Posts by bluebirdmama
TV Guilt
Lately I’ve been feeling considerable guilt and (mostly external) pressure to reduce the number of hours my children spend in front of a screen. In general, our family tries to limit tv viewing and whenever it starts to creep up, both Aaron and I make efforts to reduce it. But there have been a couple of recent factors contributing to my feeling that we need to reduce my kids’ screen time: We enrolled Rain in our local Waldorf school. Waldorf schools discourage tv and computer use by kids. A recent study has come out that showed that children who viewed 9 minutes of Sponge Bob Squarepants showed difficulty concentrating on tasks immediately afterwards (compared with children who viewed the slower paced Caillou or who viewed no tv). There are some inherent problems with this study and I also have to say that I wasn’t at all surprised—I already agree that tv viewing isn’t the best use of my kids’ time and we’ve all heard variations of this before—but, it’s the topic du jour so it’s currently influencing friends, other parents, my husband to have more discussions about kids’ tv viewing. My daughter started having wicked temper tantrums when we would ask them to turn off video games or turn down a request to play. Last week, I felt compelled to make some changes. We were letting the kids play selected video games online. They were allowed to visit CBC Preschool Games, Sesame Street and Treehouse. The games are educational so I had been feeling good about it. However, I tended to get lazy and let my 20 minute limit slip to an hour and more often than not the kids would end up watching video clips on Treehouse that I hadn’t supervised and where they were exposed to commercials. I was shocked when Rain started begging me to buy Charmin toilet paper and Bounty paper towels at the grocery store because they are 5 times more absorbent than the other brand or they disinfect better than a regular dish cloth. When Noa started having melt downs over the games, I knew they had to go. In the last week since I made the decision that they could no longer play these online games there have been no more tantrums about media viewing. However, I’m also a stay-at-home-parent to three kids, one of whom is a baby who has been waking hourly for the last three months. We have no family living near us and no babysitter. We don’t have in-laws taking the kids for the weekend. We don’t have help/support. Our friends all have babies of their own and I’m hesitant to ask them to take our three kids when they only have one. My older kids don’t nap so I can’t nap when the baby does. I’m exhausted and sleep-deprived and as I wrote last week, I’m starting to struggle with my temper, a lot. So here’s my conundrum, as much as I would like my children to be watching less tv (perhaps none), it’s the only way I get a break at all. It’s the only sure fire way that my older two won’t start fighting right outside the bedroom door just as I’m getting the baby to sleep (meaning another hour of trying to get him down). It’s the only way that I can actually lay down and have a rest in the afternoon. It’s the only way that I can occasionally sit down and put my feet up, knit or write a blog post. Sometimes it’s the only way I can get the laundry or dishes done or dinner on the table before 6:30 or 7:00 pm. Last week, I experimented with trying to get through the day without screen time for the kids and guess what I found out? I was stretched thinner and lost my temper more often. So I asked myself: what is more damaging to my kids, tv or me losing my shit? The answer was rather clear to me. I know there are people out there who will judge me...
Read MoreHand Picked
{This is an old draft from a couple of years ago that I never posted. But I like it so here it is today.} As we pull in, the sun glints off the only other car in the gravel parking lot. It is early but the day is already warm and the sky is a brilliant blue. It takes a couple of minutes to disengage: unbuckle carseats; gather ourselves; make sure keys are in hand, not ignition, before shoving the door shut with my hip. We make our way through the opening in the hedge and up a path to a little market stand. The cedar shake roof is long and low and one wall is open to the fresh air revealing a wide counter and a cooler with vats of ice cream: raspberry cheesecake, bubblegum, maple walnut, moose tracks. There is no one behind the counter but after a minute, a woman calls out from the side of the building. We find her sitting at a picnic table playing cards with a young girl. She tells us that the best picking is to the right, anywhere we like. We clatter off, the four of us and our odd assortment of buckets. Noa, our thirteen month old daughter is not walking yet but we brought along her push toy: a bright yellow, orange and purple wagon with big wheels, a handle and a storage box under the seat. She toddles after us determinedly pushing the wagon over the gravel, falling every few steps but always quick to rise and push on. She has not yet figured out how to turn the wagon; her tactic whenever she encounters an obstacle is to look back at us with a grin and wait for help, one hand still resting on the handle. However, today she will need no such assistance. We have come to a pre-walking, wagon-pusher’s paradise: a blueberry farm. Our four year old son Rain runs ahead to choose our row. After a moment’s wait while we turn the wagon into the wide alley between waist high blueberry bushes, Noa is greeted with the longest unobstructed straight stretch she has ever seen. We set her free. Noa is instantly distracted from wagon pushing paradise when she notices the marble sized berries on the bushes. They are a deep dusky midnight blue and covered with a light powdery film. I am not sure that Noa has ever had blueberries and she has certainly never seen a blueberry bush. Call it human instinct; she drops to her knees, crawls to the nearest bush and begins to fill her mouth with berries with both hands. In fact, this is pretty much the reaction of all of us. We are all diverted from our intentions by the sweet, slightly sour fruit. I love the tanginess of the berries that still have a red blush to them. It takes a few minutes before we are able to get down to work, overwhelmed as we are by the plenitude on each bush, blueberries hanging in clumps like grapes. Eventually, we settle in. The rows are wide with freshly mown grass between. It is the perfect work space for a mom of young kids. Fully fenced to keep out the deer, bushes dense enough that it isn’t easy to get into another row, vast enough to provide a sense of freedom for roaming as far as they like and provided they stay in my row, I can always see them. Rain wanders off, imagination and monologue running a mile a minute as usual. He has a yogurt container laced on to his belt loop but he picks directly into his mouth. The only rule: Fill your bucket or fill your mouth but once the fruit is in my bucket, hands off. The small competitive spark in me flares up as I make it my goal to fill my large pail before we leave. Aaron and I begin working on opposite sides of the same bush so we are facing each other. Noa stays close for the most...
Read MoreWorthy
Last week I found myself sitting on the floor sobbing. There were puzzles spread across the living room floor, laundry piled on every available surface and my daughter had just thrown her lunch on the floor. Her cottage cheese had splattered up the wall and I still had to feed and change the baby and get everyone in the car to pick up big brother from Kindergarten, a trip that would mean our second hour in the car that day (probably with baby screaming). Unbidden, a familiar thought flitted to mind, as it does in these moments: I have never failed so spectacularly at anything as I do every day at parenting. There is a bit of hyperbole in that sentence, the gift of a recovering depressive who is often too hard on herself, but there is something else too. Appropriately, a few days later I stumbled on a little quote that spoke to the heart of what I was feeling: “The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent.” ~ Frank Pittman You see, when I say I’m failing at parenting, I’m not talking about my kids. For one thing, they are generally sweet, bright, funny, interesting and usually polite and caring. Yes, they still do kid things like fight or loudly ask me to “look at that lady’s face!” in the grocery store or throw their lunch on the floor, but overall, they are wonderful kids. For another thing, I sincerely believe that as parents we can neither take credit nor blame for who our kids are. They are their own little people with their own free will and ability to make choices about how they behave. I am responsible for showing them the way but it is up to them whether or not they choose to follow me. Am I setting an example that is worth following? Am I being a person that is worthy of emulation? In the end, I can only take credit or blame for my own actions. I am the product of this parenting journey. Am I being the parent I want to be? Am I proud of who I am today? Last week, the day I found myself sobbing on the floor—it wasn’t because Noa threw her lunch on the floor. It was because I lost my temper, and in my increasing sleep deprived fog I am losing my temper more and more over kid things, over things I want to control but can’t. As I try to keep up with expectations (from others and myself) with three kids, no sleep and little support, I am finding it harder and harder to remember that my kids are on their own journey. As my sister says, “I can’t change them, but I can change my expectations.” I can focus on being the parent that I want to be, even when my kids are choosing to walk their own...
Read MoreCall for Birth Short Stories
I love reading birth stories but sometimes I find them a little long. As someone who is still writing my 6 month old’s birth story, I recognize that it’s often really hard to decide what details to put in. How much back story is necessary? Which twists and turns in the story need to be put in? How many TMI details do I feel comfortable sharing? For the person telling the story, it is all gloriously relevant. Every action, reaction, in-action, every word, every intervention, every moment…it all coalesced into the birth experience of that mama. As a means of documenting a life-changing event it is understandable that mama wants to get all of it down. Not to mention, some of the back story or early seemingly insignificant events take on meaning as the story progresses, explaining why things were done or not done. I’ve read a lot of birth stories and I see how they change depending on the audience. The ones posted on forums within days of the birth are heavy on the details, plot point after plot point, this happened and then this happened. The ones I’ve read in Mothering magazine may have less details and more dialogue, more thoughtful reflection, more arc. It occurred to me that a shorter birth story forces you to really boil it down to the salient details. What stood out for you from that birth? Was it the time of day? The way the room looked, the shadows on the wall? Was it the care you received? The interventions you either asked for or refused? Was it the person who held your hand? Was it the baby’s gender? Or the baby’s health? If you had to tell your story in 100 words or less, what would you feel was absolutely vital to share? So I’m putting out the call. I want to hear your stories. I want to hear the most important parts of your birth stories, the parts that resonate with you right now, in this moment – because certainly the details that matter now might be totally different than the ones that mattered in the first days postpartum, or that will matter when your baby is 20. The Rules: Your story must be 100 words or less. I will not post stories that are 101 words or more. I will email you back and ask you to shorten them. I realize that this is a totally random arbitrary number but it gives us a framework so I’m going with it. You can do whatever you want in those 100 words. It can be a poem, it can be a paragraph, it can be point form, it can be a haiku. It can rhyme, it can be complete sentences or it can be fragments. As long as you put whatever matters to you in that story. If you choose to give it a title, the title will not be included in the word count. You can submit more than one story. Send one for every birth if you like. Or if you want to, you can write more than one about a single birth as long as you are clear that they are describing the same birth and you were interested in comparing points of view, exploring multifaceted emotions. My hope is that each one can stand on its own. I’m not interested in multiple short stories that just continue the same story; I don’t want a mini-series. If you write more than one about the same birth, please add a note indicating that both stories are for a single birth and I will post them together. You may include 1 picture with each story. Send your stories to aaronandalison@gmail.com by September 30, 2011 at midnight PST. Please add your name as you would like it to appear and the link to your blog, twitter or facebook pages if you want me to post them. Depending on how many I receive I will begin posting 5 each day starting October 1, 2011. I reserve the right to change the...
Read MoreSummer By Numbers
We’ve been counting a lot around our house lately. Here are some examples: Number of pounds of pickling cukes picked by Aaron and Rain while I jiggled and bounced Silas in the Ergo: 29 Number of pounds of pickling cukes bought from local farm stand: 10 Number of quart jars of homemade dill pickles made at 11pm after children were sleeping: 31 Number of times per night that Silas wakes to nurse: 8-12 Number of cute noises Silas makes per hour: 568* Number of annoying noises Silas makes per hour: 6 Number of decibels of annoying noises Silas makes: 100* Number of decibels of planes flying over our new house near the Air Force base: 130* Number of decibels of Rain’s constant singing & clapping: 75 Number of pints of strawberry jam canned while children watch movies: 13 Number of pounds of blueberries picked by 3 adults, 6 children & 1 sleeping baby: 16.5 Number of pounds of blueberries remaining after 2 weeks of pies, smoothies, snacking: 0 Number of coats of orange, yellow, red & purple paint (respectively) it took to paint our 1976 Dodge camper while the children slept and watched movies: 5, 2, 4, 3 Number of days on annual camping trip to Klein Lake (Sunshine Coast): 5 Number of sunny days on annual camping trip to Klein Lake (Sunshine Coast): 1.5 Number of teeth Silas has now: 6 * These numbers may or may not be slightly exaggerated. There you have it folks. That’s the way the final days of our summer are shaking down, in numbers. How did your summer add...
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