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2012 in a word
Yesterday, I looked back. Today, I’m looking ahead. And there are big. HUGE. things staring back at me. In addition to the revelation of my word for the year, I guess I have an announcement to make: I’m excited and terrified to announce that Aaron and I have made arrangements to move back into our bus, Eliza Brownhome, this coming summer. We converted and lived in her in the middle of Vancouver for 5 years, part of the time with a baby and a black lab. She’s pretty comfortable and we’re intimately acquainted with life in a small space like that. However, we’ve never done it with 3 very loud kids before. With these kids in the middle of a rainy Wet Coast winter, I often feel that our 1900 square foot rental is too small so I’m really not sure what it will feel like to squish everyone back into Eliza. On that front, I’m feeling some, um, trepidation. However, I’m so excited about how this fits in with our bigger dreams to eventually live rurally, build a house, garden, support local agriculture, create community, reconnect with my sister’s family and centralize home life – that is to say, live, work, learn and play all on the same site. I realize that I haven’t publicly described this vision before so some of this may seem fuzzy to you…but suffice to say, that moving back into Eliza for the summer is the first tangible step in the direction of making our dreams a reality. The initial plan is to do this for the summer and reassess in the fall. The hope is that some of the considerable money we pay in rent will be freed up for investing in our dreams. It will be fun, and exciting, but we’re also facing a lot of hard work to make this happen which brings me to my word for 2012: ENERGIZE. en·er·gize verb /enər jīz/ Give vitality and enthusiasm to Supply energy, typically kinetic or electrical energy, to (something) This word came to me late at night on New Year’s Eve, as I lay in bed tossing ideas around. I had considered DO, ACT, ACTION, COMMIT but they all seemed a little heavy, a little bossy. You see, I was looking for a word that would mean just do it, don’t be afraid, quit procrastinating, you can do it, you have it in you, go for it. Even without this bus plan, I have a handful of projects that have been hanging over my head for quite some time: finish the kid’s baby books deal with the clutter spots (closet floor, top of dressers, junk drawers) clean up computer (sort 5 years of digital photos, clear out inbox, purge favourites/bookmarks) back up computer make slideshow/video for Silas’ first birthday finish making a useful household notebook organize all the loose paper recipes laying around And now, on top of those, I have to sort, store and declutter so that we can fit the five of us in 500 square feet. These projects will be very freeing, but they take time and require action and commitment. They can be boring, easy to start dreading and easy to put off. My plan is to assign one project to each month and do it, no more excuses. I like the word energize because: It’s a verb so it suggests action. It reminds me to be enthusiastic about my projects. It encourages me to put in the energy, not to procrastinate. I love the bit about vitality and enthusiasm – it means that with our energy we can bring life to our dreams. There is room for me to prioritize self-care so that I feel energized too. The flip side of our plan to live in the bus again this summer is that we’ve also agreed to help a local farming family with some of their projects, to help make their dreams more attainable and I look forward to bringing our energy, vitality and enthusiasm to their farm. It’s going to be big year. I can’t...
Read MoreLooking Back
Last year at this time I was in the middle of my third trimester of a surprise pregnancy. I wanted to spend the last week of 2010 reflecting on the previous year and anticipating the next. I wanted to choose a word of the year. But I just couldn’t get past anticipating how the new baby would change our lives. All I could think about/plan for was the upcoming birth and my fears/excitement about becoming a family of five. I felt like I had just boarded a roller coaster and well, a roller coaster isn’t the best place to write in your journal or have a strategic planning session. I let the planning and reflecting go and I sat back to enjoy the ride (or hold on/white-knuckle it as it were). This year I am again in a mental space that allows me to step back and look at the bigger picture. This year I’ve chosen a word and I’ve been able to look back at the last two years to see the themes and lessons that brought us to today. 2010 began with me seeking a clear vision of my path, and consequently, faith and trust that my dreams were achievable. It was supposed to be a year of planning and moving forward, but we got thrown a curve-ball mid-way through the year, in the form of an unplanned pregnancy. Just like that everything changed: I forgot all about my intentions and plans from January and focused on the baby we would be welcoming. Yet, looking back, I see that the year was still embodied by vision, faith and trust. I had to rewrite my vision of our family and our plans and I again found myself looking for clarity of purpose as I reconsidered my dreams. I learned to trust the process and have faith in myself and my family as I fearfully wondered whether we had the energy to welcome/care for another child. I learned to relax and believe that it would all work out. 2011 ended up being a year of being, of presence. Mindfulness is a bit of a catch word in the last decade and I wish I could say that I consciously chose to be present but the reality is that it just happened. This summer, Aaron and I made the decision that our family was complete and Aaron went in for a vasectomy which meant that 2011 was the last year I will ever be pregnant, or give birth, or hold my own newborn baby against my skin. I spent 2011 reveling in the anticipation and feeling gratitude for the childbearing phase in a woman’s life. I spent 2011 watching my baby grow and trying to soak it up, knowing now, the third time around, how very fleeting it is, knowing that I can’t slow it down, knowing that I won’t experience this first hand ever again. After all the fears and uncertainty and surprise of 2010, we were delighted to welcome Silas into our lives. He has been a wonderful ray of light and sweetness in our family. He balanced us out and healed old wounds and the first 5-6 months with him were so beautiful and—I still can’t believe it—easy. I couldn’t believe how lucky we were to have him. The last few months have been harder as sleep became a huge challenge and as a result, 2011 echoed 2009 in being a year of family, a year of being still and getting to know each other, a year of not taking on too much. I even went so far as to broadcast on facebook that we were struggling with sleep deprivation to the point where I was focusing only keeping my kids’ fed and clothed and as such my friends would have to forgive my lack of phone calls/visits. 2011 was about living day-to-day. 2011 was about the moment. 2011 was about now. But here we are: it is January. The days have slipped by. We have a new year. We can see Silas’ first birthday there on...
Read MoreMaking the Switch to Natural Toys
As I wrote last week, creating a natural playroom doesn’t happen overnight. Taking the longer route, while perhaps more realistic, is not without its bumps and setbacks. Here’s a little about what you can expect and some tips to help along the way: It’s no secret that kids don’t actually need a bunch of fancy toys, but unfortunately, I’ve also observed that given the choice, they just can’t resist the shiny, plastic, battery operated, noisy, walking, talking, lights-flashing ones. When you first start to introduce natural toys you may find, like I did, that they aren’t played with as much as you’d hoped. Despite observing the kids in a Waldorf Kindergarten regularly play with rocks and acorns and silks, I have a hard time imagining my kids choosing horse chestnuts and pine cones over a bucket of Lego, given the choice. And it’s not just the rocks that pose this problem. At first even the more exciting toys like the wooden castle filled with wooden horses and knights were only played with when they were brand new and often sat in the corner after that. So, you probably wonder what has worked for us? First off, don’t get discouraged. Keep buying natural toys whenever you can. Make it a priority to invest in these types of toys even if your initial efforts aren’t the raging success you were hoping for. Pool cash gifts from family and friends to get a big item or suggest that family members go together to purchase something you’ve been dreaming of. We started getting the kids some of the bigger ticket items every time a birthday or Christmas rolled around. We started with a beautiful wooden castle and eventually got each of the kids their own Waldorf doll. Expect that as you start getting more of them, there will be a shift. Expect that it will take a while, especially if finances are a big factor. Here are some ways to cut down on the expense: Try making stuff. The woman who did up this room for her son says she got very DIY and made a lot of the toys. Some of the things that we’ve made for our kids include a wooden doll bed, some doll clothes, felt birthday crowns, a wooden sword, and a knight’s tunic. I also have a book that shows how to make simple felt animals which I intend to do with Rain. A lot of etsy vendors even sell patterns for making your own felt food and you can get cheap plain silk and dye your own play cloths. Involving your kids in the process is a good way to ensure that they will be more willing to play with the creations too. Evaluate what big items you really want to purchase and what could be skipped. Do you really need those expensive play arches (even though they are cool)? It seems to me that you could invest in a lot more TOYS to be played with rather than the fancy shelves. Could you make do with a homemade stove/sink combo that sits on a table top rather than an expensive kitchen? Save those purchases until the end when you are really sure that you want/need/can afford them. Two Good Starting Points: Felt Food – I started getting the kids one set of felt play food from etsy for every gift giving occasion. I only spent about $20 at a time, but I did this for Easter, Valentine’s Day, Birthdays and Christmas so they added up quickly. At first they didn’t get used often but as the sets have started to pile up, they now play with them quite a bit. The sets aren’t expensive when you buy them slowly over time like this, and I feel good about supporting handmade etsy products. These make playing with the Fisher Price plastic stuff more fun until we can eventually afford the time/money to either make or buy a kitchen. Dress Up – starting a dress up bin is also a good place to start. This can be done...
Read MoreNatural Playroom Dreams
When my son was born, 6 years ago, our consumer culture was in the early stages of the move back to organic, natural products for baby. This included natural crib mattresses without fire retardant in them, homemade baby purees, organic natural fibre clothing and the rising popularity of cloth diapering. Similarly, I started seeing natural toys and wooden toys everywhere. Some expensive baby boutiques that catered to this mindset sprang up around Vancouver and Natural Pod was a new venture that I started seeing at baby themed trade shows like Birth Fest in East Van. I fell in love with the beauty and simplicity of many of the wooden toys and handmade dolls and soft furnishings. Furthermore, in the 3 years between the births of my first two children Canada declared BPA a toxin and banned it from infant feeding products. Our lifestyle began to shift away from plastic and I began to make efforts not to bring more plastic into our home. I envisioned our future playspaces to look like this, and this, and this, and this. A couple of things got in the way of this plan: Money – these natural toys are NOT cheap. Especially some of the bigger items like the wooden kitchen and play arches. I would be willing to save up cash birthday gifts from relatives until we could afford a fancy kitchen like this but Aaron finds them unreasonably expensive toys for kids (despite in my opinion, the obvious care, quality materials and craftsmanship that goes into some of them). Hand-Me-Downs – my sister with older kids gave me a lot of the things they had outgrown and my mom passed down a lot of my old toys from when I was young. My toys had sentimental value plus, being made in the 70’s, they were durable despite being plastic (particularly my old Duplo and Fisher Price sink, stove and dishes). Also, who was I to say no to free toys? Gifts – personally, I think it’s just a bit pretentious to tell people that I only want a certain type of toy for my kids, especially when these toys are also expensive and hard to find. If someone loves my kid enough to buy them a gift, I’m going to smile and say “thank you very much.” When people ask me what my child might like for Christmas or a birthday, I’ve found that the safest answer is “We always love books at our house!” About the only thing I will actually come right out and say is that we prefer not to have clothes or toys with licensed characters on them. Super Cool Non-Natural Toys – over the years, we were occasionally swayed by really cool gifts, or marketing, or our kids’ likes and dislikes, towards things like Lego, Schleich animals and so on. Mindset – to be honest, I think Aaron and I are both unwilling to be so rigidly crunchy as to make this kind of playroom a priority. We probably always will have a few plastic toys and Toy Story puzzles around. Afterall, I don’t think that the majority of non-natural toys are inherently evil (battery operated ones being the exception) so I’m not opposed to having them in the house. Frankly, I’m not wealthy or snobby enough to go all out on creating a natural playroom from scratch overnight. I assume that to be true for most people who admire these types of play spaces. That said, a mostly natural playroom is still something we’re working towards. We’ve had both challenges and successes with this and my intention was to discuss what seems to work in making the slow transition to natural toys…but alas, I blathered on too long again so I will offer that up in my next...
Read MorePersonal Space for Moms
Personal space used to be a pretty big deal to me. In highschool, friends would tease me about how much an infringement of my personal space would bother me. I am all for cuddling, hand holding, that kind of thing, but otherwise, please, don’t touch me. Someone sitting just a little too close, bumping my arm, jostling my leg, walking too close, standing too close is just… Ugh. Overcrowded schools and all, I had two lab partners in chemistry and we had to squeeze at one table. It drove me crazy. One of my lab partners was a lefty and I’m a righty and our elbows always bumped as we wrote notes. My brother is a knee-bouncer; sitting next to him in the car drove me nuts. And then I grew up and became a mom. {insert crazed laughter here} Can you imagine the adjustment motherhood has been for me in the personal space department? Moms don’t get to have their own bodies. From conception, our little ones start sharing our bodies in a way that is equal parts annoying and magical. Then, wonder of wonders, they pass right through our bodies, out into the world and we begin the slow process of separation. It doesn’t happen overnight. At first, there’s nursing. I’ve been nursing now for six years, minus a few months during each pregnancy. This means that day and night, someone is attached to me, sucking on me, crawling on me, sleeping on me, grabbing at me, sometimes even pinning me down or chasing me. (Don’t get me wrong – I love breastfeeding). Silas has also gotten to the play with his food stage: he pinches and squeezes the boob as he nurses, pulls the nipple out of his mouth, then lunges to re-latch. I know from past experience that this is coming too: sticking fingers up my nose or in my mouth repeatedly, trying to grab my tongue, while nursing. Thankfully, I’ve never allowed the nipple twiddling that most nurslings are famous for because I knew that would send me right up the wall. And it doesn’t end with weaning. My older kids are always sitting on me, touching me, pinching me. They even try to move my arms or legs to suit their own purposes when I’m busy trying to do something (like sleep, or nurse their little brother). But I’ll tell you a secret. For the most part, I don’t mind. I remember my prenatal class instructor telling us about a woman who scooped up her newborn baby, covered in blood and vernix and began instinctively, to LICK him clean…like a cat. I think it’s worth mentioning that at the time I heard this story, 7 months pregnant with my first child, I thought it was bewilderingly outrageous, but now, after three kids, I kind of see where she was coming from (though, I must say I have never done it). Because these little beings began their lives safely sheltered and cradled inside my own body, part of me views them as an extension of my own body. In my mind, I observe my interactions with Silas, the way I wrap my body around his, kissing armpits, blowing raspberries on soft belly skin, nibbling toes. I could eat him up. He’s delicious. He’s a cuddler and in the mornings, we often lay together entwined, mouths millimeters from cheeks, breathing together, feeling each other’s warmth. His neck rolls may smell like sour milk and he drools on me but I barely notice. I remember being the same with Rain and Noa. There is no too close with them. It often feels like we can’t be close enough, for long enough. There’s another little surprise though. I feel that slowly shifting with Rain. He is six now and I can feel our personal space beginning to bubble between us. Sure, we still cuddle and hug and hold hands and kiss and fall asleep with our arms wrapped around each other, but now, when I lay down with him at bedtime, his breath in my face feels...
Read MoreTV 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...
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