My sourdough rose this time!

Remember how, ages ago, I made a sourdough starter? It did okay. Never got all that bubbly, but it was sour-smelling enough. I made garlic knots with it, and they were a bit too sour and not risen enough, but not terrible. Pretty soon, though, the starter got mold on it and I threw it away.

I had given up on the whole idea of sourdough until two weeks ago, when I saw on Modern Alternative Mama that Kate had trouble with her starter as well. She had been told -- like I had -- that it's okay to pour off the "hooch," the funky liquid that rises to the surface. Apparently the hooch helps keep the mold off your starter. She recommends stirring the hooch back in every time you feed it, at least until your starter is well-established.

Another tip which I recently read, and also established experimentally, is that you really do have to get rid of some of your starter when you feed it. I had been told that you don't have to get rid of any starter, just don't feed it quite so heavily. That actually doesn't work as well. A good proportion is one part original starter, one part flour, one part water, each time you feed it -- though I don't stick to that. I try to keep the starter to about a cup, and feed a quarter cup of flour and a quarter cup of water each time. I don't throw the old away, but I use it to make sourdough pancakes or something else that doesn't require much of a rise. The more you use your starter, removing some and refreshing it, the quicker it will come to life.

The reason, as far as I can see, for this is that the starter needs to breathe. If you've got a quart jar full of starter, only the top layer is really active. Much better to keep a smaller starter so it can get plenty of air.

A few other handy things I've picked up on: I don't feed quite equal parts flour and water. I tend to use a little less water. The reason for this is that a thicker starter shows more bubble action down inside the jar -- probably just because it holds the bubbles better. I'm not sure this means it's a stronger starter, but it can't hurt.

Another is that warmth will make a huge difference to your starter. I can't afford to be running a hot pad or low oven all the time, so most of the time the starter has to muddle through in 68 degrees like the rest of us. But when I feed it, I often give it a quick burst of time in a warm oven -- I preheat the oven for a minute, turn it off, and put the starter in there for a bit. Gives it a head start. The same goes for giving the bread dough, when you make any, a chance to rise. A nice warm place will do it good. I remember my mom having good luck putting dough to rise on top of the dryer while it was running!

A final tip: it shouldn't smell overpoweringly sour. I notice in my post from almost two years ago that John kept complaining about the smell of the starter whenever he was in the kitchen. That is way too sour. My current starter only smells if you stick your nose right in the jar, and then it smells kind of like beer.

So far, I've made sourdough pancakes a few times, and loved them. They're even easier than regular pancakes, and they taste fabulous (and not sour at all). The texture's a little different -- almost like injera, because it's so bubbly. I found it helpful to mix the baking soda with water before mixing it in, so it wouldn't clump up in the batter. We had the pancakes with jam, but they'd be even better with berries or bananas.

[ETA: I also made this sourdough carrot cake, which was fabulous. Who would have known you could make cake out of sourdough? I had seen recipes, but figured it must not turn out very cakey .... I was wrong. It was very light and just the right amount of sweet. This would be great with cream cheese frosting, too.]

And then I screwed my courage to the sticking-place yesterday and tried to make focaccia. I planned lots of extra time because I was sure I'd need it, and planned to count any decent rise as "doubling." I remembered that my garlic knots never doubled. But after just the recommended rise time (in a warm oven) it actually did double! The bread turned out excellent. Its only flaw, in my opinion, was in being a bit too tall. Isn't focaccia supposed to be an inch or so thick, not two and a half? I just had too much dough for the size pan I had -- and that's even after taking a handful of it out and making garlic knots out of it. Next time I think I'll make two pans of it instead of just one. I guess I wasn't expecting quite the meteoric rise that I got! I had been convinced by my past experience that sourdough doesn't rise much. This one rose just as much as a regular yeast bread would. And it wasn't particularly sour, either -- just a faint tang, not so you'd notice without looking for it.

I don't know how long I'll be able to keep up with my starter before letting it go dormant in my fridge and half forgetting about it. But meanwhile, I'm really enjoying baking with it ... and eating the bread.

I dream of Jerseys

Today, I happened to drive some back-country roads in the area. It happens a lot, because we're pretty far out from any big cities, even though our own town is biggish (and kind of slummy). I love being out away from housing developments and businesses and near real farmland.

Of course, there aren't a lot of large farms around here. But there are tons of little ones. Northern Virginia is an excellent place for small farms, especially livestock. It's hard to plow up and down all the gulches and gullies, but it's a great place to raise cattle, sheep, goats, and horses -- so I see a lot of them when I'm driving around.

And ... laugh all you want ... I have trouble keeping my eyes on the road when this happens. Not so much with the horses, or the sheep and goats. But the cows ... happy sigh.

John jokes that when I see a cow, my eyes turn into big cheese wheels. Yes, I admit that's what it's all about. I love dairy products of all kinds. I would love them even more if I could get hold of them fresh from the cow and make my own cheese and butter. Mmm, and sour cream ...

I have a dream. I've basically had this dream since I was a kid and read the Little House books, only I thought it was only a daydream because no one actually farms anymore. (Yes, I thought this. And then I thought only the Amish did it, so I wanted to be Amish.) My dream is to have a little homestead, just a few acres, where I can produce a large portion of my own food.

There are a lot of reasons for this. There's the idea of greater self-sufficiency, protection of one's food supply in case of disaster, better health, preservation of important skills, contributing to the family while staying home with the kids, educational opportunity, and saving money. But the main reason is just that I want to, that I've always wanted to. I've always wanted to live in the country -- the further out, the better. I've always wanted to have lots of animals. I want to milk cows and feed chickens. I want to grow vegetables -- and then MORE vegetables.

Every little thing I do makes me want to do more things. Growing basil on my porch made me want to grow tomatoes. Growing tomatoes made me want to grow green beans. Growing green beans made me want to grow peas, lettuce, squash, peppers, and cucumbers. Oh, and herbs. But now I start to wonder if it's really all that impossible to start a small flock of chickens in our back yard. (Answer: kinda, yeah.)

Our current house, which we like lots, is very small. It probably won't hold us forever. I think of it as our five-year house, though it all depends on how soon we could afford to scale up. And my dream for when we do scale up looks like this:

A 100-year-old farmhouse in the country. It's white and done up in that fine old Virginia style. A little distance away is a red barn, where my beautiful cream-colored Jersey cow lives. There's some nice pasture where she can graze, and a chicken coop in the peach orchard. (Perhaps peach-and-apricot orchard.) There's a big old garden that contains every vegetable we could ever eat. Probably we'd have at least a couple of pigs to fatten.

Inside the house, I'd be preparing dozens of different things with that rich Jersey milk, putting up canned and frozen vegetables, and making peach jam. I grew up on mostly frozen vegetables shipped from a million miles away, and fruit that there was never really enough of, so the idea of a bounty of truly fresh food just makes my skirt fly up (as the Pioneer Woman says). We'd have beef roasts and stock made from bones and all the eggs we could eat. The kids could nosh on all the fruit and vegetables and cheese they wanted. No junk food required!

But the really fun part would be the outdoor part. I'd milk the cow morning and night, feed her calf, toss out grain for the chickens, feed the pigs, and the rest of the time I could grub in the garden. And the kids could help! So educational!

John says, and I admit he's right, that there would be a lot of times when he would end up being the one milking the cow. Having lived on a homestead before, he knows the drill. But he doesn't love it like I do. I'm the one who used to hang on his every word while he told all about slaughtering chickens ... over a chicken dinner. I'm the one who mooned over his family's cows when I would visit them in Wisconsin. I don't think he ever quite put two and two together and realized I was going to drag him, kicking and screaming, back into farm life, but ... if I get the slightest chance, I will. And despite his lack of enthusiasm for cows, he's been remarkably supportive about the whole thing.

So far, it's just a dream. But there's nothing actually stopping this from becoming a reality someday. Meanwhile, it's a very popular bedtime story for Marko and a nice daydream when I'm driving around the countryside. And I keep pinching my pennies in the hopes of being able to really do it someday.

What's your dream?

Polite answers to rude questions

CatholicMommy mentioned in the combox the other day that people tend to act like a pregnant woman is public property. Ain't that the truth. So many nosy questions!

Last time I was pregnant, I worked in a school, so every day I would see the kids' parents. That is to say, I would see a gang of women who had all been pregnant before and had determined that they were going to shepherd me through the whole thing. Basically, they took one look at my pregnant belly and took possession of it: this is OUR first-time mom and we are going to find out EVERYTHING about her pregnancy and give her TONS of advice. All conflicting, of course.

However, those lists of witty answers to prying questions wouldn't have worked for me, because I actually did like these women (mostly) and I wanted to maintain a good professional relationship with them, anyway. So when they asked, "Do you know what it is?" I couldn't exactly answer, "Well, we're really hoping it's a baby and not a lizard." You know?

So I've compiled this list of polite ways to evade rude questions. Don't get me wrong -- it will still be obvious you're evading questions. And certainly some rude people will persist because they want to know the answer that badly. But most people will hear a polite evasion and realize that you'd rather not say. And it's a little nicer to have a polite evasion ready than just to say, "I prefer not to say," to every single question.

Are you pregnant (when you don't want to tell yet)?
*I sure wouldn't mind if I was!
*You'd be one of the first to know!
*No news yet, but I'll keep you posted!

When's your due date?
*In the spring.
*Around Easter.
*We're hoping he'll be out by May 17th [add two weeks to your due date].
(In case you're wondering, the reason not to tell people your exact due date is to avoid people hounding you on and after the due date if you haven't delivered yet. I personally don't mind sharing mine, but I always remind people "but you know, that's just the doctor's guess!")

Oh my goodness, are you sure? You're so big/little!
*That's funny, someone this morning told me exactly the opposite!
*My doctor/midwife says I'm measuring just right.

Is it a boy or a girl?
*Hopefully it's one of those! (with a smile)
*I guess we'll find out when it comes out! (Hint: even if you know, they will find out when it comes out. So I think this is still an honest answer whether you know the gender or not.)

Which do you want?
*I'm just hoping for a mellow baby.
*Secretly, I hope it's a redhead.
*Thank goodness I don't have to decide -- I'd never be able to choose!

Have you picked out a name?
*There are a few we're thinking about.
*I'll have to see the baby for myself before I'm 100% sure.

Was this planned?
*God planned it from all eternity! (Say this to anyone who asks you at church. They should totally know better.)
*Well, it was certainly good news, if that's what you mean!
*I don't plan my life in that much detail, but I was happy about it!

Are you done?
*I guess we'll see in a few years, won't we?
*Depends on how much we like this one.

Don't you know what causes that?
*After this many kids, we're beginning to put two and two together.
*Oh, yes, we know all about how the stork leaves the babies under cabbage leaves. (wink)

What?! You are having a natural birth/an epidural/a midwife/a home birth/a hospital birth?!
*We're still doing our research.
*So far we both agree that it's the best choice for us. (Bringing up your spouse is handy ... if they're not present and the person can't argue with them.)
*Based on my risk factors, it's actually a very safe choice for me.
(Of course there are loads of other things you could say if you want to evangelize, but these are pass-the-bean-dip answers for the people you DON'T want to argue with.)

Can you think of any more rude questions you get when you're pregnant? Can you think of any better answers? Answering a prying question without seeming rude or offending the asker is a tough job!

How I prepare my garden beds

The first time I had to dig a garden bed, it took awhile. That is to say, it took me about half an hour to do 10% of it, and then John took over because I was beat. And that was in a relatively bare patch of the yard, in April when the grass isn't growing much yet.

The next time, I did it in the middle of July in a thickly-sodded part of the yard. It. Was. Awful. We have this really matted kind of grass with runners connecting it all together, so you have to sort of chop at it to get through it at all. And then you've got all this sod that you don't know what to do with: either you chop it up and bury it (in which case that nasty invasive grass comes right up a week later), or you remove it and find that your garden bed is two inches lower than the rest of the yard.

I got maybe six square feet done a day, and that was working hard. I spent maybe a week on it, got enough for the beans, and gave up.

Awhile later I had the idea that I might have an easier time if I tried to kill the grass first. So I prepared the next patch by spreading newspapers over the grass, weighing the newspapers down with bark mulch, and waiting. The hot sun on the smothered grass did the job really quickly. (It did the same underneath the kiddie pool, sigh.) Two weeks later, the grass was still there, but it was yellowed and beginning to rot. I started to hack through it, and it was WAY easier. The stems, roots, and runners had all softened and were easy to cut with the side of my shovel. I did toss the dead grass, but much less soil clung to it than to the live grass in the other bed.

I prepped the next patch, and then got too pregnant to do any more. So I let the sun beat on that patch all through September and October, let it get rained on all through November, and let it get frozen in December. Today, it was another of those delightful unseasonably warm winter days (you know, the kind that drives you crazy because you feel like you need to plant tomatoes even though there is nothing alive in the whole yard) and I just had to dig that bed. (My motivation consisted of one part second-trimester energy burst, one part frustrated gardening urge, and one part conviction that there is no way I'm going to want to do this in March or April.)

Turns out "dig" was too strong a word, though. I cleared away the various sticks and leaves I'd used to mulch it, dug up a few clumps of onion grass that had poked through -- and I was done! The sod mat had completely decayed. Not only that, but the soil beneath was much softer than usual and the worm action was amazing. I usually don't find many earthworms in my yard, but this time there was at least one in every shovelful. Afraid to chop up all my lovely worms, I just raked through the top layer and covered it back over with mulch!

Next time I want to build a new bed, I'll remember to start in the fall. The effort is greatly reduced, and the result is much better -- with less soil compaction, too, I'm sure. I've also covered the grass in my last two beds in the past month, and we'll see how they do. The process seems to be working much more slowly on the dormant winter grass than it did in the summer, but hopefully it will make the last bit of digging at least a little easier. (Though let's be honest: I will not be digging those beds. They're for tomatoes and pumpkins, which go in right around the baby's due date. Either my husband, my siblings, or my in-laws are probably going to have to do the honors.)

Here's my technique, honed on several different beds:

1. Start, if possible, in late summer or fall -- but even a week or two before planting can still have good effects. Pick a day that isn't windy, with rain forecast for the next day if you can. If there's wind before your covering gets a chance to get wet, it may all blow away. It may even do this several days in a row before you get smart, if you're me.

2. Spread newspaper, if you have it, thickly over the bed. I use about three thicknesses, and I'm careful to overlap. If there is the slightest gap, the grass will grow through it. It likes to do this at the edges of the bed, too. (You can skip this step if you don't have newspaper. We just happened to have The Washington Post delivered to us in error all summer long. It helps block out weeds.)

3. Over the top of the newspaper, put some kind of mulch. Grass clippings and dead leaves are both excellent. Put as much as you have. Raid the neighbors' leaf piles if you have to, or the edges of the street where the drains are getting clogged with leaves. (This is why fall is ideal. I only wish I had gathered more leaves.)

4. Newspaper and leaves both tend to blow away at the slightest breath of wind. Add something heavy to keep it all down. Wood chips or sticks are good. If you used grass clippings, and plenty of them, those shouldn't budge. I've been using fallen tree branches, the twiggy part that's no good for firewood. You can just throw the branches back in the brush pile when you go to dig the bed, since they won't decay in just one winter.

5. If you're not expecting rain, water the whole bed thoroughly so it doesn't blow away.

In the spring, clear away the mulch and see how much digging -- if any -- there is left for you to do! The newspapers may even be completely broken down. Whatever mulch is left can be dug in or used to cover the bare ground between your rows.

Besides the new beds, I covered all of my already-broken beds from last summer with leaves and garden scraps as well. Erosion is a real problem here, plus I wanted to keep the onion grass and other winter weeds down. The soil beneath seems to be retaining its good tilth and getting some good worm action as well.

Is anyone else getting any garden work done at this time of year? That gardening bug just pays no heed to the calendar!

No belly pictures this time

When I was pregnant with Marko, friends and family kept hassling me for pictures of my pregnant belly. I let them talk me into it, and posted a few. This time, they've started to do it again ... and I've decided to say no.

The reason I went along last time is because I'm at such a distance from my family. I knew it must be hard for them to get their heads around the idea that I was becoming a mother. So I posted a few pictures in the hopes that it would help.

But I've never really been comfortable posting belly pictures. I don't like putting up a picture of myself so that people ignore all the features I consider important about myself (like my face) and just stare at my belly. I feel objectified when they do that. In person, people might comment on my belly but they also interact with me individually. Online, when there's just a picture, only the belly gets any attention. I guess I feel like a container instead of a person. People say they "want to see the baby," but they can't see the baby. All they can see is my big ol' gut. Then they all talk about how big it is. Where else is it appropriate to exclaim over the size of a woman's belly?

It just makes me uncomfortable. I don't mind posting pictures of myself when I'm pregnant, and if my belly happens to be visible, so be it. That is what I look like. But it's frustrating to post a picture of me with my husband, or me with my son, or me doing something fun, and all the comments are "oh, it looks like you're showing!" (Especially when I'm not. That's the way my belly always is, thank you very much.) I wish they would comment on how happy I look, or the fun thing I'm doing, or the people I'm with, like they would if I weren't pregnant.

I guess sometimes, when you're hugely and obviously pregnant, you would like people to treat you as just a regular person, instead of always noticing and commenting on the fact that you're pregnant. I imagine disabled people would get tired of people always commenting on their wheelchairs, too. I'm not ashamed, but at the same time, I'm not just a pregnant woman. I'm still the same person I was before.

And when it comes down to it, it is my body and my image. I do not have to post pictures for everyone else to see if I'm not comfortable with it. I came to this conclusion after writing the post about bodily autonomy. If a woman can post a picture of herself nursing her baby, simply because she wants to do so, then I can not post a picture of myself showing off my pregnant belly ... simply because I do not want to do so.

I'm sure lots of people I know will be disappointed by this decision. But in the end, they can't help but respect it. No one can make me display what I don't choose to. And no one can make me feel guilty for respecting my own personal boundaries -- because I don't believe there is anything for me to feel guilty about.

Am I the only one who feels this way? I know it seems the norm to post belly shots ... but surely there are other people who choose not to.

Should toddlers say please?

I read this article about making children say please and thank you the other day, and I think I mostly agree with it.

I mean, there's this huge fuss about teaching children to say "please" and "thank you" as early as possible ... but why? What exactly is the purpose of a child who can barely put two words together being able to follow norms of politeness that he doesn't even remotely understand? Is it just to impress the neighbors?

A week or two ago, I read a dad's status on Facebook saying he had been engaged in a battle of wills with his son (a month older than mine) that morning. The kid wanted to get down from his highchair, but the dad wouldn't take him out until he said please. The result was an hour of shrieking and wailing from the child before he "finally realized I meant what I said" and said please.

I found that so exasperating I didn't bother to comment. What a waste of an hour, was my main thought. Is it really that big a deal? (Answer: no, but the parent always feels the need to win every battle, and everything so easily becomes a battle, doesn't it?)

My second thought was, "How do you know the child understands what you are asking?" I'll explain. Two or three months ago, John was sitting and eating ice cream when Marko came up and started begging for some. John kept telling him "say please," but he just wouldn't do it. For reasons that weren't clear at the time, he just kept saying "some that, some that" but wouldn't say please. After several repeats of this performance on different nights, finally something clicked and Marko said please!

At least, we thought something had clicked. But I never could get him to say please about anything else. When I told him to say please, he would run toward the freezer and point. Yep, our kid thought "please" was ice cream!

Awhile after that, I noticed that instead of just naming the thing he wanted, Marko would say "want banana," or "want apple." I realized this was because, when he said banana, I would say "do you want a banana?" He'd repeat, "Want banana." So I modified what I said, and started saying "Do you want a banana, please?" He parroted, "Banana please," and that became his way of asking. He had realized please meant asking, so he started to do it. He still isn't exactly consistent -- probably because I'm not exactly consistent -- but he does sometimes say please, and you know, it's not a big deal to me that it's not 100% of the time.

Meanwhile, Marko has recently forgotten how to say "yes" and "no." He started trying to answer all questions in complete sentences, but because his pronunciation is so atrocious, we never know what he said. So John's been prompting him to "say yes" or "say no." So now can you guess what he says? "Would you like a banana?" "Marko say yes." "Do you want to go to bed?" "Say no." He still doesn't know what it means when we ask him to say something specific. So I can pretty much guarantee any effort to teach him to say please would fall just as flat now as it did a few months ago. The toddler brain is growing so fast that it seems they should be able to understand just about anything -- but it has the weirdest blind spots, so I no longer assume my son is able to understand anything unless I actually have proof of some kind.

Meanwhile this kid has "thank you" down. Unfortunately he doesn't know when to say it. See, when he hands me something, I say "thank you." So now when he wants to give me something, he runs up with it and says "thank you." I figure he'll work out this skill around the time he stops calling himself "you" and starts saying "me." (Which, as a matter of fact, he has done on several occasions this week! He's still really, really confused about pronouns, but he has occasionally gotten them right.)

I also am very good about always saying "excuse me" when Marko's in my way and I need him to move. Recently he figured out what I meant and actually started getting out of my way when I said it. And just today, he was balancing on the edge of my vegetable beds and I was in his way ... and he politely said "excuse me"!

I guess I'm just learning from experience that toddlers learn "etiquette words" the same way they learn all the rest of the words they know -- by hearing adults use them, both when talking to them and when talking to each other.

This explains why manners threw me for such a loop as a kid. I knew how to say "please," definitely. I knew that the appropriate way to ask for something was "Please may I have a sandwich?" and that the way to accept an offer was "Yes, please." This is what we had been taught, and when talking to my parents I used them reliably. (Though it was more like "Please m'ave a sandwich" ... since we didn't understand the words, we didn't tend to say them very distinctly.) But as I got older, I noticed that adults didn't talk like that. I didn't want to say the wrong thing, the wrong thing being whatever other people didn't say. We would all be at a party, and the hostess would ask, "Can I get you a Pepsi?" My dad would say, "Sure, thanks!" Then she'd turn to me and ask if I wanted a glass of milk ... and I was completely thrown! Should I say "yes, please" or "sure, thanks"? Maybe "yes please" was something only our family did! Maybe I would sound like a little kid if I said that, and like a grownup if I said "sure"! The result was that I hesitated a lot and felt really awkward before going with either one, or sometimes just said "no thank you" to things I wanted because I was afraid I'd be rude if I said yes.

Kids want to talk the way adults do. That's how they are wired to learn to talk. So if you always say please when asking a child to do something, or when asking someone else to do something in the child's presence, the child will grow up saying please naturally -- not because he is afraid of getting into trouble if he doesn't, but just because that is what you say when you ask for something. Seems kind of a waste of effort, then, to try to push kids to say please before they've grasped the mechanics of complete sentences, or to have battles with them over whether they said them or not. And ultimately, if you don't say please, I don't know if you can get the habit of saying it to stick.

Do you think kids should say please and thank you from a very young age? How do you teach your kids to do it?

Keeping my cool during tantrums

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that Wednesday may have been the worst day of Marko's life. There was that one day when he was a week old and had a stuffy nose and John had just gone to work and wouldn't be back till Friday ... and that one day when he'd been sick for a week and I exploded a Pyrex dish in the kitchen ... but those would be the only two competitors. I have never seen him throw a fit like this in his life.

I see now what other parents are talking about when they say "tantrums." They don't mean, "five minutes of protest." That was Marko's old norm. This was an hour and a half of ridiculous screaming mayhem. It looked like he was auditioning for The Exorcist. And there was no particular thing that set it off, or anything he wanted, or anything that would cheer him up again.

It started with him being a bit tired and cranky. No wonder, he hasn't slept through the night in about a week. So I was thinking it might be time to try for a nap. I picked him up and carried him into the bedroom. That made him a bit crabbier. I sat down in the rocking chair -- again, bad news. There was wiggling and squirming and protestations of "not tired." But I knew that he was, and was pretty confident he'd be out in ten like he usually is in that mood.

Only he wasn't. First he wouldn't let me sing any lullabies (but screamed if I stopped trying new ones). Then he got really, really, avidly into pulling my hair ... not his usual fiddling but full-on yanking. Between that and the thrashing around, I figured he needed more room to move, so I laid down in his bed with him. That made him more angry and the fussy yells increased. He yanked my hair more fiercely. Then he started trying to kick me in the stomach.

Since I have no intention of letting him kick his baby brother or sister, I said calmly, "I don't like being kicked," and moved off the bed. That's when he went from "crabby protests" to "violent screams." He was truly livid, thrashing and screaming incomprehensibly. I quickly realized that I couldn't even get in range of him without getting hurt, so I left the room. Sometimes that helps him calm down when he's upset. This time, not so much.

I could give you the play-by-play, but it isn't a pleasant tale. I tried everything physically possible, and a few that weren't really (the stroller walk in 30-degree weather actually calmed him down a bit, but we couldn't keep that up). In the end I think he calmed down because he was ready to, rather than from anything I did. Even then, the rest of the day was pretty shaky.

What made it worse for me is that I was coming into the whole thing already not feeling so hot. I'd slept poorly and not enough, just like he had. And I had a splitting headache. And I was having way more braxton-hicks contractions than I like. So the whole time he was throwing his fit, I was thinking, "I can't deal with this! I already feel bad! The only thing that will make me feel better is to relax, and he won't let me!" I started out fairly calm, but after the first 20 minutes I was stewing with my own batch of rage.

It just felt unfair that I have to take kicks, pushes, and hair-pulling from him, and I can't do any of that stuff back. And I'll confess, I wasn't exactly gentle with him each time I hoisted him into his crib, or moved him off of my lap when he was hurting me. I felt like he didn't deserve to be treated nicely because he didn't treat me nicely. Childish much?

So I've been reflecting on how to handle stuff like that better. If, as I think, it's a "terrible two" thing, or just a symptom of his age, it's going to keep happening and I really, really want to handle it better in the future.

Here are a few of the things I came up with, which I think will help me keep a peaceful attitude during an awful day:

1. Occasionally it helps to try to do something else (like read a book) during a stressful patch. Almost all of the time, it's really better not to. When the kid is melting down, it's time to put down my book, end my chat conversation, pull the plug on the sink of dishes, and just accept that it won't happen right now. Trying to accomplish something else while Marko is crabby usually leads to me getting pulled in two directions and feeling angry at him for not letting me get the other thing done.

2. It is not my job to MAKE him stop crying. It's hard for me to accept this because usually I can. But sometimes, I won't be able to, and that doesn't mean I'm a failure. It just means he's not open to being comforted. The time he spends throwing a fit depends on him, not me, and it will not be the end of the world if it goes on all day. It isn't personal. It isn't about me.

3. Conversely, it WILL be the end of the world if I give into my feelings of rage and punch my kid in the face. So that's my goal: not to fix the tantrum in him, but to fix the rage in me. If I maintain calm and do not hurt him, I win. I'm a success. His feelings aren't a reflection on my parenting, but my treatment of him is.

4. I have to focus on being gentle with him at all times. Yelling and yanking him around are somehow what seem to come naturally at times like this. But have you ever known a kid to suddenly dry his tears and give a big smile just because you yelled at him? Or seen a kid who was jerked by one arm out of the grocery store, who suddenly calmed down and said, "Thanks for hurting my arm, Mom -- I feel better now"? Of course not. It usually just escalates the situation.

It feels so unfair to have to absorb his rage and give none back. But isn't that what Jesus did for us? When we were still sinners, he died for us. We never could have learned how to be like him unless he had shown us first, when we didn't deserve it. If I'm mean to Marko till he learns to be nice to me, he'll never learn because he has no example to go on. I don't want to teach him that yelling and harshness are okay.

Of course that sounds like a really high goal. No yelling and no angry, rough touching. And, in fact, given my temperament, it might be impossible. Except that NO words and NO touches are also an acceptable option. I can't give back a gentle answer 100 times out of 100. But I can walk away if I have to. I prefer to keep myself available, and for short tantrums I always do. However, walking away when I'm being screamed at or lashed out at is perfectly reasonable. All it teaches my son is that I have respect for my own boundaries, that he can't hit at me and expect me to stick around and get hit.

On Wednesday, after the first hour, I realized that I absolutely could not continue to be a good mother. I wanted to scream, to kick, to cry, just like he was doing. (Have I mentioned before I'm empathetic to a fault? I can't be around angry people and not feel angry, or sad people and not feel sad. Normally it helps me be a sympathetic mom ... today it was really causing me problems.) So I put his crib mattress back into his crib (it's usually on the floor), put him inside, and left the room. I figured he would at least be safe in there, and I could get the distance I needed.

He just stood in the crib and screamed incomprehensibly for about five or ten minutes till I got back. But just knowing that he was safe and I was not near him was a huge relief. In less than ten minutes, I was up to facing him again.

Some people will say you have to be always ON when a child is unhappy, trying to console him. And if he'd been wanting and accepting my comfort, I probably would have been. But there comes a point when you realize what you're doing is doing the child no good and you a lot of harm, and when you reach it, there's nothing wrong with walking away for a bit.

Well, Wednesday did eventually end, thanks to Daddy rocking him to sleep (I don't think he would have accepted me, so thank goodness John was there). And he hasn't thrown a fit like that since. On Friday, he took a nap and woke up screaming. He wasn't flailing or raging, just plain, simple screaming, which he often does when he wakes up. (Nightmare? Night terror? Teething? Who knows!) I tried to put my ideas into practice. First, I reminded myself that it wasn't my fault he was screaming, that it wasn't my job to stop him from screaming, but just to hold him and rock him while he either calmed down or had a good cry. Second, I relaxed as much as I could and thought about growing tomatoes. I didn't try a million things, because I knew he was sleepy and would probably react badly to being talked to or jostled around. I didn't try to puzzle out the causes too much. I just worked out tomato-staking methods and rocked.

After awhile, he started to pause a bit in his screaming and close his eyes. Would he go back to sleep? No, but he slowly calmed down a lot. So I quietly asked him if he wanted something to eat, and he managed to say yes. I went into the kitchen and got him a cookie (because it was what I had readily available, and because I wanted to give him something he wouldn't argue about ... I am not in the habit of randomly giving him cookies, but it seemed more important to help him pull himself together, so sue me) and sat down with him on the couch. He looked at me, smiled through his tears, ate his cookie, and eventually let himself be coaxed onto the potty, which I'm sure helped him feel better.

The rest of the afternoon was great. It wasn't ruined by 20 minutes of screaming. Maybe it just wasn't as big a deal as Wednesday's fit. Or maybe my calm helped keep his upset feelings from escalating. I have no idea. I do know that I felt a lot more peaceful about this time than the previous time. And that's the goal!

Any other tips for not completely going loony while dealing with an angry child? I need all I can get, because I have no guarantee that this won't happen again!