crooked house

So You Want to Raise a Doctor

So although I did my best with Luke, he just informed me that he intends to be a video game designer/tv show writer when he grows up. In the above video, taken when Luke was maybe two, I see now that instead of inspiring him, I was torturing the child with the profession I'd prefer he choose.

Some mothers might think twice. But not I. No, instead I got pregnant twice. Sylvie is the perfect opportunity to try again.

See how I'm already making better progress. She doesn't mind the hat at all. (Please ignore the hideous wallpaper in the background. I haven't torn it down yet as I'm holding out for a full kitchen reno. The ugly wallpaper in the video is now gone, gone, gone.)

Plus, although this might sound sexist,  nowadays it seems as if  doctoring (as the old folks around here call it) is a profession often better suited to women anyway, especially if bedside manner matters to you. All of our doctors (our family doctor, Luke's pediatrician, his gastroenterologist, all the fertility specialists we saw, and the ob-gyns who delivered both children) are women. Our family doctor is a plump, white-haired woman in her sixties. When Luke was just starting to talk, every time he saw a grandmotherly-looking woman he said, "Look, a doct-ah!" Which I just loved. (Do you remember that old riddle about the boy who was injured in a car accident with his father, who was also severely injured? The surgeon enters the operating room and exclaims, "I can't operate on this boy! He's my son!" and you're supposed to figure out how that's possible. We were told that one in grade three -- and I remember being stumped.)

 

(Note: In a later post I shall discuss my strange penchant for photographing my children with hats, wigs, and a variety of household objects on their heads. For now I will say only this: I blame my mother.)

Happily, Sylvie is still too little to tell me what she wants for Christmas. Therefore this year I have free rein to purchase mainly medical-themed toys for my potential neurosurgeon:

A giant plush neuron is actually something she could cuddle up with now. The red blood cell also looks kind of cuddly. I'll probably get Luke the giant dust mite --he's put stuffed animals on his list against the recommendation of his allergist. (Two others that interest me personally are the bookworm and the swine flu.) Sylvie will also be able to wear these tiny scrubs right away. And this plastic doctor set will have to do for now -- she's liable to bash herself in the head with real metal pieces. And while a trip to the ER would certainly be educational, I don't want to risk the loss of any brain cells.

Perhaps I should use this brain gelatin mold on her rice cereal. It's never too early for shape recognition. And instead of a bib, she can wear this vinyl anatomy apron. This 5-layer wooden puzzle of a girl's body is something she could conceivably begin to chew on during the next few months. And it's never too soon to start scribbling in a Gray's Anatomy coloring book. 

I like these 3-D anatomical puzzles so much I'd happily display them in my living room: this human muscle and skeleton model, this Bio Signs brain & skull and this frog -- they're a lot more visually appealing than a pile of Fisher-Price and Hot Wheels crap.

I already have  the art version of this book and it is full of fun, age-appropriate activities: Science Play!: Beginning Discoveries for 2-To 6-Year-Olds.

And last but not least, Operation. (While I was browsing the board games, I found a new one called Infection -- it doesn't look all that snazzy but the concept is great. And timely.)

Update! Sara O'Leary has pointed me to this treasure: the Playmobil operating room.

 

So what if it's not intended for children under three. The way Sylvie wears that shower cap --  clearly, she's very advanced.

Mother Nature and Our Halloween Costumes

Lately, while rocking Sylvie, I have been riveted by the excellent Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species. It is the most fascinating book I have read in a long, long time and that it is a non-fiction work of evolutionary biology and anthropology makes that fact even more surprising to me. The official Amazon review asserts that it "should be required reading for anyone who happens to be a human being." I couldn't agree more. And I have a lot to say about the book. But that will have to wait because the purpose of this post is to announce our Halloween costumes for this year. The idea came from this passage in Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's book:

The prize for "extreme maternal care" goes to one of the various matriphagous (yes, it means mother-eating) spiders. After laying her eggs, an Australian social spider (Diaea ergandros) continues to store nutrients in a new batch of eggs -- odd, oversize eggs, far too large to pass through her oviducts, and lacking genetic instructions. Since she breeds only once, what are they for?

These eggs are for eating, not for laying. But to be eaten by whom? As the spiderlings mature and begin to mill about, the mother becomes strangely subdued. She starts to turn mushy -- but in a liquefying rather than a sentimental way. As her tissue melts, her ravenous young literally suck her up, starting with her legs and eventually devouring the protein-rich eggs dissolving within her.

Yes, we are going as spiders. We're going to take a little artistic license, though. I'll go as a black widow, David as the poor black widower, and the kids will be Australian social spiders. I'm thinking we could perform a little interpretive dance on the front lawn for the trick-or-treaters. First, I imagine, David and I will simulate mating. Then I shall devour him and lay my eggs. Perhaps we'll have hidden the children under white sheets under a pile of leaves or something. The fact that Sylvie is not yet ambulatory will make it easier to hide her than Luke, who is not amenable to sitting still for long periods of time. Of course, Luke will do a better job of emerging and devouring my legs. 

I've already starting work on the costumes, with the help of our lovely babysitter, Holly. I sit there, rocking Sylvie and thinking up designs, and Holly gets to do all the work. The first hat we came up with, seen here on Sylvie, makes her look more like a Rastafarian than a spider, so I have devised a new design for her which I hope to put together later today. I am pleased with Luke's hat, which I will feature in the next post.

Disturbing Exercise Trend

Via swissmiss.

Sophie Can Walk

Yeah. What he said. Via swissmiss.

Photoshop Disasters

Her extra hand is what attracted him most... just think of the possibilities.

This is lots of fun: Photoshop Disasters. Via A Cup of Joe.

Beckett for Babies

Stimulate your infant’s intellectual development with Beckett for Babies, an introduction to some of the most important – and most difficult – literature of the twentieth century. If it is never too early to read to your baby, it is never too early to prepare her for graduate school.

Back before Luke was born, I was shopping around this board book featuring photographs of perplexed babies juxtaposed with quotes from the works of Samuel Beckett. There were no takers. (That's my little brother Den up there. Hi Den! Den has a lot more hair now.)

Beckett's work is bleak yet comic, much like parenting; on the whole it attempts to sort out such knotty problems as "the absurdity of existence" and "the mystery of the self." These are, of course, precisely the problems that infants and toddlers (not to mention their parents) struggle with on a daily basis. Beckett was deeply influenced by a strained relationship with his own mother who, early on in his literary career, enthusiastically encouraged him to get a "real" job.

I don't have a "real" job, either.

In an even more startling coincidence, I was born in 1969, the year Samuel Beckett won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

So was my old high school friend, Todd Durling. He put together these mock-ups for me.  That's him as a baby right up there, looking a little disappointed.

While Beckett didn’t even bother to show up to collect his prize – he sent his secretary instead – Todd and I made a point of attending our own births, because we knew how important it would be to our parents to have us there at such a major event in their lives.