Peony Moss: January 2005 Archives

So, who saw it last night?

On Sunday, a senior at Johns Hopkins University was found dead in her apartment; her death has been ruled a homicide. When I lived in Baltimore, I lived only a few blocks south of where this student lived. She was a parishioner at Our Lady of Vietnam Parish in Silver Spring.

After 32 Years, Roe Remains a Lightning Rod (washingtonpost.com)

Imagine! After 32 years, there are still benighted souls out there who think abortion is... wrong! Doesn't it remind you of those Japanese soldiers who fought in the jungles for 50 years after the peace treaty? It would be so... quaint, if it didn't hit so close to home and if they weren't messing up Monday's traffic so. Good thing this was on the first page of the Metro section, even though this is an issue of national interest drawing protestors from around the country. And that praying thing, it's just so creepy.

found at alicia's:

1. Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be

2. I never saw a Purple Cow

3. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

4. Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

5. Do not go gentle into that good night,

6. Jenny kissed me when we met

7. How do I love thee, let me count the ways

8. That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

9. It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea

10. ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

If the line is familiar, leave it. Otherwise replace it with the first line of a poem you know and boldface your changes.

holy cow, it's snowing, and at a respectable clip! I wasn't expecting the snow to start until this afternoon. If I'm going to make that grocery run I'd better get going.

It's been a busy week, mostly getting ready for Ruby, but also doing various frivolous projects. The daybed turned out to be quite a tale. I made a spontaneous trip to IKEA with a friend last Thursday, and they told me that they would get the bed in in a couple of days. So dh and I went back and arranged to have it delivered, and it arrived on Monday. It took a few hours to assemble (we had to correct a few mistakes) but we finished the main part Monday and I finished the drawers yesterday. I replaced the dark brown hardware with pretty brushed brass knobs. I am quite pleased. I'm almost finished washing the linens. Then I'll hang a few pictures and we'll be all set. I'm expecting Ruby on Friday. I hope she doesn't run into bad weather. Would appreciate prayers for her safety -- she sets out tomorrow. She'll drive from Kansas City to Indiana and stay with my sister, and then Friday she'll do the Indiana-Maryland leg of her trip.

I am getting frustrated looking for little things for feathering the nest -- rugs, lamps, and mirrors are proving the most difficult. All I want is a mirror to hang over Hambet's dresser so that he can brush his hair (when he's tall enough.) I just want a simple oval mirror in a dark wood frame. But I'm having a hard time finding one. Lamps and rugs are proving difficult too. I like clear colors and brass, but right now it seems everyone's showing muddy "global-look" colors and dark metals.

...will now be known as Saya.

The Caelum et Terra Blog

Thanks to Dawn Eden for the heads up.

my little nephew's name is Berilac Deepdelver.

It's a rainy afternoon. I've send my husband and the lad away for a couple of hours (here, here's a twenty, go buy some milk and be home by dinner) because I am doing some painting and I like doing it by myself. I've just finished the ceiling and washed my brushes, and I'm taking a break before I start on the walls. (Nothing interesting color-wise -- just a fresh coat of white paint. )

This was a little spare bedroom that used to be a junk room and now is being transformed into a dedicated guest room. I want to make a cozy, honest-to-goodness guest room because in a couple of weeks, we will have a new person in the Moss household -- my cousin, Ruby Foxburr of Loamsdown, Kansas. Ruby just graduated from Kansas State (yay, Ruby!) and has accepted an internship in Washington, D.C. She'll be staying with us until around May.

So we are getting ready for Ruby and fixing up her room. Now, here's where I am interested in your opinion: the only furniture I have for this room is an old bureau and two bookcases (purchased long ago at IKEA for my first apartment -- KURS and BILLY, if you're interested.) I need to get a bed in this room. What kind should I get? I am trying to decide between a daybed and a full-size conventional bed, and I am starting to confuse myself with all kinds of contingencies.

In favor of the daybed: the room is not that large (maybe 8 by 10?), and a daybed would look really cute. It would be fine for Ruby and most of our guests.

The thing with a daybed, though, is that it only sleeps one. When my parents were to come, it would be nice to have a double to sleep them on, and something a bit more comfortable than one of those pop-up units.

But then, they don't come THAT often. If I put a daybed in there, if they found the pop-up uncomfortable, I could always shift Hambet into the guest room and let them take his bed.

How comfortable are daybeds, anyway? Another thing in my list of improbable events that I am mentally preparing for is a visit from my elderly, travel-phobic mother-in-law. But then, again, if she finds the daybed uncomfortable, then Hambet can sleep there.

There's a captain's style daybed at IKEA that I like -- the drawer under the bed can be used either as a storage drawer or as the base for a second bed, so it converts into a full. Maybe I will look at that one. I just wonder where one keeps the other mattress?

Over at Times Against Humanity, Earl has a good article up on marketing to kids.

The amount of money and expertise spent marketing to children -- who are mentally almost powerless against advertisers -- is really disturbing.

... and I see on page 5 that Dawn Eden is now one of their headline writers! Cool! She is credited with, among others, the headline "Meet Your Mocker" (for an article I liked, even as it made me squirm) in the December 2004 issue.

There was also a review of Miniatures and Mortals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen by Peter Leithart. When I read the review, it took every ounce of self-command I had to keep me from logging into Amazon on the spot. Part of this book was adapted for "Jane Austen, Public Theologian," a great reading of Mansfield Park that ran last January in First Things.

We would really appreciate it if you left a useable email address. Twice now this week I've wanted to directly contact commenters off-blog (only for nice things!) and have been unable.

If you want to avoid spammers, consider formatting your email address something like:

commenterNOSPAM@twosleepymommies.org

Just make it clear which part you want us to take out!

Thanks,
Peony

When I was packing for our trip, reader Sandy commented,

"Crayola makes that modelling clay. It beats PlayDoh hands down for airplane travel. I prefer PlayDoh for the kitchen table, but that Crayola stuff is GOLDEN for air travel."

Now I'm intrigued. What are the comparative merits of Crayola clay v. Play-Doh? Up to know I've just given Hambet homemade clay, but I hate the way it gets all sticky.

By the way, Hambet did great on the plane. The only difficult part was when he was wide awake and ready to be entertained, and I was falling asleep on my feet and too sleepy to read. A toy airplane, a couple of new books, and the airplane's music system all provided ample entertainment.

Read it. NOW.

Of course, giving this book to a Sleepy Mommy to read is just preaching to the choir. But after reading it, I just wanted to snatch up Hambet, hold him tight, and never let him out of the house again.

Eberstadt acknowledges the knee-jerk "mommy wars" objection (She's making us feel guillllllllltyyyyyyyyy for having a careeeeeeeeeeer!) but points out that there are other big social forces at work: divorce and illegitimacy, and the loss of the support of extended family, are the other two "rulers of the empty hearth." These forces have, over the past few decades, led to more and more children spending less and less time in the care of their parents or other family members (page xx). Over the same decades, the personal and social health of children and adolescents has gone down the tubes. Eberstadt contends that it's time to stop our social denial: "At a time when roughly half of all children will have no biological father in the home at some point, and well over half of all mothers with children under the age of six are employed, it is time to stop talking of mere 'correlations' and start asking some questions about cause."

Mark Shea isn't the only one who's noticed the rationalization "Adults and their needs come first; children are resilient." Eberstadt also points out that much of the public discussion of the "mommy wars" and so on focuses on the needs and desires of adults: adults who "feel fulfilled" by going to work -- or by staying home. Not too much discussion of how this looks to the kids. In the course of the book, she focuses again and again on turning to the discussion to the immediate experience of children. For example, a couple of years ago a study came out that showed (again) that children in day care were more likely to get sick. Some defenders of the day care status quo greeted this news with glee, rationalizing it as good news, because the children would be able to build up immunity and would get sick less often "in school." So, Eberstadt points out, does this mean that the child's immediate suffering is unworthy of consideration? Doesn't it count? The promise of getting sick less often in first grade is not much consolation to a toddler screaming in pain from an ear infection, longing for the comfort of his daddy or mommy. But the pain, here and now, of children rarely enters into the discussion.

Eberstadt looks at day care, child aggression, the increased diagnosis of mental problems and learning disabilities in children, sexual activity in teens, raunchy popular music, and the proliferation of teenage boarding "boot camp" reform schools. Again and again, she discusses what these mean to adults -- and then turns them over to look at what they might mean to children.

For example, little children in day care are more likely to be aggressive -- for example, biting other little kids. Biting seems to be a particular problem; Eberstadt reports finding article after article in day care professional literature advising how to stop biting epidemics. Some people ask what's the big deal? they'll outgrow it in a few years.

[But this is] the wrong question -- the one about ends, not means. The right questions, the one addressing the overlooked moral dimension of all this, is: What, after all, is the mental state of a bunch of babies and todllers who take up biting as a habit? And we can all figure out the answer to that without reaching for the social science bookshelf: these kids aren't happy. They are exhibiting a self-protective animal instinct, which suffests that they feel unprotected. It is something we would all understand readily enough if, say, zoo animals were to attach each other more frequently in their quarters than in the wild. (And if they did, we would, of course, deplore it and blame the zoo.) Doesn't that apparent internal turmoil say something undesirable about hos institutional care is experienced by at least some small children? (p 12)

Between the "separationists" -- the "it takes a village" crowd who cheer for day care is downright good for children -- and the widespread outsourcing of parenting to day cares and preschools, have we as a society become desensitized to the needs and feelings of children -- and to normal childish behavior? For example, what's behind the overprescription of Ritalin and similar drugs? Could it be that normal childish behavior is now being seen as pathology? Is prescription becoming another way to outsource parenting? More and more children are being diagnosed with disorders such as autism-spectrum disorders, depression, and bipolar illness (I was astounded to find that someone out there has been diagnosing infants as "bipolar".) Are some of these kids being treated for their response to an unhealthy environment? Maybe some kids just aren't cut out for the stress of being away from home twelve hours a day. (I did not know this, but apparently there is also a growing problem of Ritalin abuse -- kids selling their Ritalin to other kids. When I was doing bedside nursing, we kept the Ritalin in the locked drawer with the morphine and other narcotics.)

The chapter that really curled my hair was the chapter on STD's. We're expected to be glad that teenage pregnancy is down, because that means that teens are "being responsible." Of course, condoms and oral contraceptives do nothing to halt the spread of many STDs -- and Eberstadt cites a 2004 study reporting that "of 18.9 million new STD cases in the United States in 2000, about 9.1 million, or half, were found in people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four. " (p.125) The scariest STD is the human papilloma virus, which causes icky genital warts in the short run and can cause cervical cancer in the not-so-long run. More and more young women are developing cervical cancer; I know a woman in her early thirties who has just been diagnosed.

The most obvious way for parents to discourage their teens from early sex is, of course, supervision. When a responsible adult's keeping tabs on things, the after-school special gets back to being cookies and milk. But Eberstadt suggests two more ways in which parents, especially fathers, have a particularly important role to play (besides driving off suitors, of course.) One is a really interesting discussion on recent research on pheromones -- that a girls age at menarche may be affected by the presence or absence of her father -- or of an unrelated male such as a stepfather. The other is the fact that children living apart from one of their biological parents are more likely to become victims of sexual abuse.

Eberstadt's ultimate point is that it's time to face reality and renorm our society to acknowledge that children -- and society in general -- are better off "when more parents spend time with more children." And that doesn't mean that ALL mothers MUST stay home with ALL children. For some families, dad might be the one staying at home. It's unavoidable that some families are going to end up as single-parent families, or having both parents in the work force. But if there are plenty of other parents at home with their kids, that's enough social "padding" to absorb that stress: you'll have just a couple of kids in a kindergarten class under that stress, for example, instead of half the class. You'll have more parental eyes looking out the windows as the kids walk home. You'll have more parents who have time to lead after-school clubs, or who could welcome an extra kid into their house for some family after-care.

I read a review of this book that gave me the impression that the reviewer had read the first ten pages and the back cover, stuck her fingers in her ears, and started singing, LA LA LA LA LALA, YOU CAN'T MAKE ME FEEL GUIL-TY over and over again until it was time to submit her copy. Our whole society has been doing that for years. Hopefully this book will prompt more people to take their fingers out of their ears and start listening to our kids.

Home-Alone America: the Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes
Mary Eberstadt
Sentinel, 2004