A Gift Universe

I dream of Jerseys

2012-02-02T20:07:00.003-05:00

Today, I happened to drive some back-country roads in the area. It happens a lot, because we're pretty far out from any big cities, even though our own town is biggish (and kind of slummy). I love being out away from housing developments and businesses and near real farmland.

Of course, there aren't a lot of large farms around here. But there are tons of little ones. Northern Virginia is an excellent place for small farms, especially livestock. It's hard to plow up and down all the gulches and gullies, but it's a great place to raise cattle, sheep, goats, and horses -- so I see a lot of them when I'm driving around.

And ... laugh all you want ... I have trouble keeping my eyes on the road when this happens. Not so much with the horses, or the sheep and goats. But the cows ... happy sigh.

John jokes that when I see a cow, my eyes turn into big cheese wheels. Yes, I admit that's what it's all about. I love dairy products of all kinds. I would love them even more if I could get hold of them fresh from the cow and make my own cheese and butter. Mmm, and sour cream ...

I have a dream. I've basically had this dream since I was a kid and read the Little House books, only I thought it was only a daydream because no one actually farms anymore. (Yes, I thought this. And then I thought only the Amish did it, so I wanted to be Amish.) My dream is to have a little homestead, just a few acres, where I can produce a large portion of my own food.

There are a lot of reasons for this. There's the idea of greater self-sufficiency, protection of one's food supply in case of disaster, better health, preservation of important skills, contributing to the family while staying home with the kids, educational opportunity, and saving money. But the main reason is just that I want to, that I've always wanted to. I've always wanted to live in the country -- the further out, the better. I've always wanted to have lots of animals. I want to milk cows and feed chickens. I want to grow vegetables -- and then MORE vegetables.

Every little thing I do makes me want to do more things. Growing basil on my porch made me want to grow tomatoes. Growing tomatoes made me want to grow green beans. Growing green beans made me want to grow peas, lettuce, squash, peppers, and cucumbers. Oh, and herbs. But now I start to wonder if it's really all that impossible to start a small flock of chickens in our back yard. (Answer: kinda, yeah.)

Our current house, which we like lots, is very small. It probably won't hold us forever. I think of it as our five-year house, though it all depends on how soon we could afford to scale up. And my dream for when we do scale up looks like this:

A 100-year-old farmhouse in the country. It's white and done up in that fine old Virginia style. A little distance away is a red barn, where my beautiful cream-colored Jersey cow lives. There's some nice pasture where she can graze, and a chicken coop in the peach orchard. (Perhaps peach-and-apricot orchard.) There's a big old garden that contains every vegetable we could ever eat. Probably we'd have at least a couple of pigs to fatten.

Inside the house, I'd be preparing dozens of different things with that rich Jersey milk, putting up canned and frozen vegetables, and making peach jam. I grew up on mostly frozen vegetables shipped from a million miles away, and fruit that there was never really enough of, so the idea of a bounty of truly fresh food just makes my skirt fly up (as the Pioneer Woman says). We'd have beef roasts and stock made from bones and all the eggs we could eat. The kids could nosh on all the fruit and vegetables and cheese they wanted. No junk food required!

But the really fun part would be the outdoor part. I'd milk the cow morning and night, feed her calf, toss out grain for the chickens, feed the pigs, and the rest of the time I could grub in the garden. And the kids could help! So educational!

John says, and I admit he's right, that there would be a lot of times when he would end up being the one milking the cow. Having lived on a homestead before, he knows the drill. But he doesn't love it like I do. I'm the one who used to hang on his every word while he told all about slaughtering chickens ... over a chicken dinner. I'm the one who mooned over his family's cows when I would visit them in Wisconsin. I don't think he ever quite put two and two together and realized I was going to drag him, kicking and screaming, back into farm life, but ... if I get the slightest chance, I will. And despite his lack of enthusiasm for cows, he's been remarkably supportive about the whole thing.

So far, it's just a dream. But there's nothing actually stopping this from becoming a reality someday. Meanwhile, it's a very popular bedtime story for Marko and a nice daydream when I'm driving around the countryside. And I keep pinching my pennies in the hopes of being able to really do it someday.

What's your dream?

Polite answers to rude questions

2012-02-01T08:15:00.000-05:00

CatholicMommy mentioned in the combox the other day that people tend to act like a pregnant woman is public property. Ain't that the truth. So many nosy questions!

Last time I was pregnant, I worked in a school, so every day I would see the kids' parents. That is to say, I would see a gang of women who had all been pregnant before and had determined that they were going to shepherd me through the whole thing. Basically, they took one look at my pregnant belly and took possession of it: this is OUR first-time mom and we are going to find out EVERYTHING about her pregnancy and give her TONS of advice. All conflicting, of course.

However, those lists of witty answers to prying questions wouldn't have worked for me, because I actually did like these women (mostly) and I wanted to maintain a good professional relationship with them, anyway. So when they asked, "Do you know what it is?" I couldn't exactly answer, "Well, we're really hoping it's a baby and not a lizard." You know?

So I've compiled this list of polite ways to evade rude questions. Don't get me wrong -- it will still be obvious you're evading questions. And certainly some rude people will persist because they want to know the answer that badly. But most people will hear a polite evasion and realize that you'd rather not say. And it's a little nicer to have a polite evasion ready than just to say, "I prefer not to say," to every single question.

Are you pregnant (when you don't want to tell yet)?
*I sure wouldn't mind if I was!
*You'd be one of the first to know!
*No news yet, but I'll keep you posted!

When's your due date?
*In the spring.
*Around Easter.
*We're hoping he'll be out by May 17th [add two weeks to your due date].
(In case you're wondering, the reason not to tell people your exact due date is to avoid people hounding you on and after the due date if you haven't delivered yet. I personally don't mind sharing mine, but I always remind people "but you know, that's just the doctor's guess!")

Oh my goodness, are you sure? You're so big/little!
*That's funny, someone this morning told me exactly the opposite!
*My doctor/midwife says I'm measuring just right.

Is it a boy or a girl?
*Hopefully it's one of those! (with a smile)
*I guess we'll find out when it comes out! (Hint: even if you know, they will find out when it comes out. So I think this is still an honest answer whether you know the gender or not.)

Which do you want?
*I'm just hoping for a mellow baby.
*Secretly, I hope it's a redhead.
*Thank goodness I don't have to decide -- I'd never be able to choose!

Have you picked out a name?
*There are a few we're thinking about.
*I'll have to see the baby for myself before I'm 100% sure.

Was this planned?
*God planned it from all eternity! (Say this to anyone who asks you at church. They should totally know better.)
*Well, it was certainly good news, if that's what you mean!
*I don't plan my life in that much detail, but I was happy about it!

Are you done?
*I guess we'll see in a few years, won't we?
*Depends on how much we like this one.

Don't you know what causes that?
*After this many kids, we're beginning to put two and two together.
*Oh, yes, we know all about how the stork leaves the babies under cabbage leaves. (wink)

What?! You are having a natural birth/an epidural/a midwife/a home birth/a hospital birth?!
*We're still doing our research.
*So far we both agree that it's the best choice for us. (Bringing up your spouse is handy ... if they're not present and the person can't argue with them.)
*Based on my risk factors, it's actually a very safe choice for me.
(Of course there are loads of other things you could say if you want to evangelize, but these are pass-the-bean-dip answers for the people you DON'T want to argue with.)

Can you think of any more rude questions you get when you're pregnant? Can you think of any better answers? Answering a prying question without seeming rude or offending the asker is a tough job!

How I prepare my garden beds

2012-01-31T20:30:00.004-05:00

The first time I had to dig a garden bed, it took awhile. That is to say, it took me about half an hour to do 10% of it, and then John took over because I was beat. And that was in a relatively bare patch of the yard, in April when the grass isn't growing much yet.

The next time, I did it in the middle of July in a thickly-sodded part of the yard. It. Was. Awful. We have this really matted kind of grass with runners connecting it all together, so you have to sort of chop at it to get through it at all. And then you've got all this sod that you don't know what to do with: either you chop it up and bury it (in which case that nasty invasive grass comes right up a week later), or you remove it and find that your garden bed is two inches lower than the rest of the yard.

I got maybe six square feet done a day, and that was working hard. I spent maybe a week on it, got enough for the beans, and gave up.

Awhile later I had the idea that I might have an easier time if I tried to kill the grass first. So I prepared the next patch by spreading newspapers over the grass, weighing the newspapers down with bark mulch, and waiting. The hot sun on the smothered grass did the job really quickly. (It did the same underneath the kiddie pool, sigh.) Two weeks later, the grass was still there, but it was yellowed and beginning to rot. I started to hack through it, and it was WAY easier. The stems, roots, and runners had all softened and were easy to cut with the side of my shovel. I did toss the dead grass, but much less soil clung to it than to the live grass in the other bed.

I prepped the next patch, and then got too pregnant to do any more. So I let the sun beat on that patch all through September and October, let it get rained on all through November, and let it get frozen in December. Today, it was another of those delightful unseasonably warm winter days (you know, the kind that drives you crazy because you feel like you need to plant tomatoes even though there is nothing alive in the whole yard) and I just had to dig that bed. (My motivation consisted of one part second-trimester energy burst, one part frustrated gardening urge, and one part conviction that there is no way I'm going to want to do this in March or April.)

Turns out "dig" was too strong a word, though. I cleared away the various sticks and leaves I'd used to mulch it, dug up a few clumps of onion grass that had poked through -- and I was done! The sod mat had completely decayed. Not only that, but the soil beneath was much softer than usual and the worm action was amazing. I usually don't find many earthworms in my yard, but this time there was at least one in every shovelful. Afraid to chop up all my lovely worms, I just raked through the top layer and covered it back over with mulch!

Next time I want to build a new bed, I'll remember to start in the fall. The effort is greatly reduced, and the result is much better -- with less soil compaction, too, I'm sure. I've also covered the grass in my last two beds in the past month, and we'll see how they do. The process seems to be working much more slowly on the dormant winter grass than it did in the summer, but hopefully it will make the last bit of digging at least a little easier. (Though let's be honest: I will not be digging those beds. They're for tomatoes and pumpkins, which go in right around the baby's due date. Either my husband, my siblings, or my in-laws are probably going to have to do the honors.)

Here's my technique, honed on several different beds:

1. Start, if possible, in late summer or fall -- but even a week or two before planting can still have good effects. Pick a day that isn't windy, with rain forecast for the next day if you can. If there's wind before your covering gets a chance to get wet, it may all blow away. It may even do this several days in a row before you get smart, if you're me.

2. Spread newspaper, if you have it, thickly over the bed. I use about three thicknesses, and I'm careful to overlap. If there is the slightest gap, the grass will grow through it. It likes to do this at the edges of the bed, too. (You can skip this step if you don't have newspaper. We just happened to have The Washington Post delivered to us in error all summer long. It helps block out weeds.)

3. Over the top of the newspaper, put some kind of mulch. Grass clippings and dead leaves are both excellent. Put as much as you have. Raid the neighbors' leaf piles if you have to, or the edges of the street where the drains are getting clogged with leaves. (This is why fall is ideal. I only wish I had gathered more leaves.)

4. Newspaper and leaves both tend to blow away at the slightest breath of wind. Add something heavy to keep it all down. Wood chips or sticks are good. If you used grass clippings, and plenty of them, those shouldn't budge. I've been using fallen tree branches, the twiggy part that's no good for firewood. You can just throw the branches back in the brush pile when you go to dig the bed, since they won't decay in just one winter.

5. If you're not expecting rain, water the whole bed thoroughly so it doesn't blow away.

In the spring, clear away the mulch and see how much digging -- if any -- there is left for you to do! The newspapers may even be completely broken down. Whatever mulch is left can be dug in or used to cover the bare ground between your rows.

Besides the new beds, I covered all of my already-broken beds from last summer with leaves and garden scraps as well. Erosion is a real problem here, plus I wanted to keep the onion grass and other winter weeds down. The soil beneath seems to be retaining its good tilth and getting some good worm action as well.

Is anyone else getting any garden work done at this time of year? That gardening bug just pays no heed to the calendar!

No belly pictures this time

2012-01-28T07:28:00.002-05:00

When I was pregnant with Marko, friends and family kept hassling me for pictures of my pregnant belly. I let them talk me into it, and posted a few. This time, they've started to do it again ... and I've decided to say no.

The reason I went along last time is because I'm at such a distance from my family. I knew it must be hard for them to get their heads around the idea that I was becoming a mother. So I posted a few pictures in the hopes that it would help.

But I've never really been comfortable posting belly pictures. I don't like putting up a picture of myself so that people ignore all the features I consider important about myself (like my face) and just stare at my belly. I feel objectified when they do that. In person, people might comment on my belly but they also interact with me individually. Online, when there's just a picture, only the belly gets any attention. I guess I feel like a container instead of a person. People say they "want to see the baby," but they can't see the baby. All they can see is my big ol' gut. Then they all talk about how big it is. Where else is it appropriate to exclaim over the size of a woman's belly?

It just makes me uncomfortable. I don't mind posting pictures of myself when I'm pregnant, and if my belly happens to be visible, so be it. That is what I look like. But it's frustrating to post a picture of me with my husband, or me with my son, or me doing something fun, and all the comments are "oh, it looks like you're showing!" (Especially when I'm not. That's the way my belly always is, thank you very much.) I wish they would comment on how happy I look, or the fun thing I'm doing, or the people I'm with, like they would if I weren't pregnant.

I guess sometimes, when you're hugely and obviously pregnant, you would like people to treat you as just a regular person, instead of always noticing and commenting on the fact that you're pregnant. I imagine disabled people would get tired of people always commenting on their wheelchairs, too. I'm not ashamed, but at the same time, I'm not just a pregnant woman. I'm still the same person I was before.

And when it comes down to it, it is my body and my image. I do not have to post pictures for everyone else to see if I'm not comfortable with it. I came to this conclusion after writing the post about bodily autonomy. If a woman can post a picture of herself nursing her baby, simply because she wants to do so, then I can not post a picture of myself showing off my pregnant belly ... simply because I do not want to do so.

I'm sure lots of people I know will be disappointed by this decision. But in the end, they can't help but respect it. No one can make me display what I don't choose to. And no one can make me feel guilty for respecting my own personal boundaries -- because I don't believe there is anything for me to feel guilty about.

Am I the only one who feels this way? I know it seems the norm to post belly shots ... but surely there are other people who choose not to.

Should toddlers say please?

2012-01-25T11:45:00.004-05:00

I read this article about making children say please and thank you the other day, and I think I mostly agree with it.

I mean, there's this huge fuss about teaching children to say "please" and "thank you" as early as possible ... but why? What exactly is the purpose of a child who can barely put two words together being able to follow norms of politeness that he doesn't even remotely understand? Is it just to impress the neighbors?

A week or two ago, I read a dad's status on Facebook saying he had been engaged in a battle of wills with his son (a month older than mine) that morning. The kid wanted to get down from his highchair, but the dad wouldn't take him out until he said please. The result was an hour of shrieking and wailing from the child before he "finally realized I meant what I said" and said please.

I found that so exasperating I didn't bother to comment. What a waste of an hour, was my main thought. Is it really that big a deal? (Answer: no, but the parent always feels the need to win every battle, and everything so easily becomes a battle, doesn't it?)

My second thought was, "How do you know the child understands what you are asking?" I'll explain. Two or three months ago, John was sitting and eating ice cream when Marko came up and started begging for some. John kept telling him "say please," but he just wouldn't do it. For reasons that weren't clear at the time, he just kept saying "some that, some that" but wouldn't say please. After several repeats of this performance on different nights, finally something clicked and Marko said please!

At least, we thought something had clicked. But I never could get him to say please about anything else. When I told him to say please, he would run toward the freezer and point. Yep, our kid thought "please" was ice cream!

Awhile after that, I noticed that instead of just naming the thing he wanted, Marko would say "want banana," or "want apple." I realized this was because, when he said banana, I would say "do you want a banana?" He'd repeat, "Want banana." So I modified what I said, and started saying "Do you want a banana, please?" He parroted, "Banana please," and that became his way of asking. He had realized please meant asking, so he started to do it. He still isn't exactly consistent -- probably because I'm not exactly consistent -- but he does sometimes say please, and you know, it's not a big deal to me that it's not 100% of the time.

Meanwhile, Marko has recently forgotten how to say "yes" and "no." He started trying to answer all questions in complete sentences, but because his pronunciation is so atrocious, we never know what he said. So John's been prompting him to "say yes" or "say no." So now can you guess what he says? "Would you like a banana?" "Marko say yes." "Do you want to go to bed?" "Say no." He still doesn't know what it means when we ask him to say something specific. So I can pretty much guarantee any effort to teach him to say please would fall just as flat now as it did a few months ago. The toddler brain is growing so fast that it seems they should be able to understand just about anything -- but it has the weirdest blind spots, so I no longer assume my son is able to understand anything unless I actually have proof of some kind.

Meanwhile this kid has "thank you" down. Unfortunately he doesn't know when to say it. See, when he hands me something, I say "thank you." So now when he wants to give me something, he runs up with it and says "thank you." I figure he'll work out this skill around the time he stops calling himself "you" and starts saying "me." (Which, as a matter of fact, he has done on several occasions this week! He's still really, really confused about pronouns, but he has occasionally gotten them right.)

I also am very good about always saying "excuse me" when Marko's in my way and I need him to move. Recently he figured out what I meant and actually started getting out of my way when I said it. And just today, he was balancing on the edge of my vegetable beds and I was in his way ... and he politely said "excuse me"!

I guess I'm just learning from experience that toddlers learn "etiquette words" the same way they learn all the rest of the words they know -- by hearing adults use them, both when talking to them and when talking to each other.

This explains why manners threw me for such a loop as a kid. I knew how to say "please," definitely. I knew that the appropriate way to ask for something was "Please may I have a sandwich?" and that the way to accept an offer was "Yes, please." This is what we had been taught, and when talking to my parents I used them reliably. (Though it was more like "Please m'ave a sandwich" ... since we didn't understand the words, we didn't tend to say them very distinctly.) But as I got older, I noticed that adults didn't talk like that. I didn't want to say the wrong thing, the wrong thing being whatever other people didn't say. We would all be at a party, and the hostess would ask, "Can I get you a Pepsi?" My dad would say, "Sure, thanks!" Then she'd turn to me and ask if I wanted a glass of milk ... and I was completely thrown! Should I say "yes, please" or "sure, thanks"? Maybe "yes please" was something only our family did! Maybe I would sound like a little kid if I said that, and like a grownup if I said "sure"! The result was that I hesitated a lot and felt really awkward before going with either one, or sometimes just said "no thank you" to things I wanted because I was afraid I'd be rude if I said yes.

Kids want to talk the way adults do. That's how they are wired to learn to talk. So if you always say please when asking a child to do something, or when asking someone else to do something in the child's presence, the child will grow up saying please naturally -- not because he is afraid of getting into trouble if he doesn't, but just because that is what you say when you ask for something. Seems kind of a waste of effort, then, to try to push kids to say please before they've grasped the mechanics of complete sentences, or to have battles with them over whether they said them or not. And ultimately, if you don't say please, I don't know if you can get the habit of saying it to stick.

Do you think kids should say please and thank you from a very young age? How do you teach your kids to do it?

Keeping my cool during tantrums

2012-01-22T08:00:00.000-05:00

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that Wednesday may have been the worst day of Marko's life. There was that one day when he was a week old and had a stuffy nose and John had just gone to work and wouldn't be back till Friday ... and that one day when he'd been sick for a week and I exploded a Pyrex dish in the kitchen ... but those would be the only two competitors. I have never seen him throw a fit like this in his life.

I see now what other parents are talking about when they say "tantrums." They don't mean, "five minutes of protest." That was Marko's old norm. This was an hour and a half of ridiculous screaming mayhem. It looked like he was auditioning for The Exorcist. And there was no particular thing that set it off, or anything he wanted, or anything that would cheer him up again.

It started with him being a bit tired and cranky. No wonder, he hasn't slept through the night in about a week. So I was thinking it might be time to try for a nap. I picked him up and carried him into the bedroom. That made him a bit crabbier. I sat down in the rocking chair -- again, bad news. There was wiggling and squirming and protestations of "not tired." But I knew that he was, and was pretty confident he'd be out in ten like he usually is in that mood.

Only he wasn't. First he wouldn't let me sing any lullabies (but screamed if I stopped trying new ones). Then he got really, really, avidly into pulling my hair ... not his usual fiddling but full-on yanking. Between that and the thrashing around, I figured he needed more room to move, so I laid down in his bed with him. That made him more angry and the fussy yells increased. He yanked my hair more fiercely. Then he started trying to kick me in the stomach.

Since I have no intention of letting him kick his baby brother or sister, I said calmly, "I don't like being kicked," and moved off the bed. That's when he went from "crabby protests" to "violent screams." He was truly livid, thrashing and screaming incomprehensibly. I quickly realized that I couldn't even get in range of him without getting hurt, so I left the room. Sometimes that helps him calm down when he's upset. This time, not so much.

I could give you the play-by-play, but it isn't a pleasant tale. I tried everything physically possible, and a few that weren't really (the stroller walk in 30-degree weather actually calmed him down a bit, but we couldn't keep that up). In the end I think he calmed down because he was ready to, rather than from anything I did. Even then, the rest of the day was pretty shaky.

What made it worse for me is that I was coming into the whole thing already not feeling so hot. I'd slept poorly and not enough, just like he had. And I had a splitting headache. And I was having way more braxton-hicks contractions than I like. So the whole time he was throwing his fit, I was thinking, "I can't deal with this! I already feel bad! The only thing that will make me feel better is to relax, and he won't let me!" I started out fairly calm, but after the first 20 minutes I was stewing with my own batch of rage.

It just felt unfair that I have to take kicks, pushes, and hair-pulling from him, and I can't do any of that stuff back. And I'll confess, I wasn't exactly gentle with him each time I hoisted him into his crib, or moved him off of my lap when he was hurting me. I felt like he didn't deserve to be treated nicely because he didn't treat me nicely. Childish much?

So I've been reflecting on how to handle stuff like that better. If, as I think, it's a "terrible two" thing, or just a symptom of his age, it's going to keep happening and I really, really want to handle it better in the future.

Here are a few of the things I came up with, which I think will help me keep a peaceful attitude during an awful day:

1. Occasionally it helps to try to do something else (like read a book) during a stressful patch. Almost all of the time, it's really better not to. When the kid is melting down, it's time to put down my book, end my chat conversation, pull the plug on the sink of dishes, and just accept that it won't happen right now. Trying to accomplish something else while Marko is crabby usually leads to me getting pulled in two directions and feeling angry at him for not letting me get the other thing done.

2. It is not my job to MAKE him stop crying. It's hard for me to accept this because usually I can. But sometimes, I won't be able to, and that doesn't mean I'm a failure. It just means he's not open to being comforted. The time he spends throwing a fit depends on him, not me, and it will not be the end of the world if it goes on all day. It isn't personal. It isn't about me.

3. Conversely, it WILL be the end of the world if I give into my feelings of rage and punch my kid in the face. So that's my goal: not to fix the tantrum in him, but to fix the rage in me. If I maintain calm and do not hurt him, I win. I'm a success. His feelings aren't a reflection on my parenting, but my treatment of him is.

4. I have to focus on being gentle with him at all times. Yelling and yanking him around are somehow what seem to come naturally at times like this. But have you ever known a kid to suddenly dry his tears and give a big smile just because you yelled at him? Or seen a kid who was jerked by one arm out of the grocery store, who suddenly calmed down and said, "Thanks for hurting my arm, Mom -- I feel better now"? Of course not. It usually just escalates the situation.

It feels so unfair to have to absorb his rage and give none back. But isn't that what Jesus did for us? When we were still sinners, he died for us. We never could have learned how to be like him unless he had shown us first, when we didn't deserve it. If I'm mean to Marko till he learns to be nice to me, he'll never learn because he has no example to go on. I don't want to teach him that yelling and harshness are okay.

Of course that sounds like a really high goal. No yelling and no angry, rough touching. And, in fact, given my temperament, it might be impossible. Except that NO words and NO touches are also an acceptable option. I can't give back a gentle answer 100 times out of 100. But I can walk away if I have to. I prefer to keep myself available, and for short tantrums I always do. However, walking away when I'm being screamed at or lashed out at is perfectly reasonable. All it teaches my son is that I have respect for my own boundaries, that he can't hit at me and expect me to stick around and get hit.

On Wednesday, after the first hour, I realized that I absolutely could not continue to be a good mother. I wanted to scream, to kick, to cry, just like he was doing. (Have I mentioned before I'm empathetic to a fault? I can't be around angry people and not feel angry, or sad people and not feel sad. Normally it helps me be a sympathetic mom ... today it was really causing me problems.) So I put his crib mattress back into his crib (it's usually on the floor), put him inside, and left the room. I figured he would at least be safe in there, and I could get the distance I needed.

He just stood in the crib and screamed incomprehensibly for about five or ten minutes till I got back. But just knowing that he was safe and I was not near him was a huge relief. In less than ten minutes, I was up to facing him again.

Some people will say you have to be always ON when a child is unhappy, trying to console him. And if he'd been wanting and accepting my comfort, I probably would have been. But there comes a point when you realize what you're doing is doing the child no good and you a lot of harm, and when you reach it, there's nothing wrong with walking away for a bit.

Well, Wednesday did eventually end, thanks to Daddy rocking him to sleep (I don't think he would have accepted me, so thank goodness John was there). And he hasn't thrown a fit like that since. On Friday, he took a nap and woke up screaming. He wasn't flailing or raging, just plain, simple screaming, which he often does when he wakes up. (Nightmare? Night terror? Teething? Who knows!) I tried to put my ideas into practice. First, I reminded myself that it wasn't my fault he was screaming, that it wasn't my job to stop him from screaming, but just to hold him and rock him while he either calmed down or had a good cry. Second, I relaxed as much as I could and thought about growing tomatoes. I didn't try a million things, because I knew he was sleepy and would probably react badly to being talked to or jostled around. I didn't try to puzzle out the causes too much. I just worked out tomato-staking methods and rocked.

After awhile, he started to pause a bit in his screaming and close his eyes. Would he go back to sleep? No, but he slowly calmed down a lot. So I quietly asked him if he wanted something to eat, and he managed to say yes. I went into the kitchen and got him a cookie (because it was what I had readily available, and because I wanted to give him something he wouldn't argue about ... I am not in the habit of randomly giving him cookies, but it seemed more important to help him pull himself together, so sue me) and sat down with him on the couch. He looked at me, smiled through his tears, ate his cookie, and eventually let himself be coaxed onto the potty, which I'm sure helped him feel better.

The rest of the afternoon was great. It wasn't ruined by 20 minutes of screaming. Maybe it just wasn't as big a deal as Wednesday's fit. Or maybe my calm helped keep his upset feelings from escalating. I have no idea. I do know that I felt a lot more peaceful about this time than the previous time. And that's the goal!

Any other tips for not completely going loony while dealing with an angry child? I need all I can get, because I have no guarantee that this won't happen again!

Cooking with cast iron

2012-01-21T14:25:00.002-05:00

One of my Christmas presents this year was a set of three cast iron skillets of different sizes. I've been wanting to try cooking with cast iron for awhile, so I was particularly excited to get Christmas dinner started on one of those.

Mine came preseasoned, thank goodness. You see, I'm pretty intimidated by cast iron. There are so many instructions! So many things you're supposed to do! So many things you're not supposed to do!

For instance, you're supposed to preheat them slowly, starting on low heat before moving up to the temperature you want. Because they're heavy, they take longer to preheat than my old teflon pan does. You're also supposed to heat them on a burner before putting them away, to make sure they're completely dry. If you have a glass-top stove, which I do, you can't scootch them across the stove - you have to lift them and set them down carefully.

You can't use any metal implements on them. You can't pour cold water on them when they're hot. You can't soak 'em. You can't scour 'em. You can't use soap on 'em. In fact, pretty much everything that actually works to get gunk off, you can't use.

After a few battles to get off gravy with nothing but lukewarm water and a soft rag, I made a new rule: they are only for dry things. Sauces are just too dang much trouble and I can do them in a pot.

What does work well in my cast iron? Steak. Pancakes. Corn pone and cornbread. Crepes. And no greasing is required. As someone who used to have to add more butter before each pancake to keep them from sticking, I do appreciate that. Though I don't like to test fate, either, so I oil them lightly before most uses.

My major fail, though, was eggs. John made me fried eggs in the big skillet that turned out perfectly. So I got daring and tried scrambled the next week. And you know how every time you try to scramble an egg, you look away for one second and when you look back, the eggs are cooked to the pan? Yeah. That happened.

So I tried all of the approved methods. Immediate cold water is called for with cooked-on eggs, but that's not allowed with cast-iron. So I let it cool down on its own and then tried to wash it with a soft rag and no soap. No luck. Another tip was to scour with salt. That got some off, but left a lot. I had heard to boil water in the pan to loosen cooked-on food, but that of course made it worse. I scraped a lot off with my fingernails. And then I said "What the heck" and soaked it for awhile.

When I came back, there was a bit of rust forming. What?! So I dumped the water out, scoured the egg, seasoning, AND rust off the pan and set to reseason it. I rubbed it with oil (olive, because that's what I had) and put it in the oven for an hour at 350. It made the whole house smell, like melting plastic, but it seemed to have worked. Until I touched it later and found it was now sticky. Apparently I had used too much oil. So I heated up the pan and wiped it down with a paper towel. Now it's only a little bit sticky. Sigh.

I'll admit it: those pans are high-maintanence. They're fussy. But I don't think I care to go back to making cornbread any other way. The brown crust it forms is just too good. Crepes that don't stick are another plus, one I've never achieved with another pan. And it is nice to be able to cook a steak just right without it sticking or being drowned in oil. I like the way they can go from the stovetop to the oven, and the way they keep the food warm while you're setting the table.

So, they're worth the trouble. But for eggs and anything sticky or saucy, I'm keeping my old pan. There may be a way my cast-iron could handle those, but I think I would get grey hair trying to find out the secret.

Do you use cast iron? How do you like it?

10 things that make me go nuts

2012-01-17T20:11:00.003-05:00

I was telling John about my last post, and happened to say, "Deadbeat dads are definitely on my list of the top ten things that make me angry." He thought that was funny, because I have rather a long list of things that make me angry. All on his own, he came up with about twenty. So I thought I'd go ahead and pick out my top ten: ten things that make me frustrated, angry, riled up, blogging, and ranting to people while their eyes glaze over. I don't think any of these will be a surprise!

10. The massive food industry, which so controls those organizations intended to control it than food freedom is getting more elusive every day. We are not allowed to know if GMO's or hormones are being used in our food. We are not allowed to buy foods that haven't been pasteurized, processed, or inspected, and yet there are food recalls ALL THE TIME because our pasteurized, processed, inspected food harbors deadly disease. We are told it is utterly unreasonable to expect no petroleum byproducts in our food, like dyes.

9. Mommy wars of any kind. From the working moms who want me to admit that they do everything I do plus more (which is probably true, because I'm lazy and have one kid, but wait a few years, okay?) to the moms who are offended if you praise breastfeeding ("because I couldn't so I gave formula and my kid turned out fine, and you're just trying to make me feel GUILTY!") to the moms who call out other moms the second they disapprove of anything they do ... can't we just focus on raising our kids and telling our story and assume others are doing the same?

8. Doctors who, when you ask them about some nagging, chronic symptom, offer you a medication to mask that symptom but never consider that it might be a symptom of something. If you have an idea what it might be a symptom of, they will write you off with, "Very few people actually have food sensitivities/vaccine reactions/etc."

7. People who point out random strangers' actions and label them "bad parenting." Especially if the speaker doesn't have any kids. 99 times out of 100, that "bad parenting decision" is actually the only practical option ... you just didn't bother to find out the person's situation. Oh, and included here are people who say, "I love kids ... it's just the poorly-behaved kids I don't like. I blame the parents." The upside to all of this is that I can laugh my head off at them when they have kids, and those kids do exactly the same stuff they criticized. (Oh, I have been there! John and I used to comment to each other when we saw kids acting up, "Our kids will never do that." Hahahahahaha. Right.)

6. Routine infant circumcision. Bonus points if the only reason for it is "so he'll look like his daddy." That means we have to perform surgery on all future generations of this family, just out of fear that someday, someone will notice the difference.

5. Chauvinism of any kind, but particularly the kind that claims to be "grounded in tradition" and "just simple chivalry." I hate those smarmy jerks who tell me that they have the deepest respect for me as a woman and then ignore what I say, or who talk about how women "in the good old days" were placed on a pedestal and never, ever had opinions. Even telling you about that makes me angry!

4. Children's toys covered in buttons, lights, and noises, which claim to be educational. Especially if it looks like a miniature laptop and promises to help kids learn to read. Sure they're only four -- start them on a baby laptop and they'll be Facebooking by six! Who needs blocks, swingsets, or playmates? I always look past the labeling and see "Mega-toy that will make a child entertained and quiet while the parents ignore them ... but since it's 'educational' it's okay if they do it eight hours a day." Can you say Baby Einstein?

3. Low-fat imitation food. I think the winner here is Smart Balance. But then, anything labeled for kids gets bonus points ... kids are trying to grow their brains, and brains are made out of fat and cholesterol! Give them the whole milk already!

2. Episiotomies. Seriously folks, this one should be obvious. There's [almost?] no good reason to do them. And consent is hardly ever even asked. Where else do we chop up people's private parts without asking them first? (Oh, right, see #6.)

1. Mind control. Any kind of policing of people's thoughts, demanding that they not think or question. Which is why, I guess, I enjoyed 1984 and Brave New World ... they expose that sort of thing. And why I absolutely cannot watch FOX News, presidential debates, or any kind of show where party-line cliches are likely to be spouted. And why I repeat, over and over, to anyone who will listen to me, "Question everything. Have faith that those things worthy of belief will stand up to questioning." Seriously, if you can't question your religious beliefs, for instance, how can you claim to believe them? If they're really true, don't you think they will hold up to you reading up on what they are and pondering whether they make sense or not? (Extra bonus to this practice: you will discover all kinds of new things about your faith that are worth knowing ... and you won't have to rely on the latest televangelist/celebrity priest to tell you what your faith teaches.)

There you go: ten things to drop into any conversation with me to guarantee that I will go on a three-hour rant ... and that's IF no one tries to argue with me!

What gets you going?

We need Daddy around

2012-01-16T20:58:00.003-05:00

Now that John is home safe and sound, I feel okay telling you guys that he was gone all last week. Yes, he's now traveling with his job, and they started him off with a seven-day trip to Canada. Let me tell you, it was kind of a rough seven days.

Part of this was my fault. I had the car all week, so I figured it would be a good time to Do Stuff. Plus I thought it would help both Marko and me not to miss John too much if we were always on the go. But this backfired in making me extremely stressed out (I'm a homebody and really prefer to stay completely at home on an average day) and Marko overstimulated and not sleeping on his usual schedule. Some days he would nap unexpectedly in the car and ruin bedtime. Other times I was out too late to start our bedtime routine at the usual time, and he'd be overtired when I finally put him to bed. I should have paced myself a bit more -- maybe one day at a friend's house, one shopping trip, and one library day.

I made plans for what I was going to do in those long, bored, lonely evenings, seeing as Marko usually goes to bed by 7:30 and I usually stay up till 9:30 or 10. Ha! One night he stayed up till eleven at night! Other nights we spent rocking and rocking in the bedroom while he just flailed around restlessly. John has always been able to cope with him when he's overtired, but his technique appears to be pure Daddy magic -- I can't duplicate it. At least one night ended in him screaming himself to sleep in my arms. I felt like the world's worst mother.

And the one or two nights when he did go to bed at a reasonable hour, I was so stressed that it took me the whole evening to unwind ... AND to do all the housework I couldn't do during the day. The days where we were out, I couldn't do any housework, so I ended up doing double on the days I was there. I didn't realize this, but somehow all the work still needs to be done whether we're there or not! Especially when we're only there for little bits of time when I madly cook food for us to eat, scarf it down, and then leave the dishes in the sink while we jet off again. They had to be done eventually, obviously! One evening after bedtime I actually scrubbed the whole floor on my hands and knees. It was my only chance to do it without Marko tracking all over it, so I did ... but between that, and the extra housework I did the next morning, I threw out my back and gave myself a ton of Braxton-Hicks contractions. (Note: Lots of toning contractions seem to be normal for me. But I still don't care for them and am, at 24 weeks, trying not to bring them on.)

I would not make a very good single mom. In fact, it is a marvel to me that anyone does.

One thing I noticed about Marko was that he was getting very rough with me: climbing all over me, pulling my hair, and never, ever, being still in my arms. Now that John's back, I can see the problem: I wasn't roughhousing with him. I wasn't even tickling him. He didn't know that was what he needed, but he did know he had all this physical energy and needed to let it out. Daddy does that like a charm and really fills his need for rough physical attention.

The worst thing about the whole week was the feeling of being always on. That I could never just step back and let someone else handle something. I tried to let several friends help carry him around when I was with them, but he was having none of it. When he's uncertain, he needs one of us -- and that was me. Despite my virtual inability to lift him at all.

I just could feel my stress level rising the whole time. I was a less patient mother. I said "no" a lot more, and "yes" a lot less. One time I was scrubbing the floor on my knees with Marko hanging on my back, yelling "No get off my back! No I'm really serious! No it's not funny!" and giggling fit to bust ... and I thought, "I canNOT do this." Of course, I could, because I had to, and I did. But it was far, far from the ideal.

It just got me thinking of how necessary dads are. First off, just for the mom. How is she supposed to be a good, patient mother if she never even gets a shower? How is she supposed to get her teeth drilled, her hair cut, or her doctor visits in if there is no one else really close to her child to leave him with? What is she supposed to do when she gets the flu? (Grandmas are good for this job ... if your mom happens to live close by and isn't otherwise engaged. That's how people managed "in the old days," that is, in time periods where it was considered acceptable for dads never to lift a finger to help with the child-raising.) And sometimes you just snap in the middle of the night and NEED to be able to hand the baby off to someone who isn't off their rocker. A kid doesn't need two parents to be there at every moment -- but a kid takes so much out of one person that there need to be two to switch off or someone's going to go crazy.

And then for the kids. I have heard from at least three people lately that kids don't really need their dads around until they're older. Apparently teens need a close relationship with their dads. But how is that relationship supposed to spring up out of nothing? It starts out in infancy, grows through middle childhood with lots of roughhousing, ticklefights, ball games, and so forth. Any dad who thinks he can ignore his kids until they're ten, and then leap in and be a trusted authority to them, is kidding himself.

Besides, dads can care for young children in ways moms can't. John, for instance, is a star at tickling and other physical games. I don't normally throw my kid into hysterical fits of giggling, but John does. I think Marko really needs that. When he was a baby, it was really important for him to have someone to rock him to sleep without nursing -- especially when we were having trouble with nursing anyway. Marko found it really comforting to snuggle up with Daddy and know that no one was going to be expecting him to eat. I often relied on John to calm him down after a failed attempt at feeding him so that I could try again when he had settled down. Dads have a different approach that kids need just as much as the mom's.

I was really upset recently when I was at a friend's house and the friend was rocking her youngest to sleep. While she was at it, her next youngest needed help in the bathroom -- the kind of conundrum that parents of more than one have all the time. Luckily, her husband was conveniently available. So she asked him to take care of the other child. Simple enough. But he asked, "Do I have to?"

I was simply boggled. I guess most dads say this at least sometimes. I'm not accustomed to it because my husband does not. Sometimes I get annoyed that I have to ask him to do things that I think should be obvious. But he never, ever drags his feet to do something for his own kid when asked to do it. I think it's ridiculous that any dad would. I mean, they are every bit as much parents as the moms are. They were presumably happy enough to help conceive the kid. But still, after all that feminism was supposed to have done for us, there are still lots and lots of guys who go to work from 9-5 and think that they have done everything they have to do to be good dads. Eight hours of work, while their wives do 24, and they still think that they deserve to be waited on when they come home.

That just ticks me off. I now, for the first time since I got married, realize what it is like to try to do the whole job of parenting all by myself. And it sucks. I can understand putting up with it of necessity, like we are, or like single moms do. But I cannot understand, at all, putting up with it because the dad isn't willing to step up to the plate. We need dads. We need them present, involved, and equal. Anything less is unfair to moms and kids.

So that's my rant.

John got home Saturday night. He'd been working all week and had been traveling all day. And on Sunday, he sent me off, first thing, to take a nap.

I needed it.

Toddler challenges

2012-01-12T19:18:00.005-05:00

Today, Marko was a little crabby, so I took him over to the computer and let him watch old videos of himself. This is always a hit, especially if Daddy or the dog is in the video too.

Watching him crawling around, climbing up things, made me feel all sniffly. He was SO little! And cute! And ... let's face it ... a lot less trouble. I remember feeling terrified back then of how much trouble he'd be in a few short months. Nowadays, I tend to take for granted that he needs a lot. But now I look back and think, "I could just dump him on the floor with a few toys and he'd be contented for hours! Life was so easy back then!"

Because toddlerhood is a bit more challenging. And it's always something new. Sometimes, he just wants books, books, books, and nothing else. The moment I pause, it's "More keep reading? More keep reading?" And other days he wants to run madly around the house shrieking. Some days I have my work cut out for me just trying to keep him from taking a nap at 4 pm. (If I fail at this, I WILL be sorry. He always wants to nap at the worst possible times, and even at the best time, any nap will mess with night sleep so I have to fend off nap attacks wherever they appear.)

For awhile, all he wanted at bedtime was a lullaby. Now -- and by now I mean "this past week, and who knows how long he'll be like this" -- he never likes the songs I pick. He wants "different song, different song, what song you want, say yes." (In other words, I'm supposed to ask what song he wants, and he'll say yes when I pick the right one.) After a dozen attempts, each met with wailing because it was the wrong song, he'll decide on one. And then he'll argue with it. Like this:

Marko: Fish song!

Me: The fish in the sea is happy --

Marko: No the fish in the sea is happy!

Me: As off through the waves they roll.

Marko: No as off through the waves they roll!

Me: ....

Marko: Fish song! Fish song! Fish song!

So, sleep has been a little elusive. I think I'm not catching him at the exact right moment for bedtime. This is my lesson every time we have sleep issues: when it's the right moment, sleep comes easily. When it's the least bit too early or too late, it's a struggle.

His amazing language development has suddenly become more of a hindrance than a help lately. His enunciation just hasn't kept up with his vocabulary. When all he knew was "more" and "all done," it was pretty simple. I could tell which was which. But now he has to answer in a complete sentence, and those sentences all sound alike! Like this:

Me: Do you want a tomato?

Marko: N'want a tomato.

Me: Was that "want a tomato" or "no want a tomato"?

Marko: N'want a tomato.

Me: No?

Marko: Yes!

Me (scratching head ... was that "yes, I meant no" or "yes, I want a tomato"?): Ummmm... well, here's the tomato if you want it.

Marko (sudden fit of shrieking): Nooooo tomaaaaaaato!

Me: I'm going to scream.

Marko: No I'm going to scream!

I can't remember if I've mentioned here before his annoying but occasionally hilarious habit of contradicting everything I say when he's grumpy. He just says whatever I said, plus "no." So, "No I have to go potty! No I really do have to Marko! No you're driving me crazy!" gets said kind of a lot.

After a long spell of seeming to mostly get over his obsession with my hair, except for some gentle holding of it when falling asleep, he has fallen for it again. He MUST. HAVE. HAIR. When he's going to sleep, he won't be happy unless he has two fistfuls of it, which he pulls on, twists together, and gets tangled in his fingers. This keeps him awake, of course, but if I try to take it away there are anguished howls, flopping around, and even less sleepiness. During the day, too, he's always climbing onto my lap, looking all innocent, and then one hand goes questing around for hair. Once he gets it, he starts to fidget and then really tug, first with one hand and then with two, until I go crazy and pull it away from him. Then he gives the howl of a lost soul, like I have just burned his teddy bear (if he had one he cared about) before his eyes and flops around like a fish.

It's not that I'm not sympathetic. I am. But ... sometimes it just is not possible to make this kid happy. As a mother to a happy child who is usually cheered up by very simple things, it's a very frustrating feeling. And sometimes the thing that will make him happy is more than I'm willing to give. I've had to wrench toys away from him when we're leaving a friend's house, to set him down when he wanted to be carried because my back won't take anymore, to deny him my hair because it really hurts, or to stop offering him every food in the refrigerator because he has already turned them all down already. I hate being the one to set off the scream-fest. I feel like I must be a bad mother if I can't come up with a solution he will be happy with, like I used to.

On the other hand, though, I'm realizing more and more that it is normal for him to scream and cry when he's frustrated. It doesn't mean I'm doing something wrong, and it doesn't mean he's doing something wrong. He is a little person in a big person's world, and he wants to have control over things he can't actually control. His attention span is long enough that a different toy or a new game is not going to distract him from the tragedy he's experiencing. That tragedy is the same one we all experience sometimes: I wanted something really bad and I can't have it. He feels, with his immature and uncontrollable emotions, the same way a high schooler feels on getting dumped by a boyfriend or rejected to a first-choice college, or the same way an adult feels when the job they really wanted went to someone else. He doesn't know his problems are small, or that he'll feel better in five minutes. All he knows is that he is unhappy.

This knowledge has not given me the miracle tantrum cure. My "tantrum method" is the same as always: offer hugs and comfort, but don't force them. Usually, lately, he doesn't want them. So I have had to just sit by and let him scream for awhile. Once he's subsided a bit, I usually will sit with him and read a book, which helps calm him down. (Incidentally, I can see why moms who nurse longer report that the "terrible twos" aren't so terrible. I bet a quick nurse would perk him up better than anything, if we were still doing that. I don't regret weaning him, because it's really what I needed to do, but I can sure see the benefits of going longer.)

I have noticed that some days, I rave to everyone about how smart he is, and how much fun he is, and how awesome 21 months is, and then other days I moan that things used to be so easy, and I'm so tired, and I have had it up to here with the whining. And I've also noticed that there's a direct correlation between my descriptions of him and how much sleep he's gotten. He's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde when it comes to sleep. But I'm not in total control of how much or how well he sleeps, unfortunately. He still does sometimes wake up at night screaming, sometimes because he rolled out of bed but mostly for mysterious reasons known only to himself. And then the next morning, he's a crab, and wants to take a three-hour nap in the middle of the day, and doesn't want to sleep the next night. So we have "readjusting" days very often, which means a crabby day where he would like to nap and isn't being allowed to. I try to remember where he's coming from with the crabbiness. It isn't that he's a grouchy kid as a rule, but he does have a shorter fuse when he's tired (as do I).

Perhaps you can tell from what I've said so far that it's been a pretty rough week. But there are plenty of nice things to report lately, too. He still astounds me with his amazing brain. We can read a book TWICE, and have him remember a few words from every page. He can identify tunes that we whistle, even songs he hasn't heard in weeks. Just today, he recognized Are You My Mother in a picture, even though the dog peed on our copy in October and we threw it away. And he totally cracks me up when he parrots what everyone says. When I'm on the phone, or talking with friends, he will seem not to be listening, but he quietly repeats the tail end of each sentence. I always laugh when I see him sitting, playing with his blocks, whispering, "A really big deal," or "that's hilarious" or "oh gee whiz." It's all getting filed away in there somewhere. We have to watch what we say!

Another sweet thing lately is his desire to be a part of whatever I'm doing. He wants to HELP. I've given him a sponge to clean the cupboards, and he will spend an hour scrubbing away (as long as I do it too). He likes to put away items in drawers, to fetch rags (this is a skill I let him practice all the time, because it'll be SO helpful when the new baby comes), and to put specific things in specific places I tell him about. And he never gets tired of sitting on the counter with his feet in the sink, turning the water on and off for me while I wash the dishes. (It kind of freaks me out to have him up there -- but I stand close so he can't fall, and wash and put away all the knives before I let him come up.) I figured I might as well teach him a love for dishes early. The sooner he can take over that job from me, the happier I'll be!

Potty training is going well, though not perfectly. He has an accident or two a day, but that's usually it. Plus, I'm not running him to the potty constantly. Sometimes he actually walks over there all by himself and goes without saying a word. (For this to work, obviously, I have to leave him all day with no pants because he can't take care of those by himself. But that is not a big deal to me.) And when I do put him on the potty myself, I don't have to camp there all day. He either goes pretty quick, or he wants to get up again. He knows what to do when he sits down. This is such a big deal. The third achievement is that he stays dry for quite a long time when we're out and about, so I don't usually have to worry much at the store or at church so long as he went before we left. On longer trips, I stuff the potty in the diaper bag and whisk it out when we get where we're going. He's happily gone at the library (in the family bathroom, of course), at friends' houses, and at the midwife's office (where he impressed everyone). When he's feeling cranky, we have more misses because he just doesn't feel like sitting on the potty, but even so, we're making gradual progress and I'm happy with it. If he stays for months at this level, I think I'd be okay with it.

So, there's life with a 21-month-old for you. I'd be lying if I said I don't heave a sigh of relief every time I walk out of his room at bedtime, SO HAPPY to have the rest of the evening to spend apart from him. But I'd also be lying if I said I'm anything but crazy about him. Every day we get lots of snuggles in, and I think I enjoy them more than he does. He's a sweet, sweet boy who shows me something new to love about him every day. I don't want to be anywhere else but here with him.

Why I support Ron Paul

2012-01-10T11:30:00.001-05:00

Half of you are probably saying, "Oh, of course she's into Ron Paul!" (Especially if you've been reading this blog faithfully, and know that I'm terrified of increasing government power, and that I will only support someone who wants to decrease it. Or, you know, if you saw where I said so in the comments.) And the other half are saying, "Ron Paul? Are you kidding? The guy's a nut!"

Obviously I don't think he's a nut. On the contrary, when you listen to him instead of only to his critics, you may be shocked to find out how much sense the guy makes. I reserved judgment until I saw this video in which he came out supporting exactly my beliefs on everything that really counts to me.

I'll start with his foreign policy, which is the most unpopular part of his platform, but my personal favorite. He's a non-interventionist -- believing that we should not, for instance, bomb Iran, or give millions of dollars to Israel (or anywhere else), or try to manage the whole world's affairs. I like that a lot. Every single other Republican candidate promises to be "tough" on Iran, which translates in most cases to bombing the heck out of civilian installations. Since this is against church teaching, I don't really understand how the candidate who claims to be "Catholic" and "pro-life" has promised to bomb civilian nuclear research facilities. My definition of "pro-life" includes pro-Iranian-life.

Of course I do care about our own nation's security. But I am not convinced that the Iranians would all kill us in our beds if we left them alone. We have been involved in their country since the 50's, and they really, really hate us for it. I do believe that our interference (setting up and supporting the Shah as their dictator, for instance) has played a big role in radicalizing that nation. I learned a lot about our history with Iran from this video, which I heartily recommend.

I just see that we have two options, as far as our foreign policy goes. We can attempt to police the entire world, making sure that no one who dislikes us ever becomes powerful enough to do us harm. As we do this, more and more people will come to hate us because of the "inevitable" civilian deaths that keep occurring. Meanwhile, we will become overextended in terms of money and manpower. Already we spend more on defense than all the other countries in the world put together. We can't sustain that forever, as our economy will tell you.

The other option is to stay as far away from the Middle East as we can, because it's a sticky mess, and leave other nations alone as well. We will recognize that we can't do everything, ensure democracy in every nation, prevent every oppressive regime in the world -- much as we would like to. Instead we will focus on defense, having a strong defensive force that will stop attacks on our soil. We have the manpower to secure our borders and defend our skies, while we don't have the manpower to police the whole world. Our relationships with other nations will be based on trade and diplomacy, not on drones and airstrikes. That's Ron Paul's plan, and I like it.

The second major issue on my mind coming into this election is abortion. I keep being told by my friends that Ron Paul isn't really pro-life. All I can say is, have you listened to him? He can't stand abortion. As an Ob/Gyn, he was definitely in a position to learn all about it, and he hates it. He doesn't want anyone to do them. And he doesn't want them to be legal anywhere, because he, like me, realizes the personhood of unborn babies and that no one has the right to kill another person.

However, his path to achieving this isn't primarily through the federal government. He realizes, as I do, that all our efforts to ban abortion nationwide have failed. The federal government has so much inertia and is so far removed from the people that little ever changes there. In order to ban abortion, we would first have to overturn Roe v. Wade, which requires appointing new justices to the Supreme Court, which requires congressional approval. No president has been able to do this in over thirty years they've been trying. Other tactics, like amending the Constitution, are just as difficult to do.

Ron Paul would overturn Roe v. Wade if he could. His main plan, though, involves working in the individual states. If the states were allowed to regulate abortion on their own, many of them would ban it right away, and others would add more regulation. After awhile, when the other states saw that the world didn't go completely crazy when abortion was banned, more might join in. It's allowing democracy to work -- if the people in an area really want to ban abortion, they will do so. And if they don't really want to ban abortion? Well, that's our job. We need to work, on a local level, to convince people that choosing life is better for moms and babies. All I want is the opportunity to work within my own state to get laws that support life. I don't need the federal government to handle everything while I sit and vote once every four years. I'm willing to put in the hours myself.

Most conservatives I read agree that Ron Paul's economics are sound. He subscribes to the Austrian school of economics (watch this rap battle to learn what that is, and who F. E. Hayek is). In short, he wants less regulation, less protection of big business, less spending, and lower taxes. He wants to cut the budget by a lot. That's going to hurt, but it's what we have to do to keep our economy from getting even worse.

His "crazy" ideas about the Federal Reserve do get a lot of flak, mostly from people who don't know what the Federal Reserve is. They think it's the same as the US Treasury. (I thought that, too, until I saw this cartoon, which you simply must watch if you want to understand why the Fed is a problem.) It's actually a private bank that has almost no government oversight and a ton of special privileges. And it's responsible for a lot of our current economic problems, which concentrate wealth in the hands of the 1% at the cost of the 99%, thanks to special deals for banks and other sneaky tactics most people don't know about. I simply cannot understand why the folks at Occupy Wall Street aren't waving signs that read "End the Fed."

Everything else Ron Paul stands for is a question of individual liberty. That is to say, he's the one guy who believes liberty is a good thing. He's opposed to the NDAA (the indefinite detention bill), the TSA strip searches, the Patriot Act, national ID cards, and anything else that treats American citizens as terrorism suspects.

For me to have the freedoms that are important to me, I do have to allow others to have the freedoms that are important to them. I believe that I have the right to put in my body whatever food or medicine I desire, even if the government believes that it will be harmful to me. So I have the right to drink raw milk ... and my neighbor has the right to take drugs. I don't see how you could sensibly say I have the right to one and not the other. If someone's drug use is harming someone else, though, it should be banned.

Ron Paul wants to leave drug laws and raw milk laws in the hands of the states. So if we feel strongly about them, we can campaign for them on our local level instead of nationally.

The same, by the way, goes for same-sex marriage, which is why many Catholics hate him. They would like to see marriage legally defined as exactly what we say it is. It seems to me that's a much bigger issue than banning same-sex marriage -- we would also have to make the state honor our consanguinity laws, ban divorce and remarriage, and so forth. (I feel, by the way, that divorce and adultery are WAY bigger issues, when it comes to harming society at large, than same-sex marriage is. And, from a Catholic perspective, adultery at least is just as sinful -- mortally, which is as sinful as you can get.)

Secular marriage, in my opinion, is already a joke. It bears very little resemblance to Catholic marriage. I don't see why we should cede to the government the right to decide what is a marriage and what isn't. Instead, why don't we let people have their own religious and social ceremonies and call themselves married whenever they consider themselves to be so ... and for all civil needs, have a civil union that any two people can get? That's what many other countries with large Catholic populations have, and it works fine. I've been saying this for years, but it turns out Ron Paul agrees with me on this.

Overall, Ron Paul is the only top-tier candidate that wants to increase liberty, rather than chip away at it. He's the only candidate who would like to reduce the number of wars we're in, rather than increase it. He's the only candidate who has a concrete plan for how to cut our budget by a trillion dollars the first year. He's also, incidentally, the only one who seems to actually be an honest man. He has never once flip-flopped in his entire 30-year career in the House. I can't really trust any of the other guys to even try to put forward the platform they're running on. (I know I can't trust Obama, who promised to get us out of Iraq within, what was it? Six months?)

With Ron Paul, you know what you're getting. You're getting a guy who seems incredibly extreme when compared to the other guys (who all look alike), and who actually is going to try to do what he says he is. He'll have an uphill climb trying to convince Congress of all this, but the one thing he won't do is personally sign away our liberties -- whether by authorizing drone attacks of untried American citizens, or by wiretapping our homes, or by any of the scary stuff that both Bush and Obama got in the habit of doing.

And people are getting excited that this might be the year that we actually see a change. 18- to 25-year-olds, independents, disaffected Democrats, and fringe activists of all stripes are coming out of the woodwork to participate in the political process for the first time. Even I, who hate politics as a general rule and have only ever bothered to vote once, am planning to vote in the primary and maybe even try to be a delegate. Mark Shea has written some awesome things about Ron Paul which definitely show why Catholics can and should vote for him (even if, as Shea believes, he hasn't got a chance). Ron Paul is raising ridiculous amount of money for his campaign, and almost all of it is from private individuals rather than corporations. He gets more from active military servicemen than anyone else put together. This might be our only chance in a long time to cast a vote for liberty and common sense.

What do you think about Ron Paul? I'm happy to discuss this topic all day long, especially when my interlocutors aren't foaming at the mouth and calling me a heretic or a nutjob or a racist while totally ignoring everything I say. This blog is a great place for the nicer kind of conversation, I think.

Do we get to eat gluten today?

2012-01-10T00:01:00.001-05:00

Welcome to the January 2012 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Experiments in Natural Family Living

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have reported on weeklong trials to make their lives a little greener and gentler. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

***

For the past month and a half, I've been obsessing about gluten. As a relatively healthy person who can eat pretty much anything without noticeable ill effects, I never thought this would be me. And yet, when you've got a kid who isn't feeling good -- you obsess about everything.

It started around October, I think. Marko had some diarrhea and was really crabby. For awhile I assumed it was all the fruit we were eating. So I cut down on the fruit and even eliminated it for awhile, but the diarrhea remained. Then it brought a rash, a nasty, bleeding one. To avoid irritation, we went diaper-free for awhile. Yes, I did say "diaper-free" and "diarrhea" in the same paragraph. That was not a particularly fun phase. And it lasted a solid month.

Sleep suffered. He went from sleeping through the night to waking up once, then twice, then three times a night. A few odd marks appeared on his body, some looking like blisters and some more like burns.

I know my kid is prone to food sensitivities. So of course that's what I thought of. But we hadn't introduced anything new, except grapes, and I'd long since stopped giving him any. I was weaning him, but not quickly, and he was still nursing twice a day.

That meant we had to go back on the elimination-diet wagon. I really hate elimination diets. But they always seem to bring us results!

First we tried dairy. That was the obvious choice, because he had gone from one cup of milk a day to more like three, and I figured that might just be too much for him. After days of almond and coconut milk -- and rejected sippy cups -- and none of his favorite foods (cheese, yogurt, sour cream, and cream cheese), I had to admit it wasn't working worth a darn.

So I gave him back his beloved "happy cow milk" (the carton has a picture of a happy cow; Marko LOVES cows) and set to cutting out gluten. Since it's pretty much in everything, that meant I had to make everything from scratch, pretty much. And that's what I did. No more PBJ's, no more noodles with tomato sauce, no more crackers.

In 24 hours, the diarrhea was gone. Within days the rash was healing beautifully. Within a week, the blisters and burns had vanished. Best of all, he was suddenly sleeping through the night again. And I said to myself -- uh oh. This is going to mean we have to stick with it.

And we have. Like glue. It hasn't been fun. Marko sees a picture of bread in a book he's reading, or glimpses bread in the fridge, or sees me sneaking a bite of pasta when I thought he wasn't looking, and he instantly demands a sandwich. He loves sandwiches; they were always the surefire option if he was feeling picky.

But a few odd things did happen. Like when I gave him hot dogs and ketchup, both labeled gluten-free, and he had some diarrhea awhile later. Or when he grabbed a bit of pie crust off the counter and scarfed it down, only to suffer no ill-effects. Could I have been wrong about the gluten?

I very easily could. The problem with elimination diets is that it's hard to eliminate just one thing without making other changes. Especially when it something big like gluten, it usually leads you to buy less processed stuff in the first place. I was making everything from scratch. So there were dozens of additives we weren't eating. Every time I gave him something I didn't make -- the hot dogs, the ranch dressing he dipped his chicken wings in, or the hot sauce I used to convince him he was eating Taco Bell like the rest of us -- we had issues. A rash on his face, a midnight scream-fest, an unexpected bout of crabbiness. Nothing you could really be sure about, but there did seem to be a pattern.

So I decided to test it, once and for all. We would just test gluten, not yeast and not store-bought bread. I made homemade biscuits and let him eat all he wanted. And he was fine.

And then a day later he went back to waking at night. I cut the gluten back out, but he's continued doing it. Yesterday and the day before, I gave in and gave him gluten because he has been fine in every other respect -- no diarrhea, no rash -- and because the night waking seemed to be unrelated. And you know what? Last night he slept through the night.

I think it's time to conclude I have no idea what caused that diarrhea. He's eaten all kinds of crazy things since Christmas, and hasn't had a recurrence of either the diarrhea, the blisters, or the rash. Just the nightwaking which is probably unrelated in the first place.

I am convinced to avoid food additives whenever possible. When he doesn't eat them, things definitely are better. But I don't think gluten is actually a problem. I'm still keeping my eye on yeast and tomato sauce, both of which seem correlated with problems (though fresh tomatoes have always been fine), and yet I'll have to wait for things to stabilize out a bit before I can test either of those and be sure.

It's an awful feeling of powerlessness, watching symptoms take hold of your child and then leave, and not being able to figure out what caused them to show up or what caused them to go away. I love to find answers, but I'm realizing more and more that I know very little about what's going on in my son's insides. I suppose I should be happy that he's feeling a lot better than he was -- and I am. I just ... wish I knew why.

***

Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

Make your own moisturizer! — Megan at boho mama whips up a winter skin-friendly moisturizer.

Cold Water Only — Brittany at The Pistachio Project talks about how you do not need hot water to wash laundry.

Family Cloth... Really?? — After lots of forethought and consideration, Momma Jorje finally decides to take the plunge with family cloth.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle : 5-5-5 Things A Day — Luschka from Diary of a First Child writes about decluttering her home in an attempt to create a gentler living space. She takes on a new project where she sets a goal of reducing, reusing and recycling every day.

Pros and cons of family cloth — Lauren at Hobo Mama would love to continue replacing paper products with family cloth … if she could only get over how damp she feels.

Craftily Parenting — Kellie at Our Mindful Life finds that crafting makes her a better parent.

Changes — Laura at Pug in the Kitchen couldn't choose just one area to experiment with, so she wrote a long post about all the fun changes initiated in her life!

Life without Internet: Not all it's Cracked up to Be — Adrienne at Mommying My Way tries to go a week without the Internet, only to realize a healthy dose of Internet usage really helps keep this stay-at-home mom connected.

My Progression to Raw Milk — Kerry at City Kids Homeschooling shares her natural parenting progression all the way to trying raw milk.

mama's new little friend. — Sarah at Bitty Bird tries a menstrual cup to "green her period," and is pleasantly surprised when she falls in love with the product!

Before you throw it out, try homemade laundry soap! — Jennifer at Practical OH Mommy shows visual proof that homemade laundry soap is cheaper, easier, and works better than the store-bought chemicals!

Oil, Oil, No Toil, No Trouble — K from Very Simple Secret talks about her foray into the oil-cleansing method.

I Need a Hobby — Amanda at Let's Take the Metro couldn't decide which experiment to run, so she did them all.

7 days of macrobiotics for a balanced family — The Stones make a [successful] attempt to release the "holiday junking" with 7 days of macrobiotic meals to balance their bodies and souls. Elisabeth at Manic Mrs. Stone includes an explanation of macrobiotics.

Chemical Free Beauty Challenge — Jenn at Monkey Butt Junction turned to natural alternatives for her daily beauty and cleaning routine, with great results.

Greening my Armpits!? My Green Resolution — Shannon at The Artful Mama talks about how she decided to give up her traditional antiperspirant and make the switch over to crystal deodorants and definitely isn't looking back!

Going Raw (for a while) — Jenny at Chronicles of a Nursing Mom shares her family's experience with raw food.

Do we get to eat gluten today? — Sheila at A Gift Universe has been trying to figure out if her son does better with or without gluten in his diet … but it's really hard to tell for sure.

Hippies Can Smell and Look Fabulous Too! — Arpita of Up, Down And Natural details her experience of going shampoo-free and overhauling her cosmetics to find the balance between feeling beautifully fabulous and honoring her inner hippie.

Our cupboards are full...but there's nothing to eat — Lucy at Dreaming Aloud takes on the challenge of chomping through the contents of her storecupboard rather than going shopping — but there's something that she just can't bring herself to do …

Elimination Experiment 3.0 — MudpieMama recounts the messy adventures of her baby daughter trying to be diaper free.

Family Cloth Trial — Amyables at Toddler in Tow talks about making and using family cloth wipes in the bathroom for the first time.

Taking a Hiatus — Amy at Peace 4 Parents shares how her experience of much less internet interaction affected her family and how it will change her approach in the future.

Trying Out the Menstrual Cup — Lindsey at an unschooling adventure ditches the tampons and gives menstrual cups a try.

Managing Food Waste in Our Home — Tired of the holiday waste, Robbie at Going Green Mama takes a weeklong focus on reducing food waste in her home, and learns some lessons that can take her through the new year.

Going Offline, Cloth Tissues, and Simplicity — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama muses over her time away from blogging and social networking. In addition, she shares her newfound love of cloth tissues and simplicity.

The Oil Cleansing Method — Erica at ChildOrganics explores an easy, organic and natural way to tackle skin care.

Experiments in Natural Family Living - Natural Toys! — Lani at Boobie Time enjoys the silence of natural toys and being more present with her son.

Discovering a New City and Organic Foods — Amy at A Secure Base describes her family's switch to and search for organic foods for one week.

My Experiment in Homemade Bread — Crunchy Con Mommy tried — and loved — baking her own homemade bread.

Menu Planning: Stop the Excuses — Gaby at Tmuffin stopped the excuses and started planning her weekly meals, drastically cutting her grocery budget and stress level and improving the quality of foods she fed her family.

My First Menstrual Cup — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children was pleasantly surprised with her first experience using a menstrual cup.

My Natural Beauty Regime — Christine at African Babies Don’t Cry shares the results of banishing cleanser and soaps from her bathroom, as well as a couple of natural homemade recipes that have worked well on her skin.

Unplugging and Creating a Rhythm: Our Experiment in Natural Family Living — Dionna at Code Name: Mama focused less on gadgets and spent more time with her family to create a healthy rhythm for the new year.

Experiments in Natural Family Living: 5 First Steps Toward Preparing for a Natural Birth — Charise at I Thought I Knew Mama discusses how she tackled the pressing matter of how to begin preparing for a natural birth.

All you need is...vinegar! — Kristen at My Semi-Crunchy Life learns that one household product can replace all the cleaners in her cabinet.

Nope Nada Ixnay Negative Pass Decline — Zoie at TouchstoneZ finds out what shakes loose if she says, "YES!!" to anything anyone asks of her over the space of 10 days.

Reducing our exposure to toxins found in plastics — Syenna at Gently Parenting Twins throws out the melamine and BPA plastics which have been hanging around the kitchen for too long.

Duh! — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment shares how she began the process of helping her 2-year-old son stop physically acting out.

Experiments in Natural Parenting: Starting, Stopping, and Gaining Perspective — Melissa at Vibrant Wanderings explains how pregnancy brain interfered with her attempts to complete an experiment, but how she gained some interesting perspective as she started and stopped several.

From Experiment to Lifestyle — Abbie at Farmer's Daughter shares her experience avoiding processed foods for a month, and deciding to make it a permanent lifestyle change.

From Disposable Paper to Reusable Cloth – AGAIN! — Terri at Child of the Nature Isle stops flushing trees down the toilet and switches to the softest ever butt-wiping material: cloth.

Extra! Extra! Water Heater Turned Down, Mom Doesn't Notice! — Thomasin at Propson Palingenesis finds an energy-saving experiment that's so easy she didn't even realize it was happening.

Worm Tea — CatholicMommy isn't sure how successful her worm bin will be, but she's having fun anyway.

Miles to Go ... — Rachael at The Variegated Life learns that when it comes to sleep debt, she's in real deep.

My Month With Water Kefir — Paige at Baby Dust Diaries experiments with a new fermented probiotic drink homemade in her own kitchen.

OMG Mom is Home... All Day Everyday: A Week-Long Experiment in Connecting — What a difference a week makes! Ana at Pandamoly is afforded a week off from work and takes the chance to reconnect and reattach with her 16-month-old son through an experiment in simply being there.

Creating Healthy Family Recipes — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now shares her experiment with healthy, gluten-free recipes and a chocolate muffin recipe that was created during the experiment.

Adventures in Alternative Haircare: No 'Poo — This guest post at Natural Parents Network from Amy at Anktangle chronicles a months-long journey into the world of no 'poo.

My Experiment in Natural Family Living: Natural Family Planning — Birth control options are seriously limited for those of us trying to live a little closer to the earth, so Mama Psalmist experiments with natural family planning.

There is only one issue, and it's power

2012-01-04T06:46:00.002-05:00

All through the Republican primaries, and through the general election too, we're going to continue hearing what we have been hearing: What do the candidates think about the issues? What is this one's opinion of gay marriage? What does that one want to do about immigration?

But the way I see it, there is only one real issue: how much power do we want the federal government to have?

Almost from my mother's knee, I have been warned about the dangers of an over-powerful government. "A government that can give everything to you can take everything from you." "It's easy to give power to the government, but it's almost impossible to get it back."

Does the federal government get to decide what you are allowed to put into your body? Your average conservative is thrilled when a candidate wants harsh drug laws on the federal level, overriding any of those bad states where they are legalizing medical marijuana. But I hope they realize that in four or eight years, some other guy is going to use that exact precedent to ban raw milk on a federal level.

Does the government legislate whom you are allowed to marry? At this point, the answer is actually yes, though at the state level. Clergy of any kind are considered agents of the state when they perform marriages, and they are forbidden to do so without government approval (a state-issued marriage license). Most conservatives want their candidate to work to ban same-sex marriage nationwide. Do they realize that in four to eight years, some other guy is not only going to allow same-sex marriages nationwide, but also will be able to force priests and ministers of every religion to perform them? My dream is to get the government, state, federal, or local, out of the marriage business altogether. Let them perform civil unions if they want. I'd get one. But I want my religious leaders to be able to perform whatever ceremonies they want without asking the government first.

Does the government have a right to listen to everything you say? More and more, we don't have the right to privacy that we used to, but it's all in the name of fighting terrorism, so it's okay. Rick Santorum has been advocating the wiretapping of all churches, synagogues, and mosques -- to make sure no terrorism-provoking rhetoric is being used. And I have no doubt that's just how he would use it. But four or eight years from now, the precedent will be set, and the next guy will be looking for "intolerant" rhetoric or some such thing. And you won't be able to fight it, because you will no longer have the right or expectation not to be wiretapped in church.

And who gets to decide when our nation goes to war? The Constitution leaves that power to Congress. However, in recent years it's been the sole prerogative of the President. He can embroil our troops first in a foreign conflict, and then, when they're in too deep to back out, can go ask Congress for approval to keep doing it.

In high school, I did a term project on the Vietnam War. I came to the conclusion that a nation cannot win unless its people want to win at least as bad as the enemy nation's people want to win. And since the enemy saw themselves as fighting for their nation's freedom, and we saw ourselves as sending our boys over to get killed for no good reason, it is natural that we couldn't win that one. I blamed, at the time, the media and the selfishness of the American people.

Now I'm realizing the problem may have been that we went at it hind-end foremost. First we got embroiled in a war. Then we were asked what we thought about it. Without the support of the populace, all the government succeeded in doing was wasting something in the order of 50,000 American lives. Lives of American boys who didn't want to die in the first place.

This is going to keep happening as long as the government starts an armed conflict without the consent of the populace: we'll fight for awhile, but as it drags on ... and on ... and on, the outcry from back home will be too great and we'll have to pull out. This is what happened in Iraq. You can blame the media, Wikileaks, or the selfishness of the American people, but very simply, no one wanted to be there that much, and no one at all wanted to be there for ten years. Few people want to get involved in Iran. But that doesn't matter, because no matter what we, the people, want, our government -- and particularly the executive branch -- reserves the right to attack other nations without even telling us first. So we're very likely to get involved in many more wars as time goes on.

The future looks grim in terms of increasing government power. Almost every candidate on the roster intends to increase government in at least a few big ways, and most of them in many ways. And I refuse to vote for anyone who has one of these on his platform: if they are for bigger government, they have lost my vote. Even if that means I don't get to vote at all.

My #1 housework pet peeve

2012-01-01T19:05:00.003-05:00

There are a lot of things that bug me if they aren't done right. I guess my pickiness is a sign that I really am taking on the task of keeping this house together and making it mine. I feel a responsibility for every towel that gets hung (or not hung) and every dish that gets washed (or not washed).

But occasionally I do get help. John does a heck of a lot. And sometimes other friends come over and do a chore here and there while they're visiting. This is wonderful. I'm ever so grateful.

And yet ... they do say, if you want something done right, do it yourself. And when something is not done by me, it's hard for me to relax about it. It might not be done right!

There is one thing, one thing that drives me nuts above any other.

It's more annoying than having my good towels used to clean up spills or dry off the dog, and then having them thrown in the dirty clothes hamper where they will soak all the other clothes and make them mold.

It's more frustrating than when I walk into the kitchen and immediately have to move all the knives, scissors, and pot handles out of the "Marko Reach Zone" -- about 12 inches from the edge, currently, but always extending.

It's more damaging than finding someone has used steel wool on all my teflon pans.

It's worse than when I go to do laundry and the hamper is almost empty ... only to find later, after I've done half a load, that all the important laundry was on the floor somewhere.

It gets under my skin worse than when I am done with the shower and reach out for the towel -- only to find it's hung on the hook on the door, where I can't reach it. (And no, I do NOT want to get out and drip all over the bath mat. Wet bath mats are yucky.)

It wastes more of my time than those 10 minute "blitz" cleanups that happen right before company comes, where stuff is collected from all the visible surfaces and stashed somewhere where I will never see it again.

You want to know what it is?

It's dumb because it is exactly what every other human being in the world likes to do when they walk into a messy kitchen. I must be some kind of freak.

I hate, hate, hate it when all the dishes are piled in the sink.

I know it seems natural. You want to clean off the counter, so you put stuff in the sink. And hey, it'll get a soak in there!

No, no, no. Let me explain why this is the worst thing ever.

1. Some things that are on the counter are not actually dirty, or not very dirty. There's the knife I use to cut cheese -- I use it all day. Just for cheese. But if every hour I go back into the kitchen to cut more cheese (and I do), and every time my cheese knife is swimming in cold grody water ... then I have to get out a new knife every time. Thus resulting in eight knives getting dirty when only one had to.

2. Conversely, some things are extremely dirty. If you put a water glass that just needed a quick scrub, a knife that was only used for cheese, and a bread plate that just needed rinsing, in a sink along with the pan where I browned the hamburger ... the sink will fill up with greasy water and cover every single dish with a nasty greasy film. Now every single dish will need a serious scrub and not a quick touch-up. The same goes for germy things, like the plate I used to cut raw chicken on. Now I don't just have one salmonella-contaminated plate. Now I have a whole sinkful.

3. Some things should not be soaked. And yet they're always in there: wooden spoons and cutting boards that will warp, can openers and cheese graters that will rust, and brillo pads that will dissolve and make the whole sink rusty and nasty.

4. I use that sink to wash dishes in ... but I can't just whip in and wash a couple of things if the whole dang thing is full of dishes. I prefer to keep the sink mostly empty and have room to wash. I also don't like trying to fill up a water pitcher over a towering heap of dishes. I need to have my sink open so I can actually use it!

4. (And this is the REAL reason.) Once the sink is full of cold, nasty, greasy, germy, scummy water ... it will need to be drained. By me. By reaching my hand into that cold, nasty, greasy, germy, scummy water and pulling the plug. Trust me: the more dishes are in that sink, the more scummy water, and the longer they've been there ... the less likely I am to actually brave the nastiness and actually wash them.

So, if you're ever in my kitchen and want to straighten up, but will not be actually washing the dishes ... pile 'em by the sink. PLEASE.

Does anyone else hate this, or is it just me? What are your housework pet peeves?

Looking back at 2011

2011-12-31T12:58:00.003-05:00

It's pretty sad when you have to look back through your blog archives to find out what your New Years' resolutions were. But I did it, and it's time to report:

1. Eat better. Less sugar and grains. Yes, I did this. I virtually eliminated sugar and we went grain-free from time to time. I can't seem to sustain being grain-free for very long, though. I get so hungry and end up eating a lot of expensive food ... For all their faults, grains are a cheap source of calories, and I eat a lot.

Then I got pregnant, and I stopped being so healthy. I know pregnancy is when it's most important to eat well. But it's also when you don't feel like the healthy food in your fridge, and you do feel like Taco Bell. I still don't eat a lot of sugar ... unless it's Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or someone made me cookies, or there's a party ... yeah. I find it almost impossible to turn down food that is available and delicious. For the first trimester, I hated sugar but loved processed fast food. Now, I want both. The amount of chocolate I eat is ridiculous. On the bright side, I think we ate even less processed food this year than last year, thanks to our garden and various elimination diets.

2. Pray better. Not really. I did try, and ended up about the same. I guess it would have been worse if I hadn't tried?

3. Be a better housekeeper. YES, I definitely did this. However, I also have more space to clean and it gets messier faster, due to the addition of a dog and the ever-increasing mess-making ability of the toddler. At least I am keeping pace with it. Sometimes I do dishes every single day! And that's without the dishwasher I used to have! When I was in the first trimester, I barely did a thing and we wobbled between John doing it and living in squalor. But now it's at least relatively decent all the time, and I do some housework every day.

4. To buy a house. We did this! And it's been great! When John had the two-hour commute, it was great for us and awful for him. Now that he's working closer, it's better in every respect than where we used to live. I have the garden, we have a dog (for better or worse), Marko has his own room, we spend less on housing every month (and it all goes toward owning this place for real), John's commute is shorter, the traffic and neighborhood are better ... it's great. I guess I do miss the apartment complex pool. I hardly ever used it when we lived there, but I would have loved to take Marko there this past summer.

5. To actually address stuff I'm angry about instead of stewing on it forever. All that really took was making the decision to do it -- and I'm positive that it helped. When I chose to remain silent about it, it was with the understanding that I had decided it was not a big deal and that I was going to get over it. When it was a big deal, I addressed it. And I do think we get along better when I am straightforward like that.

What has really made the biggest difference in our overall happiness, I admit, was not my new resolution but John's new job. Actually getting to spend time with each other and getting some rest was a really big deal. But what I've been doing hasn't seemed to have hurt.

6. To get another baby cooking. Check!

Here are ten of my favorite posts from the past year:

Conflict vs. cooperation This Russian novel of a post is probably my #1 favorite. I'm just a way better parent when I think of my child as a teammate rather than an adversary.

Lessons from my first garden Rookie gardeners might find it helpful to learn from my mistakes.

A person's a person Life has value. All life. That is why I'm against abortion, most war, and capital punishment.

Why I don't want another hospital birth Home birth can be just as safe or safer than a hospital birth in a healthy woman having a normal pregnancy ... so I'm having one this time.

Gender equality - I don't actually believe in the subordination of women, at least not in any really practical sense.

"Let kids be kids" - I think it's okay to give kids responsibilities. I don't think it's okay to let kids watch R-rated movies. Let's make a distinction, all right?

The fallacy of results "Here's the deal: there is more that matters besides how a child will 'turn out.' I'm not just raising the adult he will someday become. I'm raising the child I actually have."

Birth scars You never do forget what the moment of your child's birth was like. I wish the moment of Marko's birth were a happier memory.

Food sensitivities When I see odd symptoms in my son, I always look first to what he's eating. This is an instructional post with everything I've learned about food sensitivities.

Teaching vs. training You train a dog. You teach a child. This post is mainly about teaching children to deal with their big emotions.

Enjoy your New Years! I will be ringing it in by going to bed before ten and (hopefully) sleeping like a log all night. But if Marko's cough keeps up, I may find myself watching the clock turn over after all.

Excellent article about nursing in public

2011-12-30T20:57:00.002-05:00

So I was moseying around the internet today and found a three-part series that said everything I said yesterday, only better. It starts here. It's long, but really worth the read, and I'd love it if you'd come back here when you're done and tell me what you think.

The first part points out that in the Middle Ages, women weren't breastfeeding in public because they weren't in public at all, they were at home. This made me a little annoyed, because isn't that just upper-class women? The poor and rural women couldn't manage to stay home all the time because they were working.

The second part admits that yes, poor women have always nursed in public. Which is why perhaps breastfeeding in public isn't just a gender/modesty issue, but a class/decency issue. A good, decent, middle-class woman wouldn't dream of doing That in public. Because she can avoid being in public. It might be tremendously inconvenient for her to do so, but she will lest it seem that she can't afford to do what the wealthier women can. Only those women who have no choice will appear without stockings, be out without an escort, or be seen breastfeeding.

The third part ties it all together beautifully. Feminism allowed women, and then almost required women, to take part in society alongside men. We had to work, be in public, and participate in society. But, we are also the ones who bear the children and do most of the raising of them. The inescapable conclusion is that if we are to be allowed into the public sphere, our children must be too. Otherwise we are not accepting of women, just of women who are willing to turn their backs on motherhood. As a woman who has happily and successfully worked with a baby in tow, I think this may be the only solution to the dichotomy between "liberated, working, voting, thinking woman" and "traditional, cloistered, submissive, mothering woman." Why do we have to pick one of these two choices? Can't I work, vote, think, and raise children, too? It seems the only real obstacle to my doing this is society's discomfort with the mothering aspect of my female nature ... and that is an obstacle that may be overcome.

I have been accused lately of being "tainted with feminist ideals." Well, why not just come right out and say it: call me a feminist! I am not a radical feminist. I don't believe in sexual liberation or abortion or a lot of other things feminists are "supposed" to believe in. I believe that women should be free to participate in society ... while still being women. I think that women shouldn't have to disguise that they are female in order to be considered an equal human being.

And most of all, I think that respecting women means respecting mothers. That being anti-child is being anti-woman. That as long as we consider it justified to lash out at women for being mothers, for nursing babies, for bringing children into the spheres where they could otherwise be, we don't really respect women. We only respect them as long as they are willing to give up their motherhood -- something that is important to most of us. So most of us walk this balancing act of trying and trying to be good parents as well as participating in the public forum, and it's really, really hard. It's relatively easy for me. I am able to stay home; I don't have to work. I have a husband who pulls his weight and is willing to stay home so I can go out. My friends and family all respect what I do and treat me as a person completely equal to them. They are not offended by the presence of my child when I show up to their parties. They don't demand I get a babysitter or a nursing cover or stay home.

But other women don't have what I have. Let me tell you this: most women who have abortions do not want them. A large proportion of women who wean early, wanted to nurse longer. Many women who go back to work after six weeks want to stay home longer. Many women who never have children wanted to have them.

Can we really say women are liberated now if we're still over a barrel?

Okay, go read the articles and tell me what you think.

A bit about bodily autonomy

2011-12-29T09:46:00.003-05:00

Still frustrated. I suppose I should spend less time on the internet. The more time I spend on the internet, the more I discover that women, particularly mothers, get a lot of flak.

First off, there's this nurse-in at Target. Here's the story: a woman was in Target when her baby got hungry. She went off to an abandoned spot, sat down on the floor half shielded by a jeans display, and threw a blanket over her baby to nurse him. A store employee showed up and told her she should move to the changing room, or else be more discreet. Several other employees stood around, giving her mean looks and talking about her in front of her.

The law is on the mom's side here, so she went to the manager. And the manager told her that Target's policy is different from the law (what?!) and so they didn't have to abide by it.

Now there's been a big protest where women are coming in and nursing in Target. The larger organization claims they don't mind, because the store policy actually is fine with nursing in the store. So perhaps this was just an issue with this one particular outlet.

Now I, being an idiot, went and read a whole bunch of comments on the issue. They actually weren't (mostly) that bad. But almost every comment said something like this: "I don't mind if moms nurse in public. So long as they are discreet/use a blanket/use a nursing cover/go to the dressing room, I think they should be allowed to."

It's just -- who made YOU the decision-maker about when and how someone else is "allowed" to feed her baby?

I prefer to nurse with no cover (because those things are a huge hassle, draw attention, and you can't really see what you're doing, despite the advertising) but without showing anything anyone would object to. Took me awhile to get the knack, and it takes wearing two shirts. But I'm lucky because of my build. A heavier woman might not be able to manage what I do. Does that mean she can't feed her baby in public?

Here's how I managed it, back in the day. I don't think anyone would call this immodest.

The other big one -- really big -- was that stupid Facebook debate. I say it's over now because I've dropped out of it, but I believe the instigators are still hanging around saying nasty things about me. I realized I have the choice what I read, and I do not choose to read personal attacks on me. I also have the choice of where to comment, and that thread is not going to go anywhere good.

Anyway, it started with one person proclaiming as her status that she can't stand it when women post pictures of themselves nursing in a way that she doesn't consider "modest." She said that these women have no respect for themselves, so they shouldn't expect anyone else to respect them either.

Okay, so I don't post that kind of picture. The update was not directed at me. I have posted one picture of myself nursing on Facebook, and I doubt she ever realized that was what I was doing. And yet I still took it personally. If I should happen to feel very proud of my breastfeeding successes -- which I am -- and, in a moment of happiness, post a picture that doesn't match someone else's standards, why does that mean I've forfeited any right to the respect of others?

We went back and forth and back and forth over it. How modest does a woman have to be? How far do her rights go before they trample on someone else's rights? Is a blanket good enough? Or do we have to be so "discreet" that no one can tell we're nursing at all?

Now, we're a bunch of Catholics having this conversation. We value modesty because we don't want to tempt anyone into sin. I personally think it is very uncommon for men to be tempted into sin by the sight of a woman nursing. Secular conversations on this issue convince me of this: the men don't want to see it, not because they find the sight "sexy," but because they find it unsexy and they would rather see the breasts without the baby attached. But I admit that it is possible that the men of my circles, who have been more sheltered than average, do find it a temptation to sin if there is any skin showing in that area.

That's why I don't show any. I have mercy on my weak brethren who have an issue with me doing something women have done since the dawn of time. Women in earlier generations didn't have to deal with this, and women in other cultures don't have to deal with this, but our present culture isn't really used to breastfeeding and has made a connection between sex and breasts that isn't quite the norm. So I cave to cultural pressure, because I choose to make things easier for anyone who may be tempted to sin, and I honestly don't want those around me to feel uncomfortable or awkward.

However -- I see this as my choice. My choice to be charitable to those around me. Not some strange man's decision about what is and isn't appropriate for the women around him to do. Just like it is a man's choice, when he sees something he'd rather not, to look or not to look -- to lust or not to lust. (Keep in mind: anything that is sinful is a free-will decision. If I could force him into lusting, he would not be responsible and has not sinned. If he sins, that is because he gives into temptation instead of looking away.) I don't want to tempt anyone to sin. But, on the one hand, I think it is unlikely that he should be tempted, and on the other hand, I do have to feed my child. I do it in the most modest way I reasonably can -- I'm not deliberately presenting a stumbling block to anyone. Any temptation he experiences is not willed by me. If I went out in a bikini in the hopes of attracting attention, I could see being in some way culpable for the sins of others. But if I feed my baby, minding my own business, and without attempting to call attention to any bare skin I'm showing, I don't think anyone has the right to tell me I may not.

This is a complicated issue. I realize that. But I keep seeing time and time again, various sources -- mostly patriarchal Protestant ones, but Catholic ones too -- that suggest that anything a man thinks about a woman is her fault. She must dress in a certain kind of attire, specified by men, which usually includes skirts, long sleeves, and shapelessness. And if she doesn't do this, and receives harassment, negative attention, or even a rape -- that is HER fault. Men can't help their reaction to women's bodies. Only women can prevent men from lusting.

Obviously, that's simply not true. Men control their actions. If they can't control their actions, they shouldn't go out in public. Women have the right to be treated with respect, even if they don't act appropriately, because they still have human dignity.

Meanwhile, I think a woman's responsibility -- her personal responsibility -- ends with doing what is reasonable. She should dress modestly by not choosing clothing that is intended to incite lust in men, and by taking reasonable precautions to prevent wardrobe malfunctions. We might disagree about where the line is drawn -- I think that it is not reasonable for a mother to have to restrict when, where, and how she feeds her child. But, in the face of this disagreement, I think it's the woman who makes the call. It is, in the final estimate, her body we're talking about. And it is not the right of anyone who is not her to tell her what lengths she has to go to to avoid tempting others.

As a culture, we've decided to give up some of our rights, like the right to wander around naked. We decided there was a very basic limit we wouldn't go past. So we have indecent exposure laws. We also decided that, for the good of nursing babies, breastfeeding is not in any way indecent exposure -- regardless of how it is done or how much shows! You can't be persecuted for nursing in this country.

I think the law is reasonable. We have a very basic limit, and beyond that, it's up to everyone's comfort level and sense of courtesy. Some people have a very easy time nursing without offending anyone, and so they do. Some having a very difficult time nursing without kind of a lot showing ... so they weigh their options and decide that their baby's hungry tummy is more important than some strangers' discomfort. So they do that. No one else is really qualified to make that judgment call than her, because no one else is in her situation.

And ... let me say it again ... it is her body. I know Catholics don't like this phrase because it's a catchphrase for abortion: "her body, her choice." But the reason it's fallacious is because her baby's body should be her baby's choice -- not because bodily autonomy is a bad thing. I'm a strong believer in bodily autonomy, which is why I'm against circumcision or even ear piercing being done to my babies. I believe that they should undergo these procedures when they decide they want them -- not when I decide.

I also believe that a person has the choice what medical procedures they undergo when they are an adult. If they don't want some supposedly lifesaving treatment, they can refuse, even if it means they will die. This is a right defended by Catholic teaching. We are not permitted to take our own lives or mutilate our bodies, but we do have the right to refuse any and every treatment we want.

That means a woman who is giving birth may give birth where and with whom she wishes. I am downright tired of arguments that women couldn't possibly be making an informed choice when they choose homebirth. They are. I believe that a woman has the right to give birth in her bedroom by herself, or in an operating theater with twelve doctors on hand. When the Mississippi personhood law was coming up for a vote, I heard a lot of arguments that women would be forced into c-sections or bedrest or other treatments they didn't consent to, for the sake of their baby. A good understanding of bodily autonomy should tell you that you can't force a person to consent to surgery, even to save someone else's life. You can prevent them from taking someone else's life, but you can't force them to save it at risk to themselves. (In any event, as the parent of the baby they're carrying, they also have the right to make medical decisions for the baby.) Any law, court order, or doctor who tries to force a woman to consent to medical intervention for the sake of her baby is wrong. That is injustice.

And that means a woman can wear what she wants. As a Catholic, I have the responsibility not to tempt others into sin. However, that is my responsibility. No one else can force me into complying. And when I weigh that responsibility with the responsibility to feed my child, I came up with the solution that I use. Others come up with other solutions.

And for some man that I don't know to waltz into a public forum and say, "Oh, I think it's great that you want to nurse your baby, just do it the way I say or you are [a sinner, rude, flagrantly immodest, undeserving of respect -- choose one or many]" -- well, I personally find that pretty rich. Especially when I have sweet, loving friends with no desire to tempt anyone or shock anyone, who don't obey the "rules" someone else has laid out, who are being called all these names. This, by the way, does cause a lot of women to quit when they didn't want to. That brings out my inner Warrior Princess. It's not a pretty sight.

Why so anti-child?

2011-12-26T12:40:00.004-05:00

Lately it seems like I can't turn around without hearing something about how awful it is for people without kids to have to go out in public and see kids there. Especially when they're doing things that kids do, like crying, nursing, moving around, making noise, or sometimes misbehaving.

Of course these people don't consider themselves to be anti-child. On the contrary, they love kids! It's just the badly-behaved kids, which their own children or nieces and nephews never were. They blame the parents. What were parents doing bringing their children into a church or a restaurant or on a plane? They should have known it would end in disaster. Or else the problem is that they're not "dealing with it" in the way the commenter thinks it should be dealt with. Parents nowadays don't discipline their children, etc. etc. etc.

Here's a few quotes that I've run across in the past week. Each was in a public forum that got plenty of responses, so don't worry that these stood on their own without someone to tell them they were wrong.

This one is from Catholic Answers Forums:

It amazes me that almost every week there is someone in the church who will allow their small children to scream and cry during a large portion the Mass. Just for once, I would like to see the priest give pause, look in the direction of the noise and wait until the offending parent gets the hint and removes the little darling to the back of church so others aren't disturbed. What ever happend to the quiet reverence?

Well, I attend a church where they do just this. Of course the parents live in fear that they will be the recipient of the priestly glare, so they don't go into the church at all, but stay packed in like sardines in the uncomfortable vestibule, unable to hear much, while the children are learning nothing about proper church behavior because there isn't so much as a chair for them to sit in. I sometimes end up stuck back here holding my son (because there is no other option; if I put him down he'd vanish in the crowd) for the whole hour. When I leave the church, my back is killing me and I can barely walk.

For Christmas, we went to a different parish. I stayed in the pew the whole time, and John was in the vestibule with Marko for part. It was amazing to actually get to participate in the Mass, and to have a place to sit. For once, it didn't feel like a cross, but was actually feeding my soul.

Oh, but parents shouldn't get their souls fed, of course. Parenting involves sacrifice, gosh darn it, and just sitting in a pew entertaining a child isn't sacrificial enough. Meanwhile, hearing a peep out of a baby is too much sacrifice for a childless person, because they never volunteered for the job.

Of course, most of the comments were along the lines of, "Well, of course kids should be welcome in church, but parents shouldn't just let them scream and scream during the whole service." I suppose this is true, but for one thing, I've never seen this happen. Ever. And for another, that's the parents' job, not yours. Parents should do their best, and YOU, person who doesn't like to hear crying, should suck it up and assume that they are. Not try to get your priest to glare more. Not catch the parents after Mass and berate them. Not be a snot on an internet forum. Assume they are doing their best, sit near the front, and tune out the noises that distract you.

Here are some gems from the comments on an article about kids on planes and in restaurants:

I blame parents for the behavior of children ANYWHERE. If they are energetic and loud and can't sit quietly on a plane - don't take them on a plane to annoy others - or anywhere! If your baby cries a lot - don't take them on the plane, movie theater, or anywhere else the noise is going to interfere with others enjoyment. If you were driving for hours in a closed car, how would you feel with all that? Where is personal responsibility? I have two adult kids. When they were young and their behavior was unacceptable I would sit with then in the car until they quieted down. I would not ruin others' days out by making them suffer through my children's behavior. If you decided to be a parent then you must adjust your behavior and expectations. You are no longer free to just go out like you did before you were a parent.

*

Also, when on a 4-5 hour flight, a screaming child should not be allowed to disrupt everyone else's trip. If the people must take their children on-board, they need to contol them, give them a sedative. There are so many over-the-counter options. Stop invading my right to privacy!!!!

I fly business class, and I am getting truly fed up with the increased presence of families with children who scream and yell and cry during the flight. I pay a LOT of money for a good comfortable, PEACEFUL experience, and I do not believe I should have to listen to the kids or even other passengers act like complete idiots. I'm tired of the airlines reminding me that the kids have rights too. What about my rights to have some peace and quiet on transatlantic or transpacific flights?

In my not so humble opinion, families with children should be completely barred from business and first class. End of story.

Surely I'm not the only person who is upset and offended by this? You can plan ahead, you can make decisions based on the way your child usually behaves, you can pack toys, you can have a relatively well-disciplined child, and there may still sometimes be a meltdown. That's life. Children are part of society just like everyone else... why aren't people a little bit used to them by now?

But no, the solutions are "well, you have kids now, you can't go out," "just sedate them," and "my rights trump their rights."

Just once, I would like to see someone say, "Gee, this isn't convenient for me, but it's not convenient for the mom and dad either. We're all suffering together, and they have the right to be here like I do. I guess I'll just be thankful that when this is over, I get to go to my quiet house and sleep through the night." Actually, before I had kids I would think just that. When I heard a baby cry on a plane, I thought, "That poor mom! She must be mortified! Thank goodness it's not my kid and no one's expecting me to do anything about it." Even then I was aware that just hearing a child cry was the easy part.

And then there's the good ol' nursing in public debate. I don't know why I get involved in these. I guess it's because I am aware of their effects on moms. When you're a jerk about breastfeeding in a public forum, all of a sudden the nursing moms who read it think, "Is that how everyone feels about me? Are they all judging me?" And even though the mom reading it probably is draped in the world's biggest breastfeeding burka/circus tent, she still feels like everyone is staring at her thinking all those mean things they read on the internet. I remember feeling this way. SO self-conscious, even though nothing anyone could possibly complain about was showing.

Here are a few excerpts from the Facebook debate I was recently in:

But let us not deny the needs of the child; evidently you're going to get a lacrobat when nursing him in public. A mother who can't deprive of socialization for 15 minutes to spend quiet time with her baby, and allow the baby to eat comfortably and be focused on the mother, is very, very sad.

*

My response towards mothers who don't have adult conversation or tired husbands- this job you signed up for is one of sacrifice, these children you choose to accept, this husband who works long hours- this is what the better or worse part is. But to those women, I do not pity you. This is the road you choose and with the joys come the pain.

*

It is true, you will not find mention of nursing in the past - but it is not because no one had a problem with it. It was because women had a better understanding of their place in society and their dignity. It was never discussed, because it never came up. Culture today has been severely impacted by the inhumanity of socialism and their pragmatic creed of 'it it needs to be done, do it'.

Again, the message is clear: You, mother, need to sacrifice so that I don't have to deal with the reality that you are caring for a child. And I will call that "sacrificing for your child" even though what I'm asking is that you sacrifice for my comfort. But since you're a parent, you have to love sacrificing, no matter the reason, because otherwise you're a terrible parent. I don't owe you any sympathy because I never asked you to have kids.

Oh, and "back in the day" (I have no idea what day we were speaking of at this point; probably the Middle Ages, because I had claimed, I believe correctly, that women nursed all the time wherever they happened to be and no one said a word about it. My interlocutor claims that women in those days knew their place and must not have nursed in public after all ... at least, I think that's what he was implying) this question never came up because, in the midst of struggling for survival through cold winters and famine and plague, people were worrying more about beauty and dignity than about what "needs to be done."

In this, and in so many other online discussions, I feel myself being a target for others' hatred of children. Sure, my child is usually quiet in public. I've flown on planes with him, and he slept. When he makes noise, we take him out of church. And when I nursed him in public, I'm pretty sure no one ever saw anything. But you attack any mother, I feel you are attacking me too. You're saying that any support or acceptance I receive from society is dependent on my making the parenting choices that you believe I should make.

I don't mind my family and friends telling me how they think I should do things, because they do have a role in my parenting. They help. They support. They listen. They do their share. So I think they have a right to their opinion, though I may disagree. But strangers who have never burped my baby or played with my toddler -- or even laughed it off when he annoyed them -- have no right to tell me how I should do things. Either you have some interest in my child or you don't. If you're not willing to help out, I don't really want to hear your opinion.

Am I the only one who's been running into this nasty attitude, or is it everywhere nowadays?

A Christmas Meditation

2011-12-25T19:50:00.003-05:00

This is my imagining of Christmas, which I dreamed up around 5 a.m. this morning when I couldn't get back to sleep. It probably wasn't anything like this, but I did find it nice to imagine what it must have been like for Mary.

Catholic tradition often portrays Joseph as an old man who had been married before. I usually imagine him in his late 20's or early 30's. No one knows for sure, but that's how I was brought up imagining him.

I personally think Mary may well have had a painless birth. Catholic tradition suggests that she did, because she had no original sin, but some think she didn't because she did suffer some of the other effects of original sin. I tend to think that if hundreds of women using Hypnobabies or the Bradley method can have pain-free labors, Mary could too. I think it's original sin, and not just a crazy pelvis, that makes humans have so much harder labors than animals do -- our conscious mind interferes with our instincts, but our reason is overrun by our hormones, so that we tense up and get confused as to what we have to do next. I think Mary wouldn't have had that. But that's just my opinion.

I hope none of this seems terribly irreverent to anyone. This is just my imagination and it doesn't stop you from supposing things happened very differently.

* * *

Mary leaned on Joseph as they approached the cave and took a long slow breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. Joseph looked into her face, the concern visible in his face despite the fading twilight. "All this walking giving you more contractions?"

She nodded before starting to walk again. "Yes, but they aren't too strong. I'll sit down when we get there."

When they reached the warmth of the stable, though, she didn't feel much like sitting. Letting go of Joseph's arm, she walked past all the stalls toward the back corner of the cave, where there was an open area. The cows regarded her placidly as they chewed their cud, their breath making warm trails of smoke.

Finding a tattered broom leaning against the wall, she set to sweeping the corner briskly. Joseph set his torch in a bracket on the wall and reached out to stop her. "Please, Mary. Let me do it. You need to rest." She relinquished the broom and tried to sit on a straw bale, but she soon felt restless again and was bringing straw to strew on the clean ground.

"It's all right," Joseph said again. "You don't have to do anything, it will all be done in a moment."

"I know, Joseph," she said slowly, "but I just want to get it done." Fetching a bucket from another corner, she filled it at the animals' drinking trough and brought it to their nest. Surveying the result, she sighed. "That's fine. We will be nice and comfortable tonight. It isn't a bit cold in here."

Joseph smiled wryly. It was a tiny bit of an exaggeration. But the warmth of the animals made it seem almost summery compared to the biting wind outside.

Mary tried to sit down again, this time in the comfortable bed of straw she had made, but another contraction tightened her belly and again she felt more like standing. This one lasted quite a bit longer, and she put a hand against the wall until it passed.

When she looked at Joseph again, his brow was knitted with concern. "I know you are near your time, Mary, but it would be so much better if the baby could hold off a little longer," he said. "In a few days maybe I will be able to find a room here, or at the very least, finish the census business and get back on our way. Surely there will be inns along the road that have room."

"He will come when he comes," Mary said calmly. At that moment, she felt at peace with whatever happened. There had been this great sense of urgency to get to Bethlehem first, to hold off labor, not to deliver too soon. But now that she was here, she didn't feel like it mattered much if she went into labor tonight, or in a few weeks back in Nazareth with her mother there to help her.

Joseph let out a worried sigh. "This is all my fault. If only we had left earlier, maybe we could have found some room. It's just our luck that the census is now. Any other time of my whole life would have been better."

Mary went to him and put her hand on his arm. "It's all right, Joseph. You did fine bringing us here, and everything else is out of our hands." She meant to say more but her belly tightened again, insistently. A long, slow breath felt better than talking. She shut her eyes.

When she opened them again, she knew Joseph knew it would be tonight. He took her hand in both of his. "Mary, I -- I have no idea what to do! Is it all right to leave you here? Should I go get someone? Perhaps there is someone at the inn ... at least some old woman who has had a few of her own ... but we have nothing to pay them. They took so much just for the stable!"

The baby within her gave her a little wiggle. So comforting to know he was all right. She smiled at Joseph. "I think I will be all right," she said quietly. "My mother told me what to expect. The poor have been having babies since Eve bore Cain, and we've been okay."

The helpless look on Joseph's face moved her to pity. "Here, Joseph, this is what we do first. We will walk up and down the stable. You take my arm. I will lean on you."

This simple instruction seemed to calm him a little, and they began to walk. At first, they stopped once on every trip down the barn, while Mary leaned on Joseph and breathed. Then they stopped twice, and then at every few stalls. Then she didn't feel like walking anymore, and they went to their straw-covered corner. Mary put both hands against the wall and leaned forward, telling Joseph to push against her back. It didn't feel necessary, but her mother had said this was something the midwife did, and it seemed to make Joseph happy to have something to do.

Time seemed to slow as she leaned against the wall. Belly tense -- breathe in, breathe out. Belly relax -- slump forward, breathe in, breathe out. The walls of the cave seemed to disappear, and it seemed she could see the stars wheeling overhead. Were there angels in the cave? There seemed an intense presence of many onlookers. When she hummed through the contractions, she thought she heard many voices join her. But she didn't feel shy or afraid -- they were breathing in and out with her, helping her baby move down. A few times Joseph tried to speak, to ask her questions, but she couldn't seem to answer. Shaking her head, she whispered, "Shhh. Shhh."

All at once, the strangeness in the room seemed to lift and she could see around her again. Her belly was tensing in a new way, pushing down, hard. It was time for the baby come out.

When the pressure eased, she moved to the very corner and knelt down on the straw. She whispered to Joseph, "Come here. Sit behind me." He moved to support her from behind, and she raised her knees into a squat. Leaning against his motionless bulk, she felt steadied and calm. She raised her robe above her knees and waited for the pressure to return.

When it came, it came in full force. There was nothing for it but to make a long, slow sound, a birth song for her baby. Her voice vibrated in a long, deep tone. The cows lowed in response. That seemed right. They knew how to bring a baby down.

Suddenly there was a splash in the straw. She reached down and felt the baby's head just beginning to emerge. There was fine hair on it, fine wet hair. It receded, and then as the pressure increased it came forward again. She resumed her birth song. For a moment it seemed again that there were angels, that they were joining her in the song.

A few more pushes and it was out, in her hands. She couldn't quite see, but she felt its roundness with both her hands. Then she felt it turn, and a moment later the whole baby shot out into her hands. Instinctively she raised him up against her. Joseph peered over her shoulder. "It's here! It's okay! It's alive!" His voice was charged with relief.

Tilting him away from her for a moment, Mary gazed at her son. His tiny dark eyes gazed back at her, barely visible in the torchlight. They were full of infinite wisdom. She couldn't look away, even though her vision was swimming with tears. Now she was positive she heard angels singing, but she couldn't tear her eyes off her beautiful son to see them.

Loosening her robe, she pulled it down over her shoulder and brought her infant to her breast. He snatched at it eagerly, rearing back and grabbing on. His eyes roved up toward hers, unfocused but deep. Mary's heart brimmed to overflowing as she watched her son drink her milk. It had seemed so incredible when the angel had said he would be the Son of God. But with him in her arms, it was impossible not to believe. The tiny, wrinkled body, its apparent frailty, was of no consequence -- his eyes made clear he had come straight from heaven. But when she tried to wrap her head around the notion of such immense power clothed in such fragile weakness, of a being that had created her now relying on her milk to live, it simply failed. There was no understanding this. But her heart was full, and she did not need to understand.

She tore her eyes from the baby and turned her head around to Joseph. He was smiling at her, and his eyes, too, were filled with tears. Half afraid to break the silence, she whispered to him, "We will call him Jesus."

* * *

Mama's got separation anxiety

2011-12-21T19:43:00.002-05:00

I have, a handful of times, left Marko with his dad. For a few hours. When he was two months old, I left him at home for one hour while I went two blocks away to get my hair cut. The whole time I clutched my phone in my hand waiting for a text saying he needed me so I could rush out the door with my hair half cut and love on my baby. But when I got home, he was sitting in his bouncer exactly where I'd left him, and John told me he hadn't noticed I was gone.

Since then, I've occasionally left him while I went shopping (he likes shopping, but doesn't care for the driving part) or to go to some brief event or other. Each time, Marko doesn't care a whole lot, and I fall all to pieces.

Now that he's a toddler, he does have some separation anxiety. Whether I'm the one who leaves, or Daddy is, he cries for awhile. John maintains he cries a bit longer when it's me. There isn't a huge difference, though, so I don't feel I'm neglecting him when I leave him with Daddy any more than John is neglecting him when he goes to work. He's still with a parent, he's pretty happy, no biggie.

Last weekend I agreed to go to a Christmas party (the same one I went to last year and had so many adventures on the way). It was going to be quite a drive now that we live so far out. But I said I would go, because I had a good time last year and wanted to see those people again.

But Marko was having a rough day. It had been busy and I'd already had to go shopping without him. When I told him I was going to leave to go to a party, he flipped. He was running around crying "No Mama go! No Mama leaving!" and quite disconsolate. I scooped him up onto my lap and just held him for a minute. He snuggled into me and I nuzzled his neck. (Mmm, so nice.) And all I could think was, "Why the heck do I want to go anywhere but here? What possible fun could I have elsewhere to equal toddler snuggles?" But I had already promised to go.

Once he was calm, I got him reading a story with Daddy and left the house. When I shut the door behind me, he started wailing again. My heart broke into two big pieces. I couldn't even walk away. So I stood there listening to the crying through the door for about a minute, and then I heard him quiet down so I knew he was going to be okay. And I left.

The whole dang way there I was feeling incredibly mopey. All I wanted was my baby and my hubby. I tried to console myself with the thought that I had one baby I couldn't leave anywhere yet, but it wasn't good enough. I wanted our family to be together. I didn't want to go anywhere without all of us.

The party was fun, I guess. I felt all adult tromping around from my parking spot to the party in my nice clothes. But it just felt off to me. I don't see myself as a cool single woman. I am not sure I ever was one. Once I reached the party, I had fun talking to everyone, though it was weird being the only married woman or mom there. I told one woman my opinions on childbirth! Shows how out of touch I am with what single women are supposed to talk about.

After about an hour, I bailed. I told them I'd promised to leave at eight, and it was after eight. Someone said, "Aw, but this is your girl time! It's okay for Daddy to handle things!" That was the moment I felt the most out of place. Moms are supposed to like girl time, right? They want to get away for a little bit. They feel free when they leave their kids at home knowing that they are safe and happy. At least that's what everyone says!

I guess I'm just more domestic than I thought. I like being at home with my family. I love getting together with friends if my kid is invited too. But I just don't like being by myself anymore. I'm not sure when that happened.

This realization doesn't really disappoint me, though. I don't feel like I've "lost myself" or that I am missing out. (It helps that I have never in my life been cool.) I feel, instead, that I have adjusted to the way my life always is. I always have a kid in the carseat when I'm driving, and I prefer it that way. I don't think that's a bad thing.

What would have been a bad thing is if I had given in to my inclinations and scooped my sleeping child out of bed when I got home to nuzzle his neck. I was good and let him sleep. But at his first six a.m. peep, I leaped out of bed to go make sure he knew I was home. I think he'd forgotten I'd ever left. But I got some nice snuggles in while he was nice and sleepy.

Yeah, absence makes the heart grow fonder. But I don't think I'll do that again for awhile. I'll stick with snuggles and neck nuzzles instead!

Sometimes, I'm frankly terrified

2011-12-13T12:33:00.003-05:00

More and more lately, I'm afraid to read the news. Which means I'm afraid to go on Facebook, because all of my friends are always posting news stories and debating them. And, of course, my blog reader, which is full of stories that upset me.

Like what?

Well, like this. A child has cancer. The doctors tell them it's terminal. The parents want a second opinion, and they find an alternative doctor who has cured a few cases of the same kind of cancer. They decide that some chance is better than no chance, so they want to go to this doctor. But a social worker comes along and tells them they have no choice but to go with the conventional treatment, or their child will be taken away from them. They undergo the conventional treatment, which fails and also makes their son sick (as most cancer treatments do). They are finally allowed to seek alternative treatment, which seems to be going well, but their son is too weakened from the conventional treatment and dies. Now the family has lost a child, and to add insult to injury, their medical bills are so staggering that they are now bankrupt and living out of their car.

Or that front yard garden thing awhile back. Woman plants vegetable garden in front yard, which she doesn't believe is against the law. She is threatened with fines and imprisonment.

And anything about raw milk. People are raided without warning for producing milk and not pasteurizing it. The producers are upfront about what they make. The customers are aware that the milk is not pasteurized -- that is why they want it, because they believe raw milk is healthier. But the milk is confiscated or destroyed and the producers are fined or imprisoned. A Wisconsin judge ruled that we do not have the right to grow and eat our own food. I see that as a pretty basic freedom, so yeah, I'm scared all right.

I also don't like reading about the TSA. I haven't flown since the naked scanners and pat-downs started, but one of these days I might have to. And I hate the thought of having to choose between subjecting my children to radiation that may or may not be harmful, or teaching them that it's okay to be groped by an adult so long as it's one in authority -- that their personal boundaries are something imaginary that can be violated in some circumstances.

Meanwhile, I hear they're setting up random roadblocks for ID checks on highways now, just to make sure we all are who we say we are. Ditto for bus stations. We no longer have the freedom to move about the country without identifying ourselves. Most of us have nothing to hide ... but that isn't the point. I should not have to prove who I am in order to travel.

I hear most of the Republican candidates favor a universal ID card that we would have to carry with us at all times and produce upon request. Again, I don't think I should have to prove who I am just to leave my house. The burden of proof should be on my government, to prove that they need this information and that I am a threat.

Because I might be considered a threat. Among the things that may cause you to be suspected of terrorism are owning a gun with ammunition (which is a Constitutional right, though I don't exercise it), missing fingers (oh, so my Grampy could have been a terrorist now), or ... get this ... owning more than a week's worth of food at a time. Being prepared for an emergency, or even being the tiniest bit self-sustaining, is a sign we are not completely reliant on our nation's fragile infrastructure, and we should be. Because otherwise we might be terrorists.

Meanwhile, it looks like they're going to pass that horrible bill after all -- the one that says that citizens can be arrested by the military and held indefinitely without trial, provided we are suspected of terrorism. But since there is no trial, those who arrest us will not be required to prove that their suspicion of terrorism is in any way credible.

All around me, I see the government trying to control me: what I eat, who I talk to, where I go, how much I choose to disclose. And it's almost always in the name of safety: safety from food-borne illness, from unhealthy choices, and most of all, from terrorism. I am assured that the enemy would come and kill me in my bed if the government didn't trample all over my freedoms in order to protect me.

That isn't what bothers me the most, though.

What bothers me the most is hearing people defend this downward slide. They don't see it as a downward slide at all. It's just an x-ray -- just a front-yard garden -- just some milk -- just some identification. After all, why would you have anything to hide? Okay then, you don't need privacy.

And then, when they are forced to admit that yes, it is a terrible hassle, and boy, wouldn't it be easier to be able to make more choices -- they echo the safety argument. Where would we be without the government to tell us what is safe to eat? What would happen to children if the government weren't there to make their parents make the right decisions for them? And a little pat-down is nothing if it protects us from the evil terrorists who want to Kill Us in Our Beds.

People believe, of course, that terrorists actually want us all dead. That is not the case. They want to terrorize us -- to make us terrified. And we are terrified. We are so terrified we are willing to give up all of our freedoms -- the freedoms that make America a great place to live -- in order to be safe, or even to have the illusion of safety.

And they believe that the government, being benevolent, would never use any of these new powers to harm us. Oh, no, they would only ever use them to protect us. And since we're good, upstanding citizens, nothing bad will ever happen to us -- until we get a phone call from the wiretapped phone of someone who's connected to a terrorist, or we are Middle Eastern and try to fly on 9/11, or we have too many cans of corned beef hash in our basement. The fact that is vividly clear to me, which seems to be missed by everyone, is that power handed over to the government is power that is gone. We will not get that back. Years down the road, it may be abused, but by that point it won't matter because these powers are no longer up for debate.

I guess I'm just not so trusting. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I have no idea what the higher-ups in the government have in mind next. I don't even know if they know. But I do know that seeing so much power leaving my hands and entering theirs frightens me. I would like to know that, if I should happen to disagree with a doctor about my child's care, or seek to produce my own food, or decline a vaccine someone thinks should be mandatory, I won't be interfered with. And if I raise the ire of someone in authority, I want to know that I have the opportunity for redress. If I get into trouble and have to flee my hometown on a bus without my ID, I'd like to know I can do that. I like to have a backup plan that doesn't involve moving to Brazil.

I thought in a free nation, that would never be in question. But lately, it is.

Conflict or cooperation?

2011-12-07T19:55:00.002-05:00

"You can't let him win."

"Don't give an inch, or he'll take a mile."

"He knows what he's doing."

"Don't try to be his friend. He'll grow up to take advantage of you."

"You have to show him who's boss."

I keep hearing phrases like this. And they're well meant. If you're in a duel of wills with a two-year-old over whether or not it's okay to hit the dog with a spoon, it would be a bad idea to lose. First off, you're in the right -- hitting is bad. And second off, you don't want to teach the child that a certain amount of fighting with you is going to get him somewhere.

But at the same time, the language grates on my ears. My son is not an enemy combatant. It gives me no satisfaction to engage in battles with him and walk off the winner. I want us both to win. Me walking away in triumph with the spoon he was hitting the dog with, while he howls at the injustice of it all, doesn't strike me as a "win." It's a necessary evil that we put up with to get through the day, but it's not a "win."

I've been thinking lately of my three years of teaching. The first year, I was told by most of the other teachers, "The kids will try to take advantage of you. Don't give an inch." So I was as strict as I could possibly be, and they did try to take advantage of me. By the end of the year, several of my classes were near chaos. I wasn't strict enough, of course. But what really disillusioned me was how bad those kids wanted to take me down.

The next year, I had first graders. They're so transparent. They weren't rebellious, and I wasn't afraid to give them a few inches and see where they'd go with that. When they had problems, I assumed it was because they hadn't understood or felt unsure. My most rebellious student, whom I was advised to discipline harshly, I was the gentlest with. I tried to find out what was fueling his rebellion, and when I found it was his frustration and discouragement, I gave him extra help. I let him get away, by the old standards, with murder in order to work on the real problems. The rest of the kids, I occasionally disciplined, but I mostly just took them aside and asked them what the problem was. And they would tell me! They would be thankful for my help, and the original problem would disappear.

The year after that, I was back to ninth graders. The hard age. The rebellious age. I did get lucky. I had a nice bunch of kids. But there were a few that were definitely poised to challenge me. The kind of kid that gets a kick out of going head-to-head with the teacher, of finding what the limits are and staying just within them while still driving the teacher nuts. So I should have gone back to my strict ways. But it just wasn't in me. I was high off of teaching first-graders, and remembered tons of little tricks that had helped them. When a student acted up, I refused to make it into a battle, but would instead ask them what was fueling their behavior. I kept a light-hearted demeanor, warned them that I would punish them if I had to because I had to follow the rules, but that we'd both be happier if we could steer clear of the whole punishment scene. I told them I assumed they wanted to get A's in my class, and that I would do what I could to help them get those A's. I stopped "treating them like adults," and instead used grown-up language while treating them as the rather forgetful, irresponsible, uncertain kids they were.

And it worked. By refusing to fight with my kids, by laughing off things that were supposed to test me, by gently reminding them as many times as it took to get back on track, by motivating them with less homework if we got more done in class, by having a fun day every once in awhile ... I somehow ended up with a peaceful classroom, not a perfectly silent one like I might have wanted, but an involved one. And all of my kids learned a lot. The grades definitely showed I did a better job that year.

Of course, there are tougher bunches of kids than that one. Some will go head-to-head with you no matter what you do. But my assumption that I did not have a tough bunch, my assumption that they all wanted to do well and stay out of trouble (one which I would share with them from time to time: "I know you care about this class, I know you're a really great bunch of kids") ended up being, in many ways, self-fulfilling. And I wonder if my assumption with my first batch of kids was self-fulfilling too. Did they take one look at my lengthy "expectation sheet" and my tall stack of prominently-displayed demerits and say, "We're taking this one down"? I suspect some of them did think exactly that.

I think those three years affected my parenting even more than all the years of nannying and big-sistering that I did before. I find myself reacting in totally different ways to my son than I did to my charges and siblings.

When my little brother was a toddler, he didn't like to be kissed. But I would kiss him anyway. And then he would rub his face vigorously, saying, "I'm wiping it off!" I was hurt, of course, and told him, "No, you're not wiping it off. You're rubbing it in!" He got very upset about that at first, but eventually got used to it. What I ask myself now is, "Would it have killed me to have asked before kissing him? Or to let him rub off kisses he didn't want? Isn't it his face to have kissed or not? Isn't it okay for him to have control over that one thing?" I didn't mean it badly. It just never occurred to me that you could or should let the toddler win anything. It certainly never occurred to me to apologize. I would now, though. I think it's entirely appropriate to apologize to kids when you've accidentally upset them -- it shows them how to do it!

I used to think it was important, every time a toddler crossed you, to make it the hill you were going to die on, and walk off the winner. I can't imagine how exhausting that would be in real life -- when you're not the nanny or the big sister, but the mom. Every disagreement, every bit of sass, has to be a fight and has to end in victory. It would end, at the very least, in a heck of a lot of time-outs. Because no one is more stubborn than a toddler. The only way to win is with overwhelming force.

Now, I let a lot more slide. When I tell Marko that horses neigh, and he insists that they moo, I laugh and make a game of it. When he demands that I don't wear the funny hat that scares him, I leave it off. It hurts nothing to humor him. When he says that he most definitely will NOT sit on the potty, I let him go and try again in five minutes (if he hasn't had an accident by then).

There are some things I won't take. I won't be hit, or let the dog be hit. I won't let him climb things that may be dangerous. I won't let him tear books or break his toys. But I don't make a big deal over these things. I just take away the hitting implement, or walk away, or put the dog outside, or move Marko to another room. That makes him furious. I used to think the appropriate action after a "punishment" of this kind was to ignore the child until he'd stopped crying, because he's got to get the "full force" of how naughty he was. Now, when he's in tears because I wouldn't let him hit the dog, and he's sobbing "Hit the dog, hit the dog," I offer a hug or a new activity to do. I don't insist that he suffer. He is already suffering by not being able to do what he wanted.

But my general rule is to assume that he isn't trying to start a fight with me. He's just trying to do his toddler thing and experiment with stuff. I place the limits, I won't let him go past them, but I'm not offended that he test them either. It's what toddlers do. It isn't personal. And it isn't a fight.

The deepest part of this whole thing is that I try never to think of it in terms of battle or winning or losing. When I think of it that way, I treat it that way, and when I treat it that way, it becomes that way. When I think, "Marko is challenging me, I have to win this one," I am closed to his point of view. I don't think of what will make it better or easier for him. I think of how to win and how to make sure he knows it. And when I have won, I am left with an upset child who is looking for something else he can do that he can win. When I think, "Marko wants something, and he doesn't understand why he can't have it. Let me help him understand and help him not do it anymore," I feel patient. I feel like trying to understand the root of what he's doing. I easily see his motivations (is he tired? bored? hungry?) and can solve his original problem. It's amazing to see his temper tantrum over hitting the dog dissolve as soon as he realizes there are other options, like reading a story, or when he remembers there's something else he really wanted, like a snack. There's no resentment afterwards, out of either of us. We both feel better because we've solved the problem and we can both have something we want.

I know sometimes "battles" are inevitable, especially as a child gets older and more set about what they want. And I know it's important to be the mom and not the buddy or the doormat, and make clear what the limits are. But I still want to get rid of all the warlike language. It doesn't help me be a good mom. When my son challenges me, I want to say to myself not "I have to win!" but, "What does he really need? How can I help him do what I need him to do? How can I show mercy and kindness to him without blurring the limits that he needs me to set for him?"

It's how I would like to be treated, anyway. And my goal these days is to treat my son -- both children -- the way I would like to be treated. I remember being a kid. I remember what it felt like to be powerless and to want to challenge authority just to get rid of that feeling of helplessness. I want to show my kids that I do understand where they're coming from, and that I'm willing to help them get where they need to be. I just hope I can do a good job of that.

The joys, and otherwise, of potty training

2011-12-06T12:21:00.002-05:00

Weaning was pretty effortless. Improving nighttime sleep hasn't really involved that much input from us ... though I gotta say, I'm still not loving the naplessness. The worst is when he does nap on one day, because of having been in the car at the wrong time or having had a bad night's sleep, and that sets off a cycle of sleeping badly at night, wanting a nap the next day, and sleeping badly the next night. The only way to break the cycle is to deal with a tired, cranky toddler who is trying to fall asleep across your lap all afternoon. But other than that, we've been getting pretty steady improvement without a ton of work.

Potty training is another story.

The first few days were great. Sometimes Marko would go in the potty. We'd all cheer. Sometimes he'd go on the floor, and we'd mop it up. Either way, no biggie.

But it's been over a week now and I just feel so frustrated. Not that we're not making progress, because we are. But I just don't know where to go from here to make sure we keep making progress. I watch Marko like a hawk to guess when he might need to go. I keep track of when he last went. I lure him onto the potty and keep him there by reading endless books. Often it works. Sometimes it works unexpectedly -- like yesterday when he zipped over there all by himself and went without saying a word -- and I feel so proud! But sometimes, he inexplicably does not go in the potty, and five minutes later goes on the floor. And I have no idea why.

I just want to yell, "What the heck, kid? An hour ago you took yourself to the potty and I didn't even need to do a thing till you asked me to dump it out! And now you're randomly peeing next to the potty and telling me to clean it up!"

Scheduling was working really well for awhile there. I'd just put him down every hour, and he'd usually go. But then it suddenly changes partway through the day. He goes two hours without going, then goes, then goes again 15 minutes later. It just feels like there's no rhyme or reason to it sometimes.

I just don't know how to get from "willing and motivated to go on the potty" to "willing and motivated NOT to go anywhere else." I don't want to punish him for having accidents. But I don't think he really thinks it's important not to go on the floor. He's quite happy to help me clean up. But I think my little talk of, "When you need to pee, you go on the potty ONLY, never on the floor" is going in one ear and out the other as he answers "Marko pee on the floor! Clean it up!"

I remember being at this stage with the dog, too. And eventually, he did get it. I can't say what specific thing I did to seal the deal on potty-training the dog. I just kept taking him out often, staying out till he went, taking him out immediately if I saw him starting to go ... and eventually he got it. Without even any M&Ms. But it did take awhile and maybe I've just got to have more patience.

The really frustrating part is that I don't want to go anywhere while we're working on this, for fear that putting him in a diaper will just confuse him and cause us to lose all our progress. But we can't stay home forever, either. Some people tell me I must never put him in a diaper while we're potty training, and others say it makes no difference. I do know that he was totally clueless all of Sunday evening, after having been in a diaper for church. But the previous time he was in a diaper for half the day, the other half he was just fine and only had one accident. I don't know what to make of that.

I'm trying to work on deep breaths and not freaking out. After all, I've been putting up with occasional, or more than occasional, pee on the floor for months. He's finally doing it less and my life is getting easier. Would it be the end of the world to stay at this stage for a month or more? No, it wouldn't. There is no deadline. We'll be okay. If we get too fed up, we can always stick him back in diapers and try again when he's three. I'm sure he'll be out of diapers before college. I repeat these things to myself many times.

Please tell me they are true. Also, if you have potty trained a child successfully, I'd like to hear how you did it, how long it took, and whether you were super frustrated too!

Creamy turkey soup

2011-12-06T11:41:00.002-05:00

I love creamy soups so much that there was no way I wasn't going to try to make one out of my leftover turkey. Especially after seeing so many glorious, drool-inspiring pictures of them scattered around the internet immediately after Thanksgiving.

Mine was inspired by a wild rice soup, but wild rice cost an arm and a leg when I saw it on the store, so I just went with brown. I would recommend brown over white, because it gives more depth to the soup, but I don't think that makes or breaks the soup either.

I think what makes or breaks it is the mushrooms. I wouldn't leave those out. And I think it would be missing something with canned mushrooms, too. Fresh mushrooms absorb butter when you saute them, which is the main goal here.

Creamy Turkey Soup

3 Tbs. butter
5 fresh mushrooms, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 Tbs. cornstarch*
1 cup cooked brown rice**
1 quart turkey stock
1/2 cup diced leftover turkey
salt, pepper, garlic and rosemary to taste

*Or flour, or another starch. Just keep in mind that flour only has half the thickening power of cornstarch. You can adjust the thickness of the soup at the end by adding more starch to milk and mixing it in.

**I cooked the rice first because it does take a long time to cook. You could cook it in the soup if you don't mind simmering longer, or if you're using a different kind of rice. But you'd need to increase the liquid accordingly.

Saute the mushrooms, celery, and carrots in the butter. When they are aromatic and beginning to soften, and the mushrooms have soaked up all the butter you think they're going to, add in the cornstarch and cook a little longer. Then pour in the stock and cook until the vegetables are just as soft as you like and the broth is thickening nicely. Add the rice, the turkey, and the spices. Remove from heat and garnish with yogurt, sour cream, regular cream ... whatever you like in your cream soups.

This soup was so ridiculously good that I don't feel like making anything else with my almost two gallons of turkey stock and several containers of leftover turkey. I just want this soup every night for the next two weeks. I wonder if John would mind?

He's growing up so fast!

2011-11-30T20:53:00.002-05:00

When I found we were expecting, I had three goals for Marko: to be weaned, potty-trained, and sleeping through the night again by the time the new baby was born. John thought I was being a little ambitious, and I agreed - but still wanted to try.

Well, here we are, about five months out, and we're making real progress. I'm pretty sure he's weaned. (I did nurse him one time since my post about it, for a few minutes to settle him for a nap, but he hasn't asked since. And I've been able to put him to sleep lately all by myself, just by rocking and singing.) Sleeping through the night is kind of a crapshoot - he wakes up for many, many reasons, and we're clueless what most of them are. But cutting out gluten seems to have helped. Sadly, cutting out naptime seems to help too. This one I'm not keen on, but it seems to have eliminated waking at 4 a.m. demanding breakfast or wanting to party at midnight. I guess we can't have a decent bedtime, a decent wake time, uninterrupted sleep, AND a nap. But ohhhhhh would I ever like that.

And, for the first time in a long time, we've actually made progress on potty training. John talked me into letting Marko have an M&M when he goes, and so now he's way motivated. We still have to remind him to go sit on the potty when it's time to go (about every hour) but he is very willing to try, and he does finally seem to know what to do when he gets there. We've been working on it since the weekend, and he's going in the potty about half the time. I put him in a diaper at bedtime and when we go out. Let me tell you, it's nice to clean pee off the floor only occasionally instead of constantly.

In addition to these HUGE milestones, he's also tackling a million tiny things. He now will put things in the trash when asked, or follow other instructions. He knows the names of dozens of his favorite songs, and often many of the lyrics too. He can identify them whenever we hum a few bars. The same is true for his favorite books - if we pause, he'll finish the line. His vocabulary and sentence length are increasing all the time. He knows the names of his favorite people and can tell you what happened last time he saw them. When Daddy comes home from work, he tries to tell all about his day (which sounds like, "Library! Books! Ride the bus! Bus driver! Play with Gilbert!") He knows what his bedtime routine and getting up routine are supposed to look like, and will freak out if you skip a step.

He will often give you the wrong answer when you ask a question, and then laugh hysterically. He plays pretend by sitting in a box and saying he's the bus driver, or sitting on a box and saying he's riding a bike.

There's so much going on in his head lately, it's staggering. Because of this, 18 to 24 months is supposed to be a peak in tantrums, but I haven't found this to be so. Sure, he's a little particular. He has to have everything in the proper order. He likes to play in the dirt, but he has to come to me every minute or two and have me wipe off his hands. If he walks through a door, he has to shut it behind him. And if Daddy takes off his glasses or puts on his jester hat, there are tears. We could refuse to humor him and let him scream about it. Or we could adapt, knowing this is just a stage- which for the most part is what we do. He's learning the universe has rules, and it comforts him to have them be predictable. I think that's okay.

The one frustrating thing is choices. Turns out, contrary to what I've always heard, it's better not to give him any. If I ask, "Do you want ham?" the answer is "Ham!" But if I ask, "Do you want ham or turkey?" there's silence. So I ask, "Do you want ham?" "No, turkey!" "All right, here's some turkey." "No, haaaaaaam!!" Tears. I try to give him both but he throws them at me and flings himself down crying, whereupon he hurts himself and requires comforting. Not. Worth. It. If he doesn't want the first choice, I offer other things ... but it can't be an either-or.

I never thought I'd say this, but lately I'm more excited than regretful with each new breakthrough. I'm sure it helps to know there will be someone else to be cute and helpless soon. But the main thing is just that he gets more fun and hilarious every day. Like at dinner tonight, he was playing with a piece of a turkey wing. First he said it looked like someone dancing. Then he said it looked like a plane. Then he said he was going to go to the library on a turkey plane. Where does he come up with this stuff?

Anyway, it's been great. I know I've said this about at least five ages before, but THIS is the best age. Definitely.

I think we're weaned!

2011-11-26T07:28:00.000-05:00

Marko last nursed on Sunday night.

I was not thinking, "Aw, this could be the last time. I had better savor the moment." I was thinking, as I do every time, "Ow ow ow, please God, let him never do this again." So I haven't been feeling any regret or nostalgia. Instead I'm really enjoying snuggling with no nursing, and often no kicking or hair-pulling either! It's just been a really bumpy road, so that my feelings are of relief rather than regret.

It's been a slow process, which has been going on for a long time. Since he was a year old, I stopped offering very often. I would nurse him when he asked and at naptime. A month or two later, I started giving him cow's milk in a cup, because he seemed unsatisfied with nursing and wasn't nursing enough to get all I felt he should. A month or two after that, I started offering milk in a cup sometimes when he asked to nurse ... and three out of four times, he'd pick the cup.

For awhile we weren't nursing to sleep at night, and once I got pregnant we rarely were at naptime either. So he went down to an average of twice a day, and then an average of once a day -- twice some days, none some days. If he persistently asked to nurse and wouldn't be distracted, I nursed him. Or if he cried and couldn't be easily comforted otherwise, I nursed him.

Night-weaning him was relatively easy because he was sleeping through the night for awhile there. When he started waking again, he had no particular expectations, and didn't mind a spell in the rocking chair or me lying beside him in bed instead of nursing. On some nights I got frustrated and nursed him, but by the time I was about two months pregnant, he was basically night-weaned.

Then, when we stopped stroller-walking to sleep and started nursing to sleep, I decided sleep time was the only nursing time. So that was when the real work of weaning happened -- I no longer nursed him on request. Mostly it was pretty easy because he wasn't nursing much anyway and I was nursing him twice a day without him having to ask. But sometimes he did ask. I would generally not say no. No is an ultimatum, and it's like waving a red flag in front of my toddler. Instead I'd say, "Oh, is this naptime then? We only nurse at naptime. Let me change your diaper and get you ready for nap. Then we'll go in the dark bedroom and nurse in the rocking chair." That apparently sounded like too much of a production for him, because he'd usually change his mind. Sometimes he'd go along with it, only to get distracted by the change of room or the new diaper.

One hard-and-fast rule I had at this time was never to nurse anywhere but in the rocking chair in his room. I had heard that kids are often reminded of nursing by mom sitting in a place where she usually nurses, and I didn't want to give up the couch or the office chair. I would happily snuggle and read with him on the couch, but if he asked to nurse, we had to move into the bedroom. Not only did that discourage him from following through on his request, he started asking less because there was nothing to remind him of nursing.

The big challenge was getting him to sleep without nursing, especially because John's help isn't always available. He is there for bedtimes, but two nights a week he has class, and he's only there for naptime on weekends. I think that one was just a matter of being ready to go to sleep without nursing. Going to sleep with Daddy whenever available was a big help, but for a long time, if I was there, he'd want to nurse. This was made worse by my sitting in the rocking chair -- John would stand up and bounce him, but my back is no longer up to that because of my PGP. So I would sit in the rocking chair while we sang songs and snuggled, but when he wanted to go to sleep, he'd ask to nurse.

I weaned him off the left side when I was about two months pregnant because the pain was so bad on that side. It turned out to be a really good idea -- because I could hold him with his head on that side, and nursing wouldn't even occur to him unless he switched his head over to the right side. All the same, he just wouldn't settle down to sleep without nursing, so I was in the frustrating position of offering nursing to a child I really wanted to wean, just to get him to sleep. Our sleep problems were just a bigger issue than nursing was.

Every once in a blue moon, I'd get him to sleep without nursing. I did on Sunday, for nap. John went into the shower right when Marko decided he wanted to sleep, because he was going to have to leave right after that. Marko melted down in a big way. He just couldn't be consoled. I brought him into the bedroom and just rocked him and rocked him while he sobbed and screamed for Daddy. (Which, of course, broke my heart -- even though I knew most of his upset was because he was tired rather than because he would have actually been comforted by Daddy.) After what seemed like forever, he settled into my shoulder, stopped crying, and fell asleep.

Sunday night, John was gone again and I couldn't repeat the performance, so I nursed him. But on Monday, he again didn't get even a little sleepy until he suddenly had a huge meltdown -- this time two hours past his usual naptime. I took him into the bedroom, and he started crying for Daddy again. I offered to nurse him, and he refused. I offered to sing a song about Daddy, which he accepted. I sang "Bye Baby Bunting" probably a hundred times, never changing a word or a pitch. His eyes just zoned out and then fell shut.

Monday night, John put him to sleep. Tuesday nap, he slept in the car. Tuesday night, John put him to sleep, though I was thinking I might be able to on my own. Wednesday nap, he fell asleep easily, again two hours late, but without asking to nurse. Instead I sang the refrain to "Big Green Tractor" (a song he loves and I hate) about a million times, and he passed out. Wednesday night, I was rocking him to sleep when he asked to nurse, and I passed him over to Daddy, who easily put him to sleep. Thursday nap, he slept in the car. Thursday night, John put him to sleep. Friday nap, John put him to sleep. Friday night, John put him to sleep.

So, it's circumstances as much as anything else that have helped us here. Each time he's either been really sleepy and ready to go down, or else John's been there to help. But we now know it's possible. And John will be here every sleep-time till Monday, so we can solidify the whole no-nursing thing. By that time it will have been a week. And, though I'm sure we'll hit some bumps, I'm to the point where I'd rather see him skip a nap than nurse him again.

So maybe it's not Marko's readiness. Maybe it's mine. I've been continuing nursing him up to now because it was easier to nurse than to consider alternatives. Now, I've decided I'd rather try all the other possibilities rather than nurse. Marko himself doesn't care -- attention is attention, food is food, sleep is sleep, and he doesn't really care the form it comes in. So when he occasionally asks to nurse, I pick him up, read him a book, sing him a song, get him a cup of milk, and he's perfectly content.

I think I will mark this down as a win: weaned (I think), with no crying, no pacifier, no thumbsucking, and no other issues. In the end, it turned out not to be a huge deal. It is so reassuring to me to know that there is such a thing as gentle parent-led weaning. It didn't have to involve cold-turkey and screaming. We just both adjusted, bit by bit, until whether we nursed or not didn't really matter, and then we stopped.

I'm happy about it. We had a good run -- almost 20 months -- despite so many difficulties throughout. I believe I've given him what he needed. I would be quite willing to nurse the next baby longer, if I didn't get pregnant (I'm thinking nursing through pregnancy is just not something I can do ... though you never know if it might be different next time) and they wanted to. But for Marko, I think this was the right amount of time. I'm glad I nursed him this long, and I'm glad I'm not nursing him any more.

I don't care if you say "Happy Holidays"

2011-11-25T08:34:00.003-05:00

It's funny that my opinion is even controversial.

I just keep hearing that people are upset because the store clerk wished them "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas." And I really don't see the big deal.

You see, if I bumped into an atheist or a Muslim or a Jew on Christmas, I wouldn't want to be rude and say "Merry Christmas." That's like saying, "Enjoy your dinner" to the waitress at a restaurant. She's not eating. You are. And if someone isn't celebrating Christmas, why wish them a happy one?

But most people celebrate some kind of holiday between late November and early January. There's Thanksgiving, St. Nicholas Day, St. Lucy's Day, Christmas, Hannukah, Eid (depending on the year -- not this one), Winter Solstice, Boxing Day, St. Stephen's Day, New Year's Day, and Epiphany. I don't know which particular grab-bag of days you choose to celebrate. But it's a safe bet that you celebrate at least some of them. So, happy holidays.

I say Merry Christmas, very happily, to people I know celebrate it. Sometimes I just say it to strangers because most of them are likely to celebrate Christmas. But if I ran a business, I'd probably just say happy holidays to my customers to make sure I hit on something they actually want me to say to them.

I mean, saying Merry Christmas is about spreading goodwill. It's not a political act. And if it is offensive to some people, if it makes them feel left out, if they just don't want to me say it, it's not exactly going to spread goodwill to them, is it? It's not actually going to make them have a merry Christmas. It's just going to make them have a grumpy Hannukah.

The same goes for Christmas trees, Santa, and "Christmas" carols (you know, the kind that doesn't mention Jesus?). These are secular symbols of a secular holiday, which happens (like the feast celebrating Christ's birth) to be called Christmas. If people want to call it a holiday tree rather than a Christmas tree, why should I object? There's nothing intrinsic to it that makes a tree a Christian symbol. If a Muslim wants to do Santa with her family, why should I care? So long as no one tells me I'm a hypocrite because I claim to be Catholic and yet hang mistletoe, which was adopted ages and ages ago from paganism. There's nothing intrinsically pagan about mistletoe.

I admit that I celebrate both a religious Christmas (nativity scene, midnight Mass, Advent, O Antiphons, Epiphany) and a secular Christmas (gifts, tree, lights, "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire," stockings, candy canes). It doesn't bother me if other people celebrate a secular-only Christmas, or no Christmas at all. If you're not crashing into my house, tearing down my lights and tree, I don't see how it's any skin off my nose. I don't like having to listen to "Grandma Ran Over By a Reindeer," though. So do us all a favor and keep that on your headphones.

I know a lot of people like to say we're really a Christian nation. But what does that even mean? We have no official religion. We CAN'T have an official religion -- it's in our founding documents, and for a good reason. The founding fathers wanted to make a place where people of all religions could come and interact as equals. Yes, many of them were Christian. Many of them were also Freemasons. But we're not a Masonic nation. We are, for better or worse, a pluralistic nation. We generally agree that we were made by a higher power and that it does us good to give thanks to that power (hence Thanksgiving, In God We Trust, and so forth), but not everyone here thinks that, and our tradition is to respect their belief (or lack thereof). Of course I would love for everyone to be Christians. But I don't want them converting just because they're tired of being snubbed for being something else ... if that even worked, which I've never heard of it doing. If we wanted to force this country to be Christian, we would have to rustle up a much more serious persecution than insisting people say "Merry Christmas."

Maybe I'm too young to see it. I wasn't raised the 50's where everyone was Christian, or if they weren't, they kept their mouths shut about it. I was raised in a world that, from my point of view, is actively hostile to my beliefs. Pornography is forbidden by my religion, but it's everywhere. Church-going is mandated, but many people have no choice but to work Sundays. The culture, as a whole, is not at all Christian. And, though most people in this country do believe in God and the Bible, I have never found it safe to assume that a random person I meet shares a single opinion of mine. (Being raised Catholic in Seattle is good training for this, I suppose.)

I never thought of this country as a Christian nation. Medieval England? That was a Christian nation. Renaissance Italy? Ditto. But I always drew a lot more parallels between our time and the time of the ancient Romans. (Any of my Latin students will tell you so.) True, we are not actively persecuted, except perhaps here or there when we run for public office or quote Scripture in a public school. But we're not supported either. We are just trying to do our thing, while surrounded by people who are doing something else. We don't let it get to us more than we can help. We shut our eyes at the Coliseum (so to speak) and we don't burn incense to Jupiter. We live the best lives we can and hope that someone will ask us why we're so happy or what gives us the strength to love our neighbor. Then we can tell them. That's why St. Paul said that we should "always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you a reason for your hope." He didn't say "Build a society so Christian that everyone else will feel isolated and awkward because they're not."

If I can better show Christ to others by saying "happy holidays" by saying "Merry Christmas," then I will do so. And I am well aware that those who say "happy holidays" aren't doing it so that they will "stick it to the Christians" and "prove that Christianity is no longer relevant." They're doing it because they are trying to say something that will make people happy without making anyone feel left out. Is that such a terrible thing?

Happy Feast of St. Catherine of Alexandria/Thanksgiving Leftover Day! (I refuse to wish you a happy Black Friday. There is nothing remotely happy about that quasi-holiday. I do not celebrate it, and honestly can't understand why people do. But, if you are celebrating it today, be safe and remember no sale is worth endangering yourself or others.)

An exercise in futility

2011-11-21T20:24:00.002-05:00

This morning I was feeling cranky. My to-do list was long, and every single item on it seemed like an exercise in futility. Such as the following:

1. Wash dark laundry. In three days, everything I washed will somehow be dirty again. Also, I'm almost certain to forget some crucial thing, like my pajama pants or the diaper covers.

2. Wash diapers ... ditto, except it takes longer to wash them and less time to get them all dirty again.

3. Wash dishes. I will not even be done with the dishes before I start making more dishes.

4. Put away clean dishes. Since I have just washed all the most commonly used dishes, I'm going to put them in the cupboard where they will stay for eight hours tops before being taken out and used again. Leaving them in the rack would save me a lot of time.

5. Fold laundry. This is just ridiculous. Why are we required to arrange our clothes into geometrical shapes before we pull them out again, unfold them, and put them on? Sorting I can sort of see the point of ... but folding? I'll be lucky if they stay folded long enough to get into the dresser drawers.

6. Make yogurt. I do like yogurt. But it takes so long to make that nobody's going to want it by the time it's done. Then it will be gone in no time flat. Whereas if I keep it as milk, it will be gone in about the same amount of time. It gets eaten either way.

7. Put on clothes. I happen to like my pajamas. I'm not going anywhere, and the baby doesn't care. And if I put on a sweater before John gets home, he's unlikely to notice that I'm wearing the same sweatpants as I wore to bed.

8. Pick up baby toys in living room. Seeing as he is running around yelling at the top of his lungs while pulling more and more toys out and throwing them around, this is the biggest exercise in futility of them all. Every minute I spend cleaning, the place will get messier. But if I wait for all the toys to be out, eventually it will reach a critical mass of messiness and I will only have to pick up the toys one time. A little tripping between now and then won't kill me.

I am happy to report that I overcame my feelings of futility and did everything on this list. Well, except #7. Couldn't quite work myself up to that one. Other than that, it's a relief to have clean laundry, clean diapers, a clean kitchen (cleaned once by me, and once by John), yogurt in the fridge for an instant snack tomorrow, a kind-of-tidy living room, and clothes in the drawers. At least, in John's drawers. My clothes aren't folded because I simply couldn't see a reason to do it. But at least I now can find my underwear without having to dig through a pile of John's shirts.

The downside is that I am achy and exhausted and my legs are cramping up. I tend to do all my achieving in one day to buy myself several days of comparative slacking off. It used to be great because the more I did, the more momentum I worked up and the more I wanted to do. Now that I'm pregnant and getting by on six non-continuous hours of sleep a night, I wear myself out with this plan. But everything always needs to get done on Mondays!

Surely I'm not the only one who feels this unmotivated about the housework from time to time?

Primal meatballs

2011-11-20T20:42:00.003-05:00

I've been in the market lately for good gluten-free snacks. But since I'm not much into replacement foods -- gluten-free breads and gluten-free noodles are expensive and not really the same anyway -- it means I've been coming up with all new recipes.

Tonight I made meatballs, my second attempt at doing them without breadcrumbs, and they turned out great. The carrot stands in for the breadcrumbs, to lighten up the meatballs and stretch the meat out a bit. (Plus I don't believe that tomato sauce counts as a vegetable.) At the amount I've put in, you can't taste it, though you could add more.

Primal meatballs

1/2 onion, grated or very finely diced
1 clove garlic, grated
1 carrot, grated
(all three could just go in a food processor if you weren't too lazy to get it out ... plus it will give you the very fine texture you need so your meatballs aren't lumpy)
1 lb. ground beef

Mash everything together with your hands. Roll the meatballs together firmly, so they don't come apart -- any size is fine. Brown in a skillet, rolling them around to get all the sides. Then drop into your sauce, simmer for awhile, and serve.

Spaghetti sauce goes well, and Marko didn't miss the noodles. Or for Swedish meatballs, simmer meatballs 1/4-1/2 cup of beef broth, and add 1/4 cup sour cream when ready to serve.

*

Another "recipe" that I love to do is meat roll-ups. Simply spread a piece of deli meat with cream cheese and wrap around a piece of steamed asparagus. Delicious -- and the kiddo can run around the house with it. Win!

The one danger of gluten-free cooking is running out of food. I meant to go to the store yesterday, and the trip had to get put off till today. Marko and I were living off of applesauce and frozen berries! No dipping into the pantry for pasta and tomato sauce; almost all we've been eating is fresh stuff -- which is great, but requires some advance menu planning.

Having a dog is no picnic

2011-11-19T10:38:00.005-05:00

I always had pets growing up. Fish, birds, hamsters, and cats. And I loved them all. You feed them, you give them water, you watch them, and if you want to ignore them a little, they will be fine. If you want to go on a long weekend trip, you can fill up an extra food bowl and your cat will be fine. If you are gone all day, your cat will still love you when you come back.

Dogs are not like that. Dogs are demanding.

Our dog is kind of a pain. He always wants to be with you. And with you means on your lap. He is by no means lap-sized, but I can't sit on the floor without him sloooowly edging into my lap. If I put him in his kennel, he whines. If I put him outside, he digs 847 holes and tears my compost pile to shreds. And if I ignore him, something always ends up getting destroyed: Marko's toys, two spatulas, my underwear, diapers (usually dirty, nasty ones).

I suppose I should be thankful. He is now potty trained, so as long as I remember to take him out every six hours or so, he won't go in the house. And he will go to his kennel when told to do so ... and after a little complaining, does go to sleep. He's not a bad dog. He's pretty much an average dog.

But he takes a heck of a lot more attention than a cat! I try to keep anything chewable out of his reach ... but, hello, we have a toddler. With a long reach. Who likes to take toys and kitchen implements and clothes and present them to the dog for chewing.

A million times a day, I end up saying, "No, we do NOT ride the dog! No, we do NOT sit on the dog! No, we do NOT put our hands inside the dog's mouth! Oh, poor baby, he bit you." I can hardly blame the dog for biting when the kid put his hands inside his mouth. He can't exactly help it.

Then Marko dances around with a stick or toothbrush or spatula yelling, "Hit de dog! Hit de dog!" So that has to be stopped.

Then they both insist on sitting in the laundry basket, on top of all the clean clothes, where there is not even close to enough space for them. So they shove each other until the basket falls over.

Then the dog starts rolling around the floor biting himself (one of his favorite and most idiotic activities) and Marko has to be a part of that. So he shoves his head into the dog's belly. Which usually gets him pawed or scratched or bitten, and there are tears over that.

And then I separate them. The dog goes in the kennel (for his own protection!) and Marko stays outside. And oh, the tears! The drama! Want doggieeeeeeee!

Pretty soon, though, he is cheering himself up by taking all his foam puzzle pieces and dropping them into the kennel, where the dog is chewing them to shreds. Delightful.

Every morning, the first thing Marko wants is Gilbert. He sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and demands Gilbert. If Gilbert is out, Marko wants him to be in. Or we all play outside and the two of them ignore the 97 million sticks in the yard and fight over the same stick.

No, having a dog is not at all like having a cat.

On the other hand, Marko is as thrilled to have a dog as it is possible for a little boy to be. So I guess I can't complain that much. I wanted our little boy to have a dog of his own, and he's got one. But it sure is a lot of trouble.

Ooh, good stuff on the internet!

2011-11-17T12:22:00.002-05:00

I was doing my usual meandering around the internet this morning when I found a series of really cool blog posts that I totally agree with. They're about the role of women and moms.

You know I'm a stay-at-home mom and I'm pretty vocal about my support for that choice. But it's really about the kids having a parent with them, not about "my role as a woman." So I'm okay with stay-at-home dads and working moms. I don't see that it makes a huge difference. We've had some debate on that topic in the combox recently, which has been fun.

This woman here agrees with me. Start with her post In which I am a working mother and proud of it. And then, if that piques your interest, try this: In which I wonder what it means to be "keeper of the home." And if you're not tired of the topic, read her conclusion here: In which I am a keeper of my home.

The summary is more or less this: God does not give us a commandment that women have to stay home. We do what we do because we feel it is God's will for us for that time, and it can change without changing our essence.

At some point I really should start writing about this issue more myself. When I was younger, I was only ever exposed to the "liberal" point of view, which seemed to consider stay-at-home moms poor, oppressed slaves to the housework, while working women were triumphant and happy in their freedom from having to be with their kids. So naturally I spent my time emphasizing the importance of women who stay home with their kids. But now I keep reading fundamentalist blog after fundamentalist blog (seriously, why do I read this stuff? it's a sickness) and seeing people lay down the law on everyone and insisting that not only do women not need a career, regardless of their season of life, but they don't need an education either, and while we're at it, they should be under the headship of a man from cradle to grave. And that gets my dander up even worse, so that I start sounding like quite the liberal feminist. I see it as a matter of balance, and I have to defend that balance from both extremes.

Speaking of extremes. Check out this list of questions a dad should ask a young man who shows interest in his daughter. The Spanish Inquisition has nothing on this guy.

I did have John call my dad before he escorted me to a dance in freshman year. In retrospect, it was kind of silly to make him do that, seeing as it wasn't even really meant as a date. But my dad's only real question was, "Are you a Knight of Columbus? No? Oh, too bad." He may have asked some other stuff. But the conversation took five minutes, because (as my dad told me later), "If a guy holds up to your standards, there's no chance of him falling short of mine."

Let me tell you, if I were a guy and knew an interview like that was in store for me, I'd probably flee the country. My goodness. Some favorites: "Describe your standards of dress for women." (Isn't that more a question you would ask a woman?) "Have you ever been exposed to pornography? If so, explain the extent and the circumstances." (Awkward.) "What has been your prior experience with dating and romance? Have you ever kissed or been physically intimate in any way with a girl/woman? If so, explain the circumstances." (I'm not sure it's a father-in-law's business if the guy has kissed someone before. I could see the girl herself wanting to ask. But since this blog says that the "first affectionate touch" should be within marriage, well ... I guess it seemed an acceptable thing to ask.)

Well, I guess I've given you plenty to read. Enjoy, and I'd love to hear your opinions when you get back.

A bit about pelvic girdle pain

2011-11-16T11:37:00.005-05:00

When I was about five months pregnant with Marko, my back started to hurt. Right at the very lowest joint of my lower back, hovering around my right hip. It hurt when I was on my feet a lot (which I always was), when I drove a lot (which I always did), and when I carried any heavy weights (which I didn't do). It hurt at work and during choir practice. It hurt when I tried to roll over in bed. It got so John had to help me get out of bed in the morning. I couldn't stand on one foot to put my socks on or lie on my back, at all, ever. And the further along I got, the worse it got.

I asked my Ob/Gyn about it. I asked each new doctor (there were eight) at each visit. One said to ask my mom. One said it was sciatica. The nicest one said that I might try wearing different shoes and that she could write me a referral to a physical therapist. The shoes helped a little. I couldn't afford the therapist.

I asked Facebook about it. My aunt gave me a few stretches, which helped a tiny bit. Some suggested belly support girdles, which I never did try. Some suggested hot pads and hot water bottles and hot baths, which were all heaven. And everyone else told me to try to stay off my feet, which I did as best as I could.

I asked the internet about it. It said, "It's not sciatica, that's a misnomer. It's something else. 20% of women suffer from it. Suck it up."

When I was in labor, the most excruciating pain was in my pelvis. It hurt worse than the contractions, and of course got worse with the contractions. Then I had a baby, and no pain! At least, none that I noticed while staying off my feet recovering.

But when I got up again and started doing things, it started hurting again. Not a lot. Just a little twinge here and there. I adjusted the way I was wearing my Moby wrap, and it mostly went away. But if I walked too long or carried the baby too much, there it was again. Just a twinge. Nothing to worry about or even restrict what I was doing. Just enough to notice.

So I went back to Google and found more things out. Google said I had SPD -- symphysis pubis dysfunction. All the symptoms sounded about right. The discouraging part was where it said, "DO NOT by any means give birth in stirrups! That could cause permanent damage!" Great. SO GLAD Dr. Pushy took the time to do a Google search, find out what I had, and take precautions. Not. It always makes me mad when I find out something from five minutes of Googling that the doctors don't know. But then again, it took me awhile to find it, too, so whatever.

So I went along my merry way until one day a few months ago when I was walking home from the park and my back started to hurt. It's only a two-block walk. I thought, "This shouldn't be hurting. I wonder if I'm pregnant?" And I was. Little sprout was two weeks old and I was already beginning to hurt.

I'm 15 weeks pregnant now and it hurts about as bad as it did at 30 weeks last time. This makes me really nervous, thinking about the possibility of it getting worse. Every time I rake the leaves, do more than a little housework at a time, or take a walk, I'm pretty much out of commission for the rest of the day. I yelp when I turn over in bed, and I spend my time trying to figure out ways to avoid picking Marko up. I can lift him into his high chair, or carry him to bed. But I can't really rock him standing up, or bring him places he doesn't want to go, or let him come "UP UP UP" every time he demands it, without hurting a lot afterward.

I asked one of the midwives about it, briefly, at our appointment, and she said, "Well, you're pregnant now. You can't expect to be able to cart around a 25-pound toddler everywhere you go anymore. It's time to practice letting him walk." Which was good advice. Sooner or later he's going to have to learn to hold my hand and not dart into the street. We may as well practice now. Then the midwife showed me a couple of stretches, suggested yoga, and told me that the patients she's had with back pain in the past all found chiropractic work helpful.

So there I am. I decided to do more research on SPD to see if there was anything I could do myself, or anything I could avoid doing, that would help. And there is a lot of advice out there. The only thing that isn't quite right is that SPD affects that symphysis pubis -- the joint at the front of the pelvis, where the pubic bone is. And that isn't where the pain is for me. My symphysis pubis has always felt fine. And as a result, the advice to keep my legs together all the time to avoid those twinges has never helped at all.

Finally I landed on a page about pelvic girdle pain, also known as pelvic girdle instability, which actually IS, I'm almost sure, what I have. See, the pelvis has three joints: the symphysis pubis in the front and the sacroiliac joints in the back, on either side of the spine. My sacroiliac joints are the ones that hurt. SPD is just one kind of pelvic girdle pain, and I have another.

PGP is caused loosening ligaments in the pelvis. Of course this is completely natural, because the pelvis needs to loosen up to let the baby out. But it gets too floppy and unstable, and so the muscles take over to keep it steady. Those muscles get really, really sore from doing the pelvis's job. That's why a muscle right over my sacroiliac joint, on one side or the other, is always hurting. Heat and massage help, like they would for any tight, sore muscle.

I found two support pages for women with PGP: the Pelvic Instability Network Support page, and Pelvic Partnership. They both had some good tips. And they both agreed on one thing: the main thing that will make me feel better is to go to a chiropractor or physical therapist and get an adjustment to restore the symmetry of my pelvis. If it's relaxing symmetrically, the muscles shouldn't be called upon to do too much of the work.

So, that's a goal for whenever we have the time and money to do it. Meanwhile, I skip my walks (hardly healthy of me), lead Marko by the hand, and demand a backrub every night.

Anyone else suffer from this? I really recommend following the links in this post; I learned a lot.

Lessons learned from my first garden

2011-11-12T12:11:00.002-05:00

My garden is done ... almost. The cilantro went to seed. I pulled the basil. The tomatoes died. I picked the lettuce. The green beans finally died when they were covered in six inches of snow. The sugar snap peas are miraculously not only still alive, but still producing. I heard they were frost-resistant, but this is really impressive!

Anyway, it's time to look back and see what I learned this year. My goal for my 2011 garden was not to grow a lot of food, but to learn as much as I could. The bumper tomato and green bean crops were bonuses.

Lessons from 2011:

1. Cherokee Purple tomatoes are THE BEST for our climate. They grew like weeds, weren't touched by the blight that crippled the beefsteaks, and were still producing when the snow killed them. They also taste delicious.

2. Tomato cages are completely insufficient. Those tomatoes outgrew the cages in July. By November they were sprawled all over the ground looking sad and getting eaten by slugs. Next year I want to construct some kind of trellis -- basically just two two-by-fours at either end of the row, with a twine fence between them, so that I make an aisle where the plants can grow without toppling over. I think they will have to be at least seven feet high. These are some serious tomato plants.

3. I read that tomatoes will grow a taproot if they are direct-seeded in the ground. Considering our high winds and feast-and-famine rainstorms, I'm going to try it with a few next time.

4. You can plant green beans whenever. It really doesn't matter. I missed the ideal time, planted them two months later, and I still got too many. Next time I'll do it earlier so that when I'm sick of green beans, I can let the rest mature into dry beans. This time I didn't get many dry beans because they all wanted to rot off the vine in the fall rains.

5. Plant fewer green beans. I had eight plants, and they produced way too much.

6. Do better green bean trellises. The light string tied to a fence that I used was pretty pathetic. Because it was at an angle, the beans kept trying to go elsewhere. And then they started breaking and dumping my plants on the ground. And, since they were against the fence, I couldn't get behind the plants to pick the beans. Did you know beans like to produce on the non-sun side? I didn't, but now I do. I should leave room to go behind and pick, because bean leaves are pretty scratchy and irritating.

7. Pick beans every couple of days and process (can or freeze) right away. Otherwise you end up with nasty beans at the back of your fridge all the time.

8. The younger you pick beans, the better they are. I like them best when they're five or six inches long.

9. Peas are really a spring crop. They sprout and grow best when it's cold. Mine didn't survive August very well ... less than half sprouted, and then half of what sprouted died. It was after I'd written them off as a loss that five plants suddenly started growing like weeds -- right as the weather got cold. During the past month, the hardiest two plants have actually been producing pea pods for me! I get maybe two pods a week, so it's not exactly a success, but they are sure delicious.

10. Don't pick sugar snap peas too early. They're not like beans that way. I was picking tiny ones and complaining they were bitter, but today I picked a three-inch-long pod and it was like eating dessert!

11. Ditto on the pea trellises. They didn't grow up them at all, despite all my encouragement. They sprawled out of the bed and onto the lawn. Some grew up the bean vines.

12. I have no idea when the right time to plant lettuce is. I planted several times and most didn't turn out. I think the one that did was planted in early September. I only got five lettuces out of the whole bed, too. But I suspect they will grow better in the spring.

13. Plants planted in the spring may not need water in late summer and fall. But plants planted in the fall definitely do. They're weak and have small roots, and there's way less moisture than in spring. I had to water my lettuce daily, which was annoying because I'm used to watering once a week if at all.

14. Sow lettuce very shallowly. They really only need a sprinkling of dirt over the top of them. Once you've done that, TRY to keep the dog and toddler out.

15. Herbs are hard to sprout in the garden, but they grow great if you transplant them in.

16. A bit of nitrogen mid-season is a good boost if the leaves go yellow on any plant. There are lots of natural sources ... some of which may be in your own diaper pail. :P

17. Don't neglect going out to pick every day or two. It's easier than going to the store, you just have to remember to do it.

18. The backyard is probably the best place for the dog. And the toddler. It is just impossible to keep them both out of the garden beds.

19. A toddler will happily eat any vegetable if you pick it off the plant and hand it to him to munch on outside. But if you put it on a plate indoors? Not likely.

20. Turns out my backyard, which is "partial shade," will not grow anything. My green beans and raspberries back there died a pathetic death. The front yard is it for gardening.

21. Composting is great, but you have to remember to empty the bucket often! Otherwise you will dread doing it as the stuff within gets progressively nastier.

22. The veggies grown in your own garden will spoil you for storebought stuff forever. There is no comparison at all. Especially for tomatoes. I can't make myself spend $2.50 for a little plastic carton of tomatoes that taste like nothing.

22. Gardening doesn't actually take much work at all unless you want it to. The hardest part was digging the beds. Then planting or transplanting the plants takes a little time. For the rest of the season, you just check them for ten minutes a day or so, watering if you need to water and harvesting if you need to harvest. I didn't even have to weed much once the ground got all baked and hard ... nothing would grow there, but under the crust the soil was moist. Mulch would probably do a better job, though.

23. Green tomatoes that you pick at the end of the season will ripen indoors if you leave them long enough. Or make green enchilada sauce ... yum!

24. The parts of the tomato and green bean plants that were smothered by mulch or grass survived the snowstorm. In other words, you can protect plants from an early snow or frost by using mulch or other coverings. With our long growing season, I doubt I'll be too tempted, but you never know.

25. The veggies grown in your own garden will spoil you for storebought stuff forever. There is no comparison at all. Especially for tomatoes. I can't make myself spend $2.50 for a little plastic carton of tomatoes that taste like nothing.

What did you learn about gardening this year?

Are the Pearls responsible?

2011-11-10T11:39:00.003-05:00

There's this parenting book out there that gets a lot of love from one side, and a lot of hate from the other. Really, there's no one who's indifferent to it. The book is called To Train Up a Child, by Michael and Debi Pearl. The New York Times has recently brought the book to public attention again in this article. (Unfortunately, you need an account to read past the first page, so I can't comment in depth on that particular article.)

Here's the controversy. The book is extremely popular, especially in Fundamentalist Protestant families. Over 600,000 copies have been sold. But at this time, three children have died from beatings and other abuse which may be related to the book. It was found in the parents' homes, and the parents said they were following what the book said.

Of course the Pearls say their book had nothing to do with the deaths. They say that, in order for a child to die, the parents must have not followed the instructions in the book. And they claim that the parents must have lost their temper, and that sort of thing is exactly what the book warns against and tries to prevent.

However, I've read the book. My mom got it from someone years ago, and was reading it. At first she was impressed: it taught calmness and consistency -- and what parent couldn't use more of those? But then she started making a face as she read it. "It says to spank babies who wiggle on the changing table with a switch!" So I went and read the whole book.

The philosophy is pretty simple. It's based on conditioning. You condition your child from a very early age (though there's no particular age limit for starting) to obey you instantly. When they don't obey instantly, they get spanked. It should never be the hand, but always a "rod" of some sort. The Pearls recommend willow wands, wooden spoons, or flexible plumbing line. There is no specific limit on the amount of time spent spanking the child or the number of licks, but instead it is to continue until the child "submits." You can tell a child has submitted because they are no longer screaming, struggling, or trying to shield themselves from the blows, but are lying quietly and maybe softly crying.

Children raised in this system from birth do learn how to make the spankings stop. Though it's contrary to their instincts, they learn to stifle their cries and hold still so they don't involuntarily resist. And they hop to obey their parents' slightest command, because they don't want to be hit.

But there are "stubborn" children who just don't seem to figure this out. The same goes for adopted children (all three of the children who died were adopted) who are subjected to this system at an older age. They simply CAN'T stop crying or struggling. So the beatings continue. That is exactly what Pearl recommends.

I simply can't see where in the book there is any warning against the sort of things that have been killing children. The Pearls assume that every child will submit eventually. Lydia Schatz didn't. Perhaps she didn't know how. They say right out that no child will starve himself to death rather than obey, so it's fine to withhold food from a child until he "submits." Hana Williams apparently hadn't read that part. I see no evidence that the parents were angry. They simply continued on with a discipline system that wasn't working, and assumed they just needed to punish harder to achieve the goal (explicit in the Pearl book) of "breaking their child's will."

The Pearls presumably were not aware that numerous small bruises release dangerous toxins into the blood and can overload the kidneys, causing death. It is possible to kill a child without hitting hard enough to break a bone or injure an organ. But since they must be aware of this now, there's really no excuse for continuing to sell this book without some kind of warning.

In other words, yes, I believe they are morally responsible for teaching people to strike their children and not telling them that they have to stop. I've heard horrible stories of people raised under this system ... stories of being locked in dark closets for hours, deprived of food for days, all because they were believed to be "obstinate." Sometimes, they just didn't know how to correct their actions. But instead of teaching them how to do better, the parents believed, based on this book, that every misbehavior is a power struggle between them and their children -- and that they must win at all costs.

I don't for a second believe that these three cases are the only cases of child abuse by people following this book. In fact, I can't quite see how following this book could be anything but child abuse. Children are deliberately placed in situations where they will disobey (tempting a toddler with a forbidden object, for instance) and then punished when they do. They are required to maintain a cheerful disposition at all times -- yes, crying could be cause for a spanking! The goal is total, instant, unquestioning obedience. No acknowledgement is made of the child's intrinsic right to free will, or the reality that he will grow up and leave home, at which point he needs to know something other than just obedience.

But the worst of it is that this book, like others of its kind, pressures parents with the fear that if they don't follow these instructions, their children will end up rebellious teenagers who are impossible to restrict or control in any way. That's just scare tactics. Obviously there is a possible medium between beating your children several times a day and letting them walk all over you. You can teach, instruct, convince, and when necessary enact reasonable, harmless consequences.

But please, please, whatever you do, don't buy that awful book. You will not ever hear Dr. Sears, or Elizabeth Pantley, or Ray Guarendi, saying, "Well, it's true that many of our readers have killed their children, but we don't think it's related to their books." You can't accidentally kill your child by rocking them to sleep or explaining why we don't hit or making them write sentences. Why not stick with what is obviously safe?

Oh no, it worked

2011-11-09T20:08:00.003-05:00

About two months ago, Marko started having ... issues. The main one was diarrhea. I figured it was all the grapes he was eating, but when we finished the box of grapes and didn't buy more, the diarrhea stuck around.

Then the diarrhea caused a horrible bleeding diaper rash -- despite the fact that Marko wears a diaper less than half the time. Then the rash caused night waking, as he would wake up screaming for his diaper to be changed because it was hurting him. Then I also noticed a few odd welts on him, kind of like blisters -- one on his shoulder, one on his finger, one on his tummy. It was puzzling, and, to me, worrisome. I am not the type to shake off unexplained symptoms... I always want to be sure it's not a sign of anything horrible.

I thought, "Perhaps it's just because he's weaning." But at the time the problems started, his nursing had steadied out into twice per day. When he was down to once per day, he didn't have this problem.

Then I thought, "Perhaps it's all the cow's milk he's drinking. Maybe he's not really ready for it yet." So we switched to coconut milk (which he didn't like) and then almond milk. It didn't make a difference.

But I thought, "Maybe it's an actual food sensitivity." You might remember that we had that issue while he was still exclusively nursing. At least, I think we did. I went on a strict elimination diet, and every time I cheated, he had issues (screaming, diaper rash, refusing to eat). And while I was still on that diet -- down to just eliminating chicken and tomatoes -- we also went grain-free... more or less. Family meals were grain-free, but since it was for John's benefit and not mine, I did eat bread at lunchtime and the occasional cookie. Eventually I reintroduced chicken and tomatoes, and had no problem. Once he was eating solid food, I carefully tested him on those foods -- no reaction. I figured his gut had just matured and he no longer had any food sensitivities. I kept him grain-free till a year, though I've heard two years is better. I just couldn't think of what to feed him and caved to giving him crackers all the time.

But, of course, I hadn't introduced any new foods lately. He was eating what he always eats. So it wasn't a case of simply going back and cutting out things I'd lately introduced. Our diet has little variation, and there was definitely nothing new. My only recourse was to guess and check different sensitivities ... which would take awhile. Since it's him and not me, I can't cut him back to nothing but rice for a couple of days like I did with me. He demands variety, and it's hard enough to deny him even one thing he likes (which lately means a second or third banana). I had to cut out one thing a week.

First I tried to eliminate all dairy, not just his bedtime milk. But in our house, this is very hard to accomplish. I kept accidentally giving him things with butter in them, or sprinkling cheese on his noodles. I probably eat dairy 3-4 times a day -- it was hard to catch it all. But finally I did get a solid week of pretty nearly no dairy. It didn't make the slightest difference. (I did heal the diaper rash, mostly, by going almost entirely diaper-free [NOT recommended for a kid with diarrhea, but what can you do?] and slathering him with Desitin every night. But it would reappear at the slightest provocation.)

So I thought, maybe it's gluten. And then I accidentally gave him a ton of biscuits. I am so unaware of what we eat these days! And that's after all those months of elimination diets for the whole family, too. After several falls from the wagon, I finally managed to get 24 hours of giving him absolutely no gluten. (Since I am not into buying a ton of alternative flours or breads, the only grains he had were rice and a little corn.)

To my mixed relief and disappointment, the diarrhea instantly resolved. Relief, because I'm glad to know what the problem is and have fixed it. Disappointment, because I was really hoping it wouldn't be gluten. Gluten is really hard to eliminate. Couldn't it have been, I don't know, squash? I would like to believe that it just coincidentally resolved on its own, but it's been going on for more than a month. I don't think that would happen -- though I may do a gluten challenge down the road to be sure.

It's been four days, and the problems haven't returned. His diaper rash is just a pink scarified area (poor kid!) and the welts seem to be healing up, too.

He's still not sleeping worth a darn. A month and a half of trouble sleeping doesn't resolve overnight, and he has a cold, too. But his cold is getting better, and last night he only woke up twice, and for short times (though I was so exhausted I fell asleep on his bedroom floor before I found out they were going to be short times). And we have been getting him to bed before eight every night. So I guess we're making progress. I'm going to just assume his sleep problems are not gluten-related.

I've been eating less gluten, too, though still a little. Yesterday I had a PBJ ... and very quickly got a stomachache and headache. Huh. Today I had no gluten at all, and my usual gassy belly (which I thought was unavoidable in pregnancy) hasn't appeared ... despite eating plenty of chili for dinner. I do NOT want to go gluten-free. I love bread and pasta way too much. But perhaps it's just what we all need right now.

Maybe Marko will grow out of this. Many kids do grow out of their sensitivities. I sure hope so, because I hear gluten-free baking is no picnic, and I know gluten-free products are expensive. I don't want to have to plan around this forever!

And a part of me is tempted to cheat. Hey, so gluten gives him diarrhea. A little gluten should be fine, though, right? Because a little diarrhea never hurt anyone. But I'm trying to take the diarrhea (and other issues) as a sign that something is wrong. It's cluing me into something going on in his digestive system, something not good. If gluten causes a negative reaction that I can see, there may be more things I can't see, and the safe course is just not to give him any.

But so far, it's been okay. It's been pulling me out of my meal-planning rut and helping me try new things. This week we had minestrone (with rice instead of macaroni, sigh) and white bean chili. Tomorrow I'm going to make lasagna, with regular noodles for us and mushrooms for Marko. (I don't think he'll notice the difference -- he loves mushrooms.) I'm going to have to keep thinking, though, because I'm already tired of chicken-and-rice and fish-and-rice combos. I think I'd better break out the potatoes on Friday, for the sake of a change. Perhaps some oven fries?

Anyone else go gluten-free with their families? Did the kids ever grow out of it?

Evolution of an independent eater

2011-11-08T00:29:00.002-05:00

Welcome to the November Carnival of Natural Parenting: Kids in the Kitchen

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared how kids get involved in cooking and feeding. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

I had a lot of trouble nursing Marko (to be honest, I am still having trouble with it, even though he's almost weaned), so I guess it is only fair that I have never had any trouble getting him to eat solid food.

I had been planning on making all his baby food myself, until I found out about baby-led weaning. Let the baby feed himself the same stuff you're eating? I was sold. And I never had to suggest it to Marko .... he was trying to help himself out of my bowl for quite awhile before I gave in and let him eat little bits of carrot out of my stew.

I confess -- he was a little shy of six months when we started. And he hadn't developed the pincer grasp. But he was so eager to eat. I think he was still hungry from all our nursing difficulties. I let him at it, just a meal a day, and he took to it enthusiastically.

Since we'd had trouble already with food sensitivities, I was very, very careful about what I let him have. We'd try a new food every week or so. Some were huge hits: avocado, pumpkin, refried beans. (That last one was equal parts food and finger paint.) Others seemed to disagree with him: peas, sweet potato, cheese. I let him have a tiny bit of cheese at seven months, and he got a bleeding diaper rash. I felt so guilty. But by ten months, he was eating dairy of all kinds with no problem.

Meat was a HUGE hit. He would happily eat little crumbles of ground beef off his high chair tray as long as I kept handing them out. It's funny that doctors always tell you to give beef later, because it went down better than anything else he'd eaten. (Not to be too disgusting, but it was the only food that didn't show up later, unchanged, in his diaper.)

He wasn't much more than six months when he suddenly started using his pincer grasp to grab tiny pieces of food off his tray. The smaller it was, the happier he was to pick it up. Since I delayed grains till a year (having heard they are not very easy for babies to digest), we skipped the cheerios and gave him diced cooked carrots, shredded pickled carrots, diced avocado, and little bits of ground beef or beans.

Suddenly, around a year old, food was where it was at. He would refuse to nurse and reach eagerly for his high chair. I have to admit, it made me feel rejected. But he still did nurse several times a day, so I lived with it. The hard part was planning food for him to eat everywhere we went. Gone were the days of being able to leave the house with nothing but a couple of spare diapers! Now I needed a box of crackers or a banana in the diaper bag, too.

The only issue at this point was his longing for soupy foods -- yogurt, applesauce, soup -- and inability to use a spoon. I tried to show him how it worked, but he just couldn't manage it. The food would land in his hair or his lap every time. So I reluctantly fed him these with a spoon. My goodness, what a lot of trouble! The boy was absolutely willing to cooperate, but it was still tiresome to have to keep ladling the food into his mouth while I went hungry. I much preferred eating my food while he ate his.

A couple of months ago, it finally clicked. He grabbed a spoon, dunked it in the applesauce, and started shoveling it in. What a relief! He happily feeds himself pretty much anything now. Of course, whenever he uses a spoon, there are plenty of spills, to say nothing of what he dumps off the side of the high chair to share with the dog.

One problem that's surfaced lately is his reluctance to get in the high chair. No matter how hungry he is, sometimes he just won't get in there. So most of the food I've been giving him lately is fine to eat on the go. Right now he's roaming the living room with a peanut butter sandwich. I don't mind. It's much more important to me that he has good food to eat than that he spend his time buckled into a high chair. Sometimes we practice sitting in a big people chair at the table, but he's a little short for it yet.

He's also a lot pickier than he used to be. I used to be able to plop any food I wanted on his tray and watch it disappear. Now that he can express what he wants, he has a lot of demands. Sometimes it involves some negotiation: "Banana!" "Nope, out of bananas. Do you want a sandwich?" "Yogurt!" "Yes, yogurt is something you can have!" I don't worry too much about the balance of his diet, because I don't feed him unhealthy food at all (as a general rule) and because he always eats what we have for dinner.

In fact, as long as we grown-ups are eating something, he will try it and like it: kimchi, salad, fish, spinach -- anything. But lately, morning sickness has gotten me making things for myself that sound good and yet turn my stomach when I try them. So I put them in the fridge, and when Marko's hungry, I pull them out. He hasn't seen me eat them, so he can't know I find them disgusting, but he absolutely refuses to try a single bite. I think it's his instinct to watch me and to eat what I eat -- so unless I eat something and show that I enjoy it, he doesn't trust it. Conversely, I have to be careful not to eat candy or junk food in front of him, or he will beg for it, even though he doesn't know what it is.

Can I promise everyone will have an independent, adventurous eater if they practice baby-led weaning and show a good example of eating and enjoying various foods? Of course not. But at the same time, I don't think it could hurt, either. Certainly it's worked well for Marko, and I intend to try the same things with the new baby.

***

Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

(This list will be live and updated by afternoon November 8 with all the carnival links.)

Baking & letting go — Cooking with kids can be a mess. Nadia at Red White & GREEN Mom is learning to relax, be patient, and have fun with the process.

Family feeding in Child of Mine — Lauren at Hobo Mama reviews Ellyn Satter's suggestions for appropriate feeding and points out where her family has problems following through.

Children with Knives! (And other Kitchen Tools) — Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy teaches her children how to safely use knives.

"Mommy, Can I Help?" — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment writes about how she lets her kiddos help out with cooking, despite her {sometimes} lack of patience!

Solids the Second Time Around — Sheryl at Little Snowflakes recounts her experiences introducing solids to her second child.

The Adventure of Toddler Tastebuds — The Accidental Natural Mama shares a few things that helped her daughter develop an adventurous palate.

A Tradition of Love — Kelly at Becoming Crunchy looks forward to sharing the kitchen traditions passed on from her mom and has already found several ways to involve baby in the kitchen.

The Very Best Classroom — Alicia C. at McCrenshaw's Newest Thoughts reveals how her kitchen is more than a place to make food - it's a classroom!

Raising Little Chefs — Chef Mike guest posts on Natural Parents Network about how he went from a guy who couldn't cook to a chef who wanted to teach his boys to know how the food we love is made.

In the Kitchen with my kids — Isil at Smiling like Sunshine shares a delicious soup recipe that her kids love.

Papa, the Pancake Artist — Papa's making an incredible breakfast over at Our Mindful Life.

Kids won't eat salad? Try this one! — Tat at Mum in Search is sharing her children's favourite salad recipe.

Recipe For a Great Relationship — Cooking with kids is about feeding hearts as well as bellies, writes Hannah at Wild Parenting.

The Ritual of Mealtimes — Syenna at Gently Parenting Twins writes about the significance of mealtimes in her family’s daily rhythm.

Kid, Meet Food. Food, Kid. — Alburnet at What's Next? panicks about passing on her food "issues" to her offspring.

Growing Up in the Kitchen — Cassie at There's a Pickle in My Life shares how her son is growing up in the kitchen.

Harvesting Corn and History — From Kenna at School Garden Year: The kids in the school garden harvest their corn and learn how much history grows in their food.

My Guiding Principles for Teaching my Child about Food — Tree at Mom Grooves uses these guiding principles to give her daughter a love of good food and an understanding of nutrition as well as to empower her to make the best choices for her body.

Kitchen Control — Amanda at Let's Take the Metro writes about her struggles to relinquish control in the kitchen to her children.

Food — Emma at Your Fonder Heart lets her seven month old teach her how to feed a baby.

Kitchen Fun? — Adrienne at Mommying My Way questions how much fun she can have in a non-functional kitchen, while trying to remain positive about the blessings of cooking for her family.

Kitchen Adventures — Erica at ChildOrganics shares fun ways to connect with your kids in the kitchen.

Kids in the Kitchen: Finding the Right Tools — Melissa at Vibrant Wanderings shares some of her favorite child-sized kitchen gadgets and where to find them.

The Kitchen Classroom — Laura at Authentic Parenting knows that everything your kids want to learn is at the end of the ladle.

Kids in the Kitchen — Luschka from Diary of a First Child talks about the role of the kitchen in family communication and shares fun kitchen activities for the under two.

Our Kitchen is an Unschooling Classroom. — Terri at Child of the Nature Isle explores the many ways her kitchen has become a rich environment for learning.

Montessori-Inspired Food Preparation for Preschoolers — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now shares lots of resources for using Montessori food preparation activities for young children in the kitchen.

My Little Healthy Eater — Christine at African Babies Don't Cry shares her research on what is the best first food for babies, and includes a healthy and yummy breakfast recipe.

Two Boys and Papa in the Kitchen: Recipe for Disaster? — MudpieMama shares all about her fears, joys and discoveries when the boys and handsome hubby took over the kitchen.

Food choices, Food treats — Henrietta at Angel Wings and Herb Tea shares her family's relationship with food.

learning to eat — Catherine at learner mummy reflects on little M's first adventures with food.

The Night My 7-Year-Old Made Dinner — Melodie at Breastfeeding Moms Unite! shares how her 7-year-old daughter surprised everyone by turning what started as an idea to play restaurant into pulling off making supper for her family.

Cooking With a High-Needs Toddler — Sylvia at MaMammalia describes how Montessori-inspired activities and a bit of acceptance have helped her overcome hurdles in cooking while caring for a "high-needs" child.

Kids in the Kitchen – teaching healthy food choices — Brenna at Almost All The Truth shares her belief in the importance of getting kids into the kitchen using her favorite cookbook for kids to develop healthy food choices now and hopefully into the future.

Make Milk, Not War — Tamara at Tea for Three remembers the daily food fights as she struggled to feed a picky eater.

teaching baby birds about good food. — Sarah at Small Bird on Fire writes about the ways in which her family chooses to gently teach their son how to make wise food decisions.

5 Ways to Enhance Your Baby or Young Toddler's Relationship with Food — Charise at I Thought I Knew Mama shares simple ways to give your child a healthy beginning to her lifelong relationship with food.

Toddler at the Table: 10 Creative Solutions — Moorea at Mamalady shares tips for preventing meal-time power struggles.

How My Child Takes Responsibility During His Mealtime... — Jenny @ I'm a full-time mummy shares how she teaches and encourages her 32 months old son on adopting good manners and responsibilities during his mealtimes...

Kids in the Kitchen: 6 Tips Plus a Recipe — Kristin at Intrepid Murmurings shares six tips for overcoming some of the the difficulties of cooking with multiple young sous chefs, and a recipe they all can agree on!

How BLW has made me a better parent — Zoe at Mummykins shares how baby-led weaning has changed her approach to parenting.

My Budding Chef — Jenny at Chronicles of a Nursing Mom is no cook but is happy that her daughter has shown an inclination and manages to whip up yummy goodies for their family.

Kids in the Kitchen: An Activity for Every Age — Gaby from Tmuffin describes how she keeps her kids busy in the kitchen, whether they are one week old or two years old.

The Phantastically Mutlipurposed Phyllo — Ana at Pandamoly shares how Phyllo is used to create enticing dishes at home! Anything can be made into a Struedel!

Kitchen Kids — Laura from A Pug in the Kitchen shares her children's most favorite recipe to make, experience and eat.

Independence vs. Connection in the Kitchen: won't you please get yourself your own snack already? — Lisa at Organic Baby Atlanta wishes her daughter would just go make a mess in the kitchen. But her daughter only wants to do it together.

Grandma Rose's Kitchen — Abbie at Farmer's Daughter reminisces about her childhood and dreams of filling her kitchen with people, love, noise, and messes.

Healthy Food Choices for Kids — Jorje offers one way to encourage children to make their own healthy food choices at MommaJorje.com.

Cooking food to thrive rather than survive — Phoebe at Little Tinker Tales is trying to foster a lifetime of good food habits by teaching her children about the importance of avoiding junk, cooking healthy meals, and learning about the whole food process.

Evolution of a self-led eater — Sheila at A Gift Universe shares the story of how her son grew from nursing around the clock to eating everything in sight, without her having to push.

10 Ways Tiny Helps In The Kitchen — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama explores the ways in which her toddler actively participates in kitchen-related activities.

The Complexity of Feeding a Child — Feeding children a healthy diet is no straight-forward task, but Lisa at My World Edenwild shares some general guidelines to help your child thrive.

Lactation Cookies — That Mama Gretchen shares a fun recipe that will benefit both mamas and babies!

50 of the Best Books, Websites, & Resources to Inspire Kids in the Kitchen — Need inspiration to get your kids in the kitchen? Dionna at Code Name: Mama rounds up some of the best books and websites that can serve as a source for ideas, recipes, and cooking with littles fun.

A 4-year-old's smoothie recipe — Jen at Grow With Graces and her son set out to make a smoothie without the usual ingredients. She let him improvise. See how it turned out.

Independent Food Preparation (My Toddler Can Do That?) — Megan at Montessori Moments shares simple ways for children to prepare their own healthy snacks.

Follow Your Gut — Amy at Anktangle shares her philosophy about intuitive eating, and how she's trying to foster her son's trust in his own inner wisdom when he feels hungry.

A TODDLER-STYLE LUNCH + RECIPE — Manic Mrs. Stone photographs how to have messy fun during lunchtime with a helpful toddler.

Midwife success!

2011-11-05T13:17:00.002-04:00

I found a midwife some time ago that I wanted to see. Actually, it's a practice with two midwives. Both are rather new on the job -- certified two years each -- but the amount of training they have each had before becoming certified is kind of staggering.

But there were issues. First was coming up with the money. While John was working at his old job, there was no way we could afford it. When he got the new job, we decided that we would surely be able to save up that amount by May, so I contacted the midwife again. But she wanted a deposit at the first visit -- more than we had lying around.

But when I told her I couldn't schedule a visit till we had the money, she wrote back saying not to worry about it, just to come on in and pay the money when I had it. Very nice of her! And in the end, we did have the money in time anyway.

So last Thursday, I finally had the long-awaited appointment. The office was a bit of a surprise. I guess I was expecting, you know, an office. In an office building. Or more likely a business park. Though I did wonder where there were any business parks in Linden, Virginia.

Well, the "business park" was more like a gravel road disappearing into the woods. Gorgeous woods, of course. It's November in Virginia. And the office itself was a very old-looking building in the middle of nowhere. But as soon as we walked inside, I could kind of get the feel of it. It had an atrium full of herbs (which made the whole place smell like incense) and overall felt ... like a hippie midwife office in the woods. Exactly what I should have expected.

Once we got upstairs and sat down with the midwives, though, it was as professional as anyone could hope. Plenty of toys for the kiddo. Plenty of books on birth and babies and even one on elimination communication. (I think I'll have to ask to borrow that one!) Jars of herbs and trays of equipment. The appointment took two hours, between the paperwork and the actual appointment stuff. Since I'm 14 weeks already, it was nice to get all the appropriate things tested and the heartbeat listened to (sounded great!) and my questions answered. Unfortunately they do not have a secret herb in their back closet that will cure my terrible back pain. But they did suggest a chiropractor, and pointed out that I am pregnant now and can't expect to haul my 25+ pound child with me on my hip all the time anymore. Which I guess isn't rocket science, but it sure is more attention than the OB/Gyns ever gave that problem last pregnancy.

Their views seemed to jive with me about everything. They wanted to hear Marko's birth story, and we discussed episiotomies (they've never done any) and the managed third stage of labor (another thing they don't do) and delayed cord cutting (which they are all about). I have no doubts whatever that they will do what I want.

Best of all, they gave me tons of information about my options. There were packets about glucose testing, ultrasounds, and vitamin K shots, informing me of all the risks and benefits of each test and what my risk factors might be. "You mean I have a ... choice?" Everything is optional here ... because, obviously, I am the patient and have the right to refuse anything I want. That's the law, but you don't see many doctors saying, "We encourage this test, here is a ton of information about the risks and benefits." Instead they say, "It's time for your glucose tolerance test. Sign up at the front desk on your way out." You're never told that you can refuse.

All in all, I could not have asked for a better first appointment. I really think I'm going to like these ladies.

The next hurdle: finding a back-up OB or GP who can do my bloodwork, Rhogam shot, and any additional drugs or testing I might need. CPMs (certified professional midwives) can't prescribe anything, so I need to visit a doctor for all of that stuff. It's a shame, because I really believe these ladies have sufficient training to administer a simple shot -- but the state disagrees. There are tons of restrictions on midwives. However, I think Virginia does a decent job of regulating midwives so that they are available for people who want them. Certainly we trump many states that don't allow CPMs at all!

(In other news, Marko is now regularly going to bed at eight and then not sleeping very well thereafter. Sigh. I can't believe that a month ago he was going to bed at ten and sleeping through till eight, and I thought that this was a problem. But perhaps when he recovers from his current cold, things will be a little better. All I know is, I spent four hours last night lying on the cold floor of his bedroom, trying to help him go to sleep, and I'm not a fan. At least he is going to bed at a reasonable hour, though, right?)

Sleep stress

2011-10-28T12:00:00.003-04:00

I think I may have broken my kid. At least as far as sleep is concerned.

He always was a clockwork kid. First week of his life, he would sleep for three hours and eat, with wakeful periods at predictable times, around the clock. And he soon settled into a predictable schedule. At eight weeks he was sleeping through the night, and I was thrilled! I thought it must be because I was such a good parent.

Ha.

Anyway, by twelve weeks he wasn't sleeping through the night anymore. There was the fact that we flew him halfway across the country at that age and gave him jetlag. But the main thing was that he was starting to refuse to eat, which was a really big problem. So when he woke up at night and was willing to eat, my original tactic of trying to get him back to sleep without feeding him (so that he would focus his meals during the day) went out the window. My kid was dropping on the growth chart, and I was not going to do a single thing to get rid of two solid nighttime nursing sessions.

I would show up at work exhausted, and my well-meaning coworkers kept giving me advice (most of which involved leaving him to scream alone for hours in his crib, nothankyou) on how to get him to sleep. I kept repeating over and over, "My kid is losing weight. My sleep is not my priority. Him eating is." But somehow the impression remained that my child was a bad baby for not sleeping through the night, and I was a bad mom (either a martyr or lazy) because I wouldn't fix it. Sigh.

Eventually, though, he started eating regularly again, piling on the pounds, and doing great. Of course by then we had passed the ideal window for learning to sleep through the night. And then he had cold after cold (that's what happens when you take a baby to school with you every day all winter) and cut tooth after tooth, and, well, just forget about sleep. Instead of waking up for a quick snack and dropping off, he was requiring an hour of pacing and bouncing every time, and then don't even think about trying to lay him down in his crib after that. So we started cosleeping.

That actually worked pretty well. He slept better, and so did I. Not great, of course, but better than when I was pacing the floor bouncing. And when we moved the crib up against the bed and took off the side to form a sidecar, we were golden. If he fussed, I would roll him towards me, nurse him, and roll him back into his crib sound asleep so that I could have my space again.

The really ideal part of this was that I could get him to sleep much more easily. We had started out rocking him to sleep in the rocking chair, since I had heard that you don't want to nurse your baby to sleep all the time -- that will give him the habit of having to nurse to sleep and you'll never break it! I don't know why it never occurred to me that rocking to sleep every time would have the same effect. And of course it was easy to rock him to sleep when he was 19 inches long and fit upright against my shoulder. Once his legs got long, we were in trouble. He would spend the whole time trying to stand up on my lap. So we went back to nursing to sleep while rocking in the rocking chair, and it worked except for when I tried to lay him down.

But with the sidecar, it was perfect. I would nurse him until his eyes fell shut and he was sorta kinda sleeping. Then I would stand up and move to the bed/crib, where I would nurse him the rest of the way to sleep. Once he was really settled in his bed, I would unlatch him and he'd get comfy on his own. Eventually he started rolling away from me himself when he was ready to sleep! This is the holy grail of baby sleep ... getting your baby to go to sleep in his crib on his own. And the whole process took 10-20 minutes. Meanwhile, his ability to resettle himself in his crib on his own led to the other holy grail ... he often slept through the night.

As he was about a year old, though, we had some issues. He was taking two naps a day, which he didn't really need, but which he naturally took due to my work schedule. That made it hard to go to sleep. So we'd do the whole rocking, nursing, lying down routine, and it wouldn't work. And we couldn't start over, because he was starting to refuse to nurse unless it had been awhile since the last time ... so we'd have to wait a whole hour and try again.

So we discovered a new trick: the stroller walk. Just strap him in the stroller, walk around the neighborhood, and he fell asleep much more easily! It rarely took more than 20 minutes, and it always worked. He still slept through the night. We moved to our house and switched him into a floor bed in his own room -- no problem at all. We'd walk for 20 minutes, then carefully take him out of the stroller and into the house. I'd carefully lay him down in his bed, and he would stay asleep.

But, as always, there were problems. He soon became addicted to this method. Now nothing worked but stroller walking. Sometimes not even that -- we have walked for over an hour with no effect. And cold weather was approaching. Sometimes it would rain, and bedtime turned into a nightmare of indoor stroller walking (no dice) and bouncing. John would walk him around his bedroom in the dark, jiggling and humming, and eventually, when he got tired enough, he would drop off. Unfortunately I have never mastered this technique. My shoulders aren't comfy enough, for one thing, and for another, the kid weighs a ton. Lately my back has been so bad I can't really carry him for long at all. So it's a Daddy-only trick. I wouldn't mind it being a Daddy-only trick if John were always available in the evenings, but he isn't. I have to be able to put him to sleep myself.

So we switched back to nursing to sleep, even though by this point I was pregnant and really wanted to wean. We just didn't have any option. He won't even sit in the rocking chair with me unless he's nursing. He would rather get down and play. Luckily, this tactic ended up working really well. After the first few nights, I wondered to myself, "Why did we ever get away from this? This is so much easier!" Not to mention that it is easier to transition from nursing in a rocking chair to not nursing in a rocking chair than from roaming around the neighborhood in a stroller to anything else. I can nurse the first half of the time, and then when he's sleepy, just rock him. But I couldn't do anything like that with the stroller.

But we have two problems. The first is the most immediate issue: bedtime. When to put him to bed? We have tried a number of different times, and it seems every night is a little different. (Small wonder, when his naps have been all over the map lately. I never let him sleep past 3 pm, though, regardless of when he went down.) I hear a good bedtime for a toddler is 7 p.m. His usual bedtime is 10. John gets home at a quarter to seven (making 7 p.m. an impossible goal) and we are hard at work on bedtime by eight. We get in pj's, read books, try a little rocking and nursing, fail, try more books, try more nursing ... and some nights, nothing works. He's all wound up and hyper, racing around the house like a maniac if you let his feet touch the floor. Meanwhile our whole evening is shot ... we spend pretty much the whole dang thing on bedtime.

I suspect the problem is that we've missed the ideal window for bedtime. But how to know when the ideal window is? When he's already tired and cranky, he will often melt down in the middle of dinner, so we whisk him out of the high chair and into pajamas. Sometimes (like last night) it works. Usually not. And when he's had a good nap and is feeling good about life, he never shows any sign of tiredness at all. He just keeps on living it up, ignoring the fact that we've put the dog to bed, turned down all the lights, and put away all the toys. Around ten we get really serious about it and refuse to let him do anything but lie in bed or be rocked. But lying in bed for Marko usually means standing on his head and feet and toppling over while demanding nursery rhymes, so we try to stick with just rocking. And he puts up such a fuss. If he's got Mama, he screams for Daddy. If he's got Daddy, he screams for Mama. And more than anything, he screams to be DOWN so he can PLAY.

Eventually the end of that is him crying himself to sleep in Daddy's arms. He doesn't cry long, but I still feel there's got to be a better way ... and one that ends with an earlier bedtime.

I've tried tinkering with the rest of his schedule, but he just isn't as predictable with that as you would think. Nap usually starts between 11 and noon, but it could last an hour or three hours. I hate to wake him, because he ends up even more overtired and hyper, but I sometimes do for fear of having him sleep all day and play all night. And I tried messing with his wakeup time, which was a mistake. He used to go to bed at ten and wake up at eight. So I started waking him an hour earlier, so now he goes to bed at ten and wakes up at seven ... sometimes earlier. Making him more overtired, more prone to taking a long nap, and more hyper at bedtime.

Our second problem is just that we want to wean him. John can get him to sleep without nursing; I can't. And, you know, I'm the one on the scene. I always put him down for nap, and usually for bed. John is in class two nights a week, so I need to be able to do bedtime on my own. I had this whole plan for reducing bedtime nursing and getting him to fall asleep without it, but it hinged on the notion of having a sleepy child at bedtime who wanted to fall asleep one way or the other. Not on having a wide-awake child who is barely falling asleep with nursing, much less without it.

Oh, and the third problem is that he hasn't slept through the night more than once in a row in around a month. There are various reasons for that, but it's definitely contributing to the irregular naps and the overtiredness. On the bright side, I can easily get him back to sleep with no nursing at night, because he's too tired to try to get out of the rocking chair.

This is not to say we've had no success at all. There was a week there where he went to sleep at nine every night, and fairly easily too. Then he took a late nap one day and the whole thing was ruined. And last night, we got him to sleep around eight. That was more John's doing than mine, but it was a success! There clearly is a window for sleep earlier in the evening ...we just keep missing it. I have hopes that with John's new job (starting Monday!), since he'll be home earlier, we will be able to have an earlier dinner and maybe catch that window. If that doesn't work, I guess we will all have to place our hopes in daylight savings time. At least for awhile, we might be able to trick him into going to bed at nine.

But all the same, tips would be appreciated! (Keep in mind: if we put him in his bed and walk away, he just follows us. It does not work. Everyone suggests this. Even if he were in a crib, he'd probably just jump on his bed and sing songs.) Or if this is a common 18-month-old phase that instantly disappears at 19 months, I would very much like to hear that.

Housewifery

2011-10-25T08:40:00.002-04:00

I don't like being a housewife.

There, I said it.

Don't get me wrong. I love being a stay-at-home mom. I love being with my son all day, the close relationship this helps us have, and the way I'm the expert on his needs. All that is what I stay home for.

I didn't stay home to do housework. Sure, I do it. I don't do a great job. I keep us all fed, clothed, and more or less clean. But I don't enjoy it.

Oh, the chores themselves aren't so bad. They're no harder than many other jobs I have had. It's the endlessness of it. The way I can spend an hour washing a mountain of dishes, and by the time I'm done, we're hungry again and I have to make more dishes. The way I can never really relax because there's always something I should be doing.

And it's so easy to get resentful. It's tough, especially if you're the more outgoing spouse, to wait all day for your husband to come home so you can talk to him, only to find he's been dealing with people all day and just wants to be quiet. Or to have him come home and put his feet up after a hard day's work just at the moment that your job is getting its most stressful, what with dinner to make and bedtime to handle. Or to see everyone you know relax on a weekend, while for you it's just one more day where people need to be fed and clothed.

There are different ways to look at it. You can see it as a vocation. But then every time you need to ask for help with the dishes, you feel like a failure at your vocation.

You can see it as a job. But it's a kind of awful job with no pay except the privilege to continue doing it, plus the occasional word of gratitude. And then, every time you aren't thanked on schedule, you feel like your pay is getting docked.

You can see it as just trying to keep a tidy house because you like to live in one, and doing the lion's share because you happen to be home more. That's my main approach. But then you get angry when no one else does what you consider to be their share. And you don't feel like you should ever have to ask. No one asks you to make dinner, please - you just do it. So how come other people can walk through the kitchen, comment on the dirty dishes, and then just leave them there? You feel everyone has the responsiblity to pitch in and do an amount of housework proportionate to the amount of time they spend in the house. But, of course, they haven't got the memo and don't know what you might consider proportionate. They might not even know what needs doing, not being in the thick of it like you are.

It's a pretty powerless position. There isn't always any solution to being overwhelmed, tired, lonely, and behind on the dishes. But then, the husband can be in a bind, too, in many ways. If he has higher standards than his wife's (as mine does), and he thinks things ought to be cleaner, what can he do? He could do it himself, but he's so busy outside the home he hasn' t got the time or energy to do it all. He could nag and complain, but if she thinks she's doing her best, she's not likely to make a permanent improvement.

Either spouse is in danger of feeling jealous. The husband can complain that he never gets to spend as much time with his kids as his wife does, that he has to commute, and that he can't arrange his house to suit himself because he's never in it. The wife can reposte with her loneliness, lack of measurable accomplishments or appreciation, and inability to get out of the house or wear nice clothes. There are times when the other's job seems like a walk in the park. Meanwhile, both have to make constant financial sacrifices for life on a single income to work - and that can be a strain too.

A strong relationship can weather these struggles, but they definitely can be points of contention. Men and women have been arguing about them at least since the Industrial Revolution, and maybe since the dawn of time.

I do the housework because I want it to be done, because I want my husband to have a clean house, and because I'm the one on the spot to do it. But nothing has ever made it easy for me.

Language explosion

2011-10-23T11:25:00.002-04:00

Marko's language development has been amazing lately. It's been quite a surprise to me that language doesn't develop linearly -- instead it goes in sudden leaps and bounds. Which is why you always hear about kids who didn't speak a word till two and then started talking in sentences. Once those brain connections are made and they want to say something, they pick up words at a lightning pace.

It would be impossible to count the number of words Marko knows now. I joke that he knows them all. At any rate, he knows all the names of things he sees regularly and things he likes to do. He doesn't get adverbs at all, though. When I say to pet the kitty nicely, he thinks "nice" is a verb that means "to half pet, half hit." Ah well.

Lately he's begun to talk in sentences, though not usually original ones. He just mimics whole sentences that we use, like "Mama do it," "Grab the dog," "Mama kiss Daddy." His original sentences are more sparse: "Walk in street," "Eat crackers," "Marko's mousie." But he's certainly on his way to communicating everything he wants to.

That doesn't mean he always does use his words to communicate, though. Sometimes he just says "Mama do it, Mama do it," and when I say, "Mama do what?" he melts onto the floor in a puddle of frustration. When he's really upset, he can't speak at all. He clearly wants something and is frustrated that we don't understand him, but he's screaming too hard to pronounce anything. He certainly throws more tantrums than he did a month or two ago. Now that he's 18 months, he's very aware that what he wants doesn't always jive with what we want, and he's harder to distract. On the bright side, though, he does understand "no." Sometimes he still does the thing, but sometimes he just starts to throw a fit. In other words, he's thinking, "I want to touch that outlet, but Mama said no, so I CAN'T. I'm so upset!" But he is obeying, which is what matters (especially where outlets are concerned!).

I have always liked to sing to him. I have fun with changing the words of songs to fit our circumstances: "You've got to change your evil ways" becomes "We've got to change your stinky dipe," and "It's business time" becomes "It's sleepy time." He likes his songs. He's stopped liking many "grown-up" songs though: he prefers songs he understands the words of, like "Wheels on the Bus" and "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep." Our compromise is Jonathan Coulton. We both like him. His favorite is "Code Monkey," and he often surprises me by knowing the lyrics. The other day he was talking to himself and I couldn't figure out WHAT he was saying, until finally I realized he was saying, "Code monkey is a simple man, with big warm fuzzy secret heart." He calls the song "Code monkey like you." It's very cute.

He's not tone-deaf, either. On Wednesday, he was being a real crab, so I let him sit on my lap and watch the Muppets on YouTube. We found one of Kermit singing "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," but when I realized it was just a fan-made dub instead of the real Kermit, I moved on. I guess we watched about 30 seconds of it. On Friday, he was lying on my bed saying "Nap" so I sang, "Nap-nap-nappin' on Mama's bed." He immediately leaped up and headed for the living room, saying, "Watch a movie?" I was pretty impressed.

I am so proud of his recent achievements. I have a smart kid. I will use that to comfort me over the fact that he's still not sleeping worth a darn. Ah well, we can't have everything, can we?

A person's a person

2011-10-20T10:36:00.002-04:00

I am, as most of you know, pro-life. That means I am opposed to abortion in any and all circumstances. While I absolutely do care about moms in tough circumstances, I also believe that a fetus is, from the very first moment of conception (when it has its own individual, human DNA blueprint) a human person. And I believe that human persons are created in the image and likeness of God, and therefore have intrinsic dignity and rights.

Which is why it weirds me out when people who consider themselves pro-life as well then turn around and fail to respect human life in other instances.

If you believe in the dignity of a human person when it is composed of one cell, unable to think, move, talk, suffer, or defend itself, it seems to me that it shouldn't be hard to believe in the dignity of all human persons. And most people who describe themselves as pro-life also believe in the dignity of other people unable to move (like coma patients) or unable to talk (like the severely disabled) or unable to defend themselves (like the very poor). And yet they might advocate the death penalty or war with a zest that seems entirely inappropriate.

A person's a person no matter how small, sure. But I also believe this: A person's a person no matter how black. A person's a person no matter how Muslim. A person's a person no matter how guilty of murder.

Now, the Catholic Church does allow for one very particular instance in which a human person may be directly killed. That is when that human person is an aggressor threatening your own life or that of someone for whom you are responsible. By their aggression, they have forfeited, to some extent, their right to life.

The simple example is that of a gunman charging at you with clear intent to shoot. To make it easier, let's say you have a bunch of kids with you, and you're not sure who he's going to shoot first. You have a loaded gun. You can go ahead and shoot, and if you can't avoid killing him when you shoot, that's okay. In fact, you probably have the responsibility to shoot.

Another is the example of war. The Canadians finally realize we exist and send a brigade of ferocious Mounties, armed to the teeth, to murder our men and enslave our women and children. You enlist in the New Hampshire militia and prepare to defend your family. If you happen to shoot one of the attackers, fine for you. You are simply doing your duty. You respect the life of the other guy, but you recognize that he will kill you and your family if you don't kill him first -- and so you do.

The death penalty is also allowed by the Church. Traditionally, the solution to a dangerous criminal who threatened the peaceful citizens was to execute him. However, theologians and popes (particularly John Paul II) have been lately emphasizing how this ought to be avoided when possible.

Why? Because life has value. Because the "other guy," the guy you want to kill, has hopes, dreams, a family who will mourn him, and a desire to live his life -- just like you do. Because God is the giver and taker of life, and it isn't our place to say when people live or die. When we have to -- when there is absolutely no other option -- we sometimes have to take the life of an aggressor. But we'd rather not. We'd rather, like God does, see him be converted and live.

That's why the Church has such a strict definition of a just war, and one of the requirements is that all other methods have been exhausted. We shouldn't be looking for an excuse to go to war. We should be looking for any way to avoid it. Not because we are afraid of death -- but because we don't have the right to kill other people if it is possible not to. I have heard war defended on the grounds that "well, we have to, if we want to be a world power," or, "it would cause us severe economic hardship if we didn't," or, "we'd better strike first, or they will attack us later." Sorry, these aren't reasons to go over and kill someone who hasn't attacked you first!

I am not getting into specific wars here because it would take a much longer post ... probably a series of posts. I feel differently about different wars, but overall I feel uneasy about our country's eagerness to involve ourselves in armed conflicts. It's like we've forgotten that people die in them! Can there be a war that is necessary, in which risking our own lives and those of our enemies is just? Most certainly, and I believe there have been plenty of these over history. But I think there have been a heck of a lot more unnecessary wars.

With the death penalty, I feel the same. Might there be (or have been in the past) cases where a criminal had to die to protect everyone else? Definitely. But when we have the option of giving someone life without parole, and everyone can be kept just as safe that way, why don't we use it? Certainly this is expensive. But so are babies. We choose the more difficult way sometimes because we care about human life.

I got into a debate about the death penalty awhile back. Arguments in favor of it included "Knowing you're going to die is a great encouragement to repent" and "If a person kills someone, it is just for them to be killed." The first one is just beyond our pay grade. We have no idea what will help someone repent. I'm not going to get into the business of trying to save people's souls by killing them -- God never gave us permission for that. And as for the second, I thought we got rid of "an eye for an eye" when Jesus came along. "Justice is mine, sayeth the Lord," and all that. It isn't our place to decide what is "just" for another person to receive. If a man steals a thousand dollars, it is reasonable to require him to pay a thousand dollars to the person he robbed. But if a man kills a person's child, can killing him in return ever give the child back? If a man kills ten people, is he to be killed ten times? There is no restoration of justice when a person has been killed. That's a life that is no more -- it can't be given back or paid for with more death.

As you can see, my pro-life views are a little more complicated than, "You can't kill someone ever." If someone has made the choice to attack you, they don't have an equal right to life as someone who's just minding their own business. But that doesn't mean their life doesn't count, that we won't have to account for it to God. Their life has a value that can't be measured.

So, just understand that when I hear someone say, "I'm pro-life -- protect the unborn!" but then in the next sentence say, "Let's nuke Iran!" or "Hey, that guy killed someone -- he deserves to die!" ... I feel a disconnect. As if they were saying, "Only unborn life matters and has value." And the fact is, all life has value. And none of it belongs to us to do with as we like.

Exploring on the city bus

2011-10-19T11:36:00.001-04:00

I have been stranded at home on weekdays pretty much all summer long. One day, I was at the park two blocks from my house when I saw a bus go by. What? We have a bus?!

A bit of research informed me that this bus goes all over town, stops a block from me every hour, and costs fifty cents a ride. Well, sign me up!

I got the chance to try it on the second straight day of rain last week. Marko was as stir-crazy as could be, and I wasn't much better, so I resolved that we would leave as soon as possible. Our destination was the library. Hours of fun to be had there, though I planned to only stay an hour so we could have a snack before naptime. Once I mentioned the words "bus" and "library" to Marko, we were committed. We dashed around the house like mad, getting ready so we could catch the 8:37 bus.

The bus came right on time, and the driver was unbelievably friendly. He offered to swing right by the door of the library to drop me off so I wouldn't get rained on, and even asked when I'd be done so he could come by the door then, too! It was only a moment after he pulled away that I saw the sign on the library: Open 10-8. It was 8:45. And it was raining. Dang it.

So we played around the library in the drizzle for awhile. It wasn't raining hard, and it wasn't cold. Marko splashed in all the puddles with his bare feet. I had wanted to bring his shoes, but couldn't find them because the dog had made off with one, like ... two weeks ago. We're still not doing shoes that often. But it wasn't cold, like I said, and Marko seemed content and not cold, so I didn't worry.

Until a librarian came out and told me off. She said she "had concerns" about my son's bare feet and was worried he would get cold. "Thanks," I said, "he's really fine." (I deal with this EVERY TIME we go out in public. If he hasn't got shoes, I hear about it!) "No, I'm really concerned," she said. "He's going to be cold, playing out there in the rain with no shoes!"

I said I wasn't sure what I could do to alleviate her concerns, as I didn't have any shoes with me. I hadn't planned to be out there in the rain, but I'd taken the bus and not known when the library opened. Then I had an idea. "I mean, you could let us inside, and then he wouldn't be cold!" (The library has a large open area outside of the part where the books are ... so we wouldn't be hurting anything.)

Of course she turned this idea down, gave me a long, disapproving stare, and went inside. I was ticked. So I did what I always do: came up with a million and one comebacks cleverer than the one I had used -- all of which would be inadvisable to use in real life. Like this one: "Who do you think cares about keeping him warm more, his mother or a random stranger?" Or this one, "My husband works for you for FREE every weekend, and this is what I get from you." Or this one, "I'm assuming you're mentioning it because you happen to have rubber boots in size 18 months in your pocket?"

Thank goodness the lady was gone, though, so I did not embarrass myself with any of these rude remarks. Instead we went to the playground next door and played for awhile. Marko rode on the swing (his first ever! he hated it) and climbed the jungle gym. I stood there and got wet. The rainwater quickly soaked into my shoes, so that I ended up with cold, wet feet until lunchtime ... whereas the rain dried right off of Marko's feet every time I picked him up and felt them! (Every time I get criticism about his lack of shoes, I feel his feet obsessively to make sure they're not cold. They never are. This kid is warm-blooded like his dad.)

When it was almost ten, I went and stood outside the library. Apparently that is the happening place to be! There were half a dozen people waiting. I ended up telling a college-aged kid about the shoe thing, and pretty soon everyone was laughing about it. The kid kept joking, "That's like seeing a homeless guy and saying, 'I'm worried that you're so hungry' and then walking away! That's like seeing someone freezing to death and saying, 'Gee, you look cold! You should have a nice warm coat like the two I'm wearing!'" An older lady told me that she's only just started wearing shoes again after the summer ... flipflops are the most she wears all summer long! Everyone was very nice. I couldn't help but wonder if social class had something to do with it -- most people in our town are fairly poor and blue-collar, whereas the librarian looked and sounded much more "posh." John says this is true -- shoes can be a sign of social class, so we are looked down on as "poor" or "backwoods" for keeping our son barefoot.

Sigh. I thought one wore or didn't wear shoes based on whether one's feet were cold and whether one liked wearing shoes. Go figure.

Anyway, we had a great time at the library, which has a great toddler area and a wide selection of books on natural childbirth. What more could anyone want? But within half an hour, we had to leave to make sure we wouldn't miss the bus.

The bus ride home was long. See, the route is in a big circle, so it takes five minutes to get to the library and fifty-five minutes to get home. If it hadn't been raining, and wasn't all uphill, I might have walked -- it would have been quicker. But we had a nice tour of the town. I had no idea there was so much right here in town!

Marko loved the whole experience. "Bus! Man! Driver! Bus! Woman! Bus! Seatbelt! Bus!" And the few other passengers were charmed with him. Again, they were fairly poor, and we traded stories of traveling around by bus and recommendations for dollar stores. I may be college-educated, but both my budget and my preferences seem to make me get along much better with the less-well-off, blue-collar inhabitants of this small town than I ever did with the much posher people closer in toward DC. Does that make me reverse-classist or something? Or maybe it's just that I like the real South, and the DC area doesn't really count.

Anyway, except for a little bus-sickness on my part on the way home, we had a great time. Marko fell asleep on my shoulder a little short of home, and the bus driver went off his route a bit so I wouldn't have to walk far carrying him. (He was so nice.) Definitely a great adventure for a rainy day!

Though, seriously. I would like to go out in public just once and not hear a comment about Marko's lack of shoes. Just once.

The ballad of the bedtime woes

2011-10-15T11:56:00.002-04:00

Back when I was a teenager and my parents were early on in their "second batch" of children, my mom and I used to eat breakfast together. And invariably, my mom would tell me every single detail about how the baby had slept last night. I asked her what was up with this phenomenon -- why do moms have to rehash how the previous night went? It's over now, right? We laughed over it and called it "The Ballad of the Bedtime Woes." I tried to listen and be sympathetic, but the whole time I would think, "There's nothing new in this story. It's just like last night! Why is it so important to her to tell the story?"

Now, I know. It's just a purgative re-hashing. It's simply to make you feel better about having lost a whole night's sleep. Ideally, one's listener should hang on your every word, as if the story were actually interesting, and occasionally interject, "Sounds like you tried everything -- it's totally not your fault it went so badly!" and, "Well, you must be exhausted! How about I take over for you for a few hours while you catch a nap!"

I probably didn't say any of those helpful things when I was a teenager. But my mom says them to me when I rant to her (though, sadly, she is not near enough to trade kids with, or we TOTALLY would) because she is nice like that.

So here is last night's Ballad. If your kids are this age, you might enjoy hearing that someone else is up in the middle of the night, too. If not, you get to chuckle to yourself at my misfortune and thank your lucky stars that you got a full eight hours (or whatever you got).

I must back up a bit and tell you about a problem we've been having lately. It used to be that when Marko would wake up at night, he'd cry a little. I'd go into the bedroom, and often all I had to do was lie down next to him for fifteen minutes or so. Sometimes it took some rocking or back pats. We don't nurse at night anymore, unless I'm DESPERATE, which hasn't happened in awhile.

Lately, though, the second his eyes open, he leaps out of bed and pitter-pats to my room. He used to get lost once in awhile and end up in the living room, and then cry because we weren't in it. Now he knows to run to the door and bang on it, and I come out and put him back to bed. Problem is, by that point he's so awake we practically have to do the whole bedtime routine again to get him to sleep ... and even then, it's iffy.

Last night, it was about 3:30 a.m. when John nudged me. "I just heard his door open." When I saw the clock, I felt a little grateful, because that meant I'd slept four hours already. More than I got in one chunk the previous night! So I trudged to the door and opened it, and sure enough, there he was, grabbing at the doorknob. I swung him up into my arms, and he seemed sleepy enough. Surely it wouldn't take long to get him back to bed.

So I rocked him in the rocking chair for awhile while he tugged on my hair. Have I mentioned before how much he does this, and how much I HATE it? He used to do it while nursing ... but if he isn't nursing, and is sleepy, he does it too. If I'm lucky, he just twists it and fidgets with it. If I'm unlucky, he selects one hair at a time and pulls it out with long, slow yanks. Any attempt of mine to hinder him is met with struggling and more awakeness. But it also seems to keep him awake, as it was doing this time. His eyes were shut, his legs were limp, but that one hand just kept fiddling and fiddling, moving from this chunk of hair to that chunk of hair, and generally driving me nuts.

After about twenty minutes of this, I thought, "Well, last night he wouldn't stay asleep in his bed, and it might have been because he fell asleep in the rocker. Maybe I should put him in his bed now and let him fall asleep there the rest of the way." I laid him carefully down and he was fine. He still retained a fistful of my hair, but eventually he gave it up, rolled into a good position, and was still. WIN! But I was worried, because of his multiple wakeups the previous night (it was so bad I actually don't want to talk about it), so I stayed near him for another five minutes or so. Still quiet. So I carefully got up and went across the room for another blanket, because it was really cold in there.

By the time I got back, he had scootched up to the top of the bed and banged his head on the wall. He was definitely coming awake. I threw the blanket over him and tried to settle him back down with all my usual tricks -- arm around him, escalating to back rub, escalating to back pat, he reaches for my hair ... and we were back to square one. He's tossing, turning, fidgeting, and even starting to talk. My heart sank.

I stayed there for awhile while he poked at me and rolled over and over and over (he gets up against me and just rolls over and over trying to get "even closer" than touching ... generally squashing some part of me in the process). But then I went totally nuts and snatched him out of his bed, trembling with a weird cocktail of exhaustion, frustrating and rage, hissing angrily, "I'm going to ROCK YOU! In the ROCKING CHAIR!" (If you have never done anything like this, you probably don't have kids.)

So we rocked and rocked and rocked and rocked. I almost rocked myself to sleep, but he was still squirmy. Still pulling my hair. I tucked his hand under my arm a bunch of times, but he would squirm and yank it out. I contemplated whether spanking him would get him to fall asleep. Luckily, even my cranky, sleep-deprived mind can't imagine how that would help, so I didn't try that option. I just rocked and rocked and rocked until he was OUT. Then I stayed a long time more, freezing cold because I was afraid to move and get a blanket. And eventually, I crept out.

It was quite a shock to find it was only 4:40. It sure felt like morning. To my relief, I actually did still feel like sleeping, so I got under my covers and slowly started warming up. My eyes closed. I started to drowse ....

And then there was banging on the door and "MAMA!" Twenty minutes. I did all that rocking for twenty minutes of sleep for him ... and zero for me. At that point I really hated my life.

There was no way in this world I was going to go through that again. I might as well get up now ... except I do not want to spend a day with a kid who got up at five a.m. And I was pretty sure what was causing the awakeness ... it's that his room is so darn cold and he absolutely will not keep a blanket on to save his life. So I brought him in bed with me.

Usually this doesn't work at all. He spends all his time fidgeting and trying to kick off the blankets. But this time, it miraculously did! He slept! For two more hours! And I slept ... some. It was way too hot being between two hot people under two comforters. And I didn't have much wiggle room. But I know I did sleep, because I was in the middle of an interesting dream when he started to move.

I put my arm around him to keep him from rolling away ... but because he is contrary, he pulled away from me and rolled away anyway ... and fell right off the bed. We have a very low bed, but it was still a pretty rude awakening. I quickly realized that there was no easy way to make this kid stop screaming without having to leap into sudden bouncing and breakfast-making and pajama-changing action ... except for nursing. So I nursed him. So what if he never weans. I don't care. I got to stay in bed for ten more minutes, and when I poked at him and said, "Wanna go play with the puppy?" he grinned and got right out of bed.

All the same, I really have no idea why I am not napping right now. I totally should be.

If I had a money tree

2011-10-11T00:00:00.002-04:00

Welcome to the October Carnival of Natural Parenting: Money Matters

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have shared how finances affect their parenting choices. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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This month's natural parenting carnival is about finances. As my regular readers know, our finances are usually pretty tight and we try to be frugal. That means giving up a lot of things we could really use. I could lay out our budget, but why get depressing? Instead, I'll spend some time daydreaming of the things I would buy if we had a money tree growing in the backyard.

For Marko:

*More clothes. That kid grows out of his clothes like nobody's business ... to the point that, money tree or no money tree, I'm going to have to get him some more pants before too long.

*Toys. Most people seem to have too many toys. Other than stuffed animals and baby teethers, Marko doesn't have many. I'd like to get him a ring stacker, a shape sorter, one of those toy lawn mowers that makes noise, and maybe a car he could ride on. Every time we're at other people's houses, he gravitates toward toys like that.

*A big-boy bed. I want to get a regular twin bed, but the kind from IKEA that's low to the ground. We have one in our bedroom and I much prefer it to our tall American beds that I have to climb in and out of ... and it would be safer for Marko. I'd probably add a bedrail, too.

*A few more books. That's more for me -- I'm a little tired of Dr. Seuss these days, but Marko isn't. What we should really do is go to the library more often.

*A pair or two of moccasins. I got him some Rubberoos (which are like socks with a rubber sole) but they're hard to get on and off, plus he's already growing out of them. He needs some good comfy shoes as the weather gets colder -- barefoot is great for now, but soon it's not going to cut it.

What I would buy for the new baby:

*Adorable clothes, especially if it's a girl.

*A woven wrap. Those things are so versatile, not to mention pretty. And, hey, why not a pretty sling or a mei tai, just to accessorize with my outfits?

*Some really nice cloth diapers. There are so many to choose from!

*Baby leggings, to practice elimination communication without getting the baby cold.

*I would love to see if the Amby baby hammock lives up to its reviews. Why don't they sell those for grown-ups, too?

What I would buy for both of them:

*Some time off for Daddy so that we could actually spend more time as a family. I'd give up all the rest if we could get that!

What I am actually planning to buy for them:

*New pants and shoes for Marko.

*Clothes for the baby, if it's a girl. Otherwise, we have plenty of boy clothes. Even so, I think a girl would probably end up wearing a lot of boy clothes anyway ... they're so cute, we have so many of them, and we could just put a pretty bow on the baby's head and call it good. Or, you know, a mailing label on her onesie that says "FEMALE." There are cheaper ways of identifying your baby than a whole new wardrobe.

*Some more prefolds, if Marko's not potty-trained yet, and some more newborn diaper covers.

*A second carseat. Can't avoid that one!

I hope this isn't just an exercise in envy for those who have more, or in dissatisfaction with what we do have. I don't feel that dissatisfied, though. Kids need so little. For instance, Marko would love more toys. But he is also so happy pushing around a laundry basket or stacking books that I don't really feel he's deprived. He has enough clothes to wear and a good place to sleep. And the new baby has so many things of Marko's all lined up: the moses basket, the crib, the bouncy chair, the high chair, the moby wrap, the sling ... she (or he) won't need much else. He (or she) will mainly be interested in eating anyway, so as long as I keep her (or his) bottom dry, toes warm, and tummy full, I think he (or she) will be fine.

(Man, it's hard to have a kid and not know what pronoun to use! I refuse to use "them" unless and until I find out it's twins ... because them is plural. *fixed stare of peeved grammar teacher*)

Most of what I would buy for my kids is really for me. I want things that will make my life easier and make me feel good. The kids themselves? They don't care. Babies haven't changed much since caveman times, when they played with rocks and sticks and went naked.

So, I'm perfectly happy with what we have in the baby-gear department, though I won't deny a few wistful glances at websites selling toys and clothes. We have what we need. Still, if anyone has a money-tree seedling they would like to give me, there's plenty of room in our garden for that!

What would you buy if you had a money tree?

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Visit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

(This list will be live and updated by afternoon October 11 with all the carnival links.)

Money Matter$ — Jenny at I'm a full-time mummy shares her experiences on several ways to save money as a parent.

A different kind of life... — Mrs Green from Little Green Blog shares her utopian life and how it differs from her current one!

Show Me The Money! — Arpita of Up, Down & Natural shares her experience of planning for parenting costs while also balancing the financial aspect of infertility treatments.

Material v Spiritual Wealth - Living a Very Frugal Life with Kids — Amy at Peace 4 Parents shares her family's realizations about the differences between material and spiritual wealth.

If I Had a Money Tree — Sheila at A Gift Universe lists the things she would buy for her children if money were no object.

Financial Sacrifices, Budgets, and the Single Income Family — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama looks at the importance of living within your means, the basics of crafting a budget, and the "real cost" of working outside of the home.

Overcoming My Fear of All Things Financial — Christine at African Babies Don't Cry shares how she is currently overcoming her fear of money and trying to rectify her ignorance of all things financial.

Confessions of a Cheapskate — Adrienne at Mommying My Way admits that her cheapskate tendencies that were present pre-motherhood only compounded post-baby.

Money Matters — Witch Mom hates money; here's why.

Money? What Money?! — Alicia C. at McCrenshaw's Newest Thoughts describes how decisions she's made have resulted in little income, yet a green lifestyle for her and her family.

What matters. — Laura at Our Messy Messy Life might worry about spending too much money on the grocery budget, but she will not sacrifice quality to save a dollar.

Making Ends Meet — Abbie at Farmer's Daughter shares about being a working mom and natural parent.

Poor People, Wealthy Ways — Sylvia at MaMammalia discusses how existing on very little money allows her to set an example of how to live conscientiously and with love.

The Green Stuff — Amyables at Toddler In Tow shares how natural parenting has bettered her budget - and her perspective on creating and mothering.

Jemma's Money — Take a sneak peek at That Mama Gretchen's monthly budget and how Jemma fits into it.

5 Tips for How to Save Time and Money by Eating Healthier — Family meal prep can be expensive and time-consuming without a plan! Dionna at Code Name: Mama shares five easy tips for how to make your cooking life (and budget) easier.

Belonging in the Countryside — Lack of money led Phoebe at Little Tinker Tales towards natural parenting, but it also hinders her from realizing her dream.

Total Disclosure and Total Reform — Claire at The Adventures of Lactating Girl gets down to the nitty gritty of her money problems with hopes that you all can help her get her budget under control.

Save Money by Using What You Have — Gaby at Tmuffin is only good with money because she's lazy, has trouble throwing things away, and is indecisive. Here are some money-saving tips that helped her manage to quit her job and save enough money to become a WAHM.

Two Hippos & Ten Euros: A Lesson in Budgeting — MudpieMama shares all about how her boys managed a tight budget at a recent zoo outing.

ABBA said it — Laura from A Pug in the Kitchen ponders where her family has come from, where they are now and her hopes for her children's financial future.

Money vs. Time — Momma Jorje writes about cutting back on junk, bills, and then ultimately on income as well ~ to gain something of greater value: Time.

An Unexpected Cost of Parenting — Moorea at MamaLady shares how medical crises changed how she feels about planning for parenthood.

5 Ways This Stay at Home Mom Saves Money — Charise at I Thought I Knew Mama shares 5 self-imposed guidelines that help her spend as little money as possible.

Frugal Parenting — Lisa at My World Edenwild shares 8 ways she saves money and enriches her family's lives at the same time.

Conscious Cash Conscious — Zoie at TouchstoneZ shares her 5 money-conscious considerations that balance her family’s joy with their eco-friendly ideals.

Money, Sex and Having it All — Patti at Jazzy Mama explains how she's willing to give up one thing to get another. (And just for fun, she pretends to give advice on how to build capital in the bedroom.)

Money could buy me ... a clone? — With no local family to help out, Jessica Claire at Crunchy-Chewy Mama wants childcare so she can take care of her health.

Spending Intentionally — CatholicMommy loves to budget! Join her to learn what to buy, what not to buy, and, most importantly, where to buy.

New lessons from an allowance — Lauren at Hobo Mama welcomes a follow-up guest post from Sam about the latest lessons their four-year-old's learned from having his own spending money.

How to Homeschool without Spending a Fortune — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now shares tips and links to many resources for saving money while homeschooling from preschool through high school.

It's Not a Baby Crisis. It's Not Even a Professional Crisis. — Why paid maternity leave, you may ask? Rachael at The Variegated Life has some answers.

"Making" Money — Do you like to do-it-yourself? Amy at Anktangle uses her crafty skills to save her family money and live a little greener.

Money On My Mind — Luschka at Diary of a First Child has been thinking about money and her relationship with it, specifically how it impacts on her parenting, her parenting choices, and ultimately her lifestyle.

Spending, Saving, and Finding a Balance — Melissa at The New Mommy Files discusses the various choices she and her family have made that affect their finances, and finds it all to be worth it in the end.

Accounting for Taste — Cassie at There's a Pickle in My Life shares their budget and talks about how they decided food is the most important item to budget for.

Money Matters... But Not Too Much — Mamapoekie at Authentic Parenting shares how her family approaches money without putting too much of a focus onto it.

Parenting While Owning a Home Business — In a guest post at Natural Parents Network, Lauren at Hobo Mama lays out the pros and cons of balancing parenting with working from home.

Crunchy Living is SO Expensive...Or Is It? — Kelly at Becoming Crunchy talks about her biggest objection to natural living - and her surprise at what she learned.

Mo' Money, Mo' Problems — Sarah at Parenting God's Children shares how a financial accountability partner changed her family's finances.

The Importance of Food Planning — Amanda at Let's Take the Metro discusses how food budgeting and planning has helped her, even if she doesn't always do it.

Kids & Money: Starting an Allowance for Preschoolers — Kristin at Intrepid Murmurings discusses her family's approach and experiences with starting an allowance for preschoolers.

An evening to myself

2011-10-09T22:16:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure if I've mentioned before that John hates his job. He really does. Getting that job was a real blessing eighteen months ago, because it allowed us to move from Philadelphia to the DC area, but it certainly hasn't been roses. Northern Virginia is not a cheap place to live, and the salary that originally seemed so generous seemed like a lot less when it was getting stretched for rent and train tickets. And then we moved even further out, and John started commuting two hours each way. Couple that with a truly toxic work environment, and the fact that it's a contract set to expire at the end of the year, and let's just say he's been keeping his resume in the mail.

Well, there's good news! And bad news. The good news is that he finally has a new job. The people are nice, the work sounds interesting and enjoyable, it's in John's field, it is NOT for the government, and it's only 45 minutes away!

The bad news is that involves travel. Up to three five-day trips a month. John doesn't care particularly about this; he doesn't mind flying. But I? I admit I started freaking out from the moment I first saw the listing.

I live in fear of single-momming. I know people do it. I know other people have to raise kids without their husbands for months on end. But I have never wanted that life. I never wanted my kids to have that life. I actually told John back when we were dating that I couldn't marry him if he had plans to join the military! It's not because I don't like servicemen, because I do. (I'm related to four of them.) But I am well aware that it takes a lot of guts to suffer through a six-month deployment, and I am also aware that guts aren't really high on my list of stuff-I-got.

If I had found the right guy, and he insisted on joining the military, I probably would have waited six years (or whatever it is) for him to get back out again. That's how strongly I feel about it. I wanted my kids to grow up with their dad around, darn it! And I did not want to be deciding whether to do the dishes tonight, or put the kids to bed on time. That kind of decision making doesn't sound like fun.

I called my mom and whined about it, and I have to admit I could hear her confusion. "But it's three weeks a month tops," she was saying. What she was not saying was, "I did it for six months at a time, so what are you whining about?!" (My mom is much too nice to say that sort of thing. But she would have had the right to.)

Okay, I'm a coward. But now this is really happening, so I've been trying to work myself around to the idea. And I'm seeing the appeal. Blogging after bedtime? I admit it's pretty nice! And I wouldn't have to pack his lunch every day. And, of course, he'd be home a heck of a lot more on his "home" weeks than he is now.

Tonight, I've had a chance to try it. John went out with some friends to a debate (his favorite thing ever to do), and I stayed home because wrangling a toddler in an event that requires relative quiet is not my idea of a picnic. So I had An Evening to Myself.

It started out okay. I had pumpkin as my veggie at dinner, which John can't stand and I love. I made myself a nice spinach salad as an evening snack, too. I caught up on my Internet Stuff. I brought in the dog, who played with the baby, and all was peace.

Then the baby started pulling on his diaper and saying "Poo." So I offered to take the diaper off and let him sit on the potty, and he said yes. Then I took the diaper off and he REFUSED to get on the potty, possibly because he'd already done all he was going to do in the diaper already. I let him run around with no diaper for a bit, because he'd just gone and he has this rash, but that was a bust. I hesitate to get too graphic, but let me just say I used about six diapers for rags where I could have put just one on his wiggly little backside. It was NOT PRETTY.

Then I smelled something awful and saw the dog chewing on the dirty diaper, which I had neglected to throw away and which Marko had found and given to the dog. Uggggh.

Then I turned around and the dog had one of the few pairs of my underwear which is still in good condition. Edit: which WAS in good condition. It is now deceased.

Then I turned around and the baby was climbing on the table. So I got him down.

Then I turned around and saw the dog had the baby's shoe, which I rescued. (Though I don't suppose it matters, because I still don't know what happened to the other shoe last week.)

Then I turned around and saw the baby was pooping again. So I whisked him onto the potty.

Then I turned around and saw the dog was making a beeline for the poo on the floor, which I cleaned up.

But then the baby was getting off the potty, so I coaxed him back on with the promise of a book, and sat down to read to him. At that point the dog decided he belonged on my lap, which he does NOT. He is not lapdog-sized, but he thinks it's his sovereign right to be on my lap at any time when I am sitting on the floor. I spent the entire book shoving him off and having him sneak back on.

I forgot to mention the part when the baby dumped the dog's entire water dish on the floor and then tried to lap up the water with his tongue. I don't even remember when that happened.

I finally got the kid into bed, at his much-too-late "usual bedtime," and here I am. Excited to have a chance to blog after bedtime. Too tired to say anything particularly clever. And uncomfortably aware of the ham and the pumpkin which both need to be cut up and put away, in containers I'm pretty sure I don't have, sometime before I go to bed.

Good night, all. Let's hope the evenings aren't all like this when John starts traveling.

My past, part VII

2011-10-07T12:51:00.004-04:00

Part VI here.

Remember Juanita, the consecrated woman who was always pestering me at sports? Well, she was also my housework supervisor. It was her job to come into the conference room, which I cleaned every day, and nag me to work faster. Since I took considerable pride in my work and knew I did a good job, it drove me crazy. One day, I just lost it. I was tired of humbly apologizing for not doing a better job when I WAS doing a good job, as I saw it. So I yelled at her. I was holding a vacuum cleaner with a long hose attachment, and I waved it in her face. I yelled something like "Can't you see I'm working as fast as I can?!" She simply turned around and left the room. Later I seem to remember getting an earful about it from my spiritual director. I felt bad that I had snapped, but I also felt annoyed that everyone seemed to talk about me behind my back. If Juanita had stuck around, I would have apologized to her right away, but now there seemed no opening for doing so.

It was a wakeup call for me to shape up, though, and I did try. I got a little better at accepting criticism. But I still cried a good percent of the time. (In fact, I STILL do sometimes when someone criticizes me. I guess I am just really sensitive! But I'm a heck of a lot more stable emotionally than I was then.)

Soon, the school year was over and the summer began. I wasn't particularly looking forward to going home ... for some reason, I had started to be afraid of going home. I had gone into a panic when it was time to go home at Christmastime. It just seemed so far out of my new comfort zone. How could I be "what I was supposed to be" without daily Mass, a directed meditation, and someone to wake me up at six a.m.? How would I relate to my family, and wouldn't I miss my companions? But the three days I spent at home ended up being wonderful ... they were the days my first younger brother was born. I loved him immediately. And I got to go home one other time, in the spring, for his baptism.

So, I knew it would be nice to see my baby brother, and I wasn't dreading the summer visit. But I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, either. What I was looking forward to was World Youth Day, which was going to be in Toronto. We were ALL going to get to go. There was going to be a giant Regnum Christi convention! And, oh yeah, the Pope.

I had a fun time with my family, I think. I actually don't remember it very well. I do remember "major vacations" afterward, when we went to various parks every single day and enjoyed the summer. (No, we didn't do school year-round, even though we only had two weeks at home. The rest of the time was spent in outings and fun summer courses and, of course, the summer program.) I remember having spiritual direction with Sally at the park. I was mainly concerned with the fact that she was going to be gone for a good part of the summer, and she wasn't going to be coming to World Youth Day either, so I would have a long time without spiritual direction. I wasn't quite sure how I could manage without it for three weeks or whatever it was.

I have a vague memory that she said something about re-discerning my vocation. I remembered that from last year. I guessed it must be something you do every year. I told her that I would definitely pray about whether I was supposed to stay for another year, and that was the end of that.

I thought.

Meanwhile I did go to World Youth Day, and had a fabulous time. I did suffer a little bit from panic attacks and claustrophobia -- something that had been bothering me for awhile, but which I was told was all in my head -- because of all the crowds and unfamiliarity. But other than that it was wonderful. A close friend from back home was there for the summer program and had come to WYD with us. She stuck to me like glue the whole time, and really helped me enjoy everything. She was very free with handing out hugs and grabbing my hand to lead me through crowds, which was nice. We got to camp out the night before the papal mass, in a vast crowd of young people, and I even danced a little with a group of Brazilians! We weren't allowed to dance, but since it was little more than walking around in a circle, I figured it was okay.

There were many Regnum Christi events which we went to as well. At the end of the trip, there was a giant incorporation ceremony with a high-profile Legionary. And now I was finally sixteen! I could finally join RC! I asked if I could.

"Well, have you discussed this with your spiritual director? Normally you're supposed to do that first."

"Oh, ages ago," I said, remembering that I had informed her some time ago that I wanted to join, and she hadn't said anything against it.

"You're also supposed to write a letter to Fr. Maciel first, telling the reasons why you want to be incorporated. But in this situation, you'll write your letter afterward. And instead of going on a discernment retreat first, you can go on your usual retreat in the fall. That will count." So I was given permission to be incorporated.

The ceremony was a disappointment, though. Instead of the small, intimate celebrations of a few girls I had seen before, there was a vast crowd. And instead of receiving a cross, a Bible, and a commitment card, I was told to just hold my own cross and Bible, and I would get a commitment card later. I had wanted a chance to review the commitments, but no one had a card they could show me. And when it was time to recite the promises, I didn't have a sheet to read, so I just listened and said "Amen" at the end. It hardly felt like it counted, and I kind of wished I had waited. I never even wrote the letter.

We returned to Rhode Island, happy because we had gotten to see John Paul II (a second time for most of us, including me, because we had gone to Rome my freshman year). I tried to track down Sally, but all I got was, "Oh, you were incorporated? I didn't expect that. Congratulations." She said we would make an appointment for spiritual direction when she was a little less busy.

A short time after that, I got a call from my mother. "What's this about you coming home?" she asked, very concerned.

"Why would I be coming home? I'm definitely not coming home. Where did you hear that?"

"Sally called and told us you might be coming home. She said she'd discussed it with you."

I was shocked. How could Sally go behind my back like that? We'd never spoken about me leaving. We hadn't spoken in weeks anyway. But then I thought for awhile and remembered our last conversation, almost a month before. There had been something about re-discerning ... hadn't there? Finally I answered my mom, "Well, she did ask if I wanted to stay for another year, and I said I'd pray about it, but we haven't talked since then. I'll talk to her and tell her I'm not planning to leave." I figured that would take care of everything.

It didn't. We had a talk where she asked me to seriously consider leaving, told me that I was just being complacent where I was, and told me that I had to be open to the possibility that God was leading me elsewhere. At least, I think that's what she said. I was mostly busy sobbing. The very idea of leaving was heartbreaking to me. But I promised I would pray hard and really discern and ask God what he wanted.

I did, too. While writing this post, I went through my old prayer journal from the time (oh, how painful). Every night, I wrote begging God to make his will known to me, and promising that I would obey him if he asked me to leave, even though it was the very last thing I wanted. I felt that perhaps this was all because I had not been good enough, and that I needed to try harder to be worthy. But I never got the slightest hint from God that he might want me to leave, though I asked for sign after sign. All I could think of in prayer was how much I loved being there, how close to God I felt, and how firmly I believed this was my vocation.

Finally I got another chance to talk to Sally, just for a few minutes before some other activity. "I've really prayed and discerned," I said, "and I really feel that God wants me here."

She looked me in the eye. "Well, God has many ways of speaking to us, Sheila, and one of those ways is through our directors. And as your spiritual director, I'm telling you that God wants you to go home."

I burst into racking sobs then. I just couldn't understand! How could God call me to a place and then force me out of it again? Why couldn't God be bothered to speak to me himself? Why did I get one feeling from God, and another feeling from God's instrument?

She told me not to tell anyone else, because it would only upset them. And then she gave me a box of Kleenex, told me to go to the next activity when I had calmed down, and left. I cried alone in the empty room for a long time, and then finally went on with my day. Soon I let my family know, and my mother cried with me. She bought me a ticket to come home ten days later. I found out I would be leaving on the 15th of August, and on the 25th, I would be on a plane home.

Those ten days were misery. I loved my classmates so much, despite all the distance we were forced to keep with one another. We had gone through a lot together, and we knew more about each other than we ever said. I knew I'd never again have friends like those. All I wanted was to tell them I was leaving and tell them I still cared about them, but I was not allowed.

I knew people left sometimes. Some people I'd really liked had done it. I assumed it was of their own choice, because obviously they wouldn't be kicked out if they wanted to stay! And I assumed they had chosen not to say goodbye. We'd been told not to write to them, either, because it would get in the way of their discernment of God's new plan for them. So I never did, though I badly wanted to. I just assumed that they were happy where they were. Now I knew this was false, but I couldn't tell anyone about it! All I did for those ten days was go through the motions and cry a lot. My main thought was, "I loved God, and he rejected me because I am not good enough."

I did get to speak to Caroline and ask her why I was being sent home. Sally had told me she was the one to ask, so I swallowed my fear and made an appointment with her. She told me that I was too "up in the clouds," and being at home would ground me. She said I was too sensitive, and knocking around with the "rough" people at home would toughen me up. She said that this wasn't necessarily permanent; that I could come back next year if I made the necessary improvement. Then she recommended I read How to Win Friends and Influence People, and sent me on my way with a jaunty smile and a thumbs-up. I held on to the hope that I might return someday like a life raft. She had given me enough hope to survive on, and I felt kindly toward her for the first time ever.

The day chosen for my departure was a day of silent retreat, so no one would notice I was gone until I was in the air. Sally and another consecrated prepared me a snack for the plane and drove me to the airport. Sally finally gave me a commitment card and explained to me what I would have to do to follow my Regnum Christi commitments. She told me that my Regnum Christi section back in Seattle would look up to me because I'd had so much special training. I would have a lot of work to do to build up RC in my home town. Then the two consecrated stood and waved while I walked through security and away.

It was a big relief when I found my friend from the summer program was already at the airport, having been dropped off in an earlier van run, and that she would be on my flight. I told her everything and she hugged me understandingly. I honestly don't know what I would have done without her. But on the long flight to Seattle, I sat alone, sobbing for the whole six hours.

When I arrived home, I was completely empty and emotionless. I felt I had nothing left I could feel. It was late already and I was exhausted. My family met me at the airport with flowers, but I felt so dead I didn't even want to greet them, and I stiffened up when they tried to hug me.

That night, I cried myself to sleep alone in my room. And then I didn't cry again for two years.

Don't worry, though, the story's not over yet!

Tell me it's okay to wean

2011-10-07T10:32:00.003-04:00

It seems like everyone I know nursed straight through pregnancy and then tandem nursed afterwards. (Tandem nursing is nursing two children during the same time period.) I know that isn't true. The ones who weaned during pregnancy just never happened to mention it, because it's the more common thing to do. But as I read my blogs each day, I keep on coming across more and more about nursing during pregnancy and tandem nursing. Assuring me that it's okay. Assuring me that it's normal. Assuring me that it is totally the best thing to do. Articles like this one and this one and this one.

I understand that. It's not as common a choice as it seems from my point of view, and those who do it often don't know anyone else who does. They think they have to wean when they get pregnant, and the fact is, they don't. They can if they want to, or they can choose not to.

You never have to wean as long as everything's normal. Nursing never becomes physically or psychologically damaging. The length of an average nursing relationship is cultural: some cultures, like the !Kung in Africa, do it for four years or more. In Biblical times, three years was taken as pretty standard. And in Mongolia, sometimes the youngest child nurses till six or seven because no one really cares if they do. Sooner or later, whether you do anything about it or not, every child weans. At the very latest, when their permanent teeth start coming it, they lose their latch. No child ever graduated from high school still breastfeeding. So there's no need to worry.

However, sometimes mothers just don't want to wait six or seven years to be done nursing ... especially if they have other children! There are so many reasons why mothers choose to wean. Just the other day a woman was asking for advice online because she had to wean her toddler to get back on medication she needed. Some women demanded, "Will you die without it? Then why are you forcing her to wean?" I don't think that's fair at all. Making the sacrifice of going without a needed medication for a whole year is very selfless -- no need to make her sound like a terrible mother because she doesn't want to do it for three years.

On the other hand, I also don't really like the advice I see where moms are told to just wean cold turkey, along with the not-so-comforting addition, "My son screamed bloody murder for a few days, but then he was fine." Isn't it kind of traumatic to take something that has been a source of nourishment and comfort for a child's whole life and just say, "Nope, you can't have it anymore because you're a big boy"? I've heard that approach likened to taking a child's baby blanket away from him and nailing it on the wall out of reach. "Oh, it's still here. And I could get it for you if I wanted. But you're just going to have to look at it all day and know you can't have it."

So that isn't what I wanted to do. I decided to wean gently, a little a time, and being okay with going backwards for awhile during a stressful time. I've got nine months (well, seven now). I don't have to be done today. For the main part, I feel good about this decision. I think Marko's ready, or will be soon, and that he will be okay without nursing.

But I guess I just wish there was a little more out there that affirmed my current experience. I want a blog post by a mom who did wean during pregnancy -- and had it go well. Some tips might be nice. Some commiseration might be nice. I guess I just want what I always want ... someone else to tell me I'm doing the right thing.

Why am I choosing to wean? Well, a number of reasons. The idea of nursing two is just overwhelming and scary to me. I know it might be okay. But what if it's not, and I hate and resent it? I can't exactly change my mind on a dime here. And it's not that I haven't seen it done -- I have. But the women who do it always seem to have kind of mixed feelings about it. I want to feel good about showing affection to my toddler when I have a new baby -- not touched-out because I'm nursing around the clock. Nursing a newborn is really time-consuming as it is.

I also am aware that most women lose their milk supply at some point in pregnancy. At that time, many children wean naturally. It seems like an easier time to do it than later might be. Though I know nursing my son till he's five would not do him any harm, I just ... don't ... really ... want ... to. I want to be done in the foreseeable future. I never intended to nurse him longer than a year when he was born, so I am aware that I could easily change my mind. But it seems so convenient to work on weaning during pregnancy.

But then when I actually did get pregnant, I felt completely decided. Why? The PAIN. Oh the pain. Some women have no pain while nursing during pregnancy. Some have a little. And some, like me it turns out, have awful, terrible, excruciating pain. So far I am handling it fine. Twice a day for now, and knowing we'll be done soon? I can take that. But I can't imagine how I would deal with it if he were still nursing on demand, and there were no end in sight. I would find myself feeling resentful and angry. I have no objection to mothers "being martyrs" if we want to. I mean, we have to go through labor. It's not like suffering pain for your child is something out of left field. But if you've had enough, and it's driving you crazy, and the amount of good it's doing your child seems to be much less than the amount of harm it's doing you? You don't have to do that if you don't want to.

So, there it is. Marko is fine. He has never "screamed bloody murder" because if nothing else will comfort him besides nursing, he gets nursing. Honestly, though, that hardly ever happens. Generally, the offer to play outside, rock in the rocking chair, or read a book is happily accepted. So I think I'm agonizing over it a heck of a lot more than he is.

Has anyone else weaned during pregnancy? How did it go?

My past, part VI

2011-10-05T11:57:00.000-04:00

I left you all on a cliffhanger at the end of Part V for quite a long time ... sorry about that.

Changes were pretty frequent during those years. The school was still relatively new -- I think less than ten years old -- and we were still working out what the rules would be. So we would be called into the conference room and told, "Spiritual direction is now spiritual guidance," or "Section I and Section II are now called ECYD Section and Regnum Christi Section," or "Your 'face-to-face' is now your 'PC Prospect.'" Those ones weren't that big of a deal. We would just have to start using the new word right away, and never use the old word anymore. We also weren't supposed to talk about the change, because that would open things up to complaints. And we must never complain about changes, because that's just part of being co-founders.

Other changes included an announcement that we were no longer going to read classic novels at lunchtime; that was due to a mistranslation of our statutes and we were really supposed to be reading lives of the saints. A disappointment to me (because we were in the middle of Captains Courageous), but not really a big deal.

The hardest changes to cope with were the yellow letters, or new destinations for the consecrated. We would get the announcement that a person was leaving, and be told who her replacement would be. If the replacement was there already (and she usually was, so that the announcement was expected), the change was effective immediately. Again, there could be no comparing of the old person with the new person. We would all miss the old person, of course, but comparing the two implies criticism of the old person, so we weren't allowed to do it.

On this particular day, we were called into the conference room by our director, Maria Brackett. (This is her real name: the school only ever had two directors, so there would be no point in trying to disguise her identity.) I was pretty scared of Maria. She was very tall and had a rather frightening smile. At 33, she was one of the older consecrated women there. She was never harsh with me in any way, but I was still intimidated by her. However, when I had gotten a new haircut (finally cutting my hair short to be like the consecrated women, as most of us did), she took me up to her room with several of the other consecrated, where they styled my hair. It was a very big deal for me, being fussed over like that, and I had liked her well enough after that -- though I was still a bit shy of her.

Anyway, her announcement was a huge shock to the entire school. She was leaving. She had gotten a new destination to go to Spain, and she would be leaving in a few days. Then she introduced to us our new director, Caroline Wilders.

Caroline was a little older than Maria, I thought she was very pretty. She also had a delicious British accent and could also speak French. She had been a doctor. While girls around me sobbed at the loss of their beloved Maria, I could only think, "Surely things will be much better now." She just seemed so nice.

Unfortunately, I kept embarrassing myself around her the first week she was there. I loved her accent, but every time I was trying to imitate it (in admiration, not to make fun), she always seemed to appear right behind me. I even accidentally made fun of her one day, right to her face. At the time, I thought she would think I was immature and silly. It didn't occur to me then, though it does now, that she might have thought I was angry Maria had left and was talking trash about her to the other girls. In any event it was a poor start.

Then we had our first outing with Caroline. I really tried to do my best, because I was sure she'd already been informed about me and my issues. I wanted to prove to her that I wasn't so bad as all that, that I was trying my very hardest. But about halfway through the basketball game we were playing, I started wearing out. I slowed down and started jogging instead of running down the court ... and then walking. I kept trying to spur myself to go harder, but it just wasn't in me.

So Caroline noticed immediately and pulled me aside. I assumed she would say something kind and motivating, but she laid into me right away. "Don't you love God at all? Why aren't you doing your best?" I started to cry in shock and hurt. "No alligator tears," she said. "That may have worked before, but it won't work with me."

Those words went right to the heart ... I have never forgotten them.

That wasn't the end of my problems with Caroline ... but first I've got to tell you about something else that happened. I believe it was that spring, the spring of 2002. It was when we got a visit from our founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel. We didn't call him that, though -- we called him Nuestro Padre, that is, "our father."

We knew all about him, having heard stories of his saintliness and wisdom on almost a daily basis. We read his letters every day, and there were several pictures of him around the school. We heard about his amazing piety as a child, his love of sacrifice as an adult, and his heroism in founding this amazing gift to the Church, the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi. Some of the stories bordered on the unbelievable -- how he had foretold things before they happened, how he could read your soul (even through a letter, by analyzing your handwriting!) and how he didn't speak any English because he'd forgotten it when he'd had a brain tumor removed. People went on pilgrimages to his old hometown, Cotija de la Paz, in Mexico. He was our hero.

I had always felt kind of iffy about such superlative praise for a human being, and one who wasn't even dead yet. But I was told that "all movements feel this way about their founders" and that God had sent him to us to found the movement we were in, so we could only learn about God's will from him. The frequent changes we had to deal with were all because of him fine-tuning the movement he had created in line with God's revelation to him. And when I had decided to hand over all of my doubts about Regnum Christi and accept everything I was told whole-heartedly (because if it was God's will for me to be there, everything that happened to me there was God's will too), I made it a point to accept those parts, too. I didn't understand everything, but I didn't have to. I just had to make the choice to believe it all.

So when we heard he would be visiting us, we were all incredibly excited. Classes were canceled while we cleaned the school from top to bottom. The choir practiced and practiced (and my spiritual director, the choir director, berated us constantly until I cried). Everything had to be perfect.

Finally he arrived and we all gathered in the conference room to hear him speak. I was disappointed. Many of our pictures of him were out of date, and showed him either as a handsome young man, or at least a respectable old man. But the version we got was ancient and jowly. He had a bowl of hard candy in front of him, which he popped continuously, and he sat with his legs crossed (which Legionaries never do). It was such a let-down after all the handsome, professional priests who had come to speak to us before. His talk was the same. Someone was translating, but I could understand the original too. It was just a meandering flow of words ... none of that fire and passion of his letters, or of the other Legionaries. I didn't feel at all inspired. But I treasured up every word, in the hopes of finding something that meant something to me. Surely I could walk away with a sentence to tell the others when we rehashed everything later -- some special word that God had meant just for me. I got some notes down, but nothing that seemed particularly special.

And then, the moment everyone was waiting for. We were all going to go up and kiss his hand. He was going to give each of us a rosary. I was excited as everyone else. Surely I would be able to detect the glow of holiness when I was at close range. Maybe he would look at me and I would know his faded blue eyes were reading my soul. It was a little scary! But nothing particular happened. I got my rosary, I kissed his hand, but didn't feel anything special. Some other girls did manage to exchange a few words with him, but I had been too shy. Still, I got the rosary, and I clutched it to my heart, thinking, "I will have a relic of him when he becomes a saint!"

Those of you who know the things that came out later are probably feeling a little sick right now. I know I am. After he died, it was discovered that he was a fraud. He definitely had mistresses, and he probably abused little boys under his care as well. There was no halo to be seen because there was no holiness there. I have no doubt that he was once as charismatic as people say. But when old age robbed him of his charisma, there wasn't a whole lot left to admire.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. At the time, though I had heard that "evil people" had said "terrible things" about our founder, I knew that this was because they were jealous and hated the work God was doing through him. It seemed obvious to me that these were false, because why would so many good people believe him and trust him unless he were really a good man? No, I assumed my lack of a spiritual experience when I saw him was simply my own unworthiness.

I think I'd better leave the story of how I came to leave for the next post!

Plans change

2011-10-03T11:50:00.002-04:00

Two weeks ago, I had a lot of plans for how I would do things during this pregnancy. Since I wasn't sick, I wasn't too concerned about just getting by. My goals were to wean Marko, at a pace he would accept, and to teach him a better way to go to sleep. No rush, though, because stroller walks were working fine! I soon was only nursing about once a day, at no particular time, and stroller-walking to sleep at naptime and bedtime.

That was right when the morning sickness struck, and hard. We were out and about a lot -- three parties that week, and two days with my in-laws. And it was fun, but I just felt awful. So tired and so sick. I could barely eat anything, but the less I ate, the worse I felt. I slacked off on taking my vitamins, too, so that didn't help. And I was exhausted, because I had been napping each day up till then, but couldn't nap much that week.

The following week was more restful, but the sickness remained. It was just so awful. Meanwhile sleep was getting harder. Two stroller walks a day is a lot, especially when it's taking Marko longer and longer to go to sleep. And the weather was beginning to get worse. Then, two nights in a row, Marko absolutely refused to get in the stroller at all. We could roll him through the neighborhood howling, or give up -- which is what we did. John was eventually able to get him to sleep by walking around with him in his room.

But that wasn't going to work long-term, either. Marko has no interest whatsoever in going to sleep that way with me. I guess my shoulders aren't big enough or I haven't got the trick of bouncing right. He just screams "Daddy, Daddy" the whole time. Only John is not always available at bedtime ... so what now? I have sometimes had luck getting him to sleep by lying down with him and singing ... like, twice. At naptime only. Bedtime is harder, and we were already struggling against a confused sleep schedule. The only way to get him to sleep when his schedule is confused is to use a sure-fire method he is accustomed to -- only our old method is broken.

I found myself wistfully sighing of the old days, when he was about nine months old, when I used to nurse him to sleep. It took ten minutes or so. I'd nurse him in the rocking chair and then lie down with him for awhile. It was perfect and I enjoyed it -- only once in awhile, it didn't work and we'd have to try again in an hour (because he wouldn't nurse again right away). Stroller walks seemed like a magic solution, because they always worked. Only ... now they don't. And they sure take a heck of a lot longer than ten minutes.

So I went back to nursing Marko to sleep. It occurred to me that it will be way easier to transition to a new sleep method from nursing than it will to do so from stroller-walking. I can build a good sleep routine that has nursing as part of it, and then slowly reduce the amount of nursing and increase the book reading, rocking chair rocking, singing, and lying in bed. I honestly think this method is more likely to get him falling asleep on his own sometime before ten years old than the stroller method is. So nursing it is.

I wasn't really paying attention to anything at the time, except that it took an hour to get him to sleep the first night (yikes! but luckily that's improving as he gets used to it) and the fact that nursing him does hurt, a lot. It's like nursing a piranha.

But, in apparently unrelated news, the next day I didn't feel so sick. In fact, I felt like making a big dinner and eating every bite. After eating it, I felt great. The next day, I felt like eating a big breakfast. So I did, and felt fine. I haven't felt really sick since. I just have this kind of gaggy feeling at the back of my throat a lot of the time, and of course I can't eat anything too spicy or heavy without regretting it, but I'm eating normally and feeling fine. I also don't feel the need for naps lately.

It was only just the other day that I thought, "I remember hearing that nursing helped reduce morning sickness for some women. I wonder ..." And, you know, I bet that's it. I bet nursing once a day, and not at all some days, brought me below a certain threshold and gave me awful morning sickness. And then increasing the amount of nursing to twice a day, reliably, was enough to cure the morning sickness. I can't prove that, and I'm not going to experiment with it because I feel fine and want to continue feeling fine. But it's something to think about.

Another side effect has been that Marko has stopped asking to nurse almost completely. When we weren't nursing much, he would think of it all the time. I usually was able to distract him, so we wouldn't nurse every time, but sometimes I would go ahead and nurse him because he wanted it so much. Now that he's reliably getting some nursing twice a day, I think he's happy because that's the amount he needs. He knows he doesn't have to ask all the time; he'll get it anyway. So I think it's probably what is best for him to keep at this level of nursing for awhile, painful as it is. Maybe he'll need it less soon, but for now, this is keeping him happy. He even seems less grouchy! And I peeked in his mouth last night ... he has two new canines. I never noticed him teething at all. He's woken up a little at night, but not enough to make me think he was teething. Apparently he was.

I'm a planner, and I like to know when naptime will be or how I will help Marko through this or that transition. But I try to be flexible, too, so I can be responsive to what he actually needs. I think this is one of those times when I need to throw my old plan out the window and do what actually works for our family right now.

...But I still really hope I can manage to wean him before May.

Fall garden update

2011-09-29T12:18:00.004-04:00

Well, my fall garden is doing pretty well, considering how little attention I've been giving it! I've decided my 2011 garden is an experiment: How Little Can I Do in my Garden and Still Get a Harvest?

Pretty little. Since I planted some lettuce around the first of September, I have done nothing but harvest green beans and basil and water the lettuce a couple of times, as I remembered it. And things are actually growing!

The tomatoes look sad. I was going to pull them out but didn't get around to it. Then they miraculously came back to life ... but only at the ends. The stems still look completely dead, but some life must be passing through them, because green leaves appeared at the ends of the branches. These then flopped over on the ground, because they were way too high for the tomato cages. (Note: those cages aren't going to cut it next year. They fell over in every high wind and weren't close to big enough. I have a trellis idea in mind ....)

Now, they are actually bearing fruit. One is just beginning to turn red. I've heard that late tomatoes aren't as good as summer ones, but -- tomatoes! I miss eating fresh tomatoes ... especially because I can't stand buying them anymore. Not when they cost three bucks for a little container, taste like nothing, and come from unethical farms (probably).

Those flopped-over tomato plants do get in the way of mowing, though.

The green beans are doing great! That is, considering I planted them two months late, and then all their flimsy string trellises broke, and then half of them got eaten by a groundhog. I'm not sure why he didn't come back for the other half -- maybe letting the dog dig around in them helped leave a threatening scent. But my four remaining plants are overproducing. Every time I'm out there, I see more beans -- and heave a heavy sigh, because I am tired of them fresh and have no time to blanch and freeze them. But I pick them anyway, and have managed to put up a few bags in the freezer. I know I'll want them later, even though they're the last thing I want right now.

I need to remember to wear long sleeves while picking them, though. They make my arms all itchy with their prickly leaves, and sometimes I break out in a rash. Also, next year I am definitely staking them differently. Not only was this method flimsy, but I can't get behind the plants to get the beans. I didn't realize beans like to fruit on the back, non-sun side. So you have to reach past all those prickly leaves to get the beans. Another tip is to pick them at the right time. Over-mature green beans are just not worth eating. I've started just leaving them in the hopes of maybe getting some dry beans, but I think they're just going to rot on the vines at this rate, as we've had a lot of rain.

The peas that I planted in early August aren't looking too promising. I'm not sure when, if at all, would have been a good time to plant them in the fall. They just grow slowly, plus they suffered a bout of some disease ... to say nothing of occasionally getting romped all over by the dog and kid. Mostly dog. He likes to pull out the stakes and chew on them. It's not helping those poor sugar snaps. I doubt we get a harvest before frost.

I am inordinately proud of my lettuce, though. I planted that patch several times. Once in early August, of which a few plants did sprout, but grew very slowly and then got eaten by grasshoppers and/or trampled by the baby and/or puppy. Once in mid-August, of which nothing sprouted. (I think I let them dry out?) And once in early September, of which four plants sprouted (out of my very heavy sowing) and are STILL ALIVE. They're growing much faster than the August bunch, too. I think they like the cooler weather and the frequent rain. Don't they look delicious?

At our house, we mainly have iceberg, which I think is blah. This is a butterhead variety called "Mignonette," described as both delicious and heat-resistant. I think we'll stick with it.

I also did plant some spinach along with the lettuce. Not a single seedling came up. I wonder what happened? I also wonder if it would be worthwhile to try planting more now. We don't really have much growing time left, so I'm thinking not ... but I really should have tried planting it again when I replanted the lettuce. Ah well.

My head is so full of plans for next spring! And for the winter, to keep me entertained, I'm doing an herb pot. It's just a big pot divided into quarters: 1/4 basil, 1/4 oregano, 1/4 thyme, and 1/4 cilantro. My first attempt died (I took it outside for a few hours and grasshoppers ate all the tiny sprouts), so I have to try again. Luckily you can't run out of growing time for an indoor plant!

Pregnancy insomnia

2011-09-28T17:43:00.003-04:00

Totally exhausted? Check! Morning sickness? Check! But now the kidney-bean-sized terror has a new delight for me: insomnia.

I guess pretty much everyone has this. And any time you mention it, somebody's gotta say, "Hey, it's gonna be worse once the baby's born!"

In my experience, that's not actually true, thank goodness. I can wake up to feed a baby and be asleep four seconds after the baby is, if not before. My born child is no longer keeping me up much at all. My unborn one, though ... Let me elaborate. Let's take last night.

9:00 p.m. Marko is asleep. Yay!
9:15 - Gosh, my head is killing me. I wonder if I'm just dehydrated? Only I know I shouldn't drink water right before bed.
9:30 - Well, I'm gonna do it anyway. Hope it helps. Drink a tall glass of water.
9:45 - Also have a snack and a prenatal vitamin.

10:00 - Go to the bathroom one last time (haha).
10:05 - In bed. So tired. Thank goodness I will soon be asleep.
10:15 - Man, my head still hurts. If I lie on my back, it feels a little better, though I can't sleep like this. I'll just lie like this till I'm tired, and then roll over to sleep.
10:30 - Oh, I really have to go to the bathroom. But I'm almost asleep. Surely I will still be able to fall asleep.
10:45 - Fat chance. Hello again, bathroom.

11:00 - Now I'm wide awake. My head really hurts. I'll lie on my back awhile longer and stare at the ceiling.
11:15 - Getting sleepy. I'll roll onto my right side (my preferred sleeping position).
11:30 - Oh no, that made me really queasy! Let's try my left side.
11:45 - Didn't help. Am I hungry, or too full?

12:00 - I vote hungry. Drag myself out of bed to eat a few nuts. They're salty, so I have three tiny sips of water.
12:15 - Wide awake. But at least now I'm comfortable.
12:30 - Sooooo sleepy. But now I have to go to the bathroom again.
12:45 - Sweet relief. Kind of curious how three sips of water turned into a gallon on the way out. Aaaaand I'm wide awake.
1:00 - I guess I finally fell asleep?

* * *

3:45 - I have no idea why I am awake.
3:50 - I also have no idea why Marko is in the living room. Return him to bed.

4:00 - Return to my room, after eating a couple more peanuts and going to the bathroom AGAIN.
4:00-5:00 - Sort of snooze, but keep coughing. Was it the peanuts, or am I sick?

5:00 - John's alarm goes off. My throat really hurts. Like strep-throat hurts. Uh-oh.
5:10 - I tell John that I am sick, though I don't know what I expect him to do about it.
5:15 - He kindly brings me a glass of water. I moisten my lips with it regretfully. But I would like to get more sleep now, NOT visit the bathroom a million more times. It does seem to stop the coughing though.

6:00 - Is that the dog whining?
7:00 - He's definitely whining. I should get up. I should wake Marko up, or he'll mess up his whole schedule.
7:15 - Lift my head up. Owwwwww. Hurts even worse. Lay it back down.
7:30 - Haul myself out of bed, take the dog out, go to the bathroom, drink a gallon of water, eat nuts. Decide I hates nuts forever. Two days ago they were the dream morning-sickness food. Also, water makes me queasy.
7:45 - Marko makes sad noises. I let the dog into his room. Sad noises turn into pure joy. WIN! The day has officially started.

The really weird part? The really messed-up part? There is no way at all that I go to the bathroom that much in the daytime. Why do I always have to go at night?! Also, why am I always so thirsty at night? (Blame the nuts I guess. But I am always thirsty at night. It's just usually my iron bladder can take me chugging a glass before bed and another if I should happen to wake up. That is NO LONGER THE CASE.)

Later in the day I tried to nap. Ha. It would help if the cat didn't insist on napping with me. Actually, I don't mind her napping with me. I mind her getting up and sauntering away, and then, when she finds there's nothing going on anywhere else either, she comes back and pokes her nose into my back, sending me ten feet in the air every time. The dog doesn't help either. If I put him in his kennel, he whines. If I put him in the backyard, he digs and thumps around right outside my bedroom window. This didn't use to bother me. The past two days, it's ensured that my two hours of available napping time results in 15 minutes of actual sleep.

Please commiserate with me here. Also, lie to me and say insomnia disappears after week ... say ... nine. That's in two days; I can survive that long. Though my memory reminds me that it generally gets worse until delivery. But I am going to pretend that isn't true, for the sake of my own sanity. I am so tired.