Milk Musings

Mrs. Murray and the Search for Perfection

2011-08-21T20:11:00.001-07:00

I hate it when my kids won’t go to sleep. I honestly feel like I have done everything humanly possible to prevent bedtime issues, but we still have problems, like everyone else. The worst is when my husband is on midnights. He leaves to go to work at 10pm, and who can settle down for sleep when Daddy is taking a shower and getting dressed for work? We end up going to sleep later and later, until before I know it we are up until 3am.

I really want to be a mom who just doesn’t care. I want to stay up with my kids and have hot chocolate and sandwiches with them, like Mrs. Murray in “A Wrinkle in Time.” I want to be completely undisturbed by my husband’s work schedule, my children’s occasional shenanigans, and life in general. I just can’t!

I would love to be mellow and go with the flow but it’s hard for me. If Mrs. Who or Mrs. What showed up at my house in the middle of the night, I would be more likely to beat her senseless with my son’s baseball bat, and be thankful I had someone besides my kids on whom to take out my frustration, rather than invite them in to chat.

When I was a kid I thought Mrs. Murray sounded like a perfect mom, even if she did let her sons boss her around a bit too much for my liking (teenagers who care that their mom put the crock pot of stew in her lab? Really?). Her husband had disappeared months before, but she maintained a serene confidence that he would return. She was smart and kind and understood her children. I loved the fact that she was a scientist – smart and beautiful. Not bad things to aspire to, all in all.

Except, she’s a character in a book. And I’m not.

But, today I went with the flow. I won’t win a super mom award for today’s activities, but after a rough start, we actually had fun and napped at a reasonable time. I even got to watch a movie!

So maybe instead of wanting to be perfect I can concentrate on having fun. Anyway, who wants to be perfect…and boring?

A Tea Party

2011-03-22T22:38:00.001-07:00

A couple weeks ago I picked up a ceramic miniature tea set at the thrift store. I was thinking of my daughter, no stereotyping intended; seeing the tiny cups and teapot reminded me of the miniature tea set I had as a child. Every little girl needs a tea set, right?

It hadn’t even occurred to me that my sons would be interested in it…that is, until I discovered my three-year-old trying to rip apart the tape that held the package closed. I was honestly mystified. I had forgotten that the most frequent guest at my own childhood tea parties was my younger brother, who I have no memory of tying to a chair or otherwise forcing him to attend. I was a little worried my son would be too rough and break the dishes, but then I thought, What the heck, it was $3 at the thrift store, it’s not a family heirloom or anything. It was replaceable.

My three-year-old turned out to be a very gracious tea server. He was careful with the tiny cups and saucers, making sure there were enough for everyone. He refilled the tiny tea pot and then refilled our tiny cups, over and over and over. He grinned like the Cheshire cat the whole time, especially when I exclaimed, “What delicious tea!” HIs big brother even got in on the fun. I was so thrilled that they were being nice to each other, so happy that my 8-year-old was playing along and my 3-year-old was joyfully engaged in an activity that didn’t involve throwing mud or pooping in the grass.

When my oldest was this age, we had tea parties too. We drank real tea, and I made little sandwiches, and sometimes cookies, and I realize now that’s probably why I didn’t do it very often. It was too much of a production. However there’s practically no effort at all involved in letting your little one refill your little cup with water, over and over, except for maybe making sure the dishes are clean and keeping a towel handy. It just never occurred to me that boys would want a tea set! I feel a little ashamed of myself in retrospect. What the heck happened to all my aspirations to avoid sexism?

I assumed my daughter would want a tea set, and why not, considering she will apparently grow up attending frequent tea parties herself. But obviously a tea set is equally charming to a boy. The little tea pot is adorable. It’s delightful to have a tiny, one-sip teacup. It’s endlessly fun for small children to pour from one container to another. It has great potential to be a quiet activity (but, since the bulk of my parenting experience relates to very energetic boys, I can imagine all the ways a tea party might turn violent). And, although I have objections to the idea of a tea party as an opportunity for little girls to learn manners – what the heck is fun about that? – I remembered what it really is that’s fun about tea parties. It’s all about the exaggerated, extremely proper manners – the extended pinky finger, the faux British accent, the gloves and pearl necklace I wore to probably every tea party I threw as a child. And those extremely proper manners were absolutely fun and awesome to get silly with – then and now.

They might need reminding (still!) to say “please” and “thank you” at the dinner table, and they might spend a good part of some days at each other’s throats…but our little ceramic tea set turned them into charming little gentlemen. If even a little of their tea party politeness and good cheer carry over into our other activities, I will be one happy Queen Mother.

Resistance is Futile

2011-02-23T15:06:00.001-08:00

If there’s an overreaching theme that’s been carried through my entire mothering experience, it must be that change is the only constant. My children are continually growing changing, and so are my relationships with them. It’s a good thing, and a horrible thing, and a sad thing, and a joyful thing.

I am a huge fan of breastfeeding, and I never really wish I wasn’t breastfeeding…but I have caught myself wishing I weren’t breastfeeding right now. It’s usually in the middle of the night, when both little ones want to nurse at the same time, my back hurts and I can’t go back to sleep. My mind races; I feel resentful and irritable. My skin crawls. I found myself thinking, if I wasn’t such a softie I could have put both babies into cribs at 9:00 and had the rest of the night to myself! So I tried imagining what that would be like. At first, I thought it sounded wonderful. Peace and quiet! No elbows in my ribs! No half-asleep bitten nipples! Of course I would be substituting a baby and small child who would have to scream at the top of their lungs just to wake me up. I would have to wake up to a screaming, hysterical child rather than my son cuddling up to my back and saying sleepily, “Can I nurse?” Hmm. Maybe I didn’t have it so bad after all.

When I started thinking about it that way, I had a revelation. The babies always fall asleep. Every single time. Maybe it takes a little longer than I’d like, maybe I have to take a few more deep breaths and just relax and go with it, but they have never yet just…stayed…awake…forever. Ever! So there doesn’t seem to be much point in being angry over lost sleep. It’s temporary, after all. No amount of getting upset will change my babies’ needs. No amount of snapping at their sleepy fussing will make it go away. Getting caught up in my negative feelings just made it harder to deal with. When I quit worrying about how late it was – and I was still awake!! – I found it actually pleasant to cuddle my sleeping babies, even though they did not want to unlatch for awhile yet. When I decided I could either care and try to change the situation, or decide not to care, and just go with it, I found I didn’t care very much at all…and in the end it felt very good to just go with the flow.

The Long Way Round

2011-02-22T10:44:00.001-08:00

My middle son has been wrestling through moving out of babyhood. He turned 3 last month, and is sometimes sweet and angelic, and other times incredibly short-tempered. I am usually glad he is still nursing, but as he gets older I’m finding I enjoy it less, which makes me sad but also relieved he doesn’t want to nurse all that much anymore. It’s bittersweet.

Then, of course, we have a few nights where he wakes more frequently than usual, and needs to nurse back to sleep.

When this happens, I clearly have choices. I can wake my husband and ask him to cuddle the boy back to sleep. I can try to cuddle him back to sleep myself. I can ignore him (yeah, right!). I can suck it up and nurse him, whether I want to or not. I usually choose nursing, because although sometimes it becomes uncomfortable and I have a hard time going back to sleep, especially when the baby needs to nurse back to sleep at the same time, I am fundamentally lazy and don’t have the mental energy at 3am to try and talk a sad little boy into going to sleep without nursing. What would be the point anyway? A need that is met goes away. A screaming child disrupts the whole family’s sleep. I sometimes ask my son to try to just go back to sleep, and he sometimes does, but I see no real benefit to not letting him nurse when he really needs to.

So a few nights ago I found myself nursing both little ones, uncomfortable and unable to go back to sleep. When this happens I usually distract myself with the TV until I feel sleepy again. I put on “Long Way Round,” a surprisingly enjoyable series documenting a trip made by Ewan MacGregor and Charley Boorman, on motorcycles, more or less around the world – “the long way” – from London, across Europe, through the Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia, flying across the Pacific to Alaska, then south through Canada and the United States until finishing up in New York. Whew! Ewan and Charley are likeable and jovial as they sign autographs, chat with the locals and help each other and their cameraman wrestle their motorcycles through rivers and muck. They visit UNICEF centers in the various large cities they pass through and spend time with the children.

The night I couldn’t sleep, I watched the episode where Ewan and Charley were making their slow, arduous way through Mongolia. There were very few paved roads, and after a very frustrating day of extremely slow progress through difficult terrain, they were considering moving north into Russia in order to travel on paved roads. After one of their support vehicles flipped over, Ewan had a long chat with one of the producers – should they take the easier roads? To my delight Ewan said something incredibly wise. “Maybe the point is not to take an easy road. Maybe the point is just that we’re doing this, and this is where we are right now.” I hadn’t thought anything could cheer me up that night – but I found myself smiling ear to ear.

And ironically, as frustrated as I had felt earlier, I was taking the easy road…even though it temporarily felt more difficult. Sure enough, later in the episode Ewan and Charley made their way out of the worst of the bad roads. They traveled through some incredibly beautiful regions of Mongolia that they would have missed if they had sought an easier route. They ended up being proud of themselves for making it through something difficult and enjoying the ride after all.

It seems a little silly to be making something profound out of a TV show – but I do think we come upon things at a certain time for a reason. Meaningful experiences are everywhere, if we are open to them.

Thanks, Ewan and Charley.

Your Hands Are Full!

2011-01-31T17:53:00.001-08:00

Do people dislike kids, or what?

Today, for the third time in a week, a complete stranger saw me in a public place with my three children and said, “Boy, you sure have your hands full!”

Now, there are days I feel that way: my boys are fighting, I’m tired, my baby is fussy…my hands (and heart and mind) feel very full, and my reserves feel very low. But today, my kids were behaving, as they usually do in the grocery store. We had been there maybe 5 minutes.

I can understand someone thinking I have my hands full if they see me trying to keep my boys from strangling each other (which, unfotunately, I sometimes have to do). Why do some people think that if you have children with you, you are overwhelmed by them? How can I appear to be overwhelmed when I am casually visiting with my children about what vegetables we're going to buy?

Maybe these well-meaning people didn't complete their thought. Maybe they meant to say, "Boy, you sure have your hands full of well-behaved children!" or "Boy, you sure have your hands full -- and you're completely unfazed!"

I actually can't think of a variation on that statement that doesn't sound either fake or horribly condescending to me. I have come to think that most people are so unused to being around children in everyday life, they almost view them as an exotic species of animal. They sometimes encounter them trying to get through a grocery trip, or in the library or whatever, but they are not involved in a meaningful way with children in their everyday lives. Can it be that something so simple, walking through a grocery store wearing a baby and pushing your older children in a cart, is now seen as a superhuman feat? What makes my children so intimidating to a woman who sure as heck looked like a grandmother?

What does it mean, anyway? Usually when someone says they have their hands full they imply a certain amount of overwhelmedness, at the very least a busy-ness. Would it have been better to have my hands empty? What would that even have meant? And isn't it a little rude to suggest to someone else that they are overwhelmed -- when you could be encouraging them?

Maybe the woman who saw us today was impressed that I was able to push around that cumbersome racecar-shaped shopping cart with two children in it, while wearing a baby. Maybe what she meant was, Wow, your kids are cute, holy cow, you must be so strong! Go Mama! I sort of doubt it, but it makes me feel better to imagine that's what was impressive, not the fact that I was enjoying my children and dealing with them positively. Is it really a lost art?

Mom, Interrupted

2011-01-27T17:19:00.001-08:00

Lately I have been having a lot of those days where I think, if only I could have an hour to just sit and do this, I could get finished!

If only.

It doesn’t happen, and it’s frustrating. I sit down to eat breakfast, and am stopped midway by my 3-year-old, who wants to play outside in the snow and needs help putting his boots and coat on. Folding a basket of laundry took me almost an hour – I kept stopping to redirect my older children, who only wanted to watch TV all day, and keep my baby entertained. The last time my husband and I had a movie night we paused it several times, as usual.

I have, of course, been interrupted countless times since I started writing this!

One of the great things about being a stay-at-home Mom is that I (generally) have the flexibility to take care of things when I get a chance. Apart from appointments and activities, I don’t have to be any particular place at any particular time, and I like that. If I’m up late with a sick or non-sleepy child, it’s not the end of the world, because I can usually get a nap the next day, or at least a little down time. It’s virtually never true that I literally have no time to do anything – but it’s not a question of whether time is available, but of whether I can finish one thing and move on to the next!

This is the heart of my problem. I like to make lists, so I can cross things off as I accomplish them and see my progress. It’s the unforeseen interruptions that come up more or less constantly throughout the day that derail me, every time. It takes twice as long to do half as much. It’s harder to see my progress, and it starts to feel overwhelming when I have to keep stopping. Again. How will I ever get anything done?

*Sigh* It’s been that kind of week.

Mrs. Clean (Ha!)

2011-01-14T11:41:00.001-08:00

Today I decided to clean out my fridge. Aughh!! Run for the hills!

Not my favorite job. I am trying to get more organized housework-wise, though, so I decided to “like” Flylady on Facebook and work toward using some of her cleaning and organization tips. Baby steps!

On Wednesday, Flylady told me to clean my fridge. It was also antiprocrastination day! So, as if any further proof were needed that I am a housework slacker, I decided to clean the fridge Friday, when I didn’t have other activities planned. It seemed so perfect – it is that time of week when we need a good stocking-up grocery trip, so there wasn’t tons of stuff to shift around.

Flylady was right, by the way. My fridge needed a cleaning. I put my baby in my Ergo carrier and set out to just take out some old food and wipe down the shelves – to make it cleaner in a manageable way. But when I started taking everything out I saw how truly disgusting the bottom shelf had become, not to mention the crisper drawers and the bottom of the fridge itself. So I decided to take the shelf and drawers out and clean them, too. That shelf was so filthy – the glass shelf was completely stuck to the plastic frame. It seemed to be all one piece! But I got off to a great start. I put the icky shelf in the bathtub to soak in hot soapy water, and gave my 3-year-old a scrub brush so he could “help.” He promptly took all his clothes off and busied himself scrubbing.

I gave my 8-year-old a dishpan full of hot, soapy water and a rag and put him to work cleaning out the inside of the fridge while I emptied all the containers of elderly foodstuffs. Gross. When I checked on my 3-year-old he had separated the glass shelf from the plastic frame – yikes! Sure he would drop it, I helped him scrub around the edges and took it into the kitchen where I had a dry rag. In the process of trying to wipe the big, awkward glass shelf dry, I dropped it on the floor myself! It shattered all over the floor. So much for my fridge cleaning!

My first thought was to get everything “clean enough” and go lie down. Ugh. Glass all over the floor. Fridge full of soapy water. Small naked child. If I had followed Flylady’s advice and dressed to my shoes, I would not have had to rush into the bedroom for a foot covering, but for better or worse that was step one. Step two was sending the boys downstairs while I cleaned up the glass. I own a broom; it was not so bad. I called Sears and learned that I would not have to replace my whole refrigerator; for $38 they will send me a brand-new glass shelf. I wiped out all the soapy water from inside the fridge and realized that all that soaking had probably been for the best; my 8-year-old had done most of the hard work anyway.

Somewhere in the middle of all this madness my baby had put her head down on my chest and fell asleep. Thank goodness! As I wiped out the (dirty) soapy water I thought, what the heck, I’ll wipe the sides down too. Then, well, it didn’t seem like too much trouble to move the milk jug from the shelf in the door and wipe that shelf, too. And since getting that water out of the fridge meant that a lot of it went on the floor, I let my kids get out the mop.

I’m proud of myself today for dealing with the broken glass without getting upset. No, that’s wrong; I was very upset when it happened. I called Sears because I knew if I didn’t do something constructive right away I would burst into tears. But I was able to get the mess cleaned up without screaming at my children – yay! I got them to help finish cleaning the fridge, and they even mopped the floor. The fridge isn’t completely clean, but all things considered I think half-clean is pretty darn good.

“Fun!”

2011-01-09T19:55:00.001-08:00

I initially started homeschooling with the idea that I would need to “make” learning fun. Now I find this idea absolutely ridiculous. I honestly don’t think I could do much to make learning more fun than it already inherently is. Because I could (and have, unfortunately) make it a heck of a lot less fun, I’m finding myself just keeping my nose out of things.

“Put the educational materials down. Slowly back away from the child…”

Really!

“But,” you say, “your son won’t learn how to read and write! He won’t learn arithmetic! He won’t learn American history! Where does the madness end?!”

The truth is, my son loves to read. I don’t know what “grade level” he reads at. Neither does he, and we don’t really care. He enjoys reading and seeks it out on his own. Mission accomplished. (On a side note, I saw one of the most depressing things ever recently at Borders: a bookmark that had a timer in it! To keep track of required reading! And I would have said that nothing could make reading unenjoyable. *sigh*)

The other truth is, my son hates to write. But, he loves things like popcorn and red bell peppers and peanut butter crunch cereal, and if he wants to make sure they are purchased, he has to write them on the grocery list. It’s great practice.

American history is available at every turn. I can’t imagine it’s possible to avoid learning about our country’s history and current events in a family that regularly has conversations, anyway, and besides, just how accurate was your elementary school’s history text?

So, I have stopped trying to make things fun. I am now putting my energy into keeping my mouth shut.

For example, the other day I walked into the dining room where my 8-year-old son was sitting at the table with my 14-year-old stepson. They were writing something on a piece of paper. “Hey Mommy!” my 8-year-old exclaimed brightly. “I just figured out that 7 X 5 = 35!” “Cool!” I replied, bursting with curiosity. How did you “figure that out?” Did you count by 5s, or did you count by 7s? What brought this up, anyway? And to my delighted amazement, he continued, “1, 5. 2, 10. 3, 15.” I realized he was simply not saying “times” in between the numbers. “4, 20. 5, 25. 6, 30. 7, 35. And 8 would be…40!”

I had to almost literally bite my tongue. I was so thrilled.

Let me be very clear. I wasn’t excited because he finally “got” something he’d been having trouble with, which in turn was driving me crazy. I wasn’t relieved because, having mastered the 5s on the multiplication table, we could move on to something else. I was happy because he “figured it out” on his own. He was excited and pleased with himself, and it had nothing to do with me, and I thought that was absolutely as it should be.

We have not been practicing the multiplication tables, or in any other way “working” on math concepts. Except, every so often something comes up. A real-life example of something that’s usually “taught” to children in a painfully boring way. I don’t drill him. I don’t particularly care what order he learns things. What possible difference could it make?

Now, I haven’t completely got the hang of this keeping quiet thing. Our math calendar has a problem for every day, for which the answer is the date. The fun is in figuring out how they got to the answer. I kept my mouth shut admirably, and my kids have perused various problems at different times. I even caught someone mutter, “Oh, okay, cool!” As I suspected, it was interesting by itself. I didn’t need to “teach” the problems or encourage the kids to look at them. The problem for January first was: 2 + (1 X 0) – 1. My son insisted that 1 X 0 was 1, and I got the idea that I had to set him straight. I showed him how 5 X 10 = 50, because 5 X 0 = 0 and 5 X 1 = 5, and to my dismay I caught myself guiding him toward the answers, as teacher sometimes do. I decided to shut up, and noted aloud that he had done the part in parenthesis first, as you’re supposed to, and had figured that out on his own.

I don’t think I ruined the fun of figuring out problems. I’m pretty sure it would take quite a few more missteps, but I’m going to continue helping my son learn on his own terms. It’s really fun to watch.

Fun Ways to Learn

2011-01-05T21:26:00.001-08:00

I am, I’m the first to admit, a lazy homeschooler. I devote practically no time to developing a curriculum, or worrying about what we’ll work on next. I am generally so busy with what we’re interested in right now (and trying to keep a record of it in a way that hopefully makes sense to the county reviewer) that I don’t even think about what might come next.

So imagine my delight when my mom arrived at our house for some holiday festivities armed with a long list of jokes!

Okay, maybe you can’t imagine my delight just yet, unless I’ve given the impression that I love jokes. I do, but that’s sort of beside the point. I come from a long line of jokers, punners, and tale-tellers. The family gatherings I remember from my childhood were full of good-natured ribbing. It was fun, it was silly, at times when I was a teenager it was embarrassing. But it’s also a bona fide part of my heritage and, apparently, inescapable. Jokes and puns are par for the course when my relatives get together, and being geographically far from my maternal extended family has not changed that a bit.

When my mom first started collecting jokes to tell my son, he was about 5. He’d just started to “get” the concept of the joke, and loved knock-knocks. They didn’t even have to make sense; he just liked “Knock knock!” & “Who’s there?” Over the years, as he’s developed his sense of humor, it’s been fun to hear him invent his own jokes, and truly wonderful to watch his delight when he “gets” the ones others tell him. It’s not just that he has learned to tell a joke, or memorized jokes or figured out what makes a joke funny. He “gets” it. He participates in joking with a refreshing enthusiasm. He “plays along” and makes some very clever puns. It seems to me now that playing with language in this way is an important step in not just developing a sense of humor and ability to laugh at oneself, but in learning to express oneself.

Now, I have always thought learning should be fun. I discovered, quite by accident, that my son adores “Mad Libs” and that they are a fun way to learn parts of speech (that would be nouns, verbs, adjectives and so on, for the non-grammatically inclined). It helped that they were funny. It didn’t occur to me at the time how much a person might learn about the English language from riddles and puns, but as I’ve watched my son enjoy playing with language – with virtually no writing, by the way – I've seen a huge increase in his understanding and enjoyment of wordplay. It’s fun to witness and fun to participate in.

So, when my parents came for their holiday visit I was expecting plenty of silliness, and I wasn’t disappointed. I wasn’t expecting quite so much learning and cleverness – but it happened. I’m so glad my mom keeps collecting jokes.

On Why I’m No Longer a Girly Girl

2011-01-04T18:02:00.001-08:00

When I look at pictures of my pre-mother self, I can hardly believe I am the same person. I was so slim! So together! So nicely coiffed! I had such a fun variety of lipsticks! I almost never went anywhere in my sweat pants, and certainly didn’t spend all day in my pajamas, unless I was sick.

How times have changed!

I realized a few weeks ago that I hadn’t painted my fingernails in, literally, over a year. Not that that was a central part of my personal care regimen, but I used to generally have nice-looking nails, and often kept them painted. I no longer shower every day. Heck, I don’t even brush my hair every day! More often than not my hair goes into a ponytail as soon as I wake up and stays that way. My wardrobe consists of T-shirts and whatever comfortable pants are clean at the moment I find time to get dressed. I can’t remember the last time I put on any makeup…although I do occasionally put on a little concealer and some lip gloss.

The thing is, I don’t care. When I look back on my teenage self and remember spending an hour and a half getting ready for school – fully 15 minutes just blow-drying my long hair – I am amazed at what a waste of time it seems to me now. Yes, I’m busy doing things with my kids, changing diapers and preparing meals and putting laundry in the washer and playing Uno. I sort of care how I look; I make sure I have a clean shirt on if I plan to leave the house. I just have such a vastly different idea of my minimum self-care. Maybe that’s kind of pathetic. Some days I definitely feel it is wretchedly pathetic, those days when I decide it’s not *that* important to take a shower, my daughter spits up on my shirt for the fourth time, my son wipes poop all over my arm after using the potty, and at the end of the day I’m too tired to care whether I brush my teeth.

I try to feel cute in small ways. I have a collection of cotton T-shirts with pretty details, in colors I love, all thrift store finds. I have glasses I love to wear. I made myself a few pairs of earrings – pretty but not too dangly. I decided to paint my nails once in awhile, whatever color I feel like at the moment.

The truth is I don’t care very much, and I don’t feel like I have time to worry about it anyway. My kids don’t need me to look perfect; they just need me to be there.

I am going to try to get a cute haircut soon, though.

Milk: Your Body Doing Good!

2010-12-31T22:50:00.001-08:00

When I was a kid, I thought all mothers breastfed.

Over the years, I saw more and more how many mothers feed their babies formula. I honestly could never understand why. If you have your own free milk, I reasoned, why would you buy formula? I understand now that there are countless factors involved in a mother’s feeding choices, not the least of which is the fact that bottlefeeding is so ingrained in our culture, some mothers don’t even think about it! Bottles are, to them, as much a part of what you need to care for a baby as a layette.

It’s tragic that we are so surrounded by commercialism that we overlook what’s right under our noses…but how can you miss it? Why would we trust our bodies when the messages we see every day are that we need all sorts of products to cover our blemishes, plump our lips and lengthen our eyelashes? When we need deodorant “strong enough for a man,” even if it’s supposedly made for us? When maxi pad commercials feature impossibly skinny models wearing white clothes and a pointlessly bitchy Mother Nature who gives you your period at “the worst possible time” – just because she’s in a bad mood?

I kind of think this fear of leaking might be related to this strange aversion to breastfeeding. If everything that comes out of your body is bad, how could your milk be good? Most everything else is waste, not food. If the thought of your breasts leaking brings to mind smelly armpits, wetting your pants or a leaky tampon, of course you wouldn’t want to give that to your baby!

Does milk even qualify as a bodily fluid? It’s clearly not in the same category as anything else – it truly is, apart from that miraculous little baby, the most amazing thing your body can make.

The Yea-Sayers

2010-12-30T20:54:00.001-08:00

Today, an awesome thing happened. A small thing, but it was awesome.

I took a few minutes while shopping in Borders to sit down in one of those big comfy chairs and nurse my baby, who is nearly 7 months old. My other children were at home with their dad, so I was able to relax. It was great!

At the stacks to my right, a woman and her daughter were looking at what sounded like humorous books. I got a kick out of listening to them read to each other from them. I had a moment of Zen noticing the title of a book on the shelf across from me: “Be Here Now.” Hey! I am! After awhile a woman came around the corner, looking at books the way you do when you’re in a generally interesting section but aren’t looking for anything in particular. I smiled at her, and she smiled back, but I got a little knot in my stomach. Although I have been nursing for eight years now, in many public places, I’m still a little afraid of someone giving me a bad time for nursing in public – even though no one ever has.

My daughter couldn’t have cared less. She slurped, snorted, grunted and in every other way nursed about as loudly as a baby can. I think I generally nurse discreetly but she was really drawing attention to us! Oh well, I thought, and rehearsed my stock of responses, the ones I thought up over the years just in case someone happened to ever decide to say something impolite: “Yes, I’m breastfeeding!” “If you don’t like it, please stop staring at me.” “Yes, actually, I can do this here!” “Surely your eyeballs roll the other direction too?” And so on.

And after awhile the woman said something, as I’d had a feeling she might. She said, “Somebody sure sounds satisfied!”

I could have hugged her. It was awesome.

The Trouble With Teaching

2010-12-25T18:02:00.001-08:00

Now that my younger son is more-or-less preschool age (he will be 3 about a week), I’m amazed to think of all the things he would be “taught” if he went to preschool – colors, shapes, the ABCs, numbers. How insulting to small children to assume they didn’t pick this stuff up! How ridiculous to try to teach it to them! After all, what child doesn’t want to know what things are called? To understand how things work? What small child doesn’t thoroughly enjoy experimenting and figuring things out? That’s how we learn, but unfortunately a lot of public schooling involves sitting kids down and spoon-feeding them information.

I have been on a quest since the beginning of our homeschooling journey to find ways to help my sons learn. I don’t “teach” because I see absolutely no point in forcing them to work on (I won’t say “learn”) what I think they should work on at any given time. I have, for the sake of creating some written work for my older son’s portfolio, had him do some worksheets and writing practice, but truly as he gets older I see more and more how much of school work is pointless busy work, even on the “homeschooling worksheets” I printed out for his portfolio. I got this idea that he should learn greater than and less than, because that’s something commonly taught in the early elementary school years. I showed him the symbols, and the worksheet, and very quickly realized the whole activity was absurd. Obviously he knows four is less than nine! Of course six is more than two! What’s the point of doing a whole worksheet of such problems?

And, be honest, even as an adult, don’t you usually have to stop and think about which way the greater-than/less-than signs are supposed to go? And, still being honest, how often in your daily life do you use those symbols – outside of making a heart in your Facebook status updates?

Doing these worksheets, I am convinced, does not in any way reinforce the concept of greater than and less than, or any others. My son knows that the numbers start with one and go up from there. He is good at counting money, although I didn’t “teach” him how to do that, apart from answering his questions about the value of different coins, and he picked up Roman numerals in the space of about two minutes while playing a card game. He still hates to write, but how many adults use a computer every chance they get – because they hate to write?

The more I play games with my sons and enjoy their company, the more I see that they are very well equipped to figure out the things they need to know. I’m available to answer their questions, to enjoy their discoveries and try to see the world through their eyes. I have made my peace with the fact that they will at times be ahead of some of their peers in some areas, and behind some of their peers in other areas. I would rather support their learning than try to “teach” them anything – ironically, that’s my husband’s most pernicious criticism of homeschooling: “How do you know what to teach?!” Well, you don’t worry about it. Follow your children’s interests, include them in your daily activities, and most of the things they need to know will fall into place.

Learning is like birth: the most helpful thing you can do is get out of the way and let it happen.

“I’m the Decider!”

2010-12-22T17:00:00.001-08:00

Recently, I was at a store with my children. My middle child, who will be 3 in January, was wearing a turtleneck and pants but – gasp! – no coat. As we were leaving, a store employee said to me, “Where’s his coat?”

In the same tone she might have said, “Did you realize he is on fire?” or “Why have you skinned him alive?”

I just smiled and said, “It’s in the car.” It was. “He didn’t think he needed it.”

I got THE LOOK. You know the one. The one people give you when they disagree – vehemently, ardently, and in no uncertain terms – with something you’ve done as a parent. “Now, that’s when you tell the child, ‘you just have to.’ You don’t give them a choice! But I guess I should just be quiet.” Yes, I thought. You should. But I smiled my best PR smiled and left the store quietly – there was a line of people, and I could tell the lady at the store was enjoying arguing to people who seemed to be agreeing with her.

Part of me wanted to walk right up to her and say, “Excuse me, ma’am, but when was the last time you tried to wrestle a coat onto a two-year-old who really didn’t want to wear it, while wearing a baby and keeping track of an older child who still doesn’t seem to understand that he can get run over in a parking lot?” or “And exactly what is the point of making him wear a coat for the thirty seconds it takes to walk across the parking lot, and then have to keep track of it myself when he wants to take it off because he’s hot, the whole hour we’re in the store?” or “Yes, it’s none of your business!” or “I see it doesn’t bother you that I’m not wearing a coat.” Or even, bitterly sarcastic, “I guess I’m just a rotten mother!” But, truly, it was a small part. Most of me realized I could probably argue with that well-intentioned woman all day long and never make her see my point of view. Another part of me felt sorry for her. How discouraging to believe that children have so little common sense! What frustrating battles she must have with her own children!

I truly don’t think it’s my responsibility to make my children’s decisions for them. Yes, I’m an adult and I have greater experience – but I’m not always right. When I stop to listen to them, I find that my children have their own wisdom to share, and speak from their own perspective. Sometimes they are right. Sometimes our points of view have more in common than it seemed at first.

Most importantly, though, I think it’s necessary for them to be able to make decisions about things that don’t really matter. If my son doesn’t want to wear a coat and realizes it’s cold, what happens? He says, “I’m cold!” I say, “Okay, let’s get your coat.” No big deal. Maybe next time he will think, it’s cold outside. Last time I didn’t wear a coat the wind blew right up my shirt and I didn’t like it! So I’ll wear a coat. Or maybe not; it really doesn’t matter.

But if I insist on having my way, over every little thing, every single day of his life, what happens when he has to rely on his own judgement? He has no sense of what might constitute a good decision. He has no system in place of weighing his choices against each other to evaluate them. He might have a general idea of what I might do, but he is his own person – he might want to do the opposite of what he thinks I would do or want him to do, just to see what it feels like. It might be something that really matters, like whether to wear his seatbelt or use a condom or try heroin.

So, it’s not my job to make choices for him. He knows I’m older, and that there are many, many things I can do that he can’t. It’s my job to give him a safe place to make the unwise decisions that kids inevitably make, not rubbing it in his face and saying “I told you so” if he gets hurt or is cold or disappointed or sad as a result of his choice. Learning to deal with those things is part of life, and I would not be doing him any favors if I deprived him of the experience of living with the result of a choice he made.

And, because that is my general attitude, it is very easy for me to insist, without guilt or drama, on things that really do matter, life and death things that are unequivocally my responsibility: wearing a seat belt, not running in a parking lot or the street, not hitting.

It’s easy to be impatient, to say, “I know best” and expect that to be the end of discussion. It can be tremendously challenging to stop yourself and say, “Tell me.” It’s not always appropriate, obviously, but I guarantee that walking through snow in bare feet is a better teacher than any amount of lecturing or complaining or insisting that boots be put on. Life is a better teacher than I could ever hope to be – and I think it’s probably supposed to be that way.

Confessions of a Lazy Housekeeper

2010-11-30T09:14:00.000-08:00

As I write this, it is after noon, and I am still in my pajamas. I don't feel bad about that, and here's why: it's the least important thing right now!

I was recently visiting with a friend who was impressed that I homeschool, breastfeed, bake, make crafty things and blog. "How do you do it all?" she asked. "I don't do it all in one day," I replied, and that was the truth, but not the whole truth.

The truth is that I really am lazy. No, I am LAZY. I practically never vacuum. I currently have three baskets of clean laundry waiting to be folded and put away. My kitchen floor is dirty, and there is still a pile of catalogs littering the dining room floor.

I am not cleaning it up. I am blogging about it, because my daughter is asleep in my lap, and although I could put her in my Ergo carrier and clean something (and, truthfully, that is pretty much the only way I am ever able to get anything done) but it feels really good to just sit with her in my lap while she sleeps. I don't do it very often, not nearly as often as I did with her older brothers, so I have to enjoy it when I can.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not a slob. I hate having lots of dirty dishes, and I prefer to keep my countertops wiped clean. Although it usually takes me awhile to get clean laundry put away, I don't have tons of dirty laundry. I use cloth diapers, so I have to stay on top of it! But I am lazy, and I would rather meander through my days at a comfortable pace than run myself ragged trying to keep everything spotless.

So, although I do a lot, I don't try to do it all at once. I have different priorities than some people. I try to keep things lighthearted and fun, and prefer the comfortable clutter generated by the daily living of a family over museum-exhibit perfection. I just don't have time to obsess over it, and I'm okay with that.

“Breastfeed!! Just Don’t do it Here…”

2010-11-17T14:09:00.001-08:00

I’m always astonished at the insensitive things some people choose to say to (and about) breastfeeding mothers.

Maybe it’s because I grew up surrounded by breastfeeding. I thought it was normal. I was not traumatized as a child by the sight of my mom or her friends or my friends’ moms breastfeeding their babies. Breasts are for feeding babies, period. They are no more sexual than your elbow or your mouth…except that various adults, for various personal reasons, might enjoy exploring their other body parts as part of sex and/or foreplay. That might include breasts; why not? Maybe a nice neck nibble. Maybe some hand-holding.

Who cares? It’s no one else’s business.

For some reason, though, some people feel the need to tell mothers they should go in the bathroom, or wherever, to breastfeed. Some people – and this I really don’t understand – are “okay” with seeing a mom breastfeeding in public as long as she is…wait for it…“covered up.”

In every context I have ever heard this, the speaker clearly meant a nursing cover or blanket draped over the shoulder. I find this truly ridiculous. I have yet to meet a breastfeeding mom who is soooo confident of her rock-hard postpartum abs that she wants to show them off…or who thinks her big, droopy, leaky breasts simply must be shown to everyone with eyeballs. Surely they exist. But if my experience is typical of the average new mom – and I have no reason to think it wasn’t – most new mothers are mortified at the thought of anyone seeing their saggy, stretched out belly, let alone a breast!

What on earth are people thinking?! Trust me, NIP naysayers, we are not exposing ourselves to titillate you! Our babies need to eat, and we are willing to give them our milk wherever we happen to be because we believe our milk is best for them. Even if some of you are rude about it.

How do YOU Talk to Your Kids?

2010-11-12T15:36:00.001-08:00

Awhile back I read something about how a lot of people don’t treat kids like they’re people; they’re sort of denied basic human rights “just because” we adults control their activities, feeding, and so on. The author expressed dismay at the short-temperedness of many parents, at the ease with which so many people yell at their children over every little thing they do. If you saw an adult in an elevator pushing all the buttons, the author said, you wouldn’t yell at them; you’d ask if they needed help.

Well, maybe.

While I agree with the basic idea that children should be talked to respectfully – as should any human being – it has so far been my experience that children can be frustrating in a way that other adults generally aren’t. I have never seen an adult pushing all the buttons in an elevator, but if I did, his body language and facial expression would most likely tell me pretty unequivocally whether he needed help, or if he thought it was funny to make the elevator stop on every floor. My own children love pushing elevator buttons, and so I have taught them to only push the necessary buttons, and I watch them closely. I might feel exasperated – and probably embarrassed – if they somehow escaped my vigilance and pushed too many buttons, but I wouldn’t be angry the way I’d be angry at an adult who deliberately did the same thing, as a “joke.”

Understanding children goes a long way toward approaching them with a compassionate attitude. They don’t think they way adults do; they are inexperienced and immature. However no one has endless patience! It can be terribly frustrating to deal with the same behavior over and over, for days on end. As many times as I feel like I handle things well, I have other times when I find myself wishing I’d bitten my tongue – hard. I wouldn’t have said that to my best friend…husband…mom…or whomever.

But, really, my husband doesn’t walk up and smack the baby on the back of her head for no reason. My mom doesn’t pour a whole bowl of cereal out on the table and watch the milk drip through the cracks between the leaves. No one but my 2-year-old draws on the walls. I would react with shock and outrage to any of those things, if anyone else did them – I think – but the fact is, they don’t!

These crazy things kids do drive us crazy because they do them over and over again. It’s easy to be compassionate on a case-by-case basis; easy to take a moment to hold a door for the person coming along behind you, give someone directions, let another shopper go ahead of you at the checkout. It’s much harder, and a lot more work, to feel the anger, shock or outrage at a child’s behavior – especially when it’s repeated behavior – and choose to be compassionate instead of punitive. Sometimes it feels like a waste of time. But I think – hope? – that choosing compassion will pay off in the form of children who also choose compassion, at least most of the time.

My Amazing Breasts and Me

2010-10-29T11:05:00.001-07:00

Remember how weird it was when your body started changing?

I was so excited to “need” a bra I almost couldn’t stand it, but I was mortified that someone I knew might see me shopping for one. I laugh about it now, but at the time it seemed like such a big deal! So important and so embarrassing, exciting and scary. I was so excited to have a bra I even wore it to bed.

It was a couple years before I really had any kind of breast, though. Even then they were pretty small, which was okay. As I got older I was terribly self-conscious about them for awhile, because they were kind of hairy and my nipples were inverted and very flat.

I think breastfeeding has been the best possible thing for my breast self-image. I find impossible to feel negatively about my awesome breasts, my all-purpose mothering tools that are baby-comforters and milk-makers. They are really important to my two youngest children, and that makes them indispensable to me. My babies couldn’t care less what they look like (and I read somewhere that men don’t generally notice imperfections in our breasts, either; they think, “Awesome! I’m looking at boobs!”).

In short, breasts are great. Breast substitutes are just not worth it.

I Love Me, I Love Me Not

2010-10-28T22:43:00.001-07:00

One of the craziest things about becoming a mother is the way it changes you. Every part of my life is different, everything about me is different.

Well, almost. Of course it’s to be expected, but some changes are easier to deal with than others. It was easier to make mistakes when I was younger, when they mostly only affected me. Now I’m keenly aware of every misstep. My own worst critic, I sometimes wonder why on earth I thought I should have children, and pity my poor children for having me as a mother.

Maybe one of the hardest things is to silence that little voice that whispers, you’re doing that wrong…you shouldn’t let him get away with that…why can’t you be more patient?…why aren’t you more decisive?…oh, god, I can’t believe I just said that to a child…and so on. Incidentally, it sounds a lot like the voice that used to say, your hair looks terrible today…ugh, another zit…ohhh, he would never want to go out with me…of course I flunked that test, I suck at math…and so on.

I’m a Virgo. An astrology book I once read compared Virgos to Alice in “Alice in Wonderland,” who would scold herself so severely she made herself cry. I chuckled when I read that, because I had never seen myself described so succinctly, and yet so accurately. I am terribly hard on myself, at times even cripplingly so. When I stop to think about it, there’s no real reason for it. Of course I make mistakes sometimes. Of course I am sometimes too hasty to scold, less patient than I’d like to be. At times I just can’t stop myself, and find it impossible to keep my perspective. Then I find myself wallowing spectacularly in self-pity.

What I’ve finally come to realize is that it’s not just spectacularly self-pitying, it’s also spectacularly self-indulgent. It’s ridiculous to imagine that I can be a perfect mom all the time, because no one can. Surely even June Cleaver got PMS once in awhile! Why do I have to be so hard on myself? Why can’t I recognize my strengths, minimize my weaknesses, and just be the best mom I can be? What’s wrong with me?!

See how I can make myself cry?

It truly is kind of silly…but it’s also not. The way we talk to ourselves is ultimately the way we talk to everyone else, because it’s our inner dialogue that colors our perception of the world, that interprets our inner compass, that counsels and criticizes to whatever extent we allow. It is so easy to pay more attention to the negatives, so easy to second-guess and self-hate until we lose sight of anything good about ourselves.

If we are to see the good in our children, we have to see the good in ourselves and reflect it back to them. It’s our responsibility to show them what it looks and feels like. It’s as simple as saying to that negative voice, no, you’re wrong, and believing it. Accepting that we made a mistake and sincerely trying not to make the same mistake again. Deliberately noticing the good things before we have a chance to obsess about the bad. Understanding that sometimes a good cry is the best way to get it out of your system.

If I am honest with myself I know I don’t need to be perfect. I don’t even need to be “good enough,” which I think adds a misplaced qualifier to the whole discussion. I need to be compassionate; I need to listen; I need to have an open heart. And I don’t have a nasty voice inside telling me those things aren’t true; they exist as facts. It becomes simple, a very clear goal: just be.

My Daughter, Myself

2010-10-24T17:16:00.001-07:00

I’m excited to have a daughter.

I love being a mom, and have really enjoyed my years of mothering only boys. I have never felt disappointed to have boys, and I’m not sure it really matters what gender one’s children are…but I’m still excited to have a daughter. I know she will be our last baby, and I’m okay with that because our family feels complete now.

Because she’s a girl? Because she’s herself?

I honestly can’t imagine not being her mother, just as I can’t imagine not being my sons’ mother. It’s who I am now. And as close as I am with my sons, I feel a different connection to my daughter, even though she’s only a baby. An anticipation of shared experience that I know my husband and sons (and her husband and sons) will never be able to completely understand, a connection which goes far deeper than stereotypical “girl stuff” like slumber parties, shopping and fingernail polish. A connection I feel with my own mother more strongly now than I ever had before in my life.

My daughter is so easygoing and cheerful, and I feel so protective of her. She carries every egg she’ll ever have – she embodies and contains my future, as well as her own. Such precious cargo! I know I will likely have a closer relationship with her than I ever will with my sons, or with their future partners…but who knows? Life is full of strange twists and turns. Unpredictable. One thing is for sure: I have my hands full, but it’s a good thing.

Too Real

2010-08-31T13:01:00.001-07:00

Every so often I have one of those days – or sometimes a series of days – that make me question my mothering philosophy. They usually come around those times when there has been upheaval, but they always seem to catch me off-guard. I become complacent; I forget that children need to test their limits periodically, that change brings with it an intense need to make sure the rules haven’t changed. So the toddler starts running away at diaper time, even though it wasn’t that long ago that I was vigorously enforcing the don’t-run-from-Mommy rule. The 7-year-old has become a bit of a sassy-pants, to an extent I find unpleasant.

Yes, school is back in session! And, although we do learning activities all year long and take a fairly relaxed approach, for my own sanity I have designated a few hours in the morning as school time. It went really well the first couple days but now reality has sunk in. ‘Wait,’ they seem to be thinking, ‘we have to do this every day?! Really?!’ Well, yes!

I start to think how much simpler life would be if I could just plop my toddler into a crib at 9pm, say good night, and not see him again until morning (yeah, right) or if my 7-year-old were quietly obedient all day long. But I really don’t want to be that kind of parent. I would love to have control over when my toddler gets sleepy, but since I don’t, I have to make the best of things and try to keep my sense of humor about staying up long after the rest of the family is asleep.

But this is sort of my problem. I want to be authentic. I want to be myself. I don’t want to put on a cheerful “Mother” mask for my kids; they are smart, they’ll see right through it. But I also want to reflect a positive image back to them. I want them to like and feel good about themselves. Some days it’s hard to find anything positive to reflect back. Some days I haven’t gotten enough sleep and, try as I might to be positive, I feel grumpy and irritable. Some days I am excited about learning something new and they have absolutely no interest; it’s hard not to take it personally.

It seems unfair to burden them with my worries, and obviously, there are some things they don’t need to hear. My boys are sympathetic when I say, “I’m feeling pretty grumpy this morning, and I’m going to try really hard not to take it out on you. I need you to really help me do a few things that really need to get done, and then we’re going to try to have some fun.” They know what it’s like to wake up on the wrong side of the bed. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been too negative. Sometimes I’m so irritated with my entire family I literally don’t know what to do. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who cares whether we eat dinner at a reasonable time, that we ever eat anything besides hot dogs and cereal, that we have clean dishes and underwear and know where to find our shoes and coats.

Is this what mothering is? How on earth will all these days of squabbling children, lost socks, overflowing baskets of laundry, cooking, dishes, and “No, you may not have another cookie” ever add up to anything good?

I suppose by themselves they wouldn’t. These icky times make me doubly thankful for the times when everyone has gotten along, shared their toys, helped without complaining. Those good moments sometimes seem to shine like rubies in a mud puddle. But if you keep looking, you’ll see that their might be some pretty pebbles in there, too. They aren’t as flashy as the rubies, but they have interesting colors and unusual shapes, and there are a lot more of them.

What it comes down to is, you can spend all your time watching for those rare precious stones, or you can open your mind to the beauty in the little pebbles that make up most of your days. They aren’t as sparkly as rubies, but compared to the mud, they sure look nice.

Breastfeed, or Else?

2010-08-27T12:42:00.001-07:00

A couple weeks ago I heard about a “controversial” comment made by supermodel Gisele Bundchen that there should be a law requiring mothers to breastfeed.

I heard lots of outraged commentary by female reporters and other women; I heard nothing about it from the women I actually know personally, which maybe says a lot about just how important this comment is (i.e., not really).

The thing is, I kind of agree!

However, I don’t think women should be jailed or fined for not breastfeeding. Should we really be surprised that so many women either choose not to breastfeed, or encounter problems they find insurmountable when they try? Our country’s social support for breastfeeding is abysmal, and it is the formula manufacturers who benefit. Despite the claims on their labels and advertisements that “Breastfeeding is best. Ask your doctor.” it is obviously not really their goal to encourage breastfeeding. They know that doctors are giving out their formula. They know babies need to eat. They charge exorbitant prices for cans of powdered cows’ milk infused with chemicals – demonstrated time and again to be vastly inferior to breast milk – because they can.

What if doctors – especially pediatricians and obstetricians – received extensive training in breastfeeding support? If they worked in tandem with lactation specialists to help mothers solve their breastfeeding problems and prescribed formula only as a last resort after determining that a mother well and truly could not produce enough milk (which is rare but sometimes happens) or that her baby can’t tolerate her milk (rarer still but, again, it happens)? What if women were encouraged and supported in their efforts rather than ridiculed and criticized? What if it were socially acceptable to breastfeed in public without being expected to put a blanket over your baby’s head?

So, should there be a law?

I do think there should be some laws. For example, it should be against the law for hospitals to give formula samples to new mothers. It should be against the law for pediatricians and obstetricians to give formula samples to anyone. Formula manufacturers should not be allowed to advertise on TV or in magazines.

If you’ve read the WHO guidelines for marketing breastmilk substitutes, you’ll notice my ideas are not original. No, we obviously should not be jailing or fining mothers for making a difficult choice in a society biased against breastfeeding. We should be adopting the WHO guidelines and enforcing them as law. Women are not the problem; they are the ones who need the solution.

Wild Horses

2010-08-23T15:06:00.001-07:00

I had a rough morning with my toddler.

Since we returned home from visiting my parents our family has been what I half-jokingly call under martial law. We have to enforce the rules every single time, watch closely, and be very consistent; otherwise chaos reigns. It seems we always go through these periods when there have been changes: a trip, an illness, school, visitors. It’s frustrating but it works; after a couple days of seeing that, yes, he really has to sit down every time he hits or runs away from Mommy, my toddler is much more cooperative. I’m finding, too, that the more I do it, the easier it is to keep my cool. It’s simply not worthwhile to get worked up. As irritated as I finally got with my son the third time I had to chase him up the stairs to enforce the no-hitting rule, I stayed calm and was very proud of myself later for staying in control.

I was totally surprised when I fell apart listening to my mom’s Susan Boyle CD. The first time I heard Susan Boyle sing I had followed a link shared by a friend on Facebook. I didn’t know what to expect; I thought she might sing a cheery folk tune or something. She would sound like my Grandma, a little off-key but from the heart. I watched her beautiful performance with my chin in my lap and tears in my eyes. Her voice was so heartfelt, so genuine, so full of a simple joy for singing. So of course I was excited to borrow her CD from my mom.

I was listening to the first song on the CD, “Wild Horses,” which has a hauntingly mournful melody. I had squatted down to wipe up the honey my older son had dripped on the floor while making his peanut butter and honey sandwich. I was wearing my daughter in my sling and keeping an eye on my toddler, who had been throwing things. I was thinking, dang it, he wiped up the honey on the counter but he missed the honey on the floor. I was thinking, I don’t know if I can stand chasing that child through the house again. I was thinking, I don’t know what I’d do without this sling! I felt silly but I was completely overcome; I burst into tears. My sweet toddler thought I’d bumped my head and was very worried for a moment.

I collected myself pretty quickly. I was a little tired from our trip, I stayed up too late last night, but I wasn’t depressed, didn’t have PMS. It actually felt really good to have a brief cry. I’m finding that, no matter how frustrating my kids are sometimes, I always come back around to the basic truth of being their mother. The only one they have. They drive me crazy sometimes, but wild horses couldn’t drag me away. Really.

Mother, Goddess

2010-08-17T18:16:00.001-07:00

I started collecting goddess images many years ago. I have a pretty eclectic collection, including Kwan Yin (Buddhist Goddess of Compassion), a variety of Virgin Marys (with and without babies), a Venus of Willendorf, a Sleeping Goddess of Malta (brought back from Malta by my mom), a Lilith (surrounded by animals), and a Kali (Hindu Goddess of Eternity).

I was really captivated by the Hindu Goddesses: Laxshmi with her handfuls of coins, Radha and her beloved, Krishna. I loved the images I found of Kali: black, fierce, with a necklace made of heads and a skirt made of arms, and swords in each of her hands. She is a Goddess of destruction and rebirth; she is also a ferociously protective mother.

I admit, I looked at those Goddesses with envy. Of course they can do amazing things, I thought. Look how many arms they have! Everyone would call me a goddess, too…but of course they probably have lots of arms to show all the divine things they can do. It’s a representation, not to be taken literally. But how often have I thought each baby should come with a fresh set of arms!

But then I thought, maybe they do. With each baby we increase our skills, our patience, our experience, our love. Maybe with each baby we receive another embrace from the Great Mother – a gesture of gratitude for our service to the Life Force. A supportive embrace encouraging us when to persevere, to be Mother.

Boisterous Boys

2010-08-12T12:56:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite things about my oldest son is his incredible energy. He is constantly moving, always excited to tell me something. He sometimes exhausts me and sometimes exasperates me, but he is so smart and clever that he’s always fun to spend time with. He has lots of friends and makes new ones everywhere we go.

When we went to Ocean City recently, he befriended a kind grandmother at the pool. My son and this nice lady were the only people swimming, and I hung out poolside with my nursling and a paperback, half-watching and half-listening to my very water-confident boy. I kept an eye out to see if he was pestering his swimming companion, too, but he wasn’t – he introduced himself to the lady in the pool, and he must have spelled his name, because I then heard her say, “I’m Beth, B-E-T-H.” I decided she was pretty cool. My son told her all about swimming in the ocean, and how old he was. She has a grandson the same age, she replied. My son followed her back and forth across the pool as she swam laps, cheerfully bobbing along beside her and chatting to her when she stopped to rest. When she went across the pool on her back, he was entranced! “How did you do that?!” he squealed delightedly. She patiently showed him that he had to put his head in the water, and lay back and relax his body. I was so impressed with how cool this woman was. She didn’t roll her eyes or ignore my son or snap at him or complain. After awhile she finished swimming, said goodbye, and left.

Some people might wonder why on earth I let my obnoxious brat pester that nice lady. I don’t look at my son that way. He doesn’t pester people; he doesn’t do things to be annoying or get a reaction. He is a warm, friendly person who loves to meet new people. He introduces himself and asks polite questions; he doesn’t splash adults in the face. I think it’s cool that he likes to talk to adults; in fact, he got a little carried away splashing the kids who turned up later. Since I know him, I know he felt shy surrounded by kids he didn’t know and was trying to play with them.

I always feel sorry for kids who ask me questions or talk to me and are snapped at by impatient mothers: “Don’t bother her!” “Get back over here!” I don’t want to undermine another mother by saying, “It’s okay, he’s not bothering me,” which is usually the truth, but I wish we all felt comfortable enough to let our kids be themselves, and honestly say to a child, “Please don’t. I don’t like that.” I sometimes think we’re so conditioned to be polite that we act as we think others want us to without even thinking about it. I’m always thrilled to chat with a friendly kid. I love it when polite kids ask me questions or want to see my baby. I think kids should be able to look up to adults, to ask us questions and bring us their problems. We really can’t “make” them behave, much as we might want to. We, as parents, need to do our parenting work at home so that when we take our kids to a store, we can be reasonably confident that they will behave, in an age-appropriate way, most of the time. I know that my 7-year-old is not going to throw things off the shelves, hit people, or yell, “You’re an ugly booger!” at other shoppers, so I don’t mind if he wants to chat with the person in line behind us or ask someone questions about their wheelchair or seeing-eye dog. So far, it’s been my experience that people like talking to him. He has a respectful attitude and is genuinely curious. Older people seem delighted to talk to him – he asks them questions and really listens to their answers. He makes eye contact and, although he moves around a lot, he isn’t clumsy or destructive. I can tell by the way they smile at me that they enjoy talking to him, and that makes me feel good too. I decided to trust other people to be adults and say something if they don’t like something or don’t want to talk, and I think it’s been a good thing.

All the World’s a Stage

2010-07-18T18:27:00.001-07:00

My background is in theatre. I’ve done all kinds of things but I’ve probably spent the most time backstage, as a dresser and/or hair and makeup tech. I actually like being backstage: it’s great to be part of the team of people making the show happen. Best of all, I found that I’m a pretty good actor-soother…and I’ve worked with a few fussy actors.

Some days those fussy actors were in a bad mood. They didn’t want to go onstage, they didn’t like their costumes, they weren’t happy with their wigs, they hated the way I put on their makeup. The first time any of these things happened I was thoroughly devastated. Once, an actress washed all her makeup off after I’d spent 20 minutes applying it – for the first time, by myself, for a performance. I took it very personally and wondered what on earth was wrong with me that I couldn’t do her makeup right?!

A little more experience taught me that, temperamental and particular though they may be, the majority of those fussy actors were pretty easy to jolly out of their bad moods most of the time. It simply took concentration to make sure I was doing my job correctly in the first place (and not giving them anything to be legitimately mad at *me* about), a cheerful attitude (whether I really felt cheerful or not), and a backful of duck feathers (so their storming could just roooooolll off). I found that simply having a professional attitude earned actors’ trust pretty quickly: they could see that I knew what I was doing, and that if they had a problem I would notice, listen, and do what I could to fix it. It helped to try to see things from their perspective: who wants to go onstage with a gaping hole in the armpit of their costume, or with a ripped hem they might trip over, or a messy wig? Knowing that a dresser was nearby and prepared for quick fixes let them relax and focus on the show, and it made my job easier too because as they got to know me better over the course of the show, they saw that I took care of things quickly and never let them go back onstage looking bad. In fact, I often noticed things they hadn’t, and took care of them without being asked.

What does all this have to do with parenting?

It turns out that small children aren’t all that different from temperamental actors. I have occasionally been able to tell myself, okay, we just have to get through this show…which might be about 2 1/2 hours, or even as much as 5 or 6 if I wanted to include pre-show preparation and post-show cleanup. It’s easier to humor a crabby actor when you’re getting paid to do it; it’s easier to handle frustration when you know it won’t last forever. Likewise it’s easier to summon patience for your toddler when you can tell yourself, we only have to make it to naptime, or until it’s time to go to the park, or whatever. Comparing a morning or evening with my kids to a theatrical production helps me – it defines my role (facilitator, guide, essential personnel) and gives me a chuckle (my kids sometimes are dramatic divas!). It shifts my focus from what they’re doing (which may or may not be driving me nuts) to what I can do.

Many mothers seem to have a hard time relating their mothering experience to their “professional” lives. How do you put “perfect peanut-butter sandwich maker” on a resume? “Baby soother?” “Peek-a-boo player?” How do we give ourselves appropriate credit for the truly challenging work of mothering when we sometimes spend half our day feeling like a piece of furniture for baby to nap on?

It’s sometimes similarly difficult to relate “professional” experience to mothering. But I believe it’s good for our self-esteem, our hearts, our minds, and our chi to find ways. We might not get paid for mothering in money, but we can give ourselves credit in ways that matter.

Math Junkie

2010-07-13T10:50:00.001-07:00

A couple weeks ago I found an awesome book at the thrift store: Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers. I am not, nor do I want to be, an elementary school teacher…except I sort of am, because I home-school my 7-year-old, who will “officially” start second grade this fall. But I thought this book might help me a bit in guiding my son’s math learning, and a brief flip through its pages confirmed my initial impression: this book has lots of great ideas for helping kids learn math.

The irony is that, while the author of the book repeatedly emphasizes the importance of mathematical thinking, and learning different problem-solving strategies, he also states that a person’s attitude toward math affects their math learning, and that many people viewed math as a “system” taught to them by their teachers, who seemed to have special knowledge. As teachers, the readers are told, they will be the ones with the special knowledge. This all struck me as incredibly odd. One of my biggest criticisms of public school is that, generally, information is communicated in just this way: the teacher “teaches” everything to the students, who passively absorb it. The author of this math book is a big fan of active learning, but what he means is writing and thinking about the ideas in his book. I have so far read nothing about what I’d consider active learning: hands-on activities to explore math concepts.

It’s absolutely true that one’s attitude toward math affects how one learns math. I hated math starting around second grade, and it only got worse as I had to learn more complicated math. I got decent grades in math, although it was never my strongest subject, and I always felt uncertain about my answers and my methods for finding them. I wonder now if I would have felt more confident if I had had some freedom to explore math concepts on my own. Of course this is exactly what John Holt advocated, and what many, many homeschoolers do every day. I find it fascinating and depressing that this textbook for elementary school teachers presumes to teach teachers how to teach – within a school system that doesn’t work very well for a lot of students – emphasizing how to make students interested in learning.

I think it’s easier to “teach” math to adults. After struggling through Trigonometry in high school, I wanted nothing more to do with math. In college I took a real-world math class and, for the first time, understood what I was doing and didn’t feel like an idiot in class. I think now that I didn’t have a very solid foundation for all that advanced math I took in high school; I could add, subtract, multiply, and divide, but I hadn’t internalized mathematical thinking. I had never felt like I knew what I was doing, but somewhere between high school and college I dumped the baggage of feeling dumb about math. I didn’t feel like a lost kid anymore, and that was really liberating.

I don’t want my son to feel lost and dumb like I did. I have been cautious in my approach to math, but I’m realizing that’s just silly. My son can already do simple multiplication, and understands a basic algebraic equation. We have explored fractions, place value, carrying, telling time, and measuring. I have generally guided him in finding answers to his questions without telling him what he needs to learn and when – but I’m finding that some of his questions need a little more background. Like when he was certain that 25+25=35. I needed to use place values to explain why the answer is 50, but as soon as the paper and pencil came out, his eyes glazed over. I’m hoping to get some ideas for times like that from my new book, and I want to continue helping him find his own answers. I want him to be able to figure things out. It took me awhile to realize he could learn to add without doing pages and pages of worksheets – it was actually very easy to encourage learning addition. When he’d say, “Did you know 5+5=10?” I’d say, “How else can you get 10?” It helps to make it into a game. I think so far it’s working; he thinks it’s fun, and occasionally asks to do problems in his math workbook. Yay math!

Worst Day Ever?

2010-07-09T20:13:00.001-07:00

Today was the most frustrating day in my recent memory. I have a month-old baby and am tandem nursing, so of course I have dealt with some frustration this summer, but today really took the cake.

My husband took the two big boys to lunch and a movie, leaving me home with our toddler and baby. No sweat! Half the kids, half the drama. If I’d been babysitting it would have been a cinch…and never mind the fact that when I babysat regularly I was 16 and had tons more energy than I do, what with being young and active and not sleep deprived! However now I’m an experienced mom. I can change a diaper with my eyes closed (I’m sure I could; I’m just scared to try) and entertain a small child with a set of chopsticks and a sugar packet. I know what I’m doing.

But today was miserable. It seemed like every time I sat down to nurse, my toddler started throwing the folded laundry out of the basket (three loads!!), or screaming, or asking for a snack. My baby wouldn’t nurse in the sling – every time I had to bend down or grab my toddler, the baby would pop off my breast and fuss. I had a brief period of success distracting my son with his brother’s pattern tiles (he liked using them to make “sandwiches”) until he dumped them out on the couch and started carrying them back upstairs by the handful. I had another brief period of success reading to my toddler, which was fine as long as I was willing to read whichever page he opened the book to. Sure, why not? We pleasantly shared some grapes after lunch.

I coped really well until naptime, and am really proud of how I handled some of my son’s antics. So how on earth did I end the day feeling like I got hit by a truck? My neck, back, and arms ached from the combination of carrying the baby around while chasing the toddler – after awhile the sling just didn’t seem worth it – and then nursing them both in a cradle hold at naptime. I thought I’d perfected my pillow placement, but we just couldn’t get comfortable. My toddler woke up long before either of us were ready for him to be awake, and instead of cuddling up sweetly and nursing gently, he kept pulling on my nipple and tapping and rubbing the side of my breast with his hand. I had resolved to stop being nice about the fiddling – I was really tired of moving his hands away. So, I told him he’d have to stop nursing if he wouldn’t keep his hands down. Of course before long his fingers were tapping away on my breast, and when I made him stop nursing, as I’d said I would, he sobbed in an utterly pathetic, brokenhearted fashion. He wasn’t even completely awake. I felt like the worst mother ever! But I talked to him again, as gently as I could, and gave him a second chance. More wiggling, more tapping, and my nipple was getting sore. *sigh* By the time the rest of my family returned home I was developing one heck of a headache. My husband asked about my day and I burst into tears while telling him about how frustrating it had been. Whaaat?!

Well, of course it wasn’t just all those little frustrations. It was controlling myself, over and over, when my son did frustrating, infuriating, sometimes dangerous things – not to mention the added emotional drain of tandem nursing. It was the fact that I didn’t get a nap and was feeling really tired. It was feeling constantly hungry and getting interrupted while eating. I mostly kept my cool through it all; of course I yelled a little bit, I’m not perfect! But it can be emotionally exhausting to stay open to a little person’s needs, and when said little person doesn’t even seem to recognize or appreciate what you’re doing one might wonder if he even deserves it! But the deepest, innermost part of my heart loves that wild, frustrating, infuriating two-year-old with a fierce, fiery passion, and I am as committed to his well-being as I am to my own. I really don’t want to force him to wean, or for him to run away from me when he causes mischief; I want him to understand that it’s not okay to smack the baby’s head, and that when Mommy says it’s time to change your diaper, you cooperate with her, and that the folded laundry goes in the drawers, not down the stairs. If I scream and slap when he misbehaves, I don’t think that sends the same message, tempting as it might be sometimes. Really the most awful thing about my day had nothing to do with my children; the most awful thing of all was that I was alone. There was no friendly teenager around to play jacks with my toddler; no aunt or grandmother to rock the baby while I gave my big boy a cuddle. No meaningful distraction from the infuriating task of entertaining a 2.5-year-old who is hell-bent on making the house into the biggest possible mess in the shortest possible time while also caring for a fussier-than-usual baby. I had a brief, yet horrible, vision of what life might be like if every day were this unpleasant, and I completely understood why some housewives become obsessed with daytime television, or eat too much junk food, or have affairs. It can be absolutely no fun to be home alone all day with small children.

So what is a mother to do? I like kids, especially my own. I like my house, and I like making it a pleasant place to be. It would appear that my values are more-or-less perfectly aligned with being a full-time mom. I normally have lots of things going on, and have no trouble taking all those little annoyances in stride. What happened today? Will having a new baby completely derail our family’s homeschooling? Am I emotionally crippled by postpartum depression? Is my husband a bum who doesn’t help enough?

No. Some days just suck…but there’s always tomorrow.

Double Duty

2010-07-08T11:56:00.001-07:00

I have been breastfeeding now for about 7 1/2 years. Breastfeeding has become such a big part of my approach to mothering that the certain knowledge that all of my children will, eventually, stop nursing strikes fear into my heart, despite the fact that my weaned 7-year-old seems to be surviving my no-longer-breastfeeding mothering with no ill effects.

My oldest tandem nursed with his new brother for about two days. By that time he was only nursing to go to sleep at night, so I nursed the boys together the first night after the new baby was born, and I think again the next day…but when my milk came in, my big boy didn’t want to nurse anymore. He said it tasted like sawdust, and that, as they say, is that. He went to sleep without nursing and has ever since, although he did ask to nurse a couple times later that year, probably just to know that he could.

I always expected to tandem nurse long-term at some point, and now, with a 2.5-year-old son and 1-month-old daughter, I am. The first time was easy. A few hours after my daughter was born, my mom stuffed some pillows all around me, I snuggled up with my babies, and we all took a long nap. It was great! My toddler wanted to nurse a lot that first week or so but I thought, no problem. I experimented with the best places to put the pillows so that I could relax my arms and rest my back, and found that I could rest comfortably and read or watch tv while nursing. However, I also realized quickly that it was hard to eat, get a drink, or go to the bathroom in that position! I started to feel a little trapped by nursing two. Fortunately it was only necessary to nurse them both at naptime and at bedtime – and not necessarily even then. While my son prefers to fall asleep nursing, and is reluctant to let go, even in his sleep, for any reason, my daughter likes to nurse a bit, then either use my breast as a pillow while she falls asleep, or she wants to be lifted up onto my shoulder, where she puts her head down and falls asleep. I discovered that I could carefully lay down one baby, then the other, and then myself and nap with them. Victory!

Of course it is hard to tandem nurse, much harder than I thought it would be. It’s hard to be fully present for two small children, a helpless infant and a rambunctious toddler. I feel guilty when I lay my sleeping daughter down so I can make some sandwiches and I feel guilty when I’m holding her while she sleeps and my son whacks her in the head with a toy (which of course he could not have done if I had laid the baby on the bed and taken him somewhere else!). Her easygoing personality means that she’s sometimes willing to nap on the bed instead of in my arms, which is really necessary for my own well-being – sometimes I even get a shower while she sleeps! Her brother’s energy means I have to keep him occupied when I’m not holding the baby – he is just too unpredictable.

I had lots of warm-and-fuzzy fantasies about cuddling and reading to my big boy while nursing the baby, and that has actually happened a few times, but in reality my son would usually rather run and jump around than cuddle and hear stories. He likes to scream and do somersaults and throw things. The truth is that I can’t be physically there for both of them all the time, and it’s unrealistic to imagine that I might. That’s not what attachment is about anyway. So now I am trying to stay connected with my toddler while I’m establishing a connection with his sister.

A Matter of Trust

2010-07-07T10:46:00.001-07:00

My all-time favorite way to wash a baby is to take her into the shower with me. It’s easy to hold her up so she can see, and, with my warm body on one side and the warm water on the other, she can feel cozy and secure in the otherwise unfamiliar shower. Unfortunately I didn’t know this when my first baby needed a bath; we gave him the old-fashioned kind as quickly as we could because he started crying almost immediately. I remembered my mom saying that I liked the shower when I was a baby, and when I tried it, he liked it too. Whew!

So I recently took my daughter into the shower for the first time, and she liked it. I wasn’t surprised. I was absolutely delighted to see that she didn’t even look worried or uncertain – she actually looked kind of excited in the shower. She looked around wide-eyed, waving her arms and legs a little. I thought, Wow, she completely trusts me, and felt both glad and slightly terrified. Trust is a big responsibility, and earning someone’s trust is a huge undertaking.

I read somewhere that a baby spends his first month or two getting organized: learning how to breathe and eat, settling into a more reliable sleeping pattern, and getting to know his caregivers. I think what people overlook is that, while the baby is doing all this learning and adjusting, his caregivers should be earning his trust. It seems to me that’s what all that organizing boils down to: trusting that meals will be delivered in a timely and tasty manner, trusting that his environment is generally a friendly place, trusting that his caregivers are available and responsive. As adults we easily take the basics of our comfort and well-being for granted; after all, if we don’t like something we can fairly easily change it. Not so for a completely helpless baby.

It’s easy to feel like very little gets accomplished when there’s a new baby in the house. But earning that baby’s trust is probably the most important thing the family can do. Everything is easier with a trusting baby: when he’s included in the family’s activities he doesn’t have to work to get everyone’s attention. His needs are met quickly (most of the time; no one is perfect!) and he quickly learns to feel that he belongs.

Fully Present

2010-07-06T17:50:00.001-07:00

Last week I found a book at the thrift store that I can’t wait to read. The title is something like, “Rituals for Women,” and it looks chock-full of ideas for ways to incorporate spirituality into your daily life. Great! I’m busy, and I would love to learn some simple rituals, maybe even rituals I can involve my children with.

Unfortunately, I’m too busy to read the darn book. So I tried the next best thing and flipped through it while eating lunch. I got my toddler occupied with some toys, my baby latched on, and munched while I browsed.

I magically opened to a section on worship. The author said, in a nutshell, that worship is being present in whatever you’re doing, and doing it with a thankful attitude. Then my baby started fussing, and I needed to change her position. I got her settled, then opened the book again, but this time I was able to read less than a paragraph. Fuss. Settle. Flip. Hmm. Aha!!

I left the book closed and focused my attention on my daughter, thinking it was pretty ironic that the only part of the book I’d been able to read was the part that told me, in essence, that all the spirituality you could want is there if you are present in every moment and open yourself to seeing it. I thought, could there be a more sacred task than nurturing the young people entrusted to my care?

It’s easy to get overwhelmed, to feel frustrated by the little messes that get made, the childish behavior that sometimes gets out of control, and the occasional tantrums. But when I’m fully present with my children – when I not just look at them but really *see* them without trying to do anything else – I see that they are wonderful, joyous, exuberant, and absolutely delightful, even though they are also sometimes absolutely maddening. Their complexity is part of what makes them so addictive, so enticing and so delicious. My growth as I care for them is part of the reward.

I would like to get some ideas from that book, and I probably will, eventually. But in the meantime, surely I can make a ritual out of enjoying my children: of seeing them as they are and fully experiencing them as they grow and change.

Swings and Things

2010-06-27T20:32:00.000-07:00

During my last pregnancy, a friend offered me a baby swing. I thanked her and declined, but at the peak of my home's postpartum craziness I wondered if I had been foolishly stubborn. Swings can be helpful sometimes, but I've never used one and don't really feel the need to start now. The truth is, I kind of think they rob a mother of the experience of mothering. Today, we have all kinds of baby soothers -- and all they really are is overpriced mother substitutes. Are you really "mothering" if you feed your baby a bottle of formula while he sits in his bouncy seat, then pop a pacifier into his mouth and put him in his swing for his nap? In that situation you're manipulating gadgets; the baby's presence is incidental and peripheral. He could be someone else's baby, a pet, or even a doll.

What do you miss when you let a gadget do your parenting for you? What do you learn?

I partly don't want a swing because they make me nervous. I have three older, very active little boys, and while they are generally compassionate and sensible children, I get chills when I imagine the "fun" ideas they might get involving our new baby and a swing. Supervise it closely, you say? How helpful is this gizmo, really, if I have to watch my baby like a hawk every moment she is in it? I'm better off with her in my arms or my baby carrier.

This leads me to my other, more fundamental reason for not using a swing: I don't want a mechancial contraption rocking my baby to sleep. That's my (or Daddy's) job. I know how briefly she will be small, and I don't want to miss this precious stage of her life. I also feel confident that if I'm physically available to her now, when she needs that kind of mothering, she will carry this feeling of closeness throughout her life. She will know that I'm there for her, because I really always have been...not figuratively, but actually. I don't want her to feel that way toward a swing (or pacifier, or mobile, or vibrating bouncy seat, or bear that plays a recorded heartbeat).

A swing might have made my life easier when my first son was a baby. He was a high-need "velcro baby" -- he cried whenever I put him down. I realized quickly that I had entered motherhood with unrealistic expectations of my baby -- I knew that babies liked to be held, but I was completely unprepared for a baby who did not want to be put down at all. It was completely overwhelming at first, but I learned to do everyday tasks while holding my baby. The Maya Wrap I received as a gift became my favorite baby item. Instead of trying to make my baby content with less contact, I held or wore him most of the time, and because mothering that way felt right to me, I did the same thing with my other children. Yes, it required a big commitment of my time, energy, and of course my body. Putting my son in a swing occasionally while I washed the dishes or took a shower might have given me a little more time for relaxation, for having my body to myself. That's probably not a bad thing. But the fact is that my son's temperament forced me to give him all the mothering he needed -- and it was a lot -- whether I knew how or not. He let me know, very early and very clearly, that he needed 110% of my attention and love. He was so sweet and cheerful when he got it that it was completely worthwhile: I could sense a feeling of rightness radiating from every part of him. It took me awhile to become experienced enough to be proud of my resourcefulness and creativity; it wasn't until my second son was born and everything seemed so much easier than I remembered that I realized how much I had learned the first time around. My oldest son's infancy was a trial by fire, intense, exhausting, and sometimes terrifying -- but it was also brief. He was tiny for a short time, and I'm glad he spent that time in my arms. Today he's incredibly active and independent, but we still share the closeness he learned to expect from me, the closeness that comes from always being there.

Monkey See, Monkey Do?

2010-06-22T16:12:00.001-07:00

Several years ago I saw a show on tv about a woman who ran a refuge somewhere in Africa for orphaned baboons. She had a group of young, mostly female volunteers who generously gave their time, energy and presence to these motherless babies; they slept with them, wore them in a sling-like carrier, took them on "play dates" to interact with other baboons, and bottle-fed them for a period of months, until the babies were old enough to survive in the wild.

These human surrogate mothers were very sweet and loving to their baboon charges. The woman in charge of the refuge understood that the baboon babies were healthier, happier, and grew better when they were in constant contact with a mother figure.

I am not making this up.

These were animals being attachment-parented by humans! And, from what I saw, it worked. Eventually the babies grew up and left their "mommies." The human volunteer mothers, not surprisingly, found it very hard to leave the babies for whom they had cared. They got very attached to them and treasured the closeness they had with their baboon babies.

The thing that really bothered me, the more I thought about it, was that these young women, after having the wonderful experience of becoming attached to a baby and watching it grow, would return home to the United States and probably become mothers someday, where popular culture would discourge them from becoming attached to their own human babies. They received extensive training in monkey mothering, including the importance of constant contact and sharing sleep, but in America they would be actively discouraged from doing these demonstrably beneficial things with their own human babies.

Has the world gone crazy?! We know that monkeys need mothering, but human babies don't?

It took some more thought and reflection for me to realize that young women who are willing to attachment-parent baboons may be less vulnerable than your average new mother to bad parenting advice. They know how it feels to sleep next to a tiny, vulnerable body, to comfort nighttime fears and soothe hurts. Maybe -- I hope -- they wouldn't think twice and would naturally adopt the mothering style they learned in Africa.

Unfortunately, the idea that humans are different from other animals has led to some appalling treatment of babies. Everyone who has visited the zoo knows that primate mothers carry their babies everywhere and nestle them in the bend of their leg when they sit and eat; even tiny babies cling to their mothers' fur...but some people erroneously believe that human babies can happily spend all day in a car seat and only cry to "get attention" or "manipulate", in spite of the fact that most babies are vastly happier when they are held or worn most of the time. Primates are a continuous contact species, and we humans are primates. We can, and should, learn what we can from mothers who have not been disconnected from their primal wisdom: get attached, and stay that way.

Gender Bender?

2010-06-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

When my daughter was born almost 3 weeks ago, I had to cancel my 7-year membership to the (fictitious) "Mothers of Only Boys" club. I totally dig being a mother of boys. Boys are fun! They are exuberant and messy and physical and loud. I have 3 brothers, no sisters. I "get" boys.

However I also always thought (hoped?) I would have a daughter, someday. This did not make me disappointed to have sons; in fact I felt honored to have the opportunity to raise boys who would be loving and nurturing, and not be straitjacketed into arbitrary gender roles. My oldest son used to have a baby doll he carried everywhere; he chose a pretty one with a frilly pink outfit and named her Hang Loose. She was his constant companion starting when he was about age 2 1/2; as he got older his interest gradually waned until by the time he was 5 I hardly ever saw Hang Loose at all. When we were at a store or park, occasionally someone would say, "Is that his doll?" I would simply smile and say, "Yes, isn't he a good daddy?"

This always stopped people in their tracks. After all, he wasn't pretending to be a mommy, or even a girl (which, admittedly, might have been something to think about). He was just loving his baby, which is a wonderful thing for a daddy to do.

I have heard of many parents, especially mothers, feeling conflicted about the gender roles their children inhabit. From dress-up clothes to toys, parents are worried that whatever their child chooses will cause others to make fun of him/her, and therefore guide them toward "gender appropriate" items and behavior.

Isn't that missing the point?

Early childhood is a time for play, experimentation, trying things out...dare I even suggest androgyny? Or perhaps not genderlessness per se; maybe more of a fluid sort of gender identification which allows room for both sparkly princess dresses and firefighters, and everything in between. A child can know s/he is a girl or a boy without that label carrying a lot of gender-specific baggage and limitations: boys don't cry; girls don't fight; boys play with trucks; girls play with dolls.

There certainly is more to being a man or a woman than some of these narrow stereotypes would have us believe. Men and women equally benefit from being able to check the oil in their car's engine or change a flat tire, just as they equally benefit from being able to wash a load of laundry or prepare a meal. There is no value in teaching or withholding certain skills or roles "just because" of one's gender. It's foolish and limiting. We're better off teaching useful skills to everyone, and guiding individual children as they learn about the things that make them uniquely wonderful people -- including the possibilities that come with being either mother or father.

Now that I have a daughter, this seems like an even more complicated question. It's even more important to me that no one says -- ever -- that someone throws, hits, or screams "like a girl". I have established a firm "No Barbie" policy, at least until my daughter is old enough to have an opinion on her toys, at which point we'll talk. I refuse to replace all my (colorful) baby clothes with pink, or dresses, although of course we have some dresses, and some pink clothes, and I won't be getting my daughter's ears pierced until it is her idea.

I have been thinking this over since I first became a mother. I want my sons to be respectful to women and girls; not a condescending door-opening-for-every-female faux respect, but a genuine-value-for-another-human-being respect. A respect that includes opening a door for anyone who has their hands full, and not disparaging anyone with flippant comments about their gender. It seemed easy when I only had boys; they could make their mistakes at home where their childish fumbles wouldn't hurt anyone. They are nice to their friends who are girls, but now they have a sister who lives with them. Will it be different to deal with a sister? Will it be harder, or easier, for them and me? Will it hurt her to be different from her brothers? Will she notice, or care?

What I imagine will happen is that my daughter will grow up very active and energetic, like any healthy well-rounded child should. If she has trouble keeping up with her brothers sometimes it will be because she is younger and smaller, not because she is a girl, and they will be kind enough to include her most of the time because they have learned that everyone has more fun when the smallest gets included, too. She will be too busy learning about the world to be obsessed with shallow stereotypical "girlish" things, which in my opinion is as it should be. She can decide for herself the kind of girl she wants to be.

Growing Up

2010-04-27T07:17:00.000-07:00

I realized recently that my children are going to grow up.

Of course, I always knew this. From the first moment my first baby reached for the toy I was holding...no, even before this, when I was still pregnant with him and my flat abdomen became a baby greenhouse, I could see that he was going to GROW.

What sort of freaked me out was the realization that I would not always be the mother of a baby. Yes, we mothers tend to say, "You'll always be my baby! Even when you're 20! Even when you're 50!" And I believe we mean it, in the sense that we will always love them, always want the best for them, always remember that baby smell and find it hard to believe how *big* this kid is getting.

But even my youngest will eventually grow up. I won't have a baby forever, and it's hard for me to wrap my brain around that. It took me awhile to realize why, exactly, moving on to another stage of motherhood seems so foreign and scary. I have found taking care of a baby to be absolutely delightful. My first baby was a "velcro" baby; he nursed constantly and hated to be put down. I learned very quickly that life was easiest for everyone if I wore him in a sling and napped with him whenever I could. In retrospect it's fortunate that my high-need baby was my first; if he had been easygoing I would probably have held him a lot less. Instead, I practiced attachment parenting without ever having heard of it, and when my second baby came along, I was well-versed in what I now consider to be baby-care essentials like babywearing and sharing sleep. I even have to laugh at myself when I look back at my expectations, which were probably more realistic than those of many new parents but still pretty far removed from reality.

As the years have gone by, I've found that, compared to older children, babies are downright *easy*! Perhaps the reason is that my own intense temperament is well-suited to the intense needs of a baby. It is so easy to rock or walk around with a fussy baby, and so frustrating and even maddening to try to reason with an angry or frustrated 7-year-old! It is so easy to nurse a tired baby to sleep, and so exhausting to have to repeated tell an older child, "Let's talk about it tomorrow. Lay quietly and let your eyes get sleepy..." Maybe I am a control freak. One of the most frustrating things I've experienced is my older child arguing with me or asking questions when I have asked him to do something. Maybe it's easier to be patient with a tiny helpless baby who can't express himself with the sass and single-mindedness of an older child who is determined to have his way. It certainly is easier to work a baby into a busy day -- just pop him into a sling and go about your business. It takes time, thought, and planning to anticipate and meet needs that go beyond what you can immediately provide with your body.

That's really the crux of it. Being attached, breastfeeding, and keeping your baby close are very easy, and they lay a great foundation for the rest of one's parenting. It's scary to feel that they aren't enough anymore.

Being Mother

2009-02-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

I found a really interesting book a few months ago at a thrift store. The title was "Made From Scratch: Reclaiming the Pleasures of the American Hearth" and it was written by Jean Zimmerman. It sounds instructional, doesn't it? I began reading eagerly, expecting old-fashioned housekeeping tips and recipes. Instead, it turned out to be a fascinating history of America's infatuation with packaged food and manufactured goods.

I enjoyed the book but its content left me depressed. Ms. Zimmerman asserts -- correctly -- that, while "men's" work (i.e., what people do for a living) has changed significantly over the last 100 years, "women's" work (i.e., taking care of a home and/or children) has hardly changed at all. At the turn of the twentieth century, industrialization changed workers, cities and towns, the economy, and the way people lived. On the domestic front, human needs remain the same: meals still need to be prepared, clothes still need to be washed, children still need to be cared for and educated. We have lots of appliances at our disposal to make these basics somewhat easier, but today's housewife spends her days echoing her foremothers' lives to a remarkable extent. This is not what I found depressing, however. I was utterly dismayed at the realization of how many inventions there are these days to replace me...and how few women seem to object to this.

If I chose, I could go get a full-time job. I could entrust my 13-month-old, who is still a baby in so many ways, to a full-time professional caregiver. I could send my 6-year-old to public school and utilize whatever after-school care program is available. My salary would add significantly to our family's budget, and I would undoubtedly enjoy the satisfaction of a full day's work, a job well done. I already utilize many modern conveniences; a trained monkey could run the dishwasher, and probably unload it, too. Do I need to stay home with my children?

I believe I do.

I have come to realize that there is really no good replacement for me. Many other loving friends and family members are a part of my children's lives, but they are not Mother. My husband is a loving father, fun playmate, reliable breadwinner, tasty sandwich-maker, story-reader, and tucker-inner; he has an uncanny ability to engage the children in a different activity just before I get irritated enough to yell; he keeps the baby happy, or at least distracted, while I take a shower. But he doesn't do the things I do, and I don't do the things he does. We are a parenting team with equal but different strengths. I can't replace him just as he can't replace me, and I don't know where I'd be without him!

So, am I replaceable? Absolutely not. I am the only mother my children have, and no amount of professional training or financial reward can compel anyone else to love my children as I do. Love from other people is wonderful, but there is a reason we are all nostalgic about Mom's apple pie. My presence is constant in my children's lives, the most important thing I can do. So I have no problem whatsoever with being Mother. That's who I am.

Make Your Own

2009-02-16T19:38:00.000-08:00

I have had a long-standing affair with saving money. My latest, and possibly greatest, strategy: making things myself.

It seems we as Americans have had a strange love/hate relationship with all things handmade. Before industrialization made our every desire manifest, people made what they needed (or wanted) or traded with someone else who made what the needed (or wanted). Strong, sturdy craftsmanship was essential for everyone's safety, and of course product recalls were unheard of. If someone had a problem they could easily take it back where they got it and, personal relationships being what they are, get it fixed.

It became a sign of affluence to have factory-made things; by the time I attended public elementary school in the 1980s homemade was the exception rather than the rule. Store-bought valentines (placed in our childish handmade mailboxes; there seemed no sense of irony), colorful plastic lunchboxes filled with packaged foods, an incredible assortment of crayons, markers, paint, paper, pencils, and glue -- it seemed nobody made things, apart from crafts, which were different because crafting was a hobby and almost by definition didn't produce anything necessary or, sometimes, even useful.

My mom was, however, an accomplished seamstress. As a teenager she made her own clothes, and of course she made several outfits for me. Every year my younger brother and I looked forward to planning our hand-made Halloween costumes, and every year my mom came up with something unique, fun, and a heck of a lot nicer than the cheap-looking store-bought costumes. I always felt proud of my costumes which I designed and my mom made. My mom taught me to sew when I showed the interest, and it has become one of my most personally treasured skills. Being able to sew made it easy for me to work in the Costume Shop as a theater student, and sewing is pretty much a prerequisite if you want to work in Wardrobe. Now that I'm a mom, I sew things for my family all the time, which I really never imagined doing.

My first project was making some reusable nursing pads when I was pregnant with my oldest son. I bought some cloth diapers, cut them into circles, and zigzagged several layers together. They worked great and even lasted through the early days of nursing my second baby -- although by this time I had learned that I was prone to plugged ducts, and wool nursing pads worked better for me. Of course I figured out a way to make myself some wool nursing pads too.

My next project was cloth napkins. I couldn't believe how much they cost in the store! It finally occurred to me to look for some in a thrift store, and I was astonished to find 6 for 50 cents. I kept my eyes open and found enough for a pretty good supply; some of them were homemade and I realized how easy it would be to make my own out of some fun fabric, so I did.

I was truly on a roll! Next I made some reusable menstrual pads, and I was so excited about how easy they were and how much money I saved (I used a flannel sheet from the thrift store) I made some for a friend too.

During my second pregnancy, I decided to use cloth diapers. I made some prefolds -- again from thrift store sheets -- and a couple wool diaper covers. I had gotten some Bummis prefolds and covers at a LLL conference silent auction and some all-in-ones from a friend and I was all set.

I was also finding that chemical cleaners were bothering me, so I sought out recipes for natural cleaners and found several to my liking. Now I make my own all-purpose cleaner, scouring powder (for bathtubs and sinks), dish soap, laundry detergent, and carpet freshener. I really like making all these things myself from mild, gentle ingredients. They all have a fresh, clean smell and no overpowering fumes.

I just found how easy it is to make a mei tai (Asian-style) baby carrier. I love the one I made and wish I'd had one a year ago! Although I must also say that, when my baby was small, the Maya wrap was (and sometimes still is) my carrier of choice. Now that my son is 13 months and 24 pounds it is much more comfortable to wear him on both shoulders.

Nowadays it seems there's a resurgence of handmade things. More and more, WAHM businesses' products and all sorts of handmade items are trusted far more than mass-produced plastic junk (who ever heard of a WAHM toy or sling recall? Not me!) and my husband's addiction to the DIY network is a testament to the appeal of do-it-yourselfing. The truth is you really can save money doing things yourself! It's worth taking the time to learn how to do it, and you will have given yourself the gift of a skill you can use again and again. It is immensely satisfying to make something for your family to use. Try it -- it's easier than you think!

Choice?

2009-02-07T12:53:00.000-08:00

You are a new mom. You "don't have enough milk" or your baby "won't latch on" or is "too hungry." So you give formula with little fanfare, perhaps even some relief, without giving your baby a fair chance to learn how to nurse or your body a fair chance to get accustomed to making milk, and soon your baby is prematurely weaned.

Have you chosen to artificially feed your baby?

Do modern mothers get enough information to "choose" anything? We are bombarded by advertisements that undermine our inner wisdom as the primary nurturers of our babies. Although our bodies wisely nourished our babies in utero, according to Madison Avenue that unconscious expertise ends at birth, when "you may not be able to breastfeed...but it's okay, because XYZ formula is like human milk."

It's ridiculous.

The formula industry makes billions every year. Can you "choose" to feed your baby artificial formula? Sure. But you should be aware of the choice you are making, with full knowledge of the alternatives and risks involved.

Consider a study mentioned in this clip finding that although most people asked consider breastfeeding best for baby, less than half considered formula-feeding to have any risk associated. (http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Ftiny.cc%2FSuckonit&h=dac4ce6b710814c3e543fc56d9dd7108) And for more information on the risks of artificial infant feeding: http://www.kellymom.com/newman/risks_of_formula_08-02.html

The fact is that formula-fed babies are much more prone to a whole host of preventable illnesses than their breastfed counterparts. And American women, under the guise of free speech and fair trade, are led to believe that "choosing" between breastfeeding and formula feeding is the same as choosing between brands of deodorant.

In a society where the bottle is the universal symbol for babies, can there be any real choice regarding infant feeding? A society where formula companies are one of the biggest sources of breastfeeding information for new mothers? Where hospitals and even pediatricians routinely hand out "Breastfeeding Success Packs" containing formula samples, information books published by formula manufacturers, and absolutely nothing useful to a mother who is breastfeeding? Where the WHO Code of Marketing Breastmilk Substitutes (http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/code_english.pdf) still is not legally binding to formula manufacturers...and the U.S.A. is the only country that didn't adopt it?

The promise of formula manufacturers is seductive. What busy mother does not want help from her partner and family? Restful nights with long stretches of sleep? Worry-free parenting and the promise that someone has all the answers all figured out for you?

What formula manufacturers do not tell you is that, not only do they not have all the answers, they only offer the facts that support the premise that "breast is best, but when you can't..." Meaning it's acceptable, appropriate, apparently even desirable, to feed your baby an expensive third-rate milk substitute rather than to feed your baby your own free nutritionally superior milk...because formula seems convenient, and they have created the belief that breastfeeding is hard and that many women just can't do it. What modern Marvelous Mama wants to put herself and her baby through the pain and drama of failing at breastfeeding?

Under these circumstances have you really made a choice?

Mother's Milk: normal infant food

2009-02-07T12:01:00.000-08:00

Check out this petition to normalize breastfeeding!

http://womensrights.change.org/actions/view/normalize_breastfeeding

Breastfed babies are healthier because, well, they eat the natural food Mother Nature intends them to eat! Just like we adults are healthier when we eat fruit, vegetables, and whole grains instead of candy bars and potato chips.

You could just as well say that artificially fed babies are sicker...and they are! The risks of artifical infant feeding include higher rates of obesity, ear infections, and diabetes, lower IQs, and crooked teeth. Check out http://www.breastfeedingtaskforla.org/ABMRisks.htm for an extensive list.

Pampers = Breastfeeding support?

2009-02-07T11:24:00.000-08:00

A friend shared this article with me, and I am outraged!

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=64673851954&h=VWSIH&u=NjDGs

A quick summary: noted hot actress and breastfeeding mom Salma Hayek recently traveled to Sierra Leone in support of the Pampers campaign which donates money to UNICEF for mothers to have tetanus vaccinations. In 2008 she became spokesperson for the campaign, and while I am delighted that women like Salma Hayek are breastfeeding their toddlers, I am outraged that a company like Proctor & Gamble is using the deaths of thousands of babies to shamelessly push their environment-destroying disposable diapers!

According to the article, the present health crisis in Sierra Leone is caused by 1) unsanitary birthing conditions in mothers' homes, and 2) babies exposed to the tetanus bacteria when the umbilical cord is cut with a dirty knife and/or "the umbilical cord is dressed by the traditional method of packing it with dirt, clay or cow manure."

If this is a traditional practice, why are babies so affected by tetanus now? What has changed in their environment?

It is laudable to want to help mothers and babies. Certainly, tetanus is horrific and it is tragic for any baby to die. Unfortunately I believe the wrong questions are being asked. Specifically, companies are asking, "How can we make money?" instead of important questions such as:

Why are women not being educated in better sanitation? Why are birth attendants not learning the importance of clean instruments and hand washing? Will traditional birth attendants be able to make a living and provide for their families if all (or most) women begin giving birth in health clinics? Why are women choosing not to give birth in those clinics in the first place?

And...What about informed consent? The forced vaccination debate in the U.S. should provide ample evidence for UNICEF and other organizations that work to help women and children that a "one size fits all" approach is not appropriate when it comes to injecting toxins and bacteria into women and newborns.

Women all over the world are entitled to safe, joyous birth, and most healthy, normal women are most likely to experience that at home, surrounded by their families and friends, rather than at impersonal clinics surrounded by strangers. UNICEF should be taking the least-invasive approach, educating mothers and families about hygiene and breastfeeding, before trying to make everyone get vaccinated.

And, working to figure out why traditional practices are having lethal consequences for babies.