.Reading time 6 minutes.

***Since it’s been forever since I updated, here is a family update that’s kind of like a Christmas Card.  And I even forgot to do a paragraph on Gene.  Oh well, he deserves a post all of his own. 

Elena has started Kindergarten.  She loves it. She does hate the bus drive though, and puts me on a guilt trip for not picking her up at school. I got to say I love having a school girl.  I love the schedule, the new school books, the learning stuff, and the new friends.  I’m hard pressed to find something I don’t like about it.  Plus, now she is full of wisdom like:  “Mom, I’m learning new things like don’t eat stuff that falls onto the floor.”  Oops, I guess I missed that one, Thanks Miss Peterson for picking up the slack.

                Brandt does not love Elena’s school days.  He has no clue how to entertain himself without his big sister to show him what to do.   He follows me around and whines a lot of the day when she is gone.

Also, he is Brandt.  That means he is kind of a mystery package that I am trying to unravel. (That sounds creepy, please don’t worry)  I did a little self-diagnosis, (don’t write me off) and came up with Sensory Processing Disorder.  Basically his sense of touch is very screwy and hypo-sensitive.  And his hearing and smell are just. a little. odd. It also means he lives a hard life.  So unless I get him evaluated by a professional, the diagnosis stands the same.

For us that means getting him dressed and going away is hard work.  He constantly says: “It doesn’t feel good” and “My pants are going to fall down,” even if the elastic is pulled so tight it leaves marks.  It usually takes about half an hour to get suitable clothes on him, and then we have to pack back-up clothes so we can give him the option of changing, when we go away.  The clothes he likes to wear are basketball shorts and t-shirts.
When we finally have him dressed, he is usually tired and has a little whipped puppy look about him.  I usually let Gene get him ready because he does a way better job of it.  I get frustrated, and feel like the time is ticking, and we need to leave, and just GOSHDANGDARNIT wear these clothes. (See how clean I cuss?)  Gene rolls in the room all fun and games, and basically makes a puppet show out of all the articles of clothing and Ta-da! A boy dressed for church.

Brandt  also likes to rough-house with Madelyn. Grabbing her neck, shaking her like a puppy and making her scream.  She yells and then whops him back.  Such loving offspring I have.

Sometimes I feel like I give so much of my energy to Brandt I don’t have much left over. Sometimes I feel like I’m closer to him because he takes so much of my time.  Funny how that works huh? Enter Mady.

She is sweet and spunky.  She knows that if she wants any attention she needs to demand it.  And demand she does.  She is great. She is super-huggable.  We all love her a lot. And we spoil her a lot.  Do you want to know a secret? She sleeps with us, in our bed. Shh don’t tell.  The goal is to get her into her own bed, we’ve tried, but it hasn’t lasted.  What can I say?  My ideals have dropped significantly the past five years.

Oh yes, and she likes to nibble on puppy biscuits.  Give her one and try to wrench it from her fist. It’s much easier to let her snack on it.

There you have it, a little of the Esh happenings. Here are some pictures, I am incapable of interspersing pictures throughout my post like some others can.  So I’ll have them all at the end.


Endless Summer playtime has come to an end

 


Excited for Day 1 of School

 


Classic: The kids are bathed, squeaky clean with hair washed. I send them outside for a tiny bit so I can finish cleaning up the house. The next time I look outside they are all climbing around on Gene’s dump-trailor of dirt. I need to  give them all baths again.

 

   
I spent way to long trying to get a good one year picture of her. Still don’t have it.

  
The other weekend in Ohio I got this picture of Dad with Madi and her cousin Ava. Love it!


My family in all our glory.

 


Have a good weekend everybody!

My Daughter the Racist

.Reading time 6 minutes.

I downloaded & read the NurtureShock book recently, and found it fascinating. A lot of the chapters weren’t anything hugely significant or shocking, but one chapter especially had me absorbed.  It was the chapter concerning race and how we teach our kids about race.  More specifically, how we don’t teach our kids about race.

                Now, race and prejudices, minorities and the equality of all men, have always been a hobby horse of mine that I climb aboard and can go on and on for quite awhile.  So it’s been kind of a big deal to me that my kids are color-blind.  Since I don’t notice those things, and certainly don’t draw attention to skin color, my kids won’t either.  Logical, right?  I really thought my kids would absorb my color-blind attitude.  I really thought they wouldn’t notice that a black or Asian person looks different than them.

                News flash!!  They do notice. It is naïve to think that they won’t.  And if they are living in a parent created “race- free vacuum” they are quick to improvise their own conclusions.  This book says that 80% of white parents do not talk to their kids about race. They are afraid of saying the wrong thing.  I can so identify with that.  NurtureShock also surprised me by saying that having a multi-cultural setting has little to no effect on small children’s attitudes about race. 

                I was reading the book during the Winter Olympics.  So, drum roll please….Elena & I are watching figure skating… and if you followed it at all, you know where this is going.  We watched Kim Yu-Na. She is adorable. So graceful.  So beautiful.  

And Elena goes

“No, no, not her. I don’t like her at all.”

We watch Mirai Nagasu, and Elena goes

“Not her again, I’m so tired of her.”

As a light bulb flashed in my head,  I say,

“Duh my child, that is not the same person”.

  So I pressed her, and fished from her why exactly she didn’t like those figure skaters.

                And profoundly she said:

“Because I don’t like their faces.  Or their hair.”

So that, my friends, is when I was humbled to discover that my own daughter, through no fault of her own, is an anti-Asian racist.  I didn’t flip out.  It actually made me smile and think “OMW the book is right! She is totally rooting for the people who look like her.

But the book did inspire me to boldly go where white parents don’t go, and talk about race. Not vaguely as in “God loves us all the same” because kids are not going to connect the dots and realize we are talking about race if we don’t tell them.  Get over trying to be politically correct.  Get over the fear of saying the wrong thing.

I don’t have a neat and tidy ending.  But the new and improved mom tried to tell her daughter that she has a black cousin through adoption.  All in the name to bring about racial awareness, to break down those walls!

E: “No Mom she’s not black.” 

Me: “Yes, Elena she is.”

E:  ”No”

Me: “Yes”

E: “Look here’s a picture and I told you she’s not black.”

                Gene walks through the room while we’re arguing, with a peculiar look on his face, obviously thinking I’m losing my marbles for making an issue out of this.  So I let the matter drop, feeling insecure again that maybe I have lost my marbles, even if the book says we should talk about these things.  But I’m thinking that Elena’s need to have her cousin white just proves my point.

For the record, I have no fears of her being racist in the long-term. Not on my watch.