10 Ways Parenting is like the Peace Corps

So I was in the Peace Corps - the "toughest job you'll ever love."  Next to parenting, that is.  It occurred to me this week, staying home with my son who has a mysterious fever-causing illness, how similar my life is to when I was in the Peace Corps.  Here's how:

1. Children, often partially naked and hungry, are watching my every move making me feel like a big fish in a little glass bowl.  
2. When driving distances , I often find myself eyeing good spots for places to pee by the side of the road.  (But for the kids - not for myself, so that's a small difference.)
3. I never feel fully clean...  except for the two minutes during or right after a shower, and then the feeling quickly dissipates.
4. There is an ongoing theme of illness - some diagnosed, some mysterious, often causing fevers and diarrhea and vomiting.
5. I get to learn several new languages!  The language of parenting, some sign language (of the baby variety), and each of my children's' unique words for things that until recently only I could understand.  It's not French and Kabiye, but it's close!
6. Sometimes I feel like I'm forging through the parenting landscape with nothing but a bicycle and a book.  Before I had "Where there is no doctor" but now I have "Where there is no super nanny" and at least one partner who's got my back!
7. You can never have enough batteries, duct tape and stuff to wash your hands.  
8. Gift giving has climbed the ladder to a more important place in my life.  Birthday parties galore.  Rewards for job well done.  I'm not used to this.
9. It feels like constant problem solving.  "How am I going to get my gas canister to town when the market isn't until Wednesday and there's no way to find a taxi?" is very similar to "How am I going to navigate around Target if I need a huge bag of dog food and the baby demands that I carry him on my shoulders?"
10. I learned that the feelings of wanting to run away or hide, and shower everybody in sight with love and affection are not as far apart as you might think.

I am now fully convinced the guy who crafted the Peace Corps slogan was also a parent and thus the similarities.  Now I must go tend to my naked 2-year-old asking for food.

Scientific(ish) Parenting: Getting Big Sis to Eat Her Vegetables

Two posts in a row?  And two in Scientific(ish) parenting?  Goes to show you I've been thinking about this a lot!  I have quite a few more lined up too!  Unlike the potty training graph, this one is a current experiment in progress for Big Sister.  (Potty training is in progress for Baby Genius, however... stay tuned for a comparison chart in the coming years).  I think the graph below and accompanying text say it all.  You might ask - why don't you use the 80% success rate approach more?  I have two cookbooks to help me in this quest - one from The Sneaky Chef and the other from her arch-nemesis, Jerry Seinfeld's wife - here.  I am working on figuring out what things the whole family will eat that I can hide veggies in.  Would love recipes if you have some to share!  :) MB

Scientific(ish) Parenting: Potty Training Success

There are no perfect parents. For those of us trying to be mindful, strategic,
successful parents (hopefully all of us), this is a hard pill to swallow. Maybe
it's just me, but I like to think that there are people out there who've figured it out. Somehow, that idea
gives me hope that I, too, will figure it out.... or that "it" is "figure-out-able."

However, I also know there are no right answers, no golden gooses, no silver bullets, and no more good analogies for me to use in this sentence. We all do the best with what we've got. There seems to be a lot of stretching of the truth on parenting websites. Pish posh, I say, to reports of perfect children sleeping through the night from day one and always sleeping in their own bed. Pish posh, I say, to reports of potty training 13-month old with narry a soiled diaper to be had again. Pish posh, I say, to reports of children demanding to eat vegetables at every meal. Such reports, and others like them, just serve to make the rest of us turn green with envy and wonder what we're doing wrong.

In the midst of all this pish-poshing, and in the spirit of "doing the best with what we've got," I've decided to periodically post a "scientific(ish) parenting" post in which I create a graph reflecting a
parenting reality as we have come to know it.

Click on the graph to see the enlarged version - It is graph #1: Potty Training Success. I believe it reflects a reality of our parenting. We set our goal and learn something about how to get there. We try something - usually involving praise, candy and fruitless convincing! If it doesn't succeed like you had hoped, try again. Something new this time.

It took Big Sis probably 1 year to learn to use the potty, from age ~2-1/2 to a little past age 3. We still have occasional accidents, but they are few and far between now. In the end, all us 'adults' did was lay the foundation. She had to decide for herself when the time was right!