The Art of Becoming

Because we live in St. Louis, my kids are growing up in close proximity to their cousins. They are roughly around the same age, and they are all in the same grade level at the same school. It's pretty idyllic. The second grade teacher this past year told me that my daughter and nephew often function like twins in the classroom - both the familiarity and comfort, and then sometimes the desire to break away from that familiar person to do their own thing. As luck and genetics would have it, for each child I have, my brother and sister-in-law have the same age child, but of a different gender or sex. I see gender as a socially constructed reality, and I see where stereotypes about the differences between men and women come from. I don't see anything wrong with naming the ways boys are different from girls. Part biology, part genetics, part nature, part nurture, there are millions of reasons why our kids display the personalities and talents they do. However, I do think it's ...

Our air conditioning was broken for a week: it was the first week of July in St. Louis. Thankfully we had a couple window units that could help us limp along until we secured a company to install a new one. We closed off many of the larger rooms, completely abandoned the third floor, and lived out of 4 rooms on our main level. Though we tried other configurations, the kids settled on sleeping in our room every night. Only once did I wake in the middle of the night and step on a child. However, a child woke me up every. single. night. The lack of functioning A/C, the extra heat floating around the house, and the confined space put everyone in a crabby mood. One of these days, I was hoping to coax our oldest child out of a bad funk by purchasing the supplies needed to make slime (his idea). As soon as Sean had his focus and felt more excited about his day, then the middle child threw a fit about something. We had just arrived home from purchasing the slime supplies, and Audrey was so a...