swimming

Why didn't I know until now that the Looni has a free outdoor pool for anyone with an ID, and it's open 10am-9pm every day except Sunday (1pm-9pm)? Pools always seem like a luxury to me - I know lots of people take them for granted. But in this climate I consider then a goddamn blessing. I should have been hanging out in the pool 2 summers ago when largely pregnant!

We found it and took Casper there yesterday, in her new swimsuit that looks like a wetsuit (it's one of those UV-protecting ones.) (I need a new swimsuit, too - mine dates back to 1999 and the lining is starting to go. But damn, they're expensive for what you get!) She was very nervous at first - willing to dangle her feet but nothing more for a long time. She sat in mr. flea's lap at the edge, and I'd ask her if she wanted to swim and she'd say, "No." mr. flea said her heart was racing. But then some five year olds showed up (most of whom I recognized - I live in such an insular world) and she watched them swim around with their daddies, and was willing to get in my arms. At first she did the juvenile-monkey cling, but by the end she was relaxed enough to let me swoosh her from side to side in the water with her legs free, and was wet up to her neck. It's a start. I'm a little sad that she isn't a water enthusiast or bold enough to go jumping into the unknown, but she is who she is. And it would be surprising that a child of mr. flea and me would be anything but cautious.

We took mr flea's bike in for a tune-up and new tires. He hasn't ridden it since I've known him, but the man has got to have some exercise outlet. Pondering the possibility of a chair for Casper on the back. I don't have a bike myself, but was loving some of the gorgeous retro-girlie bikes from Electra they had (http://www.electrabike.com/home.html).

my baby!

I just watched a film that DXM made of Casper and me (with cameos by Theodosia and Ellen S and Nutty and mr. flea's shirt) in the Public Garden last year. With the McCloskey Ducks, and Swan Boats, and police horse, and funny faces and drool. I don't have a baby anymore. That little person from last summer was my baby - I have a little girl. She gets more talkative and knowing and sophisticated every day. I have a little girl!

(Thanks, DX!!)

books read

La Leche League, at the crossroads of medicine, feminism, and religion, Jule DeJager Ward (UNC Press 2000).
This was fascinating, because it places La Leche League within the context that its founders inhabited - that of progressive mid-century American Catholicism. Something I knew nothing about, and still don't know a lot, but this book made LLL so much more understandable to me. It also deals with LLL's relationships with the mainstream of American medicine and the feminist movement - and how in some areas it is very close to, and in other areas very far from, these two entities. It's emblematic of how far we've come since LLL was founded in 1956 that women nowadays can buy scads of books about breastfeeding; in 1956 there was such a dearth of knowledge that women who wanted to breastfeed grabbed on to LLL with both hands. The 7 founders had a first meeting with themselves and 5 pregnant women they knew; at the second meeting 30 people showed up; at the third people could not fit into the house. All without advertising, jus word of mouth. It's also so funny to read about the culture of the founders, and how different (and similar) it was to that of modern LLL members, who seems to fall mostly into the Christian-homeschooling camp or the hippie-granola camp.

Girls & Boys: The Limits of Nonsexist Childrearing, Sara Stein (Scriber, 1983).
This book pissed me off. The author purports to do what the author of Our Babies Our Selves did - look at the role of nature and culture in shaping gender roles and how they affect the way we treat our children. The author does no such thing, however. The author treats as evidence of "nature" studies conducted on American middle class white infants and toddlers that show that girls are more girly and boys more boyish at quite early ages. The author never stops to consider that these studies might be examples of culture in action - that by 18 months a child knows that girls play with dolls and boys play with trucks, because of the images on television, they way parents and friends treat her, etc. There no discussion of evolutionary sex roles or cross-cultural ones. Very unsophisticated, just a rehash of mid-century child psychology, and this leads the author to conclude that gender sterotypes are innate and you can't raise a boy who likes dolls? FEH.