Flashback

A few weeks ago, I started a cleaning frenzy and have been progressively take care of projects that I'd meant to do long ago and clean out old stuff that I shouldn’t be keeping around (thus trying to solve one of my idiosyncrasies. )

Among my projects was organizing all my newspaper clips of the last few years. (I had originally planned to do this during my maternity leave. Ha!)

I came across one of my favorite stories, a front-page story in response to the so-called “summer of the shark” in which I got to spend a few days with shark researchers at Mote Marine Laboratory and attempt to demystify shark biology. I had a blast, traveling to St. Petersburg and Charlotte Harbor and spending one whole day on a boat and calling it work.

Then I saw the publication date: September 10, 2001.

It almost gave me chills, reading that date and remembering. The last day before the seminal event of my generation. The last day before our whole perspective would be radically torn apart by four hijacked planes. The last day of a carefree summer. The last day of our innocence.

Then it took me back to THE DAY, the one that will be forever etched in my memory, the one that I will tell to my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren, if I had the chance.

Every generation has such a day. One of my Tai Chi friends just came back from a trip to Hawaii, where she visited to Pearl Harbor and while looking at her photos, she had a vivid recollection of that day. For my parents’ generation, it was the JFK assassination, of course.

And now, I’m sure, for thousands of Louisiana and Mississippi residents, it will be that fateful Aug. 29, 2005, when they saw Mother Nature at her most violent.

May New Orleans be rebuilt and may they once again proclaim in the French Quarter, “Laissez le bon temps rouler.”

From biology to psychology

My PreciousBoy woke up yesterday morning, his forehead slightly feverish. Then one of the first things, he said to me, "Mommy, I ha boo-boo in my ear."

So he's in a little funk right now because of an ear infection and he's spending extra quality time with his Nana.

What is such a relief to me is that he's finally at the age where he can tell me exactly what's wrong with him.

Not too long ago, he was a grand science experience. He was a test of every little bit of knowledge that I had about medical biology and everything that My Darling Redhead and our parents and our friends knew about medical biology.

If he had a fever, then you had to play the guessing game of what's wrong. And there were a few times, when we never figured out what was wrong and the doctor simply doused him with some antibiotics.

At least now I have a mostly-verbal human being.

But now I've got the next level of experimentation - tests in child psychology.

Persistence of Memory

One of my daily joys is a new discovery of my Precious Boy's budding brilliance.

For example, this weekend's lesson was the persistence of memory.

Often, I will read my son a book, or let him watch a video and half the time, or I'll mention something in passing, I don't think he's paying attention. Then he'll surprise me.

We were playing with one of his more unusual stuffed animals, a giant stuffed shrimp with a top hat from the Bubba Gump restaurant chain. Precious Boy got this from my sister as a Christmas present two years ago. We started doing our usual skit, giving the shrimp a voice as it discusses with Elmo whether it's time to have pancakes, when Precious Boy chimed in, using his normal voice, "I got dis, Tita, Christmas." Which was absolutely correct.

What amazes me is the fact that I think I told this to him once, maybe twice. The other time he could have made that connection was when he actually received the present, which would have been when he was 1.

Go figure.

He's also been singing lots of different songs lately, stuff that I never thought he picked up. He was singing the "Colors, Colors, Everywhere" song from a Blue's Clues episode that I swear to you he has only seen about 5 times, at the most. (Yes, in the whole debate about toddler exposure to TV, I've fallen flat. But I do have my limits - Yes to Bob the Builder. No to Spongebob.)

And he's been repeating lines from books, like the "Water, Water Everywhere" book (part of the Baby Einstein set) that he hasn't seen in weeks (since My Darling Redhead just finished a major bathroom renovation and I had stored a lot of the excess bath books and toys). He also knows the opening lines to one of his new favorites, the Dr. Seuss story in the Sneetches book about the empty pale green pants.

He's a genius, I tell you. A genius.

The Killer Katrina

After living through our hellish summer last year, we felt very lucky that Katrina passed through Florida without leaving a drop of rain in our area.

Now watching this massive storm attack New Orleans, I feel doubly glad that we were so lucky this year.

I do feel very bad, however, for Louisiana and Alabama, which seem destined to get whacked by this storm.

We have friends in N'awlins, and they have safely evacuated already, so at least we don't need to worry about their lives. Now we'll just have to wonder about their homecoming. I just hope the loss of life there isn't too tragic.

But I will add, that I would easily take another two months of Charley/Frances/Jeanne to having one Katrina.

An American Idol?

I think I'm going to have to nickname my son "Karaoke Boy."

He has never watched American Idol. He has never seen karaoke, live or on TV.
Yet one of his favorite little games is to pick up something, anything, treat it as a mike, and start wailing away.
He'll pick up a wooden piece of his truck, hold it near his mouth, and sway and make up his own song, his own words, making up a tune.
Then he'll enlist me for a duet, and give me a "mike". Or he'll ask me to play air violin or air cello while he sings.
And then we'll rush to the piano, where he'll sit on the bench and start tickling the ivories, all the while singing and swaying. He'll even close his eyes for added effect.

Now, mind you, I have been trying hard to introduce my son to music.
I played loads of CDs, sang nursery songs and played piano for him while he was in utero.
I have tried to play piano for him when we have time, or when the desire hits.
We even took him to a special classical music performance, geared for children, in which they introduced the instruments of a string quartet, then told a story with music.

But I have NO IDEA where he is getting this idea for karaoke, or his Ray Charles imitation.
It is moments like these when I start to believe in reincarnation and I think that in a prior life, my son was a jazz musician.

(And I forgot to mention that he has a clear preference for jazz music and has told me to turn off rock music and put on jazz instead. Since I play jazz in my car as we commute to his preschool, he considers jazz "Mommy music." Then one day we were listening to one of My Darling Redhead's rock CDs, and my little boy didn't like it. "Mommy, put on Mommy music," he asked, plaintively.)

Not too anxious

For once, it's actually a relief to hear the word hurricane or to look up the weather forecast without getting anxious.

Tropical Storm Katrina, a burgeoning hurricane, is headed for south Florida, which somehow got spared during our summer of hell last year. Landfall is predicted tonight and tomorrow and there's no hurricane or tropical storm watch declared for my area.

I do feel for the folks in south Florida, though by most accounts, Katrina won't be all that bad. But I am so relieved to be as far north as we are.

Here's hoping that the hurricane demons won't need to return to our part of Florida any time soon.

Summer blahs

It may be the heat of the Florida 100+-with-the-heat-index summer finally getting to me. Or this cold that has my family sniffling and sneezing. (A total annoyance because I saw my Precious Boy getting sick this weekend and I didn't take the precautions to prevent myself from getting sick. I hope I remember this day when flu season hits.)
Or maybe it's the fact that news really does slow down this summer and I don't have any good features brewing during this lull.

It's just one of those summer days that I would rather spend in a swimming pool, being lazy.

The Europeans really have it right. They simply take the whole month of August off.
I'd love to petition for the change, though I know I'd never see it here.

So now I have about 2 months of summer heat left before we get our first cool breeze. That's as long as we don't get a hurricane in the interim.

Idiosyncrasies

As a nod to one of my favorite websites, I now offer 5 of my idiosyncrasies.

1. I can be very superstitious and I still follow chain letters, but I do find this quirk comes and goes. I may go for weeks without doing any chain e-mails, then I’ll read one that really affects me and then I’ll send it out. My apologies if you have been a recipient when I am in such moods.
2. I always put the toilet lid down. It is a habit I picked up after reading a feng shui book once, that open toilets will allow your good fortune or good qi to drain away. I know it annoys the Husband, but I do it all the time.
3. I am a hard-core recycler and I will spend a lot of time tearing away those bits of paper in plastic packaging, just so that I can separate it in my recycling bins (since my community still requires that to some extent). I save Styrofoam containers from takeout lunches, or the plastic yogurt cups or anything else remotely recycleable and will wash them in my dishwasher because I know I can recycle them.
4. I am constantly making faces. I have an expressive face, which can be a good thing, but more often than not, I make odd, ugly faces like scrunching my forehead and nose when I react negatively to something. The bad thing is that my son has now picked up this habit. The good thing is that I can never play poker and therefore I will never gamble away my savings on a bad hand.
5. I can be an extreme packrat when it comes to things that I want to read. In college, I was constantly saving New York Times issues that I had no time to read. I still do that now with that paper, with my own paper (when I’m on vacation), and with about a half dozen magazines. It takes something like an allergic reaction to the incredible amount of dust that all these papers accumulate before I can bear to recycle them.

Moment of panic

I suffered a moment today when I seriously thought about ending this blog. I even temporarily deleted the penguin post.

The stories of people having their blogs bite back at them have become all too familiar. And now I know of a couple of people who have had their blogs critiqued, and the addresses published, in a newspaper.

So I panicked. Though there are very few people reading this blog (and really no way to find it and find it or even connect it to me - I tried to Google it), I suddenly worried about that what-if. What if this blog suddenly finds its way to some jerk who decides to make me the laughing stock of the day?

Then I chilled out and figured that if that ever happens, I'll deal with it then.
In the meantime, I'll just be smart about my blogging, and keep out the kind of things that would get me in trouble at work or with people I know.
And I'll stick to the fun stuff, like all the wonders of raising my son, exploring Tai Chi, or other fascinating things that I want to comment about.

Penguin play

My son has recently decided his new favorite toy to play with (and to make up a voice for) is a baby penguin.

This most recent bout of animal imitation comes from seeing March of the Penguins (a very fine documentary that is decent family entertainment if you haven't seen it yet.)

My son enjoyed the movie, though he wasn't thrilled with the landscape shots or the scenic vistas. Each time one of those came on screen, he would ask, "Where did the penguins go?"

Honestly, though, the penguin fascination started weeks ago. I think it was because of a playmate who has his own penguin and therefore PreciousBoy needed to have his own penguin. It didn't help, of course, that we saw Madagascar soon after that.

So for weeks, he asked for a penguin (one day, he even cried that I needed to buy him one immediately). To which, I would try to assuage him that a penguin would be forthcoming on his birthday. "Oh, my birthday," he would say.

Thankfully, I did find a penguin (they are a little difficult to find) and my mother-in-law also got a penguin puppet, just a little larger, who could be Mommy Penguin.

Guess who gets to play Mommy Penguin.

Party boy

It seems hard to believe that three years ago, this little boy was a tiny, wide-eyed newborn, alert and ready to take in his new world.
Now he's a climbing, jumping, shouting, choo-choo-train-obsessed little guy who can be stubborn and picky, but who sings all day and loves to laugh and play tricks on me.

He had a blast at his birthday party, and knows to expect all the fun of presents and cake and other sweet goodies. He barely ate any of his sandwich or his fruit salad, choosing to save his appetite for the cake that he knew was coming. Then after finishing his slice, he went to his grandfather (the one who loves spoiling him) and said "I want another cake." And he would have had another slice, if I hadn't intervened.

That's my boy.

Elaborating on Taoist mothering

I started thinking yesterday about extending this Taoism / motherhood perspective and I thought I should make it clear that in no way am I advocating a philosophy of simply letting children run wild.

I see the results of that in the juveniles that I see when I visit criminal court.

No, my PreciousBoy has some very firm limits and he knows what he can and can't do and he gets timeouts for misbehaving.

But I have found that sometimes I need to move at his pace, or sometimes do the things that he wants to do first, otherwise he rebels. Hence, the wisdom of applying some Taoism.

For example: This morning, he woke up late and since we needed to rush to get him to his preschool on time, I tried to get him to change his clothes. I got a blood-curdling "No!" and backed off, seeing a temper tantrum in the works. So I lured him to the kitchen and fed him breakfast first. His tummy full of pancake, it was very easy for me to get him to change his clothes.

Now, I could have been insistent and changed his clothes and dealt with his temper tantrum, but instead I went with the flow and got everything accomplished that needed to get accomplished with a minimum of fuss. And it turned into a happy morning

The red and the blue

Despite the politicized name for this blog, I don't feel inclined to dwell too much on politics.

HOWEVER ....

I couldn't resist posting this essay that was forwarded to me.

If anyone knows who is the actual author, I would be more than happy to properly give them credit.


We're ticked off at the way you've treated California, and we've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us.

In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and the entire Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole Miss.

We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue; you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Stanford and Cal Tech.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11, and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then us lefties.

By the way, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

Sincerely,
Author Unknown in New California

the ambivalent blogger

I admit I am still a little wary, yet fascinated, by this new medium that I am trying.

It all started because I know several co-workers, younger than I, who blog.
I read their blogs and then I became hooked.

Tthe concept is still utterly foreign to me, since I am on the older side of the 30-year milestone. I am reasonably connected, having personal and work emails, cellphones and I am comfortable with technology. But the idea of having an online diary, accessible by anyone with web access, is a little disconcerting.

(Technorati claims there is something in the order of 14.5 million blogs. Interesting.)

Yet there are advantages, since I see this potentially as a way to let those who remain rooted in the blue states, get a glimpse of my life.

I am wary of a few things, though, like having co-workers reading my blog. Hence, the use of aliases and the fact that I won't directly name anything that could be directly traceable to me.

Public, yet somewhat anonymous.

Anyway, so that is my intent with this blog, to keep in touch and keep posting. So if you are reading this on my invitation, welcome and I hope you enjoy the read.

Meet PreciousBoy

Now what kind of mother doesn't show off pictures of her children?
So of course, you must see my PreciousBoy, just one week shy of his third birthday.

One of the great things about living in a beach town is being able to simply walk to the beach at will. PreciousBoy and My Darling Redhead (husband) went first thing in the morning, to check on the status of a sea turtle nest that is due to hatch any day now.

Do forgive that little nick near his eye. Just a byproduct of being a rambunctious little boy.

Clues

Though I am trying to keep this blog unknown to people who actually know me, there are always clues.

I am using the pseudonym BlueBabae. Blue, referring to the title and theme of this blog.

So what is Babae? It means woman in Filipino. Hence, a clue, though not one of Blue's Clues.
(And if you don't have a child under 6 you probably had no idea what that was about.)

The Taoist mother

There really is a synchronicity to life, if you're on the right path.

I realized such a synchronicity between two very different parts of my life - my Taoism and my motherhood.

I am the proud mother of a little boy, whom I shall dub PreciousBoy, who is almost 3 years old. PreciousBoy is curious, smart, and a little spitfire who has fully lived to the expectation of what "Terrible Twos" are supposed to be about.

Now, what makes them "Terrible Twos" is the fact that they are developing their own personality, trying to assert their independence from their parents, and so they will disagree and say no, for the sake of saying No.

This can be a terrible thing when you need them to pipe down and stop making a scene in public. And with my son, this is all the more pronounced since he has inherited every ounce of stubbornness from me and my husband, My Darling Redhead.

I am also a budding Taoist, having been a Tai Chi Chuan practitioner for a number of years.

So here is the confluence of things. The Tao translates as The Way and at the heart of the philosophy of Taoism is to follow the Way, to go with Nature. To basically go with the flow. (This is a very limited bit of Taoism, but I am only a budding Taoist).

Anyway, I have discovered with PreciousBoy that when I mother like a Taoist, trying not to fight him, trying to let him follow his Way, so to speak, then the temper tantrums stop and I can actually witness him growing, developing, learning about the world.

There is a book about this parenting style, the Parent's Tao Te Ching, which I recently bought from Amazon, but have yet to read. (It's number 4 on my reading list at the moment).

But in the meantime, I am trying to be a Taoist mother.

Testing the waters

Though I am a latecomer to the party, I have decided to open a blog.

Am I looking for attention? Or a new voice?
I admit I feel a need to be a full-fledged member of the hi-tech society.

But I'm not sure what I really need to blog about or whether my blogs may be of interest to anyone else. Then again, I'm not sure if that matters either.

Anyway, hello, if anyone there is reading it.