Livingston, I Presume

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Holiday photos: outtake edition

Waiting until Christmas Eve Eve to do our holiday photos...What could go wrong?

Fresh!

To say that Chip and I are not really the co-sleeping types would be something akin to saying that George W. Bush isn't really into book larnin'. Not only have we been resolute and unswerving in our belief that the family bed is not for us, we have also discouraged others from the practice. Connery slept in his crib in his own room from the night be came home from the hospital and did great. I always got up and went to the nursery to breastfeed, never nursing in bed (mainly because of anatomy but also because I never wanted to be an all-night cruise buffet) and the presence of children in our bed has been strictly limited to morning cuddles.

I even confess that I have secretly judged people with "accidental" family beds (those who set out to co-sleep were different, perhaps a little insane in my view, but different in that there was a purpose and belief behind having their kids in bed with them). Couldn't these people see that sharing a bed with your kids is the quickest road to marital problems? Sleep problems? Clingy kid problems?

Ha. Also ha ha ha. And did I mention HAHAHAHAHA?

I have probably already indicated in this space that I have a theory about God. Similar to one of my uncle's contentions that "there is a God and you're not it", my maxim is a sort of a "good news/bad news" setup. The good news is that there is a God, but the bad news is that he's a white, male Republican with a bad sense of humor. He's proven it many times, and now he's really gone in for the ultimate punch line, because we have a baby who is so opposed to independent sleep that she will cry non-stop until she is returned, literally, to my loving arms.

Except that, at 3:30 a.m., they don't feel very loving anymore. Mainly they feel tired and cranky and ultra-aware that they haven't had a decent night's sleep since, oh, March 2007.

This is the part of the post where I realized that I've already bitched about this (but not about co-sleeping, so it's fresh, right? right?). Sorry. It's just that when it comes to describing my life at the moment, all that comes to mind is zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Or the lack thereof.

Webkinz of lies

Lately, Connery has been receiving Webkinz—stuffed animal toys that come with special codes that give entry to an Internet site where the toys can be “adopted” and “cared for” virtually. Now, as far as he knows, the present is the stuffed animal. We have not volunteered information about the online component.

The question has become whether we should tell him about it and then allow him to use the computer and the Internet to check it out. It is the first of what I predict will be many dilemmas we will have about exposing our kids to the electronic media, and I am—so far—advocating against telling him.

As a dutiful parent, I checked out the Webkinz site before making up my mind. And while I’m sure I’ll get many letters to the contrary about the educational and social developments possible at the Webkinz site, it seemed to me little more than a training tool for future online shopping.

When Connery makes his first purchase from Amazon—or whatever the online superstore of the roaring 2020s is—I’m pretty sure he’ll be able to do it by blinking his eyes in a certain pattern or something. He’s not going to need to be trained in it, any more than most of us have had to learn how to buy things from our favorite online haunts. I daresay most parents will agree with me on that, their views on Webkinz notwithstanding.

But as far as I’m concerned, that’s also the case with the bulk of the non-consumer computer skills that most of us use on a daily basis. I really don’t think that it’s necessary to teach Connery how to use a mouse, for example. I predict that when he needs to use one, he will figure it out in 30 seconds flat. Kids are very intuitive when it comes to technology. In my opinion, the same is true with video games—also banned for the moment in my house.

The main reason for my hard line on this is that once these technologies are introduced, it’s impossible to put them back in the Xbox, so to speak. We already argue with him quite a bit about how much television he gets to watch; add in the lure of an interactive online “world” and we might never get him away from the various screens without a fight.

As it is, our son loves books and Legos and drawing. (In fact, he often draws “video games”, which I think is sweet and my own parents—who, by the way, resolutely refused to buy me an Atari way back when—decry as evidence that I am overly protective.) I don’t know how long those would hold up next to the Internet and a Wii console.

It’s not that I don’t ever plan to allow these kinds of toys into our lives. I’d just like to hold off on it as long as I possibly can. Sooner or later he’s going to need to have a computer and desperately want to have video games to belong among his peers. When one or both of those days come, I guess I’ll tell him about the Webkinz. Until then, I’m going to keep my mouth shut and exclaim loudly about adorable stuffed animals.

NB: A version of this essay appeared in this morning's Business to Business, a monthly publication of the Bozeman Chronicle.

Class-y

I haven't wanted to blog much about the (in the words of Marketplace) Ongoing Financial Crisis. What is there to say beyond the obvious? Everybody's scared. Scared of layoffs, scared of the value of their retirement and college savings accounts (if they even have them), scared that the home loan they took out at the peak of the market was utter folly. I can't really come up with anything original to say about all of it.

But what I can't keep silent about anymore (and what I'm not hearing from the media) is the unbelievable classism and anti-worker attitudes on display in Washington D.C. at the moment. What the Detroit automakers have had to go through to vie for a paltry portion of the megabucks we've shelled out to "save" the financial sector is nothing short of ridiculous. Of course it was stupid for them to go to Washington the first time without a firm plan and on corporate jets, but do you really think the execs from CitiGroup are flying in coach to fill their pockets? Did the AIG CEO have to agree to work for $1? To my knowledge, no.

Let's be clear on this: I absolutely believe that the auto industry should have to show a viable plan, cut executive compensation, and generally come clean on the greed that caused this whole mess. But so should every other company involved in this debacle. Just because the financial services sector is peopled by white-collar workers who can be laid off at a moment's notice just to bump up share prices does not mean that those workers--or those industries--are any more worthy of saving. At least at the end of the day the autoworker can go home and say he made a car. What the hell did the CEO of Goldman Sachs make?

Besides the obvious clusterfucktastrophe, of course.

The media coverage of the auto industry--even on outlets I normally consider excellent, such as NPR--has been condescending and one-sided. Today's Morning Edition report quoted Alabama Senator Richard Shelby as an opponent of the bailout without once mentioning that he represents a state infamous for its union-hostile auto industry. Gosh, he couldn't possibly have a dog in this fight, could he?

I come from a long line of union folk, and while many out there would like to convince us that unions (be they of automakers or teachers) are the root of problems ranging from the decline of the auto industry to the much-trumpeted but not much-evidenced crisis in education, I'm not buying it. Unions provide a necessary counterweight to a corporate world that is driven only by profits. Enlightened companies and corporations recognize that happy, healthy employees are productive employees, but not all companies are enlightened. By any stretch of the imagination.

We've already lost a lot of ground as workers, and that has translated into a middle class that is barely holding on. Further marginalize the unions and that's only going to get worse. It's time we start holding those who--in the words of one commentator I heard yesterday--shower before work to the same standards that we're demanding of the people who shower after.

Edited to add: Blythe in comments provided a link to two blog posts by Jim at Sweet Juniper, who lives in Detroit. Both are excellent. The first is makes many of the same points I was trying to make with this entry, albeit in a much more personal way:

Some of the people saying let them fail about Detroit's automakers are very the same people who had no problem with the $700 billion bailout of the very "industries" responsible for the sudden evaporation of so many billions of dollars in equity and credit. I would like to show them the state of this city and ask them to think about how much worse it (and hundreds of other cities reliant on the auto industry) will get if any of these three employers were suddenly unable to pay their employees or suppliers. This isn't Manhattan. We're not talking about Goldman Sachs associates suddenly not being able to pay the mortgages on their $350,000 parking spaces in Tribeca for the Ferraris they bought with their 2006 bonuses. We are talking about the lifeblood of a region that has already suffered so deeply, and I can't believe how many people are speaking so flippantly about allowing this great American industry to die.

The second references correspondence he received after his post and is very revealing about the hidden and not-so-hidden classism in our society:

...What has surprised me is how all kinds of people---conservatives and liberals---have such a visceral, angry response to the idea of the lazy union worker. In the comments I said it reminded me of the way people were so up in arms about Reagan's "welfare queen" mythology in the 1980s (you know: the black welfare mom driving all those kids around in a Cadillac and buying caviar with her food stamps). Now we have the lazy, do-nothing UAW member sitting in a room doing cross word puzzles instead of working on the line, collecting $70 an hour salaries with better health and retirement benefits than the CEOs of the company. I have no doubt that in the 1980s there were a few women on the welfare rolls driving around in Cadillacs. And I have no doubt that it wouldn't be a huge challenge to find a lazy UAW member getting paid more than he's worth. But does anyone really believe that all union members are that way---that this industry is currently crippled because lazy people without college degrees had the audacity to believe they deserved to join the middle class?

Good stuff. Go read it. (Thanks, Blythe!)

Mike Huckabee called me

Honestly, I think I'd rather talk to the least English-speaking telemarketer in the world, even if he or she was coldselling funeral plots. Not that I got to talk to the Not Good Guv, mind. No, he just blathered at me in a so-called "survey" that was a push poll for the forced-pregnancy crowd. For the record, the number was 703 263 1658, and caller ID identified the number as Respolnov. (And Huckabee himself said the call was being paid for by Americans United for Life. And no, I'm not giving them a damn link.)

When I did a reverse lookup, I found a lot of other people getting right-wing robocalls from the number. Thank God mine wasn't from Sarah Palin, like some of the other callers reported. Hearing her voice on the other end of my phone might have caused some kind of post-election stress disorder.

I hate this crap. The election is over. Over. I would not/did not/will not ever support Mike Huckabee and his causes, and trying to scare me into thinking that Barack Obama and crew are going to be roaming the United States looking for babies to abort is just ridiculous. And how did you get my number, Mike? You're totally barking up the wrong uterus.

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart

This year, to save me from tears (and to combat the economic downturn), I'm offering you Chip's special friends and family discount of 35 percent off at PrintingForLess. Just use the code FF35P30 in the promo field on the website or mention it to the friendly PFL staff person when you call. It's good for first-time orders only. And who doesn't need some business cards?

Tired

It's not that I haven't tried to blog since November 19th. Really, I have. It's just that there exist only so many ways to moan pitifully, "I'm so tired and Emerson will not let me sleep or, indeed, even out of her sight" in an even vaguely entertaining fashion. And I think I just used that one up.

The truth is that Emerson is kicking our ass.

She doesn't look capable of it, does she?

Oh, but looks can be deceiving. She's darling--everyone tells us so--but she turns into a raging beast with a kind of astonishing regularity. She's perfectly happy so long as either Chip or I is holding her, but failing that--held by a grandparent, sitting in the carseat, playing in her new jumperoo, lying on her activity mat--we've got about 15 minutes, max, before she starts to get upset. The doctor says she's "neurologically advanced!" to have separation and stranger anxiety this soon, which is a nice way of saying that she wants us and only us, 24 hours a day.

The bitch of it is that she has been a total reverse baby. As a newborn, she was so sweet and docile that I actually called the doctor's office to ask if a baby could sleep too much. (I look back on that call now and can't decide whether laughter or weeping is more appropriate.) And I was prepared for the worst. I remember Connery's newborn days in a sort of terrible, weepy fog, and I swore to myself that I would be prepared this time for the craziness that comes with a new infant. When she turned out to be an easy baby, I felt like we had gotten really lucky and that even better days were ahead. I wasn't counting on her sleeping less at night, crying more during the day, and generally moving into what I would classify as "challenging baby" territory seemingly overnight.

Of course, karma being what it is, it's a sure bet that we brought some of this on ourselves. As much as we swore up and down to our fellow new parent-friends that Connery's sleep habits were just a happy accident, in our hearts we truly believed that he slept through the night from 12 weeks of age on because we had done something right--something, crucially, replicable.

The universe laughed. And sent us Emerson of the Micronappers.

Given the separation and stranger anxiety and the difficulty with sleeping, you can all imagine just how well the newly-instituted three mornings a week in childcare are going. Not. Well.

The two care providers in the infant room (where the baby-to-care-provider ratio is basically 2:1) are experts at baby soothing, and they've got nothing. The only thing that soothes her is when Chip comes up from his office to visit or when she falls into an exhausted heap on one of the providers' laps. Not exactly sustainable.

We're basically at a loss. She can't come to work with me anymore, at least not every day, because she won't let me get anything done. (I'm writing this with the carseat beside me, listening to her grouse.) But she certainly can't spend hours upon hours crying. We need a break, and she's unwilling to give it.

And with that, I must remove her from the carseat to stop her crying and then duct-tape her to my chest so that she will be happy and I can get something done.