I can't find it online, but some years ago Ellen Goodman wrote a column critiquing a book of advice for would-be parents. The book apparently asked prospective parents to consider numerous factors - their financial stability, the status of their relationship, their own mental health, etc. - before having children.
Goodman's response was that if parents got their lives sufficiently in order to have children, as the book suggested, then nobody would ever have children.
Having children, she said, is inherently non-rational. Much like sex itself, it's something we do to satisfy desire.
Yes, though this isn't _quite_ about that. It's about the my god, this sucks/I wouldn't have it any other way split that parents feel.
"to satisfy desire" is too pat, and too much like reason. Desire is the name we give to the fact that we are driven to do the thing, not some separate motive which is "satisfied".
the my god, this sucks/I wouldn't have it any other way split
God knows I'm a fan of complaining, but the second part is often stated with a little more of a "but it's all worth it because my life is more significant than yours" shading to it.
Certainly there's some incentive to add "I wouldn't have it any other way" because by God you're in the shit if you would have it some other way.
We did have a somewhat related discussion not so terrible long ago, about a different article that is also soon to be a book.
Smearcase, you're making me so paranoid that I come off that way! I absolutely don't think I'm morally better or leading a more meaningful life than anyone else. I was terrified I'd be an awful parent and was lucky that actually it felt fairly natural, but I'm a big fan of people who don't want to be parents not doing so. (That said, the photo of you and Ace was superb.)
Also, that academic research about how much less happy parents are is a lot less dispositive than people think, as I have mentioned before.
is a lot less dispositive than people think
One thing I liked about this article is that she's pretty nuanced about that.
4: I mean, the complaining-about-parenting part is also sort of satisfying in a way that I'm not sure is inherently linked to the difficulty (which I surely don't mean to underplay) of parenting.
6: And I find that I posted comment 1 more-or-less identically there. So never mind.
Oh, I was aggressively possibly-obnoxious in the thread in 6, about the birth of one's child as not being as all-fired transformational as the weathered rustic painted pinterest signs would have you believe.
9: I don't have time to read! I have an early walker!
I know I personally have been much happier since Nia started singing the Pharrell song hypercorrected as "a room without a Ruth" to rhyme with "truth," which she never said as "troof" but certainly would have heard that way.
That said, the drudgery of parenting has been making me despair lately. At the moment, like I said in another thread, I'm on the brink of summer vacation and recharging-time. But the past two months have been super awful and I feel sometimes like I can't figure out how to enjoy my children. So much bickering and squabbling from the older two and it's just relentless and unpleasant, and so much drudgery to these endless routines. Brush teeth! Pajamas! Pick out clothes for tomorrow! Clean up the toys! and on and on.
I've got one at school and one down for a nap. I should be working, but I haven't activated SelfControl yet.
I absolutely don't think I'm morally better or leading a more meaningful life than anyone else.
You're an imaginary person on the Internet, but I suspect you're probably morally better than I, and leading a more meaningful life.
My opinion on this doesn't make me feel bad, nor would it make me feel bad if you shared it.
Heebie, what you need is...another kid!
Smearcase, you're making me so paranoid that I come off that way!
No, I don't think anyone here does it so it was maybe dickish to bring it up here. Some days it's hard to dishabituate from your schtick, you know?
I know, I know, like a hole in my head. It just seemed (and still seems) that if four was the right number all along, stopping at three won't make life any easier and will just fall short of four.
I'm putting a lot of faith that the main problem is that I've physically felt so awful these past couple months, because any other explanation is too depressing a forecast.
If only you had kids to make you too tired to have a schtick.
My stepdaughter called me an idiot this morning. Of course, she's right, but it's hard to take from someone obsessed with an anthropomorphic candelabra.
The bickering and squabbling is really, really obnoxious and incessant. It's only kicked into high gear in the past 6 months, I think.
I mean between siblings, not between parent and child.
Nia started singing the Pharrell song hypercorrected as "a room without a Ruth" to rhyme with "truth,"
Every room needs a Ruth.
My schtick makes me too tired to have kids.
Is it shtick? Without a c? You never know with Yiddish.
The Calabat is ill and vomity,and so he's not eating, which would be fine except that we're worried about his lack of weight gain, so I'm stressed more than I need to be over a minor GI bug.
24. Huh. In , the kids bicker, but cartoon John Goodman's cartoon hot wife cheerfully separates them and then they cartoon stop.
Sympathies!
I theory, we've got 5 years to go until no kids in house. Will have been 35 plus years of continuous child rearing for my better half, 25 or so for me. The drudgery aspect diminishes substantially once they are adolescents and parenting evolves a lot as they become independent personalities / intellects, and I like that evolution even though it can be nerve racking and sometimes heartbreaking.
Perhaps we are super neglectful parents, but I've never felt we lost ourselves or had all adult joys sucked out of our lives. Sleep deprivation sucks, being handmaiden to small helpless creatures is tedious, but it all does pass (in a blur!). And they can be amusing.
I'm putting a lot of faith that the main problem is that I've physically felt so awful these past couple months
This... seems pretty fair, really.
26: The Ruth! The Ruth! The Ruth is on file!
20: feeling wretched will discolor EVERYTHING. Do not discount this effect.
Every room needs a Ruth.
Unless you are a group of Ruthless pirates.
20: I suspect the feeling awful explains 99% of it. I can't even imagine being pregnant right now with one small child, let alone three.
And the steady bickering is the sort of thing that should settle down. I found my kids maximally draining at the age yours are at now -- no longer infants but not yet reasonable people -- and pretty soon the older two should be moving into the reasonable people age bracket.
31, 33, 36: This is helpful validation.
I'll be taking a moment to lay down, and Jammies will say something like "If you don't want to come to the [birthday party], stay home!" and I'll have this thought that "No, we cannot make that the litmus test for my participation or else I'll never get out of bed again."
(Sometimes I stay home with just the baby, which is marvelous. It's quiet, she's fun, and when she stops being fun, she either is hungry or takes a nap. So I'm capable of enjoying her, at least.)
37: Really? That's good to hear. I have this fear that the bickering will last until they're in high school.
She's lying to make you feel better. I was an asshole to my siblings until I was 25.
This is pretty much what I remember from my own relationship with my brothers. Constantly needling each other. Hawaii constantly makes up bullshit to gloat over, and Hokey Pokey falls for it every single time. Hokey Pokey constantly just takes something Hawaii is playing with, or disrupts something she's made super orderly. They're evenly matched. But so much whining and fussing.
Oh, I fought with Dr. O forever, but it wasn't really my parents' problem after we weren't little any more. I mean, Newt and Sally are often rolling around the apartment in a cloud of dust with stars and exclamation points coming out of it like cartoon dogs and cats, but other than snapping about keeping the thumping to a minimum to avoid bothering the downstairs neighbors, I don't get overly involved, and if I need them to stop and behave, they do.
If the bickering drains more joy from your family life than other things that come with having small unreasonable people as roommates, consider making it a priority to mitigate this behavior. MASSIVE QUALIFIERS:
- it will be a very long term project and gains will be small in the near to mid term
- you've got to coordinate with your coparent and be relentlessly consistent
- age appropriate expectations are crucial
All that said, if the key to a reasonably pleasant home life for you means ratcheting down the bickering then I do think you can do this with almost all raw human material. Can't eliminate it, but definitely reduce it below what us otherwise considered "normal".
consider making it a priority to mitigate this behavior
But how? Really! I would love advice.
(I've read "Siblings Without Rivalry" which is a good book, but boiled down to:
1. avoid intervening.
2. When you do intervene, paraphrase the dilemma and validate that they've got a tough dilemma to resolve.
3. Say that you trust their ability to come up with a solution that will satisfy all parties.
4. Unless physical danger is imminent, in which case separate everyone and give everyone a chance to cool down.
Which is fine, but there is a steady stream of stuff to ignore, and it's just...unpleasant and relentless.)
If there's one thing that teaching college math should have prepared you for, it's a steady stream of unpleasantness.
So wait, if you concentrate on reducing bickering and are super consistent about it and are willing to wait until the kids are at an age where it's possible to reason with them... you're pretty much just waiting for them to age out of it, right?
If there's one thing that teaching college math should have prepared you for, it's a steady stream of unpleasantness.
And also how to evaluate the rate of change of that unpleasantness at a given moment in time.
Trying to think what I did, that I've been reasonably happy with (but of course my kids are unusually stolid. Aggressive, but not so much with the hurt feelings). Does it make sense to adjust "avoid intervening" with "intervene insofar as the behavior affects you, and only so as to mitigate its effects on you"? That is, refusing to referee disputes (barring extreme cases when it's actually necessary) but telling them at the drop of a hat that if they're going to bicker, they need to do it in one of their rooms out of your earshot?
Wow I'd totally intervene! But not in the substance of their dispute, more to enforce the outward forms of courtesy.
eg on someone else's stuff I'd be inclined to jump the gun when possible and say "sibling y, you must not have noticed sibling x was playing with that", key being to keep it matter of fact, cheerful and as if we are all of course completely on board with being pleasant and charming to each other at all times. Which they aren't of course being heartless savages. But you have to start somewhere. Relentless repetition, and then add age appropriate theorizing re value of courtesy, plus praise of acts if politeness, and actually pretty soon they will begin to notice that they enjoy both being treated with courtesy themselves and being lauded for doing so.
Is it shtick? Without a c? You never know with Yiddish.
.שטיק
50: I think that goes in the same direction as my 49, but sounds more appealing in that it's less 'law of the jungle' and more likely to produce pleasant people. On the other hand, it sounds like more work.
Does it make sense to adjust "avoid intervening" with "intervene insofar as the behavior affects you, and only so as to mitigate its effects on you"?
This is a nice rule-of-thumb. (In fact, I naturally do this in the classroom, where I use "If it's more work for me, then usually no. If you can make this exception fairly for everyone and not especially much work for me, then sure." Students are incredibly willing to go along with this kind of honesty.)
So, to be really specific: at the dinner table, would it be "Go squabble in the back of the house, and come back when you're ready to be pleasant"? And what about in the car?
Jammies intervenes a lot more than I do. He's much more inclined to do the sort of thing in 50. I do make an effort to do the "caught being good!" kind of recognition.
Dinner or car, where sending them away isn't an easy option, I'd order complete silence for a short time, and then let them start talking again so long as they stopped talking about the dispute (with express permission to pick it up again as soon as they could do it where I didn't have to listen). Yours probably aren't old enough for this to work yet? I can't remember?
I have no idea about the bickering, since we're a one-child household for about another month. But we do seem to have turned a real corner into reasonableness that has made everything much easier. Getting past 5, starting elementary school, etc. It just requires way less attention and effort once you have a basic belief that the kid is rational and somewhat capable of taking care of him/herself without constant monitoring. The worst is the period at ages 2-3 when they are both 100% mobile and 100% insane, but I have to admit I also find that age the cutest. We're now down to only maybe 20% insane, maybe less.
Relentless repetition, and then add age appropriate theorizing re value of courtesy, plus praise of acts if politeness, and actually pretty soon they will begin to notice that they enjoy both being treated with courtesy themselves and being lauded for doing so.
It's hard for me to distinguish this vs. 47...
eg on someone else's stuff I'd be inclined to jump the gun when possible and say "sibling y, you must not have noticed sibling x was playing with that", key being to keep it matter of fact, cheerful and
...passive aggressive! "You must not have noticed"? Why be disingenuous?
And what about in the car?
Go squabble in the trunk, presumably.
Exactly right re dinner table, just make sure they understand that exile is sadly but necessarily the result of being unpleasant. Mild sadness, not high dungeon. In the car I'd pick my initial moment carefully, when going somewhere they care about and when you don't and can be flexible re timing. Explain your completely reasonable expectation of pleasantness and when they heedlessly ignore you just pull over and shut off the car, don't say a thing. Once silence reigns, cheerfully say how relieved you are to be able to get back underway!
Yours probably aren't old enough for this to work yet? I can't remember?
Borderline. Hawaii at 5 could handle this. Hokey Pokey at 3...depends how exhausted/hungry he is.
57: I think you'd notice the difference in terms of how they aged out of it. I mean, I did the lazy-woman's version of 50, with courtesy-focused intervention when I had the energy for it and out-of-my-sight law-of-the-jungle when I didn't, and the work on courtesy gets you kids who recognize how courtesy works and that it is an obligation, even if they don't always abide by it, when they're old enough to be rational. If you don't do that, I think you get kids who may age out of the bickering behavior, but don't get the courtesy generally.
In the car I'd pick my initial moment carefully, when going somewhere they care about and when you don't and can be flexible re timing. Explain your completely reasonable expectation of pleasantness and when they heedlessly ignore you just pull over and shut off the car, don't say a thing. Once silence reigns, cheerfully say how relieved you are to be able to get back underway!
This, I think you'd have very very few opportunities where the kids genuinely cared about getting to the destination timely more than you did. Maybe it's just me and my two, but I think that if I tried specifically this, I'd be in a battle of wills that I would lose.
Ok, follow up question: Is "until you're ready to be pleasant" a fair condition to place on a roommate/child? I think people here have expressed different opinions on this, according to whether they identify with the parent or the child. I mean, children are allowed to have sourpuss moods, and should be allowed to be cranky just like I am sometimes, (but jesus christ is it frequent with Hawaii).
58: disingenuous key to not getting dragged into the petty weeds, also used to reflect back an aspirational image to tender young souls. Might as well help them save face.
Parenting requires a shameless commitment to the judicious employment of drama and artifice.
58: disingenuous key to not getting dragged into the petty weeds, also used to reflect back an aspirational image to tender young souls. Might as well help them save face.
And yet my finding is that this particular angle does not fly because any dunce will know that she did too notice and may well drag you into an argument on this very topic. Cheerful, yes, pleasant, yes. Not dragged into the weeds, assuredly. "You must not have noticed," I have my doubts.
But I can't really give advice, because S&N really do seem to have been unusually compliant. Not for long term things like "keep your room clean", but since they were fairly young, direct immediate orders have been obeyed. So "Tell them to stop speaking" worked for me, but I'm not sure if that's generally applicable.
(They will, of course, try to talk their way out of things, so there's a little tension about communicating the transition from when I'm negotiating to when I'm issuing orders. Somehow, the phrase "Stand on your feet..." (meaning, essentially, actually get up and start the physical process of moving to do whatever it is) preceding an order has turned into the unambiguous signal that the conversation is done and compliance will happen now.)
Completely agree with LB re growing out of it and this is all about priorities.
66: could turn out that way but let's remember our dramatis personae are an adult and two under fives. And the adult has known the tots since before the year dot (literally).
It's almost as if you don't believe in the magic of the theatre, redfoxtailshrub!
64: I think the key is narrow, achievable, definitions of 'pleasant'. 'Stop discussing subject X' works. 'Be cheerful' is harder.
One of the most memorable things my mother ever did to address bickering was collapse and start crying. I'm not sure it was the most effective thing she ever did, but it sure as hell made an impression. (She only did it once that I remember.)
My personal style is a lazy person's version of DQ's, but I have to say that the result has been somethng like the opposite of a kid who is unusually compliant. OTOH I only have partial control over the parent environment.
but let's remember
...that I've got a four year old of my own who's helping me ultra fine tune my theatrical magic.
71: That was my trick when I was babysitting! It worked! The 2-3 year old was so surprised she stopped crying.
Incidentally, I was pretending.
66, 69: I also think this kind of disingenuousness as a tactic is tightly dependent on the psychology of the individual. Some kids will go with it, and some will call you on it (and of the 'call you on it' breed, for some it will be a bad thing, and others it will defuse the situation because everyone has the giggles.)
72: That was what I meant about not giving advice. I don't think S&N were compliant because of my A+ parenting, I think they're just kind of naturally inclined that way. Sally's funny -- she's very attracted to conflicty, aggressive situations (rugby, debate), but is extraordinarily even-tempered about them.
64: like 70, it depends what you want. If by pleasant, you mean engaged and vivacious, that's too much to ask, but if your bar is that they sit quietly and entertain themselves without yelling or slamming doors, I think it's fine. That's about what you want from an adult, right? They can sit and stew (say, in front of the TV in the living room) without making things too unpleasant. Maybe "until you can be civil/calm/quiet/whatever" would convey better what you want.
Also, I'm not sure whether threatening to separate them would be feasible. Something like if you two can't stop bugging each other, we'll have to move your place at the dinner table/seat in the car next time. (Not sure whether you can do it in the car, but if you have three rows, put them as far apart as possible for a trip or two.) I seem to remember threats like that working pretty well, although again, compliant little girls. We did bicker a lot, pretty much relentlessly for (sorry) a long time, but it got better once I had friends to hang out with and spent less time relying on my sister as a playmate. Then again, who am I kidding giving advice about siblings? As adults, we have seen each other for two hours in the past two years and have exchanged three e-mails and no phone calls or texts.
I agree with the general principle of blithely pretending to assume good intentions though!
I suspect that me being so physically wiped and sick has exacerbated things family-wide. Like, Jammies not getting enough sleep because he's taking care of house details, and then him being short-tempered with kids, and the whole ratio of pleasant-interactions to unpleasant ones getting skewed into a feedback loop that infects everything.
Thank fucking god it's almost summertime and I should also be feeling better any day now.
I think they are also sick of each other. It's hard to plan how to separate them and send one with each parent, without them interpreting it as one of them getting shafted, but we need to do more of that.
I found it helpful to be very clear that life isn't fair and neither am I, at least on a small scale. Once you accept fairness as a goal, you're screwed if you have the kind of kids that will lawyer over it. Reject their premises, though, and there's not much they can say. (I did try to be fair on a larger scale, but that's different from letting them argue with me over fairness.)
Daycare has been great for indoctrinating the mantra "You get what you get and you don't get upset." Or sometimes it ends with "...and you don't throw a fit." Because it didn't come from us, the kids really accept it as gospel.
(For things like what color cup you get. Not to be over-applied.)
They should try to put that to the song from "Westside Story" about being a Jet.
Could you sent one to a friend's and have a friend over for the other?
Another thing my mother did that in retrospect was pretty smart was to mark up the calendar with our initials on alternating days to solve score-keeping arguments. Who gets to pick the TV show? Does the calendar say W or E? Sit in the front seat? Check the calendar.
Heebz, if you schedule it so that Tuesday is Mommy-Pokey night or whatever, that has helped for us. Lee finally stepped up and started doing special things with Nia just like every professional involved had been asking her to do, and there was an overnight change. Not complete and I barely stopped them from hitting each other on the way to school because OMG she opened the car door and it was myyyyyyyyy turn to open the car door, etc.
Your other stuff going on sounds objectively sucky. I hope you and Jammies can relax and rest and suspect things will feel a lot better once you've done that. (Also, what's the age gap between Ace and the newbie going to be? Nia and Mara are almost 17 months apart and that's seemed to be a really good division at their ages. I'm not so sure how well it would work with littler ones, but that's on my mind these days.)
We had that too, by weeks. Of course we tried to stretch the power of it being "my week" to all sorts of things. It's my week, I get to pick what's for dinner! It's my week, I get to play with whatever of your toys I want!
You could always try my parents' solution, which was to have a large house with many separate rooms, plus one or more nannies.
I'm a relentless intervener, but doubt it much matters--I'm just being myself because I'd go nuts trying to follow some formula.
four was the right number all along
Right number for what? This must have been a thread I missed.
I had pretty low expectations for having a kid -- I thought that it would be all drudgery with maybe one or two super-cute moments a week where you had a little epiphany moment of 'this is why it's all worth it, now I can go on!'. But at his age (almost 2!) the super-cute and joyful moments come pretty continuously through the drudgery -- it's almost a one-for-one kind of thing. Certainly multiple times a day.
With that said, I REALLY REALLY miss the luxurious, unstructured freedom of my single, pre-kid days. Like, a lot. (I also sort of miss having a lot of promiscuous sex, although that's another story and TMI anyway). It seems plausible to me that I'm less happy now, for some definition of happy. I stayed single a long long time and was very habituated to the particular pleasures it offers. But the pleasures of parenthood are much more present, obvious, and everyday than I thought they would be.
All this has me thinking that maybe I want to stick with one kid, as sort of a compromise between 'this sucks/I wouldn't have it any other way'. We started late anyway, and I'm having an only child seems like a way to have the parent experience while economizing on the demands of it. I'm not sure if that's true -- I know that the pure freedom of being single is not coming back, period, and there's a certain thought that 'once I'm embroiled in this parenthood I may as well go for the matching set'. Plus I feel a bit guilty about selfishly depriving him of a sibling, and my partner feels I think more so. But I also gather that having two kids is a significant increase in parental hassle level over having one -- is that true?
sorry for all the typos above -- i am one of the more typo intensive people on Unfogged -- but y'all can figure it out. E.g. 'once I'm embroiled in this parenthood *thing*', etc.
I have to say, the descriptions of sibling interaction in this thread are making the only-child thing look more reasonable than ever. I am very close to my brother as an adult, although we fought a lot growing up, so that gives me a lot of appreciation for the benefit side.
"You get what you get and you don't get upset." Or sometimes it ends with "...and you don't throw a fit."
...and you don't fuss a bit was the ending at my kids' preschool, and it generally applied to food. Which is possibly the biggest irritant for me.
Noah: "I won't eat Pastaroni; I only like macaroni and cheese!"
Cassidy: "I won't eat macaroni and cheese; I only like Pastaroni!"
Dad: "They are both fucking dried noodles in cheese powder. Congratulations, you each get nothing."
But yeah, you (and I) are at the very worst stage of parenting. Too old to be adorable and too young to be either reasonable or interesting. Granted my teenager is only part-time and weirdly well-behaved, but he's *so, so, so much more engaging* than listening to entire iCarly episodes recounted line for line or every tiny detail of what they've done in Minecraft over the past hour.
But I also gather that having two kids is a significant increase in parental hassle level over having one -- is that true?
My impression is that having only one kid is more relentless some ways, because they do amuse each other to an extent. But the big difference (which makes it sound like you're making the right decision given how you feel about it) is that it's easier to incorporate one kid into a mostly adult life than two. Only children seem to seamlessly integrate into adult pastimes like nice restaurants and interesting travel much more easily than two or more.
Perhaps we are super neglectful parents, but I've never felt we lost ourselves or had all adult joys sucked out of our lives. Sleep deprivation sucks, being handmaiden to small helpless creatures is tedious, but it all does pass (in a blur!). And they can be amusing
Pretty much sums up my experience. We've been reflecting lately how pleasant the whole experience was, now that neither child may be living here soon.
than listening to entire iCarly episodes recounted line for line or every tiny detail of what they've done in Minecraft over the past hour
Well, gee, you sure seemed interested in talking to me at unfoggedconII.
31: I second the idea of physical discomfort coloring everything. I had a rash for a few weeks that constantly itched, causing pustules and I would scratch so hard they bled. I was ready to declare this my one and only pregnancy.
The doctor gave me prednisone, which fixed 99% of the problem (I'm itchy about once a day, but no bumps). Now I feel like I could be pregnant indefinitely.
PGD, one is fantastic, two is life-destroying.
That's overstated, and I don't have time to elaborate, but I do wish we'd stopped at one, despite number two being very cute and all that. But especially at your (our) age, I think one is the way to go.
91: Obviously I'm not coming to this from the standard way of having kids, but two is so much easier because they have each other and aren't asking you for every fucking bit of attention. A+++ would do again and have, but the transition to three was a little different but in most ways even better and there's no assumption that there will be a four.
I don't know how well I do at not being sad about having no life outside parenthood. I think it's mostly my own fault but just being able to sleep in someday would be so fantastic.
(On the other hand, and I know this is the cliche of "oh, but my life is so rich now!" the big girls asked this morning what they'll be allowed to cook to make us breakfast for Mothers' Day, which is adorable and also probably messy.)
Only children seem to seamlessly integrate into adult pastimes like nice restaurants and interesting travel much more easily than two or more.
Very true. I also think maybe I'm older than a parent of elementary school kids should optimally be, because my patience is exponentially shorter than it once was.
Right number for what? This must have been a thread I missed.
Oh, I've got several theories, according to how much neurosis you want.
1. Four kids feels like summer camp! (This is probably the least neurotic one.) That at that point, the kids have some momentum unto themselves which makes a more parental-hands-off, kid-community kind of space.
2. I don't want to recreate my own family. (This is the more neurotic one.) We were three, and we've turned out very distant, and it makes me sad. Whenever I say this outloud, the other person scoffs that I think I can engineer such things. It's not exactly that I think I can, but I still want to do something different.
3. Sort of a gut feeling, independent of the reasons above, that it would be a nice number to have.
(Many many people - none of whom who themselves have four kids - tell us "four is easier than three!" The theory being that at four, you stop trying to maintain the illusion of control, whereas with three, you run yourself ragged trying to do so. So who knows, but that's kind of the parent version of (1).)
(Also, what's the age gap between Ace and the newbie going to be? Nia and Mara are almost 17 months apart and that's seemed to be a really good division at their ages.
HPs are 19 months apart, and Ace and #4 will be nearly exactly the same.
(Pokey and Ace are 2 1/2 years apart. Two sets of two close together.)
I think we'll be done with diapers before I turn 40.
102.1 does not seem remotely consistent with trying to really focus on reducing bickering. More with LB's contain-the-scrum-like-a-ghostbuster approach.
Four is certainly a nice number of people to have, in terms of flexibility in who's aligned with whom and not having an odd man out all the time.
Well, we don't have four yet.
102: You had big age gaps, though, didn't you? Your closest brother was quite a bit older than you are?
I have a strong prejudice against 3, and a sense that 4 is better than 3, for no very good reason (I grew up in a two sibling house). Being the middle child always seemed like a downer.
We're about to embark on 2, but I keep telling myself it won't be that bad because (1) almost 7 year age gap so we've at least got one approaching the reason frontier (2) older kid is only around 50%, not 100% of the time. I'm probably delusional.
Right, with that kind of age gap I think either they won't interact at all much, or the older kid will be a useful quasi-babysitter. No idea how to bring the latter situation about, though.
I was musing the other day that no one here, besides Apostropher?, has three kids. I share Halford's bias against it.
My brothers are 3 and 6 years older than me. Some fond memories; lots and lots of quarreling.
Did any of you try to design it so that the kids are fairly close in age, but one is out of diapers? I always hear people talking about the impossibility of having two kids in diapers, but I would think it's a necessary evil when you're trying to minimize the age gap.
two is so much easier because they have each other you have a fourth for bridge
I am one of three. My youngest sister is much much younger, though, so it's effectively 2 and an only child.
You guys are really not selling this whole parenthood thing.
We've done lots of 2 in diapers, and it's not particularly bad, given the general chaos of having two very little ones.
111: Hey!
Anyway, Halford, the 7-baby gap is great. We do use "junior babysitter" time, where one of them can watch Selah while I run and do something or go to the bathroom or whatever, though one of them lost that privilege this weekend. The other great thing about two close in age is that they tattle on each other, so once you can cut down on the tattles you don't want to hear about, since that's a pet peeve of mine, they can do things like go places together and you know if anything goes meaningfully wrong you'll hear about it from the other one.
(I will always have a soft spot for the time Val came running down the stairs yelling "Thooooooooorn! Mara's tattling on me!")
116: Oh, heh, whoops. I didn't include especially cute kids.
Alternative excuse: I counted Lee as one of your four kids.
115: Excellent!
We're planning on naming the baby Rea/gan. Maybe it's my subconscious influencing the decision from all the presidential talks here! My reasoning is that it's gender neutral and studies have shown that gender neutral names get more interviews than obviously female names on resumes. She'll have an obviously female middle name in case she hates this idea.
If you saw that name, would you assume that the parents are Republican? What if her sibling was named Clin/ton for balance?
Anyway, Halford, the 7-baby gap is great.
We call it "the 7-baby itch".
If you saw that name, would you assume that the parents are Republican?
yes
it's effectively 2 and an only child
Yeah, here too. I really wanted to stop after the second one, but Roberta (one of 5 sisters in a 7-kid household) would have never stopped moping about not having a daughter. She sandbagged me with the third, though obviously I wasn't being sufficiently vigilant about birth control either, so 50% my fault.
Cass is the most challenging and frustrating of the three by a margin that could only be closed if Noah ends up in juvenile detention. However, there isn't much pleasure in that "I told you so".
I really like the name Reagan and have been irritated at That Reagan for ruining it. Maybe enough time has passed? My friends named their kid Katrina within a year.
Oh my fucking God. I will literally come out to Utah and steal your baby and rename her.
116.last: That's awesome. I love your stories. I've had the image of your littlest one stroking the fancy stroller playing on repeat in my head since yesterday.
"Hitler" is also a male name you could give to a girl, and everyone would assume she's a boy.
122: as far as girl's names go I think it's really been a hard decade for Boehner.
How does that work? Do you return the baby with a tattoo on its back?
"LeMay" is kind of a cute name for a little girl.
I'm going to figure that out after I take this kid away from these parents.
It makes me think of the 40th president AND Linda Blair!
123: But it's not for the president! It's an Irish name! And it's not gender neutral but overly used like Madison.
Let me rethink that. If a child is named "Reagan", I would not ASSUME the parents are Republicans. I would assume they are not Democrats.
I'm with Halford. Just no. (If you love the name so much, Regan is a possibility. But not Reagan. Please. No.)
Will you rename it Roosevelt?
113: Obviously you need to be a super-attachment parent and do Elimination Communication so you don't even have to diaper and Halford will rip his own intestines out with his teeth because he just can't take it.
If you saw that name, would you assume that the parents are Republican?
Yes.
Regan is a better option, since basically nothing is worse, but then you are naming the kid after an evil daughter from King Lear, plus it is still too close to Reagan.
120: Yes, and so will everybody else. Also makes me think of this kid, but that's less disturbing.
Reagan is definitely more a girl's name now.
What if her name was Thatcher? Is that better? My husband wants her name to be Hillary Michelle, but I dislilke the name Hillary.
And to be clear, I play around with some Republican ideas, but I vote as a New England Democrat. I'm as liberal as they come about most social issues.
Pwned so many times in the span it took me to find the right link.
What about R'Gan? R'gan Mak Th'oon, in the language of Mars. Nobody would be confused then!
I don't like how Regan is pronounced Ree-gan. Reagan sounds better.
but I vote as a New England Democrat
Speaking as a member of the Democratic party born in, and currently resident in, New England, what on earth does this mean?
I think "Rogan" isn't super popular for girls right now, so that might be an option.
Spell it Regan and call the kid Ray.
Based on 131, I think Liz might like my name a lot.
Lyndon, is that you? Lincoln?
Then you could name the next one Cialis.
145: Liberal about social and fiscal policies. As opposed to a Blue Dog Democrat.
134 gets it right. Spell it "Regan".
Also that way she can call herself "Reg" if she wants to.
If O was a girl, he was going to be named Winifred Margaret. Aren't those lovely names? And she could be called Freddie! How cute! Feel free!
Or move to Minnesota, where Regan and Reagan sound exactly the same, if the local pronunciation of 'bagel' is anything to go by.
No takers for Thatcher or Clinton?
Liz, these are all names for pets. Rethink your paradigm.
Everyone's heard the David Alan Grier piece about how generic drugs sound like black girls' names and vice versa, with a mom hollering "Levonorgestrel, you get your ass over here right now!" or whatever, right? My girls do definitely have hollerable names, whether or not that was intentional on their moms' parts.
No takers for Thatcher or Clinton?
Let me be the first to suggest Disraeli.
157: Clinton is a boy name and matchy-matchy themed names are gross. Thatcher is for people who put Ruths on huts. I vote No.
Also, never tell people what you're planning to name your kid, because they'll tell you they hate it.
158: See that's the problem! I used up all the good names on my birds.
I've told everyone except my parents because my dad made fun of our list of names years ago.
Definitely never tell people you're planning to name your kid Ghengis or Adolf.
Also a bad idea to tell people you're planning on "Cheney". Which is a pretty name, c'mon!
but I dislilke the name Hillary
More gender neutral than Reagan, though.
If you're in a baby-name-critiquing-or-suggesting mood, these people (one is a distant co-worker) are soliciting votes on names for their baby and donating $1 for polio vaccinations per vote received.
http://www.jasonmorrison.net/vote/
Have you considered Michellary? That might actually be more Utah-friendly.
these are all names for pets
I heartily second this, but my entire childhood was peppered with people telling me "I have a dog named Rusty!" so I may be a bit oversensitive on that front.
Hillary, more gender neutral than Reagan? Really?
I have the impression that gender neutral names rapidly become feminine names. So if you really want a gender neutral name you have to pick something very unusual.
If you want something that has no gender implications at all but is definitely the name for a person, consider "Omnicorp"?
Pat and Chris are nicknames, though, right? Not something you'd put on a resume.
But I've never heard of Hillary as a man's name, excepting a surname.
Caspar and Felix were shot down by teenage siblings as inextricably linked to cartoon characters (not that i cared, was thinking if romantic painter / composer if anything). At some point we gave up trying to get past the teenagers' laser-like ability to turn any name, within five seconds, into a horrid nickname and said, fine - you name the baby. So the irony it BURNS when they come up with an unusual, old fashioned name that is shared with a cartoon character and we make them swear up and down it has NOTHING to do with said cartoon character ... when baby turns one they give him the first tiger themed gift.
I thought the traditional spelling, as in the Saint's name, was Hilary, and that the politician was named after someone with that last name. I doubt it was the mountain climber, unless he was famous before the Everest ascent, because she was born years before that.
I'd missed the gender neutrality concern expressed in this form:
118: My reasoning is that it's gender neutral and studies have shown that gender neutral names get more interviews than obviously female names on resumes
I'd think that if gender neutrality is your (noble) goal, how it looks on a resume isn't really the point.
Hey parents, how much would you pay to dissuade me from sending this with your kids?
177: You named your kid Tigger?
176: Yeah, as a man's name, it's Hilary. No big difference. Famous person Hilary Putnam (not female).
I can't think of any cartoon tigers other than Tony and Hobbes.
Thirding 162.
Reagan wasn't a popular baby name until recently. #951 in 1993, #923 in 1980, DNF in the years between, and #97 in 2012. Thanks Obamacare!
Shere Khan is certainly an unusual baby name.
Tiger is the side kick, LB's .2 is correct.
I know a female Hilary, spelled that way.
Tiger-themed gifts are better than Snoop Dogg themed gifts. Well, better or worse depending who you ask.
I had never noticed the l/ll male/female distinction before. Noted! And so I instead hold that Hilary is a more gender neutral name than Reagan.
Oh, the kid is the Swiss protestant? That does seem to me like a name where the cartoon interpretation is still fresh enough to be pretty dominant. I wouldn't rule it out on that basis, but I'd expect that reaction.
I would totally have gone for Shere Khan! Casimir was also unpopular with everyone else, I still regret giving in on that one.
There was also a cartoon tiger in Aladdin. I believe his name was Rajah.
I actually have a naming dilemma of sorts, though heebie has already weighed in privately and I was thinking about asking the mineshaft, but I really have to googleproof as the child is the only one on the internet with that name and has already been found that way before. But I think I want the Mineshaft's help, maybe.
199: A member of the Flickr group, certainly.
J's wee bestie also shares a name with the Swiss protestant/cartoon character from Chagrin Falls. I think it's a swell name! Becoming more popular, I think.
Looking at this list of gender neutral names a couple that I would pick out are:
Casey (could go by "Cass" if she wants a more feminine name).
Rowan
Riley (interesting to see that more girls than boys were given that name, since I associate it with the Boondocks character).
Parker
Please do not use "Kamryn"
Everyone here knows what cartoon protestant swiss immigrant we're talking about besides me?
Swiss protestant/cartoon character from Chagrin Falls/Doggfather
203: I was thinking of somebody else.
He has a tiger sidekick and is often pictured on car decals, peeing on things.
"Nuk" is sort of a weird name, but definitely gender neutral.
Think tiger sidekick and separately predestination.
Oh, I thought we veered onto a different name somehow. I'm with us then.
Becoming more popular, I think.
Really? Dangit, it's on my short list if we had a second and that second were a boy.
Is the latest issue of Zwingli the Avenger out yet?
Take Casimir, Blume! It's so dashing. Also there's Casimir le Serpentin in French Cancan, the world's best movie.
Not super popular, just not ultra rare. Plus even moderately popular names these days aren't nearly as ubiquitous as they used to be.
God, Babynamevoyagerwizard is really so much fun.
177, 185: I can't think of any cartoon tigers other than Tony and Hobbes.
Felix the Cat. Though the name "Felix" has really been rehabilitated lately with the advent of the beloved Felix character on Orphan Black. Not that I thought "Felix" was a goofy name to begin with.
Of course Felix the Cat is not a tiger.
Take Casimir, Blume!
"Omnicorp" is somewhat more likely.
Dangit
Remember, you think and you think and you think, and then you pick what everyone else picked. Didn't a sociologist here once link a book explaining the phenomenon?
218: I know, right? Zion is more popular for girls than boys now? Weird!
Having a common name isn't a problem, who gives a fuck. Having a kid named Reagan is a big problem, because then your kid's name is "Asshole."
Three people I know through grad school in German have kids named Felix. Also trendy in Germany? Matilda. (/Matilde, but it seems that the English spelling is part of the trendiness.)
Matilda is a reasonably trendy girl's name around here.
Speaking of names associated with cartoon characters, I have a weakness for "Fritz," but I think I'm alone on that one. Also there is the problem that I don't like giving nicknames as proper names, but I don't like any of the full name options that get you to Fritz.
Felix, Sebastian, Archibald -- all names of more than one kid-of-friend.
My uncle pointed out that all the parents of young boys that he knows have a habit of calling their sons "buddy", which made me self-conscious about that, but wow does it slip out unconsciously. Since he pointed that out, I mostly switched to "sweetie".
Remember, you think and you think and you think, and then you pick what everyone else picked.
I know. I abandoned the girl name I'd had in mind since childhood because everyone else picked it.
Here there are lots of Evies and Amelias and Sadies and Sophie/as. I think we're a beat behind the German names.
I have a weakness for "Fritz,"
After the computer chess program, right?
Wow, I know a little "& Hobbes" as well. He's the only one I've ever met. One of his sisters has my name, and my brother is Kelvin, so hearing them together sounds almost right.
Hawaii's name is still pleasingly unpopular. Both Pokey and Ace are on trend, though. Which we knew but it's just so hard to find a name you like, that you sort of give up.
a name where the cartoon interpretation is still fresh enough to be pretty dominant
Except for everybody who follows the NFL. They think Megatron.
The boy name I'm rooting for, if that what this is, is a variation on Peep's real name that is pretty unpopular.
The "Swiss Protestant" bit had me confused, following on the .rss without seeing upthread. I was thinking Zwingli? Really?
The man you're thinking of, the author of the Institutes on the Christian Religion was French, he took refuge in Geneva. He and Ignatius Loyola may have known each other as students at the University of Paris.
Casimir, source of a subtle and enigmatic attraction!
Argh. On some level I did know that.
225/226/230 - one advantage of having children young, get there first. When I had my first three, I'd never in 20whatever years met anyone with their names. (Actually, not true, I'd met one Kid A. But I'd wanted it since before that.) Now, you can barely move for tripping over them. Kid D I had come across, although she arguably has the silliest name of the lot. If she'd gone to our local school instead of not going, she would have been one of three in her class.
I didn't care about popular / unpopular I just wanted *dashing*.
Mathilde well represented here, also Blondine, Genevieve, Vlodya, Anastasia, Natasha etc. Skewed samples.
238: my regret is now tripled!!!
That's kind of dumb nit-pickerry. Sure, C/alvin was born in what's now France but lived in what's now Switzerland for years, and ran the city of Geneva for much of his life.
It's always seemed to me that the musicality of the name in conjunction with the surname was the central concern.
Okay, here's my dilemma and maybe someone can redact this in a day or two, please?
Nia has a completely unique name and also a situation where it's better for her not to be immediately findable by certain relatives. (Although they could walk around our neighborhood asking for us by name or as the interracial lesbian couple and be directed to our house, I'm sure, and they know what school she attends, so I'm not implying this is a huge deterrent or anything.)
Her first name is [redacted], pronounced [redacted]. She's been going by Chri/sty for the last 18 months and it's the nickname her paternal relatives have always used since she's named for her dad Chr/is.
I really don't want her to totally lose her name when she'll be about 8 at adoption, but as above I don't really want her to keep it and she seems keen on changing it but will probably hate me or whatever and regret it later. So my thought was that instead of a long compound name we could break it into two names and she can keep using her nickname but go by the full name if she ever wanted to again, and yet it wouldn't show up on the school website when she's student of the month (again this month!) and so on.
Anyway, anyone who wants to weigh in on what to do about Nia's name is welcome to do so.
1. Lee's preference is for [redacted], which I hate because I hate nicknames for real names and because I want the [redacted] or [redacted] part to stay because that's what makes it black and the other two girls have identifiably black names and I don't want her to think we're whitewashing her, but anyway no.
2. My initial preference was for [redacted] because I've always liked Chris/tine better than Chris/tina, but then other friends I talked to got after me about Chris/tine being the super-white version, which is probably true.
3. So [redacted], which is what's winning at this point. She'll still be Chris/ty and can be
4. But the canonicalish spelling is [redacted], generally with capitalization in the middle. And in her first foster home she had the -sia spelling rather than the -isa one because they didn't bother checking against her birth certificate when typing her info into the system, which also gave us all kinds of problems with Mara's name when she first came to us. (Thanks, Obamaarefoster care!) And her mom may have intended the caps in the middle given that she wrote Nia's name inside her coat like that. But I'm still inclined not to bother with changing it from the way she's been doing it except to make the first letter capitalized, but I could be swayed.
Selah will be dropping her apostrophe getting a new middle name that's a family name for both Lee and me and that's a tribute to a friend who died right before we were chosen as Selah's family. We don't know how to pronounce Nia's current middle name and her family is inconsistent about how it's spelled, too. She knows what it is, but it's not something I feel I need to preserve. I don't feel any guilt about that. With Mara's name, we kept her middle name and standardized the spelling of the first.
I think Ace's first-middle name is not very musical at all, as it has adjacent vowel sounds, but I tell myself it's like Ya'el or something.
My vote, for the record, was that she should be registered for school under something ordinary and un-identifiable for safety reasons, and her legal name shouldn't be changed. But I gather Lee is not ok about that.
Also there is the problem that I don't like giving nicknames as proper names, but I don't like any of the full name options that get you to Fritz.
"Walter", "Ernest", "Friedrich"... I see your point.
The Swiss Protestant name is one that has been passed along my mother's family to four generations. (My first cousin's wife drew a line in the sand.) We have been told that it suggests "bold and bald" from the etymology, which we prefer to believe since male pattern baldness also runs in that family.
It's funny to think of it as becoming more fashionable.
236: The English spelling that is actually pronounced in England like my name? E.M Forster novel, for those who have no idea what my real name is.
247: Yeah, I should have put that on there. And I think I'm going to talk to Nia tonight about it, because you've made me think that maybe we should just stick with it even though it's kind of awful to make her put 23 letters down every time she has to write her name, and then we'd still need a middle name. (Actually, in that case she could have my name, because my mom has her mom's first as her middle and I have my mom's first as mine, so we could make it an oldest daughter tradition and make her feel special about that.) She's been very literal about adoption = name change, but maybe the last name would be enough for that. I don't know. And she's not the only one who gets a vote.
I personally like Chris/tina better than Chris/tine! And I think [redacted] is prettier than [redacted] (without intercaps either way). So I think the winning at this point name seems like the best solution!
I would normally vote against CamelCase in a name, barring the Mc/Mac sorts of things, but there I'm probably just being culturally white. And in this case, I think the CamelCase is actually useful as a pronunciation guide. I would guaranteed pronounce [redacted] completely wrong, but I'd get [redacted] or [redacted] either right or close.
Ummm...I have no idea. But I suspect not. Pronounced "Mosey".
250: You mean space cowboy/gangster of love?
I thought Peep shared his name with a cat, not a space cowboy. Or is the Space Cowboy the guess for my own progeny, I guess.
255: That's what I mean. I don't know if that's what heebie has in mind.
252: There are plenty of languages (several of which I know) where "s" can make a "sh" sound, and so I'm fine with that and it makes it a little more unique than De/asia, which is everybody's name to the point where half of them are De/Ayjah (which I'm pretty sure is an actual spelling I saw at school this week) and hers is at least a little different in a pretty way. I have no interest in standardizing it to De/Asia, but I could if it seemed like the right thing to do. And I'm not convinced by the "Oh, it has to be spelled the traditional way!" for a name like that.
I guess this runs afoul of your distaste for nicknames as real names, but what about Chris [redacted] or Chris [redacted]? Then you're not changing the name so much as rearranging it.
In Britain the space cowboy is pronounced like the cat. Strange, I know. Also, "Anthony" is pronounced "Antony". I'm not sure how "Antony" is pronounced.
I've posted this before, but it seems appropriate for the thread.
Plus it will be gender-neutral on a resume!
I think of the cat and the space cowboy as the same name with alternate spellings. I did just run into a bartender who introduced himself as what I'm remembering as Meer-sha, which he then explained as the Gaelic version of cat/cowboy.
the full name options that get you to Fritz
Fritzabella is all genderbendy.
I think of the cat and the space cowboy as the same name with alternate spellings.
Really? So like Tuesdays with Morris Sendak?
I also like the idea in 251 a lot. Getting a middle name that reflects a family tradition is a great adoption-reflecting name change. And "Chris DeA/sia [Thorn]" sounds really good. Musical, even.
266: Well, in England, Maurice rhymes with Horace. Right?
259: It seems kind of weird to give her her dad's name and I'm not sure she would actually be comfortable with gender-neutral right now when everything has to be a Boy Thing or Girl Thing.
The other point for Chris/tina is that the other two girls' names end in -a(h) and so then they would all coordinate and I'll be the left-out white person whose name doesn't do that, since Lee's does too.
"Chris De Burgh" could become a girl's name too.
271 to 268. This thread is fast. Are we all proctoring boring finals?
266: Right. I know some people pronounce it Maw-reese, and I wouldn't be surprised by that pronunciation, but my first guess for Maurice would be to pronounce it Morris.
269: And let me reiterate how strongly I favor the capital A version of the name. Running into "eai" in the middle of the name, I would absolutely guaranteed stop and boggle and come up with something stupidly mangled.
Running into "eai" in the middle of the name, I would absolutely guaranteed stop and boggle and come up with something stupidly mangled.
"Doice? Is that right? Lovely Irish name."
Love the idea if Jeanette McDonald's foreign but not Canadian co-star's name becoming popular again but actually have no idea if that's what you mean.
Also making me consider whether Love Me Tonight might be as good as French Cancan, but no because lacking Jean Gabin. Mmmmmmm, Jean Gabin.
274: Yes, that definitely throws people now. My dad was very concerned when he got the first email about her that it would be pronounced Crustacea. Most people who don't guess how it really works go with just a long e. I don't think I'd throw in capitals if I did keep it all one long name, but I think about it more with the middle name. I have a feeling Lee is opposed to them, but she's said she doesn't want a vote since I don't like her version.
kind of awful to make her put 23 letters down every time she has to write her name
This is actually a serious consideration. Also, from experience: don't call your kid by their middle name, it's quite the pain in the ass in the automated forms era. I'm the fourth generation of this (Andrew Joseph [Joe], Joseph Robert [Bob], Robert Stephen [Steve], Robert Russell [Russ]), and was happy not to inflict it on any of my own kids.
I haven't read all the way through yet, but this thread is making me a lot more interested in adopting 5-year-olds.
278: I know! We already set the precedent with giving Mara a hyphenated last name (and 20 letters for first and last combined) and it's not as if they have to actually write out their last names all that often since they're the only ones., but.....
I'm glad other people didn't look at this and think I was stupidly overthinking it and that there's an obvious right answer. Probably just that I'm stupidly overthinking it.
278: For all I know, it may go back further than four generations, but all I know about the fellows earlier than that are where and when they were born and died, not what people called them.
I think I like Lee's Christy Asia, tbh. Christy seems like a proper enough name in its own right, although I don't have a problem with nickname-ish names being the actual name.
don't call your kid by their middle name
Oops.
23 letters is not that bad for first and last name! Hawaii has 18 letters, and 25 with her middle name. My first name has 10, which is occasionally a PITA because forms often cut you off at 8 letters, but is certainly not a reason to avoid a name you like.
The form-cut-off thing really doesn't happen anymore, I should say. It used to, though.
ad was very concerned [...] that it would be pronounced Crustacea
This keeps cracking me up, which indicates his concern may not be misplaced.
Our hyphenated last name is 14 letters (fifteen characters with the hyphen) and it's a hassle. The kids tend to go by Buck rather than Buck-Breath when they're writing their name in informal contexts.
I'm sure I've told this story here before and know I have elsewhere, but after we gave her permission to go by Chr/isty, she decided the next day that she'd really rather be called Chipotle. And that is 100% the perfect name for her, but we said no.
285: Does to me. My drivers license, I'm E Buck-Breath because my first and last names didn't fit in the allotted space.
Crustacea is an awesome name. It sounds like a character from Monster High, which those of you without 4-8 year old girls can Google. "The Daughter of the Sea Monster" (actually I think there already is one, Neptuna, who fills that role).
Also, from experience: don't call your kid by their middle name, it's quite the pain in the ass in the automated forms era
Common in my grandfather's generation in our family, but all of my father's siblings went by the first name given.
My son's seven-letter name gave us some pause but we've always called him by it and he's never had a nickname stick. More trouble in the forms-department even now that my wife kept her last name, but we didn't budge or take it seriously and most people adapted fine.
Our hyphenated last name is only 13 letters and seemed like a good idea since it shows intent toward co-parenting since only one of us can adopt. That may well change within the next year, but for now we've been following the better-safe-than-sorry rule. And it will be so much fun to spend money on getting a co-parenting agreement and then spend money on filing a civil order or whatever that registers us as co-parents with the court and then as soon as the law changes having to pay to do stepparent adoptions and presumably also get married.
OMG LAST TWO STUDENTS PLEASE LEAVE. You do not know all the answers. Everyone else ended a long time ago.
Really? Dangit, it's on my short list if we had a second and that second were a boy.
Definitely among our rough age group and class - I have several friends with babies named this. I do think it's adorable.
297: that's a surprise, no indications around here. Stepkids were in the vanguard, babynamingwise!
Euthanasia would make a nice girl's name. Someone here could start a trend!
243
I know I'm punctilious on the subject, but no comparably-important historical figure is so universally misrepresented, not to say slandered.
He's become important to me, and I've read quite a bit in the Institutes, although they're very extensive and I doubt I'll get through them all.
Whenever I have time before a torah service, I look up the discussion of the week's portion in the Institutes. Quite close to the rabbis, much of the time, often with vivid expressions.
The worst is the period at ages 2-3 when they are both 100% mobile and 100% insane, but I have to admit I also find that age the cutest.
xelA is there now. He's 13 months but very physically able and has had a big leap in ability even just in the past week. He can climb furniture, ladders, etc. He can unscrew bottles. The lot. But it's not even clear he understands most of what we say, and you can't reason with him, obviously. So, on one level it's hilarious and sort of admirable when he's doing some mad shit; but terrifying and you need to stay sharp, always. Which is wearying.
You had a story (I think it was you) about your baby brother managing to stand on something and figure out how to use a key to get a door unlocked and escape at a ridiculously young age. If I'm remembering rightly and that was you, sounds like it runs in the family.
Have you considered duct-taping xelA to something heavy?
298: Hee, they all live in the Bay Area. These are *new* babies though - this year.
Well, 2013. But they're under 1 year. Stepkids were definitely ahead of the times, though!
xelA is there now. He's 13 months but very physically able and has had a big leap in ability even just in the past week.
Yes, but he's not a total asshole yet...unless he is?
Re: 307
If he has missed a nap, or has a cold, he is bloody hard work. Otherwise no. Willful, and determined (super common at that age , I suppose) but smiley and sweet.
Re: 304
Yup, that was my brother. Balanced on the back of a chair to fish a key off a high shelf and then unlocked the door through brute determination. I think it comes from my Mum, although it's not a trait I had as a baby.
Thorn, I like Christina on the basis that it gives you a couple more nicknames (Christa or Tina), but the first+middle sounds off to me with both ending in -a. I'd think she'd outgrow her current nickname (like Katies all go to college and become Kates). I think the capital is the middle name is good - I like either that or an apostrophe (is that not the style anymore?). I think without the capital, you'd need to change the spelling to be phonetic. Something like Dacia or Dasia (although with the s it looks like Daisy misspelled) would get you close. Don't get hung up on number of letters - my full name is 20. It's not a big deal, but maybe I'm unusually laid back about getting bits cut off on forms.
ydnew is a nickname. My full name is long and doesn't suit me, although everyone who hears it insists it's absolutely beautiful. It's not hard at all go to by a nickname. I even have credit cards as ydnew, which was nice until your ID had to match your plane ticket exactly and I had to get one with my full name.
I know at least as many adult Katy/Katies as Kates. Just for balance.
My sister found her younger boy trying keys in the padlock for the garage (he wanted his bike). To get that far, he had made separate trips for a stepstool and for all the keyrings in the house. He was trying each key. I think he was three or four.
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At the end of any job, even better ones than this, though ok not the last one, as I exit the building I ritually mutter one of the last lines of Lorrie Moore's "People Like That Are the Only People Here":
For as long as I live, I never want to see any of these people again.
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Just curious, did anyone read the linked piece?
I did. Thought it was reasonable, but didn't have much to say about it.
Just skimmed most of it and gotta say it is a ringing endorsement of my superficial, negligent parenting style.
I read the piece, but it doesn't describe the parents I know, so I stopped thinking about it.
It also struck me that the parents in the piece were setting themselves up for a bunch of their angst and I can't spare any sympathy for self-inflicted problems.
309: The pronunciation is [redacted] regardless of spelling and we can't really use your alternatives because those are part of the pronunciation of Mara's real name, although it's spelled differently. Initially I wanted Chris/tine in part to avoid the -a -a endings, though I realized Selah will also have -ah -a and I'm okay with it for her, which made me more okay with it for Nia.
313: Yes, in 2010 and again today. Parts of it make me feel awkwardly guilty but most of it doesn't, and so instead of elaborating I hjacked the thread.
We're coming to the end of nine months of no kid at home. In some ways it's made life less stressful (dinner dishes have become a total non-issue), but we both really miss having him around, and work has provided more than enough stress to fill the gaps. It will be interesting to see what the readjustment is like for all of us when he gets home. And then we'll get to do it all over again 18 months from now.
313: Now I sound like I'm being deliberately mean and snipey. I actually spend a lot of time thinking about to what extent expectations of having fun and being able to have a meaningful emotional/intellectual life and all that should even be the priority. I just read Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born, which is very much about how crazy-making motherhood is from before the time when the expectations were those of the people in the article. I've been struggling a lot with what expectations fairly apply to me and what I can hope to get out of life and so on, but I don't think it's quite in the same way the article people are.
I got hung up in the part of the linked piece when they started talking about all the stress that parents feel due to comparisons with the Ideal Parenting and Parenting Competitions, because I was basically reading the article looking for validation/cures for myself, and I just don't relate to the Comparison Parenting Olympics whatsoever, and can't there be enough stress just with the drudgery and bickering? Since I didn't have a point, I didn't make a comment on it. I know many parents do stress themselves out over comparisons, and that's unfortunate and I know it's spurred on by society but, again, no point here.
Hawaii: I think I'm going to pick out my clothes for tomorrow, so I don't have to do it later on tonight, and also I'm going to change into my pajamas now, so I don't have to do it later on.
Sure, you odd thing.
Which is essentially what Thorn and Megan said, so if they counted it as a point, then I do too.
I just sat through a weekend of listening to the boyfriend's mother (who is named Christine, just to tie it all together) bitch about her stepkids' parenting. She can go on forever about how she did it better. I just can't muster many more thoughts about parenting or judgment without dwelling on how nasty she was about it. (One set took their kid to DisneyWorld three days in a row on a vacation to Orlando. Oh the humanity! And they let her get ice cream sundaes before dinner! And her dad gave her donuts and potato chips for breakfast one morning! She would never! Clearly, they are raising a future delinquent.) The kids are all darling, and their parents think very hard about their choices.
263: Muiris ("Mwir-ish" to you anglophones), maybe?
Popular nickname for cat-cowboy in rural Ireland is "Mossy".
If you like those surnames-as-girls'-names then I vote for "Sullivan".
I mostly noticed the woman negotiating with her son about when he would stop watching television and start doing his homework and how stressful that was for her. I simply can't imagine that ever happening with the parents I'm familiar with, my own.
We wouldn't have been in that situation from the get-go. We had one TV, in my parents' room, which we weren't allowed to go into without express permission. I am dead certain that either of my parents would have destroyed the TV before negotiating with us about when we would stop watching it. And we would never have thought we would get away with arguing back. There's just no step on the path to "arguing with my child over when to stop watching TV and do homework" that would have happened.
If they're having the fight, they've already lost. But that was their own doing.
Popular nickname for cat-cowboy in rural Ireland is "Mossy".
But you have to smile when you call them that, varmint.
309: I never realised until just now that ydnew was like ttaM.
328: It took me way longer than it should have to figure out that you meant the backwards spelling ("But I'm not Scottish? Or a guy? Or a parent?")
arguing back
This is one with a real difference between the easier parenting path (no negotiation, period) and the outcome I think is best for the kids (argumentative negotiators). There are times I get so tired of negotiating over Every Little Thing, but I encourage it.
I go back and forth between encouraging at least some negotiation (yes, you can watch one last show before bed if you get into pajamas and brush your teeth first) and blind fury (eat at least one fucking bite of your dinner if you expect to be excused from the table). I may not be the best parent.
I basically agree with 330 on argumentative negotiators being better for kids, in one sense: it makes them more demanding for their rights and entitlements every step of the way, which is good. It is more mixed for their emotional development, though - you should not be allowed to hold someone else hostage in conversation against their will. If a conversation becomes unproductive and is getting on my nerves, I am not going to have it with them.
Oh, sure. I mean, he's three, so he has to lump it plenty.
Come to think of it, my parents were explicit about things changing at age 18. When you are 18, you can have agency and do what you will (unless you want to pursue the humanities on our dollar). Before age 18, suffering under house rules builds character.
Not that this comes up yet but I'm not sure I'll be terribly interested in negotiation. Zardoz will probably solve the whole "you can argue to get what you want" thing on her own or, if not, maybe she'll join a fun cult.
If the movie needs to be shut off then that happens, no "negotiating". Usually these things are allowed within pre-set limits, though - right? Otherwise madness ensues. Time limit up, done. But then we also tend to talk through the underpinnings of such decisions faaaar more than the poor dude would prefer. And we've encouraged independence, including the freedom to screw up in ways that would horrify virtually every parent in that article.
A bright line switch at 18 strikes me as strange but Megan is clearly mire than fine and dandy so humans - adaptable, flexible sods, aren't we?
My daughter, saving for graduate school, works several jobs. One of them is as a babysitter/nanny. She's good at it, and is pretty much the only person who ever says no to the girl she spends most time with.
It you ever watched an episode of Supernanny, the point was made again and again about setting boundaries. The number of people who haven't been able to do this is amazing to me, but my daughter meets them in real life.
"This is not negotiable" and "This is not up for negotiation" are definitely things that come out of my mouth daily. But I am generally up for a round or two of discussion--if conducted pleasantly--on the question of whether something is possible if she does XYZ first and the question of whether yes, okay, five more minutes, or no, sorry, no can do.
We have a fairly consistent policy that our daughter is entitled to a reason for any parental decision she disagrees with and that we -- meaning, mostly, my wife, who is much more patient than I am and has much better self-control than I do -- will listen to any reasonable counterargument or proposed alternative the kid wants to present. At five years old it's mostly still cute. We'll see how it works once she hits adolescence.
I am trying to think what more I could have gotten (given that I am pleasantly middle class now) if I were more of an instinctive negotiator. Probably most of the gains of 'leaning in', which have not accrued to me at work. On the other hand, people have offered me stuff along that line and I decided that it would cramp my style.
I laughed out loud twice on BART about Crustacea.
Speaking of naming kids after cartoon cats, sort of, I have an internetical friend who talked about her kid by a pseud, and told these stories about her overbearing mother pestering her about the kid's actual name, so of course I was all "back off, mom!" And then I found out the actual cartoon cat name and was like "oh. Aha. Yes. Well then."
339: exactly, and an awesome opportunity to reinforce that being pleasant gets results! Also, so much easier for little kids to practice politeness and courtesy with a sympathetic adult to help the dance along. Much harder with that *intensely annoying succubus* aka sibling your parents unaccountably spawned.
Garfield? To 342 or Lizspigot.
Good advice. But back to cats.
I hope, but doubt, that it was Ch/ester Cheetah.
Paula Abdul's krazy kat boyfriend?
Haven't read the thread, but we have gotten crazy lucky with all joy and quite a bit of fun. Partly that is because both our careers are in slow-motion right now, and we have a late walker with a sunny disposition.
The guesses are funny. I can't quite reveal yet.
I sat down at one end of the very long empty communal table at the cafe and a guy in a shirt that say "meh" sat down at the other end. I sometimes wish I were the person who looks straight at him and says "it's like we never talk anymore" but I'm really not.
Allow me to update you Friday after we take Little Miss 101.7-degree-fever on a plane to Chicago.
Please please please let 349 be true... That is too wonderful.
If 349 is right, that's a pretty good name. Also the best damn disco, man.
Puddy Tat is Disco Cat? That is an irresistibly teasable name.
Oh, we're talking about naming children after cats? Because our daughter shares a name with my childhood cat. Mrs. K-sky came up with the name innocently; I was like, "I like it, and added bonus, that was my childhood cat and I demanded in vain that my parents name my little sister after her. So my family will think I've been waiting 36 years for revenge." Which they do.
350: You're still in the adorable phase. That is a seriously great time.
Wait, wasn't someone on this blog talking about wanting to name a kid the name in 349? Or did I hear that recently in some other context?
That is an irresistibly teasable name.
Still better than Porky or Daffy.
Sylv/ster is a cool name. Is it surprising to people? Seems like it's in a hipster sweet spot, but maybe I live in a bubble and it's child abuse. I would totally call the kid "Sly."
After my first "thufferin' thuccotash" I'd be like "mother darling, I have decided to go by my middle name, Elmer Fudd." Except I guess no one under 35 has heard of any of this so it's probably not as bad as I think.
360: it's not a phase, our child will be delightful forever. Gobama!
But no. I do think it's an awful name.
365: aw, parents are so cute at this stage.
I miss Ace. Heebie, when are you bringing her back out here?
What would be the best *last* name to pair with Sylvester? My gut says Chao.
Except I guess no one under 35 has heard of any of this
Crazy talk.
368: Daycare lost our favorite pacifier leash and then found it today, which made us happy.
The thing about wanting your kids to learn negotiating skills is that there are a million decisions to be made every day that don't matter even a little. If I'm in a mood to listen to it, I will let them haggle up and down over what's for dinner or if we're going for a bike ride, and if they make a case, they get their way. If I actually care about the outcome, though, the fact that I'll listen to haggling sometimes doesn't interfere with being able to make a decision that sticks.
Felix was on our short list. I was trying to sell Mrs. K-sky on Isadore for a boy after my great-grandfather -- she was OK with Isadora for a girl but couldn't go for the boy version.
At some point when we were discussing our names after marriage, we told everyone we were going to change our last name to Mazltov and name our firstborn "Hateface" pronounced HOT-uh-FATCH-uh. Our parents were delightfully half-scared.
But Sylvester Mazltov-Chao would be better.
Well, it's important to distinguish "open to negotiation" (or "open to discussion") from "susceptible to being pushed around," certainly. Those aren't the same thing at all (which is in fact a really important part of the lesson!).
What, Molester isn't a last name anymore?
Spell it Regan and call the kid Ray.
The obvious answer here is to spell it Raygun.
I feel like Regan and Goneril just aren't obvious choices.
373: Sylvan Sylvain [Last name]
Before this was spoiled by my getting off the train and refreshing, I was hoping it would be Snagglepuss.
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Random comment in a post on my FB feed that made me think of urple:
"I'm fine with the legal sale of raw milk. I like steak tartare, myself, and eat it whenever I'm in a restaurant I trust. That said, this is where public health is the answer -- we need good, readily available, easy to understand education. What's distressing is overhearing a woman in our local co-op talking about buying raw milk, leaving it out for two weeks, and then feeding 'the fabulous natural cheese that made itself' to her family. Cheese does not make itself, lady. Cheese-making is a science; it's an art. It's not a lot of rotten clots."
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List:
-God, Liz, NO. Just because you moved to Utah does not mean you have to give your kid a name that screams "Republican from Happy Valley."
-Christ/ine [redacted] or [redacted] sounds best to me.
-shiv started calling the Calabat "little buddy" in the delivery room. Hey little buddy, hey little buddy, hey little buddy. Very cute.
-Hawaii's name is my mom's name!
386: and yet the story seems to imply that the lady suffered no ill effect.
That said, I for one will never eat self-made cheese again.
387: in number of letters or actual first name?
Indeed, she apparently found it fabulous. Laissez les bons temps rouler! Maybe every so often the fungus growing in the rug in the back of your closet is actually truffles.
Wow. I've made cheese before. They say that the process described 386 is essentially how cheese was invented, but I can't imagine that what she made turned out as something that tasted good, especially if she didn't add salt. I would, however, believe that it came out edible. I wouldn't eat it, though.
I thought cheese came about because people used animal stomachs (rennet, acidic) as storage vessels for livestock milk and out came the cheese. You don't just leave it out on the counter, that's sourdough bread.
If you leave milk on the counter, you get sourdough bread?
Oh, rennet, duh. Yeah, I have no idea what she made. Dried yogurt?
If you leave milk on the counter, you get Chopper.
Raw milk initially goes sour in a perfectly edible way, creating soured milk, a pretty popular drink in Poland. You can turn that stuff into fresh cheese pretty easily by straining it. However, I'd be a bit skeptical about two week old stuff. Then again, who knows? How long can you keep natural creme fraiche/sour cream out before it's no longer edible?
soured milk, a pretty popular drink in Poland
Seems like that would make for a very dour people.
List:
I'm sad that Thorn and Lee stomped on Chipotle, which is awesome, and doesn't have to be official.
s/Reagan/Rhiannon/?
Speaking of the "M" name, did this ever get picked up for showing in the US? The first two seasons were genuinely ROTFL funny, though a lot of the gags were topical, so they might not have lasted.
Truth be told, as you may recall, the self-made* cheese I ate was actually pretty fabulous as well. So maybe this works fine more often than people assume.
And I didn't suffer any serious ill effects; it was my toddler who spent the day vomiting.
* Not strictly "self-made", but "self-transformed" from cottage cheese into blue cheese. I assume that's a probably a similar process.
407: I do call her that sometimes! But while she's been in foster care, we had to be careful that any nicknames were respectful and not a way of erasing her real name. Otherwise kids get really whitewashed nicknames because foster families can't handle their real names. So if her family hadn't already been using her nickname, we probably wouldn't have felt okay letting her put it on school papers and so on until her parents' rights were terminated just so that none of us would get in trouble over it.
396: How on earth did you figure this out from this thread?
The Norse version is cooler than the actor-from-the-Midwest version.
Of course then you could just go for Fafnir and get the bonus much-beloved-internet-figure reference. Although that would probably be taken as a boy's name rather than gender-neutral.
411: Oh, I think I knew it a while ago, and never mentioned it. It's not a name one often hears.
What if her name was Thatcher? Is that better?
I have a better idea! Blair!
Also, I'm shocked no one suggested Bush or Nixon.
"Facts of Life" meets Neoliberalism. Perfect.
417: that whole show was always just thinly veiled neoliberal propaganda anyhow.
I had forgotten that "Facts of Life" was a "Different Strokes"spinoff. What a strange world we live in!
416: I'd think Bush for a girl would be deprecated.
What ought to be deprecated are boy names that rhyme with "maiden" although a boy named Maiden would have to grow up pretty metal.
Right, no more Osama Bin Ladens.
Cameron Blair Thatcher is a terrifyingly plausible preppy-girl name.
I like Sylvie for a girl.
We are getting a girl cat soon, and that's what we're naming her. I really like it. If I have a daughter, it'd be totally cool to name her after the cat, right?
I named the dog after a Samoan warrior goddess specifically to protect any future daughters from my having an impulsive moment. I mean, Sally would have managed okay with a silly name, but it seemed like a cruel thing to do.
Amaterasu would be a pretty name for a girl. I wonder if it would be considered blasphemous in Japan.
"Halford" would be a good gender-ambiguous girl's name.
There's a Samoan warrior goddess called Dogbreath?
432: Hiddenchild, actually, but in Samoan of course.
But Sylvester Mazltov-Chao would be better.
If nothing else, you'd be guaranteeing the kid a job at NPR.
435 WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT?
430: I don't think it would be blasphemous (Shinto doesn't have the cultural emphasis on origin stories Abrahamic religions do, and it's focused on purity-via-ritual with almost no concept of sin or scolding anyway), but it would be pretty weird.
Apparently there's a Japanese video game focusing on Amaterasu in the form of a white wolf.
412: I might be able to convince my husband to go with Regin. He's been really into a Viking show lately. And he loves the Ring Cycle.
Re pet names, my husband has suggested naming the baby after pets, but acting like the names were in succession in the family. Like Regan for the bird, and Regan II for the baby.
I might be able to convince my husband to go with Regin. He's been really into a Viking show lately. And he loves the Ring Cycle
Time was, LB would have linked now to a video with a bunch of cats in a longship, to the music of Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song
--Given that cats and their names are already part of this thread.
Like Regan for the bird, and Regan II for the baby.
I did this for my successive rabbits. (Hobbit I & Hobbit II.) It worked well.
You might want to avoid naming the baby after pets that are still alive. I'm imagining nosy neighbors calling child protective services after overhearing bits of different conversations over time . . .
"Can you take Regan to soccer practice today?"
. . .
"Did you change the newspaper in Regan's cage?"
440.2: I don't think it worked as well for Peter Jackson.
412: I might be able to convince my husband to go with Regin. He's been really into a Viking show lately. And he loves the Ring Cycle.
What's wrong with the women's names ON the Viking show? Lagertha? Aslaug? Þórunn? All gold.
Lagertha is a great female role model, but the name is so obviously gendered! (kidding)
Þórunn
A friend has the modern spelling of that name. She hated that name as a teenager and young adult and adopted an American name for herself. Now that she is back in the land of Scans she uses it again.
I had forgotten that "Facts of Life" was a "Different Strokes"spinoff.
And Alma Garrett from "Deadwood" is an ancestor of Edna Garrett in both of the above.
I CALL BULLSHIT or else related through her first marriage only
my husband has suggested naming the baby after pets
Really don't do this. A friend I served as birth partner to did this with her girl baby, naming the baby the same thing she'd named one of her cats -- protesting the whole time, "Look, I really like that name! It's really pretty!" -- and it was just uncomfortable and creepy. Like, come hell or high water, you were going to name something that, be it a potted plant or a cat or a goldfish or a baby, just something, maybe everything?
I reopened the name conversation with Nia tonight and she immediately said, "I think I should be [redacted], because I BEEN Chr/isty already and there are lots of [redacted] so I'd be popular!" i told her I'd give her a list of my counteroffers, but just from hearing them she had a strong preference for Chris/tina [redacted], but was certainly intrigued by her full first name and then Thorn for a middle. But after that she was wondering aloud about whether she could have no last name to be more uniquemand so I had to just end the conversation and remind Chipotle that it was bedtime.
Sort of relevant title wise to the OP, check out the Polish Eurovision entry. Living down to the worst Eurovision traditions of bad camp.
Endorsing 449. Naming a child Tiddles or Rover will lead to estrangement and bitter regrets later on.
"What is this 'Junior'?"
"It's his name. Henry Jones, Junior."
"My name is Indiana."
"We called the dog Indiana."
"You are named after a dog??"
"I've got a lot of fond memories of that dog."
Can't believe this thread has devolved into baby names. What happened to the parenting advice!?
Speaking of which -- approaching two years old now, l'il delightful has been amping up on the whining and screaming lately. Whenever he doesn't immediately get what he wants he just raises the volume, and if that doesn't work he emits a siren-like continuous yell. He used to end dinner by politely making an 'all done' signal and saying 'alldone!', now he does it by throwing his food and yelling DOWN DOWN DOWN. His language acquisition is proceeding fine, he's speaking in sentences and all, so it's not that. And being a toddler he's extremely cute and still delightful and affectionate, etc. generally.
This is standard, right? Is it a phase? Does this mean we need to finally start working at the 'disciplining/boundaries-setting' part of parenthood? We have been doing boundaries by just not giving him /doing stuff we didn't want to give him -- we still do that -- just that his methods of guerilla resistance to that are getting more effective, yelling-wise.
456: That plus dramatically throwing herself on the ground, dramatically hitting her head, even fucking sighing passive-aggressively is what Selah (21 months) will do, starting in the last few weeks. But the scream is really something else.
456.2 -- yes. I mean, in as appropriate ways, but it's time for the boundaries to start being set. I feel like we waited about a year too long in that and it was a big mistake.
Yes to "working on disciplining part of parenthood."
Absolutely they are old enough for simple, clear boundaries. Just make sure your expectations are shared among parents, nit fair to confuse the little buggers.
nit fair to confuse the little buggers
If you tell them lice are bad and then have a Nit Fair, it's bound to confuse them.
On topic because joy: I'm getting an office with a window.
Is it a phase?
Doubt it. Sorry, brah.
I remember the transition from gentle, saintly toddler to much more aggressive older-toddler-preschooler; it looked to me like the kids had sort of developed enough to really powerfully want things sometime around two or so. Nothing to do but limits, expectations of reasonable behavior, and a lot of patience until they grow up enough to get reasonable.
Thanks...made it sound worse than it is. Really whining more than yelling, and he is fairly easily distractible by just presenting him with an alternative thing/activity after denying him the object of desire.
A problem I have with discipline is that I still find everything he does cute, even whining. NONONONO (FURIOUS HEAD SHAKING)! I never get to express my preferences that decisively in my daily life.
Yeah, I had and have the same problem. You're so cute when you're angry!
Oh, this scares me, as the Calabat is already pretty forceful at 12.5 months, and the shriek on this kid. He figured out I swear at three months old that bloodcurdling shrieks get attention.
466: I'm not saying this is a good thing -- I may have damaged my kids for life -- but I channeled finding them adorable while being unreasonable into holding the line on what I was requiring while openly laughing at them.
XelA doesn't shreik much (although he does shout/cry at scary volume when he is fighting sleep) but he has started the Nononahnononahno refusal. And he throws himself around, but again, usually when tired. Oh and dropping food has always been his 'done' sign, or his lure. Drop food, wait till parent crouches to clean, bomb them with more food, laugh.
The dropping food thing isn't I think even meaningfully bad behavior: pretty much every kid seems to do it, and they grow out of it. I think that one is more "not hungry any more, let's go back to figuring out how gravity works." I mean, discourage it, sure, but I wouldn't sweat that as any more than a necessary part of having a baby until they were old enough to be sitting in an ordinary chair.
I remember the ants. The floor was never completely clean and the ants would come.
I am trying to un-read 471. shudder.
I'm at seaworld, btw. Sorry about the lack of posts. I've got a shitton of grading done, though.
Have fun. Demean an intelligent, aquatic mammal for us.
I feel bad. It's an awful place but nothing else is open on weekdays yet.
I remember being at the world's most half-assed zoo and feeling very sorry for the chimpanzee that was there with no other chimps. It was a loaner chimp. They had to give it back because somebody started pressing the owning zoo about why they were letting a chimp go to a zoo that couldn't provide an adequate environment.
A) There are reasons for calling the stage under discussion "The Terrible Twos".
B) As of today and to my current knowledge, 2.5477707 % of my Facebook friends are dead.
478: nothing looks more lonely than a loaned chimp.
I was at the low point of my life as far as giving a shit goes (age 20, for those keeping track) and I still wanted to call somebody.
You should have busted him out, taught him to play poker, and had madcap adventures. (Madcap looks out of place. Perhaps rewrite to incorporate 'hijinks'?)
Nothing reads more dumber than a pronunciation-based pun.
Speaking of intelligent aquatic creatures, has anyone linked the video of an octopus opening a jar from the inside yet?
Here's your moment of cheerfulness for the day, from some brief internet research done for purposes of making a chimp-related joke:
According to "Visions of Caliban: On Chimpanzees and People" by famed primatologist Jane Goodall and Dale Peterson, the original "Clyde" [the chimpanzee from Every Which Way But Loose -- RH] was trained with a can of mace and a pipe wrapped in newspaper. He was viciously beaten the day before filming started to make him more docile. Near the end of filming the sequel "Any Which Way You Can," the orangutan was caught stealing doughnuts on the set, brought back to the training facility and beaten for 20 minutes with a 3 1/2 -foot ax handle. He died soon after of a cerebral hemorrhage.
484: I think the best part of that is once it has the lid off, the octopus seems to be happy to remain in the jar.
I mean it's not that different from how other talent gets treated, but still.
Aw, jeez. For stealing doughnuts? I mean, that's not really the problem, but you're making millions of dollars of the poor ape, and he can't have all the doughnuts he wants?
the world's most half-assed zoo
AKA PetSmart.
486: Clyde wasn't a chimpanzee. He was an orangutan. Which makes me question the rest of the story.
Although I guess Clyde was actually an ourangutan, not a chimp. And LB, if Clyde wanted those donuts he should have gotten his agent to negotiate for them.
I had it wrong. The lonely chimp wasn't removed. He was given company. It worked for a while.
Octopus are amazing. Definitely on the too smart: do not eat list. Being dumb is even rougher for animals, I guess.
Shot while trying to escape? What's the worst thing that happens if some chimps escape into Nebraska.
Here's more on the Clyde story. It involves more Bob Barker than you might expect.
I bet an orangutan couldn't open a jar from the inside while submerged in water using only its tentacles. The only question is whether they're tasty or not.
What's the worst thing that happens if some chimps escape into Nebraska.
A swath of manually detached testicles stretching across hundreds of miles of cornfields?
What's the worst thing that happens if some chimps escape into Nebraska.
That Clyde story is fucking depressing. What's worse is that the trainer, Boone Narr, is apparently still working.
I tried to look up the zoo referenced in 493, but the only thing I could find was the following snippet from an article:
The howls from a pen of 10 wolves as a stranger approaches is hair-raising confirmation that the remaining animals of Zoo Nebraska are very much alive.
500: I'm kind of surprised it's still there myself.
No time to read TFA: has anyone mentioned the octopus scenes from Gravity's Rainbow?
Has anybody read Gravity's Rainbow?
http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/images/7/76/Octopus.jpg
486 is lain fucking sick. I have nothing constructive to say about it.
The problem with octopus is, they're delicious. I discovered this before anybody knew they were PhD material and I don't eat them any more, but I miss them.
The baby came last Sunday just a few hours after we decided on a new name for her.
Congrats! And if we were influential in the name change, that makes me very happy.
Congratulations! Happy baby, happy name, hooray!
Babies, hooray!
It's not Meese, is it?
I thought the actual name (as revealed on FB, leaving it up to Liz if she wants to say it here) was great -- I haven't seen it for a baby ever, I don't think, which makes me wonder if she's the forefront of the next big fashion.
The real name is great. The baby is great. And we helped to prevent that beautiful thing from being called Reagan, which is great.
LB is Pauline Kael. And I can break the sanctity of my own off-blog comm to say that I'm pretty sure I said Reagan would be great for trolling Halford, which was clearly an understatement. I'm happy everyone is happy!
Huh. It's pretty common starting with an E, but I think of the A version as a different name, and I've never run into it on a kid.
519 -- it's in the top ten girls' names for this year. As is, I should add, my kid's name, which I thought was "unusual, a little old fashioned, but nice and unique" back in 2007. Can't fight the Zeitgeist.
Zeitgeist or no Zeitgeist, I'm still counting on Crustacea-adjacent names not taking off.
It's pretty common starting with an E, but I think of the A version as a different name, and I've never run into it on a kid.
I agree that they're different names, but neither strikes me as particularly unusual. I've certainly encountered both names among people my age, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if one or both has become more popular recently.
Thanks everyone! It hadn't occurred to me that people would have a strong reaction to Reagan until I mentioned it here. I talked it over with my husband, we settled on the new name, and three hours later my water broke.
Congrats, Liz!
You named her Vista, right?
533, 534: did you miss the part where it starts with A (but more commonly with E)? Clearly it's "Ancarta".
