Okay, it doesn’t sound too appealing from my description here… but it really is quite funny and clever.  You just have to appreciate dark humour and the cleverness of the switcheroos.

Today’s comic is one without a caption, the joke is entirely within the comic.  It shows a graph measuring “Topics You’re Willing to Address in a Pickup Line” versus “Age” — indicating that as you get older, you’re going to use more and more bizarre topics for pickup lines.  I guess out of desperation, is the implication.

The rest of the comic shows an example of this.  A middle-aged man is approaching a woman on a bench.  The woman has a baby in a sling and is nursing discreetly.  The man says “I don’t believe in public breastfeeding, so… how about we go back to my place?”

I really, really like this comic.

First of all, in the SMBC universe, this man is definitely being portrayed as The Jerk.  We are not supposed to be agreeing with him or sympathetic to him.  His desperate pickup line is inappropriate and ludicrous.  Therefore, the association is that “people who disagree with public breastfeeding = jerks”.

Secondly, as the foil, the woman is being potrayed as the “normal” person, the regular person just going about her day who gets set upon by this oddity.  In other words, nursing in public is “normal”, and wearing your baby in a sling is “normal” as well.

I think part of what excites me so much is, in fact, that the baby is in a sling.  Just a simple over-the-shoulder variety, possibly a pouch, possibly a tied shorty wrap.  Whatever.  Just the fact that it’s there means that the artist (who is just a regular joe, science student, young fellow) is aware of them.  Where so many of us still get funny looks and “gee, that looks interesting, what is that thing?” it’s nice to see it just pop up like this in an online comic like no big deal.

It’s also notable that the woman is not portrayed as some super-crunchy hippie chick.  She’s just a regular woman, nursing her baby on a park bench.  Thanks, Zach, you just made my day!

She’s been keen on numbers for awhile now.  She loves to point out “fenen” when she sees one… that’s ’7′ for the toddlerese-challenged.  The fun thing she did today was out of nowhere, in the middle of a parking lot, she shouted out “Fee!  Too!  Won!”

Whoa… counting backwards.  Even Flipper didn’t do that until he was closer to three… but then he counted down from five and folding down his fingers one at a time to boot.  Still, sibling rivalries aside, it was cool to see.

Of course, this is a 27-month-old who still says “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 6, 7, 5, 7, 9″ sometimes.

She also loves drawing.  And what she loves drawing best, is anything at all on her brother’s dry-erase board, ostensibly part of his math curriculum.  It’s great, she can draw all she likes, erase it, and start over, and I don’t have to deal with mountains of scribbled paper.

Her drawings are starting to become representational… at least to her.  To us, it’s still circles, zigzags, lines and dots, but to her it’s boats, cats, letters, and (most frequently) whales.

Today I tried drawing a ‘track’ for her to trace.  Two wavy lines about an inch or so apart.  I held her hand to give her the idea to get started, showing that she should follow down the middle of the track.  She quickly understood and finished on her own.  We did a few more at other times during the day as well.  She wobbles off the track occasionally, but for the most part stays in the middle and is definitely following the general shape.

She’s also singing the alphabet now.  This is, of course, totally unrelated to literacy and understanding of letters and phonics, and we had not been teaching it to her.  But she heard it, and it stuck.  Most often, we hear “ay bee see dee eee HEF JAAAAYEEE”… or we hear “koo ar ess, tee yu vee, dubbayu ess, tee yu vee… ”

And we’re also getting frequent renditions of “tinkow tinkow itta taaa” which is just too adorable to be believed.

We were out shopping today and I thought I should get her some new pants.  Many of our favourite pants are now too short on her, and most of the next size up we have in hand-me-downs are still like, size 5.  She’s a little shopping DIVA already, I swear.  Everything she saw was like “Oh!  Cooooooooool!” and “pitty pitty shooooos!!” and trying on sunglasses.   Where’s the tomboy we ordered?

Once I’d found the perfect pants she saw something way up high.  “Beena!  Beena!”  That’s her attempt at “ballerina”.  This girl is a dancer, and we can’t wait until next fall when she can start dance classes.   Anyway, sure enough, there was a cute little t-shirt with a silhouette of a ballerina on it.  She doesn’t need more shirts, but it was very cute, and only $6.  There were a few different designs, and the one she ended up choosing is a lovely image of ballet shoes.  Her two favourite things… dancing, and shoes.

The pants are nifty chocolate brown cargo pants.  Very, very cute.  Of course, I’m going to have to take in the crotch by a good 2″.  Stupid pants manufacturers and their “diaper fit” for toddler clothes.  Did you know it’s next to impossible to find pants “cut for undies” in anything less than a size 4?  While I understand that clothing manufacturers aren’t really familiar with the diaper-free movement and don’t get many requests for cut-for-undies pants for 18-month-olds… or 6-month-olds…  there are still plenty of potty-trained 2-year-olds out there.  And the average age for potty-training is age 3.  So I would at least expect that size 3 would be easy to find.

Alas, it is not to be.  You’ve got to make them yourself, buy them from someone who makes them herself, or alter them yourself.

Finally, while driving around today for my many errands, I noticed that she was being very quiet in the back seat.  She had her toy monkey with her and seemed to be cradling him close, and I wondered if she was falling asleep.  When we arrived, and I was opening her door to let her out, she pulled the monkey away from herself and said “all done nurse!”

All together now:  awwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Be sure to share it with all your friends who are contemplating formula feeding because they think breastfeeding would be too much of a ‘hassle’…

I’ve put the words “work” and “toys” in quotes in the title of this article, because for young children, the ideas of “work” and “play” are synonymous.  They have not yet made a judgment decision that “play” is all for fun and “work” is necessary but unpleasant.  To the young child, everything is exploration and discovery, and this is inherently fun to them — and so they will work very hard at it.

When adults are first exposed to the traditional Montessori materials and teaching style, the initial reaction is often: “well yes, I can see how that activity would be very useful and educational… but do the children actually enjoy doing it?  And when do they play?”

The answer is, yes, they do enjoy it.  And as far as they’re concerned, they ARE playing.

Child’s Play is Serious Work

A child does not have to be running around, giggling, or even using their imagination to be playing.  Those are all different kinds of play, but they are not required for the definition.  A child can appear deeply focused, intent, quiet, even serious, when at the thoroughly entrancing “work” of constructing a brand new person from the inside out.

As jaded adults, we might look on this seriousness and say “oh dear, that doesn’t look like fun, it must be draining, they need a break to go play and refresh themselves.”  But in fact, as Dr. Montessori herself, and generations of Montessori teachers and parents after her have observed, after a period of intense focus and “work” such as this, the young child will frequently finish the activity on their own (generally after having repeated it many times), and seem rejuvenated, refreshed, and content.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and I have now seen with my own eyes how young children will not only enthusiastically ‘work’ with Montessori and Montessori-inspired materials and activities… but they will be drawn to them.  The urge to create themselves through exploration of their environment will naturally zero in on activities providing the greatest benefit to whatever developmental stage they happen to be in – Dr Montessori’s “sensitive periods”.  Indeed, they crave activities suited to their task.

Montessori “Toys” in Action

This past week, I acquired a few new Montessori “toys”.   Opening the parcel, I first unwrapped a geometric shape puzzle, and set it down in front of Pomme to play with while I unwrapped the rest.  I thought this particular puzzle might be a bit too challenging for her as yet, but she immediately set to it and was deeply involved in it.

Another item I unwrapped was a set of mini knobbed cylinders.  A central staple of the Montessori equipment, I have been coveting the knobbed cylinders since I first learned about them.  But they are so expensive!  I finally found an acceptable compromise in the mini cylinders, only 5 cylinders per block instead of 10 and they are smaller in size, for less than 1/3 the price.

I set the blocks on the counter and went to Pomme’s bedroom to put something else away.  I had not, at this point, even shown her the blocks.  When I returned less than a minute later, she had discovered the blocks, taken one down, and completely on her own initiative, having never seen this item before, had set about removing and replacing the cylinders.  Having mastered this set, she then proceeded to take down the rest of the blocks, lined them up, and got to work:

This was a toddler on a mission!  And there was no cajoling, no bribing, no window-dressing, no inviting, no presenting.  She had simply recognized an excellent tool for exploring her world and herself, and had seized upon it.

Further proof happened a couple of days later.  My brother and his family were over for New Year’s Eve.  They also homeschool, and mostly unschool.  I was excited to share my new “toys” with my sister-in-law.  My 4-year-old nephew, who was right there while we were talking, has had little to no exposure to ‘formal’ academic work, he has lived a fairly free-spirited life thus far.  So he came into this “experiment” with no pre-existing bias one way or the other.

I brought out two blocks to show them, took out a few cylinders, and asked my nephew if he wanted to try to put them back in.  He did, and of course it was easy for him.  He almost seemed… not too impressed, really.

So we adults got talking about other things.  Within a few minutes, I noticed that my nephew had, on his own, returned to the blocks, and this time was trying to work with both sets at once.  So, I brought out the other two blocks to give him the full set, and he worked at them quite diligently for several minutes!

Truth be told, he didn’t actually finish the activity.  It was a busy and noisy house at the time, and he was too quickly distracted by all the commotion around him.  In Montessori terms, we didn’t “respect his concentration”.  Quite forgivable, given the holiday, I think!

Still, there it was.  He had taken to this activity with seriousness, concentration, and on his own initiative.  Would he have done so if it was not, in some way to him, “fun”?

Breastfeeding is not obscene!

I just read about today being a planned action day against Facebook regarding their continuing policy of removing breastfeeding pictures despite many complaints.  Now I admit that I love Facebook… I have reconnected with so many old friends that I had not been able to find in years.  It is a wonderful way to keep in touch with my far-flung community of old buddies.

So I’m not about to quit over this… but you can bet your booby that I’m going to join the protest!

Read the details over at Mama-Is, then go join the action!

To tell the truth, I’m not sure what I think of it.  On the one hand, I totally agree with the premise.  On the other hand, I see some comments saying how it confirms that it’s okay to be “good enough”, and I have a problem with “good enough” sometimes.  “Good enough” is an excuse often used for formula-feeding when there was no real reason not to breastfeed other than, perhaps, a belief that it would be more difficult.  “Oh I know breastfeeding is BEST, but formula is GOOD ENOUGH.”

This is why we need to change the language we use when discussing the pros and cons of breast vs bottle… rather than portraying formula as normal and breastfeeding as BETTER, we need to portray the breast as the norm, and anything else is below the norm.  As in, instead of saying “breastfed babies have lower incidence of diabetes”, we should be saying “formula-fed babies have higher incidence of diabetes”.  Yes, formula is plenty ‘good enough’, it’s a life saver when breastmilk truly is not available.  But it’s too easy to turn that into a wimping-out excuse.

Anyway, that’s a whole other topic which I’m sure I’ll blog about someday!

When it comes to parenting, what qualifies as “good enough”?  I suppose none of us can possibly be perfect, and “normal” varies so much.  Is it “good enough” as long as we’re not actually abusive?  Is it “good enough” as long as our intentions are good, however our actions might present themselves?  Is it “good enough” if we are constantly striving to learn and do better, even though we may feel every day that we are somehow letting our children down?

The article does say it’s about balance.  And the right balance for me might not be the right balance for you.  I guess I can live with that.  It’s good enough.