Trucks. Dogs. Balls.

Back in 2005, after Katrina and before Chad and Tate, I found myself in a Cambridge kitchen, reading a poem on a refrigerator. I was visiting a lovely young couple that was expecting their first child, and they had pinned up a reminder to themselves of how they wanted to raise their unborn child. The gist of it was this: do not limit your child's potential by subtly sending them messages of what they can and cannot do, and should and should not do, based on their proscribed gender role. The poem went on to emphasize how not only does this extinguish our children's gifts before they are even recognized, but it also robs our society of finding the best man (or woman) for whatever task is at hand. I loved it and tucked it away in my memory, to save for my child-bearing days. One day, my child would grow up in a thriving, gender-neutral environment where he could safely pursue his life long dream of becoming a dancer, a harpist, a hairdresser, a cook, a whatever, with me and my husband cheering him wildly along the sidelines all the way until he thanked us profusely at the James Beard award ceremony. And then came Tate.

I try, really I do. Tate and I look at flowers and birds every day. I try to limit the number of shirts he wears that have numbers on the back, and introduce him to dolls at our neighbors house. He had a pink rattle. His best friend is a girl. Heck, I even dressed him up as a girl! But, it matters not. I have never told him that a car says VROOOOM and yet I find his standing at his windowsill, rolling his little Hot Wheels along, vroooming. I have never even bought him a toy car, yet somehow he has accumulated a garage full. I have never overemphasized dogs to him, nor airplanes, balls or trucks. Oh, trucks. Trucks, cranes and buses are truly in a category of their own - they send him to the moon.

Take this example: we went hiking in the Tillamook Forest on Sunday, and after Chad and I spent a good thirty minutes singing "The Ants Go Marching" and pointing out all of Oregon's finest flora and fauna, Tate was done. He was ready to get out of the Ergo, back on his feet, and run fast and furious in any direction. We were about to turn back but instead climbed a little further and LO AND BEHOLD we came upon a construction site. Cranes! Trucks! Tractors! Things with huge metal jaws! And Tate's reaction:

This was the first time he had ever said "WHOA!!!"

And then, before we got back in the car, we saw Smokey the Bear. Who, by the way, had jeans on so tight that I almost felt uncomfortable standing by him. Tate thought that he was a giant and very still dog. Here is his reaction:

Notice that he is panting at Smokey.

I don't know if this is a boy thing or strictly a Tate thing, but I'm not going to fight it. I got him a place mat with planes and rockets on it, and he looked at me like I was heaven-sent. If he wants to be a fireman or an ultimate fighting champ or a ballerina or a florist, we'll just stand by and smile at Tate becoming more Tate, every day.

A wonderful father's day weekend!

Stuff I'm thinking about

By PEGGY ORENSTEIN

Published: March 11, 2010

Four women I know — none of whom know one another — are building chicken coops in their backyards. It goes without saying that they already raise organic produce: my town, Berkeley, Calif., is theVatican of locavorism, the high church of Alice Waters. Kitchen gardens are as much a given here as indoor plumbing. But chickens? That ups the ante. Apparently it is no longer enough to know the name of the farm your eggs came from; now you need to know the name of the actual bird.

Data source: The National Gardening Association.

Human Empire

All of these gals — these chicks with chicks — are stay-at-home moms, highly educated women who left the work force to care for kith and kin. I don’t think that’s a coincidence: the omnivore’s dilemma has provided an unexpected out from the feminist predicament, a way for women to embrace homemaking without becoming Betty Draper. “Prior to this, I felt like my choices were either to break the glass ceiling or to accept the gilded cage,” says Shannon Hayes, a grass-fed-livestock farmer in upstate New York and author of “Radical Homemakers,” a manifesto for “tomato-canning feminists,” which was published last month.

Hayes pointed out that the original “problem that had no name” was as much spiritual as economic: a malaise that overtook middle-class housewives trapped in a life of schlepping and shopping. A generation and many lawsuits later, some women found meaning and power through paid employment. Others merely found a new source of alienation. What to do? The wages of housewifery had not changed — an increased risk of depression, a niggling purposelessness, economic dependence on your husband — only now, bearing them was considered a “choice”: if you felt stuck, it was your own fault. What’s more, though today’s soccer moms may argue, quite rightly, that caretaking is undervalued in a society that measures success by a paycheck, their role is made possible by the size of their husband’s. In that way, they’ve been more of a pendulum swing than true game changers.

Enter the chicken coop.

Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious (not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their food — who these days can’t wax poetic about compost? — it also confers instant legitimacy. Rather than embodying the limits of one movement, femivores expand those of another: feeding their families clean, flavorful food; reducing their carbon footprints; producing sustainably instead of consuming rampantly. What could be more vital, more gratifying, more morally defensible?

There is even an economic argument for choosing a literal nest egg over a figurative one. Conventional feminist wisdom held that two incomes were necessary to provide a family’s basic needs — not to mention to guard against job loss, catastrophic illness, divorce or the death of a spouse. Femivores suggest that knowing how to feed and clothe yourself regardless of circumstance, to turn paucity into plenty, is an equal — possibly greater — safety net. After all, who is better equipped to weather this economy, the high-earning woman who loses her job or the frugal homemaker who can count her chickens?

Hayes would consider my friends’ efforts admirable if transitional. Her goal is larger: a renunciation of consumer culture, a return (or maybe an advance) to a kind of modern preindustrialism in which the home is self-sustaining, the center of labor and livelihood for both sexes. She interviewed more than a dozen families who were pursuing this way of life. They earned an average of $40,000 for a family of four. They canned peaches, stuffed sausages, grew kale, made soap. Some eschewed health insurance, and most home-schooled their kids. That, I suspect, is a little further than most of us are willing to go: it sounds a bit like being Amish, except with a car (no more than one, naturally) and a green political agenda.

After talking to Hayes, I rushed to pick up my daughter from school. As I rustled up a quick dinner of whole-wheat quesadillas and frozen organic peas, I found my thoughts drifting back to our conversation, to the questions she raised about the nature of success, satisfaction, sustenance, fulfillment, community. What constitutes “enough”? What is my obligation to others? What do I want for my child? Is my home the engine of materialism or a refuge from it?

I understand the passion for a life that is made, not bought. And who doesn’t get the appeal of working the land? It’s as integral to this country’s character as, in its own way, Wal-Mart. My femivore friends may never do more than dabble in backyard farming — keeping a couple of chickens, some rabbits, maybe a beehive or two — but they’re still transforming the definition of homemaker to one that’s more about soil than dirt, fresh air than air freshener. Their vehicle for children’s enrichment goes well beyond a ride to the next math tutoring session.

I am tempted to call that “precious,” but that word has variegations of meaning. Then again, that may be appropriate. Hayes found that without a larger purpose — activism, teaching, creating a business or otherwise moving outside the home — women’s enthusiasm for the domestic arts eventually flagged, especially if their husbands weren’t equally involved. “If you don’t go into this as a genuinely egalitarian relationship,” she warned, “you’re creating a dangerous situation. There can be loss of self-esteem, loss of soul and an inability to return to the world and get your bearings. You can start to wonder, What’s this all for?” It was an unnervingly familiar litany: if a woman is not careful, it seems, chicken wire can coop her up as surely as any gilded cage.

Peggy Orenstein, a contributing writer, is the author of “Waiting for Daisy,” a memoir.

Peninsula Park in bloom!

Our latest project..

Chad and I have created a lovely nook! We have this little breakfast area surrounded by windows that we love to sit in, and Chad recently built a table and bench along the windows in it to give us more space. Then, we went to the fabric store and bought some sturdy "home dec weight" fabric for the cushions and some pretty stuff for the pillows. I'm not quite done with the cushions yet, but I'm halfway there and wanted to take a pic of it to show the process. Loving our new space...

Things that are growing

Rows of arugula..

Kale, spinach...

Tomatoes, lettuce, leeks...

Sweet snap peas....

Pretty climbing roses....

The weed from hell...

A beautiful confederate jasmine to remind us of New Orleans...

Climbing hydrangea, which I hope will eventually cover this rather sad wall...

Strawberries, lavender....

My hair. This may be the first time it had been out of a bun in like a year.

A Day in the Life

WAKEUP

nurse Tate

put on coffee

unload dishes

make breakfast

eat breakfast

cleanup breakfast

load dishes

sweep floor in kitchen

vacuum carpet

change Tate

change self

wash our hands, brush our teeth. forget hair.

make bed

read books to Tate

play in tunnel with Tate

make lentils for dinner tonight while playing music and dancing with Tate

nurse Tate

put Tate down for nap

clean bathtub

wash windows/mirrors

put on 2 loads of laundry

check email

do pilates! yay!

start to shower...hear Tate waking up

QUICK! SHOWER!

nurse Tate

make lunch for self, Tate

eat lunch

clean up lunch

load dishes

change Tate

take Tate to Children's Museum

chase Tate

chase Tate

chase Tate

chase Tate

kiss Tate's cheek after he falls

laugh at Tate

be proud of Tate

take cell phone pics of Tate

don't correct people when they say how beautiful SHE is. whatever.

run to car with Tate in torrential downpour

go to toy store

warn Tate about stairs

buy wooden push toys and 2 more pacifiers, just in case

sing to Tate in car to Professor Banjo, who rules

play with Tate's new push toy all over house. it won't work.

color picture for Mimi and Pops with Tate

throw crayons around house

pick crayons up

tape box of crayons that Tate has ripped open and is frustrated about because they keep spilling

please don't color on walls, color on paper. please.

chop sweet potatoes, apples

feed Tate apples

laugh

turn on Rebirth, dance with Tate and apples

unload dishes

set table

wait for dada

DADA!!

dada fixes toy

eat dinner, love wine

go to farmer's market

buy rhubarb, strawberries

go on swings with dada, Tate

pet puppies

eat hazelnut icecream

play with car windows. up and down, up and down.

naked baby time!!

bath time

naked baby time, part II!!

nurse Tate

sing to Tate

nigh-night, Tate

load dishes

take out garbage, paper recycling, glass recycling, compost. OCD Portland.

make rhubarb crisp

fold 2 loads of laundry

move couch downstairs with Chad

tend to compost bin

kill slugs that are destroying kale

put new sheets on bed

make butternut squash casserole

unload dishes

spill olive oil on carpet. curse quietly. consider rubbing it in with foot. feel ashamed.

clean up olive oil.

If you're wondering what it's like to be a stay at home mama, here's a sample day.

And here we are. 9:51pm. Am hoping to read from 10:20-10:30, and then fall fast asleep.

Some words from CS Lewis, via Bubba

My brother -- truly one of the finest human beings on the planet -- asked me tonight to edit one of his seminary papers for a class he is taking. And like always, his words floored me. He floored me first with his vast knowledge of church history, doctrine and theology. Then he floored me with his unique perspective and insight. And finally he floored me the simple gracefulness of his words, illustrating complex ideas in such subtle, beautiful, Bubba-tinted language. Like a song. I am so proud of him, everyday. Truly.

He wrote about CS Lewis tonight, whom he writes about so often. One of his literary heroes and personal role models. After I finished his paper, I started reading some of Lewis's work myself, and came across this whopper, which I then jotted down on a note card and taped to my fridge:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

Goodnight.