(no subject)

finished my gold ring, with no major disasters. I over-filed the base of the setting a BIT but it's symmetrical and that's fine. I didn't see the error till it was TOOOOOO LATE. but I'm confident I'll just nail another 70% as I usually do and on with life.

I am annoyed that despite the repeated "HARD DEADLINE" this piece had, she'll still accept lates with little penalty, and I wish they'd crack down. Everyone who was miles behind were the people who barely ever showed up to open work periods.

I might not be perfect but I get the damn work done and I'll improve from there.

Finished a slew of other jewelery pieces.

Onward to last semester.

Finishing this program means something to me. I've walked away from so many programs unfinished for one reason or another and this one I want to see through. I want to stand there at grad with my kid! and my husband and go "fuck yeah we did it", because so many people who have a kid drop out and I don't want to be that person.

Anyway. Tired. Need a shower. Need sleep. we fly in 9 days and we're slowly getting ready for that. Onwards.

(no subject)

Reading a book about an american who has a kid in Paris, and wonders why parisian kids are so much better behaved and the parents less frazzled.

Turns out, its what we've been doing all along. Semi-detached parenting! Hahah. It explains how their kids generally sleep thru the night at a couple months old and it's a method we inadvertently used because I was too damaged to get up and leap to his beck and call constantly. The pattern got established early by accident. He's about 50/50 sleep thru the night entirely, or waking once for food.

Basically the differences come down to the North American intensive hands on parenting that seems to only stress everyone out and turn the wee sproggets into dictators. Generally. While I was in Europe I was always taken aback by how laid-back everyone was, the kid wasn't micromanaged to the nth degree, they fit into the family sphere rather than dictating it entirely.

I now cease ANY guilt that I am delighted when he's down for the count by 9 most nights so I can have adult time. I Do not feel any shame that my kid can go to a museum, a gallery, a literary event and behave himself in a crowd. I feel no shame that my kid sleeps through the night, and can relatively self-amuse when I need 5 min.

( current fun of choice: yelling at his feet)

I think instead of the hyperintensive sort of parenting of North America, we'll do what the europeans are, because the dutch kids I saw were such a contrast to North American.( exceptions do apply but we're basically not jumping on the ultra-enrichment bandwagon and he'll go to an ordinary public school. There's time enough to figure out what he wants to do, what he likes and till then, we'll just go watch the fish at the Aquarium and not stress that everything has to be "learning." Being awake and alive is learning.

Mostly we go places because I get cabin-fever in the house too. And it gets him used to going places.

I like the book's philosophy of teaching them how to cope with frustration and delayed gratification, starting small. I know too many people as adults that one hint of frustration just buckles them. I often tell him to "work it out" when he's trying to solve a problem of his own making. ( After a few minutes I will come to his rescue if I have to.)

OK. off to do a mail run, bundled up for the cold.