A status report.

The weather is warmer and outside beckons!

From March 5

Maia spent several hours outdoors yesterday with me and Nana Dawn (mainly in our backyard), and again, today, she and I went to campus to explore and enjoy the warmth. We went to the U's Natural History Museum, which was a first; the museum boasts several old-school prehistoric skeletons and models (of the green, scaly, tail-dragging-on-the-ground variety), but Maia was enthralled. She was a bit afraid, too, so I carried her in my arms the whole time, but she didn't want to leave. We saw skull casts of a T-Rex, a Triceratops, a Diplodocus, and an Allosaurus, and there are full skeleton casts of Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, and two Mastodons. (Maia can say the names of all the aforementioned beasts; Triceratops is her favorite.)

She was decidedly not interested in the hominid and ancient human skeletons and skulls, which was not surprising. That stuff is my favorite, but I think it'll be a while before Maia's willing to go there. :)

Maia's favorite parlor trick of the moment (or, at least Mama and Dada's favorite): she somehow picked up the spelling of our last name. She's probably heard the two of us spell it frequently enough over the phone or at the Y or at the kids' museum . . . so now she knows it herself. If you ask her how to spell her last name, she'll say the whole thing, slowing down a bit at the last I-O. :)

Brian and I were hanging out last night in the hour between Maia's bedtime and the start of The Office, and we had what evolved into a "how are we doing with our parenting philosophy?" kind of discussion. These seem to come up every couple of months, when we re-examine what we're doing with Maia and why, and how she seems to be responding.

We've both had people say to us, on several occasions, some version of this thought: "Before baby's born, sure, read all the parenting books you want. But once the kid is here, the best place for all of that stuff is the garbage can!" It's what I tend to think of as the "reinventing the wheel" philosophy of parenting: we're on our own, there's no use in all of that psychobabble, and research into parenting techniques and philosophies is for the birds. Brian and I are decidedly in the opposite camp, in that we believe very strongly that parenting is an art and a science. It requires daily creativity and improvisation, certainly, but there are also volumes and volumes of studies and books out there that can illuminate paths and raise questions along the way. Of course, some of it's complete nonsense (ahem, Ezzo), but there's some really wise stuff out there, too.

So, in the interest of the scientific, analytical, reflective side of parenting, Brian and I like to periodically question ourselves, our assumptions, and how we're doing. Here's some of what we came up with:

• We're very proud of our continued ability to keep Maia in the care of family all the time (well, except for an hour a week at church). This has been a yearly improvisation that's demanded some economic vigilance on our part, but we're happy about this choice and how she seems to be thriving with it.
  
• We see Maia moving out of her developmental stranger anxiety, and into fears that seem to be more imaginative and "distant" in nature (that's the best way I can describe it). Things are scary to her now because they signal bigger and stranger ideas in her head, I think. Her fears are very visual in nature these days, too--she's scared of things that look scary.
• Maia appears to be a very confident person. She orders food for herself at cafes and restaurants, wants to climb big staircases and discover new corners of the world on her own, and yet she is also clearly able to state when something is too much for her to explore by herself (the dinosaur fossils today being a great example).
• We're seeing all the normal and necessary oppositional behavior of toddlerhood, and we feel good about the ways in which we place limits and set expectations. For example, we sit down to dinner at the table around here, period. Maia sits with us until dinner is over. She might refuse to eat or decide to raise a stink, but the establishment of consistent routines and habits around food (meals take time, we don't rush when we eat, etc.) is something we really care about.
• Research about TV and toddlers is relatively clear, and so this is one example of a time where the science of parenting has led our decision-making. We've downloaded few animated shows for her to watch (episodes of "Max and Ruby"), but at this point I'd say Maia's weekly TV watching amounts to about 30 minutes per week, on average. Almost always, if Maia's awake, the TV is off.

I know that the vast majority of parents live in the bubble of wholehearted belief in the supreme awesomeness of their own kids (it's what gets you through the sleepless nights and poopy diapers, after all), and so I'm not alone here. :) Taking a moment to pause and say "good for us" for developing philosophies, testing them, and reflecting upon them feels productive and worthwhile. As I say a lot here in these blog posts, I'm proud of all three of us.