The Paper Dart
An ode to creativity and distraction

7 Years of Marriage & The House in the Cerulean Sea

This past week, my husband and I celebrated our SEVENTH wedding anniversary. We didn’t do much (its hard to find a babysitter during a pandemic), but it still felt pretty momentous.

Dan and I were the first of our friends to get married. Our wedding was in July of 2013, and we were a mere 25 years old. We got married in Chicago, and my mom was my wedding planner. I can honestly say that it was the best day of my life, largely thanks to my parents, and the college and high-school friends in attendance who hadn’t yet learned the difference between a frat party and a wedding reception.

When we decided to get married, I remember thinking that it was a big step, but also being sure that it was the right one. I knew I had found a really good guy who loved me despite my weirdness (I haven’t always been an “easy” partner, but he never bats an eye). I also knew that there was a lot my then fiance and I didn’t know about how to make a marriage work, the challenges of living thousands of miles from our families, what it means to navigate grown-up careers, and the stress kids would bring into our lives. I knew that we would definitely face some of the hardest times of our lives together, and that we would hopefully grow together in the process.

I also knew that uncertainty is inevitable, and that making no choice, would have been way worse than making what could possibly end up being the wrong one. So we jumped.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune is about a man named Linus who never jumps. He thrives on living comfortably, and refusing to take risks. As a result, he is very, very lonely, but refuses to admit it–even to himself.

Linus works for The Department in Charge of Magical Youth, and is a good employee, as most hard-working people with no semblance of a social life are. As a result of his diligence, impartiality, and lack of confidants, he is chosen by Extremely Upper Management to work a top secret, and very important, assignment.

Linus is sent to an orphanage for magical youth, in order to determine whether the living conditions are “adequate.” When he arrives, he finds himself confronted with some pretty terrifying “children,” but also discovers that his assignment might actually have more to do with the orphanage director, than the children themselves.

Klune is a masterful world-builder, and succeeded in truly transporting me to a very believable Marsyas Island. The characters were strange, but also delightfully witty and relatable. (Any author who can get me to connect with the child of Satan really knows what he’s doing.) I fell in love with the kids right alongside Linus, and really enjoyed how his character development required a little suspension of disbelief, but not as much as I would have thought for such a fantastical book.

But the best part of the book is the love story that lit a roaring fire in Linus’s cavernously empty heart. Going into this book, I knew that it was a queer love story, and I honestly wasn’t sure if I would connect or relate to it as I would a more hetero-normative plot line. But boy, was I wrong.

The most amazing thing about my own marriage is how much it has changed both my husband and myself. Neither of us are the people we were seven years ago, and I could not be more grateful for that fact. My husband has taught me how to have compassion for myself, and helped me overcome the habits that were holding me back. I have taught him how embrace the discomfort of his feelings, and how to clean a toilet.

In the book, Linus learns that there are things in life worth fighting for, and he teaches his partner how important it is, both for yourself, and those who look up to you, to be truly and authentically yourself.

Like our love story, Linus’s is one of struggle, faith, and compromise. Linus spent a good chunk of his life struggling to work up the nerve to to even believe in anything worth reaching for. But once he finally did, it was pretty great.

People often say that “marriage isn’t easy,” and I’m not sure that’s true. When I think of the past seven years, I can think of a lot of things that were hard, but, at the end of the day, if you take those things away, our bond, and the way we feel about each other, is the easiest thing I have. And at the end of The House in the Cerulean Sea, Linus also realizes that life would be a lot easier (and crazier, and sillier, and more fun) if he just let the rest of it go, and allowed himself to fall in love.

The Book (Click to Purchase):

The Martyr Mother in KidLit and Why I’m NOT Here For It.

Staying home with kids is a gift, but it’s also really hard. Going to work when you have kids at home is extremely fulfilling, but also really hard. I know this because I have the privilege of straddling the line between the stay at home mom (SAHM) world, and the working mom world. And I say privilege because I know that I am so lucky to get to do both (even though I sometimes have to remind myself of that). 

When @readwithriver started the #librarianfightclub movement (or at least I hope it becomes a movement), I immediately thought about children’s books that perpetuate some kind of expected “norm” for moms. The first one that came to mind for me was Jesse Bear What Will You Wear by Nancy White Carlstrom. 

This is a book that I read many times as a child, and there are parts of it that I still really love; the relationship between Jesse and his mother, and the simple way they spend their day preparing food and playing outside to name a few. 

There is really only one part of this book that bugs me. And it bugs me a LOT. Throughout the book, Jesse’s mom does everything for him. She gets him dressed in the morning, prepares all his meals, and cleans up all of his messes. Then, around dinner time, dad comes home from work. He hugs Jesse, is involved in about a minute of playtime, and goes inside to read the paper in silence. During dad’s “quiet time” Jesse’s mom somehow manages to prepare tea and snacks for dad, make dinner for the family, and wrangle Jesse into his high chair. 

When I work, it is as a middle school teacher. It is wonderful, creative, exciting, and definitely fills my bucket, but it is also exhausting, and overwhelming, and the workload often feels never-ending. Most middle school teachers (and teachers in general) would probably tell you that the job is harder than it looks. I have also stayed home with my kids, both during quarantine, and in normal times. THIS IS ALSO A HARD JOB. 

When I came back to work from maternity leave the second time, I remember a co-worker asking me how my break was. At six months old, my son still barely slept, so I have few memories of this phase of life, but I think I probably just stared at him in response. Sometimes there is no point in explaining to someone that caring for a colicky, constantly-sick, never-sleeping infant (who is also super cute) is not exactly a “break.” 

What bugs me more than this single comment, however, is the fact that our society oftentimes still views the work of mothers (or stay at home fathers) as “easier” than “real” jobs. 

In Jesse Bear, that mom works ALL DAY. And, like a good martyr mother, she smiles through most of it. (Except for the page where Jesse throws rice everywhere and she gives him a hilariously relatable scowl.) Then dad comes home, and somehow he deserves a break, while mom gets to keep right on working. After Jesse goes to bed at night, do you think that lady bear gets a break? NO! I’m sure she goes on to do all the laundry, dishes, housekeeping, etc. while dad sits on his butt watching football. (Neither my husband or father spend much time watching sports these days, so I promise I’m not projecting here.) 

I know that for many mothers, and fathers, acts of service are important. A lot of women I know find fulfillment by caring for others and their home. I have absolutely nothing against this, and actually find it quite inspiring. As long as it is a choice. 

I know that I am not the only one of my friends who has, at times, found motherhood dehumanizing. Not because I don’t love my kids, but because I am expected to love them more than myself. Moms are expected to do everything, and be everything for everyone around us. Since our work isn’t viewed as “work,” we’re often not given the breaks or support we deserve. When I go to my teaching job, I have a literal team of people supporting me, including my husband, babysitters, preschool teachers, colleagues, boss, union, etc. The list goes on and on. 

When I’m in my stay-at-home role, however, it’s just me. No prep period, no lunch break, no final bell. Sometimes, on the hard days, I’ll call my husband (or, now, since we’re in quarantine and working from home, yell into the office) that I’m ready for my “union break.” Because we have worked and worked and worked on making sure that we support eachother and share the load at home, he will laugh, and then come take over for me. 

While I love the sweetness of Jesse Bear, I am in a place in my life where I just can’t get past the unfairness of it all. And one day, perhaps soon, I’ll find the time to rewrite the story. In my version, Jesse’s mom will still love and care for him with all of her heart, but she will also get to sit and read in the evening while dad does the dishes. Without her asking him to.  

Preschool at Home: Early Phonics Activities for Toddlers

I want to preface this by emphasizing the fact that I am not a home-school mom, or even a preschool teacher. I also desperately miss my daughter’s in-person preschool, and the bazillion things they were able to teach, that I can not. One of the reasons that I love preschool, or playgroups, or group-home-school (or whatever you call it) is my firm belief in the fact that kids need to learn from other kids. When she was at school, or around her friends on play-dates or at birthday parties, pre-Covid Margot was learning how to express and regulate her emotions, make and outgrow friendships, solve problems, advocate for herself, move her body, deal with conflict, etc. In fact, I think that in preschool and kindergarten especially, academics are probably the lowest on the list of skills kids really need to develop.

However, a lot of these social, emotional and physical skills are developed organically, through taking my kids to the nature park, or hanging out with friends, or by me sitting back and watching while my kids duke it out over an empty Amazon box. The teaching of “soft” skills is not really something I plan for, so it’s difficult to write about. It is also something that has become harder and harder to do, as we keep getting pushed back into isolation.

Reading, however, is a skill that can and should be taught. And it is one of the few skills that I think is best taught one-on-one. So, I am here today to share with you all a little bit about how I have been practicing some early phonics skills with my daughter while she is out of school, and away from most of the other kiddos she normally learns from and with.

For reference, my daughter is almost 3.5 years old. She is also a girl. (Controversial topic alert!) In my experience (and this is also backed by research), girls develop more quickly than boys, and take to traditional “school” settings more naturally. What I am doing with Margot at 3.5 may be very different than what I do with my son at 3.5, or with a different, future daughter at the same age. So take it all with a grain of salt, and never ever feel bad if your kid “can’t” do something yet. They’ll all just end up on TikTok eventually anyway.

Letter Sound Hide and Find:

This first activity is a fan favorite in our house, and it’s pretty straight forward. A few weeks ago, I made a “set” of letters, which are just 26 pieces of computer paper, with one upper-case letter written on each one. If you want to get all fancy, you can laminate them, which I may do the next time I visit my classroom.

To set up, Margot and I wander around our living room and find good “hiding spots” for each letter (don’t pick anything too hard–you want your kids to be able to see them). We tape each paper to it’s hiding place using painter’s tape, and then return to the center of the room.

The first few times we played this game, I would ask Margot to find the letter (aka: “where’s the A?”), and she would run to it’s hiding place and either yell, or ring her “teacher bell” when she found it.

When she became pretty proficient in recognizing most of the letters, we moved on to letter sounds. I would ask Margot to find me the letter that makes the “ooo” sound, and she would have to find the letter O. Recently, I have added a few letter pairs to the wall, so she can find the “sh” or “ch” sound as well as single letter sounds.

Margot loves this game because she gets to run around a room that we normally don’t “run” in. Sometimes I mix it up by making her close her eyes while I move letters to new hiding places. Sometimes her brother participates, and chases after her, or pulls letters off the wall before she can get there, which is annoying, but adds a layer of excitement for everyone involved.

Remember, this game, like all of the ones included in this post, should be fun. I recommend playing when your child shows interest, and stopping when they start getting bored. The more you can make this an “exciting” activity, the more they will learn from it.

Letter Sound & Object Matching:

This game is probably my favorite, as it involves cute toys, and allows me to sit down.

To play this game, you first need a collection of objects. You should have one object that matches each letter of the alphabet. I use this set of objects from Amazon, but had to add a few of our own toys to hit all the letters. (We also drew a slightly terrifying skeleton (aka X-Ray) on the outside of one of our plastic dinosaurs to serve as an example for the letter X. Because literally nothing starts with X.)

The goal of this activity is for the child to match each object to the letter it starts with. When we play, I will ask Margot, “which object starts with the “ssss” sound?” to which she will reply “STARBUCKS!” (Yes, that is one of the objects in this set).

We have this Melissa and Doug Alphabet Puzzle, so I usually lay out all the pieces ahead of time, and ask Margot to place each object on the correct letter after she identifies the starting sound. We have played this game outside as well, and placed the objects on letters we drew on the sidewalk with chalk.

You can switch it up by asking kids to think about colors or shapes (aka: “which object is the color that starts with the “yyy” sound?” or “which object is the shape that starts with the “ccc” sound?”).

Margot loves this game because she gets to play with the tiny plastic toys that we only take out when Max is asleep (because they’re a choking hazard). We also break it up with some imaginative play, and allow the animals and objects to fight, build empires, create families, and have snacks, before moving on to the next letter.

Letter Baskets:

This game is a winner primarily because both of my children LOVE collecting stuff. Their favorite activities always involve finding some kind of bag, backpack, stroller, etc., and stuffing it with random toys. Sometimes it takes weeks for us to locate said toys again. Which is always a blast for me.

But regardless, this game allows me to play into this obsession, and also get some good old fashioned learnin’ done.

In the morning on the days we plan on making letter baskets, Margot and I pick a “letter of the day” and make some kind of container (or “basket”) for this letter. Sometimes we use an actual basket, a grocery bag, or a toy shopping cart–whatever works, and isn’t broken. We then cut out and tape a construction-paper visual of said letter to the front of the basket, as a reminder of what we’re looking for.

Next, we take the basket and walk around the house (or the neighborhood), looking for objects that start with that letter and adding them to the basket. For example, for the letter “B,” we might find some toy bread, a button, a teddy bear, a dog bone, a book, etc. If Margot is still engaged after collecting the objects, I sometimes unload the objects with her, and ask her to start thinking about the second letter in each word. (i.e. “book starts with B, but what makes the ooo sound?”)

Sometimes we end with a “letter party,” where we lay all of our objects on the table, and have some kind of snack related to the letter of the day. Educational, and you get to eat.

Letter-Eating Monster:

I found this activity on Teachers Pay Teachers (otherwise known as TPT) a few weeks ago. If you haven’t used TPT yet, and are currently engaged in any kind of home schooling situation, RUN to this website. It is basically an online marketplace where amazing teachers from all over the country can sell their lessons and resources directly to parents, or other teachers. I have used it as a seller, a teacher, and a parent, and I absolutely adore it.

This resource includes the “monster” image, which you can glue onto a box, or a paper bag. There are also a variety of “candies” that you can cut out and “feed” to the monster. The resource pages include upper and lowercase letters, objects and words matching each letter sound, and much more. There are also question cards and directions for each activity, so you know exactly how to set up the game, and what questions to ask your toddler. Margot loves this game, and asks for it often. I also love it because it is engaging, relatively quiet, and actually helps her learn.

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Hopefully something on this list of activities piques your interest, or sounds like something your toddler might enjoy. Drop me a comment if you try something to let me know how it went. And happy teaching!!

What I’m Reading: The Vanishing Half

What does The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown have to do with The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett? Kind of a lot (although I’m not sure whether Bennett would appreciate the comparison). Both are about the constraints of identity and the ways in which we spend our lives fighting against them. Both focus on the parents-child relationship, and the temptation both parties often feel to run away (and then back to) each other. Both are about the power of transformation, and its ability to bring us together, but also tear us apart. And both of them are about bunnies. (Just kidding.)

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is about two sisters (Stella and Desiree), who are raised in a tiny, African American town in the south, so small that it is almost invisible. The girls are both light enough to pass as white, but only one makes the choice to do so. The book switches back and forth in time, telling the story of the twins’ divergent lives, as well as the converging fates of their daughters. This book deals with racism, both within the African American community, and in the country at large, as well as themes like the fluidity of identity, and the ways in which one’s sense of self is driven both by the very real world they inhabit, as well as the lies and half-truths they are told about it.

There is a strong emphasis on the power of history in this novel: all of the characters desperately want to escape something, or become something new, but are, at the same time, irrevocably tied to the past. Some of the characters feel so trapped in what they believe to be true that they get stuck, and fail to see that they, like the world around them, are capable of changing.

I think what I found most impressive about this book was that the characters were all so real–in a very frustrating and messy way. There were so many points in this book when I wanted to slap Stella, but I also found her desperation to maintain the facade she had worked so hard to build kind of relatable. Her daughter, Kennedy, was also completely insufferable at the same time that she was sympathetic. Kennedy’s life was built on luxury and luck, but also on lies, and it was this second fact that made it nearly impossible for her to develop any real sense of self.

Desiree’s daughter, Jude, whose name, as she points out herself, is a biblical allusion more than a pop-culture one, is the only character who, like her namesake, is able to catch glimpses of how lies and dishonesty have led people she loves astray. (The symbolism here, as well as the fact that Jude is so dark she is alienated from her community and “disappears” in photographs, is just so perfect.) But, Bennett doesn’t let it be that simple, because Jude also lies: to her mother, and her boyfriend, and herself at times. There’s another lesson here, I think, about when a lie is a lie, or an act of love. And, when Jude’s boyfriend “lies” about who he is, he also shows readers that a lie can seem like a lie to others, even when it is really just the truth.

In addition to their complex relationships with history and the truth, Stella and Desiree also struggle with motherhood, and the fact that their children are, in many ways (appearance being just one), so foreign to them. While I think that the racial and historical context of these feelings is important in its own right, I also think that all mothers, even those whose children who look like them, and inhabit the same “world” as them, can relate to the desperation the twins feel when they realize their children are moving further and further away from them. I thought the saddest part of this whole book was the void between Stella and her daughter, and the fact that, even after the truth was laid bare, the space was still there.

But then again, maybe this bothered me because the existence of this void, in any parent child relationship, is unavoidable. The ways in which I made sense of the world, and the truths I constructed my identity around, won’t be the same as those my daughter experiences. The world today is already so different than it was when she was born, and there is no way a child who has to be a child now will completely understand someone who was a child 30 years ago (and vice versa).

Like the river Jude floats down at the end of the novel, the passage of time, and the erosion of the reality that I know to be true is both natural and inevitable. But I think what this book reminds me of most is that, while I can’t let the past control who I am, or how I see my children, I need to understand how it shaped me, so that I can let go, for both myself, and my kids.

The final thing I want to say about this book, and the part that made me most uncomfortable, was the fact that all of the characters spend so much of their lives alone. I think there is probably something purposeful in this–maybe a statement about how prejudice and self-loathing cause people to push others away, or hide from connection because they don’t feel worthy of acceptance? But regardless, the rampant loneliness really really bothered me. Desiree and Stella both show so much strength and fortitude in their own ways, but are so stubborn and fearful when it comes to letting people in. Stella even passes this trait on to her daughter who, in turn, spends most of her life pushing away any chance of a real relationship. I think, if anything, this aspect of the book was a reminder to me that it is always easier to shun real connection, than engage in it. But, at the end of the day, the only way to live is the latter.

ANYWAY, this book is really good. Go read it.

The Books (Click to Purchase):

What My Kids Are Reading: Seeds and Trees

Seeds and Trees by Brandon Walden is about a young prince who receives “seeds” from all of the people he speaks to in a day. Sometimes the seeds are green, and sometimes they are black, depending on whether the words exchanged were kind or not.

Every day, the prince goes into his forest, plants his seeds and tends to his trees. Since he doesn’t know that he has the power to do otherwise, the prince cares for the good and bad trees equally. Eventually, the young prince grows into a man, and his seeds grow into a forest of beautiful green trees, and ominous dark trees. The more he tends to them both, the more the prince begins to realize that the dark trees seem to be having a deleterious effect on the others.

When I taught 8th grade (I now teach 7th), my class always read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Lewis Stevenson, which is a story about dual identities, as well as the essential roles good and evil play in our everyday lives. Before I taught this book, I always thought of Jekyll as an “evil” character who chose to turn himself into a monster. However, in the novel, Stevenson’s Jekyll is actually a pretty sympathetic guy. He, like of all us, is just trying to figure out how to temper the evil impulses he recognizes, and dislikes, in himself. In the novel, he hates the fact that he feels the temptation to be bad, so he separates that part of himself from the good, only to find that the two can’t exist untethered to one another.

When introducing this book, we always read the Cherokee Legend of “The Two Wolves.” In this story, a grandfather tells his grandson that everyone has “two wolves” inside of him/her: a good one, and a bad one. There is no avoiding this fact, and no way to get rid of the bad one entirely. However, the grandfather says we can control which wolf has more power over our lives by deciding who to “feed” with our attention, and daily actions.

In all of these stories, the first thing that sticks out to me is the inevitability of “evil”: in the world, in ourselves, and in the actions of others. In Seeds and Trees, preventing the seeds from being handed out in the first place is never an option. These characters seem to know full well how futile it would be to try and control what other people choose to contribute to the world. I also like to think of this story, not just in terms of the battle between “good” and “evil,” but in terms of all of the “helpful” and “harmful” habits we all develop when learning how to interact with the world, and other people.

For example, I have always lived with a pretty high level of anxiety. I have spent a lot of my life feeding into my fears and living the worst case scenarios before they ever happen. At times, I have let anxiety take a toll on my friendships, my work, and even my health.

As I mentioned in a previous post, when my son, Max, was five weeks old, he came down with a bad virus, which turned into meningitis and landed us in the PICU. At the time, I was already in the throes of my “normal” postpartum anxiety, so Max’s illness, and the resulting total lack of sleep, really put me over the edge. I told myself that the only way to keep him safe, was to keep “feeding” the anxiety. I thought that I could only be the best advocate for my son if I stayed hyper-alert and on-edge. I had to watch everyone, and everything, even in the middle of the night. If I let my guard down, the worst would surely happen.

After Max recovered, the effects of this mentality still lingered. A few weeks later, I was sitting in my therapist’s office, telling her that I just couldn’t shake the lingering fear. It had been two weeks since our hospital stay, and I had pulled my daughter out of school, committed to an insane daily cleaning regimen and avoided other people like the plague. I felt like I had failed my son once by letting him get sick, and I wasn’t going to let it happen again.

My therapist considered this and replied with something along these lines: She told me that I could choose to view the future with fear, or I could choose to use the past to empower me going forward. Instead of being afraid that it would happen again, I could look at Max’s illness as the success story that it was. I could give myself credit for facing the problem head on, dealing with it, and coming out on top. I could tell myself that we had survived it once, and now knew, for sure, that we could survive it again.

At this point, I was so accustomed to feeding into my fears and anxieties that I hadn’t even considered the alternative: that, instead of fear, I could feed hope instead.

In Walden’s book, the prince doesn’t realize what he’s doing when he wanders around his forest, tending to his evil trees. He thinks he has to accept both types of seeds (the good and the bad) and give his heart to them equally. He doesn’t see how insidious the bad seeds are, because its their roots that are doing the real damage, strangling the good trees in secret, from below.

In Jeckyll and Hyde, Jekyll thinks that, if he separates his “bad” self from his “good” one, the good will be allowed to thrive on its own. However, in doing so, he ends up spending so much time in his evil persona that he almost entirely forgets to feed his “good,” allowing it to whither, die, and trap him in the bad.

Today, we are all living through a time where it is easy to allow ourselves to constantly give in to feeding our fears and anxieties. This past week, I have been looking into childcare options for when I go back to work in the fall, and all of them feel scary. Many days, I have found myself back in the same self-destructive patterns of imagining the worst case scenarios, and how they would all be my fault if, and when, they came into fruition.

At the end of Seeds and Trees, the prince’s friend (strong female hero alert!), open’s the prince’s eyes to the error of his ways, and brings him the tools he needs to start combating the negativity that he has allowed himself to sow in his own life. This friend helps the prince cut down the bad trees, dig their roots out of the earth, and throw any remaining seeds of negativity out into the ocean where they belong.

So I guess the lesson here is that, to be as successful as the prince was in the end, I need to be aware of how I am tending to my own garden. I need to be conscious of what I read, who I listen to, and what feelings I hold on to. But this book also reminds me that I can’t really do all this alone.

In times of anxiety, especially ones which require us to be so isolated from one another (like right now, for example), it is so important for us to reach out (to friends, family, professionals, etc). When we get trapped in our own heads, we are sometimes blind to the ways in which the thoughts we think are protecting us, are actually harming us. It was not until the prince in Seeds and Trees saw himself through his friend’s eyes that he realized how crazy he had been to water his bad seeds, and what he had to do to fix it.

Even in this time when we can’t be with each other in person, we need to be there for each other as best we can. We need to help each other weed out the negativity and fear we are being bombarded with on a daily basis, and try our best to grow something beautiful in spite of it.

Let me know in the comments what you guys are doing these days to “tend to your gardens,” and check out the links below to find the books.

The Books (Click to Purchase):

Where to next?