Parenting paralysis

I was talking to a friend who is currently potty training a 2.5 year old, and she said something very profound along the lines of "Sometimes you take a page of a parenting manual and make it a chapter." This is very true of the potty training stage, where all of your daily conversations revolved around bodily functions. I also know mothers of infants who get sucked into cloth diapering.

My current chapter is school options. We are moving to D.C., which is so much larger than where I currently live my head occasionally spins. I have lived in other large cities, and the one I leave near now could qualify, but I either didn't have children yet or was one myself. All my other moves have just consisted of finding the cheapest rent and moving in. Now I have to think about neighborhoods. Commutes. And schools. Trying to find a home within the right public school district would be daunting enough, but my husband also is very skeptical of public school and wants to look at private. The sheer amount of schools involved in considering this, the different styles, the various driving patterns, it all gives me stress headaches.
Hopefully everything will become much clearer after we make our reconnoitering trip in a couple weeks. Until then, though, if you talk to me, I apologize in advance. It will all be about schools.

At least it's not potty training.

Under the floating dogwood tree

One thing I love about living in the South is dogwood trees. I think they've replaced daffodils as the plant that fills my heart with joy. Daffodils bloom too early here, while there's still a high probability of winter. But dogwoods are a sign of April and spring and warmth.

Dogwoods are magical. The flowers seem to float in mid air, especially the white ones. No other blooming tree comes close to this effect. It's just gorgeous driving past woods with white ghosts of petals hovering in the shadows. Whenever the flowers are more densely packed, the effect is still ethereal, as if a graceful hand were reaching up and offering them to the sky.

Spring isn't my favorite season, but it is the most amazing to think about. They interdependence of plants and animals is mind boggling, but what's more it's beautiful. I know flowers bloom in certain ways to attract certain bugs, but why are they also appealing to us? If creation is so random, why is it also so beautiful and so perfectly harmonious, so balanced? Spring convinces me that creation wasn't an accident.

A post is a post is a post

There is a children's book about Gertrude Stein. Why someone thought this was an appropriate topic for a picture book aimed at ages 4-7 is beyond me. Exactly what child did they expect to be interested in an obtuse modern writer? And it was written in her style -- repetition, random statements, nonsensical sentences. I managed to make sense of it because I knew what the author was trying to mimic, but a kid would be lost. It wasn't funny (for kids), it wasn't engaging, it was trying far too hard. This book will only be picked up by other English major parents who can't believe there is a kiddie book about Gertrude Stein. And her lover.

Of course, I don't care for Stein in the first place. I can appreciate what she was trying to do with the repetition and meandering thoughts trying to mimic what the mind does. I really can admire the effort. But it's just not nice to read. I only had to read a novella in college, and I didn't make it through. I couldn't stand to read the same scene in a slightly different way ONE ... MORE ... TIME. I'm not much of an artiste, I guess.