Hair as a biological weapon

Given yesterday's post about all the hair goings on at our house, I was reminded of some hair hullabaloo earlier this year here in Seattle. Charles Mudede, a writer for The Stranger newspaper, wrote a column about a situation involving his bi-racial daughter, her hair products and a teacher's alleged physical sensitivity to the smell of it.

As I wrote about the debacle at the time in a Facebook comment:

Jay-zuss. So. Poorly. Handled. By the teacher and the parents. Why isn't anyone thinking about the child, her feelings, and her classmates and what they're learning from this? About how deal with difference? (They've learned to push it away. In a really distracting and obtrusive way.)
About how to handle an uncomfortable situation without making someone feel bad? (They've learned a child's feelings don't matter. Only the adult's/teacher's.)

Why didn't the teacher just say "I'm feeling a little warm/dizzy. Let's open a window and the door and create a cross-breeze." Then she could broach the subject - delicately and discretely - with the parents later.

All kinds of teachable moments being missed in all this.

At the time, reading about that girl left me totally worried about my little brown girl and her gorgeous hair and attendant hair products as we prepared to send her off to play school.

Hair affair

Hair is big around here. Both kids were born with full heads of hair, which my aunt says runs in my side of the family, and J. has had a catalog of coifs over the years, ranging from the current short, clean cut 'do, which he's growing out, to twists, braids, puffy afro and more.

I'm currently sporting a long, relaxed hairdo down to my shoulder blades, courtesy of two semi-close together pregnancies and related hormones, and the retirement of my longtime stylist. She was originally from Canada where apparently the word "trim" means cut off an inch and a half, thereby negating efforts to grow it out.

I've written before about the process of managing Ava and Dylan's hair day to day. Now Dylan's trying to comb his 'fro just like dad.

And this week, Ava asked for her hair to be blown out instead of styled wet.

Diana Ross-esque results below.

She was so busy dancing around and twirling it was hard to catch her on camera. Note to self: learn to use sport mode on camera. Also: replenish supply of headbands and save blowouts for weekends. Because the next day, after spending the morning playing at school outside in the wind, her hair looked like a rat's nest. A very, bouncy, rat's nest.

Parenting to-do list

We had our first parent-teacher conference today with Ava's play school teacher. At one point, she used the phrase "exceptional girl" with no caveats. She may have been blowing smoke, but I'll take it. And I will keep it in mind when Ava's being exceptionally cranky and exceptionally annoyed with her brother.


All in all, Ava's loving her class and classmates and comes home every school day to regale us with tales of all the great fun they had outside and who did what. I think the school and its play-based philosophy and diverse students and parents has been a great fit for her and us. We like what she's learning there and it matches and reinforces our family philosophies around independence, personal responsibility, fairness, kindness, politeness, friendship, and contributing wherever you are.


But it also reinforced our resolve to do whatever is required to raise Ava and Dylan to be productive members of society by hopefully modeling good behavior towards them and each other, and providing the guidance, structure and freedom in the correct balance to parent them successfully.


It reminded me of a great wee-hours discussion J. and I had over the summer precipitated by a news update on a local 10 y.o. gang-affiliated attempted robber and his sibling accomplices who robbed a 17 year old on a public transit bus. Egads. What happened (or didn't) in his 10 short years on the planet that led to the series of poor choices he made that day?


We had a wide ranging discussion about what we are trying to instill in our kids now to keep them on the straight and narrow. We want them to understand that there are consequences for negative actions, unlike the parent of an elementary school student taught by my friend, who informed her that they don't believe in consequences at their house. Huh. Wonder how that's going to work in the real world, seeing as how pretty much EVERYTHING there has consequences?

Topics we covered included how we can teach them to value themselves (so they'll know how to spot others who try to devalue them), dealing with and avoiding frien-emies, how we can demonstrate the value of persistence and hard work, how we can never demonstrate too much what positive, supportive love is so they don't go chasing some poor approximation of it, how to be leaders not followers, being and spotting a good friend, trusting their gut, standing up for what's right even when it's hard, sportsmanship when you're the star AND when you're not, dealing with peer pressure, being considerate of others, trying to live a moral and compassionate life: you know, the things that seem to have fallen out of vogue in some circles. That's a laundry list, and it's of course incomplete and we may not cover every item every week. Still, it's something to strive for. Which leads to another bullet on the list: setting and meeting goals.

Man, this parenting gig is tough but important work. But we're hoping that by doing the heavy-lifting on the front end and throughout their formative years, we won't see either kid in a news story like the one above years down the line.

Out and about by the crack of noon should work

We've been kicking around vacation ideas since about August since Seattle got robbed of a real summer this year. Trolling around online, I found a tour that seems right up my love-sleeping-in-on-the-weekend style, courtesy of http://www.guruofnew.com/ and  http://www.springspotter.com/.

A California man (of course: the epitome of laid-back style) has come up with a new series of what it calls Crack of Noon Tours “for those who don’t consider themselves ‘morning people’.”

Always wanted to travel Europe but hate the frenzied pace of most tours? This company's guided trips in Italy and France are scheduled so that no activities start before noon.

According to the company, “We firmly believe that travel is enjoyed much more when one is rested and relaxed — not herded and rushed.”

Dylan in his favorite sleeping pose

Man, talk about a company tailor-made for us! I know some parents swear by getting their kids in bed by 7pm or so, but the related 5 am or 6am wakeup would be a major problem for us.

Ava is definitely a night owl like me and Dylan is still sleeping quite a bit, so even though he goes down at 8pm-ish, with periodic and partial wake ups for a few sips of milk, he's out for about 11-12 hours.

That works fine for us, and on weekends, Ava occasionally wakes up around 7:30 am and creeps in to our room and quietly climbs in with us for another hour or two of sleep. It's a little snug, even in a king size, but the family bed can't be beat for snuggly wakeups on cold fall and winter mornings. And I think our schedule will work fine on a crack of noon tour.

Feeding the beast(s)

Like many couples, especially those with kids, we struggle with the daily challenge of what, and when, to eat. As a working mom, my challenge is compounded by the time constraints of commuting to and from a job, picking up kids, etc.


As a lover of  the French approach to many things, I was not surprised to learn that they take their school lunches for kids, even toddlers, as seriously as they do meals for adults. Check out this CBS News story on French School lunches.


We have been very intentional and fortunate with our kids' eating habits. We buy organic where we can (milk, fruit, some veggies), and in general, we have pretty good eating habits and rather than any hard rules, try to do all things in moderation.


Despite my southern birth and family, we fry infrequently and when we cook soul food, we try to make it a bit healthier by using smoked turkey in place of pork, chicken and seafood in place of some of the pork and beef sausage, etc.


The fortunate part has been that the kids are pretty easy when it comes to food. Ava has the toddler standard 'no crusts' edict for sandwiches and over the past few months seems to have picked up the 'vegetables are yucky' mantra from some of the kids shows we let her watch. Athough she says it, she will still eat and request broccoli, carrots, edamame, sugar snap peas, corn and more.


With Ava, the bigger challenge is making sure she eats at all. Some days I'm sure she is subsisting on sunflower nut butter and jelly sandwiches (her school has a 'no nut products' rule), grapes and string cheese. Other days, she polishes off her meal, asks for more, and sneaks bites off my plate.

Look what I found! Is Magic Shell a vegetable?

One month ago, Dylan, aka The Eating Machine, had a single upper tooth. Which he promptly chipped somehow when I was away overnight. Le sigh. 


Three weeks later, three more broke through within a day of each other! And as of last night, a canine tooth is poking through too. Amazingly, despite having five teeth erupt in such a short period of time, other than a runny nose, he's shown no discomfort or discontent, other than sticking his fingers in his mouth periodically. Having read about the teething-related misery of other toddlers, I know that once again we are incredibly fortunate with this little guy.


And as I've mentioned, even before teeth, he ate at will. Now, I think we can simply stop dicing everything into tiny slivers and instead give him slightly larger pieces for feeding himself. Next up: teaching him to use a spoon and fork.