you will notice that i am actually quite scientific

here i will share with you how i have organized my summer with a simple formula:

day off work + sunny morning = one hour at the beach

this means we are going two or three times a week nowadays, since the gray days have mercifully been less frequent. today was a GORGEOUS day at bacara; we were able to arrive there by 10 am (i like to go in the mornings before my shower and before the big heat and crowds of the day). it was seriously perfect: pristine, practically tar-free, amazing smooth round rocks scattered about, the perfect tidal level, the perfect amount of haze in the sky, and the perfect temperature: breezy, yet warm in the sun. and no one else to be seen. it made me sooooooooooo glad that we still live in santa barbara, despite the craziness of rent. i had my travel mug of fresh gourmet coffee with me, which improved my outlook even more. sparrow was great the whole time and played in the sand without insisting on going down to get tumbled in the water. although she does have quite the affinity for tossing sand onto the blanket... we went on a walk down the beach, we picked up some interesting shells, she face-planted in the sand, she laid on top of me as i was getting my vitamin-d intake, she played with dogs running by, she knocked beach rocks together, she tried to pick up boulders, she gave me sweet little kisses under her ladybug hat, she destroyed all the sand towers i made... sparrow is perfectly content when she is outside. once i figured this out, i decided to make my life a whole lot easier and developed the summer formula given above.

it also helped that i became free of sunscreen: yes, i don't believe in it anymore, and it has sure made it a lot easier and funner (and better-smelling) to go down to the beach. it is crazy enough trying to get everything ready for a baby to hit the sands without having to add to it the sunscreen burden. she's become quite the little brownie, but i am telling you: we have been to the beach for an hour each at least 4 or 5 times without sunscreen now, and she has NOT gotten a sunburn. she must have really good nutrition to build up that natural internal sunscreen mike adams talks about on newstarget.com. i have started taking spirulina and chlorella for this purpose, but i still got sunburned the other day cause the nutrition takes a month to kick in. (side note: i tell thomas we are naming our first set of twin girls spirulina and chlorella. sounds like evil stepsisters.) sparrow on the other hand eats either kale or broccoli every single day, not to mention super porridge and fruits and carrots and most everything organic. i love feeling great about the sun. i love basking in it and tangibly noticing that it's doing my body so much good. that the vitamin d is sinking in to fight cancers and lots of other potential ills. i even had a cold the other week and all i did was drink loads of water and lie in the sun. the throat ache lasted not one day longer after that.

barnaby told me today: "well they say that even one bad sunburn can increase your risk of cancer." right. A) i think pop tarts, croutons, and boxed soups increase your risk of cancer. B) who are "they" and WHY are they not ALSO telling people that using frikn sunscreen increases your risk of cancer too!? HMMMMMM? got a hunch that these "sun causes cancer" studies are being SPONSORED by the sunscreen industry... in my book, the vitamin d obtained from the sun exposure probably more than cancels out the increased cancer risk but no one is going to mention that. more formulas i've come up with to illustrate the dang truth of the matter:

sun expossure = vitamin d
vitamin d = cancer risk plummeting!
sunburn = cancer risk slightly increasing
plummeting + slightly increasing = still remains significantly decreased!
sunscreen use = cancer risk greatly increasing
sunscreen + probably getting sunburned anyways = cancer risk extremely high!

and oh yes, once the twin sisters nutrition boost sets in, it looks like this:

sun exposure + spirulina + chlorella - sunscreen = no sunrelated cancer risk + decreased risks of all kinds of other cancers too, due to vitamin d!

now i have to say something about people who wear spf 8. if you're gonna smear a cancer-causing chemicals on your largest (absorbent!) organ, you might as well use spf 45 and at least take the SLIGHT decrease of cancer risk by avoiding sunburn for sure. they know deep down that they DO want the sun to get to them, but are paying their token homage to the all-powerful sunscreen industry ANYWAYS, sooo.... it takes slightly longer for them to get their desired tan, but they feel good about themselves for at least putting on SOME sunscreen. and in my opinion they are worse than an unbeliever cause they're getting free cancer over here, AND actually PAYING for cancer over there! cancer over here + cancer over there = stupid people. ok maybe just misled, brainwashed, ignorant... as i was once myself. sigh.

i have become so anti-parabens that i even made my own shampoo and conditioner today. so ambitious, yet it left my hair oily and stringy, much like on days when i don't wash my hair at all, but perhaps even oilier and stringier. must have been that oil i put in it. hahaha hehe. i still use "california baby" brand shampoo on sparrow, as i have from the day she was born (johnson's "no tears yet i cause multiple other ills" shampoo has never touched her) but i cannot justify spending $10 for a shampoo bottle for my own use, since with my hair i would use up the lot of it in 2 weeks... i will just have to keep experimenting with food products until i get a good FORMULA which i will subsequently share with the world!

prodigy!

the most amazing thing happened, well really i shouldn't be so surprised, since God is good and cares about these things: i have been praying that we would be able to get sparrow potty-trained in the next 2 weeks, and... then yesterday this happened: she wakes up in the morning and starts playing a little. she looks at us and pats her diaper with her little "huh?" noise which i love so well. i say, "does that mean she wants to go pee? what if it means she wants to go pee? oh well, let's try it!" so i walk her to the toilet, take diaper off, set her on it, and she pees a pee! and her diaper was even completely DRY through the night! so i think she's a veritable genius. nevermind that that's the only time that's happened successfully. she tried to indicate when she was pooping too, but we didn't get to the toilet in time. most of the time, actually, i can tell when she is wanting to poop, and it sort of happens around the same-ish times every day, too. but she has this funny habit of running away when she poops! the other day i came home from work and was so excited to see her, i told her "come to mama and get kisses!" and she was coming toward me, but then she did a 180 and ran into the corner! thomas and i were like, what was that about? but he said, "maybe she's pooping." how did he know? cause sure enough, when she emerged she was very fragrant! but it's apparent that she doesn't like wearing diapers anymore. whenever she is in nothing but a diaper she always pulls on it and tries (sometimes successfully!) to take it off. i have been talking to her a lot about poo and pee and toilets and showing her flushing and telling her every time i am going. confession: i have not been using the decided-upon "turtle" word for her poos. i've just been saying "poopee." it works and it is intuitive and won't make her confused about turtles, which are really a sweet animal.

other things she has been amusing me with lately: she is really dang good at saying "uh-oh!" and "bye bye" now. she started saying bye bye about a week or 2 ago; so cute and so clear. she says uh-oh every time she falls down; or she makes a dramatic crying scene but i usu. don't give her much sympathy. thomas has always reacted to her head-bumping and falling in a dramatic way, a LOT more than me. i keep telling him he should temper his reactions, but he can't help himself! but she learned somehow to react dramatically when she falls! cause i know she really doesn't care a whit, because it usu. doesn't even hurt. when she bumps her head, thomas always shows her what she bumped it on. then he knocks on the item (edge of counter, or whatever it was) and says, "look baby, it's very hard, watch your head! very hard!" as he pats on it firmly to illustrate. she picked that up pretty fast! now whenever she bumps herself on ANYTHING, including his arm or my leg or anything, she will knock on it and make the "huh?" noise to indicate that "this is very hard!" sadly enough, my legs are definitely NOT hard... quite soft, i told her, but maybe someday when we start doing ballet together...

speaking of ballet, we took her to thomas' wed. night ballet that he teaches in goleta, and she was FULLY trying to to tendus and plies, and even working her arms! when she was watching lily's dance recital on video the other week, she was also moving quite accurately to mimic. so perhaps she will want to get into it, even though thomas is super adamant about not pushing her. whenever someone asks him if she's gonna be a dancer, he says, "or maybe she'll want to play soccer!" but for the record, valerie huston (great ballet teacher at ucsb) did herself confirm the beauty of her dance-able feet when she was a mere six weeks old.

motorcycles, bees... turtle?

my baby is obsessed with motorcycles. it is super hilarious. she gets these big eyes and says: "dadda! vrrrm vrrrrm." and yesterday we showed her how to rev her wrist while she says "vrrrm vrrrm" so she is doing that now too and it is soooooooooooooo cute. cute cute cute. i want to eat her. here's this little downy-haired cherub-faced baby child with sparkly barrettes in her hair, and she is saying "vrrrrm vrrrm! and revving her wrists a couple of times every hour. especially when she hears her dad, thinks of her dad, or sees/hears a motorcycle or any other loud vehicle. also when she sees motorcycle helmets. speaking of helmets, yesterday we were hanging out with auntie sissy out at the calle real center. a guy drove up and parked his motorcycle and headed toward one of the shops. sparrow got soooooooo excited when she saw him and started going toward him, saying "dadda! dadda!" until the guy took off his helmet. then--i wish i could have filmed the progression of looks that crossed her face. she stopped in her tracks, and looked first taken aback, then she did a double take, and then she looked extremely confused for a few moments before furrowing her little brow and looking in the end as if she were slightly mad that he had stolen her dad's identity. the guy was being really sweet to her the whole time and talking to her and saying hi. liz had called over to him, "her daddy rides motorcycles!" anyway, motorcycles are her favorite thing right now.

motorcycles and bees. she does the bee sign/sound every couple of hours too and so far, the animals that she thinks are bees include: 1) actual bees 2) flies 3) ladybugs and 4) this little winnie-the-pooh face printed on a pair of thomas' thrift store sweats. for some reason, every time she sees that beary face she starts doing the bee thing! maybe cause it's black and yellow?

thursday there was a big buzzing fly in the house and she got really exited about it and vigorously performed her buzzing and flying like a bee, and for the rest of the day she would do it whenever she looked toward the window. she thought that fly was sooooooo cool! how did we get so lucky as to have a real bee in our house? i don't really know what to do if she mistakes something like that. should i assume that she could understand the difference between a bee and a fly? i just think she's doing so good to even think it's a bee that i want to encourage her, not discourage. so when a ladybug landed on her yesterday i told her it was a ladybug, but then i immediately said, "it's kinda like a bee!" and focused on the bee thing more as we played with the ladybug. she didn't really get it at first and just wanted to roll it between her thumb and forefinger, but then it finally flew off and she lit up and did "the bee." then tonight, she saw a cellophane sheet that had ladybug drawings printed all over it, and she went right up to it and did the bee, and i was so amazed! had she recognized it from yesterday, or was she just thinking that up on her own since she could tell it was a bug with black on it so it must be a bee? i don't know. but i think i need to challenge her and tell her all the right names from now on.

i decided that maybe i should try to potty train her. apparently, if she can do faces on command (tigerface, fishface, roller coaster face!) she can also poop on command. it would be nice to save money on diapers. now i must 1)attune myself to her pooping prep mannerisms so i can tell whenever she is gonna poo, 2) have a word or a sound that i always make when i can see she is starting to do it, and 3) set her on the pot. anyways, liz and lisi and i decided that the word of choice is "turtle," which prompted much laughter and discussion yesterday. it is perfect! my one concern is that she will have issues with turtles--the animal--in the future if she forever associates that word with pushing out a poop. my other alternative is to say "doodoo" or "doodee" but i think i am more of a turtle mom than a doodee mom. savvy?

self-recognition

oh sparrow. she is such a baby. a girl. a girl and a baby rolled into one. i got her some kiddie sunglasses at the toystore today. she looks amazing in them. and also some little colorful hair clips. when she saw her image in the mirror, she reached up to her head to take the clips out! is it just me, or is she not supposed to realize yet that the person in the mirror is actually her? i mean, wasn't it just last week that she was checking behind the mirror to find and touch that baby on the other side of the glass? but in az at 12 mos. she was also taking bows out of her hair when she glimpsed her reflection in the sliding door. so she must have already had some associateion of that image to herself.

last wednesday (june 6th i believe) we all went to thomas' wed. night ballet that he teaches at the rec center. sparrow loved being in the studio and was even dancing along, attempting to do plies and port-du-bras. she was great. so maybe she will want to be a dancer after all, even though thomas is determined not to try to sway her toward it unfairly. the girl's life of ballet can be a social and physical torture. and i don't see myself wanting to be like the other ballet moms, elbowing for parts for their girls and jealousy and false pride and spite and ambition and living vicariously and all that crap. but for now it is still fun admiring her feet and her aptitude and the fun she has when dancing around. i dance around with her to music in the evening sometimes; she shows me some pretty cool moves.

un-frazzle stage!

THE FOLLOWING BLOG CONTAINS DISCUSSIONS ON DISCIPLINE AND HAS BEEN SERIOUSLY EDITED TO CONTAIN FEW DETAILS ABOUT MY METHODS. I BELIEVE THAT PARENTS HAVE A RIGHT AND A DUTY TO DISCIPLINE THEIR CHILDREN--NEVER TO ABUSE--BUT TO DISCIPLINE AND TEACH THEM METHODS OF CONTROLLING THEIR OWN WILL AND IMPULSES. IT IS CLEAR AND OBVIOUS FROM HISTORY THAT A SOCIETY IN WHICH PARENTS HAVE NO AUTHORITY OVER THEIR CHILDREN IS A SOCIETY WHICH QUICKLY LOSES ITS YOUTH TO DANGEROUS BEHAVIORS. THEN THE GOVERNMENT HAS TO STEP IN AND INSTITUTE PROGRAMS SUCH AS (toxic and ineffective) HPV VACCINES TO "PROTECT" KIDS FROM SOMETHING WHICH THEIR PARENTS DID NOT TEACH THEM TO AVOID... SOMEONE RECENTLY TIPPED OFF CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES TO INVADE THE HOME OF A FRIEND OF MINE, BASED ON BLOGS SHE HAD POSTED ABUT HER FAMILY, INCL. SPECIFIC TRAINING AND DISCIPLINE MEASURES. THIS IS A SHOCKING BREACH OF CONSTITUTIONALLY-GIVEN (AND GOD-GIVEN) FREEDOM OF THE PARENT TO RAISE UP THEIR OWN OFFSPRING, AND A SIGN OF THE GOVERNMENT'S GROWING DESIGNS TO CONTROL EVERYTHING WE DO. ENOUGH ON THAT. I AM AN AMERICAN CITIZEN WHO PLANS TO RAISE A SAFE, ADVENTUROUS, FUN, LOVING AND DISCIPLINED FAMILY, AND EXACT METHODS OF DISCIPLINE CAN THEREFORE NOT BE REVEALED IN PUBLIC FORUMS UNTIL THE GOVERNMENT DECIDES TO BACK OFF ON ITS INCREASINGLY FASCIST APPROACH AND LET US LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE ONCE AGAIN.


ah my little one! her canines are coming in like painful little whiteheads, and she is hurting, i can tell! what did she do today that i thought 'i MUST write this down'?...

well, she can do a little sign for "bees" nowadays. she puts her thumb and forefinger together (tries) and goes 'bzzzzz bzzzzz,' or at least that's how i say it. with her it comes out like a "thhhh! thhhhh!" and she shakes her entire arm vigorously back and forth with her little pincer sign. also, she recently learned that cows say "moo," from a little farm animal book that mel's mom sent us before she was even born. but it's really funny when the cow page comes up because she's not perfect in her pronunciation of the "moo" quite yet, and basically makes a loud low grunty sound that starts with an n. but she makes good and sure that it is really loud. i love it. and i can also recognize her trying to say "cockadoodle doo!" but it is as of yet pretty irregular and garbled. but she knows that she is supposed to say SOMETHING complicated on that page!

today i taught her how to sign "diaper," because yesterday it seemed like she was holding her diaper to try to tell me to change it. the sign involves putting your fists near the front of each hip and rotating them as if you were undoing diaper tabs. i had shown her how to do it earlier, and then i said at some point, "sparrow, how do you say 'diaper'?" she knew. and she seriously kept on rotating those little wrists with a serious expression on her face for over 30 seconds. it made me laugh so hard.

i have begun to read a book called "to train up a child." the philosophy behind it is really amazing and smart. hear this:

"In the infant and young child, we do not deal with their "selfishness" as sin, but we are aware of where it is
headed. Drives, which are not in themselves evil, nonetheless form the occasion to all sin. Our training must
take into consideration the evil that a self-willed spirit will eventually bring.

We parents cannot impart righteousness to our children, but we can develop in them a firm commitment to
righteousness. We cannot write the law on their hearts, but we can write the law and gospel on their
consciences."

and it is really hard because you have to "train" your child consistently and this from an early age, and it involves self-discipline on your part, and expecting your child to obey and not giving in to them. wow, it was really hard for me when sparrow discovered scotch tape today and kept tearing looooooooong strips of tape off of it. it was kinda cute and i wanted her to be able to learn about stickiness, but a) we can't waste tape and b) i wanted to use it as an opportunity to train her to obey. before today, i would have simply taken it away from her and put it somewhere where she couldn't find it. but not today. armed with my newly acquired parental wisdom, i tried the new methods, and was surprised to see she took to it, and learned to give me the tape!

it was also a blessed relief, i tell you, to sit down to my dinner--with her on my lap--and realize that i didn't have to awkwardly eat all my food at arm's length while wrestling her to try to keep it out of her reach. i was the parent, and her will was trainable. i did not move my salad bowl OR my cup of tea away from the edge of the table. i was fully in awe. i felt so free! after dinner, i even felt free to do the dishes! lately she's just been hanging on my legs and whining so much whenever i try to do anything in the kitchen, that i don't wash up til she's asleep and feel like i have to hurry through all my essential kitchen tasks when she is awake. seriously, it was such a burden off to feel like i was a parent in control of my own household. i felt so orderly and right. but my goodness, i do love her little dickens face when she is staring up at me with her tiny set jaw...

one more hilarious quote by the author of my new favorite book... they like to tell anecdotes about certain kids/parents they've observed in situations. he tells the story of a particularly horrible (untrained) child, and then says,
"It was enough to make you believe the Devil started out as an infant. I am just thankful that one-year-olds don't
weigh two-hundred pounds, or a lot more mothers would be victims of homicide." hahahahahahahaaaaa. ha. i laughed pretty hard at that one.