Posts Tagged "kids"
Easy as 1-2-3
{A couple of weeks ago I wrote about everyone asking us how it’s going with three kids. Since that is THE question, the only thing people really want to know, I’m going to answer it, honestly. Not just with the “fine” that I tell people in real life. So, then Part 1: the good stuff.} In many ways, having three kids isn’t much different than having two. Our life was already pretty loud, chaotic and sleep challenged. It was already a gong show getting dressed and in the car to go anywhere. Silas doesn’t really change that much. In fact, on the whole he’s very quiet and easy to deal with. We’ve already raised two babies. Pretty much everything Silas does is old news to us. We know how to take care of him. We aren’t surprised by the lack of sleep or the inconsistency of newborn clothing sizes or meconium. We were even better prepared for dealing with the big siblings in the transition this time. We learned from the mistakes we made when Noa was born so that this time both of our bigger kids have adjusted to their new little brother much more easily than Rain adjusted when he became a big brother for the first time. The third time around, it seems that we more or less know what we’re doing. Finally! It’s mostly just a matter of integrating a new personality into the family and as far as that goes, it’s luck of the draw. If your first two babies were quiet easy babies and your third is high needs, you’re going to feel that the third time around was the hardest. For us, all three of our babies had more or less the same temperament and so we haven’t had to make huge adjustments in the way we parent our babies. Another little bonus is that once you have three kids, those times when you get to go run errands with just two of them suddenly seems totally doable, fun even. Truth be told, by the time you have a 5 year old and a 3 year old, you realize that babies are nothing compared to the sassy, mess-making, willfulness of preschoolers. So while I say babies are old news, I don’t mean for a moment that I don’t delight in our baby. Silas is my secret little joy right now. Thank goodness for him who brightens up my often frustrating, head/wall banging days. When the older two won’t listen, when they fight and scream, when they pee on the floor, when they refuse to pick up their toys, I breathe in extra deep to inhale the smell of the top of Silas’s head, squeeze him a little tighter and nurse just a little longer because he’s not big yet. There may always be some stress when you add to your family but for us, so far, it seems to get just a little easier every time. If you’re curious about the hard parts, stay tuned for Part 2. In the mean time, how have you found the transitions each time you added to your family? Did it get...
Read MoreThe Question of Three
“What’s it like, having three kids?” “How’s it going with three?” “How are you doing? With three kids, I mean.” That’s what everyone wants to know. The question is usually asked with a mixture of genuine curiosity, horror and pity. It’s like they are staring at a picture of a train wreck and asking a survivor how they managed to get out alive. They want to hear all about it but they can’t help but betray the better-you-than-me attitude. Our concerned friends—the ones who really care about us—seriously want to know how we’re managing because God, three kids (!), how does one manage? They want to know if we’re ok because well, they are scared for worried about us. They are checking in to see if everything is going well, or if we need help, but there is always that hint of a suggestion that three kids is just too much for two parents to handle these days. We also get this question from strangers and acquaintances: parents who kinda sorta wanted to have three but weren’t brave enough (or managed to get the vasectomy before there was an accident), parents who find one or two kids completely overwhelming and who think we are totally nuts, or people who secretly think we’re being greedy. These queries are actually in the hopes that we’ll tell them it really is as bad as they imagine, thereby affirming their own parenting decisions. Coincidentally, we asked this very question a lot after we found ourselves unexpectedly expecting a third. Every time we ran into someone with three kids or even heard of someone with three kids, we would ask this question without even attempting to hide our hopes. Our question was really more of a pleading to please, please, tell us it isn’t as hard as we fear it will be. Tell us that by the third time around, the kid just slots right into the family and no one even notices that it wasn’t there before. Raising young kids is hard physical work. It’s tiring and often kind of drudgerous. Discipline issues can be frustrating and mentally taxing. It really isn’t easy and with three kids, we’re outnumbered. Two parents, two hands. I can physically only hold onto two kids at a time. If they all run different directions, two parents can really only chase down two of them at any one time. It takes a different set of skills to manage three than it took to manage one. Fair enough. I totally get why people ask, why I asked and why I feared (heck, why I sometimes still fear) being a mom to three kids. But I do find it interesting that the idea of three children is so universally considered to be such a terrifying burden. It seems to be the absolute limit to how many children people can even try to imagine having. I bet you anything that by the time someone announces their 4th or 5th child people don’t even ask anymore. They just smile and nod. What do you think? Have you asked this or been asked...
Read MoreStocking Stuffer Idea
I have to preface this by saying that I do not represent Usborne and I did not receive free product or compensation in return for this review. If you’re looking for a last minute stocking stuffer for the 5 year old in your life, I highly recommend Usborne’s 100 Things for Little Children to do on a Journey. My son received this as an early Christmas gift from his grandparents and we love it! This little gem consists of 50 double-sided activity cards and a pen. The cards are laminated so the marker wipes off and the activities can be done over and over again (move over colouring/activity books!). When the pen runs out, any old dry erase pen works just as good and the cards are easily wiped clean with a tissue or paper towel. There are a whole series of these activity cards and I’m sure the other sets are just as fun. Some of the other sets are more clearly geared towards travel, with activities like spotting things out the window, or older kids like the brain teaser set. Though this particular set is supposed to be things to do on a journey, there’s nothing about it that makes it only a travel game. In fact, we haven’t been on a journey yet and our cards are getting heavy use at home every afternoon. This lovely portable little box has also been brought along every time we’ve eaten out at a restaurant since we received them. The cards themselves have a range of activities with everything from drawing prompts (similar to the Taro Gomi colouring/drawing books which we also love, by the way) to simple crossword puzzles. Because Rain is pre-literate right now that means the cards will have longevity. It should be quite a while before the cards are too simple for him. Other activities include mazes, spotting the errors in a picture, connect-the-dots and more. Even our 2 year old loves them. We call them black out cards because she loves to colour every item on the card until it’s completely blacked out and then wipe the card clean and start again. She will do this for sometimes half an hour at a time! I’ve seen these cards for between $10 and $12 CAD everywhere from amazon.ca to Costco to our local toy store. They shouldn’t be hard to find near...
Read MoreMindfully Creating Family Traditions
When we first got together in our mid-twenties, we (and our friends) were in the habit of celebrating about 3 holidays: Thanksgiving (big potluck), Halloween (costume parties) and Christmas. Beyond the required family Christmas, we also often did things with our friends, especially during the years when I had no family close by (potluck dinners, staff parties, secret Santa gift exchanges). When we had kids, it became more fun to revisit old traditions and holidays that had fallen by the wayside. Over the years we’ve added more and more (starting with Easter), and in the last year we decided to make a specific effort to focus on traditions and festivals in a mindful way. Rhythm This decision was precipitated by some of the things we learned about Waldorf school when we began to investigate Rain’s options for Kindergarten earlier this year. According to Waldorf educational philosophy, rhythm is an important aspect of human life: When more people depended directly upon nature for their living, their lives were, of necessity, more rhythmic. They recognized that the rhythms of their days, their weeks, and even the seasons of the year supported them by yielding to them what they needed to live. Beyond the Rainbow Bridge – Nurturing our Children From Birth to Seven For young children marking the seasons and festivals throughout the year is an important way to incorporate rhythm into their lives. This becomes increasingly important as we live in a society that is more and more cut off from the natural world. Though we chose not to pursue Waldorf education, the focus on rhythm throughout the year has enriched our family and homeschool life. We’ve made this a priority year round, but today I will just mention a couple that come to mind immediately. Birthdays One of our cherished birthday traditions began the day my oldest was born. We had made a blueberry pie to cook during our homebirth with the intention of sharing it with our midwives before they went home. Rain was born at 7:00 am. Every year, my husband takes the morning off work so that we can begin Rain’s birthday with blueberry pie for breakfast. Valentine’s Day Two years ago, I made a deliberate decision to start celebrating Valentine’s Day with my then 3.5 year old son. It was a reaction against the glut of commercial, trademarked characters (Dora, Spiderman, Sponge Bob, etc.) on store bought, throw away cards that was coming home from preschool. It was a reaction against the fact that cartoons aimed at children seem to often contain love interests when 4 and 5 year olds don’t need to be obsessed with having a girlfriend or boyfriend. It was even a reaction against all the people who hate Valentine’s Day for the way it makes single people feel and for the fact that it is so commercialized. I thought that at least while Rain is young I would like to teach him that Valentine’s Day is a day set aside to tell or show people in your life that they are special to you, whether that’s a good friend or a family member or your mate. I also wanted him to understand that Valentine’s Day can be about chocolate and cards but that it can also be about a thoughtful gift, or ideally using creativity and imagination. Rather than buy cards for his friends, we gave out pictures of Rain. We also celebrate as a family: heart shaped pancakes for breakfast or making jam sweetheart cookies together. We’ve also done things like hang dozens of hearts from the ceiling on strings or leave a trail of hearts on the floor leading to a hiding spot with a gift. Christmas Christmas can be pretty tricky to work out as a couple. We have had to figure out how to incorporate each of our individual traditions to try to create a meaningful holiday for our kids. Thankfully, Santa didn’t figure too prominently for either of our families so we don’t really do Santa for our kids (other than as a fun story). We...
Read MoreBriefly November
This month I learned again that it feels better to listen to the little voice in your head rather than ignore it. Earlier this month our landlord approached us and inquired if we would be willing to move before our Lease is up in August. She’s a really nice woman and we like her. She was not being evil. She’s going through a rough patch and we would have loved to help her out. I was rather overcome with panic and yet because I wanted to help her, we started looking for somewhere to move. We even looked into buying a place (but that’s a depressing tale for another day). During that week, I really couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I was totally consumed with the whole moving situation. My intuition was telling me that it was NOT a good one. I don’t think there are many people out there who relish the packing and cleaning involved in moving, but having moved a lot as a kid, there’s a part of me that still finds moving kind of exciting. Given that our house is pretty tiny and we’re expanding our family, a move could be a good thing for us too. But wait a minute. There’s the catch. We’re expanding our family. Our due date is only 3 months away. Back in 2008, we were expecting Noa and we made the decision to move the same month that she arrived. We didn’t just move to a new house; we moved to a new community and in the process left behind my sister and her kids who were virtually like Rain’s siblings. We also moved out of our bus and into a real house. Inflicting this many changes on our not-quite-three-year-old all at once was more than he could handle. He had a very hard time adjusting. We vowed not to do that again. We had committed to keep our kids’ lives as consistent as possible for at least 3-4 months on either side of our due date. But this month we found ourselves only thinking about what WE (the adults) might be capable of. My pregnancy is going smoothly. I am feeling well. I am feeling physically capable of moving. I can rationalize and consider the benefits of moving now. I can intellectually separate the move from the birth of our baby. As a parent, I can welcome a baby with unconditional love. I have moved many times in my life and am capable of adapting to new surroundings. As we ran out of options for December 1st rentals, we found ourselves looking at January 1st opportunities and caught ourselves rationalizing that we could make that happen. It wouldn’t be so bad. Except for that little voice in the back of my head that kept telling me that this isn’t a good idea. I had to keep reminding myself that little people, while resilient, need consistency in their lives. I had to remember that the question is not what we are capable of, but what are our kids capable of. The truth is that in many ways asking a 5 year old and a 2 year old to welcome another family member is a pretty big deal. It doesn’t seem fair to also ask them to cope with: having all of their things packed into boxes a week of driving back and forth from house to house the boredom while mom and dad pack and clean the late nights and late dinners associated with moving learning to get used to the sounds and smells of a new house losing the comfort of home (during the wait until the new house feels like home) Moving now, or anytime in the next 6 months, is not the best decision for my kids and my intuition was telling me that every time I looked up rental listings on craigslist and felt overwhelming panic. So I told our landlord that we couldn’t do it. Guess what happened? She was fine with it. And I feel a hundred times better for having listened to...
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