OK so it has been an eternity since I've written about the precious cub. I keep saying that I will do an update post but truly life is very busy right now. First things first....the cub. I recall sharing our adventure with the good ole temper tantrum. Well, those suckers have gotten WORSE. I don't even know if I can call the ones at 15 months tantrums. The new and improved ones definitely challenge my patience as a parent and it doesn't help that he has them daily. More and more he is like the sour patch kids....naughty then sweet. Oh and now that he is speaking all I can say is help me.

The funniest thing that has come out of the past few months is the relationship between the cub and the dog. Now I have heard the saying a boy and his dog but I never really understood until now. Not only that but I didn't expect a true relationship to blossom between those two until the cub was like four. Boy was I wrong. Those two act like siblings. They argue over toys, the window, the couch, and daddy time. As usual no one cares about mommy time, everything is about the daddy. The cub is usually the instigator in the baby puppy wars. He doesn't seem to understand that like him Pancho has his own set of toys. So...anytime Pancho plays with his squeaky ball the cub gets excited and takes the ball to throw it. Well...Pancho doesn't feel like playing fetch so he interprets this as the cub taking his toy and he just sits there upset. Then...the cub gets upset because the dog didn't chase and fetch the ball. It's hilarious as I write it but in action this is a full on sibling rivalry happening in my house. The window. Both the cub and the dog like standing up in the over sized chair by the living room window and looking at the cars and people passing by. Well....when Pancho does this he usually barks at everything that passes our window. Due to the fact that Pancho rarely barks the cub is always frightened when he does. Add the close proximity to the dog and you have a completely freaked out toddler. Toddler starts to cry which in turn freaks out the dog. The only time this doesn't happen is when the cub comes and evicts the dog from the chair. He has learned that the word "down" commands Pancho to get down from the couch or any piece of furniture. So...the cub now yells down to Pancho quite often but especially when he wants the over sized chair and window all to himself. How do I teach the two of them to share? The cub calls Pancho two things, dog and woof woof. Whenever I come home from work and ask the cub about his the words dog and woof woof are repeated several times during his rant. He is apparently telling on Pancho for doing something.

The cub has also began defining our roles. It was always clear that daddy's role was playtime. This is even more evident now that the cub is running a talking more. He and daddy sword fight. Now the cub doesn't actually have any swords so this game is usually played with his toy golf clubs or the tool pieces to the vacuum cleaner. We don't know where he learned this game but it's one he loves to play. Mommy's role is obviously to kiss scrapes, remove boogies, and watch movies. We always read a book with the cub at bedtime. The tradition was to alternate readers each night. Well....the cub only likes for daddy to read Brown Bear Brown Bear. Apparently, he likes the animal noises the daddy make better than the mommy. So...no more alternating. The cub usually picks the book then picks which parent he wants to read it. Toddlers are hilarious. There is just no other word for it other than hilarious. Anyways, stay tuned for more updates ;) and enjoy the little video clip. I trimmed it down from a longer video just so you can see the cub terrorize the dog then the beginning of a tantrum because he wants the dog's toy.



The Mother of an African American Son

With the whole divide, anger, and just overall emotions swarming the Trayvon Martin Case, I have remained silent and a bit of a recluse if you will. Why? Truthfully, I don't like engaging in conversation that is divisive. I hate rhetoric that doesn't lead to solutions or in this case rhetoric that will lead to further division. I honestly have very mixed emotions about the race issues in this country; emotions that in moments such as the Trayvon Martin incident only become more confused and muddled. I usually shrug my shoulders and continue in the thought that the best way for me to fight these types of racial issues is to continue to be the best person that I can be and to embrace all God's people with love and compassion. I still stand by that but today as I listen more and more to the language and the thoughts and beliefs of people surrounding this case, I find myself thinking about my almost two year old son.

I must say I have been angered and saddened by the fact that our nation can't hear past some of the noise in this case and connect with the fact that one a young man died and two he did so because of the actions of someone else. I can't understand for the life of me why it's ok to say that George Zimmerman overacted or was maybe too ambitious but it's not his fault that a young boy is dead. I would hate to think that one day something I do, even if it is well intentioned, leads to the death of an innocent person. I also can't understand why George Zimmerman has the right to defend himself if threatened or attacked but Trayvon Martin doesn't have the same right. It pains me to hear people refer to Trayvon Martin as a thug. When I hear the word thug I think of someone in a gang, a drug dealer, a menace to society, someone that has a criminal record. None of these things were true of Tryavon Martin so why is he a thug? It disorients me to hear that George Zimmerman was a racist. I don't believe this to be true either. I do believe that he racially profiled Trayvon Martin but I believe he did so because according to what he understood there were young black men allegedly breaking into homes in his neighborhood. I do also believe prejudice played a part but not racism. These two things are very different to me; prejudice and racism. I believe the jurors had some prejudices. To hear the juror say that Ms. Jaentel wasn't creditable because of poor communication skills and poor education is sad to me. Does this mean an autistic child isn't creditable? A known charlatan, liar, or thief isn't creditable. Someone with a poor education can be very creditable to me.

These things trouble me deeply because I have an African American son. It hurts me deeply to think that I will one day have to explain to him that he will be judged not because of the content of his character or because of his actions but because of the color of his skin. Let's be even deeper, because of the amount of melanin in his skin. It pains me deeply to think that my son could be innocently walking home one day, make the mistake that a lot of children make and cut through a backyard (the kids in my neighborhood cut through mine all the time since the bus lets off right behind my house), be viewed as suspicious, feel threatened so he attacks his attacker first (if this is how you believe it happened), begins to win the fight against his attacker, and then end up dead on a sidewalk. I can't describe to you how my hand is shaking as I type and my heart is racing. But what frightens me even more is that the community of people that I work so hard to connect with, will not be able to see past the race and how they feel about which stories receive media attention, and how black people kill black people every day but want to holler the race card in any other incident. They can't see past this to connect to the human tragedy of the story then work together to make sure that something doesn't happen like this ever again-for both the Trayvons and Zimmermans sake. None of us really know what happened. We are all trying to piece together the evidence and let's be honest we will all do so from different perspectives. Why? Because we will each relate to a part of the story and the evidence based on our own experiences. That's why the verdict isn't what angers me. What anger me are my peers and the language I've heard from EVERYONE-white, black, grey, yellow, tan-surrounding this tragedy.

I want to be able to tell my son that the world can be a scary place but the people in it are working every day to change. I want to tell my son that as long as he does what is right he will always win. I want to tell him that he can trust his fellow man. I want to say these things to him and they be true. More importantly I just want to be the mother of a son. But it's times like this that I realize the world in which I live won't let me remove that descriptor African American. Why? Because it can't seem to stop making race an issue.