Lately, Milo has been having trouble with groups: as soon as we enter a room with more than two adults, he freezes—no matter how well he knows them. He stands stock still, avoids eye contact, and refuses to acknowledge their existence. The more attention that they pay to him, the worse it gets, but he isn’t doing it to get attention, in fact, it’s the attention that is freaking him out, not the size of the crowd. When we are at a public place, like the farmers market or grocery store, he’s perfectly content and natural and chatting with me nonstop. That is, until a stranger talks to him, and then he freezes.

I know it’s a phase, but it’s a phase that is troublesome to me because his father has crippling social anxiety, which makes us both hyperaware of all signs of social anxiety in Milo.

So I bought him a little bear.

I got this little rubber panda bear for $.50 at a toy store in Nob Hill when I was shopping with Lauren. When I came home, I told Milo that it was his Brave Bear, and that he should keep it in his pocket and whenever he was scared, he could take out the bear and the bear would help him to be brave. I don’t know if this was the best approach, or if it will work at all, and I’m thinking I should probably go back to the toy store and get a dozen or so of these as backup, but Milo is really into the idea so far.

I might be biased, but I think that my dude is pretty awesome, and I just want other people to have the chance to get to know him. When I was his age, I was starting conversations with strangers in the grocery store. Come to think of it, I am still doing that. I don’t expect (or want) for him to be his loudmouth mother, because that came with its own set of problems, but if he evolves into a taciturn person, I hope that it’s not because he’s too afraid to be himself.

Let’s cross our fingers for Brave Bear.

I don’t handle transition well. I have friends and loved ones who really flourish in times of transition, whose capability to roll with the punches is honestly nothing short of extraordinary and who seem to have endless patience for adjusting variables.

I want to be that person, but transition and uncertainty make me physically ill. I like to know where I’m headed. I don’t even like to go on walks unless I have a destination in mind. I’d love to be the person who can just happily wander around my neighborhood or fly by the seat of my pants, but I’m so not. I’m trying to make peace with that.

Luckily for me, my life is starting to have a definite routine again. I began nannying on Monday and so far, it’s going even better than I had hoped for. I realized that all of things that I hated about my previous daycare jobs is nonexistent in this situation. I worked for several daycares where I was overworked, underpaid, utterly unappreciated—by my boss, that is, my kids always loved me and attacked me with affection, which is the best perk!

Worst of all, there were multiple times where a child with a behavioral problem was compromising the happiness of the rest of my kids, and I was powerless to do anything about it. When I was at the Montessori school, the director of the school didn’t want to have to deal with the parents at all, so she made it my responsibility to talk to the parents of problem children. I was 21 and there I was, having to tell a crying mother that other parents were threatening to pull their children out of the school unless her child could behave. I was having to tell her that while 14 other toddlers swarmed around me, tugging on me for attention. It was a nightmare.

Being a nanny, on the other hand, has been truly awesome. I am keeping the group small, and since all of the kids are only with me part-time, there is a nice rotation and variety and there are still some chunks of time where it’s just me and Milo. Matthew is currently in the application process for a few apprenticeships, so I’m really glad to have an extra hand when I need one, but the kids are sweet and easygoing, and when I wake up in the morning, there is no sense of dread. It’s funny how I didn’t really notice the dread until it was gone. How long had I been waking up, hating the idea of having to lock myself away at some point to get work done? I don’t even know. Possibly it had always been that way and I just didn’t notice, because I thought that was the default, it was what everyone felt on a weekday.

Anyway, here is what you came for, pictures of cute kids:

Jack, Milo, and Cal having a snack

Holy crap, so much cuteness!

I’m thinking about starting a happy hour for nannies and caregivers in Portland. It will be a monthly opportunity to get together, compare notes, talk about experiences. I definitely do not want it to be a bitch-fest. If you know someone who might be interested, send ‘em my way.

Here’s my favorite thing about living with a toddler: watching him make decisions. It is the source of endless fascination and pleasure for me. That tired old cliche “seeing his gears turn”—this is really true with a young child. You can watch their expressions change as they process new information.

And since I’m human and thus every observation I make about someone just makes me think about myself, the thousands of decisions that Milo makes in a day leads me to ponder my own decision-making.

Most of the critical long-term decisions that I’ve made in my life were made in my late teens and early 20s: what college I attended, my major(s), where I lived after college, my first jobs. I even met Matthew when I was 20, although we didn’t start dating until I was 26—lucky for Matthew.

Here’s the thing about your early 20s: You’re an adult by every definition that counts. You can vote; you can drink; most of us have graduated college or trade school and have begun careers. Some of us are married or dating the person we will marry. Some of us even have kids.

But a 21-year-old isn’t even a fully-formed human being yet. The frontal lobe reaches full maturity during your mid-20s. Why is your frontal lobe so important?

The executive functions of the frontal lobes involve the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress unacceptable social responses, and determine similarities and differences between things or events. Therefore, it is involved in higher mental functions.

So that’s some pretty important stuff. The underdeveloped frontal lobe is why a lot of us did things in our teens and 20s that seems at best reckless and at worst criminal, or at least criminally stupid.

I was recently laid off from the company for whom I had been working since I was 21. It was the kind of foundation-shaking life occurence that makes you take stock, that makes you look back and wonder how things might have been different if you’d chosen another path.

As a parent, I am really saddened by how much pressure is on teenagers to figure out their entire futures before they’ve even figured out who they are yet. I don’t know yet how I’m going to help Milo through that time in his life, but I do want to make sure that none of that pressure is coming from me. I hope that he screws up, a lot, and learns from all of it. And that he can pick himself up after every setback and shoulder on. I hope that if he learns anything from us, it’s that failure isn’t the worst thing. Giving up is the worst thing.

I wanted to share a few bits with you today — things that I read or thought about this week.

my couch

This is a photo of my corner of the couch. It’s where you will find me almost every night at 8 PM, under my quilt, reading a book. This simple routine has been grounding me over the last few weeks. Matthew joins me after a bit, and then we will watch a movie or the latest episode of whatever TV show we’re currently obsessed with, but the 30-45 minutes where I am just reading in silence is priceless and one of the nicest parts of my day, second only to the 10 minutes every morning after Milo wakes me up, when we lie in bed snuggling and giggling.

Thinking about having a wedding that represented who we are made me want to hunt down a set of photos from a wedding that was going around the internet this summer, so here they are. Aren’t they so inspiring and beautiful? Doesn’t everyone seem insanely happy to be there? It would be nice to be a part of something like that, even though that particular something isn’t right for us.

I like what Matthew wrote about running and coffee over on his Tumblr.

Sweet Sweet Life is one of my favorite blogs, because it’s so consistently optimistic and joyful, and one of the few home design-y blogs which embraces color. This blog post about choosing to home school her 11-year-old daughter really inspired me with it’s braveness. We have often discussed giving Milo the same option some day, since the social aspect of middle school was self-esteem-destroying for both Matthew and me and we would would have preferred to have skipped that whole part, if given the choice.

Abby took some beautiful pictures of my ‘hood that made me fall in love with North Portland all over again.

This post about her son’s newfound love of vinyl over at SouleMama made me smile a whole lot.

I am the queen of the quick tidy-up. I have to be, because my default nature is to be sloppy. When I am cooking or doing a craft or DIY project, I create disaster zones. In my 20s, I was likely to leave it that way and just work around the mess for days afterward until I was finally forced to clean up after myself, but now that I’m in my 30s, I’ve identified that my state of mind is strongly tied to how tidy my surroundings are, so I’ve taught myself how to do quick pick-ups.

Milo's room

So here you have it, the 10 Minute Tidy Up:

1. Very quickly pick up everything that isn’t where it should be and put it on the bed.
2. Divide what is on the bed into logical categories. One category should always be “Doesn’t belong in this room.” (If I’m tidying Milo’s room, the categories would be: “Dirty laundry,” “Clean clothes,” “Costumes,” “Toys,” “Trash,” “Doesn’t belong in this room.”)
3. Put away the easy stuff first. (Dirty laundry goes in hamper, clean clothes go in closet or drawers, toys go in toy chest, trash goes in trashcan.)
4. For the pile of things that doesn’t belong in the room, ask yourself if it often ends up here, and so would it thus make sense to have it live there permanently. Think about making a home for it there so that it can still be put away rather than just sitting on the floor. Likewise, if the dirty laundry ends up in the same spot, consider moving a hamper closer to that spot. In the meantime, take that stuff out of the room you’re tidying.
5. Vacuum or sweep. It’s a simple step that makes any room look a thousand times cleaner.

The end!

I know a mom who has five kids and every night right before she goes to bed, she walks around the house and puts all the clutter into a big box and then puts the box in a closet in the guest room. That way, if her kids want to know where their stuff ended up, they don’t need to ask her, they just check the box. If they don’t want their stuff ending up in the box, they can clean up after themselves better. I think that is a genius solution and might use it myself when Milo is older. Right now, he thinks that cleaning and tidying is a novelty, and really loves to help. He evens pick up after me and his dad: if my water bottle isn’t where it usually is, he’ll bring it to me saying: “Back, back,” meaning, “Put it back, mom.” I love this phase, but I know it won’t last forever.

I just wanted to pop in here and make quick post to make a couple of quick announcements. I won’t take up too much of your time because I’m sure that you have crossword puzzles and mugs of hot chocolate to get back to.

If you come over, be ready to read a book to Milo

The first is that I’ve started a new blog: Is There a Giraffe? I will be reviewing some of Milo’s (and my) favorite children’s books. There will be strong emphasis on vintage and lesser-known titles. I won’t be able to stop myself from singing the praises of the greats now and again—particularly Maurice Sendak and Richard Scarry, two of my favorites—but since they get so much love elsewhere, I’d like to draw attention to a few of the many underappreciated children’s writers out there. Please check it out if you’re so inclined! I’ll be building it out a little more over the hoildays and adding a few entries before the new year.

The second is that I’ve done the layout for the next issue of my zine, and I have a couple of blank pages. For layout purposes, my pagecount needs to be a multiple of 4. Rather than trying to create filler for those pages, I’ve decided to offer it as ad space. The first issue of my zine has already sold over 100 copies and has only been out for a little over a month, so this would be a great way to get exposure for your small business or Etsy store. Quarter-page ads are $15, half-page ads are $25, and full-page ads are $40. Please let me know if you’re interested—include some information about your business, please, as I want to be sure that your business is in line with my ethics so that I’m not unwittingly pimping porn in the back of my zine. I like to wittingly pimp porn, thank you very much.