Oh San Diego...How You Cost Us!

Yes, we're back and in pretty good shape! San Diego was super fun for all of us. Maelin ADORED the ocean and even I didn't imagine how much fun it would be to watch her scampering in and out of the waves for hours. She'd stand at the point where her feet were wet, but she could get out of harm's way quickly enough if need be and yell, "Big One!" "Little One!" "Here it comes!" and then run as fast as her little legs could carry her through the water. She LOVED it.

It was amazing. I would gladly pay twice the amount of money this trip cost in order to watch her do that again. Very glad we brought the camcorder. It was awesome.

She also really liked the Mexican dancers in Old Town. She stood for about 30 minutes with her mouth wide open just staring at them and then as soon as they left the stage to take a break, guess which little Drama Queen decided it was her turn to dance? Yup...she ran right up on stage and twirled, skipped and danced to her heart's content. It was adorable. She looked so proud of herself as she swirled her skirt and kept saying to me, "Mae Mae dancing?" (Note to self: look into dance class when she's 3.)

We also made it to the world-famous San Diego zoo. It was great fun to watch Maelin admire a new zoo and animals she had never seen before (Koala bears and Panda bears were our favorites too). It was a bit hot that day and I am so not a fan of the heat-and-humidity weather, but it was worth it for the moment when we got her into the Sky Tram that takes you from one part of the zoo to the other (it's huge). She kept saying, "Mae up high!" and looking all around and laughing and beaming and just loving life.

She also really liked the swimming pools. (shocker, right?) The hotel we stayed at kept the water really warm (too warm for my taste but the little flags you raised to have someone immediately bring you a drink made up for that), so she loved it. She loved being thrown and spinned and one night on our way to dinner, she ran up to the pool glass wall and just pressed her nose against it, like a puppy begging for someone to adopt her. She would NOT leave this perch until I promised her we would come back after dinner ("Mama promises???")

However, CA is not a cheap place to be. Our one night out with the lovely babysitter cost us $350 all together. Really. Between the $100 we paid Karen, the $50 for different taxis and things, $150 for an awesome fish dinner that we can't get here in CO, barhopping in places that charge $9 for a gin and tonic, (oh, and the room service dinner the babysitter ordered which I had totally told her she could do), the final total for us to go out from 6pm to 11pm was $350. Oops. Good thing the tequila bar we had stopped at made that bill a bit easier to swallow.

We tried to skip the expensive hotel drink option by walking to a nearby 7-11 type place for some food and liquor to keep in our room. A six-pack of Coors in a can was about $8.50. I got a six-pack of the good local micro-brew and that was about $12. Horrendous, but better than the $5.75 the hotel charged when the lovely waiter brought you your drink by the pool. Or the $5.50 for the Bud Light. We also tried to skip paying restaurant prices for breakfast one day by walking to the local Einstein's. We got 2 breakfast bagels, a milk for Maelin, a coffee and a diet Coke. This cost us $22. Really.

So bottom line is this: San Diego is a fabulous mix of great Mexican food, Southern CA lifestyle, beach, ocean breezes, flowers, pools, fresh fish, fun night-life but be sure you bring your moo-la: you're gonna need it.

Would I change anything? Not on your life. The memories I have of Maelin's first visit to the ocean is not something you can put a price tag on. I'll forever remember the joy in her face as she scampered around by the water's edge with sand all over her, her toes dug in, laughing and screaming at the waves as she tried to avoid them. Then looking up at us with pure happiness in her eyes. Who cares about money during a moment like that?

Not me. Not ever.

(I didn't label each of these pics cause frankly, I think they're self-explanatory and I want to get back to reading Eclipse...)

Off We Go!

Kevin, Maelin and I are off to San Diego for our first ever family vacation. We are planning on taking Mae to the beach, the zoo and we figured we'd take her downtown to see what a new city looks like. She's such a good traveler: I've taken her to Traverse City, MI, Seattle and Disneyland but this will be Kevin's first experience traveling with a child.

We'll see how he does. I was going to go get him some "rescue remedy" from Vitamin Cottage (it's a natural Valium) but I think he'll be okay. I'll let you know.

We were lucky enough to even get a babysitter for one night while we're down there so Kevin and I can go out. A friend of mine has a good friend who lives about 5 minutes away from our hotel so I talked to her a few days ago and Karen is very excited to come meet Maelin and play with her. I'm excited about that because in general, my favorite part of vacations is the night life. We won't be clubbing it up by any means, but it'll be nice to be able to see what the Gaslamp district is like after dark.

Maelin is so excited: she keeps talking about the airplane, the beach and the koala bears. It's going to be awesome to experience this through her eyes. She also really likes the train at DIA, so we're in for some fun with this little one.

You know I'll post pictures when we get back. And we're off!

Love and Pain...Mother Love??? Some thoughts about Chinese Foot Binding

One of the reasons I love summer vacation so much is that I finally get to catch up on my reading. I've always been a voracious reader and I'm so busy during the school year (and frankly exhausted by the time I get home and get Mae to bed), that I have a stack of books that I'm just dying to read by the time June gets here.

I've been slowly making my way through some excellent reads. Finally got to "Twilight" and loved it (going to bring the other three books in that series with me when we go on vacation next week.) "Eat, Pray, Love" was next and I thought it was an extremely well-written account of Italy, India and Indonesia (the best part of that book for me was recognizing all the places Liz visits while in Italy).

Yesterday I started "Peony in Love" by Lisa See and I finished it today. I'll preface this blog post by saying that I adore Lisa See: one of my favorite books of all-time is her "Snowflower and the Secret Fan." She is a master at Chinese Historical fiction which is quickly becoming one of my favorite genres. However...there is a aspect to Chinese history that has always turned my stomach. Even more so now that I'm a mommy to a beautiful girl.

The practice of foot binding is mentioned (and actually plays a significant part) in both of See's books that I've read. Honestly, I didn't know a whole lot about the practice until I read "Snowflower." It had such a disturbing account of the barbaric procedure that one of the ladies in my book club actually stopped reading "Snowflower" because she just couldn't stomach it. I read that book before I was a mommy and was disturbed, but didn't really think too much of it. "Peony" has another gruesome account of the practice and I decided that I owed it to myself to find out once and for all what this practice is, who did it, why, and how it affected girls for their entire lives.

Basically, foot binding begins when a girl is 5-10 years old. Her bones are more pliable and soft then. Mom or Grandmother (if the Mother couldn't bear to do it), would take the 4 smaller toes and fold them underneath the foot and wrap it tightly with bandages. Then the child would spend 2 agonizing years walking around on these feet. The bones would eventually break. Death from infections was common. The goal was to achieve the perfect "Lotus Blossom" shaped foot...which was visually pleasing and if her foot was smaller than 4 inches, guaranteed to help her get a valuable husband. I'm not going to go into the procedure much more because I respect the fact that this is a stomach-turning topic, but click here for a link to an excellent essay complete with pictures of foot binding.

I imagine some of you who come to this blog to see pictures of Maelin or to amuse yourself with my latest classroom story are asking yourselves why on earth am I tackling this horrendous topic? Well, it's not because I broke my little toe tonight (oh really, I totally did and I'm in a huge amount of pain right now). As ironic as that would be, that's not why. The reason why I'm bringing up this barbaric (in my opinion) custom is because of the writings that I've read during my research for this post about the opinions and actions of the mothers who carried out this custom for 1,000 years. They have chilled my soul.

Here are a few of the quotes I have discovered that were commonly told the girls or each other as their mothers and grandmothers and nurse-maids were physically holding them down to break their feet:

"Only through pain will you have beauty. Only through suffering will you have peace"

"Give your daughter the gift of your Mother Love"

"Every pair of small feet costs a bath of tears".

"When a Celestial takes into his hand a woman's foot, especially if it is very small, the effect upon him is precisely the same as is provoked in a European by a young and firm bosom..."

The reason I wanted to research and write this blog post was because of the 2nd quote. "Give your daughter the gift of your Mother Love." In Chinese, the written character for mother love is composed of two elements: love and pain. During the foot binding procedures, it was generally an elder female member of the girl's family or a professional foot binder who carried out the initial breaking and ongoing binding of the feet. This was considered preferable to having the mother do it, as she might have been sympathetic to her daughter's pain and less willing to keep the bindings tight. A professional foot binder would ignore the girl's cries and would continue to bind her feet incredibly tightly, thus achieving the ideal "Golden Lotuses" shape. "Mother Love" seems in this case not to refer to the staggering pain the girls went through, but the pain the mothers went through inflicting it.

As parents, we all have degrees of "Mother Love." The first time you tell your child "NO!" and really mean it and you see that little baby face crumple into tears tests your Mother Love. When your kid cries because he doesn't understand why mommy and daddy don't live together any more tests your Mother Love. Discipline in most forms tests your Mother Love (the old, "This hurts me more than it hurts you"). However, reading about these procedures physically turned my stomach. Now that I'm a mommy, I can't imagine inflicting this sort of Mother Love on Maelin. It's staggering. I totally understand why some mothers snatched their daughters away and ran off with them, never to be seen again. That was the minority. Most of the mothers gladly went through with this custom believing it would help their daughters secure their positions in life and achieve higher social standings. Thus the Mother Love.

Now I know there are blogs, essays, articles out there that use this practice as another way to point to how women have been mutilated throughout different cultures, different centuries. I agree with them. However, I wrote and researched this as a way for me to work through the emotions I had when I read about the Mother Love. I can't stand it when Maelin has a cold. I cried real tears when she had the flu and I couldn't help her. When she was 15 months old, she had a seizure in my arms. It was the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to me. At the hospital afterwards, the nurse made me hold her down while she inserted a catheter into her bladder to get a sterile urine sample. I remember holding my baby down while she screamed and fought and cried and looked at me with such confusion in her eyes. She seemed to be asking, "Why Mommy? You're supposed to be the one keeping me safe, not hurting me!" I cried right along with her.

Love and Pain. That's the closest I ever want to get to it again.

So in conclusion I imagine all of us are glad this practice has stopped. We're happy to be Americans and live in a country that has never practiced any severe female mutilations. However, I know I will do some more research on what I can do to help the millions of girls who undergo neck stretching, or genital mutilations, or countless other atrocities that are performed in the name of culture. As I hobble off to bed on my poor little broken toe (just one...not the entire foot) with my ice and my Advil, I know this for certain: sympathy and apathy walk a thin line. Easy to do on two healthy feet.

Wordless Sunday Picture

Auntie Kat told me a while ago that if I was going to do a "wordless" picture, it'd better be about Maelin. Since Auntie is in Germany for the next few weeks (and missing Mae terribly, she told me), I'll indulge her.

Here you go Auntie Kat!

Is Real Love Chance, Work...or Choice?

Now that I'm home for a few more weeks (how fast summer flies by will be another post), I've been able to catch up on some reading that I've been putting off. I finally made it through Twilight (LOVED it!!) and I'm hoping to finish the other 3 in that series before school starts again.

Another book I've read recently is The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. I was somewhat "assigned" to read this (more about that in yet another post), and although I'm usually not very interested in self-help books, this one had some good things to say. In fact...I think I believe most of it.

The premise of this book is this: have you ever been in a relationship where you just felt that you and your partner were speaking different languages? Where you couldn't believe how hard you worked to let your partner know the things you needed and wanted and your partner responded with exactly the opposite? Have you felt that you were talking Swahili to your partner? Or your words just flew right over his/her head? If your answer is yes (which I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I bet that's most of us at one point or another), Chapman's view is that you and your partner speak different love languages.

I bet some of you wanted to stop reading at this point. I'm starting to go all Oprah on you...this is something she would do, right? She reads some amazing book (Eckhart Tolle ring a bell???) and tries to get everyone on her bandwagon on how it totally changed her life and we should all start a book club this very day and read this book.

Well...I'm not Oprah. This blog doesn't reach millions of people. However...I know some ladies who read this blog semi-regularly when they're up late and don't feel much like watching another Snuggie infomercial who might actually benefit from reading this book. It sure beats the cost of marriage counseling...

But, I digress. The idea is that there are 5 love languages that each of us speak. In general, we have one primary language and one secondary. These can change during the course of our lives (the language that you speak is different during your courtship and changes after you've had a baby, etc...) but for the most part, your primary language is what speaks love to you. I'm not going to write a huge posting about every point I liked from this book because minus all the Jesus talk (which wasn't too bad...I was able to skip over it), I agreed with pretty much everything Chapman had to say. This post would be huge and frankly, I'm too excited to go start New Moon to write a real book review. You can also look that up here on Amazon if you want. There are tons of positive reviews and you can read those too if you have already read New Moon.

There are 2 points to this book that I'll take away with me. The first one is:
"The in-love-heady-feeling you get when you are first together with someone ISN'T real and DOESN'T last." Wow. So what he's saying is that all those romantic books, movies, songs that I've taken to heart in the last, oh...34 years aren't real???? You mean most people don't talk until the sun comes up after they've been together for 15 years??? (oh come on...you know you did this at least once with someone you had just started dating!) You mean to say that after I've been with him for 13 years my heart won't skip a beat when I see his name on my caller ID???? Hmmmmmm....

The point that Chapman is making is that the heady "in love" experience that we all love (the "new" feeling) has been studied and is temporary. It is impossible for your system to maintain that sort of intensity for longer than 2 years. 2 years! That's what we get people!! That's it...of that wonderful, dizzy, can't-think-of-anything-else feeling. The problem with this is during that 2 years is when most of us move in, get engaged, possibly even get married. Then what??? Who hasn't heard someone complain, "It all changed after the wedding."? Who hasn't watched some wonderful "The Notebook" or "Serendipity" movie and wished their love life was as passionate years down the road? Those aren't real and are in fact, fiction. Having my MA in Behavioral Sciences, I kinda knew that already but it sure was pleasant to have it confirmed by actual studies.

The other point I enjoyed from this book is the actual "Love Languages" themselves. As a veteran of many relationships (some better than others, but that's neither here nor there), I know how hard it is to make a long-term relationship work. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe because I'm the 3rd child, I seek too much control. Maybe it's because of the crazy religion I was raised with. Maybe it's because I'm a master at being passive-aggressive. Maybe it's because I'd happily move to Disneyland and work in the Candy Kitchen wearing the red and white striped outfits. I don't know. Or maybe...it's because I was speaking the wrong language.

Now before you start screaming "Oprah!!" at me, hear me out. This really does make sense. Has your partner ever done something for you (ie: told you he loved you and you sure do look nice tonight) and you said thanks, but deep down you were cursing the mother f$%#@$ because what you really wanted was for him to get off his lazy a$%# and fold the friggin laundry? Or have you spent days, weeks, months on locating the perfect gift (scoured Craigslist and eBay) for the first edition of the Radiohead anthropology, had it shipped over from London, wrapped and ready to go on the 6th anniversary of your first kiss...and he says "Thanks." Then proceeds to look confused and asks, "Was I supposed to do something?"

Sigh...

I'm willing to bet we've all found ourselves here at one point or another. The problem isn't that he doesn't care or you are just a screaming, nagging hag. The problem is that you aren't speaking the same languages. You may as well be speaking Latin.

Here are the five languages. See if you're lucky enough to be able to spot your primary and secondary language right away (then you won't need to read the book!!)

Quality Time***Words of Affirmation***Gifts***Acts of Service***Physical Touch

(I'm going to say that before you start moaning that ALL men speak Physical Touch, it involves way more than just sex. Enough said.)

Here's your challenge if you want to improve your current relationship: you need to figure out which language is your primary language and communicate that to your partner. The book also gives plenty of ideas and examples of things you can do for your partner in THEIR language. You also need to figure out which language is your partner's primary language so you can start speaking it.

So that's it. That's my new soapbox. We'll see how long I stay on it. For now, I'll leave you with this quote that a friend sent to me recently:
No one falls in love by choice, it is by CHANCE.
No one stays in love by chance, it is by WORK.
And, no one falls out of love by chance, it is by CHOICE.