Wait, there are how many mommy bloggers?

I'm reading a lot about blogging, for a piece I am writing. About mommy blogging, in particular, in the US and here in Switzerland. I came upon a number in neighborhood of about 3.9 million mom bloggers in the United States. Do you know how much data those people could provide about any number of life issues?! About marriage, about kids, about women's health, about parenting and work and all the rest.

That is a lot of writing about parenthood.

And given how confusing I find the whole "pacifier surrender" question, for our particular situation, I'm thinking that the data in there could be so useful. I'll bet there are at least two groups of kids when it comes to pacifier users. The casual and the addicts. I think my kid is the latter. And I would love to know more about her type, who are still walking around during the day with coat collars or anything else portable to chew on, even when they don't have a pacifier. Who are extremely orally focused, and get a lot of comfort from that. Is she at risk for smoking and a host of other drugs, the withdrawl from which I may one day have to witness in the same way I held her shrieking in the middle of last night when she didn't have her pacifier? Was that a foreshadowing?

Turns out, she didn't even remember that crying.

I do.

It was rough. On me and M more than her, apparently. And we finally gave it back to her (it had been her choice to try without, and, honey, I gave it the grad school try). And retreated in slight panic to the living room, kind of feeling echoes of her early months, shrieking in the middle of the night. Sheesh.

Or maybe she will just always chew on something as an adult, and a pen will do fine. Will trying to break her of this habit lead to good things or bad? Or at the very least, is she likely to snap out of it, like with so many other things that seem to just click into place with time?

Come on, Big Data, start looking at child development - things like colic factors and behaviors, tantrums, milestones, and, please, first of all (and soon), pacifiers.

Thanks. Hope to hear from you soon.

Sea stars are punks

Actually, scallops may be the punks of the seafloor. Sea stars are more just everywhere.

I've just spent some 45 minutes classifying image after image of the seafloor, marking scallops, sea stars, crustaceans and fish. Oh, and lots of nothing and lots of "other." This is one of the projects available on Zooniverse, a citizen science portal, where people can classify galaxies, African savannah animals, cancerous cells, and sea creature images. I'm starting work on a project related to Zooniverse, and I wanted to get a taste of what it is like to be one of the citizens.

Classifying galaxies is something I've already spent time doing in my life. And seeing lots of lot quality images of them. I'm good, as far as galaxies are concerned.

But sea creatures...now that is new. At first, I thought I was going to quit on my first image. The tutorial image was so clear, my first actual image was....like a dust storm. And the field guide provided didn't actually tell me what a sponge looked like, although the tutorial image claimed it contained one. And fish...sometimes hard to see.

And the punky scallops. Some are dead - a hole in the shell, maybe with white shells. Some are not. And some, I have no idea. They are just being difficult.

Finding a fish or crab is pretty exciting.

Rarely is an image totally empty of life.

After a few images, I got more comfortable with the uncertainty of maybe having it wrong. Other people were going to see these same images and add to what I said. Subtract from it, maybe. My mistake wasn't going to single handedly kill the scallop population. My eating habits, might. But not my classifying.

And now, an image with a fish is pretty exciting. And without a fish, my brain is more able to coast through the marking and measuring of creatures. In the back of my mind I'm thinking about eating sea creatures, about fishing, about sea stars in general. It is an interesting process.

Citizen science is pretty cool stuff. Whether it is nearly a million people classifying images more accurately than computer programs, or people going out counting birds per square mile, or inmates studying slow-growing mosses.

The first sprouts

I like to think that much of the time that I pour into trying to understand myself better, leads to me being a better parent as well. And, conversely, that the time I spend trying to parent more calmly, lovingly, well, leads to benefits in myself. Well, and that all of that also impacts A.

And now, in the middle of another big push of "parenting tune-up", I'm seeing some really lovely things sprouting up from all those seeds I had hoped were being planted with all the hard emotional work.

A has started to thank both me and her father for making dinner or breakfast. Just, out of the blue. She's really shy talking to many other people, and may not even say thank you, at all, to others. Not for a chocolate, a toy, a gift. We figure she'll get there eventually, and have not pushed her much past "it is nice to say Thank You." We don't require it. But we do say a lot of thank you's in the house around things like dinner and breakfast, among the adults. And it seems, just sitting there and watching, that A has taken to that habit. A very good lesson about living and practicing, instead of preaching.

And a few times recently, I have found myself so frustrated with our clash of wills, and confused about how to proceed, that all I can do is say "I'm not sure what to do!"

This, too, has been observed, and, it seems, assimilated.

The other morning I told A that I needed another 5 minutes to sleep, that I'm cranky in the mornings, and that if she really really wanted to get out of bed, it should be without pacifier (she needs to be awake enough to not need it, for my morning person to want to hang out with her morning person) and with diaper changed to underpants and pants. She protested a bit. Somewhat louder than in a talking voice. I re-iterated. And then she sighed loudly, and said "I don't know what to do!"

I asked her if she was having a hard time choosing, and she said "yes."

And then she had "an idea, Mama." She decided to go to the diaper/underpants switch first, pacifier in mouth, and then put the pacifier away. Totally acceptable to me, and a great solution.

This kid is awesome.

Better angels, beatin' up some cranky angels: the parenting pay-it-forward challenge

I'm reposting most of what I just wrote to some friends, because I'd like to keep it on record, and have a place for comments for people to contribute.

Time to start giving each other props for moments we should be proud of as parents.

I just saw a mom alone weather a massive tantrum calmly in the grocery store. At rush hour. While all judgy eyes were watching her. Bought her chocolates and candy and found her upstairs and gave them to her and told her what an amazing job she just did and how hard that was. I didn't get her candy as a present, so much as for a jolt of sugar, which is what I would have been needing at that moment. 

And although I could tell she was surprised and touched by my gesture of carbohydrates, the statement of how well and calmly I thought she did, and in front of all those people, seemed to touch her more. She smiled and said, "wow, I didn't think I was doing that well." Her friend (or whoever it was she was talking to when I caught up with her) was kind of stone faced, which I'll just ignore. Anyway, as I walked away to jump on my tram, I was the one in tears. I guess because that could have been me and I don't always manage to ride out the entire tantrum without raising my voice. Or because it felt a bit good to see another kid behaving as out of control as mine does sometimes, and see it from outside, that it is the situation and not the parent, making things worse. 

It takes so little in the way of staring, scowling others to stop us from listening to the better angels of our nature when it comes to difficult parenting moments. So many people have so little faith in our best intentions. And yet one person, sitting on a plane next to me and my squirming toddler, or on the playground, telling me they understand and that they don't mind, that all kids go through that or that I'm doing well, to give me that extra bit of resolve to keep calm, not yell, not get self-conscious. Or a smile during a tantrum that implies "I've been there."

There is a "pay it forward" crafting post going around Facebook, that I love. So in that vein, I'm challenging myself (and anyone else who is up for it), to tell ONE parent or caretaker "good job" this month, when you see them struggling but doing a good job. Because lawd knows those screaming kids aren't going to tell them. And neither are the scowling people who'd probably be hitting those kids in the same situation.

I'd love to hear some experiences that people have in doing this. Please post in the comments, and let me know if that isn't working. 

The color of mindfulness is blue (glass, apparently).

I was in the middle of an hour-long cleaning blitz, trying to get things cleared up enough to get to the bill filing. And to an hour of focus on work matters. Part of the new year's resolution. I'd been doing really well already - A had made M call me on their way to school to remind me to brush my teeth. Resolution #2, check.

10 minutes was going to take care of the kitc....smash. Blue glass bowl shards pretty much flew everywhere. Into the sink, under the sink, into the dishwasher, into the living room, probably into the closed refrigerator, too. I'm expecting to find those later.

I have to say, there is nothing more focusing than trying not to cut oneself on glass.

Ok, that counts as my mindfulness practice for today.