Kid Crocs are generally offered in a variety of solid colors, which eases the challenging process of having your baby look well put together (ie. her outfit matches).  Bonus: if you child wants to liven up his or her footwear the geniuses at Crocs have just the thing for you: shoe charms.  You simply insert them into those little holes.  

these charms for kids crocs are called Jibbitz
and i must say that i think they're pretty cool-

I opted out of the charm bit.  Not for any stylistic reason – I actually think that they're quite festive – it's just that I'm sure Poppy would pull them off and leave them laying around just like she does everything else.  She's a messy little Pop-Tart.

poppy helping Ikea organize their merchandise-

Optimal Toddler Footwear

Crocs are probably definitely the optimal choice in modern toddler footwear.  The fact that socks are optional was the tipping point for me; given Poppy's perpetually squirmy comportment, I welcome anything that eases the process of getting her dressed.  If she's being feisty (which is fairly often), this process easily qualifies as an athletic activity: there's some chasing, then you have to steady and balance The Pop-Tart's small but limber body long enough to get it into some pants.  It's often the case that, once you get her left leg into the pants and are working on the right leg, she takes that left one back out again.  So yea, the option to skip an entire genre of clothing is lovely.  

But adults wearing Crocs...that's a different story. Nothing says 'I've given up' like wearing rubber shoes. 

shoes

Don’t You Love It When People Are Really, Really, Unambiguously Into You?

In the adult world, people don't clap when you enter a room.  It's a shame really, that lack of boisterous enthusiasm for other human beings.  That's why I'm always happy that Poppy is always happy to see me.  It's quite refreshing when someone applauds and yells 'yaaaayyy' upon your arrival.  Whenever I go to pick her up from Mommy's Day Out (that's just a euphemism for 'daycare' that was invented to make the institution more palatable) she's generally pretty busy doin' her work and playing with her friends.  When she does look up and see me standing there it's always the same sunny salutation – with the clapping and the 'yyaaaayyy' – and it makes me feel like I'm doing something* right. 


*Even if 'that thing' is merely the effective cultivation of a 1 person fan club.

Therapy Session

We do not read to Poppy often enough, and I know that that's really bad.  It's just that I find it tedious; I don't read fiction personally, and kid books are fiction.  I'm very American in that regard.  You know how it goes: 'no time to waste, must learn things and improve self'.  

So, while Poppy's little books are cute and the illustrations can be entertaining and all, I still find them too tedious to read to her on a nightly basis.  I'd say that I probably only read to her 4 or 5 times per week.  These sessions generally begin with a reading from Bisou (by Benoît Charlat): 

followed by a Hairy Maclary book (by Lynley Dodd):

this one is actually pretty fun. there's a dachshund
named Schnitzel von Krumm ('with a very low tum')

Do you remember that split-screen scene in Annie Hall where we experience Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in their respective therapy sessions?

Alvie's therapist:  'How often do you sleep together?'

Annie's therapist:   'Do you have sex often?'

Alvie:  'Hardly ever, maybe 3 times per week.' 

Annie:  'Constantly, I'd say 3 times per week.'

I'm fairly certain that, if Poppy had a more advanced language capacity and if we both had therapists, a split-screen scene of our therapy sessions would play out in a similar fashion:

My therapist:  'How often do you read to her?'

Poppy's therapist:  'Does she read to you often?'

me:  'Hardly ever, maybe 5 times per week.'

Poppy:  'Oh my goodness...constantly.  I'd say 5 times per week.'

http://www.amazon.fr/Bisou-Beno%C3%AEt-Charlat/dp/284865564X/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379347507&sr=1-5&keywords=bisous

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hairy-Maclary-Donaldsons-Dairy-Friends/dp/0670913502/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379347930&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hairy-Maclary-Zachary-Quack-Friends/dp/0141381132/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379347488&sr=1-4&keywords=harry+maclary

The One Couple Who Definitely Read Enough To Their Kids*

There was an article about Stephen King's family in The New York Times Magazine  that left me freshly inspired:

'Entertaining their parents, for the King children, was part job, part enrichment. At bedtime, they were the ones expected to tell their parents stories, instead of the other way around.'  'If reading was a common escape in the King household, it was nonetheless deeply social. They read on tape, but they also took turns reading aloud after dinner, passing around “The Hobbit” or the Narnia chronicles.'

the article highlighted how close the Kings are to one another-

Did the Kings simply not have a TV in the house when their kids were growing up?  

There's this wonderful french expression:  to be <<en train de>> something.  It means to be 'in the middle of doing something', or to be 'in the flow of doing something'.  I imagine that, even in the face of the hypnotic vortex that is TV, if you began reading The Hobbit or The Poisonwood Bible or Fifty Shades of Grey  aloud with your child after dinner, you guys would likely become engrossed in the story and your communal experience of the it.  So engrossed that after dinner novel reading would quickly become a habit.  You and your lot would eventually even prefer  family storytime to the clacking television sooner rather than never.




http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/magazine/stephen-kings-family-business.html?pagewanted=all

*Well, there's probably more than one, but I don't know of any others offhand.

The Ultimate Recalibration

The Pop-Tart's passport photo/mug shot

I'm an enormous fan of  letting one of the many sets of grandparents take Poppy for a sleepover.  Babysitters are great for a date night planned on the fly, but locally or even quasi-locally based grandparents are the ideal supplementary caregivers.  Let's face it...at this point, they probably love your baby more than they love you, therefore the grandparental sleepover is a mutually beneficial institution.  They get to play with their beloved grandchild, you get to throw maturity and responsibility to the wind (or out the window...whichever you prefer) for an entire evening.  When you and your significant other return home after a thorough romp about town, the air in the house has a light and peaceful quality reminiscent of days gone by.  
Point made.     

Lena Dunham's Mommy

I love it when people are out there, you know, just out there doing what they've always wanted to do and doing it well.  In addition to her epically original and epically successful HBO series Girls, Lena Dunham recently got a $3.7 million advance from Random House to write a book of essays (that's a hardy piece of validation).

So where did this 26 year-old find career inspiration?  In her interview with Alec Baldwin* on his NPR radio show Here's The Thing,  Lena says that she was inspired by her mother's work as an artist; that she was turned on by its element of permanence.

excellent cardigan Mrs. Dunham

Lena chats with Alec about the source of her closeness with her mother:

Lena Dunham:  Something I like about both my parents, and I’d imagine you’re like this with kids too, is they really talked to me like I was an adult always. And I love that. And I love talking to kids like they’re adults because it’s like they kind of come alive when you just ask them real questions.

Alec Baldwin: Yes.

Lena Dunham: My mom always really let me into her world and say, ‘I’m working right now. I’ll talk to you in 10 minutes.’ Just having that kind of access to her was amazing.

Alec Baldwin: Sincerity.



Lately I've been catching myself speaking to Poppy with that silly, almost cartoonish voice that adults use with kids.  It's shameful.  I'm going to try to speak to her as an adult, without the condescending high-pitches. 



Another interesting part of the interview:

Alec Baldwin: Someone said to me, ‘To be a famous star you have to have two double-syllable names.’

Lena Dunham: My mom did tell me that she gave me my name, which is so funny because it’s not like we have any actors in our family.

Alec Baldwin: You’re real name is what? Svetlana?

Lena Dunham: My mom said, ‘I named you after my Russian great-grandmother.’ My mom said when she named me she thought, ‘I don’t know what you’ll want to do, but this is a great name if she does want to be a movie star.’ That was what my mom thought. Which is so funny because it’s not like my mom’s some crazy stage mom or like -'


Only awesome moms take this kind of thing into consideration.  


Here's a great scene from Tiny Furniture  (yes, Lena cast her mom in her first feature film).  Even though Lena's mom isn't portrayed positively in this particular scene, it's still clear that they have an real and honest thing going (I wish that I wanted/had this kind of relationship with my own mother, but instead we are happily under committed to one another).  If that weren't true I doubt that Lena's mom would be able to say things such as 'like Bob would go to the opening of a fucking envelope' to Lena with such ease.  

Here's the interview podcast:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/heresthething/2013/jan/21/




* Oh Alec Baldwin...that guy is everywhere: Woody Allen films, SNL, random commercials, public radio, the 5 timer's club...and he's apparently also on the board of some international cigar smoking club.