Ask Moxie

Reader call: Music for kids

Clare writes:

I'm hoping you can throw this out to the peanut gallery.  My one year old loves to dance, and he got an iTunes gift card for his birthday.  I'd love suggestions of good songs/albums/artists to download.  My only criteria for kids' music is that I have to be able to listen to it without the kids around (ie, not really kiddie-music a la Barney or even Raffi, but music that appeals to kids).  So, right now, I've got lots of folk (we love Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie), bluegrass, Zydeco (for parents of the train-obsessed, Buckwheat Zydeco's Choo Choo Bugaloo is fantastic), Irish/Scottish traditional.  I love the Putumayo albums, but they don't appear to be available on iTunes.  Any and all suggestions welcome.  Thanks!

Ideas? My kids are currently into AC/DC and Heart (from the 70s and 80s), but they're also 6 and 3 instead of 1.

We also listen to lots of Earth, Wind, and Fire, ABBA, Aaron Shust, and anything with either a beat or lots of guitar. Sometimes we just watch Jack's Big Music Show if we're looking for something new and silly.

What do you guys recommend?

Also, iTunes gift card as a present for a one-year-old: Excellent.

Group hug

Holy crap, but you guys are dealing with a ton of stress!

I put up that post yesterday feeling bad about wussing out on a real post, but too fried because of this thing with my friend (and my internet access being down at home for several hours). I had no idea so many of you were going through so much.

I guess this is a real lesson. I know lots of you were really shocked when I announced the divorce, because you thought I had it all together. And I was so nervous about announcing it, because I thought all of you had everything under control in your own lives and would be disappointed in me. And then I thought I was the only one trying to tread water yesterday, but some of you are dealing with so much more than the rest of us had any idea about.

I think it's astounding that we're all doing such a good job holding it together the way we are. It's a testament to how strong we are, even when we don't realize it about ourselves. And I'm glad to be able to make a place where you guys can unload some of it.

Continuing in my haze of lightheartedness...

You guys asked how you could help me.

Obviously, clicking through the ads on the side helps. (Has anyone tried Nads? I'm all in favor of waxing, especially with something that just washes right off. The name though, well, yeah. Let this be a lesson to people naming products to run their potential name past people from other countries.)

And clicking through here before you buy something from Amazon helps, too. I can go through and see what people bought (although I have no idea who bought anything--I just see a listing of the products: fancy cheeses, really nice shoes, movies I've never heard of, a computer, a lawn mower, etc.) and I had no idea you could buy groceries through Amazon. So if you're doing monthly diaper orders, or buying a new Bugaboo, or shoes, or anything else, click through here first.

Also, I'm ready to put up a Cafe Press store, but don't know Photoshop so I can't design the graphics to go on the shirts/mugs/onesies, etc. If there are people who would be willing to take a slogan or two and turn it into a jpg I can put up, that would make my life way easier. (Either that or suggest a good, clear, easy Photoshop tutorial on the web.)

When should we start another 60-day challenge?

My Sally Field moment

Wow.

Wow.

Thank you guys so much. I was not expecting such an outpouring of love. I really don't know why we never get trolls here, and why everyone is just so happy to be here and so supportive of everyone and of me. But it feels really good, every day, and especially yesterday and today.

I woke up yesterday morning knowing that post had auto-posted just feeling so free. A decade of hiding was way too much.

I've had so much love and support IRL, too. When I was in the middle of it, I'd closed off from people. But once I made the decision I decided that if I could trust God I could trust people, and just let myself freefall. What happened then was truly amazing--hands appeared to catch me from all sides, from old friends and new ones. I've never felt as loved--as connected--before in my entire life.

Now some clarifications:

1. No evil person is outing us. An impartial publisher released a book yesterday in which my kids' father has written a piece that mentions the divorce. So you can save your righteous ire for the fight to get that PPD act passed.;-)
2. It makes sense now why I stopped posting on my personal blog. I had nothing to say that wasn't about the process, but I couldn't say that. Maybe I'll start up again...
3. It also makes sense why I suddenly went back to work.
4. If you emailed me to ask how I "do it all" or what my daily schedule is, now you know why I didn't answer.
   
5. Remember my gluten intolerance from fall '06? It went away completely as soon as I told him. (I know!) So I've secretly (from you--the people who know me IRL knew about it) been scarfing down banh mi and chocolate croissants for 17 months now. (In a strange twist, however, I've been off gluten since Sunday, just to see if it's making me bloat slightly. Thank goodness for the gluten free goodness of Kozy Shack rice pudding.)

And now some sad news: Hedra didn't get the job. (She said I could tell you.) I predict that the company that didn't hire her will go bankrupt within 18 months.

Thank you so much for being out there. Your stories help so much.

Cool stuff

Frequent commenter Neil is doing a Flickr project called "Smiles for World Peas" Day on April 12. Take a photo of your child smiling, and then post your photo to the group page or send him the photo (if you don't have a Flickr site) on April 12 (not before or after). Read details here.

Reader and childhood friend Beth tips me off to her mom's friend who writes a blog called 37 Days that talks about what you'd do if you knew you only had 37 days left to live. (Check out the blog to see why 37 days.) It's a celebration of life and about embracing the things you want to do. She's also got a book coming out in the fall based on the 37 days idea, so stay tuned for that.

While we're talking about jumpstarting creativity, has anyone else read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield? I read it on friend Scott's recommendation, and am finding it simple but also strangely motivating in its bluntness. For those of you (and I read your comments on the post Friday about The Ten-Year Nap, so I know you're out there) who feel like there's still some passion there but you're having problems re-igniting it even once you're getting a grip on the kid-flow thing, it might be a place to start. And it's in short chapters, so you can read a bit at a time, while your kid naps, or while you're on the bus.

And, if you're still cool enough to see live music, check out my friend's project WhoTours.com, which collects tour info from around the web so you can set up favorites and get notifications whenever your favorite bands are going to be playing near you. If you're not cool enough to see live music anymore, pass it on to your younger siblings.

What have you guys found that's cool and of interest?

Sleep posts

You know what I think is funny about the comments on sleep posts here?

That different posts totally bring out commenters with different situations. Some posts draw tons of "try co-sleeping!" comments. Some draw "read Pantley!" comments. Some draw "read Ferber!" comments. Some draw "do CIO!" comments.

Which just goes to show you (or me, at least), that there is no one right answer for everyone. I've been fumbling toward trying to find some classification system so that we could make some kind of checklist and you could observe different aspects of your kid and then know which "method" (can you really call anything that makes you cry at 3 am a method?). Wouldn't that be awesome? Observe and answer these 50 questions about your kid, and then you'll know exactly how to proceed. (The "tension increaser" vs. "tension decreaser" observation was the first step in my plan for a taxonomy of sleep personalities and issues.)

Unfortunately, all we have to go on now is trying to figure out exactly what the problem is (going to sleep initially? staying asleep? nursing at night? waking early? all of the above?) and then trying different things to fix it until you either find something that works or pack the kid off to boarding school.

Remember that there are tons of things to try before you resort to doing something that isn't in your comfort zone (I'd put co-sleeping and true CIO--letting the child cry alone until s/he falls asleep no matter how long it takes--in those category of things that people might not be comfortable with). The Ferber method (not that he made it up, of course, but no one's great-great-great-great-great-great grandma wrote a book about it) of allowing the baby to cry for short chunks of time and then going in to check and make contact is one of them. In fact, the surefire way to tell if your baby is a tension decreaser who needs to cry some to fall asleep is to walk out and let the baby cry for 5-10 minutes and see what happens. That sounds a lot like Ferber to me. (If the baby starts to lose steam and quiet down, you've got a tension decreaser.)

If you've got the baby in the same room with one of you, try switching who the baby's with. A baby who nurses all night on mom might sleep the whole night through with dad. If the baby's in the same room, try switching the baby to a different room. Or vice versa.

In other words, if the pattern is bad, figure out exactly what part is bad, and try changing the structure of it. Sometimes just small changes will break the pattern.

The other thing that's really important to know is that no matter what you do, it's not going to stick. If you sleep train, you'll have to do it again, after sleep regressions and big teething spurts. If you co-sleep, you'll have to re-evaluate every time your kid goes through some developmental spurt and starts kicking you in the kidneys all night. So don't feel too smug or too desperate, because there's always someone better off and worse off than you are right now.

Anyone want to post something that either helped or hurt your kid's sleep that surprised you?

I'll go first.

Son #1: Went through a phase around the age of 2 in which he'd go to sleep just fine, but would then wake up screaming an hour later. It took a few weeks, but eventually we figured out that he was having heartburn/indigestion from eating tomato products at dinner! We put the kibosh on all tomatoes after 3 pm, and he stopped waking that first night.

Son #2: Wanted to nurse all night long with me. I went to sleep out on the couch and left him sleeping with his dad and he slept the whole night through. Occam's Razor in action: if I was there, he'd nurse; if I was gone, he wouldn't.

Now you go.

Archivist Alison on Jumping Monkeys

And we knew her way back when...

Archivist Alison talks about archiving family memories with Megan Morrone on Episode 38 of the Jumping Monkeys podcast. Her part starts at 22:50 and ends at 47:00.

She sounds to me exactly the way she writes--smart, funny, and engaged!

They say it's my birthday

Happy Birthday to me! (And to Johnny Cash.)

Would you like to give me a present? Please post a link (the comments should do it automatically if you just cut and paste from the browser URL window) to something funny.

Thanks for sharing my birthday. Here's my present to you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE1SgU1l46A

Please note the hair, glasses, and beard, as well as the dancing, especially at 1:14.

Anyone up for a challenge?

Full disclosure: I'm typing this while licking peanut butter off the back of a spoon.

I hope my post on the artificial sweeteners didn't make anyone feel judged. That certainly wasn't my intention. It was more of a "first we couldn't drink regular soda because of the HFCS; now we can't drink diet; soon they won't even let us drink water" grouse.

Did any of you guys see this article in The Onion this week (for those of you not in the US, The Onion is a fake weekly newspaper): Study: Use of Phrase 'Don't Skimp On The' Linked to Heart Disease Read it first, then read the rest of this post.

If you read the whole Times article, the author of one of the studies did bring up the idea that the study showed correlation, not causation. (Which is why I didn't specifically mention it--it was in the article).

But for me, at least, correlation or causation doesn't make a difference in what I'm going to do with the information that there's some kind of link, in terms of my own behavior.

I thought Catherine's comment was brilliant. If artificial sweeteners cause metabolic changes, then obviously we should stop using them. But Catherine's comment points out that it could just be a correlation, but that that still points to a problem, just a different one.

From a public health standpoint, I hope that it turns out that there isn't a causal link, because it would mean that we've been effectively poisoning ourselves willingly for 20 years. But I actually think that a behavioral link (as Catherine put it) is more interesting to me, and I'm guessing to you.

Have you ever gone on a low-sugar or low-carb diet? You feel like you are literally going to die of the cravings for the first week. And sweet is such a cultural force. Witness the comments to my Valentine's Day rant, when people were outraged that I didn't want my son to have candy. (Which, again, I'm fine with candy, just not every week in school. I'm all for Halloween and Easter as candy ground zeros, but I resist candy just for the sake of candy, or as a boredom reliever.) It's almost as if we're supposed to have something sweet and comforting in our mouths to help us manage the stresses of daily life. And artificial sweet is so meaningless and disposable, so it doesn't matter. Which is cool on one hand, but alienating on the other.

Did you guys read the Little House books? I'm thinking about the scene in one of the middle books--Plum Creek, maybe--in which Ma gets hold of some white sugar and makes some white cakes for Laura's birthday. And how special they were. I wonder what it would be like to live without having sweet tastes at our disposal so easily.

So I was thinking about how useless all these musings were, and how they aren't helping anyone, and then realized that we could actually all be helping each other. I believe, without a doubt, that the reason so many of us are so stressed and tired and stretched out and unhappy with ourselves is that we're eating the typical Western diets and living the post-post-modern lifestyle.

So I'm going to propose a challenge. 60 days, starting next Wednesday, Feb 27 (so we have time to figure out what we're going to do and to have a last hurrah) and running until April 26. Do three things to improve your health, whether that means giving something up (ahem, diet soda) or doing something new (ahem, T-Tapp Basic Workout Plus) and stick with it as well as you can during those 60 days.

Everyone who "finishes" will get some sort of prize, which I haven't determined yet, and which will undoubtedly have no actual value. "Finishing" will mean that you're still doing it on April 26 and haven't given up, even if you slip up a bunch of times during those 60 days. Consistency, not perfection.

Here are some suggestions of things you could do to improve your health:

Switch out your coffee for green tea.
Stop drinking diet soda (or Crystal Light) and drink water instead.
Actually start drinking 64+ ounces of water a day.
Take Omega 3s every day.
Cut out refined sugar.
Switch from refined carbs to whole grains.
Start reading all labels and not using anything with high-fructose corn syrup.
Exercise for 15-25 minutes a day.
Start running (the 60-day Challenge will end just about the time all the summer 5Ks start). (Read's DoctorMama's post on how to start here.)
Take up T-Tapp (read Summer's post on how to start here.)
Eat 5+ servings of vegetables every day.
Take the stairs every time.
Walk/bike to work.
Go to bed at a decent time.

Please suggest more in the comments. Next Wednesday on the official start, we can all post what our three things are going to be. (I know what mine will be already: Switch out my delicious, delicious coffee for green tea, eat 5+ servings of vegetables a day, and go to bed at 10 pm every night.)

Is anyone else interested in the challenge? Or is it going to be me doing it alone?

Vote here/ Vote aquí

Let's talk politics (we've already talked sex and religion).

If you're an American living in one of the Super-Duper Tuesday states and registered as a donkey or elephant, please vote in the primary!

The boys and I went to vote this morning before school. At 7:45 I was the 46th person to vote for my party in my district (precinct? whatever the small partial neighborhood areas in NYC are called). My older one always helps me vote by pulling the lever at the beginning, helping me find the people so I can flick the little mini-levers for the people I'm voting for, and then pulling the lever to register the vote.

How do you guys get your kids involved in the political process? How do you vote where you live?

Here in the US, each state has different physical methods of voting. New York State still has the really old-school machines with the levers*. Other states have different methods, from electronic machines to paper ballots.

I'd explain our primary process, but I'm not exactly sure I understand it myself. (I thought I did, but was then trying to explain it to an Australian client last week and realized I had no idea how the primaries actually choose the candidates for each party. I don't know how the delegates actually fit in. I fear I was supposed to learn this in a year in which I was more concerned with my stretch acid-wash denim miniskirt and silver flats.) If there's someone who can give a concise explanation of the relationship between delegates, primaries, and states, I'd appreciate it.

Let's talk about how we get our kids interested in the process and how we stay interested ourselves. Feel free to ask questions about other countries' political processes, and we'll try not to be offended and will answer to the best of our abilities.

* My friend's husband used to get paid by a certain political party in a certain northeastern city to jimmy open the back of the machines and change the vote count with a screwdriver when he was 11. Ah, the wheels of democracy.