Letting the Princess into the Farm House

Note: This article originally appeared  on kveller.com. Kveller.com offers a Jewish twist on parenting, everything a Jewish family could need for raising Jewish children–including crafts, recipes, activities, Hebrew and Jewish names for babies…and advice from Mayim Bialik.

It all started with the arrival of the Ariel bathing suit.

I was whipping a cart through Target when my 2-year-old spotted the suit. “Oooh, so pretty,” she said. “And her hair is exactly the same color as mine.” My daughter has dark brown hair and Ariel’s hair is a shade of red you don’t actually find naturally. Something about her bubbly delight combined with her hilarious use of the word “exactly” softened me to mush and the suit went right in the cart.

Back in the days when parenting was still a theoretical concept for me, I was firmly in the anti-princess camp. Why would we want to expose our children to old fashioned and limiting stories of frilly girls waiting to be saved by a prince?

But in real life, the quick calculation in my mind went something like this: “Wow, that mermaid is in a skimpy bathing suit, they have to be kidding… On the other hand, opposing a mermaid seems harsh and humorless, like being anti-unicorn, and I don’t want to create a forbidden fruit issue.” So the bathing suit came home, and became an instant favorite.

Then we visited a cousin who shared a princess book with my children and my 2- year-old came home with a new word which she took to yelling, “pinnnn- cesssss.” Suddenly, the various princesses were appearing in the most unexpected places. We would be calmly pushing the shopping cart through the grocery store and I would hear the shriek from the cart, “pinnnnnn-ssesssss.” My untrained eyes started scanning while my little one motioned desperately up toward a shelf of toothpaste, breakfast cereal, bread, whatever…. and then I would spot it, a tiny picture of a princess on the side of some random made-in-China plastic thing. It could be anything, a mini-water bottle, bandages, shampoo, vitamins, the images appear in the most unlikely places and children can train their eyes to see them all.

Thinking and reading about the effect of princess culture on young girls (and boys) was the kind of thing I had time to do before becoming a mother. But things move so fast and there is not enough time to read these days, so I wind up making important decisions too quickly, with an eye on revisiting them later. I am not sure if I am making the right call on this one but here is why I am allowing them in the house for now.

Why I’m allowing this princess stuff in my house:

1) If I am casual about the whole thing, I hope it will blow over early and she will be done with them before it really matters.

2) While she loves princesses, this morning she happily went out to do some “farm chores” with her dad and brother wearing a flannel shirt and jeans that she picked out from her brother’s dresser.

3) I am reassured that my son seems to be equally interested in princesses (and princes), so it is not a girl thing in our house (yet).

4) I am concerned that guarding against it strictly might create a backlash.

5) Since we live on a farm and she has female role models like me who are decidedly un-princess like, I feel it might create a balance that is ok in our house, for now. But I am not sure.

6) I will keep reevaluating this one and I am open to finding out I need to be more proactive in keeping the whole pin-cesses thing at bay.

I did find a couple of resources from people with the time and expertise to think this issue through when they are not pushing grocery carts at the same time. I hope to find time to read them all before it spirals out of control around here.  I would love to hear how others navigate this one. Does Mayim keep the princesses out? Should the rest of us?

Here are the resources I’d love to read, once I find the time:

- The American Psychological Association report and all the press that followed: Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls.

- Cinderella Ate my Daughter, by Peggy Orenstein,

- The Christian Science Montitor Story: Little Girls or Little Women, The Disney Princess Effect

This article originally appeared on kveller.com. Kveller.com offers a Jewish twist on parenting, everything a Jewish family could need for raising Jewish children–including crafts, recipes, activities, Hebrew and Jewish names for babies…and advice from Mayim Bialik.

Why Toddler Picked Flowers are the Best

My children brought me these beautiful flowers this morning when I really needed a lift.  I was trying to finish a giant writing project on a deadline (a grant proposal) and I was feeling stressed and exhausted when they came bounding in with a great sampling of every single thing blooming in the front yard from tiny to large.

I love how young children pick flowers — they go right for the bloom and pull off the very top. They  have zero interest in the things that stress out flower farmers like getting the right stem length.  And once they pick a blossom, they kind of shove them into their palms so they can grab another.  They arrive a little rumpled and without stems but they are still a joy to arrange and look at.

I sometimes think about all the sweet lovely flowers that are overlooked and unknown because they do not fit into the floral industry — which always seems to be a bit more obsessed with stem length, size and vase life than beauty.  So the tiny flowers don’t get much attention — except when the young children burst on the scene.  They  have their eyes on the prize — its about the pretty flowers and that is all — and with that focus they find so many of them.   One of these flowers, the “pink” is actually what the flower breeders created carnations from — making them bigger and far fussier (and in my opinion a lot less lovely).

Today, at around my one month anniversary of starting to sell lots of flowers to a big commercial flower wholesaler, I am happy my children brought me this tiny rumpled bouquet ….which for this mama is prettier than anything in the entire commercial flower warehouse!

By the way, below is another toddler flower image — it is my 2 year old’s honest interpretation of my instruction, “please put the flower back in the vase.”  Again, by the way the stem was tossed aside since it is so not the point.

Shabbat Shalom and/or have a peaceful weekend.

Matzah in the Sandbox (repost)

I am reposting what I posted around the third day of Passover last year since I have some new readers.  There is no time to write now, but I am experiencing the now annual matzah crumb issue and I am thinking that if Jewish Mamas invented our Jewish celebrations, somehow Passover would have been linked with Sukkah and we would always eat matzah outside,  just like during the #exodus.

  

Nobody wanted to leave the sandbox at lunch time today. With the perfect spring breeze shaking the new Bradford Pear leaves over our heads and the soft afternoon sun warming our cheeks, we were all content to keep playing. Plus, there was a new bucket of plastic sand toys for digging and building. But I was hungry too, so I ran into the house and grabbed a box of matzah.

I have noted the irony of the impressive onslaught of matzah crumbs beginning the moment the house has been cleaned for Passover. The near constant shower of matzah crumbs around my kitchen table has been relentless for the past few days. With two young children, I even found myself sweeping in “real time” with crumbs falling around me and a few directly into the dustpan. Maybe this is another opportunity to remember the bitterness of slavery, I am sure building the pyramids and sweeping up after Egyptians was far more thankless. But for me, I would rather be eating horseradish (which I guess isn’t fair because I do sort of like it).

So, matzah in the sandbox was a welcome change. The crumbs fell and instantly camouflaged into the sand just as the original matzah crumbs must have disappeared on the ground of the Sinai.  And as we were eating, it seemed a perfect time to talk about Passover with my son who spent most of the Seder playing with legos in the next room with his cousins.

He started the conversation. “I love matzah with jam and matzah without jam” he declared.

“Do you know why we eat matzah”, I asked.

“To remember that we are free and that we ran away from the Egyptians.” He said.  Ok, I thought, he absorbed more than I realized during his brief stints at the Seder table.

Then he thought for a minute, raking some sand and asked, “Who was good, Pharaoh or the other one?”

“Moses,” I volunteered, “he and his sister Miriam lead us from Egypt and God helped too.”

He thought about it and asked, “Is Pharaoh still around or did he turn into a skeleton.”  This has become his turn of phrase for describing his new concept of death since we visited the dinosaur museum.

“No, Pharaoh turned into a skeleton long ago.”  I said thinking this is not the time to introduce the mummy concept.

“Then we could stop eating matzah, and go back to Egypt.” he suggested still raking.

“Yes, I guess we could visit Egypt someday,”  I told him.

Then he ate some more matzah and said, “Mom, the matzah is working. It does make me remember.”  And he had a far off look in his eyes, like the matzah was literally giving him memories from someplace far away. What was he thinking about? Were there four year olds who played in the sand in Sinai after crossing the Red Sea.  Or maybe he was remembering something from earlier that day, like when we ate matzah with jam on actual plates at breakfast. Either way, I highly recommend matzah in the sandbox.

Nursing our Fledgling Apple Orchard

The Jewish New Year for trees, or Tu Bishvat is coming up next week. In anticipation, I wrote the following piece for the Jewish parenting blog Kveller.com, which is also running a contest where you can win a package of our organic dates from our small business supporting Israeli farmers. Thanks for reading and Shabbat Shalom!

Years ago my husband and I volunteered on Kibbutz Sde Eliahu in Israel, working in an organic vineyard and vegetable garden. On Tu Bishvat (the Jewish holiday celebrating the new year for trees!) kibbutzniks we had never seen in the fields came to help in the garden for a few hours. When we left the kibbutz, the leader of the vineyard gave us a little farewell blessing. We didn’t understand it all but he definitely said to “have children” and “plant trees with real roots, not just tomatoes.”

So, we returned home and pretty much got to work following his instructions.

Six years later, we are grateful to have two small children and a tiny heirloom apple orchard. The orchard is still very young and vulnerable. The trees are spindly and they had a tough time during last year’s flood. A few of them are no taller than our 4-year old boy and have branches as thin as pencils. I am always happy to see a bird rest on one of these little branches, treating the sapling like a real tree for a moment.

Here in Maryland it is still winter and far too early to plant trees on Tu Bishvat. So we are developing our own little Tu Bishvat tradition. This year, we plan to take our children down to our fledgling heirloom apple orchard to visit the trees and give them some much needed attention. We will bring a nice pile of mulch to each tree, check them for winter damage and possibly add a few bamboo support poles if needed. We will talk to the children (and probably the trees too) about our hopes for a day when the trees are full of fruit and strong enough to climb. We will imagine Tu Bishvat in Israel, where almond trees are blooming. And by then we’ll probably need to go inside to warm up.

This article originally appeared here on kveller.com. Kveller.com offers a Jewish twist on parenting, everything a Jewish family could need for raising Jewish children–including crafts, recipes, activities, Hebrew and Jewish names for babies…and advice from Mayim Bialik.

Chasing off Bad Dreams

My four year old had his first nightmare this week, or at least the first one he remembered and could articulate.  It came directly from a children’s book that I had been meaning to toss. One of those books where something seems scary and then they realize everything is fine (it’s only a hedgehog, not a monster), but in the meantime they throw in spooky illustrations.  It pays to pre-read all hand-me -down children’s books, but this one wound up in circulation even though I had glanced at it and knew better.

So, I googled for a solution and found lots of of great suggestions.  We wound up employing a three part solution.

1) First, we talked about it.  He told me about the dream slowly throughout the day and it wasn’t until my husband came home that we realized it it came straight from the book.  That was actually a relief to me, that he isn’t inventing his own scary things yet.  I think it helped to clarify that while dreams seem real and can be scary, they are not actually happening and cannot hurt you physically.   That seemed to reassure him a little bit, but not much.

2) Second, we made a home spun dream catcher.  We broke into my sewing supplies and quickly whipped up this dream catcher complete with lots of rickrack from a yard sale and a piece of my great grandmother’s thread for luck.   We also used an embroidery hoop, because get real, when am I going to take up embroidery?

This was a very age appropriate project for my son at four, he was able to do all of the material selection and most of the wrapping and twisting.  It turned out to be a pretty fun looking mobile that will hopefully keep bad dreams at bay for a while too.  He loves it and it was very much his project.  He even made the number 4 for his age a few times, you can see one in red rickrack above.

not that my son can read yet, but the label reads: magic sweet dream spray (banishes monsters too)

The second part of the solution was quick and easy and maybe even his favorite part.  We re-purposed an old spray bottle (California Baby Diaper Spray) into our own Magic Sweet Dream Spray.    This was not an original idea, it was part of what my google search turned up.   Since he already loves spray bottles, this one was a huge hit.  We filled the bottle with water and some vanilla extract and I let him spray away on his bed, his sister’s bed, and even the dream catcher.

When he asks me if these solutions will work, I answer that I think they will work but I am careful not to promise. I am sure we will see more bad dreams in the coming years, but so far this one did not return and the sweet dream spray seems to be working in as a regular part of the bedtime routine.   Even with a drop of vanilla, the spray smells great and since he is in charge of the spray bottle it is a huge hit.  Something tells me we will be refilling it often.

As an aside, I think this was a moment where blogging helped me be a better mother.  While we would have attempted to do this either way, the thought of writing about it helped ensure we did not get distracted halfway through and inspired the picture taking in hopes that it could be helpful to other parents.  Having an audience, even one that is largely imagined, can make us better people and parents.  So thanks for reading and being that audience, it helps!