Picture this

Today was picture day at my baby's daycare. I dressed her in a corduroy blue jumper with red trim, white stockings, and pigtails. She was as cute, as an old "drinkin' and dancin' Baptist" friend of mine from Alabama would say, "as a pup under a red truck durin' pokeberry time". I buckled her in her carseat and took her to nursery school.

By the time we arrived, she had pulled out her pigtails, torn a hole in her stockings, and had viscous green goo coming out of her nose and plastered all over her face. She looked more like a pup run over by a truck during pokeberry time. I smeared the green goo over her face with a used napkin, and brought her into class.

I had her all done up this morning, I told her teacher, handing her the pigtail holders. Do the best you can before the pictures, I pleaded.

"She'll look adorable no matter what!" She answered perkily.

Yem. I muttered, dubiously.

I thought of my mother and smiled. She once gleefully revealed to my then fiance: "I would dress your bride-to-be in a beautiful gown. She'd be immaculate, her hair done in a little curl on top. You couldn't imagine a prettier baby. I'd sit her down for five minutes - she wouldn't move a muscle - yet, when I'd come back, her hair would be completely undone and she'd be covered in dirt. I could never figure it out!"

My mom also said, "Just wait till you have kids of your own!"

I could never understand why my mother was so amused when my niece and nephew threw monumental tantrums. I would look on appalled, and she'd just smile. Aren't you going to do something? I'd demand, incredulous.

"They're not my kids!" She'd smile, broadly.

Mom is coming to visit next week. She'll get a kick out of my little pigpen. I imagine she'll smile wider than the Mississippi when my child emerges from her carseat in a predictably dishevelled state.

Israelis have a great word for a mess resulting from chaos: balagan. Balagan perfectly describes my daughter. It's my house right before bedtime. Balagan is my baby before her nap. It's my life encapsulated in one word.

Having my baby in full-time day care has opened up so much free time for me, even though I'm working part-time. Sadly, I have all too eagerly whittled the free time down to a couple of hours a week. I volunteer at the school one day a week, I have a class on the laws of Shabbat with a Rabbi one morning, and CST, Caffeine Shock Therapy, with the Skokie girls once a week.

CST is the most important morning of my week. I desperately miss my dear friends. Our kids are no longer in class together, our Wednesday afternoon playdates are history, but we've recently begun to reconnect over lattes. It's the time of week I most arduously anticipate. Nothing brings you out of a self-pitying morass than hearing a friend say, "Yeah, I can relate."

We spent last Shabbat as one of my Skokie Girl's house. It was as enlightening as it was enjoyable. We ate, laughed, talked, and chilled as much as one can with seven lunatics running around underfoot. Every hour or so, my petite pal would call up a stentorian bellow, twice as big as her frame, and set the kids to work putting away toys. If they dared ignore her demands a garbage bag would instantly be whipped out. "Any toys not put away are going in the trash!" she'd threaten.

I looked on in awe. Here it was: clear expectations, fair warning, instant consequences, everything I have been aspiring to as a parent. Yet, despite her success rate and her freaky ability to stay completely calm, something quite disturbing occurred to me. Her kids were no calmer, no more attentive, and no more sweet and polite than mine. Her parenting technique produced no better results than my lack of technique had. Her house was no less balagan.

It dawned on me that my problem wasn't tactics, but philosophy. For the third time this month, it was time to rethink my parenting approach.

So now, I'm trying to be a more positive parent. Instead of negative consequences, I'm trying for positive incentives. Losing out on ballet or soccer is being replaced with the lure of a pizza and movie night once a week. I'm looking for good stuff to add to our "ma'asim tovim" jar, good deeds. I'm trying to smile more and demand less. Smiling in the face of a child wilfully ignoring me is no easier than demanding full respect and obedience. I'm just hoping it's more successful.

I'm beginning to realize that what I imagine to be wilful disobedience is often just a genetic disposition for spaciness. That one I chalk up to law school dad.

The spontaneous mess-making is all mine. Balagan is in my genes.

I'd better learn to love it.