Saisquoi?

Lookit what I have:



Yes, it's blurry. Yes, it's a bad picture. But that? My friends? Is what three looks like. Three is perpetual motion. Three is smiles and screams, hugs and tantrums, all rolled up into a whirling dervish of blue eyes and curly hair.

Two seemed so much more...pensive.



But I have a good feeling about three. Three brings us to the start of early preschool next week. Three brings us some sight reading. Three brings us tons of imagination and a love of princess dresses, crowns, dollies, doggies, and lollipops.

Three is going to be fun.

Note: The doll in the first picture is a 10-inch jointed Waldorf Style Doll from Making Friends on Etsy. If you're in the market for this type of doll, I highly recommend them.

I forgot to post this last week when we went out for "Big Girl Lunch."

C and I are frequently Ladies Who Lunch. She is actually very good company and generally well-behaved. We were both suffering from a cold on this particular Big Girl Lunch outing, and I wanted to try the Pho at Street, a local restaurant/hipster joint specializing in street food from around the world.

C requested a hot dog, but ended up eating a fair amount of my Pho. We went back the following week for more Pho at her request.

Crazy as it may be, I am incredibly proud of having produced a little foodie to keep me company.

This post is L-O-N-G overdue, and I apologize to Annika both for the crappy quality of my cellphone pictures and for the fact that it's taken me so long to post about Emmett. I promise I will take better pictures once I can find my actual camera.



I loved knitting this sweater. The yarn was a YarnPirate teal I bought many moons ago. The pattern was straightforward and the finished product is practical. Unless you're really particular regarding the placement of buttons for boys and girls, this is one of very few items I've knit that could totally be used by a male sibling, should such a thing come to pass. Of course, this sweater doesn't actually have buttons, because C finds them to be offensive.

Toddlers. They are weird.



Speaking of toddlers...I'm not going to have one for much longer. Someone is coming right up on three. MY BABY! WHAT HAPPENED?! C is getting so big. She talks all. The. Time. She loves mermaids and princesses and skulls and dolls and her family and rubber chickens and OMGgiraffes. She was a giraffe for Halloween and is still talking about it.



We have had a very difficult few months Chez Saisquoi, but things seem like they might be mending. I'm debating on how much to air via blog post because some of the stories are not entirely mine to tell. And the ones that are mine to tell are not happy and cheerful and I don't like how they present me as being, you know, human and all. But, at the same time, maybe it's helpful to post the difficult alongside the easy...the awful alongside the awesome. I don't know.

What I do know is that US Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and I have a whole heck of a lot to be thankful for--starting with my big girl who makes turkey pictures with handprints and wants to sing Puff the Magic Dragon every night at bedtime, snuggled up with her Mama and Daddy.

PS: I do have buttons for the sweater. But since my child won't wear the sweater if it has buttons? I'll sew them on when she outgrows it. Oy.

No, I most certainly did NOT have a snack before lunchtime, Mama. WHY DO YOU ASK?

I'm going to tell you something that may surprise, shock, or horrify you. My daughter is over two and we're still breastfeeding.

Actually, if you follow me on Twitter, this shouldn't come as a surprise at all.

I may have been very lucky, but I have had very few issues nursing C. She was an excellent eater from the beginning and initially, I received a lot of support. My support network started to wane after I hit the one year mark, but when I told people that the WHO recommends nursing for two years and beyond, and that our health care provider indicated that C would benefit from nursing till at least two due to her asthma, they usually backed off.

Now that she's two, the gloves have started to come off. What was once the best thing I could give my daughter has now somehow become freakish, strange, and stunting--this aspect of our relationship, something she has known since birth, is now deviant and should be eliminated.

A week or two ago, C and I had a really rough spell. It culminated in her ramping up her need/desire to nurse at a time when I did not want to be touched. It was hard. I felt horrible--I felt like I was failing to live up to what she needed because I needed space from her. Her reaction was to cling to me as tightly as possible. So, I asked for help in an online breastfeeding forum I've participated in since C was born. Specifically, I said that I believe in child-led weaning, that I fully intend to let C wean herself when she is ready, but that I'm having problems setting limits because she's refusing and I'm tired and frustrated. Please Help.

While I did get some virtual hugs and sympathy, the lion's share of comments were, I once thought as you did and when it got too hard I weaned and we were fine, so you should wean too.

Um...no.

This is not to say that for all people weaning is wrong. In our situation I feel to the very depth of my soul that weaning would be the absolute wrong thing to do at this point in time. I know that the reason she clings is because she needs more; my problem was that I didn't have more to give her and I didn't know how to fix the balance.

I was told that nursing is a relationship--when it's no longer working for both parties it should end. Again, while this might be true for some people, this isn't exactly what I want to teach my daughter about relationships. I want her to know that relationships can be hard, but that doesn't mean they're broken--it doesn't mean they have to end. Often, in improving communication and in making changes, the relationship can be improved and made stronger...better...than it was before. That's what I wanted and needed to hear.

I did hear it...from another online friend and from my LLL leader. I learned that what I'm feeling is not uncommon among mothers who are nursing toddlers and preschoolers. Most importantly, I learned different ways of approaching the limits I needed to set with C, and when to allow those limits to relax.

So, why this huge story about my deviant parenting techniques? Because I'm really starting to realize how little support mothers, and perhaps parents in general, receive from their communities--the community at large and even specific parenting communities. Why was the answer to my difficulties with C "wean now, you hippie freak?" Even hearing, "You know, sometimes toddlers are just really needy; it doesn't last forever," would have offered me more of the support I needed at a very difficult time.


The experience has brought home the importance of recognizing that we don't know what's going on in other people's families and that the miracle cure in one home may not achieve the desired results in another. The breastfeeding and cosleeping that have been vital to my parenting and my relationship with C will not necessarily work the same way in other households. I need to respect that when I share my experiences or my reasons for doing the things that I do. I'm happy to hear of the experiences and reasons why other parents choose to do what they do. What I don't like, and what I don't find supportive, is the notion that this worked for me and it will work for everyone--you'll be so much happier when you wean/sleep train/etc. like we did.

That old adage about the village raising the child is true. I bet it will be easier if we base our village on Sesame Street rather than Witch Trial Era Salem.

These were a test-knit for Pumpkin Pie Baby completed in time for C's birthday. Here she is channelling Macaulay Culkin after receiving the mitts:




I used some Peace Fleece left over from a pair of ruffled longies I knit for her this summer, and the mittens knit up quickly. The slip-stitch pattern used for the hands yielded a thick, firm fabric that will be awesome for winter wear--especially this winter of extraordinary snowfall and bitter cold! If I were to make them again, the only change I'd make would be to lengthen the cuff--C has proven adept at removing the mittens and so, for us, longer is better.

Since I've got what I've got, and these were a test knit (meaning no modifications), I'll add a cord to keep them together and threaded through her jacket. Or, we'll limit wear to car trips rather than outside play.

These are actually my second finished objects of 2011. I knit myself a pair of fingerless gloves that I finished on January 2, but I've only got a crappy cell phone picture of those. They are, however, toasty warm--which is very important given this winter of lots of snow and coldness.

Two years ago today you changed everything I thought I knew about myself.
You took the person I was and turned her into a mother.
My sweet, special girl--the baby I had given up hope of ever having, of ever meeting; The toddler who forces us all to see the world through your eyes.
Know that you have brought your own special kind of joy into this world.
And I thank God every day for the miracle of you.