Day 168: Poll Update

You'll notice I'm starting over with a fresh poll. We're not that fond of the name Clement (one friend told Mary it sounds like a disease), and Everett has now emerged as a front-runner. I know I said Everett was excluded "for family reasons" back on Day 114, but on reflection, the reasons aren't good enough to warrant an exclusion!

So Clement is out, and Everett is now in. Unfortunately, in order to make this change, I've had to throw out previous votes, so if you would, please vote again.

Day 168: Montessori

So I've been reading about Montessori education. It's pretty attractive, on a few levels:

• It lays out an organized path of development, beginning at birth, thus giving us an educational roadmap we can follow starting immediately. In short, it gives us something constructive to do.
• Most of what I've read so far about the Montessori method makes logical sense to me, with only a few exceptions.
  
• The profile of the Montessori kid in-action is one of prolonged attention to whatever he/she is studying. This contrasts sharply to what I was capable of doing when I was young, and I feel I'd be much better off if I'd been capable of this kind of engagement. If they know how to make it happen, that's compelling to me.
  

Of course, my friends who have kids see this as an attempt to neatly encapsulate my fatherly responsibilities into an easy-to-follow system—an over simplification of what is needed. At the same time, they probably also feel it is overly ambitious to believe one can strictly adhere to any single "doctrine" of educating/raising a child.

I'm not worried about being too narrowly focused. Mary and I are just not that rigid. And from the first chapter of the first book I've consulted about Montessori, it's clear that it would be impossible for us to create a bedroom environment that's even 50% in keeping with what Montessori adherents would recommend. We just don't have the space!

As for relying on Montessori as a guideline to give me a (false?) sense of direction/confidence while I wait to undertake the greatest responsibility of my life... I'll plead guilty, but won't stop reading. I think there are some valuable insights in the Montessori approach, and I won't ignore them just because my curiosity is motivated by uncertainty.

One friend, whom I've noticed takes an admirably Zen approach to raising his two children, rightly interprets my interest in Montessori as a need to understand what will be expected of me, as a father. He told me: "don't worry about knowing what to do, your children will tell you what they need, you just need to learn how to listen to them"—best advice yet.

Day 164: Urban Dearth

Went on a shopping expedition a few days ago with Mary & her mother. Our kid, not yet born, already has an extensive wardrobe including items that should take him from 0 to 6 months - all of it cute.

On Saturday we walked the length of Newbury street, hitting four or five baby/maternity specialty shops offering everything from books to clothing to stuffed animals and much more - all of it high-end.

But you know what there isn't? Diaper pails, table-top bassinet thingies, burping towels. Anything utilitarian, cost-competitive, mundane. Obviously, this isn't stuff suitable for fashionable Newbury Street, but we've looked and there aren't really any baby/child-related retailers convenient to downtown Boston - all of it's in the suburbs.

I suppose if we had moved to the suburbs as soon as we started contemplating having a kid, like we were supposed to, we wouldn't be facing this problem - we'd have easy access to a Babies R Us, or whatever, and our kid's cute wardrobe wouldn't have been so costly.

I really don't get it, though. We see so many babies and strollers around our neighborhood, I can't believe there's no market for baby-staples in Boston proper (note: I hereby informally trademark "BabyStaples", a great name for big-box retail franchise). Granted, all strollers are Stokke and Bugaboo and Mutsy, but those babies still need basics... even if the basics have to match the strollers - all of it Scandinavian.

Come on Boston, I know you have babies. Where are your retailers??

Day 155: Yogic Squats

Mary and I have owned an instructional prenatal yoga DVD for weeks, and Mary's done the workout before, but I didn't get around to trying it until last week.

I'm going to do a little pre-yoga stretch before we do the DVD next time. What does it say about a man's body when he feels he needs to do a stretching exercise before doing yoga? Yoga is supposed to be a stretching exercise. Not good.

Yogic squats are hard. Also funny sounding. Not terribly stretchy, but definitely the hardest thing on the disc for me to do.