be part of the calendar, but will be there when the kids wake up in the morning, in a bark manger, if I can find a curly piece of bark.

Alternatively you can have Mary and Jospeh there at the beginning and take them through a journey - now, I quite like that idea, but it would mean coming up with two more people for that final week before Christmas. Maybe I could do some wise men after all, but I don't have the materials for them at this point (and it's all gotta be finished by Saturday night, so really I should be working on the shepherds and sheep right now, not blogging!).

The book we've been using for instructions on how to make the animals is The Nature Corner: Celebrating the Year's Cycle with Seasonal Tableaux. But for the people we just had instructions from someone at the school, and I think they're a bit simpler than hers, basically just using fine wool batting, and a felting needle to "stitch" the pieces together. For the angel though, if I get to that, I think I'm going to use MamaMoontime's fleece fairy doll as a base, but I'll probably do the head the way we have for the other people, just sort of pulling a bit of the wool back over to make a smooth face.

Advent is traditionally a time of anticipation but also of preparation, of making ready for the new year. Apparently it used to be a time of fasting in the Christian calendar (I wonder if this was as well as lent, or did it move over to lent? Not that many people actually fast during lent either). I'd like to give my children some sense of reverence amid the excitement and joy of Christmas. So we'll be finding a time each day - probably right after dinner - for opening the parcel on the advent string calendar and maybe having a little bit of the story of advent. Or maybe the story will be reserved for weekend nights, I'm not sure yet.

Since we're not a strictly Christian family I'm thinking of including some other stories, from other faiths or cultures relating to this same time of year, but that's a bit further from my expertise.

The funny thing is that the idea of this being the end of the year is really predicated on coming up to mid-winter, but here in Australia we're coming up to mid-summer, which has quite a different feel to it. So although we are approaching the end of the calendar year, and, more significantly for children, the school year, seasonally speaking we're right in the middle of life. So I might need to dig out some summertime stories too.

I'll post an update with pictures when I have the initial scene set up with the advent string ready, and then I'll try take another pic at the end, when the whole scene is complete.

This post has also been linked in the Simple Seasonal Goodness linky list over at Sustainable Suburbia.

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*According to this page about Anthroposophy and Waldorf Education:

In terms of the "kingdoms of nature," we share our physical body with the mineral kingdom, our etheric body with the plant world, and our astral body with the animals.  The ego is shared with no other kingdom: only the human being carries this "divine spark" into earthly life.

The no cry nap solution

They tell you that if you put a newborn down when she is drowsy, she will learn to go to sleep on her own. I don't know whether that's true, but it hasn't worked for any of mine.

Okay, maybe we didn't really try it with Liam. Mikaela had reflux and used to cry a lot before she could sleep until we got that under control when she was maybe six or eight weeks old (and that's while being held, largely upright). With Eliane, we thought we'd get it right. But everytime we put her down, even just long enough to change her nappy, she'd get the hiccups, and quite violently. So the idea that we could put her down and she'd fall asleep was laughable. Trust me, I tried. Sometimes even when she was asleep and we put her down, she'd get hiccups and wake up.

She is, nonetheless, a great night-time sleeper. I can't remember the first time she "slept through the night" (you know, the five hours between midnight and six am version of sleeping through), but the she did her first eight hour stint at just before eleven weeks. She now mostly sleeps 6-10 hours straight every night. Some nights she wakes up a lot up to midnight (for a few weeks there that would have read every night), some nights she wakes up between five and six, and very occasionally she wakes up sometime before five. But alot of the time she sleeps like she did last night, straight through with barely a murmur from about nine until after seven. All in her own little carry cot (soon to be graduating up to the bassinette, let's hope that doesn't change things).

Day time though, is a different story. She pretty much only sleeps in arms. And, she wants to nurse on and off the whole time. Sometimes I can put her down and she'll stay asleep for twenty minutes. Very occasionally longer. It used to be sometimes she'd stay asleep for an hour or more, but that hasn't happened for weeks.

If she was my only child, I wouldn't really mind that. In fact, I didn't when it was Liam. He was an in-arms or in-sling sleeper till he was six months old. But she's not my only one. And as a consquence, she's not getting enough sleep, and in order for her to get as much as she does, Mikaela's watching way too much tele, and she, in turn, is getting way to little one on one time with me. Until recently I could get Elli to sleep in the sling (either the Ergo or the Hug-a-bub) pretty well, and she'd usually have a two hour stint in there in the afternoon after school (when television is strictly banned). And other stints here and there through the days. And at playgroup, which goes for three hours, she'd usually either sleep for two hour-hour & a half stretches, or one long two-three hour stretch. But the last month or so, she's not even sleeping in the sling for more than one 40 minute sleep cycle.

So, a few weeks ago, I decided to get serious. Chris was taking the middle week of the school holidays off and I was going to focus solely on teaching Elli to nap on her own. I knew one option would be to put her in her bed and refuse to get her out - pat her or whatever, but not pick her up - even when she cried. But I also knew that was not something I was ever going to choose to do. So I bought a copy of Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Nap Solution, and made a plan.

I love this book. I read a bit of it (and some other books) online on google books, to decide what to buy. And when I read this, I was sold:

Important Notice for Those Who Hold Sleeping Babies
If you really love having your sleeping baby in your arms and your daily schedule allows this pleasure, then continue on as your are, with my blessing. Don't change what works for you and your baby, because someone else told you you should. If your baby is having long restful naps in your arms or sling, and you are happy holding him, go ahead and enjoy this precious, fleeting time in your life and his.
Don't change what works today for fear of some future problems. It will likely be no harder or easier for your baby to make a change now or later, but it will be easier for you when you are truly ready and motivated to create change.
...
There will come a time when you feel ready to move your baby from your arms to his bed. It might be today, next month, or even next year. The right time is different for everyone, and your right time is when you should make that change - without guilt or anxiety.

I really love this woman. Of course, I was already expecting that, because I used her No-Cry Sleep Solution back when Liam was waking up eleven times a night as an eight month old, but this confirmed it. I bought the book.

The only part I didn't like was how she said you have to be patient, that this was going to take some time. Oh, but... I want it to happen now. Over night. Can't we do that?

So, it's two weeks since I bought the No Cry Nap Solution. Want to know how it's gone? I'll tell you. The day after I bought it, my Dad had open heart surgery. Yep. So you can see how I was all focused on teaching this baby to nap last week, rather than on visiting my Dad in hospital every day, can't you? And now he's staying with us for an indefinite period of time I (I was thinking a week or two, but it's looking like it might be longer - which is perfectly fine, I hasten to add, it's nice to spend some time with him - though I suspect he'll end up wanting to leave soon than he thinks, anyway). So again, my focus hasn't exactly been complete.

And now - or rather, on Monday - Chris will be back at work. But I am going to keep working at it. Initially I'm focussing on the Pantley Pull Off - trying to teach her to fall asleep without sucking (how did we get here again, didn't we learn our lesson with Liam?), with a few other bits and pieces, like dimming the room. And maybe even getting to a routine of napping at the same times... though that's tricky for a number of reasons, but especially because she can have between three and six naps in a day, depending on how long I manage to keep her asleep for.

I have to admit to being a little disheartened, and frustrated that I never had my concentrated time to just focus on Eliane that I as planning for while Chris was off work. I was really hoping that by the time school went back (ie Monday), I'd be having her sleep for longer periods on her own, which I could then spend with Mikaela, even if I still had to be there to help her get to sleep. The plan was to first teach her to go to sleep without sucking, hoping that she would therefore stay asleep for longer without being in my arms, and then start working on teaching her to go to sleep in the bassinette. But we're no-where close yet.

I'm hoping that simple maturity will help too. I remember it was when Liam was about six month old, that I discovered that he could sleep in bed without me for naps, sometimes of a couple of hours or more. But of course, I still lay down with him until he was asleep, which I'm hoping to learn how not to do with Elli. He also had a dummy (pacifier), which she doesn't. Trying one of those is an option that I will go to if all else fails, but my sense is that as it is, she will still just wake up shortly after it falls out of her mouth.

And now (three days and many naps since I began), the baby in question is demanding some attention.

My favourite baby and toddler parenting books

You think, when you have a third baby, that you surely are an old hand at this now and will know things. And it's true, you do know some things, and more importantly, you know how to find out. And you can be more relaxed about it.

But. On the other hand, thinking you might know things already, you might not bother with the books and so on, and consequently miss out on re-learning things that in fact, were quite helpful the first time around.

When I say 'you' of course, who I really mean is me. I've been surprised by the things I have simply forgotten and need to ask about or look up (how long does it take the cord stump to fall off? is it meant to still be gungy like that afterwards? when does the newborn acne tend to kick in? And now it's here, when will it go away again? What do you do about blocked tear ducts? How do you get this baby to latch on well for a good feed?).

But also, when I do look things up, I've been surprised by the things I've forgotten that I didn't know I'd forgotten (that you only feed on one side to begin with, and indeed to go on with potentially; that the yellow gunk she gets in her eyes is just tears that can't drain b/c of blocked tear ducts, not conjunctivitis - although putting breastmilk in her eyes is still a good idea; that the tear ducts can block up again and again for up to six months; I'm sure there've been other things, but I've forgotten them now).

So, it's back to browsing in the baby books for me. Here are my favourites:

The Baby Book: Everything you need to know about your baby from birth to age two by William & Martha Sears.

When I'm recommending this to people the main things I tell them are that I like their general parenting philosophy a lot, that it has a great section on 'Infant development and behaviour' covering those first two years in a fair bit of detail, and another great section on common childhood illnesses, how to recognise and treat them, and when to see a doctor. I referred to this section a lot when Liam was little, just for peace of mind. We hardly ever needed to go the doctor.

But actually, as I am rediscovering, it has heaps more goodness than that. A whole section on newborn care, for instance, and what to expect, covering things like care of the cord stump, normal skin changes (new born acne, for instance, or cradle cap), how to put on a nappy (they call it a diaper, of course), pros and cons of dummies (pacifiers), the newborn's body - what's normal what's not. Two chapters on breastfeeding, and another on formula feeding, and another on how & when to introduce solids. Then there are the chapters on 'babywearing', on how to get your baby to sleep, and on parenting the fussy or colicky baby.

Some of the sections I haven't read since Liam was a baby, but still remember fondly, are about the very beginning. In "Nesting-in", a section in chapter five, they say

"Take maternity (and paternity) leave: ... consider what maternity and paternity leave really mean - leave everything else to someone else and concentrate on your newborn. Baby will only be a newborn for one month. Almost anything can wait four weeks."

And "Dress for the occasion" - I love this:

"Don't take your night gown off for two weeks; sit in your rocking chair and let yourself be pampered. As a busy mother of eight Martha has learned to dress for the occasion. Wearing her nightgown gives the rest of the family the message that mom is off call. develop a language and mindset - 'go ask Daddy' - that directs the traffic of the  other children from draining on mom."

Of course, not everyone can manage this ideal. Some mother's partners don't take time (or much time) off for unavoidable reasons. But what I love about this is it sets the ideal. The mother of a newborn should not be the sole carer of other children, she should not be worrying about cooking dinner or washing clothes. Look, of course she will - usually - manage what she has to manage. But I swear I am getting so much more enjoyment out of my beautiful Eliane because I am not the primary carer for the other children right now, Chris is.

Do the other kids miss me? Probably. But would they miss me even if Chris wasn't at home? For sure - I'd still be preoccupied with Eliane, I'd just be more tired and stressed doing it, and they wouldn't have someone doing all the things with them that Chris is able to do at the moment. And, if Chris wasn't at home, he wouldn't be getting so much time with Eliane either.

Okay, well, Eliane's waking up now, so rather than try to get this whole post complete before I publish it, the other books are going to have to wait till another one.

Special preview - they will include The no cry sleep solution: Gentle ways to help your baby sleep  through the night and Mothering your nursing toddler. And maybe more, I'll have to think about it and see if I get there...

P*nis envy

Mikaela has, quite literally, got p-nis envy. She said the other day she wants to be a daddy, not a mummy, because she wants to have a penis. Of course, she backtracked when she realised that daddies don't get to be pregnant, but she has said she wished she had a penis at least two other times in the past few days. Then too at other times she's said (happily), "So we have three girls now: you, and me, and Eliane."

Interesting.

In other news, she had a dream the other night in which she fell into deep water (when we - the family - were strolling along next to it), and a house pulled her out. Yes, that's right. A house. My Dad said it must have been Howl's Moving Castle.

Reading to children, the buoyancy of language, the beautiful sounds

As I mentioned a while ago, I'm now reading the Narnia books to Liam. We've got through two so far (The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe and The Magician's Nephew, in that order), because we have been interspersing them with The Spiderwick Chronicles, which Liam borrowed from a friend, and some Magic Treehouse Books, which my sister just gave Liam last week as a late Christmas present.

As I said, I am really enjoying reading the Narnia books out loud. The language and even the stories are so much richer than many of the modern kids books we've been reading, which I guess are designed to be easily read and digested by primary school kids, with their short sentences and relatively simple language and plots lines. 

We had a parent-teacher night at school the other day (not individual interviews, just a general session with all the parents to talk about 'the class two child' and the curriculum for this year etc.), and Liam's teacher, Margie, gave us a handout about the art of reading.

In the Steiner curriculum the kids are taught to read and write rather differently and more slowly than in the mainstream in Australia. They started writing last year, in class one, first learning their letters, then starting to write out sentences (copying from the board) from the stories Margie tells them each day. They are building up a list of 'words we know' (starting with things like 'and' 'in' 'the'), but at this stage they are still only reading what they themselves have written. They won't get their first 'reader' until later in the year, and that will consist of poems and stories which they already know.

This fits in not only with Steiner teachings, but also with the research that shows that starting all children in reading and writing at five means that those who are not ready at can become frustrated and stunted and often never really catch up or learn to enjoy reading, while children who start at seven have caught up with their earlier starting peers by about the age of ten, while avoiding the problems for those who weren't ready earlier. (know I should really look up a reference here, but I'm bound to run out of time anyway, so just google if you are interested).

Anyway, the problem this does present is when children, and/or their parents, start to feel worried that some of their (non-Steiner) friends can read, and they can't. We tried to avoid having this issue with Liam by explaining up front that in lots of schools they start reading and writing in kindy, rather than having so much outdoor (and indoor for that matter) play time. Since outdoor playtime was always his favourite part of the day, he considered it a fair trade. We didn't even need to point out that he could french knit and knit and sew etc whereas those other kids (mostly) couldn't - he'd probably give all that the flick in exchange for more outdoor play time!

But, we also have had it pretty easy since he has taught himself to read - by word recognition - far ahead of the curve as far as his own school goes. I guess just the amount that we have always read to him, plus maybe a genetic pre-disposition (he probably could hardly help it with such bookish parents), helped with this.*

So Margie handed out this article partly in response to some parents reporting their children's anxiety. It's for the parents, not the children, but the parents need to have the faith first, I think, that we are doing the right thing for our kids. But the article made me feel even better about reading the Narnia books, and also about me reading it to him, rather than the other way around. Last year we were doing a lot of him reading to me (because he wanted to), but this year it's now mostly me reading to him (not just in the case of the CS Lewis books either), and a part of me had started worrying that I wasn't encouraging him in his own reading enough, especially now school's back and light's out is a bit earlier - so not as much reading on his own in bed either.

It's called The Winged Horse: An essay on the Art of Reading, by Henry Barnes. I guess the gist of the article is in this paragraph

"When had this boy first started to learn to read? It was not in his reading lessons, when he first struggled to spell out words, but when he listened to the stories which were told and read aloud to him, into which he entered with his whole being. For reading is an art—the art of entering with one's whole soul into an experience outside of oneself. It is a gleaning of the sunlight hidden in the hard kernal of the word...The technique of reading the printed word is a specialized branch of the reading process and should no more be confused with it than the technique of raising and lowering the fingers should be confused with the art of the pianist."

Barnes goes on to compare the teaching of reading to that of swimming - just as the first step in swimming is to get children comfortable in the water, not to teach techniques, the first step in learning to read is to give them a "love and enjoyment of the great stories and poems which are the element in which the reader swims." He adds

"Learning new words, practicing work families, sounding out syllables, all of this necessary work belongs in special lessons which parallel the reading lessons, but are not allowed to destroy the germinating, imaginative process of reading itself."

But the part of the article that really got me? 

Quoting Nathanial Hawthorne in his 1851 introduction to his Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales:

"In performing this pleasant task... the author has not always thought it necessary to write downward in order to meet the comprehension of children. He has generally suffered the them to soar, whenever such was its tendency, and when he himself was buoyant enough to follow without effort."

And Barnes adds in what I consider the 'money quote':

"It is not the poverty-stricken renderings of obvious and ordinary events which we should give children as their first experiences in reading. Let us have the courage to do what our forefathers did... let us give them the truly great stories, fairy tales, and poems, told by the masters of the language... with the right guidance, the difficulties of the vocabulary will prove no stumbling block and the beauty of the language will itself prove a most potent educational force. Let us have confidence in the bouyancy of language, as we do in water, for language is one of the great creative powers of the race. And let us not fail to value the educative power of what is half-understood in what the children read. This strange word, often beautiful in sounds, placed like an emerald in its native rock, stirs the imagination and allows the child's soul to surmise a shadowy world which it will one day understand but which is now veiled in mystery. Isn't this reaching out to grasp what cannot yet be fully understood an important part of every growth?"

___________

*Having said that, I should add that his writing is nowhere near at the standard of his reading. He is probably among the slower in the class at this, as at most fine motor skill activities, like knitting and sewing (bit like his mother in this area too!). I talked to Margie about this too, but that's another post.

Mikaela demonstrates giving birth

We have three very different books to do with having a new baby come into the family, all told from the perspective of an older sibling.

There's a Little Golden Book from my childhood called Jenny's New Brother, in which the the parents arrive home from the hospital with the baby at the beginning of the book and the baby is able to walk and say Jenny's name at the end.

A 'concept book' (that's what it calls it on Amazon) called My Mom's having a Baby, which begins with the pregnancy being four weeks old, and follows it through until birth, with a couple of pages on how the egg and sperm get together in the middle. The birth happens out of the story though, while the big sister waits at home with the grandma, though the waters breaking and the contractions starting are in there.

And a lovely home birth book, called Hello Baby, by Jenni Overend, in it's original (Australian) edition, but Welcome with Love in the American edition, which is what we have because a lovely American friend sent it to me when I was pregnant with Mikaela. This one starts at the beginning of the labour and finishes with bedtime the night after the baby has been born. It has beautiful illustrations by Julie Vivas.

Mikaela has been requesting all three books regularly lately, probably the first and last ones most often. Tonight we read Welcome with Love before bed. In the middle of the book Mikaela said "I'll show you," and stood up on her bed (which is perpendicular to Liam's bunk, above), grabbed hold of Liam's bed and leaned forward sort of hanging from it, sticking her butt out. "This is how the baby comes out," she explained.

What I have been doing lately (plus some other comments)

Grrr... just wrote half a post and lost it when Firefox crashed. We *really* need to do something about this computer.

Anyway, I was writing a post in dot points...

• I love that poem/short story by Jamaica Kincaid, 'What I have been doing lately'. I'm pretty sure it's from At the Bottom of the River, but I gave the book away before I moved back to Australia after studying it in America years ago. Damn it.
• In less than 2 weeks this baby could be born any time and be considered 'full term' (ie I will be 37 weeks pregnant). I'm hoping to have everything on my very long list done by then, and then have a week (or more?) to rest on my laurels.* But we'll see...
• Liam & I have started reading The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe this week. Or more accurately, I've started reading it to him. It's really fun to read.
  
  Most nights we have about a half hour of reading together in the living room, while Mikaela reads with Chris and goes to sleep in their bedroom, then Liam has another half hour (or so) reading on his own in bed. And often what he does is reads ahead in whatever book we are reading together, but because he is still mostly reading by word recognition, his comprehension can be limited, depending on the book, so he's happy for me to re-read it to him the next night (or him to read it to me, with help on some words, depending on the book and on how he feels).
  
  But because I'm mean, I'm not letting him take the Narnia books to bed. I'm insisting on reading them all myself. Partly that's because it's been close to two decades since I read them and so I don't remember just how scary they might get, partly it's because with the old-fashioned language I know he'll have a harder time reading it to himself, and partly it's just because I want to enjoy being with him when he hears the stories for the first time.
  
  I am finding the language - the long sentences, and very English way of talking - to be really fun to read aloud, and quite refreshing after some of the modern kids books we've been reading.
• What I am not reading any more of to Liam is the Zac Power books. I am sick to death of them. Zac is, quite frankly, annoying, they are completely unrealistic (in a way that is somehow different to the Magic Treehouse books or the Narnia stories being unrealistic). But more than that, I don't like the values they are promoting. Zac is always going on about his 'geeky' or 'nerdy' big brother Leon, using those as negative terms ('Even the geeky Leon could do that', or 'isn't scared of that', or whatever); Zac is never scared of anything, even when he plainly should be (so he's a twit, but instead he's written as a hero); and the only female characters I've come across so far either turn out to be working for the baddies, or are his mother (who is also a spy, but you certainly wouldn't know it).
  
  People talk about them as 'early readers', there is even a set of four or five of them (the Test Drive books) which have larger print & are shorter - and, from memory, generally less obnoxious - but that just gets the kids in of course. And really, I think they are probably better for an older age group - after all Zac is 12. But given that Liam only just started reading & writing at school last year, at the age of 7, and he can read them now, I figure kids who go to mainstream schools and start the three Rs at 5 must be reading them by now, or earlier, too. Certainly a few of his friends are (though not his school friends, that I know of). Either way, I don't like them.
  
  Liam just borrowed five more of these books from a friend (who I think, I am sorry to say, first came to them when Liam bought him one for his birthday last year), and I've said he can read them to himself, but I'm not reading them to him. I explained some of why I don't like them, but I don't think I did a very good job of it.
• We have had two 'dinner parties' with friend in the past week. This is unheard of behaviour for us! On Friday we had dinner at my lovely friend Simone's house, and didn't get home until after 11. I don't actually think we've done that since we've had kids (unless you count weddings). Another couple were there as well, with their two children, so there were friends for all ages and the kids had as much fun as we did.
  
  Then last night we had another family over for a more casual pizza dinner (home made though!), but again the kids got to run wild while we chatted until about nine o'clock at night. As a consequence Mikaela is already over-tired now at 10:30 in the morning, so I hate to think what the witching hour will be like tonight! But it's all good.
• We finally went to see our lovely doula last week, and she lent me Ina May Gaskin's Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, which I had not read before, as a general refresher. It's a wonderful book.
  
  I am really looking forward to the birth. Not without some apprehension - because you just never know how it will be - but with a reasonable amount of confidence & plenty of excitement. I do hope to get to the birth centre a little earlier this time (having arrived pretty much already in transition last time), so that I have some time to get into the calm birth/hypnobirthing 'zone' - it's hard to relax and let go when you arrive so late. Most of the labour at home was okay that way, but of course with Liam here and me worrying about Chris changing the sheets before we left... Yeah, not exactly right out of the neo-cortex (ie rational) part of my brain.
  
  On the other hand, I'm realising that some more time to relax once my list is complete wouldn't be a bad thing. Liam is back at school next week, and while my mum is away that week, the following Friday she's agreed to take Mikaela for the whole day (moreoreless) so Chris and I can take the whole of Liam's school day to be a 'date' day - do to a movie, have lunch etc. And if the baby could hold out another week past that, we could do it all over again the next Friday! If I give birth as early with this one as I did with the other two then we'd be home from the birth centre with a new baby by that time, but then again, every birth is different, as I keep being told! :)

I had more to say about my doula, who is also a reiki practitioner and did a lovely relaxation session with me (visualisations plus reiki) on Sunday, but I gotta go. We leave for Mikaela's swimming lesson soon (which she is still loving), so I better go get those children organised.

__________

*What does that mean, to rest on one's laurels? I mean, where does it come from? Must google it later... (edited to add: apparently the laurels come from "ancient Greece, where laurel wreaths were symbols of victory and status")

Reading princess stories with Liam

Liam and I have just (a few days ago) started reading stories out of an old book of my Mum's called The World's Best Fairy Tales. It has tales from the collections of Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Anderson, Andrew Lang etc. He found it on the shelf and decided he wanted to read them - especially the princess stories (more on that later).

I haven't read from it before, because some of them a quite Grimm (ha ha). Like the Little Match Girl (who I'm pretty sure dies in the snow at the end), and the Little Mermaid. Not at all like the disney versions. But he seems old enough to cope now, and I must say when we got to the end of The Little Mermaid tonight, it wasn't quite as bad as I remembered, even though it was sad.

I'm a bit nervous about the nasty bits. He often wants me to read ahead in mildy scary books (like The Famous Five books) and check that it's going to be okay - which, if it's Enid Blyton or some such I can readily assure him it will be. So I've warned him these aren't all sweetness and light. When we started the Little Mermaid last night we got to the bit where the witch is describing to the mermaid what it will be like to walk as a human (every step will feel like you are stepping on daggers etc) and then cuts out her tongue as payment, and Liam decided he wanted to stop, it was making him too teary. But then later he read ahead, checked the end, and decided it wasn't so bad (even though there was probably a lot in there he didn't get - it's pretty old fashioned language), so we finished it tonight.

Anyway, what's interesting to me about this is that Liam has decided he wants to read all the princess stories in the book. After I leave him for the night he gets to read for another half hour or so, and he's read through bits of them and bookmarked lots that he wants me to read to him. So far we've read Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 

But today he told me that he can never tell his two best (male) buddies at school, or they will throw him out of their 'club'. Why, I asked him. "I don't know," he said, and then elaborated - because they think girl's stuff is dumb, and they think princess stories are girls stuff. Which, Liam said, is dumb. There's no such thing as 'boys' and 'girls' stuff.

Well, I thought, I guess I've done my job well, but... isn't it a sad world?

Reading with Liam

"When can I read the first Harry Potter book?" Liam asked me the other day.

"When you can read it yourself," I said. Of course, he immediately claimed that he can read it himself in his head, now. Which I know to be untrue. So I amended "When you can read it out loud to me, then."

Now, they don't really start reading books until class two at Orana. In class one (where Liam is now) they learn to write, and they read only what they have written (or what their teacher writes on the board). They haven't done much in the way of phonics yet, although they have learned about the 'magic e' that sits silently at the end of words and makes the preceding vowel long. And they have learned about sentences, pausing (for a count of three no less) after every full stop. I think they'll be learning about 'blends' - 'st', 'tr' 'sh' etc - in their next English main lesson* (at the moment they are in a math main lesson).

So when I said "when you can read it to me", I really meant "maybe next year". However, Liam's response was "Yay, can we start today?" And we did.

When he first opened the book, he was a little dismayed. "I thought the writing would be bigger," he said. But he pushed on, helped by using a book mark under the line to keep his place. We read two pages the first day - me filling in the words he didn't know. I made/helped him 'sound out' a few of the easier words. And I was amazed by some of the words he read without pausing, like 'concentrated'. But he also got lots of quite simple words right some of the time and wrong other times, depending on context and how closely he was paying attention - he's already taken to scanning rather than looking at each word.

I thought he would probably leave it after that experience, but no - we read another page before school the next morning, and then two more that night. But the next day I went to the library and borrowed three Zac Power books - which have large print and are far more age appropriate. We started the first one that afternoon, getting through three chapters before I said 'enough', and then read the other three chapters (finishing the book), before Liam went to bed that night. He then got up before 6:30 the next morning - which was yesterday - and we could hear him out in the living room, reading it aloud again. Which he did again this morning.

We haven't started the next book yet because I've been at work since then, and he had footy training last night so we didn't have our usual before bed reading time. But I promised him we could start it tonight.

I have to say, all in all I'm a pretty proud parent. I know he's behind other kids his age in conventional school systems. But considering where he's up to in his own school program, he's really well advanced. And I can easily see that before we know it he'll be hiding his torch under his pillow at night so he doesn't have to stop reading when we tell him it's lights out time.

___________________

*Main lesson is a Steiner concept I think. They have one long lesson a day - after morning circle time - which is called main lesson. Each main lesson topic runs for two or three weeks, and is either maths, literacy, or social science focussed. Then they have 'practice lessons' later in the day. When they have a maths main lesson, they will still have English practice lessons, but they won't learn new literacy concepts. (Of course, they also have music, handwork, German and Japanese lessons once or twice a week, as well as quite a lot of free play time & organised games time).

Group behaviour, boys and their cliques in school

Via the Twelfth Down Under Feminist Carnival, I've just been reading Andragy: CyberBullying, Feminism, Mean Girls, Queen Bees and Boys, and from there, the bit of Queen Bees and Wannabes that's online at Amazon.

Andra says of Wiseman's book:

I think that Queen Bees is a fine piece of feminist analysis, with racial and sexual prejudices opened up as well. Wiseman points out that she works equally with boys and girls, and that society's definition of masculinity influences boys away from strength, individuality and towards violence, bullying and groups in the same way that definitions of femininity trap girls.

I'd love to read a similar book about boys (though I note from the TOC of Queen Bees that there is a chapter on boys, and I have requested it from my local library). I do feel that ever since Liam began school the influence towards violence and group behaviour has certainly been growing.

He still does plenty of lovely creative play,* plays with girls as well as boys and so on. And I love his teacher and think she is working really well with them to teach them to be courteous, that making sure everyone gets a go is more important than winning a game etc. But the cliques seem to be forming, the popular children and less popular children are finding their places.

And I am starting to feel that I need more information. Liam is a boy, which I plainly am not. And also, he seems to be quite popular. Which, it might surprise you to know, I already was not by his age. I wasn't the lowest of the low at any time, but I was below the middle, right through until the end of year 10.**

So I'm not entirely sure how to teach him to - well, to be nice. To not fall in with group behaviour which is mean to others. To stick up for children who need support. Andra quotes Wiseman:

Boys and men who speak out against sexism or publicly support girls and women run the risk of being ridiculed by their peers as "fags", "sissies", "pussies" or in some circles "sensitive new age guys".

This is the sort of message I am afraid Liam might be picking up from his friend 'Craig'. That being kind, wearing a beany, playing co-operatively etc might may him some kind of 'sissy' (a word I would hope he's never heard, but I'm probably kidding myself), and that there's something wrong with that.

Any book recommendations for me?
__________
*Am I showing my biases here?
** Year 11 & 12 is at a different school in Canberra, and quite a different experience - for which I was extremely grateful.

The divided heart

(I wrote this offline, earlier in the week)

Reading Rachel Power's book, The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood, I am overwhelmed by the resonances it continually strikes. It's not surprising, perhaps, that such a book should resonate for me. This blog, largely, is about art – writing – and motherhood (or at least it's about the children). But it seems that each page I read there is another quote I want to record, and share, and comment on. I have half written a dozen essays in my head in the past half hour. So many things I've been thinking, or not quite thinking but feeling, are being articulated in this book.

I often feel incredibly lucky: as a writer-mother I have it easy compared to many, if not most. I have a supportive partner who actively encouraged me to start the masters in writing, knowing that writing was really what I wanted more than anything else to be concentrating my energies on. My professional energies that is, because of course parenting requires and equal – if not greater – toll.

Right now I am sitting in a cafe, writing, on a Monday night. My children think I'm at pilates, which is where I usually go on Monday nights as soon as Chris arrives home. But my pilates instructor is away this month, so I am going to this cafe instead, to carve a little time to write, or read, or plot, or research markets. Yesterday morning I spent time writing while Chris took the children swimming, which is a recently resumed habit, since the pool they go to finally reopened just before Christmas, after six months of renovations.

Nonetheless, I struggle with the same guilt that seems common to so many writer-mothers. Somewhere recently I read a comment from a writer-mother about the problem of treating art as a privilege, not an obligation*. I know there are those who feel torn between their salaried jobs and their children. I honestly don't have that issue, perhaps because I know my kids are with their father when I'm at work, or because I only work 20 hours a week, or because I think the benefits to all of us of Chris and I sharing the domestic role as well as the paid-worker role far out way any disadvantages.**

But I do find it hard to treat my writing as an obligation, and I find it hard to expect my partner to do so also. It doesn't pay (usually) and while I hope that it will, it's never likely to replace my public service salary. And now that I am actually enjoying my paid work so much it makes writing seem even more like a luxury that I indulge in at the expense of my family. I long to have my Sundays back – Sundays in my study, that is, like I had before I went back to work, while I was working on my Masters Project. Time to write and think and read as I felt I needed to.

Power writes of "the burden of the artistic imperative, of that constant desire to record everything almost before it's happened" (p . 16).*** Oh yes, I thought. She also writes about sometimes longing to be free of it. "For the first time in my life, I envied the women without strong ambitions outside of the home. Art was like a monkey on my back and I resented it's skittish hold on me, the way it caused me to strain away from my babies, to live a split life. I was burdened by the knowledge of what it would cost my family (financially, but more so emotionally) for me to keep writing – just as I became aware of how much it was cost me not to." (p. 17) Yes yes yes!

I think I've written here before about the sense I have sometimes of how much easier life could be if I could just give up writing. The time I – we, as a family – would suddenly have. The freedom I would have from this constant desire to record, to interpret, to imagine. But I don't know how to be free of that desire. I've had it as long as I can remember, or at least ever since I read Our snowman has olive eyes when I was about eight, which ends with the protagonist deciding to write about her grandmother – sort of an eight-year-old's memoir (from memory, which could be wrong). And although I often think it would make life easier, I don't really want to be rid of the monkey either. I don't know who I would be without it.

This past six months, since I finished my master's project and started back at work, I have written little. I have spent weekends with my family, planted and expanded our vegie garden, planned fruit trees, half covered our pergola (our house faces west, so this is not before time), and of course gotten back into the swing of paid work, complete with occasional overtime. But I have been hankering after my writing time, trying to figure out how to fit it in.

The truth is that I am lazy by nature. I like to sit and read and chat with my husband, and yes sometimes watch television (I gave Chris the last season of Alias for Christmas and we've already watched 5 episodes). Also, since I had children I always seem to be tired. I don't like to do housework – and unfortunately neither does he, so our house is a constant mess, I don't like to get up early, I don't like to stay up late.

Also I do like to spend that precious hour or two after the kids are in bed with my husband. Usually a good bit of that is still spent in domestic labour, be it cleaning the kitchen (Chris usually does that), hanging out washing, watering the vegies or walking the dog. Then, if we're lucky, there's enough time left to watch an episode of Alias (or West Wing – we're on the second season) before I need to collapse into bed. Otherwise we usually retire to the living room for a cuppa and a chat. Sometimes I retire instead to the study to write a blog post or read my email or google something or other, but mostly I reserve that little bit of time to be alone with my partner. And I do that both because I want to and because I feel I should; that it's important for both of us separately and more to the point for both of us together.

Part of our commitment when we married was to nurture our relationship – to recognise that it would not always thrive without some effort on our part, and to put that effort in. Having brought children into the mix that becomes even more important, while ironically also becoming harder to manage. I am lucky to be able to say that our relationship is – I think – as solid today as it ever was. Nonetheless I feel to neglect it is both foolish and unfair.

Or is this simply all justification for my inability to prioritise writing?

I do feel incredibly lucky, as I began by saying, in my choice of life partner, in my well paid part-time work, in my wonderful children. But I still feel guilt when I take 'time out' to write. Especially when I use the time to write something like this, or to read, or to – well, do anything that is not either required for my masters (and I do have one subject to go, which will begin in March), or specifically aimed at getting published. If I'm writing an article or preparing a story for submission, that's not too bad. But if I use the time for writing like this, or what I think of as feeding my writing-self, by reading something like Power's book, I feel like I am somehow being deceitful, like my partner has given me this time (as Power says, time alone is never free, once you have children – it has to be "bought, borrowed or stolen" (p. 14)) and I am wasting it.

_____________

*Maybe at Literary Mama, maybe one of the revolving writer-quotes on Dawn's blog, maybe somewhere else (somewhere offline even!).

** That's not to say I don't feel frustrated by never having enough time either at work or home - I just don't feel guilty about it.

***page numbers refer to the paperback edition (amazon refers to a hardback?), published by Red Dog, Fitzroy, 2008. Rachel Power is an Australian, by the way, who also just happens to be a good friend of a good friend of mine, and who also had her first child within a week (or was it a day?) of mine, but who I've never met.

On mother-writing, mothering and/while writing, and writing as a mother.

If the woman artist has been trained to believe that the activities of motherhood are trivial, tangential to main issues of life, irrelevant to the great themes of literature, she should untrain herself.  Alice Ostriker

This is the epigraph to the introduction to The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood, by Rachel Power. I blogged about this book before when I heard Power interviewed on the radio, and now I own it, thanks to my lovely husband who bought it for me for Christmas.

Of course, being a mother of children on school holidays, I've barely read any of it yet. But so far I think my favourite two quotes from the introduction (yes, I haven't even made it past the seven page introduction) are:

"Beyond giving birth, however, the stuff of mother's lives becomes worse than taboo - it becomes merely mundane. Mothering is such a prosaic term in our culture that it functions as a disguise for the true intensity of the experience, blocking any insight into the way this singular knowledge could be translated into good art."

You'd think we'd be over this by now, but we so are not! Just this morning I was discussing with one of my mother friends the sense one gets when talking to one's still single (or at least childless) friends - of being old and married with children and living in the suburbs (oh the horror!)*. I think being a mother is a bit like living in the suburbs. Actually, it can be very rewarding and intensely stimulating, but it still has such a dud reputation.  (Okay, I'm going a bit far as far as the suburbs go, but you get my point.)

"Every woman featured in this book defies the myth of the artist as tortured, self-obsessed genius with no option but to damage those who love them. Each is at a different stage along the path of reconciling the demands of domesticity with her desires as an artist...
"All the myths about art, as well as motherhood, are dismantled and reinvented by the voices collected here."

Soon, soon I will get to read more and I will enjoy those dismantlings and reinventions, I'm sure of it.

_____

*I hasten to add this is not a sense necessarily projected by the childless friends, just a message we have internalised from the broader culture.

The Divided Heart: Art and Motherhood

I've just been listening to a radio interview with Rachel Power, author of The Divided Heart, along with two of her interviewees, and just listening to them talk inspired me to get back to writing something - even blogging.

I have written virtually nothing since I started work two months ago. A few blog posts, a few more half blog posts*, nothing else.

I blame it partly on settling into my new routine that includes three days a week in the paid workforce,** partly on a sort of post-intensive study/writing lull, and partly on the fact that I've been sick four (4!) times since I began work. That's roughly every two weeks. Currently I m just getting my voice back after two days without it, but to compensate one of my ears is completely blocked (and weeping!) and every sounds reverberates inside there, mixing in with the constant ringing. And that's not even to mention the sore throat, headache, wet cough etc. And this began two Sundays ago.

Of course another factor is Spring - I always have a hard time settling down to writing in the Spring, when what I really want to do is get out into the garden. Today it is a beautiful, sunny, 16 degree day, and what I really long to be doing is getting out into the vegie garden which has a lot of preparation needed before the Spring planting begins,*** but I know that what i should really be doing is resting, and even standing here at the bench typing on my laptop (which is the only way Kaely will let me get any writing done) is more restful than digging paths and lugging manure and mulch and sawdust. So when my brain is still available at night I've been re-reading books on permaculture and vegetables and herbs, and drawing out plans, trying to figure out how to make the best of my south-west facing block.

But back to the point of this post, which was writing and motherhood and Rachel's book. Rachel Power, I realised half way through the interview, is a very good friend of a friend of mine. A few years back when Liam was a baby, and her first child was a baby, and I was in Melbourne for a month while Chris completed his Rolfing triaining, our mutual friend was trying to get us together, and I remember she told me that Rachel was writing (or perhaps just thinking about at that stage) this book. We both had babies and lived on opposite sides of Melbourne and had transport issues, so we never did manage to connect. But it was partly talking to that same friend, a year or so later, that inspired me to start the Masters degree. I suppose I felt that studying and working part-time would simply not be possible at the same time as being the mother I wanted to be for my son.

Of course me studying did impact Liam. And (equally of course) that is one of the refrains of the book - the balancing act between doing the work you want/need to do and being the mother you want/your children need you to be. One of the women interviewed said that of course her children were impacted, but that for her it was about finding the compromise she could live with. Of course, that's something I suppose all working mothers (and to some extent fathers) live with, but there's a definitely difference between working for a certain pay check and working for a *maybe* pay check, somewhere in the future. For me, I suppose that I could make a living writing if I really really worked at it, but it would be a lot more work for a lot less money. So my writing becomes something that I fit into my 'spare' time, and hope to get bits of peices of published here and there.

Another difference between the at work mother and the artist mother is that the latter, whether she's paid or not, is very often a work-at-home mother, so her work is constantly interrupted and fit in around. Rachel Power spoke about the self-discipline required - that now she has finished The Divided Heart, it's so much easier to make the beds than to sit down and start a new project. Especially, I add, when you know that you will be interrupted over and over again. So far in the time I've been writing this post I have also

• changed a stinky nappy
• set Mikaela up with the trainset
• set Mikaela up with the barn and animals
• set Mikaela up with a pencil case and paper (and moved myself from the kitche bench to the dining room table so as to keep an eye on her and make sure she neither sucks any of Liam's textas (markers) dry, nor draws on my pile of gardening books also sitting on the dining room table)
• put on a load of washing (nappies)
• helped Mikaela with numerous pen lids, and rescued the same from her mouth.

One of the mothers on the radio mentioned the guilt over knowing that your children want to be with you, and yet you are argonising over the exactly word or phrase you need while they watch a video. Mikaela's not yet of an age or temperament where I can count on the tele to keep her occupied for more than about five minutes (although sometimes it will), but I have certainly experienced that guilt with Liam. For me though, when I was studying on a Sunday, it was more the sense that I was depriving not only the kids, but the whole family of 'family time' (since Chris was also working on Saturdays). So now that I am not studying, and Chris is not working on Saturdays for a while, I am relishing our long, two day weekends, but also half wishing I could justify shutting myself away in my study again. I said I was write in the evenings, but so far I haven't done it. Some women get up at the crack of dawn to write or paint or whatever before their kids are up, but my kids are up at about 6am lately, and I frankly am not going to get up significantly earlier than that - I don't get enough sleep as it is.

I am still planning to make the evenings thing work for me, but for the moment I really just need to try to get my health under control, and try to write a little more during the day I think, the washing be damned.

On the up side, I was interested to hear my experience reflected (and I gather this was also a common theme), in that having children actually makes the art easier, the work more efficient in some ways. There's something about knowing you only have ten minutes, or two hours or whatever that can focus the mind, reduce the procrastination, and enhance one's ability to make fast judgements. One of the women also commented that having children makes your emotional nerve endings that much more sensitive, which can actually be quite useful to an artist.

But now I have literally used up all my time for writing this morning. Kaely is moving towards melt down and needs to be fed and put to bed in time to get her up again to go pick Liam up for school. It's possible her nap will give me more time, but just as likely that she'll spend half of it in my arms and then wake up twenty minutes after I put her down. I don't mind too much - I love having her sleep in my arms, and it gives me an enforced rest too, which I could use. Then again I could also use the time to hang out those nappies before while the sun is still high in the sky, or to think about dinner, or perhaps I could plant some of those tomato seeds that arrived in the mail the other day, so they'll be ready to plant out in the garden by the beginning of November... right now though I'd better go organise lunch.

________________

*Because most of the time when I start writing Kaely interrupts after about two paragraphs if I'm lucky, and then again another para on, and so on until I completely lose the thread and the interest. Which is why the posts I do write are so jumpy from one thought to another - no time to stop and think or save a thought till later or re-structure afterwards, if i do that, it never gets posted at all.

**Which i am still quite enjoying by the way, and at least there I am getting to do a teeny bit of writing - currently I'm working on a story on WWII shipwrecks in Australian waters, as random as that sounds - though mostly I'm doing more mundane work of updating websites with other people's content.

***Our vegie garden has lain fallow since we moved the chooks back into their run a couple of months back, but we are about to get serious about it again - and see how that goes with Lochie and what we might have to do. In the meantime, on the weekend we finally got a couple more Silkies (another white and a blue) to be friends for Fluffy, which was very exciting and is another reason to be spending time outside.

Managing the toddler's 'negative' behaviour

I've been re-reading bits of You are your child's first teacher, by Rahima Baldwin Dancy. I have to return it to the library today, but I'll be getting it back because it's full of good reminders and information. It's written by a Steiner teacher, but what I like about it is that it doesn't just rely on Steiner's ideas, it backs them up (and occasionally updates them altogether) with more contemporary research.

This is the sort of book you can just dive into anywhere and find something good. I opened it first (randomly) at a section called 'Dealing with Negative Behaviour' in the chapter on 'Helping Your Toddler's Development'. It starts out "One of the challenges of living with the child from eighteen to thirty-six months is dealing with the 'negativisim' that he manifests. If you can recongnize your child's emerging sense of self and power as something positive, you won't fall into the trap of thinking that you have done something wrong..." (or, I would add, that the child is somehow 'wrong').

She talks about the importance of being loving but firm, providing limits and corrections in calmness (not anger) but with 'absolute certainty' that there is no other choice. She goes on to suggest that you

...set up your house so that the child has the maximum freedom and requires the minimum of no's, and then you are firm about what is not allowed. It is wonderful for your child to be curious, but he doesn't have to play with your makeup, which can be met with a stern no, removing the child from the scene, and then putting the makeup in a less accessible place. There is no need to punish the child, because a toddler is unable to understand what he has done or to remember the next time.

This idea of then making it inaccessible is the key. Why set yourself up for conflict? She goes on (a bit later)

Many two-year-olds hate change and fall apart during transitions between activities. Everything has to be a certain way or pandemonium breaks loose. This doesn't mean you need to give in each time or put up with whiny behaviour, but understanding this aged child's attachment to order can help you avoid problems.

Of course, knowing something is age appropriate and acting that way are two different things. I find it a whole lot easier to accept Kaely's two-year-old age appropriate tantrums than Liam's six-year-old ones - even though I know in my head that his behaviour is just as understandable as hers. Head knowledge doesn't stop me feeling cross about it. But - and this, I think, is the important part of Dancy's comments - knowing what's normal can help you avoid problems, for instance by putting the makeup out of reach, or in the case of transitions by creating set routines and rituals that the children know and even enjoy. She gives an example of a bedtime routine:

One mother I know lights a candle while she sings a song, and then lets the child blow out the match, which is an exciting incentive to get the child to go into the bedroom. Then they go into the bathroom to put on pajamas and brush teeth. The mother has turned off the bedroom light, so when they return, they have to tip toe and be very quiet as they enter the softly lighted room and lie down together for songs and playing the children's harp.

Of course, sometimes it's not that easy:

...sometimes your child will just be negative, and she may astonish you with the force of her refusal...

One of the most effective ways of handling negative behaviour is removing the child from the area of activity. With a young child, this requires going with her and staying with her until she is ready to return. For example, fussiness and throwing food at dinner can be quickly handled by taking her down the hall, telling her what when she is a happy clown the two of you can go back, and then standing there like a stone until she comes around. It usually takes about one to three minutes, because it's very boring being out of the action with a deadpan mother or father who won't interact with your until you're ready to do what is expected.

I'm not sure how I feel about the 'happy clown' idea - do I want to teach my kid that 'happy' is the only acceptable emotion? But the idea that you removed the toddler from the situation, stay with her, and remain impassive - that all makes sense to me. There's no point in getting upset or angry. She's only two after all - but there is a point to firmly enforcing acceptable limits. She needs them enforced in order to learn them.

Oh dear, I'm going to have to take this book back to the library now, and I had so many other bits bookmarked.

Meditations for kids

Following a post from Trish a while ago at Imperfect Parent, I borrowed a book from the library called Meditations for Kids, by Kids. It's not the book Trish was talking about (which was The Wishing Star: Meditations for Children) - they didn't have that one in the library. But I liked the idea of reading a meditation with Liam each night before he went to sleep, so I thought I'd try the one they did have.

It's been a good experience. We've been right through the book once, and are half way through again. Sometimes Chris reads him a meditation after Liam and I have finished our 'book & chat' time and I have gone off to nurse Kaely and put her to bed in our room. Or sometimes if Liam is still awake when I've got Kaely down, I read him one then.

Each of the meditations is written by one of four kids in a family. The youngest was, I think, four at the time of writing (he's only got one or two in there) and the oldest was about ten (she has a lot). They all have the same basic structure - you go into your peaceful garden, hang your worries on the worry tree, take a few deep breaths, let go etc. - and they tend to have lots of comments about being safe and loved.   In the middle of that, some are rather quirky. But all are engaging, as far as Liam is concerned. One includes a dolphin ride into the quiet depths of the water. Another involves Pixies. Many involve friendly talking animals.

At first Liam said he wasn't going to 'do' the meditation, he just wanted to listen. Now he tends to close his eyes as he listens and take the deep breaths when instructed, but he still often bounces up at the end to ask for another one. Recently when he did that I told him the idea was to stay relaxed afterwards and let himself drift off to sleep. I don't know if he took that to heart, because I haven't read him one since then, but last night after our goodnight kiss and cuddle he said "I think I could just lie here and drift off to sleep now," so maybe he did take it in. Either way, I think we'll keep up the habit of bedtime meditations. It's a soothing way to end the day (and lets face it, the pre-bedtime part of the end of the day is usually anything by soothing), and I like the idea of Liam gradually developing the skills of mediation, or at least of relaxation.  It's something we could all do with more of.

Taboos and the trouble with abortion politics

In her book, A feminist account of pregnancy loss in America, Linda Layne talks about the way (wanted) ambryo's have personhood bestowed on them far earlier now than they would have a generation of two ago, when a woman often didn't even go to the doctor until the second missed period. But then, "the very people participating with us in the construction of this new social person - your mother-in-law or your friend or whoever was saying 'Everything you do is important to the health of the baby, every cup of coffee matters' - they suddenly revoke that personhood [when you have a miscarriage]. It's like nothing ever happened."

Peggy Orenstein quotes Layne in her article 'Mourning My Miscarriage' (New York Times Magazine, Apr 21, 2002, p.38-41). She talks about why people often don't talk about their miscarriages, why there is still a taboo. And then she goes on:

But for me, there is another uncomfortable truth: my own pro-abortion-rights politics defy me. Social personhood may be distinct from biological and legal personhood, yet the zing of connection between me and my embryo felt startingly real, and at direct odds with everything I believe about when life begins. Nor have those beliefs - a complicated calculus of science, politics and ethics - changed. I tell myself that this wasn't a person. It wasn't a child. At the same time, I can't deny that it was something. How can I mourn what I don't believe existed? The debate over abortion has become so polarized that exploring such a contradiction feels too risky. In the political discussion, there has been no vocabulary of nuance.

I have more to say about this, but no time to say it. Today is the day my master's project is supposed to be finished. It is basically done, though the essay still needs a significant amount of polish I think. I have the next several nights to get to that, plus to write an abstract and figure out what details need to go on the title page, then the plan is to print, bind and post the whole thing on Friday. That's the plan.

A meme about books

I got this meme from Pavlov's Cat, though I've seen it in at least two places since then..

These are the 106 books most often listed as 'unfinished' on LibraryThing. The rules seem to vary, but I'm going with bolding the ones I've read and underlining the ones I started but didn't finish. I must say it's interesting to me to see how many of the latter are books I was supposed to read for uni.  Hmm... All in my undergrad degree though.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities [I never finished this, but I know it's actually called A Tale of Two Cities]
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin (but i still have this out from the library, so there's still hope)
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

Writing in the dark

In one of the novels I have just read for uni, Diane Blacklock's Almost Perfect, (yes, another infertility narrative, although the back cover description - romantic comedy - is really more on the mark), one of the minor characters claims that it's good for him to write in the back room of his house, because if his study had a view he would never get any work done.

The character to whom he's speaking (a newly wannabe writer who appears to be a 'natural') feels differently and spends some time making her writing space just right. Until she realises she's procrastinating and just starts writing.

I get both points of view, but I have to say: on gorgeous days like today, I think I would find it easier to settle in to work if I at least had some sunlight in my 'office'.  Because quite frankly, without it, I'd rather be outside.

On the other hand with the runny, irritated nose and eyes I have at the moment, the glare outside would probably blind me. Maybe I should stop making excuses and just get to work. But honestly, after three cups of caffeinated coffee (for someone who usually sticks to decaf tea), that's easier written than achieved.

Nonsexist books - where they succeed and where they don't.

In "Learning to Be Little Women and Little Men: The Inequitable Gender Equality of Nonsexist Children's Literature," Amanda B. Dickman and Sara K. Murnen found that "Nonsexist books succeeded in portraying female characters as adopting the characteristics and roles identified with the masculine gender role, but they did not portray male characters as adopting aspects of the feminine gender role or female characters as shedding the feminine gender role" (381).

(Lisa Rowe Fraustino, 'The Berenstain Bears and the Reproduction of Mothering' The Lion and the Unicorn, 31.3 (2007), 250-263, p. 257)

I'm sure I've said this before, but there's no harm in repeating myself - any recommendations of children's books that succeed in doing any of the above (better yet all, but as the authors note, that is rare), I am all ears.

 

Inconceivable

I'm now reading Inconceivable (Ben Elton), and while it too has it's annoyances (seriously, are there still women who think if their partner is attracted to someone else that he (or she) is effectively being unfaithful to her? Or that enjoying a spot of "choke the monkey" (his term) on his own is somehow evidence of him not being attracted to her any more? This is the Noughties for heaven's sake!), it's only taken to page 69 to have me laughing till I cried, a very good sign for a comedy.