A Member of the Pride

"Have you noticed they seem to be filling out zoos these days with antelope?"

Y smiles. "It's true," he nods. "They make these glorious exhibits with cool backdrops and then it's just, like, antelopes. Or gazelles. Every other exhibit. You expect something more, but they're trying to trick you into getting all excited about filler!"

We're driving home after a long day in the sun and I'm inclined to say something serious - something we'd learned that very day - about how it's probably due to so many other species gradually becoming extinct, but decide against it. Too depressing, and it's good to see Y smile. He works like a dog these days, often straight through the night. I don't know how he does it, but he feels he has to to stay afloat managing his tech start-up.

Nobody ever told us 26 was going to be so much work.

But it's Memorial Day weekend and we have Monday off. Well, scratch that, I have Monday off and Y will be working from home. Which meant Sunday was...extra!

We decide on the Wild Animal Park, part of the San Diego Zoo. They tell us we'll get closer to the animals than ever before. In my head, (and, it turns out, Y's,) cheetahs will be licking popcorn off our palms. Lions will paw us playfully as we ruffle their manes. Zebras will obviously talk to us, as in the radio commercial, and there will SURE AS HELL BE PANDAS THERE. That might or might not give hugs.

I didn't question these assumptions, though, of course, I recognize now they might have been overly optimistic. I didn't care how many Xanax they had to give the Wild Animals to induce such a level of touchable, cuddly tameness. All I knew was I wanted in. Badly.

Luckily, my husband gets just as hot and bothered about the idea of a safari as I do. And sure, Elan and Ariel would probably like it too. After all, they are a little creature-obsessed. Ariel tells me he simply cannot wait to see lions. No, wait, the leopard. No, no, not the generic leopard, he wants to see a jaguar. HE TAKES IT BACK. It's the puma he's been waiting for all his life!

My sister-in-law is floored: "A puma is a real animal? Not just a shoe?"
"If one of my boys says it, trust it, my dear."

We've got the Discovery channel in all its 50-inch, plasma-screened, high-definition glory, after all.*

When Y says what the hell, screw work, let's go, I'm ecstatic.

We borrow my mother-in-law's minivan, which is just about the most luxurious ride I know. It comes stocked with a DVD player, which I'm avidly against for shorter rides but am counting on to occupy Ariel for the two and a half hour, holiday-weekend trek into Escondido.

No good. Why would he watch Dakota Fanning in Dreamer when he can alternate professions of love for his mother with are we there yets for the entire 150 minutes? According to my Freud-quoting, prescription-wielding father-in-law, Ariel's deep into the Oedipal stage and way ahead of the curve in terms of when. And while he may find this phenomenally interesting, I am generally quite embarrassed by my son's vehement denials of my marriage to Y and insistence that we peck on the lips at least every once in awhile. A little too embarrassed to be proud of how mature he is.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about the physical love, I eat most of it up, and this kid is as cuddly as they come. But seriously? One day he suddenly noticed a framed picture of Y and I looking into each other's eyes at our wedding, and he burst into tears.

I bring this up because he's been clinging to me lately like white on rice and yesterday was no exception. And the lines were insanely long, the crowds near impossible, and while it's a pretty zoo and all, it's really nothing special - neither in terms of how close you could get to the animals (not very) and the variety of species there (um, mostly rhinos, and, natch, 2.4 million antelope).

And I could not so much as use the ladies' room without company in the stall because Ariel found any and all absences of mine to be grounds for an earth-shattering downpour of tears, accompanied by an extremely dramatic My mo-o-o-mmy LEFTED me! And Y just didn't deserve suspicious stares from strangers on his day off.

Luckily, provided Ariel and I were skin-to-skin, the kids had a marvelous time and Elan didn't seem notice that the Special Zoo was Nothing Special. On the contrary, he declared it the best he'd ever seen, and the ear-to-ear grin plastered to his face as we left would have justified a far pricier entrance fee.

Ariel, whose name means Lion (of G-d) in Hebrew, deriving from the Germanic Leo (Y's late grandfather's name was Leonard), was, as he'd warned, especially keen on the cats. The lions there spend most of their time lazing on the roof of a rusty old Jeep (ruining any real photo op), and Ariel called out to them from the safety of my embrace: "Hey, big lion! I'm a lion too, because my name means Lion! It's Aryell! My daddy even told me! I'm not scared of you because I am the same as you!"

Having foregone his daily nap, said little one nodded off in the rented stroller as we headed for the exit. We passed the Lion Camp once more on our way out, and just as I was thinking about how annoying it was going to be to have to reach into the backseat (to hold Ariel's hand) for the duration of the car ride home, a small informational sign caught my eye:

Did you know?
- That a lion cub clings to his mother for the first two years of its life?

I nudged Y and pointed. "Well, that should make you feel better," he laughed.
"It does, I guess," I only half-joked. "Except...Well, isn't ours going on three?"

---

*For another post, working title: How the Impulse-Purchase of a 50-Inch Plasma Television and HD Cable Service Can Seriously Threaten an Otherwise Solid Marriage.

By Nature of Comparison

In general, child comparison makes me ill. When mothers of kids the same age get together, it seems to be natural instinct for many of them to size up another's kid in relation to their own. You can kind of see the wheels in their heads turning feverishly, taking notes, as they shoot all kind of questions at the mother of the short, round-faced competition:

How old was she when she started walking?
How long as he been talking like that?
When's his birthday?

I get that last one a lot lately. Ariel's quite the little comprehensive chatterbox, and his verbal aptitude became plainly apparent to the other parents in the class at his Passover recital. Basically, the other kids sat silent in their parent's laps while mine sang and shouted the entire program, word-for-word, in two languages. It was a little embarrassing, actually, because suddenly all of these moms and dads who'd barely spoken a word to me the entire year were positively staring at me, Ariel, and then in turn, their own children, some sucking contentedly on pacifiers and bottles.

The class recital turned into The Ariel Show, and I've been getting the questions ever since at morning drop-off.
Did you practice the play at home?
No.
Oh.
When's his birthday? Is he three yet?
September.
Oh.

I hate it. It's stupid and awkward and I don't know why these mothers insist on having The Comparison Conversation. They don't even do it casually by talking to me about anything else. They just look at Ariel, look at me, and launch into the "When's his birthday?" nary a Good morning! lead-in.

And it makes me supremely uncomfortable. All kids are different, develop different skills at different rates, and, (serious developmental-delay issues aside,) I think they generally all catch up to one another eventually. And even if they don't. So the heck what? No good can come of
that When's his birthday?

I back out of these discussions, of those mothers' penetrating looks, as quickly as possible, and with no reciprocal questions, with an excuse about having to get to work. And I try to never indulge in the comparison thing myself.

Except...

Except when it comes to obedience. Because although I wouldn't trade my kids for the world, and although they are generally as well-behaved as most people expect from boys their ages, I do occasionally wish Elan and Ariel considered my demands of them more than polite suggestion. More than mere recommendations that they could also - in equal measure of both importance and likelihood - simply ignore.

With other children, parents and teachers, my kids are lambs and never doubtful of rank or authority. But I, apparently, don't pose much of a threat to them. Good and bad, I suppose.

Mostly bad. I think I'm a bit of a joke to them. A lovable joke, but funny nonetheless. I guess I kind of expect more.

So a week ago, we were invited to eat shabbos dinner with a family in the community who is quite famous for their ten-going-on-eleven perfectly behaved children (nine of whom are boys). And not perfectly-behaved in a freakish sort of manner - these children are just delightful and friendly, yet kind, polite, and helpful. Like, every day. In every situation.

I had to see it to believe it. And see it I did: at dinner, seven boys (two weren't home) and one little girl sat lined up neatly at the table, the older ones helping the younger fill their plates & clean up spills, others making trips to and from the kitchen with their mother to serve soup and clear at the meal's end.

There was - G-d's honest truth - NO fighting. NO teasing. NO rib-poking, NO climbing under the table to remove guests' shoes and tickle their feet (that is, except for Ariel. I was extremely proud, as you can imagine). As we ate, they told their parents about school, about their friends. They made jokes. But not one picked on another.

I was in shock. Elan was almost completely silent throughout the night - which isn't really unusual for him in an unfamiliar setting - but that night he did a lot of staring. He watched the other children steadily with an open-mouthed, dumbfounded expression, as if they were a zoo exhibit (or a new Caillou episode).

The next day, I was telling our lunch company that it was true, that those kids really were as amazing as their reputation, that I had no idea how their parents did it.

"I've seen them at shul, the dad's not real critical or anything," a friend added.
"He doesn't have to be!" I marveled. "Those children do the right thing because they want to! They're happy and everything, not beaten into submission."
"It's gotta have something to do with genetics."
"Yeah, but combined with stellar parenting, I think."
"Those two should at least write a book! When you've got an anomaly like that..."

At some point during the conversation, Elan sidled up next to me, and stood there, listening to every word, my arm wrapped subconsciously around his shoulders. When the topic shifted to something else, he turned to me and said, for my ears only, with a big smile:

"I know what you're flinking. You're flinking you WANT those kids!"

"Oh, Elan," I sighed. "I don't want any kids instead of you. But I do want you to ACT like those kids, maybe just sometimes. Would that be so hard?"
"When we were there, at their house, I just stared-ed at them the whole night," he replied, surprising me with precocious self-awareness. "I just couldn't stop looking at them."
"Yeah, I noticed. Why was that?"
"I was just feeuling shy. I didn't know them."

Or anything like them, I thought.

When, on Friday, Elan covered Ariel in mud - I'm talking head-to-toe, caked-in-the-ears-scalp-and-nostril covered - I did a fair amount of hollering, then sent him to his room for a well-deserved time-out, followed by a bath. As I helped him undress, utterly frustrated, I sighed again. You need to level with Elan, rather than criticize, so I decided to let him know how I felt.

"Elan, when I tell you not to do something, I'm not trying to take away the fun in your life. I'm just trying to make you a better person. You're a very good person, but as your mommy, my job is to try and make you even better, all the time."

As usual, he didn't appear to have been listening, but at this remark he met my eyes suddenly.

"Better like those kids at that house we ate at last week?"

Wow. Did I need to be careful. I caught myself.

"Nope. Just like you, but better behaved. That's all."
"K."

That night, all I could think was: When is his birthday? When's his birthday? Is he three yet? Did you practice at home?

Standing Corrected

Once it becomes financially feasible to take the initial plunge, there are a million and a half reasons TO buy a house.

But I'm not sure anyone besides Y and I would answer, when asked why he went for it, that it was because, "We were tired."

We were so tired we bought a house. Truth be told.

Ariel's never been much of a sleeper, and we used to blame it on the apartment, on the fact that he and Elan shared a room. Because we felt badly about upsetting Elan and preventing him from getting the sleep he needed, we could never properly teach Ariel to do so. And because we feared him growing too attached to the idea, moving Ariel into our room wasn't an option.

Of course, we tried everything, and it became pretty obvious that Ariel didn't sleep through the night simply because Ariel Didn't Sleep Through the Night. Not for more than a week at a time, at least.

When we moved, things improved at first. But he began to cycle again, going through weeks where he slept the night and others when he'd wake me every time he woke himself.

The last three weeks had been like that, and, again, I was lazy about treating the problem. I didn't ignore him in the middle of the night, and I didn't let him "cry it out." Doing so, he'd proven, wasn't very effective anyway and seemed cruel to do to a 2-and-a-half year old with a highly precocious and overactive imagination.

But three weeks is pretty much my limit - at that point, after no more than two or three hours at a time during a 6-hour night, I usually snap. And one morning, after a six-hour night of dragging my feet into Ariel's room to pat his back and tuck him in for the eightieth time, I snapped. I yelled at Ariel, really yelled at him, when he tried to tickle my neck and squeeze me off the bed while he caught the 6:30 AM "The Legend of Tarzan."

I'm a claustrophobic sleeper as it is. But still. There's no real excuse for YELLING at a toddler.

I went to work and felt guilty all day, because, really, the whole sleep issue was probably my own fault. OK, it was my fault. True, some kids are naturally better at the shutting down thing than others, some moms have an easier battle with the ZZZs. But weren't all kids, essentially, trainable?

So claim the Books. The Child-Rearing Books, like, you know, "The Baby Whisperer," or "The Magic Formula" (okay, I made that one up, but it probably exists). The books that want you to apply the same behaviors to almost every child or family system, regardless of their idiosynchracies. Or, as it happens, "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems," by Ferber, which was tossed through my mailbox that very day.

Yes, totally coincidentally, when I got home from work on the day of the Snap, something was glowing on the floor, light emanating from it with such intensity that I couldn't look directly at it, at first. Or so it seemed. Because on the day that I needed it most, a friend had dropped the book at my house - a follow-up to a conversation at least three or four months prior - with a casual note about it having just been returned to her from someone else.

Now. You have to understand that I've been entirely against these books for the past four and a half years of motherhood. Parents who waxed proudly poetic about how their robotically-sheduled child was the result of a cram session, frankly, freaked me out.

Because, I argued, every child is different. And forcing him or her to eat/sleep/poop at pre-ordained times seemed bizarre. I mean, you're only 3 months old once, right? Life only gets tougher. Shouldn't you be able to call the shots for just a little while? I can't help it, but when I hear the term "sleep-trained," I can only think of a dog, and parents who are "doing" a book are not typically fun to be around. They lose consciousness when it's two minutes beofre feeding time and the kid is hungry, MUST be home at exactly 6 pm to begin the prescribed Night-Time Routine, are generally married to their watches for months.

You cannot be friends with Book Parents when they're "in it," and they're hard to listen to, I thought.

Now I think, can you really be friends with any parents of newborns? Are any of them easy to listen to, and should they be, really, while trying desperately to figure out a new system, their new way of life?

I thought I'd done everything right with Ariel, everything that had worked so seamlessly for Elan. I had made bedtime enjoyable. I was consistent about naps and bedtimes. I let him cry when I felt he was old enough. And eventually, I tried giving up, letting go of the control, and with it, the hope that it would ever be perfect or anywhere near that: lying in bed with Ariel until he dozed off, or sitting in a chair in his room and tip-toeing out (the ultimate Book No-No!). September babies like me tend to be idealistic. Less-than-perfect wasn't easy for me to accept, but I figured I'd be happier if I just did.

The thing is, staying with Ariel while he fell asleep did nothing to keep him from waking up all night long. And that didn't seem healthy for him. Being tired made him aggressive and overly contrary during the day, which was way too far from perfect to stomach.

I'd failed.

Elan and Ariel are exciting, sweet, never boring and, according to everyone else, they're also, supposedly, "smart." And I'm extremely thankful they have intellectual potential, am sure it'll come in handy later in life.

But a "smart" child doesn't simply a happy parent make. Sleepy children? Their parents smile more, if only because they have cognitive brain function (no small feat).

So, that night after work, I looked at the book lying on the floor in front of me, read the Post-It and knew it was time. Time to give my friends the benefit of the doubt.

I got the boys to sleep and curled up on the couch. And read, skeptically at first. After all, the friend who'd loaned me the book had a one-year old. These books were written for brand-spankin'-new parents, weren't they?

Well, guess what? Ariel was in the book. The kid with the sleep associations, only not the pacifier/bottle/blanky association, rather the Mommy's Presence one (because I'm so "smart" I was able to make the mental leap).

Every mother has at least heard of Ferber's progressive-waiting method, I certainly had. But I'd never really stuck to it - the chart, precise number of minutes, and everything - for a length of time until last week. My mission was clear: I needed to break Ariel's associations with sleep, while assuring him of his safety and my presence.

And the change wasn't instantaneous, but after a few days, the little monster is back to sleeping nights normally. He still sometimes cries when I leave his room, but the frantic calls to the room next door of, "Elaaaan! My mommy LEFT!!" have subsided. He seems to understand I'm not leaving, and that I'm serious about him getting to sleep.

It's good, and it's not counter-intuitive or Nazi-esque. And it seems to be working.

So I'm a believer. Maybe little robots aren't so bad.

What's your experience been?

Maternal Instinct

"Seriously, Mommy, you just don't understand. She is incredibly strong, stronger than all of us boys! We asked her if she takes Karate classes but she just said no, she just learned'ed it all herself!"

The she-woman in question is an exceptionally lovely four-year-old from a local French-Moroccan family, in Elan's class, with large brown eyes and wavy hair. I've watched her grow for the last two-and-a-half years. Apparently, she moonlights as an ass-kicker.

"I don't get it - why was she fighting with you?" I'm slightly perturbed, never fully comfortable in the presence or talk of fist-fighting. (My brothers and I just used the meanest words imaginable.)

"I don't know, she just got all the girls together to fight against the boys. Really just against me and Kevin. And those girls are extremely strong! We couldn't even beat them. We tried, but they're better fighters." His eyes are wide with good, old-fashioned appreciation.

Now, I can always muster up some respect for a guy who respects a girl, but can't you just imagine the conversation?

- Wow. Moves like that - you're obviously trained. Ju-Jitsu?
- Why no, as a matter of fact. I'm entirely self-taught.
- (low whistle) Daaamn, girl! Wait'll I tell my Mommy!

But when the next day, my son comes home with an unfamiliar Band-Aid on his finger, attributed, with a shrug, to "Aurelie. She's just really tough and has sharp nails. I had to go to the school office and Bernice put it on my cut," I begin to re-think his apparent "respect" of the female species.

I raise an eyebrow, zooming in on his cut, even as Elan - already preoccupied with something else - trots off into the family room.

I'm torn, see, because part of me is always rooting for the woman, and if shattering the glass ceiling has to start in pre-school, well, then that little girl just might be my hero. Go, chicka!

Another part of me knows full-well that Elan and Kevin probably deserve EXACTLY what they seem to be getting from the, uh, gentler sex, that it's quite doubtful the attacks came unprovoked. I've heard my son make threats, and it's entirely possible he suggested he'd "squeeze her brain out of her ears" or something equally testostorone-laced. You know, just insulting enough to make the fair Aurelie feel it was time to gather the troops.

I get it, sister. I do.

Except.

Except this is MY kid you're messing with, MY boy. And I know he couldn't be TOO mean to you because he still blushes when we mention his first love, Michelle. He blushes before he gets angry at us for teasing him. In other words, he, like most men, is vulnerable - putty in your hands.

And yes, I do realize that there are more and more Tough Girls on TV these days, girls who kick boys' butts with a stilletto heel every day at their CIA operative/prosecutor/heart surgeon/vampire-slaying day jobs and I, too, favor this light of feminine portrayal over that of the cheerleader and younger sister of shows past. Hell, I want to be Jennifer Garner in Alias just as much as you do. I, too, want to serve the greater good.

But I see you in the mornings and you're not wearing any Band-Aids, honey. And yes, I might spend half my paycheck at your daddy's kosher market twice a week, and yes, I might thoroughly enjoy when he and your uncles call across the store to greet me because of how cool my name sounds spoken with an accent. Yes, I get a tiny thrill every time I overhear them saying oui to each other and I understand what that one word means.

And granted, you are absolutely stunning, and I covet your eyelashes even though you're practically a baby and I probably shouldn't be jealous of anything about anyone so young. True, your smile is sweet and appears innocent and it's pretty cool that you do all your own stunts.

But sweetheart. I'm gonna give this to you straight:

Make Elan bleed again and it'll be girl-versus-girl.

And I am NOT self-taught.