Bedtime Malarkeys

“Mama! Mama!” Havana called from the girls’ room. Its 8 O’clock. Bedtime stories are done and its essentially mummy and daddy time. That’s the theory. It is also fairly routine for us to pop back and hear some badly-constructed reason that is preventing the descent into sleep. This time Havana tells her mom: “I don’t know where Ily is!”
Ilyana sleeps in a beautiful white crib with long bars on all sides, somewhat like an ornate cage with no lid. Since she was 3-months old this has been her place of rest. In recent days Havana has been climbing in and Ilyana's crib has become another venue for “showtime.” “Shows” in our house invariably involve what could loosely be called acrobatics, dance and/or dress-up, or some combination thereof, where the grown-ups are compelled to watch. Ilyana has consequently now learnt to climb into her crib from the head of her sister’s bed which is beside the crib.
So when Karen is informed that Havana does not know where her sister is, she looks at the crib and for the first time in Ilyana’s entire long life, our 2-year old is not in her crib. Next to Havana is a large lump of gathered bedclothes and some life form evidently squirming underneath. Like a jack in the box, Ilyana’s head comes to the surface yelling, “I’m here!”
So the girls get to sleep in the same bed. Havana likes goofing off as much as any of us and two in a bed almost too small for one, is a recipe for such malarkeyness. However, unlike her sib, Havana likes her sleep. And so an hour later when we visit the girls, to cover them up, on our own way to bed, we see a quiet, subdued but wide awake younger sister. It was too much excitement for her. Havana is dead to the world, fast asleep. Ilyana is lying awake possibly wondering what would be the next frontier to be broken, now that she has graduated, albeit by escape, her crib.

Mom makes Dresses 4 Christmas

Karen made 3 dresses for Havana for Christmas. She's been working on 2 quilts of squares from Havana and Ilyana's baby clothes for the girls: a total of 950 4-inch squares! Yes, 950. So Karen took a break during December to make 3 dresses for Havana as shown!

Secrets and Suprises

One calculation in measuring the success of a surprise birthday party is fairly simple: the level of apparent surprise at the exact moment of the intended surprise. For those lined around the room uniformly hollering the surprise, it is the look on the face of the birthday person that reveals all.
When this occasion visited me on Saturday evening I utilized the limited skills one accumulates for such rare events in an attempt to look surprised. I picked up the mail in one hand, appearing to look down at it, as I walked into the ambush stridently. However I was somewhat genuinely surprised to be physically attacked by a dozen kids armed with large balloons. That detail I could not have envisaged.
I knew this whole thing was coming. It was my birthday weekend. I was not sure of the time and place, but the whole affair had been confessed to me, in whisper, some days earlier.
It was probably the power of intimating with parent that drove Havana to lean into her daddy and confide that “they are doing something for your birthday, it’s a Secret.” By bringing me into the conspiracy of the surprise I was concurrently excluded from the actual surprise.
It would have been justified to be mad at Havana. But there are many occasions when a child of diminutive vocabulary makes a parent with more vocabulary, feel short of words. This was one such moment.
I didn’t have much time to figure out how to respond. Without much thought I stopped on the sidewalk, leaned down to my daughter, and eye to eye whispered back to her. “In a couple of years your Mom will be forty. I will be organizing a surprise party for her. Won’t that be nice? However, I will not be telling you about it because it will be a bloody secret.”
She grinned back at me, “too late Daddy, ‘cause now I already know!”
Thus the parent-to-kid life lesson of this story, tossed clumsily at my daughter, made no impact before it was summarily returned so fast as to leave me once again speechless. Unsurprisingly.

Kindergarten, Dickens and the Proven Fact

Last week our almost 5-year old daughter began Kindergarten at the public elementary school two blocks from our house. Such transitions are generally anxious times for both the child and therefore for the parents too.
Wednesday evening I attended the Back to School night and along with a dozen or more parents, overwhelmingly moms, I listened as the teacher explained her hopes for the children’s year within the school district’s mandated curriculum.
“Basically, Kindergarten is the new 1st Grade” explained the teacher, a 30-year veteran of the Oakland School District. She went on to explain how the school is required to have every 5-year old be able to read by the end of the year. “We teach reading 90 minutes each day. We have 2 science classes a week and math for a minimum of one hour a day” she explained. The school day for the four and five-year olds is 7 hours long. There are 3 recesses, including lunch and no music or art to speak of.
As I left, I thought: OMG, our daughter’s childhood is over. The rat race begins here. Get up, go to school, suffer, come home tired, go to bed, get up, go to school. While children don’t have to work in factories in this country, nor are parents forced to sell their children, the earlier and earlier start of the drudgery of work is no sign of social progress.
Additionally, on the day the country of Georgia was rewarded with $1 billion from the US government for doing the oil business’ dirty work in the Caucuses, we were asked to donate toilet paper, hand sanitizer, paper, children’s snacks and other necessities on a long list the teacher gave out.
When picking up Havana the next day I chatted with the teacher. She had implied in her talk the night before that the curriculum was too much for the kids and not necessarily the best for their general development, adding, “the children start raising their hands right after lunch to ask if it’s time to go home yet. They are tired.” She explained that her hands were tied with the high-performance pressure of the curriculum. I responded that the politicians play football with our kids to try to prove, through testing, that they’re strong on Education. She smiled and nodded.
The testing-driven style of education is a retreat to pre-civil rights era education. In Charles Dicken’s critique of Victorian Schools, Hard Times, the main character is a Member of Parliament and the owner of a local school. His railroad-method of education has no room for exploration, imagination or dissent. The children are seen as ‘little vessels’ to be filled to the brim with facts. The two strains of education were taught as one: for the children expected to become managers, they learned how the teacher taught; for the children of the workers, their education was essentially about obedience and tipping your cap to the bosses’ “fact.”
Meanwhile there is the additional factor at our local school. It is considered an under-performing school. All schools with lower income children are this way. So, the school is under even more pressure than many schools to raise test results,
Our Kindergarten teacher does a great job. The mandated pressures on her to teach strictly by the book and timetable makes her job more difficult.
She alsohe mentioned that our daughter is running around, chasing the boys in the playground and generally happy.Havana confided to me that she already has two boyfriends.
On picking her up one afternoon, I noticed from a distance that while in line a boy pushed by her, she turned and jabbed the kid to get his attention. These apparently small skills, of learning how and when to stand up for yourself and how to enjoy the people around you are among the most important skills we learn as kids.
With both McCain and Obama committed to variations of No Child Left Behind, our kids will be forced to continue the monotony of fact-driven education. Working class kids are more likely to survive because they are more likely to see through the system’s veneer.

first swimming lesson

Today's first swimming lesson belonged to Ilyana, but of that, later.
Havana took classes this summer and lost her caution of water. She can hold her face and breath under water and paddle with a life vest. Her wee buddy Tristan and her were paired up, and in eight half-hour classes over two weeks Havana was, air-assistedly, able to swim.
Ilyana, on the other hand, miserably failed her first swim class today.
We were at the park. She was hamming it up as usual. Our newly-2 joker was yelling "I'm stuck! I'm stuck!" as she climbed around the play structure. Ritualistically, I would come to assist, she would grin and run off. The joke was repeated ad nauseam, eventually building up to the day's ultimate disaster.
Out of nowhere Illy cried out,"I wanna go potty." So off we went into the park's bathroom structure. I pull her things down and place her squarely onto the toilet seat. Then things got crazy. She raises her hands and yells,"I'm falling! I'm falling!" Then she stabilizes herself, returning her leaning arms down to her side. She laughs in my face. This is 2-year old funny. I show a slight smile. Then she does it again."I'm falling! I'm falling!" But this time. Splash! It was a sad moment in her comic career. One which all comics hope to forget.
I grab her before she disappears into the Oakland Parks Sewer system and she lets out a horrendously loud wail, demanding sympathy. I try not to laugh as I dry off her butt with the paper available.
I considered explaining the lesson of what just happened to Ilyana to her, but it seemed that her recent near-disapearence was more powerful than any words I could concoct.
Well, she managed to get back on the proverbial "bike" and pee and so all was not lost, bar a little 25-month-old's unrelenting cheekiness. And that, only temporarily.

The Swedish Connection

I wasn't sure that the leap to punk music and hip hop was going to stick. It was Havana and I's first musical connection. Our Friday afternoon dance parties, while mom was at work, were dominated, admittedly, by music of my choice. Stereophonics, Cyprus Hill, the Stooges. Oblivious to their meanings, she learned the words. We cranked up the volume, "louder, louder" she'd cry, and we danced. We'd run back and forth across the front room. I'd swing her around. She'd try swinging me around. We'd bounce. But Havana's first love with my music was to be short-lived.
I later realized that in order to appreciate my music, it was necessary for Havana to first pass through other music. Less complex, less angry, more sedate music. Pop music. It was impossible to make the leap direct to higher forms of music. Havana needed to procede through her Abba stage. And that's where we are. Dancing Queen. Mama Mia. Fernando. SOS. Waterloo.
I suspect that her mother is encouraging her, but I cannot produce any concrete evidence. Although Karen has suggested that Abba should not be judged superficially. That the catchy exterior of their melodies are twinned with darker lyrics, overwhelmingly about sadness and loss.
Almost every evening the parents are invited to take a seat on the sofa for a SHOW. Havana rushes back to the girls' bedroom and puts on her old Halloween pink tutu, returning to look for her little dance partner. Bjorn's piano intro opens and the two are off on their performance: Illy making spins that fall before completion and Havana showing off her latest dancing mad skills, while increasingly lip-synching the lyrics.
Where are those happy days, they seem so hard to find.

Glam Rock and Hair Consciousness

Havana has long hair and is very attached to it. She makes tails with it, she has it up, she has it down. Once every few weeks she will spend an hour in front of the mirror in what could either be described as playing or working on her hair.
I am regularly reminded by our children that I have no hair.
I, inturn, regularly remind them that a more accurate formulation is that I have no hair on the top of my head. In our house, like in society in general, hair that is not on one’s head is presumed to not even exist, while hair on the head gets all the special attention normally associated with the crown.
Living in a house with three persons who have hair on the tops of their heads, it would be easy to find myself excluded from the many rituals associated with hair. I have instead tirelessly forced myself into the world of hair on the head.
I do, however, find myself generally sidelined into hair maintenance. I brush and comb other people’s hair. I wash other people's hair. And it is within this narrow role that I have had to find my own style. For instance, I do not and will not use hair de-tangler, chemical, organic or otherwise. This was not an attempt to be the parent that is never picked to brush hair. I am fairly hair aware.
I am also the cutter of hair in our house. I will probably never be trusted to cut adult hair, but I have exclusive rights for the bang-cutting of our offspring.
I have developed my own style of bang-cutting. I have perfected the cute-crooked-line bang. Like all things made of great skill and talent, each haircut appears that it took no effort whatsoever.
I also prefer what we call the 90-day cut. The 90-day cut, applied only quarterly, provides the whole family with more time to spend on things beyond hair. This cut at first strikes the observer as severely short, but as each day passes it slowly and subtly becomes less and less short.
As a family, we recently watched a YouTube video of a glam-rock star from the era of my own youth. Karen half-mockingly queried if the singer’s large heap of hair was his own or a wig. Before I could reply, Havana confirmed that it was his real hair. “Mommy, didn’t you hear him sing, you can run your fingers through my hair. He didn’t say you can run your fingers through my wig.”
Hair consciousness.

Boyfriends, Marriage and our first Punch

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. It landed on the wrong kid at the wrong time. But it landed. Zack got clocked and was down.
As the first parent to arrive, post-scream, it was somewhat of a bizarre scene. One boy standing. One boy down, with hand over eye, crying, and a third child under the covers of the bed, hiding. It didn’t take long to figure out the guilty party, from the victim, from the witness. We knew Havana could dance like a butterfly. We’d hoped she’d be able to sting like a bee. But why Zack?
I had coached Havana from a young age: "if a boy hits you, you hit them back. It doesn’t matter what the teacher tells you." We want H to be confident around men and not to flinch at male power as it eventually invades her world. So, if life proceeded in a straight, predictable, line, then the boy who should have got clocked is the boy that clocked her first.
During the post-punch investigations it became evident that the the punch was neither an accident, nor particularly justified. It was Havana's first boy-punch and I was asking her to say sorry to Zack. This isn't how I'd planned it.
Zac and Tristan were over at the house playing with Havana. In previous weeks Havana had floated the idea of marriage to Tristan. Initially the slight-framed blonde almost 4-year old, had confused Havana's overtures with woman-loyalty issues. Havana told me that Tristan had decided he was going to marry his mother, implying that no other female was going to step between him and his mom. After a while he lowered his guard and on occasion agreed to marry Havana. Unfortunately in the meantime Havana had received a commitment from Xavier and Tristan was reduced to the category of boyfriend.
On the day of the punch, Havana, in a very relaxed mood in the comfort of her own home had been yelling to Tristan, "hey boyfriend." While cute on the surface, this also represented her tug-of-friend war with Zac. Zac is really into to sports. Havana isn't. When Havana plays over at Zac's house she'll often end up just picking through his books while Zac races outside on his wheels. Today, Zac and Havana were in a tug over Tristan's attention which ended in violence.
Tristan and Zac were wrestling in the spare room. As I imagined it, Havana tapped Zac on the shoulder and clocked him. He went down. Tristan stood stunned and Havana hid amid the bedcovers.
Zac is a sweet kid, didn't deserve to be hit and it pained me to explain it all to Zac's mom. However, it was nice to know that Havana can punch and can punch a boy when necessary. If she can cleanup her selection process all will be well.
,

Love, Love, Love

Our routine on weekends begin with Ilyana waking up, calling out and being carried with her blanket under arm into bed with the big primates. She may or may not fall asleep and gift her parents with an extra hour of shut eye. Then Havana will call out and/or trape into our room, also with obligatory blanket.
Today was special. It was the day that Ilyana (20mos.) woke up and noticed Havana looking at her. She then gazed back, stretched, smiled and spoke the words we all like to hear, this time directly to her sistie (as Havana is known). "I love you"
NOTE: the essence of any story is not in the detail. However, it should be disclosed that Ilyana's exact words were "I luh you" and "I luh you Hava."

Cousin Tuesday, boyf'd Tom, Havana and Ilyana

The Institutional Time Out

In many ways our childhoods are marked by a series of "firsts." As we grow, they become increasingly infrequent and less important.
18-month-new Ilyana can have several firsts in a day. Yesterday she turned the pages of a book one at a time, as if she had joined world of the literate. She smacked me square in the right eye, a first for both of us; and said the word "mouse."
Havana, now almost four and a half had her first Time Out at school. Led on by a five year old, she had taken sand out of the sand box. The girls were then cautioned by the appropriate authority, ignored the warning and went back and took more sand out of the sand box. This kind of thing, if not nipped in bud can lead to the collapse of a preschool.
Havana's accomplice was given a long Time Out. As a first offense Havana got a short Time Out. In adult minutes I imagine they are both short Time Outs. Havana's punishment-free run was over. For over a year she avoided this situation, either by blatant good behavior or subterfuge. I like to think a large part of it was the latter, but what's hope got to do with it.
When I picked up Havana, her teacher took me aside to let me know what happened. Havana had cried and her teacher was almost as upset.
Later in the day, talking to other parents at the pre-school, it became apparent to me that Havana was in a minority. Most of the kids have had Time Outs.
On the way home in the truck I didn't exactly know what to say to Havana. I reminded her that people can do bad things, but that no kids are bad. She echoed this, having heard that from her teachers. There wasn't much more to say so I high-fived Havana for finally having a Time Out. She was not sure how to take that.

Sleep and Sanity: underated aspects of parenting

Once in a blue moon Havana wakes up with a scream. Her subconscious is probably processing some aspect of her mad life as a 3-year old. As I enter her room and sit down bedside, with a gentle pat on the back she will often roll over and head back to her dreams. Other times she will already have begun to semi-coherently describe her dream to me. Then mid-sentence she'd turn over and return to scene that first woke her.
Crazier dreams no doubt emanate from Havana's 11-month old sister. Ilyana, unfortunately, will probably never be able to verify the visual contents of her slumber. Most likely she dreams of crawling, of standing, and the classic dreambreaker: of falling. Either way: when she wakes she wants only one thing. Ilyana’s demanding March to drink from her mother’s font every 3 hours remains unimpeded.
One night some 5 or 6 months ago her parents celebrated Ilyana’s first full night of unbroken sleep. We celebrated without full force, aware that worshiping the false god of the return of deep sleep would likely be premature. But for a full day back in January of this year we were lighter on our feet and carelessly expended the energy that we wouldn't need for that next night of unbroken sleep. That next night never came. We instead returned to the real world of uneven, shallow sleep, lying in wait of that sweet primal scream. And like the sun and moon, it came. And one of us rose up from bedside, as if carrying the entire weight of a million years of evolution on our frames, and zombied into Ilyana's room.
Sometimes I wish I too could return to the days when I was unencumbered by social restraints and could let out my own primal scream. But it’s too late. I can’t go back. But that doesn’t prevent my envy that Ilyana can scream as loud and long as her lungs will bear. Unlike the emotionally restrained adult world, babies can emote without a care. But like all babies she can also go from terrifying screech to giggle within 10 or 15 seconds. And it’s all socially acceptable.
Of the thousands of parenting methods available on bookshelves in California, ours tends towards attachment parenting. While we do not let our kids sleep in our bed, nor hang off our bodies all day, moreso, we do not let them cry unattended nor do we view our children as an inconvenience to some notion of our “careers”. Parenting is an inconvenience and a pleasurable one. It is full of adversity and struggle, the ingredients that can add color to what may have been the greyness that went before. Our single goal beyond keeping the young ones fed, clothed and sheltered, is that we attempt to help them be somewhat emotionally secure. That’s it.
But goals come at costs and ours is that for the first 12 months, with the exception of one January night, we have not slept past four hours in one stretch.
While the demands of parenting constantly press down on us, we have managed to construct our weekends around ourselves as parents. We do the normal kid stuff: the zoo and the park. But all stands in shadow to our single weekend goal: that our two children’s afternoon naptimes coincide and that their parents get about 4 hours a week locked away in our own room. After all, as flight attendants remind us, when the air mask fall, you put yours on first, so that you can breath, then you’re in a place to help the tiny ones get the air that they need.

First Crimes

It was her first verifiable crime. Albeit, a crime that few District Attorney’s would take to prosecution.
Havana and I went shopping for ink and car batteries. Meandering around the office supply store so as to get in and out as quickly as possible, Havana was in awe. The high ceilings, the bright colors, the light and of course the candy shelves at kids’ eye level. Usually Havana gets to point and yell to me before facing the inevitable denial of her candy request. Today she picked up some sugar and chocolate item packaged in a flashy wrapper. “We don’t buy candy babe, you know that” I reminded her. She knew that, but maybe she thought that on the millionth visit to a store she would get her wish. 999,715 visits to go.
After purchasing the ink, the clerk handed me the bag. It was lightweight enough for a three year old to carry, and good work training. “Yes, I can carry that Daddy.”
We went into the Auto supply store and went up to pay for the battery. Once again, even at the Auto store there was kids’ eye level candy: tons of it.
As I picked her up into her car seat in the front of the truck she tugged the plastic bag she held firmly. “D’you want me to take that, girl,” I enquired. She replied, all adult-like, “that’s okay daddy.”
As we got home, she rushed in the front door and spilled the bag onto the coffee table with a red shiny bag of skittles skidding out across the tabletop. “Where did that come from,” I asked. These days Havana’s boilerplate response to any wrong-doing, large or small, is a complete and utter denial. “Where did the candy come from?” I asked again. “Nowhere” she replied. She sunk into the sofa. She knew she had broken some inane adult rule, but she wasn’t sure which one. Whatever she’d done wrong she realized the distance between her and her candy was going to widen.
“Did you take it from the office store or the auto store?” I asked.
“I didn’t take it.” Figuring the loss of candy possession was building too much emotion into the moment I moved on to the moral of the situation. I held back from saying that stealing was wrong. We live in a society based on stealing from the working class, so stealing will always be based on who is stealing and who is getting stolen from. “Havana, stealing from a store will get you in trouble,” I lectured. When Havana is old enough to know the whens, hows and ifs of shoplifing, she will know how not to get caught. But that’ll be several years down the road.
At 3 years of age, there’s a lot of lecturing going on about rules. It’s annoying from the parent’s perspective, but necessary. Kids are little adults with less experience, and helping them learn to be independent, dialectically entails a lot of rules.
I was of course a little proud that some massive corporate store lost 25 cents worth of profits and that Havana unawares of the big wheels that turn capitalism had played a large role in this miniscule dent.

School Daze

Havana sat down on the sofa and read her book outloud to us. It was a combination of words, and sounds that could be words in a toddlers head. Sometimes the wordsounds were looped together poetry-like and sometimes clumsily piecemealed into sentances apparent.
Then Havana looked up from her book at her audienced parents. "Zip your lips!" Havana quietly commanded, adding, "Throw away the Key!" And then with an appropriate pause for full emphasis she raised her finger, "And listen to me!"
This re-enactment was our first exposure to life inside Havana's story time at her pre-school. We figured it was some kind of outside influence, as she topped her lesson with the hilarious, yet utterly serious, "I've told you 5 times!"
Those poor bloody pre-school teachers.

"No One Likes a Boss"

Family mottos, like the family silver, are most commonly associated with the rich and those that try to ape them. But if a family motto is no more than the parents establishing its own slogan, its own moral banner, why should we not have them too?
So we have one. It's not in Latin and it has not found a home on a wall in our house, but Havana can recite it on command. It's short, as mottos should be and, we hope, pointed. However, just as I was helping Havana recite it, she broke out into a parallel family motto. Aparently Karen has also already established a motto with Havana. One sounds very similar to the other and each was born unaware of its motto-dopple.
So, after a half dozen recitations of "No one likes a boss," Havana broke out into Karen's family motto, the appropriate, "nobody likes a Princess."
So there you go. Two social systems for one. Capitalism and feudalism. We have them covered.

The terrible draw of the Chupee-pacifier-sucker

"that looks good - what is it?"









"and where can I get one?"

the hoarse whisperer

Havana recently got a cold, which may be connected to her last bout of teething, which has given her a rhaspy vocal tone. This has only added an edge to her new fixation with whispering. Now she's whispering with her hoarse voice, communication has taken a few short steps backwards.
Whispering is normally associated with secrets and not with notions such as, "I want my crayons out" or "can I play with my clay." These passtimes are hardly clandestine in our house.
The whispering coincidentally became the fashion some days after the newborn moved in. When there is a diaper to be changed or lactation to be done, someone wanted something else at that same moment. The struggle over parental attention was a war that needed to be fought and won in Havana's eyes.
Timing is important in such a struggle. Almost 6 months after Havana has been potty-trained, she now began to hide in a corner while her mom was totally pre-occupied with breast feeding Ilyana. Then she we would walk in the room bow-legged, with a lump hanging down from her pant seat. This worked. Now, while I'm at work, Karen has been known to jump up with baby secured to the nipple and chase down the dirty bomber. And all three have to make it into the bathroom before a major cleanup is required.
The war to win back full parental attention in one mind, still needed to be fought. Yelling hadn't worked. Ignoring her parents was not going to work and would also defeat the object. So, the whispering had begun. And low and beyold, one parent would stop what they would be doing and ask the other parent, "what did she say?" And it went on, "Hey, Havana what did you say?" She would reduce the decibells and increase the body language, which lured her prey in even closer. The cold and aquired hoarse voice was an asset in this fight.
Finally we cottoned on. We could've begun whispering, as parents, in retaliation. But we're not the children in this relationship. So we didn't. Well, Karen thought it was an immature response if the truth were known.
We still stoop down and ask her to repeat herself as a small concession to a small person confronted with a big change in her world.

Not exactly what we ordered

The three of us were equally excited about the eruption into our world that is Ilyana. Two of the three of us had a closer concept of what to expect from this new development. We did what we could to prepare Havana. But like birthday parties or friends about to visit, sometimes the event is so exciting in a small person's brain that it doesn't allow room for details. Such was Ilyana's birth and consequent first month of life.
Havana has done all a girl could do to get Ilyana to act like the sister she expected. She prodded. She poked. She pulled limbs. Yet Ilyana has not yet acted like a baby sister should. She doesn't talk. She doesn't walk. She can't play. She hardly engages in the simplest of all communications: eye contact. And eye contact. That's okay for teenage love but hardly the first rung of play. And that's what Havana believed we ordered: a playmate. A sister.
Eventually Havana will get a reaction out of Iyana, something more complex than a wail. And even if it's not what she thought we ordered, she doesn't want it returned.

Baby sister born: July 20th 2006

Finally, Ilyana emerged from her mothers bump and joined the rest of us. She came out fighting, screaming and kicking, but is slowly ajusting to our less warm and cozy world.
Havana has been a big sister since Ilyana moved on from being a worm in her mom to being a little baby in her mom. She is dotingly fond of her new playmate and is not too upset that we won't let her tattoo her yet.
Her tattoo days will come.

Karl Marx never said it'd be easy

Raising a child in an anti-capitalist household has its unique challenges. How do we help her see the importance of solidarity and the emptiness of Disney Inc. is an ongoing process. While we encourage her to pick up Marxist literature, das Kapital is a little short on the important attractive pull of goofy images that draws 2-year olds to the page.
Havana and a couple of comrades went out last Sunday to the flea market to give out flyers for people seeking to fight capitalism. Essentially the flyers had things like - "trouble with your landlord, trouble with your boss?" We were looking for a new direct action case to fight for the Campaign for Renters Rights.
Havana was pretty well behaved. She even gave out a few flyers.
A few days later Havana picked up a few flyers on our dining table and handed one to Karen, "are you in trouble? Are you in trouble?" she enquired to her mother with an empathetic look on her face. Karen had missed the flyering and slightly confused asked, "in trouble with who?" to which Havana, thought twice and answered with the only authority figure she could think of: "in trouble with teacher?"
She had picked up from her 4-year old buddy Joaquin that being in trouble with teacher was something to aspire to. As Lenin said, three steps forward and two steps back.

Language, Thought Development and Music

When faced with difficult questions, in particular when her parents are asking her to recollect a common moment, Havana has developed a method. I ask her, do you remember such and such, to which she replies, definitively, "Yes." Encouraged that we are about to have a real conversation, I then ask her the same question, and she glazes over and says, "Tell me!" It goes something like this.
Dad: tell mummy what we did at the park today, do you remember?
Havana: Yes
Dad: well, what did we do?
Havana: Tell me
So what we have here, clinically, is either a child that honestly can't remember anything about what she did at the park today, or can't be bothered to think about it, or doesn't want to get drawn into an innevitably boring conversation at a semi-adult level.
Anyway, the new development, what I call the West Side Story phenomena, is the latest tool our daughter has developed to avoid adult-like conversations.
Havana has over the recent months developed her singing voice. What it lacks in carrying a tune it makes up for in unintentional comic content. Unfortunately, as loving parents, however bad Havana's singing is, it always sounds beautiful to us. For the untrained ear it can be compared to the singing of a happy drunk, a meandering tune that loosely strings together a combination of actual words and phrases, alongside slurred incomprehensible ones.
Karen has never liked Musicals. She conceives them as movies with plots that are irritatingly inturrupted by songs. She considered the Crouching Tiger movie in a similar vein: a plot irritatingly inturrupted by fight scenes.
Well, now after we have repeated the "Tell Me!" saga outlined above, instead of it ending there, Havana has begins to express her inner happy drunk. She just goes off into her own musical composition.
As we attempt to introduce a dialogue she replies by breaking out into song, deliberately aiming to irritatingly interrupt any adult effort to plot a conversation.

Genius and "the name"

Alongside, cleaning behind the fridge and under the bed, our "to do" list got one item shorter this week. With four weeks left in utero, Havana's baby sister finally got a name that has stuck.
For several weeks, months ago, we had the name Catriona, which we thought was pronounced as it looks. We emailed a comrade with that name and found out that it should be pronounced kat-ree-na, which undermined the integrity of our bubble, one which finally burst when we learnt of its roots in a certain Saint Catherine. As concious athiests, we struck that one off.
SO. We kicked around many, many names until Karen told me that we needed to cross the name thing off our "to do" before the baby arrives list. So I suggested we each pick 10 names and sit down and come up with an agreed top 3 list.
Then, out of nowhere, a Name appeared to me. It was a creation of genius. It met our 2 requirements. It was political and it sounded good. I was proud of my own brilliance.
June is currently the month of the 30th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising. A movement of grade school students against the apartheid regime in South Africa which ended in bloodshed, but spirred on a huge movement which eventually brought the apartheid regime down.
Okay, I figured to myself, Soweto doesn't sound like a girl's name. However, I a small reshaping, created, "Soweta." Politically great, and it sounded beautiful. Our quest was now over.
"I've got it" I explained to Karen, "its as good as Havana! It's brilliant!"
Well, that was 2 weeks ago.
I have since run into various friends of Karen, who had heard of "the name." Karen had dismissed the name outright for sounding "just aweful" and then one by one I would overhear her friends joking about how bad "the name" was. I had outdone myself this time.
However, "the name" as it is now known with derision, did help give Karen that small push into deciding an entirely different name which did stick. Ilyana.

The World Cup, TV and the cost to family-pet relations

We considered it our first gift to Havana. When Karen was pregnant with her we got rid of the TV.
Like all households, capitalism flowed in through every pore. Magazines that came home. Junk mail that came through our door. Pop ups on the computer. Radio commercials. We figured we wouldn't keep The Man's machine in the house with its sitcoms that weren't funny and ads for things we didn't want. Stopping short of putting it out on the street, we packed the TV away. That was 3 years ago.
We forgot about the bloody World Cup.
So we dug the thing back out and switched it back on. With help from the lad across the street, we were able to get enough reception to distinguish one team on the pitch from the other.
Havana was of course mesmerized by the new machine. Her clay, crayons, books, lego were discarded as yesterday's fleeting interests. They could hardly compete with the TV.
While in Wales earlier this year we had watched a couple of televised Chelsea soccer matches. My brothers and I grew up in West London, home to Chelsea Football Club. The CFC tattoo on my forearm was all that remained of my strained relationship with Chelsea.
Havana, however, immediately recalled the games we had watched in Britain and when Argentina and Ivory Coast walked on the field, sensing the excitement in the room, she quickly began chanting, "Go Chelsea Go." I explained to Havana a couple of things mum and dad had picked up as internationalists watching the World Cup. We generally supported the least economically advanced team in each game. That seemed to be the socialist thing to do. I consoled Havana also that Chelsea was not a country and would not be playing in the world cup.
I explained that although Chelsea has a single geographic location, it would need to develop a seperate language, seperate cultural identity and lead a succesful movement for national soveriegnty before it could qualify for the World Cup. She listened intently, looked back at the TV and took off where she left off, chanting "Go Chelsea."
In what may seem like an development unconected to the World Cup, Havana has also been developing her pet relationship skills. She now recognizes her place in the combat hierarchy in our house. She is below Karen and I, below our cat, Milou, who can kick any kid's ass, but above our other cat, the appropriately named, Kitten. She chases Kitten, picks her up by her bottom half and generally manhandles her. Her relationship with Kitten is frequently the basis of tedious life lessons on sensitivity and bullying.
During the Holland game today there were many shots at the goal by Serbia and the 7-foot Dutch goalie made many great diving saves. While watching the Argentina game, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, Havana standing upright on one end of the sofa. Her arms were outstretched, she pushed down and dived all the way to the other end of the sofa, as if to catch a shot at the goal. Unfortunately, the recipient of the dive was Kitten, who in a moment of stupidity had fallen asleep, awoken by 28-lbs of 2 year old landing full force on her.
Kitten lived to see another day. I don't know if she'll survive the whole month of world cup games. Perhaps in her small pet cerebrum, she blames the TV for the increased violence in her home.

simplifying the complex can backfire

Sunday morning the three of us are in bed. Havana is leafing through a book. Karen and I are splitting the weekend edition of the capitalist Financial Times.
I turn the page to an ad. It's for some high-end resort in the Carribean. The image shows a woman walking on the beach with a bellboy five steps behind carrying, we presume, her bags.
Havana peaks over and, without encouragement, explains the ad as she sees it.
"That's a worker and that's not a worker" she clarifies. Initially, I was a bit stunned. We hadn't begun our indoctrination on the issue of class and image. But I figure we're making big progress here, so I push the envelope a wee tad.
"Yes" I confirm to her and add, "worker - good" and then point, "bourgeois bad!" She looks at me with furrowed eyebrows. So I repeat, "worker -good, bourgeois - bad!" To which she retorts, "No, daddy, she's not bad. She's a woman."
Outwitted again.
Well, as one stickler for political clarification once said, "theory is grey, but the tree of life is green."

broken sleep and breaking rules

The onset of another teething period has once again cut us all adrift from our full night's sleep. Perhaps the move from her crib to her big girl's bed is interrupting her sleep. Maybe the move into her new room is interrupting her sleep. Whatever the cause, the effect is self-evident: sleep for all the primates in our small tribe has become a more precious commodity lately.
There's not much we can do about broken sleep, however, as parents we can establish some rules for the road that hopefully leads our tiny offspring off to sleep.
When she got bumped up to the monkey room out of her baby room we made some concessions to smooth that process. After her good night story and we depart, she would call out for us, with new and improved excuses: she needed to poop or pee, or she needed a drink. What parent could ignore such demands?
Then there were others excuses for not sleeping. Armed with her newly expanding vocubulary and her very basic conversational skills, she would attempt to engage her parents intellectually. "Daddy, what's vovo and grandpa's dog's name?"
Family trivia exercises were not about to be added to our daughter's very short list of legitimate bed time excuses.
For the first week after Havana was liberated from the cell-bars of her crib to her big girl's bed, it was as if that old crib had left behind an invisible force-field around her new bed. Such is the power of established routine, that it NEVER even occurred to her that she could get out of bed and wander around her room.
Until that one night. The substance of her new reality finally dawned on her. And she began to vacate her bed. We had, perhaps mistakenly, conceded to allowing the light to be left on after we left her. This was a genuine attempt on the part of her caring parents to soften the blow of moving out of her crib.
She began asking for the light to be left on. That should have been a clue. We thought we were helping her transition, but in actuality, we had once again been outwitted by our 2-year old.
We would walk in on her doing all sorts of prohibited past-bedtime activities. We caught her in the act on many occasions. Pj-ed, with her sucker in mouth, looking up innocently with a dozen books scattered over her bed.
Now, as her parents leave her to sleep each night, so too the light once again goes off.
Did she complain? No.
She probably figured she had a good run for her money, but that the law was innevitably gonna catch up with her. And it did.