Ideas for volunteering at DC1′s school?

DC2 will be in daycare next year and DC1 will be in third grade.  DH will be working on starting a consulting business.  I have tenure.  We think we may have more time to get involved with DC1′s school this coming year.

DC1′s school is still hurting from the disastrous financial management last year.  It’s down to 50-odd students.  The management is much better now, but it takes years to recover from bad publicity.  We’re hoping to help out some, but aren’t sure what best fits their needs and our desires and abilities.

We’re currently on the financial committee.  Their large-grants committee is in terrible shape, but their version of the PTA seems to be doing ok.  We don’t want to go on the fundraising committee, though it is insane how much that particular committee has dropped the ball and bungled things this year.  We also did a stint on recruitment last year and find that to be pretty thankless.

They also have parents doing regular helping out in class.  They have room-parents.  There’s a lovely woman doing a gardening program with the students.

My graduate degree is in social science, and really isn’t something I can teach at the K-12 level.  I do, however, have a wide range of experience in math education, both teaching and tutoring.  I even spent a year doing gifted pull-out math once a week for fourth graders in an inner city school.  (Though I would have to recreate my box o’materials– even if it still exists it is in my parents’ basement back in the midwest.)

DH has degrees in engineering and computer science.  He will probably be the adviser of the robot team next year.  He wanted to do that the first year, but for one reason or another the students didn’t field a team.  This year they did, but we had a brand new baby so that was off the table for us.

Any suggestions for what we should suggest to them, if anything?

Book Review: The Zebra Said Shhh…

The Easter Bunny brought DC2 a paperback copy of Wandering Scientist’s The Zebra Said Shhh.  I figured I’d review it here.

The quality of the book itself is quite good.  The paper is thick and better suited to destructive little hands and mouths than most non-boardbook children’s books.  Well worth $11.25 (or $9 if it’s on sale).

The pictures are quite nice and are similar to several of our other children’s books.  I think this style that looks like cutouts was popularized by Eric Carle, though these are not as sparse and come with full backgrounds.   I especially like the parrot.  Lots of bold bright colors.

As for the story, it has a pleasant repetition and simple concepts for its target audience.  It holds the same wish fulfillment for adults that Go the F**k to Sleep does, only without the profanity.  If only saying “Shhh” worked on small human children.  There’s always the hope that books like these will build that connection.

After the excitement of breaking open plastic Easter eggs and scattering their contents (raisins) over the floor waned, DC2 was immediately drawn to the book.  Ze opened it, folded over the cover, chewed on the inside a bit (another note:  the book itself was not made in China), and generally seemed to enjoy it.  Miraculously, the book is still in really good shape.

When DC1 (age 6) woke up and started going through DC2′s loot, hir attention was arrested by the book and ze immediately read through it.  Later I noticed hir reading it out loud to DC2.  So that passed some sort of test.

In any case, I recommend purchasing this book.  It’s a good solid children’s book in every respect.  And we own a lot of children’s books.  Hat-tip to both Wandering Scientist and to X-ist publishing.

April Mortgage Update: Still wrestling with next year’s money goals

Last month (March):

Balance: $82,617.28
Years left: 6.666666667
P =$881.26, I = $333.14, Escrow = 621.66

This month (April):

Balance: $81,065.97
Years left: 6.5
P =$887.38, I = $327.03, Escrow = 621.66

One month’s prepayment savings:  $2.62

So, as we’ve discussed, this past year we’ve been contributing $500/month to each of the DCs’ 529 funds.   DH and I have been contributing to various forms of IRAs (now all Roths) since we graduated from college.  We’ve been putting money in 403(b)s and 457s as well, and are now pretty much caught up to where we should have been retirement-wise had we not wasted our youth frittering away our time in graduate school.  We’ve also been paying around $600 extra each month on the mortgage (though that varies with our escrow).

All of that is going to stop being automatic next year, other than my mandatory 403(b) contributions (~12% of my salary if you include the match).

We will have some extra money on top of our emergency fund at the end of the summer because (in theory) I’m getting summer salary.  This will be somewhere between 18K and another number (depending on things like emergencies, whether/when DH gets consulting, and so on).

Last semester when DH was thinking about quitting his job, we wrote out a list of priorities of what to do with extra money above and beyond our emergency savings.  #1 was 529 plans.  #2 was DH’s Roth IRA, #3 was my Roth IRA, and so-on.

Now I’m questioning the wisdom of putting money in the 529 plans before funding the IRAs.  On our current path, our children may very well get financial aid, which is something we hadn’t been planning on when we started the 529 saving.  Mint tells me that DC1 has over 40K at this point and DC2 has over 4K.  Do we really need to keep putting 12K/year away in these funds?

Earlier when I talked about this, I suggested filling up DC1′s 529 and not doing much with DC2′s, even though we are planning on paying for four years of college for each.  The reason would be that if DC1 doesn’t use all of hir money, it could easily be transferred to DC2 and we could stop saving for DC2.   People didn’t like that because they didn’t want DC2 to feel like a lesser loved child.  I want to emphasize that we will be paying the full college tuition for both children to the schools of their choices, even if 529 pots are unequal sizes (which they will be, even if we contribute the same amount just because of the vaguaries of the stock market).

Also, I would love to just put money into the Roth IRAs now, but there’s always the chance that DH will make a full salary before the next fiscal year is out and push us over the limit.  Undoing that sounds like a hassle.  Though maybe that’s too unlikely a proposition to keep us from waiting until January.

Anyhow, here’s our dream list of savings:

$12K/year in 529 plans (6K/kid)
DH Roth IRA (5.5K)
My Roth IRA (5.5K)
Mortgage prepayment (up to the amount left)
My additional 403(b) (17.5K/year)
My 457 (17.5K/year)
A SEPA or other self-employment retirement vehicle for DH (up to the amount he earns or 51K whichever is smaller)
Taxable stocks (infinity!)

Keeping in mind that I already must contribute 12%  to my 403(b), that we’ve caught up with where we should be an our ages and income on retirement, that our mortgage is as described above, we want to pay full tuition to college for two children, we’re in the 25% tax bracket (we were also in that bracket before DH left his job), and we have a healthy emergency fund in cash, In what order would you put extra money and why?

RBOChildren

• I now understand why my parents let my sister tear up my stuff.  If tearing up the receipt that came with DC1′s library books keeps DC2 happily and safely entertained for 20 min, that’s worth the confetti and loss of a “bookmark”.
• This early potty training is AWESOME.  Seriously guys, I cannot tell you how absolutely cool it is do to this part-time pottying with diapers the rest of the time.  DC2 prefers pooing in the potty and we prefer dumping it out of the potty to cleaning it off hir rear.  It is SO much easier getting started than it was with a 15 month old who had already been diaper-trained.  Just like the book said it would be.  Wish we’d had the book when DC1 was 6 months old.  If you have a baby who can sit-up, get a potty and just try putting your baby on it as soon as ze gets up in the morning (or after a nap).  It is addicting and totally awesome.  (Also saves diapers and lessens the ick factor.)
• I think we discovered one of the anti-perfectionism tactics that DC1′s first grade teacher used last year.  Last year when DC1 got a problem wrong and we’d ask hir about it when the homework came home, ze would shrug and say, “Yeah, the reason I got that wrong was [this silly reason], I know it’s [correct answer] now.”  This weekend I wanted to discuss a comment hir teacher had left on a math problem, saying that DC1 should have rewritten the (Saxon math) problem and done borrowing, which DC1 had done one of the Singapore math ways in hir head instead (and gotten incorrect).  DC1 said ze had never looked at the homework and never looks at hir returned homework(!)  So ze has had no clue about what ze has gotten wrong or right or why (except on spelling tests, for some reason).  And it isn’t discussed in a growth mindset way, but is treated as a fixed mindset thing– you do the work and it’s done and that’s it.  So I guess we’re going to start going through homeworks to talk about and to demonstrate learning from mistakes.
• DC2 waves hello and bye bye.  It is SO CUTE!  Update:  and claps!  Update:  first word [older sibling's name]  Ze also sounds like a happy little puppy when ze gets excited.  *pantpantpant*
• DH said, “It wasn’t so much an accident as an out of potty experience.”  Then he started talking about the pottygeist.  He tried to make a joke about the excretionist, but it failed.  DC2 thought it was hilarious, but who can trust what the potty gallery thinks?

Authoritarian vs. Authoritative parenting

We recently left DC1 with my sister for hir first overnight away from home without parents.  My sister asked, “Do you have any rules?”  And really we didn’t have any.  I came up with, “Don’t rob any banks” (Actually, I came up with, “When we’re gone, your aunt is in charge,” turning to Auntie, “Don’t abuse that privilege.  No robbing banks,” back to DC, “If Auntie tells you to rob a bank, tell her no.”) and DH came up with, “Ze is too short to cross the street by hirself.”  Apparently my sister’s friends have a lot more rules for their kids.

DH and I don’t have a whole lot of rules for our DCs.  We don’t say that they must ask to be excused at the dinner table.  We don’t make them clean their plates. We do have a set bedtime, although we didn’t used to.  But practice has told us that if DC1 isn’t asleep by 8:30 ze is difficult to get up to go to school at 7 the next morning.

We do try to guide DC1 (and someday DC2) into the rules for polite society.  Grown-ups don’t have to ask to be excused at the dinner table.  But when they leave, they must leave politely.  We try to model that.  Adults also can’t hit people, but that hasn’t been a problem with DC1 since ze was 2 or 3.  And if DC1 does anything odd, we address that at the time and explain what appropriate alternative behaviors look like.  So DC1 says please and thank-you and is reminded if ze doesn’t.

Our goal is not to have total and unthinking obedience.  The rules we do have (see:  street-crossing) we have for a reason.  DC1 is free to argue with us about said rules, so long as ze does it in an appropriate fashion that could be termed, “discussion” and not the heated kind.  Our primary goal is to guide, and we have authority because we’ve lived longer and know more about the world than DC1 does.

Another form of parenting is authoritarian parenting.  With this form, there’s a belief that the child needs to respect and obey hir elders because they are hir elders.  Blanket training is an extreme and awful example of this.

The ironic thing is that Authoritarian and Authoritative parenting seem to lead to exactly the opposite types of behavior that the parents are trying to instill.

For example, DC1 is a natural rules follower.   Ze trusts us.  If it were our goal to raise someone who questions authority, we’d be doing a pretty poor job of it.  (Fortunately for us, our goal, as always, is just to make things easier for ourselves.)

We haven’t noticed that kids under authoritarian parenting are any better behaved.  In fact, with more rules, there seem to be more rules to complain about.   And that leads to lots more arguing.  The arguments don’t seem particularly valuable either because there’s a lot more, “Because I’m the adult and I said so.”  Authoritarian parenting seems to create rebels in a way that authoritative parenting does not, despite rebellion being exactly the thing that authoritarian parenting is trying to squash (and questioning authority being encouraged by authoritative parents).

How were you parented growing up?  Do you think how your parents disciplined mattered to you as an adult?  If you have children, how do you try to instill lessons today?

Adventures in Elimination Communication

Have you noticed that we’re kind of hippy-dippy parents?  We are.  (We do vaccinate on schedule… we’re hippy-dippy parents with PhDs.)

Anyhow, we started gentle potty training with DC1 around 15 months, even though we really should have started at 12 months when ze didn’t want to poo in hir diaper anymore.

It was so much fun, that we vowed to start with any future DC2s once the poo became more solid.  DC2′s poo is now more solid.

DC2 also hates wet diapers with a violent passion.

The first step of elimination communication is un-diaper-training your baby.  The baby has to realize that ze is peeing.  With DC1 this was easy– ze could stand so we let hir take showers and pointed out peeing when ze showered.  Ze had a hilarious expression the first time it happened, sort of a “what is this?”  DC2 isn’t stable enough to stand in the shower and probably won’t be any time soon.

So, for us, Step one was pulling out the incontinence pads we’d gotten for DC1′s night training and putting DC2 on top of them with shiny new-to-hir toys to keep hir occupied.  Then we kept watch for sudden wetness.  (This part was a little weird.)

When the wetness occurred, we would move on to Step 2:  cueing the baby.  Most folks cue the baby with a “pssss” or “tsss” or “peeeee” sound.  My family apparently has a song they sing to the tune of “Twinkle twinkle little star” (“Tinkle, tinkle…”) that I thought I made up with DC1, but it turns out is something my grandma used to sing to my mom and her siblings and my mom must have sung to me and my sister even though I don’t remember it.

We repeated this for 2 days whenever we thought of it, probably 20 min a try, a few tries a day.  Day 3 we decided to Step 3:  introduce the potty.  Sadly our tiny little potty got a crack in the bottom while stored in the attic which makes it useless as a potty.  (But it’s recyclable!)  And it has been discontinued.  Fortunately DC2 is bigger than DC1 was, so can use the next size up Baby Bjorn potties, of which we have two.

DC1 always peed after waking up, so we figured to try that with DC2 as well.  It worked.  We caught a pee almost immediately.  I tried later in the day with the cuing song and also caught a pee.  The next day I caught another one and thought, “There is no way this can be so easy.”

So of course the next time I tried, baby didn’t pee when cued, and the time after that ze stood up and peed all over me instead of in the potty.  (That has happened a couple times since then as well, but we stay upbeat about it.)  But we’ve been catching a lot of pees, especially right after sleeping in the morning and right after naps.  It’s pretty amazing.

One time half-naked DC2 even walked over to the potty hirself (with parental assistance), but then got distracted by the bathtub and peed on it instead.  Oops!

The true joy of this method has been the poos we’ve caught.  It is just so much less icky to dump poo in the toilet and then rinse out the potty than it is to deal with a poo covered rear end.  I understand that many folks who do EC are better at catching poos than pees because their babies give more signs they’re about to poo, but apparently DC2 is a stealth pooper.  (DC1 used to do an adorable wiggle-dance.  DC2 just explodes without warning, usually while on hir tummy.)

The end goal, of course, is to be able to figure out when the baby is about to pee and for the baby to start to hold pees for the opportunity to go.  DC2 does seem to have bigger pees the more we do this, but we’re still clueless about the communication part.  Maybe we’ll figure it out or maybe it’ll all work out when ze starts talking to us.

Also:  we’re only doing occasional elimination communication.  Ze’s still mostly in diapers and the mother’s helpers all use diapers.  (One of them thinks we’re weird beyond belief, another thinks we’re really cool, and the remaining two haven’t been around for a post-nap pee yet.)  The Diaper Free Baby swears that occasional and part-time (that’s a step up from what we’re doing) elimination communication are fine, so we’re trusting them on that.  It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.  And so far, other than DC2 maybe fighting a little more about getting that diaper back on, there doesn’t seem to be any harm done.

So anyway, Elimination Communication:  messy but WAAAAAY easier than potty training later.  Surprisingly so.  And much easier than we ever thought it would be.  (Also, kind of fun!)

Food and DC2

Long-term readers of the blog may have come to the realization that #1 and her partner are kind of hippy-dippy parents.  Or lazy parents as they think of themselves.  They tend to let nature take its course, even when that causes them to deviate from the more stress-inducing mainstream.   Things other parents tend to complain about, #1 and spouse do a little research on and then usually realize they can avoid the thing causing the stress.

One of the potentially stress-inducing baby situations to rear its messy head is that of introduction to solid food.  Some parents force it on their kids and get very frustrated when it doesn’t go down.  Some parents freak out about perfectly made fresh organic purees, lovingly frozen in ice cubes.  Obviously perfectly made fresh organic purees are great, but if they freak one out…they can be skipped.

So in our lazy parenting strategy, we wait for the “signs of readiness”.  These are things like the baby being interested in food, the baby grabbing your food from you, the baby swallowing the food rather than pushing it out with hir tongue, and so on.  DC1 did not get these signs until ze was around 8 or 9 months old and rather dramatically stole a banana from me.  Because DC was so old and was pincer grasping, we figured we could just skip the puree stage entirely, so we did.  Research on “baby-led weaning” backed us up on it.  (Weaning being the British terminology for introducing foods.)

DC2 has shown the signs of readiness much earlier.  The day after hir 4 month appointment, in fact, it became pretty well impossible to keep food from hir at the dinner table.  So we didn’t try to keep it away.

DC2 gets table food, just like DC1 did.  We give hir little non-chokable bites.  Ze eats things that are naturally mushy with a spoon (split pea soup for lunch today).  We have been keeping wheat away because we’re still a bit worried about allergens.  And DC2 did have a small allergic reaction to *something* in San Diego, but we have no idea what, possibly naan (this, of course, being the reason the pedi says to introduce only one food at a time in 3 day intervals… something hard to do with a grabby baby on vacation).

Other forms of baby-led weaning suggest mesh baggies or just giving entire chicken legs or soft carrot sticks… but we’re still too lazy for that.  Ze gets what we’re eating.

And it seems to be going just fine, though we could have lived longer without the stinkier diapers.  Still, if you limit to whole foods, the diapers still aren’t as stinky as they could be.  (We remember the results of DC1′s first foray into processed food… the experience out the other end cut processed food out of all of our lives.)  We also understand bibs in a way that we missed with DC1.

Now, does that mean that more traditional methods of introducing solids are wrong?  Probably not.  We’re just lazy and take the least stressful way out.  It seems to work so far.

So if you don’t want to bother with purees, we at grumpy rumblings give you permission not to.

You don’t have to sleep train

No seriously, if it’s making you miserable, this isn’t something you need to do.  Grumpy rumblings gives you permission to not do it.  You’re not spoiling your kid.  You’re not destroying your child’s chances of ever being able to sleep at night or whatever dire consequence you think is going to happen.

There is nothing wrong with nursing to sleep.  No, the baby won’t be needing the breast to get to sleep at age 5.  There’s a reason breastmilk has sleepy juice and anti-cavity stuff in it.  Even if you wanted to breast feed forever, the kid will eventually wean on his or her own.  You’re not fostering bad habits that will have to be broken later.  And, the baby can fall asleep a different way for a different care provider even while nursing to sleep with you.  Rocking is fine too unless you dislike doing it.  Again, five year olds don’t need to be rocked to sleep.

Yes, some parents are absolutely desperate for sleep, and if their kid is older than 6 months, it probably won’t do any harm to try sleep training (making sure they’re using a real method of CIO like Ferber’s, and not some crack-pot thing they found on the internet that could get the child protective services called in on them).  [Note:  ending co-sleeping with an older child.]

It is OK if your kid doesn’t take naps.  Honest.  You don’t need a rigid schedule.  If your kid is cranky from lack of sleep then, sure, encourage naps and sleeping in, but if your kid is perfectly happy… that is OK.  You’re not a bad parent.  Really!

Cosleep if that works for you.  Don’t cosleep if it doesn’t.  Stick to a schedule if that’s what’s easiest, but don’t bother if it is making you miserable.  There is no “You have to do this,” in parenting once you get past the basics of food, shelter, clothing, interaction, and love.

Also, while we’re at it– you don’t need to force pureed organic baby foods down your kid’s throat if the kid isn’t ready for them.  If they just come right back out, you have our permission to take a break from trying.  And no, solids will not help your baby Sleep Through The Night, even if your pediatrician says they will– pubmed disagrees.  And it’s ok if your baby doesn’t sleep through the night!  Sleeping through the night is unnatural and an invention that we’ve only had since electric lighting.

Honest to goodness… kids have been doing this sleeping thing (not to mention the eating thing) for aeons.  The idea that somehow we have to train them to do it (or dire consequences) rather than it being hard-coded seems pretty ridiculous.  In fact, with so much of this parenting, it seems like you get exactly the results you don’t want if you try to force something rather than letting it take its course.  (Disclaimer:  some kids do have disorders like reflux and other things that interfere with sleep… those should be checked out by your pediatrician–get to the root of the problem.)

This tiny rant brought to you by #1′s kid being old enough that she’s hearing folks’ stress again.  And having some seriously scary interviews with potential mothers helpers.  Aieeeee!

RBOChild (bragging about)

Because if you can’t brag on an anonymous blog, all that’s left is the grandparents…

• Recently took DC2 on a trip.  Everywhere we went ze charmed folks.  Walking across/down the street we’d hear drivers or other pedestrians tell each other that babies like ours make them want one.
• DC2 has bright eyes.  Everyone says so.
• Lots of people guessed at how old DC2 was on our latest trip.  Most were shocked that they were off by 2-4 months.
• We got a lot of comments about how amazingly advanced it was that DC2 was doing assisted walking at this age… but ze has been doing it for at least two months now.  More if you count the time it was just newborn reflex walking.
• DC1 didn’t start solids until 8+ months.  DC2 started at 4 months.  Apparently this is ok because there was a pediatrics rule change, but we’ve just been going with the signs of readiness (baby wants food and doesn’t tongue thrust it out, baby can have food).  Whenever we eat food ze is totally demanding.  Especially ice cream.
• DC2 has been practicing the pincer grasp.  We’re a bit blown away by that.  But we hope it will decrease meal-time fussiness.
• DC2 recently realized that rolling over is a legit form of locomotion.  Ze can now travel a plane with a combination of rolling and turning in circles.  Ze still prefers assisted walking.
• DC2 can stand on hir own.
• DC2 has no fear.  But ze has recently been getting a little stranger anxiety.
• On the plane ride back DC2 discovered squealing and squeaking.  We really hope this phase passes quickly.

Join me… brag about your kid(s) and/or cat(s) here!  Say that stuff you complain about other people posting on facebook.  We promise we will only celebrate and not judge.  :D

DC1 on DC2

For my Christmas present from DC1, DH and DC1 made an mp3 that was full of awful awful puns (mostly penned by DH).  For the blog, and to keep you from the pain of all the Gnu Year wildebeast puns, I am transcribing just the part that DC1 wrote all by hirself with no help from DH (the transcription comes directly from the script– I have changed the names).  I think ze captures the essence of DC2′s personality perfectly, and DC1′s reactions to it.  (DC1 also voiced DC2 in the broadcast as DC2 is not actually talking much less reading.)

Gift Ideas for mommy

DH: I don’t now.

DC1: maybe a picture

DH: maybe one with decorations for Christmas

DC2: want want want play

DC1: maybe a decorated box for mommy on Christmas

DH: with fancy decorations

DC1: some food?

DH: I would love some

DC1: lets all eat some while [baby] drinks milk

DC2: milk!! yummy!!!

DC1: theres [baby]

DH: [baby] needs a diper change

DC1: okay Ill play some more,

DH: were done

DC1: its Christmas

Mommy: what do you have for me

DC1: [An mp3]

DH: let’s go!

(And what brilliant thing did DC1 get DH, you ask?  As of Dec 24th, when I’m writing this, I have no idea because I outsourced helping out on that to my sister this year.  Usually DC1 gets candy for DH.)