the OTHER mother

Return of the T-Rex

Today we saw dinosaurs at a museum here in San Diego.

Shish!

Greetings from the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, CA.

Photos by Sean Claudio Mancillas and Scripps Oceanography via flickr

Bird Rock Coffee

Good morning from San Diego, CA.  Mmmmmmm.

Happy Holidays from Grrrlville USA

Dear Friends and Family,

In the spirit of “better late than never,” we are sending you another year of news along with our best wishes.

This year Robin (a.k.a. Baba) has become addicted to online word games such as Babble and Scrabulous. If the scientific studies are correct, Robin’s in no danger of getting Alzheimer’s. As Ping! (her online identity), she is quick-witted and fast, unscrambling words, piecing together letters, and racking up points like a card shark. As the family historian Robin continues to post bright photos and shiny plot summaries of our lives. Her blogs number 4 now, and they’ve received more than a half million hits, so if you’ve been lame and out of touch, click here, here, here, or here. Robin still brings home the bacon literally and figuratively. The staff and board at WITS recently honored her 10^th year as Executive Director with Italian cream cake and kind words. She deserves both. During the month of April Robin participated in A Poem a Day and wrote 30 poems in the wee hours of the night. She never thought she’d be labeled a Texas Poet, but that moment has arrived. Robin’s poems “Damage” and “The Grief Snapshot” are featured in the Lone Star anthology The Weight of Addition. Despite these depressing titles, Robin manages to remain quite cheerful most of the time, and her hearty laugh still fills even a huge theater. Robin does lots of things to keep the family boat afloat—picking up size 5 diapers and yogurt on the way home from work, giving Moriah the cat her nightly diabetes shot, paying the bills so we have hot showers and a working stove, giving horsey rides to Carrie, helping Pearl select tomatoes at the Farmer’s Market, and coaching Marcia on how to poke someone on Facebook. You get the idea; Rob’s enthusiasm is enormous, her job endless.

Your dear friend Marcia is in the midst of an awakening. After wandering around for a long time in the fog, she is coming to life again—the sunshine is stunning, the sea dazzling, the air salty and clean. After 10 years of graduate school, teaching, and focusing on matters of the mind (semiotics, global hegemonies, cyberfeminism… ummm, yeah), she is diving headfirst into the body. In yoga she’s learning how to bend, twist, and yes, arch her middle toe. She lives a vegan-esque lifestyle with daily staples such as asparagus, kiwi, and quinoa. Her breath smells faintly of garlic and onion, but she still needs kisses, so don’t hold back. So far, her midlife crisis has played out benignly, even positively, but she does fantasize at least once a day about moving the family to Isla de Mujeres and buying motorcycles for the mamas, surfboards for the girls. About 10 hours of the week Marcia works outside the home teaching creative writing to elementary, middle, and high school students. She’s also writing a book for the nonprofit C-STEM about sea turtles, robots, John Biggers, and geo-positioning (if you can’t see the connections, folks, buy the book). If you have a good imagination, you can find Marcia drinking peach oolong tea at Antidote or strolling down Heights Boulevard listening to The Beautiful Girls on her iPod. If you’re more realistic, you can find Marcia hanging out with Pearl on the monkey bars at Proctor Park or chasing naked Carrie through mountains of mulch. This is the life of Marcia (a.k.a. Mamu), and it’s a lucky one indeed.

Pearl, who is 3 going on 6, spends most days in character. This week she is Batty and her sister is Cilantro. Her days are a story in progress, and anything can launch a new chapter—a misplaced eraser, a broken clothespin, a picture of Dim Sum. When she draws or paints pictures, the results are often what she calls “story maps.” She also has a talent for designing elaborate zoos out of building blocks. They become stories too. At her Montessori preschool, she constructs with pink towers, brown stairs, and red rods. She has a good memory and knows the names of dozens of dinosaurs as well as her 23 classmates. Lately her favorite videos are stories about dogs—Lady and the Tramp, Balto, and Milo and Otis. Pearl loves to run, whether it’s on the playground at school or in the dance studio at NIA Tots. Her best friends are boys—Alex, Miles, and Avery. She can dress herself and help her sister solve all her “baby problems.”

Carrie turned 2 on Thanksgiving Day. Although following in Pearl’s footsteps might not be an enviable position, Carrie has definitely taken on the role, and she’s made it her own. She plays practical jokes that she finds quite hilarious. She is an avid photographer, when Baba’s camera is accidentally left within her reach. In the spirit of postmodernism, her favorite photographic subject is…herself. Carrie loves playgrounds, and she will try ANYTHING, much to her parents’ distress. She enjoys small dolls and the three-story doll house that David and Glenda gave us. Despite the limitations of a two-year-old vocabulary, she tells stories too. Most feature one of three basic plot lines that can be summarized as: Want to play? Help, help! Happy Birthday!

Carrie’s best friend is her sister Pearl. When she wakes up in the morning, instead of asking for Mamu or Baba, her first words are, “Where is my Pearl?”

You can keep in touch throughout the year by bookmarking The Other Mother and by emailing Marcia or Robin any old time. We hope you will. Happy 2008 to you!

Love, Marcia, Robin, Pearl, and Carrie

Stockings were hung by the chimney...

with chocolate candy inside them.  And that's what really counts, here in Grrrlville.

Is there a Doctor in the House?

Lucky 13: Places I've Been

'Tis the season for making lists.  Here's mine.

1. The Hoh Rain Forest
2. Santa Monica Pier
3. Isla Mujeres (The Island of Women), Mexico
4. San Gimignano, Italy
5. The Chelsea Hotel, NYC
6. Farnsworth Art Museum, Portland, Maine
7. The Hamburg Inn, Iowa City
8. Vancouver Folk Music Festival
9. Bald Knob, Arkansas
10. Parc Guell, Barcelona, Spain
11. The Beer Can House, Houston, Texas
12. Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee
13. 24 Hour Church of Elvis, Portland, Oregon

I got this meme from Smiler.  You can do it too!

R U Axed?

Parents.com, we are very disappointed!  You just axed one of the funniest lesbian mommy blogs around. Have a heart.  Please give us Harlyn Aizley's Are You My Mothers back for Christmas. 

(Find out the whole story from Suburban Lesbian Housewife.)

Variations on a Theme

Pearl has made dozens of drawings of this type.  They're all different combinations of dinosaur families protecting and waiting for their eggs to hatch.  Maybe those of you who guessed she wants a baby brother know more than we do!

This Is Not a Gift

Marcia's family has a no-gift policy this year, which is how our holiday slide show got its name.  Click play to view the past year in Grrrlville condensed down to 11 minutes.  Happy holidays, dear reader!

It's Grrrville 2007

Santa Drops In

Santa Claus (or Claws, as Carrie calls him) stopped in while Marcia and Pearl were getting their holiday haircuts.  Would anyone like to guess what Pearl told him she wanted for Christmas?  (This is not a trick question.)

They Dig This

This is stuff our girls are really into these days.

Pearl (age 3 1/2)

Stories, stories, stories

Land Before Time

Lady and the Tramp 2

Groovy Girls/Boys (especially dressing them)

Castles made of building blocks

Dogs

Dinosaurs

Milk

Her mommy Marcia

Hoho the lion who eats only marbles

Jigsaw puzzles

Pizza

Carrie (age 2)

Doing it by herself

"Helping" others

Little Einsteins

Calliou

Teddy Bear

Her blankie

Bandaids

Outside

Dangerous things--matches, scissors, electrical sockets

Cats

Action painting

Her sister, Pearl

Milk

Cooking in her play kitchen

Tea parties

Avocado sandwiches

Question of the Day: From Pearl

Here's a question that Pearl is asking everyone lately:

Do you have a chimney?

Wonder what's on her mind.

Action Painter Jackson

I suppose you could argue that there's a little Jackson Pollock in each of us, but in Carrie, I fear it might be more than just a little.  Here are two of her paintings done on Monday.

As a subtle strategy, I'm considering removing the book OLIVIA from her room. In the story Olivia creates a giant Pollock-like masterpiece on her bedroom wall and gets a major time out for it.

Carrie strictly refers to Olivia, the main character, as PIG, by the way.

It's a Strike

Bowling for toddlers, a Chanukah tradition since yesterday. Or perhaps it was the day before.

Chanukah Report 2007

We've lit our Chanukah candles every night except for the first one.  Pearl says the prayer in Hebrew with Marcia and me.  Carrie chimes in on occasion with a chant of Tan-Dulce, Tan-Dulce!  That's how she says "candles."

Chanukah 2007 went well, and tonight was the final night. We ate oatmeal pancakes instead of potato and played Candy Land in stead of dreidel, our usual quirky substitutions, but everyone seemed to enjoy the nightly rituals.  That seems significant.

Oh, and by popular demand, here's the link to a story from Chanukah 2006 in which you may discover whether or not Pearl is jewelish.

Pearl Loves to Move It Move It

This past weekend we went to the annual Lights in the Heights celebration in our neighborhood. They close off three streets so that only pedestrians, red wagons, roller bladers, and baby strollers have the right of way.  The neighborhood is festooned with the light of candles and electric facsimiles all along the route.  Singers, string quartets, bell choirs, and balalaika societies play from the front porches of the houses.  Houstonians bake 10,000 cookies that are distributed freely.  Lights in the Heights has an old-fashioned spin on fun that I always enjoy.

This year the NIA Moves group had a dance space and welcomed participants to join them. Pearl knows the co-founder Christie from playgroup and yoga, and she had a wonderful time dancing.  At first she ran back and forth in front of the group, but eventually she started to pick a a few of those moves.  Her happiness was luminous.

Carrie Loves Candles

Pearl at 3.75

Happy Hanukkah, Y'all

Hanukkah started a day late in Grrrlville, but originally I'd thought we'd be starting two days late.  So we're ahead of the game, see?  It's not that we're utterly unprepared; it's because I had a work meeting Tuesday night and Marcia taught classes on Wednesday night.  But last night (Wednesday) we began in earnest. 

Earlier that day, Pearl and I did a Hanukkah presentation for her class at school.  She said the prayer in Hebrew with me, and chimed in at various moments with the refrain: I like the chocolate pennies.  It was as though she were channeling Carrie. Her classmates seemed to enjoy learning about Judaism.  We brought dreidels, gelt, and sugar cookies for everyone.

The past week has been a whirlwind of prep, but now that gifts are acquired and wrapped and the family DVD is almost finished, I'm hoping to relax and enjoy the holiday season.

Quotable Pearl

While watching the Wiggles Christmas video with Carrie, Pearl stood up and shouted: Santa, come on out of that movie, okay?

5 Blogs That Always Make Me Laugh

1. Weebles Wobble
2. Random Outlaw
3. Hahn at Home   
4. Are you My Mothers?
5. CityMama

Feel free to list your funny favorites in the comment section below.