Big Girl

These are the kind of fashion decisions 'Big' little girls are apt to make...

        Kiley is a “big girl”, as she reminds me at least a thousand times a day. She wears big girl pants (not diapers), sleeps in a big girl bed, and rides a big girl bike. She even uses the big girl potty (not the potty-chair), though I must admit she is barely big enough to accomplish this and is perched quite precariously on the edge of the seat when she does. (There have even been a couple of incidents where she slipped off of the big girl potty in mid-process, resulting in an unpleasant situation, and recriminations from me about her being more careful and from her about me being more watchful. One of the many hazards of being a big girl I’m afraid.)  Because she is a big girl, she can’t understand why she is not allowed to do certain other things that big girls do. Things like ride in the front seat of the car, use a metal knife and fork, or go out front by herself. At three years old, this longing to do what she is not yet mature enough to do will be a perpetual condition that she will struggle with for at least the next eighteen years and even beyond. “Stop treating me like a child” is the universal demand of all those who are still children.

Being a big girl is like being married; it’s not a destination it’s a journey. Big girlhood is a relative condition that slowly evolves over many years and even decades. That is hard for a three year old, sixteen year old, and sometimes even a sixty year old to understand. So I suppose it can be quite frustrating for the big girl in question when she has achieved big girl standing and yet does not fully partake in big girl privileges. This can be exhibited by minor or major divergences between big girl status and big girl abilities.

For a three-year-old, the minor divergences between desires and abilities are legion and are the kind that makes a caregiver give pause and contemplate whether the big girl in question is ready for that particular step. (Managing a big girl, of any age, is an art. It’s kind of like fishing. If you give them too much slack they spit the hook out and are gone from you. If you don’t give them enough slack they break the line and are gone from you.) Sometimes, however, what your big girl believes is within her power and abilities is so far out of the realm of possibility that it’s ludicrous, (like the sixteen-year-old who thinks she should be able to go to Cancun with her friends for spring break.)

Just the other day we were out on the deck when I suggested that it was lunchtime. Mackey, my “little girl”, immediately chimed in with: “Nuggets and fries!” Inspired by this suggestion, Kiley added, “Yeah, let’s go to McDonald’s!”  I was in a good mood and both girls had been angelic all day, so I acquiesced to their demands and we all piled into the car. On our way to McDonald’s the “big girl” in the back proposed: “Just drop me off at Friendly’s. I’m going to get some ice cream.” This from someone who is firmly strapped into a car seat, by the way. I briefly entertained the idea of dropping a three-year-old off at Friendly’s with a five-dollar bill in her hand but decided that was probably not in her best interest. “No, we’re going to McDonlad's”, I replied. This instigated a discussion reminiscent of many debates I’ve had in the course of raising three teenage girls and ended in similar fashion: with me laying down the law and her feeling that she was the victim of unjust oppression.

Such is the condition of the “big girl”. It has always been thus and always will be. We, none of us, are ever as big as we think we are. From the toddler learning to walk, to the teenager learning to drive, to the mother of grown children learning to “let go”, one hallmark of maturity reached only leads to another milestone yet to be conquered. That is only as it should be. For in the final analysis, Kiley becoming a “big girl” is nothing more than her growing beyond what she already is. And if any of us stop doing that then it’s time to pack it in.

Nan

Pressing The Reset Button

        I have a confession to make. It has been more than a year since I began writing about my experiences in caring for my grandniece Kiley. Every Monday for the past fifty-two weeks I have posted a new offering describing my thoughts, feelings and interactions with a little girl as she grew from six weeks to one year old. Being exposed to Kiley on a daily basis made me think about all kinds of wide ranging subjects and I wrote about them too - baby related topics like naps, baby food,  SIDS, milk, security blankets, diapers, car-seats, and many others, and topics not so obviously related to small children like swimming, summer, dreams, flying, snow, dust mites, and even the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812. A little girl who had crept into my life and made a comfy nest there inspired all of these things. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that childcare is drudgery that does not engage the mind and imagination.

         cared for Kiley’s mother and aunts when they were young children the way I care for Kiley now. Those years, when they were small and an everyday part of my life contain some of my most cherished memories, but because they were so young they don’t remember any of it now that they are adults. So when I began writing these little essays about Kiley and me, I did it out of a desire to leave her a chronicle of our time together. Not so much a day to day account of what transpired, but rather a memory of us, so that she could look back many years from now and have a glimpse of the way we were and the way it felt when we were together.

         I decided to turn those writings into a blog, I wanted to convey the feeling of adventure and new beginnings that I felt when I undertook the responsibility of looking after another little person just new to the world. And so I began at the beginning, describing my excitement and trepidation at the prospect of once again looking after a little one and helping to mold and shape her mind and spirit. The first year of those posts, my blog to date, correlate to the first year of Kiley’s life up to her first birthday and the announcement that her mother was expecting her second child in August, a second charge for me to look after on a daily basis. Though everything I wrote about actually happened from the time she was born to the time of her first birthday, that first birthday didn’t happen this January, it happened two years ago. Kiley isn’t one year old she is actually three. On top of that, the second child referred to as being due in August was actually born eighteen months ago (in August). It’s a girl! Kiley’s little sister. Her name is McKinley. We call her Mackey and she joined Kiley as part of my daily responsibilities when she was six weeks old. Together, the three of us have had many adventures and I want to relate them while they are still fresh in my mind. And so, I am pushing the reset button and starting anew. Kiley is three years old, Mackey is eighteen months, I am fifty-nine, and let’s take it from there. Kiley and Me and Mackey makes three. I hope you don’t mind my little deception too much. There was no evil intent, I assure you.  Below is a small montage of the last three years, just to give you an idea of what I am up against. The pictures are of Kiley and Mackey but none are of me. I don’t take a good picture, and besides, I am of the firm belief that by taking one’s photograph you can steal their soul and I still have a need for mine, so….

Nan

The Chronicles of Nannia - Episode Five

        So, as I mentioned in the post about Kiley's birthday, it appears that another little munchkin is on the way and I will soon be dealing with two tiny tyrants instead of just the one that I am currently charged with. Double the diapers, double the drama, double the fun. Though I admit to a certain amount of trepidation, I am actually looking forward to the prospect of juggling babies again. I have past experience with that, as I've stated before. In fact, I'm anxious to see if my juggling abilities have stood the test of time. It has been quite a few years since I've used them. In fact it has been nearly thirty years since I was called upon to undertake such an enterprise and endure the ordeal. That's a long time. So long in fact, that I scarce remember most of the experience. Then again, there are some things that one can never forget.

         The year is 1986. The Oprah Winfrey Show is broadcast nationally for the first time. Microsoft Corporation goes public, creating four billionaires and twelve thousand millionaires from Microsoft employees. The space shuttle Challenger explodes seventy-three seconds after launch. The Iran-Contra Affair erupts when it is discovered that members of the Reagan administration planned to use money from an illegal arms sale to Iran for the illegal funding of the Nicaraguan anti-Communist rebels known as the "Contras". The explosion of a Russian nuclear reactor at Chernobyl creates the world's worst nuclear accident. Iron Mike Tyson becomes the WBC Heavyweight Champion of the World. My youngest daughter is three, my oldest is twelve, and I am thirty years old.

         In January of 1986 I am about to have a house full of kids. I am already providing daycare for my four-year-old niece, the daughter of my husband's brother, plus my own three daughters, ages twelve (known as No. 1), five, and three. That is about to change. In December my brother's wife had given birth, and it was an unusual delivery. She had gone through nine months of pregnancy and the ordeal of labor only to find out after the baby was delivered that there was another one right behind it! Two girls! Twins! We have all heard about such surprises, but I, for one, always wondered how it could happen. Of course, this was December of 1985, and though ultra-sound technology was available it was not yet routinely used the way it is today. Now ultra-sound is used for a number of diagnostic purposes and, of course, to determine the sex of the baby. But back then, ultra-sound was not so commonly used and there were still varying opinions on the safety of bombarding our unborn loved ones with high frequency sound waves. Obviously, her obstetrician had not picked up on two heart beats either so she, as well as everyone else, was unaware that there were two cupcakes in the oven until the oven door had been opened. Gads! It came as quite a bombshell to everyone and the general reaction was something along the lines of   -  Wha-a-a-a-at?

        My father was a twin and my oldest sister had twin boys, so it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that my younger brother would also be thus afflicted, but the fact that no one saw it coming made for a good deal of drama. They already had a two-year-old (Lee-Lee) so suddenly having two more (Erica and Stephanie) so unexpectedly came as quite a shock. Even more shocking was when they asked me to look after all three of them when she went back to work. And most shocking of all was when I said yes. And so, at the end of January -  ding-dong - here comes a two-year-old and two infants.

        The three kids I was riding-herd on (not counting my twelve-year-old) had suddenly become six, and all of them below the age of six - a five-year-old, a four-year-old, a three-year-old, a two-year-old, and two one-month-olds. Oy! Thank God that three of them were out of diapers, but that left three that weren't. I really don't know how I managed, and I'm sure I wouldn't have if it had not been so easy to fall in love with all of them. Though it was often a chore, my affection for them prevented it from ever being a burden.

        My twelve-year-old was a big help even though I had to constantly watch her to prevent her from making an escape out the front door - "Get back here!"  Still you can't condemn a twelve-year-old to daycare drudgery no matter how desperate you are. So most of the time she was either in school, or outside and out of sight, though never fully out of mind, but I could always rely on her when the logistics of caring for six pre-schoolers became problematic.

        Not surprisingly, it is all kind of a blur now, nearly thirty years later, but there is one thing that sticks out in my memory. And that is the twins. They were so adorable! My husband took to calling them "Weebies" after the toy Weebles that were popular at the time (Remember them? "Weebles wobble but they don't fall down").  He still calls them that today. Even though they are almost thirty years old, I can't remember the last time he called them by name. It is never "Erica" or "Stephanie" to him, it's always just "Weeby or "Weeb"" regardless of which one he is addressing.  It's like they are merely different aspects of the same person to him. He's weird.

        Even though they were fraternal twins, not identical twins, they looked exactly alike when they were babies (fraternal twins are no more genetically alike than regular siblings). As they grew older, however, they took on their own personalities and physical characteristics. By the age of two or three, Erica looked and acted like Erica and Stephanie looked and acted like Stephanie, at least to their parents and me. To everyone else, however, those who weren't around them so much, they still looked exactly the same and people would often ask me  -"How can you tell them apart?"  The answer was easy - "They don't look alike." But when they were babies, they did. They were absolute bookends. I could not tell them apart. And that created a problem.

        To differentiate the twins, their mother often dressed them in different colors, Erica in purple and Stephanie in pink. And when they were infants, that is how I kept them straight - Erica is purple and Stephanie is pink (and sometimes yellow and green though I don't remember which was which on those colors.) Needless to say this is a recipe for confusion and even disaster.

         One day, early on, when the twins were babies and the other kids were running rampant as usual, I was bathing the wee ones. Something happened that required my attention, (I don't remember what), so I took the babies out of the water, lay them down on a towel, and took care of whatever was required. When I turned my attention back to the twins, I was faced with "The Dilemma" - which was which? Suppressing a feeling of panic, I determined to resolve the problem, but try as I might, I could not tell them apart! What was their mother going to say? In desperation I turned to the other kids for their opinions. Holding up one wiggling, wet "Weeby", I asked the all-important question, "Does anyone know who this is?" but all I got was blank stares from four pairs of pre-school eyes.  Lee-Lee, to her credit, gave it the old two-year-old try and declared it to be "Stephrica". Thanks for nothing.

         What was I to do? The only thing I could do -  "eeny, meeny, miney, moe. I proclaim you Erica" and dressed her in purple. I don't know if their mother ever caught on to what had happened, but she never said anything. And that wasn't the only time I mixed them up either. By the time I could tell them apart it had happened three or four times to me and maybe even a few times to their mother. Who knows? They are twenty-nine years old now. Erica is a teacher and Stephanie is an accountant - or are they? Maybe the teacher is actually Stephanie, I don't know. Does it matter? What's in a name after all? The whole world knows the accountant as Stephanie so she is Stephanie. And if she's not, well, "a rose by any other name is still a rose, and smells as sweet."  I'm just glad there is only one Kiley. That makes things easy, uncomplicated. I'm way too old to go through that kind of thing again. Kiley looks just like herself, though I must say that at certain times, when she smiles a certain way, she looks just like her Aunt Stephanie. Erica is Kiley's mother, by the way. At least I think she is. Probably. Maybe.

Nan

Rosie

        Robot nannies? Have you heard about this? It seems someone has come up with the idea of creating robots to perform as nannies. Apparently, the main focus for this bizarre idea comes from Japan where a shortage of day care workers is forcing the Japanese to think outside the box. Well, maybe it isn't so outside the box in Japan. The Japanese are probably the most high-tech-obsessed society on Earth. They are even more obsessed with tech than Americans which, considering recent reports of people camping out in front of Apple stores weeks in advance of the iPhone 6 debut, is saying a lot. Still, it is one thing to trust an electronic device to run herd on your personal data and a completely different thing to trust the well-being of your offspring to the vagaries of the silicon chip.

        I admit my opinions on the subject are not without prejudice. (Full disclosure) I, myself, am a nanny after all. In fact I am practically the quintessential nanny (Mary Poppins without the scary edge). Even my given name "Nancy" has, over the years, been so frequently mispronounced by my linguistically challenged charges as "Nanny"(then shortened to "Nan") that I have, in effect, become what I do, even to adults. And so it rubs me the wrong way to think that there are those who believe that a machine, regardless of how sophisticated, could take my place, or that what I have provided for my charges could be so easily duplicated. I rebel at the notion.

        Then again, isn't this the exact same situation that workers through the years have experienced since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution? Our society and our places in it have undergone radical transformation more than once ever since the dawning of the age of machines. People are displaced by devices that can do the jobs they once did quicker, cheaper, and better - (robots on the assembly line, robots performing surgery). Even whole industries just disappear as new inventions do essential things in a different way (where have all the blacksmiths gone, or the once ubiquitous telephone operators?). The development of computers, or course, has accelerated this process exponentially. This is called progress, and though progress is ultimately beneficial it also comes with a price to individuals as well as to society as a whole. Part of that price is the effect on society's image of its self and of the individual's place in it. That is why the Industrial Revolution spawned not only new industries dominated by machines but also new songs, stories, and folklore revolving around the competition of man against machine. These tales (stories like those about Paul Bunyan or John Henry etc.) are possibly the way our collective ego comes to grips with the realization that our creations are, in some ways, greater than ourselves. They also serve to assure us that, regardless of their abilities, "they" will in some ways never be equal to what resides in "us". It is telling that John Henry ("a steel driving man"), through super-human effort and will, defeats the "steam drill" only to collapse and die heroically of exhaustion while the machine, ego-less and tireless, goes on driving steel into the future. The machine may outperform and outlast its mortal maker but it can never be noble.

        So let's be honest, shall we, leaving all ego aside. Has the present state of robotics reached the point where we could even remotely consider entrusting such a machine with the most precious things in our lives? I mean, seriously, I don't know about you but I'm not overly impressed with the abilities of those robot vacuum cleaners you see on TV. If we can't have faith in a robot's ability to clean our carpets effectively, how can we believe they are up to the task of raising children? That's what we are talking about here isn't it, raising children? Because that is what nannies do, you know, they help us raise our children. They are not just baby sitters; they are baby raisers. The hand that rocks the cradle, changes the diaper, and disciplines tiny tyrants shapes the next generation and the daycare worker we hand our "precious" over to every morning will, for better or worse, have an influence on the development of our child. Taking care of children requires both an emotional commitment and emotional engagement. To do that in any meaningful way a nanny robot would have to, at the least, mimic those emotions appropriate to every situation in the daily lives of its charges if not actually experience those emotions. For robots to take over the responsibility of something as uniquely human as child rearing would require a machine that exhibits spiritual qualities; qualities like patience, humor, kindness, and nobility. I'm not an expert on robotics but it seems to me that a computer algorithm that sophisticated is still a bit out of our reach regardless of how rapidly advances in computer science are coming. It may be that such a machine will never exist, but I wouldn't discount mankind's ability to achieve anything it sets its collective mind to. If we can imagine it we can probably build it, eventually any way. Who knows? Perhaps in another couple hundred years or so our creations will actually be able to "sing the body electric" (as imagined by Bradbury not Whitman). Until that fateful day, however, letting the androids take charge of the children is a dangerous and subversive idea. Rosie doesn't exist yet.

Nan