On getting kids cool books

Several friends have asked me about finding good kids' picture books, not for Otter necessarily but for other kids in your lives. (My mom has long used me as her kids book-buying consultant.)

Otter has loved all his many board books, and is just now graduating more into "real books". So here's how we've explored finding good books for him and for his cousin and other kids in our lives.

First, we've found that looking by book publishers can help in finding good stuff. I mean, you can search by authors and illustrators, and that works, but it doesn't get you as much choice when you find something you like as looking by publisher. It doesn't help as much for big big publishing companies, but if you find a smaller press for kids' books you like, it can lead to other books your kids will love as well.

Barefoot Books has fabulous stuff --not just for Otter's age range but for older kids, for those of you who've asked me for recs for books for older kids in your lives. Their catalog does this cool thing where they list for each book the most suitable age range for the book for reading alone (kids reading for themselves) and the age range for reading together (grownups doing the reading).

Also Candlewick Press is pretty reliable in quality; you might recognize their Maisy books but they have tons of great authors, especially in that three to five year old range.

Even if you don't want to buy straight from the publisher, most good small presses have great descriptions on their websites, and you can then go to your local bookstore and ask for a special order. Or, if it's an indie bookstore, check out the children's section and see if you like their options. If so, you can ask to speak with their children's book buyer and ask for recommendations (e.g. my six year old granddaughter loves baseball and cooking, she's just starting to learn to read books by herself, and I'm looking for something she'd like).

You can also consult the various book award lists: NY Times does a great one yearly, as well as the more well-known Caldecott awards.

Museums (both science and art) that have kids' book sections in their giftshops often have lovely choices, as they screen for books that are visually and intellectually interesting to kids.

There are also a few online indie bookstores and toystores that have fabulous catalogs, useful for their great descriptions and detailed information (powells.com lists various children's awards as well as their staff recommendations). And your local library may have a good children's librarian who can help.

And if you're looking for a great book for a toddler/preschooler, one of Otter's current favorites is Knuffle Bunny.

Bad parenting?

Another of my favorite bloggers posted this week on her "bad mother" day. And that "bad mother" day was absolutely not bad parenting at all, but just real-life parenting, in her case under difficult circumstances and with a great deal of grace --what reminds me from some of my own days parenting as that particular small-child-caretaker grace that comes with bodily fluids and effusions on clothes and a sense of perpetually not being (enough? at all?) in control, of too many things to carry and juggle and remember on not enough sleep. Too many.. not enough... too many... not enough... the yin and yang of parenting.

It left me thinking of one of the first days in the hospital right after Otter was born, when G came by on his way to work (Otter was born back when he got no paid time off), and at 6 or so in the morning G and I changed his diaper, I think for the first time. And amid all the supplies in the drawer below the wooden bassinet Otter was poopily sleeping in, we couldn't find diaper wipes. So we went into the bathroom and found a plastic cylinder with wipes sticking out the top, and wiped off the poop, and put on the diaper. Yay. Mission accomplished.

Then a few minutes later, a bit more awake, I looked at the wipes container, and saw a funny crumpled up sticker on the top. I smoothed it out and saw a big international "no" sign (the circle with the line through it) and a drawing of a crawling baby in the middle of the "no" circle.

No, this did not mean "hey, don't let your baby change himself." It meant "we here at the hospital think it's a darn good idea to stock the bathrooms in maternity with containers of cleaning wipes that are great for disinfecting your hospital sink but far too toxic to use on any chidl's skin, especially that of a delicate newborn."

And futhermore, it meant (to me), "because this has happened before--someone mistakenly using these wipes on a child--we'll design and put this handy sticker on the wipes container because, you know, any sleep-deprived overwhelmed new parent will be deterred by it... and it would be just too much f-ing trouble to put the wipes in the cleaning cart or with the nurses' supplies. We prefer to leave them handy in the bathroom, ready for new parents NOT to use."

But none of that changed that we had just wiped toxic cleaning fluid all over our less-than-a-day-or-two old son's sensitive parts.

You want to feel like a moron? Go out to the nurse's station in tears a day or so after major surgery wearing creepy mesh underpants and a hospital gown and tell them that you and your spouse have disinfected your baby's butt in dire violation of every small print warning on the wipes cleaning container as well as the lovely international NOT-FOR-BABIES-YOU-IDIOT sticker, and that you need immediate medical help to undo whatever (hopefully not irreversible) damage you've done to this child that you are supposedly taking home unsupervised, on your own, that week.

The nurses said that Otter would be fine--and I suspect chuckled at me after I went back to the room.

But that was my first lesson in parenting and ego... that even if it made me and/or my spouse look like incompetent unfit parents--even if it meant we WERE incompetent parents--I could 'fess up to endangering my child to get him help... that even as part of my brain wanted to hide the container and just tell myself Otter'd be fine, I had to make sure. (And if he has infertility problems or prostate cancer years from now, yes, I'll feel guilty for not insisting they DO something to fix our wipes catastrophe--but fingers crossed, my paranoia on that is waning as the years go by.)

I think that is one of my personal lines for parenting. While sometimes I do fib to make us--or me--look like better smoother parents than we are, when it matters (or it might matter--and I so rarely know which is which), I am capable of looking like a total nitwit to make Otter safe. And isn't that what you all were hoping for?

This comes up when I drag him off to the pediatrician yet again, with a lingering stuffy nose that turns out to be a sinus infection and needs antibiotics--or with a possible chicken pox blister that turns out to be a bug bite. I never know if I'll look in-tune with my kid's medical needs or needlessly alarmist and wasting my kid's health insurance dollars and the doctor's time. But, hey, I'd rather look like an idiot than have Otter suffer an undiagnosed problem.

If anyone can figure out a way for me to look good while being a good parent at the same time, let me know. That I haven't mastered yet.

Good job

Inspired by my bro and sister-in-law, we try not to tell Otter that he's a good boy, but to say "good job" (or "thank you") when he figures out a problem or helps out. A while back we heard him start saying "job" to himself when he managed something on his own, like getting the clothes off his baby doll or putting away a toy.

So I've been concerned that he'd start being too driven by our praise and not by his own satisfaction at doing something. Because I haven't got enough real problems to worry about, right? And we're such great parents that we should sweat such subtleties, or maybe we're such bad parents that we're making him too eager to please us... you know, the inside of my head is just a pretty jumbled place these days. Remember that I'm 7 months pregnant and in the (I hope I pray) last few months (one way or another) of dissertation work and handling a toddler hitting his terrible 2's... and be kind.

That said, setting aside my neuroses (temporarily), last night I was picking up some of the clutter in the living room and asked Otter to come over and help me with putting toys into bins (which he does quite well: toy food in toy food/toy dishes bin, Fisher Price Little People in their own bin, toy balls in their own bin--and if that sounds compulsive to you, you haven't recently had to find a particular Little Person or a red plastic knife while a toddler wails in total despair because it's been misplaced). Otter strolled over from the gate to his dad's office (oh mecca of places that he so rarely gets to visit), looked at me putting plastic bacon and finger puppets away, and said to me (quite seriously), "good job."

I couldn't stop laughing.

Then again, he may well be the only person who's ever been impressed with my domestic housekeeping skills... I should appreciate it while it lasts.

I foresee more no's to come

Otter and I spent a few days with my family in Maine. G stayed home and worked. (Thank you for earning money, G, though we missed you!)

Upon returning last night, I was somewhat eager to co-parent again. Oh, who am I kidding? I was quite eager to have G do some solo parenting while I snuggled with my feet up on the sofa and incubated the second kid.

So G said he'd do the "put Otter to bed" portion of the program for the evening. Otter protested some, and I said to Otter I'd come in and kiss him goodnight and bring him his sippy cup of water. After I did so, I began to leave--as I'd told him I would--and Otter demanded, "No, Mama BED, Mama no go other room!"

I said, "yes I am going to the other room; Daddy will put you to bed; it's been many moons since Mama had a break."

Yes, I know, technically, it had been five days, not even one moon, but poetic license, right?

I don't, however, think that the inaccurate time frame was Otter's main objection when he responded, "NO moons, NO break!"

Postscript: Sadly for Otter, I nonetheless left him to struggle off to sleep with G's help. The sofa-lazing was just as lovely as I had hoped--actually, even more so, as, when G got done putting Otter to sleep, he brought me a fabulous plate of homemade burrito fixings with G's homemade mango salsa.