Patrick said "Wait- I have to check the candy for Nestle!"

Last week I was at the store with Patrick and I tossed a box of Nestle Drumsticks into the carriage which was totally a brain-fart.  I don’t know what I was thinking as I do TRY to avoid Nestle wherever possible.  I mean they own, like, almost everything, which makes boycotting difficult but I do try to avoid the brands I know about!   When I got to the checkout, Patrick saw the box and said “NO WAY MOM! We don’t buy Nestle junk.  I’m putting this back.”  And he ran back to the freezer.  The cashier just looked at me, and I shrugged and said “I forgot we boycott them” and continued to unload my cart.  When he came back, the cashier asked him why he didn’t like Nestle, didn’t he like ice cream?

And Patrick looked at her, aghast, and said “Nestle does things that the World Health people don’t like. They make formula that babies in other countries drink and then sometimes they get sick and die because the water isn’t clean. They’re a bad company.” 

The cashier looked confused and didn’t say anything else.  I was proud that my kid feels so strongly about what he believes is right and wrong, and at the same time I was so surprised to see how closely he pays attention to what I say.  The kid is purely awesome, and a better activist than I am, that’s for sure.

While we are talking about informed children and ice cream, let’s talk about how much fun it is to have the kids yelling “Beaver butt juice is EVERYWHERE!!!” when you are just trying to purchase a frozen treat!

My kids won’t eat/drink anything with strawberry “flavoring” (except actual strawberries) since they learned that some strawberry, raspberry and vanilla flavoring has beaver anal gland secretions as an additive…. So now they call it “beaver butt juice” which makes for some awkward moments when you’re out in public!

It’s kind of scary to think about how everything we say and do shapes the thoughts and opinions of our children.  Even a silly comment over breakfast (beaver glands anyone?) can be tucked away and saved to be pulled out months later in a crowded aisle of the grocery store.  Raising kids to be knowledgeable about the world we live in is tricky… You have to practice what you preach and stay on your toes all the time!  Has something like this ever happened to you? Do you have little activists in your home?

My first attempt with markers

Once upon a time there was a girl.  She wasn’t a particularly happy child, but she loved to be creative and spent every spare moment adding to the towering stacks of drawing books and canvases and endlessly scribbled her poems and short stories in her school notebooks.  Her dad had been an artist, and it made her feel like she was closer to him, that she was like him, when she drew her little pictures.  She dreamed of going to art school, and unsuccessfully tried to talk people into paying for painting classes.  She dreamed of writing books.  She just wanted to CREATE…

And then she did.  But not the way she thought she would.

The girl got pregnant.  It was a struggle to finish high school while caring for a little baby all by herself, but she did it.  She signed up for community college and watched all her friends head off to bright futures without her.   She felt so sad, alone, and unfulfilled.  She dropped out of classes the first week.  She stopped drawing.  She stopped writing.  She started hiding.  She floundered and flopped through the end of her teen years and the start of her twenties.

When she was twenty-one she forced herself out of her hidey-hole.  She started school again and signed up for an art class.  She hadn’t so much as scribbled in years and the first day she felt so outclassed and intimidated that she dropped out and signed up for accounting instead.

And then she met the man who would be her husband.  She fell in love, got married, started a blog and started having babies.  That little blog gave her a creative outlet and for a long time she was content enough to share her thoughts with a small following.  Her husband would occasionally gift her with art supplies but she was too scared to try again, afraid she would make a fool out herself.  And maybe still grieving for the part of her that thought she had been headed in a different direction.

Then she made a friend who taught her how to do henna and gave her a job.  It was frustrating and hard at first, but she was motivated by the idea that she could help support her family.  And she did henna like a boss.  It was satisfying to drape and lay out lines and dots until they grew into intricate, lacy patterns.  Only after she had been doing it for several years did it occur to her that this was indeed ART.

She grew a little more confident.  She started another blog and befriended a kickass website designer who talked her into sketching for her layout.  People liked it, and one kind soul compared her sketches to Alphonse Mucha and she cried.  And then she stuck her toes into the arty world and tentatively started doodling cartoons for her blog.  People liked them and asked for more.  She cried some more.  Her husband outfitted her with everything she could possibly need to draw and paint and she sat and stared at the blank paper, overwhelmed by the possibilities and the very real fear that she would never be good enough to make all this worthwhile.

She completed her very first painting.  It wasn’t great but she was so proud to actually finish something for the first time in over a decade. And then she saw the work of some of her childhood friends and realized it amateurish and crap and put it all away again.  A few months later she scooped up enough courage to try again and when she finished her drawing she put it on her facebook page.  She got such awesome, supportive comments and emails-  but all she could see were the mistakes.  The eyes were askew, the shading was wrong, it wasn’t good enough.  People liked it anyway.  They wanted prints, and several people wanted to commission her to paint something for them. She was embarrassed. It was hard for her to look at anything she had drawn or painted and think it was worthy enough to sell; she was just learning to be brave about showing her “art” to people.

And now we move forward to today….   And the girl stares at her blank page and is struggling with the urge to put it all away again because the idea of people who actually want to put something she has done ON THEIR WALLS is freaking her out.  She’s afraid that she will disappoint someone, or herself.

Hannah is a babywearing sister!

I have a bunch of littles (sometimes it feels like fifty but really it is just three) and one daughter firmly entrenched in her teen years.  So many blogs are devoted to parenting a young child; I thought it might be a refreshing change to address what it is like to be an attachment parent with a teenager.

Whenever I post something thoughtful or awesome that Hannah has said or done (like Sunday, when she got out the laptop and put together a quiche to surprise me with dinner while I put Cooper down for a nap, or the time she wrote this letter) it results in several people asking me what it is that we did to get such an amazing kid.  It isn’t one particular thing.  In fact, I think its two parts her awesomeness by nature and one part how we work as a family. Do we fight and yell at each other? To be honest, yeah. I wish it was not the case, but we do have our yelling matches.  My mom was a yeller, and my natural reaction is to yell when I get overwhelmed or aggravated.  I’m working on it, and I’m getting better at taking a breath and a moment to calm down before I flip out.  It helps that Hannah sounds exactly like me- sometimes half way through an argument we fall into giggles because it sounds like one person arguing back and forth.

But we also talk. A LOT. Our kids aren’t just our kids.  They’re people and we treat them as such.  There is a ton of “it bothers me when you do A, B, C,” and “it hurt my feelings when” and “I feel blah blah when” going on around here.  When I screw up or make a bad decision, I talk about what happened and why. We talk about how we feel, what we’re thinking, all day long. Hannah is a person with valid opinions and reasons for her actions, and we talk about the choices she has and what she could do with them. When I’m upset with her, I explain why and when she is upset with me she does the same.

If I had to give advice on how to raise a thoughtful and kind person, I would say…

1) Listen to your kid.  Actively listen.  Don’t just nod your head and make agreeable noises, but hear them.  Last night Hannah and I stayed up until two in the morning talking.  I needed sleep, and so did she, but it was more important that we spent some time together.  Listening is imperative. 

2) Own up to your mistakes.  Your kids will learn more from you admitting you screwed up and then seeing you try to fix it than thinking they have a perfect parent. 

3) Explain why you set a boundary or rule in place.  We have very few rules in our home, and Hannah understands why each one exists.

4) Nurture honesty.  My kids know that if they have screwed up big time they just have to tell us- and we’ll help them fix it, whatever it is. 

Is there a recipe for producing the perfect child?  Of course not, but the way we choose to interact with our children sets up the way they treat others and how they feel about themselves.  I would love it if she wouldn’t nitpick at her brother so much, or if she could do the dishes the first time I ask or even just remember to take the dog out more often…  But the flip side is that I have a daughter that is strong, thoughtful, compassionate, talented and kind.  She is articulate, funny, and a fierce protector of her siblings.   She stands up for what she thinks is right and isn’t afraid to speak her mind.  She is beyond awesome.

Upon request, here is the epic thread from The Good Letdown.  The idea of her (the woman that took screenshots from my page and wouldn’t remove the images and names of my readers, even after she was repeatedly asked) complaining about improper use of someone’s images was just too much.  If that’s true, it sucks, but it is still hypocritical and funny.  We just couldn’t help ourselves!

I put this guy

and these in the same sentence....

And someone got mad.

I was surprised by the fuss...

And then someone got funny!

I'm sure these guys don't mind...

With one phrase I managed to snag a KW hate page AND a KW love page that hates the KW hate page.

This is my official statement: Bananas are awesome and Jesus is a groovy dude.

This recipe makes one loaf of a light oat bread that is perfect for sandwiches and is so simple to make that I will no longer buy bread from the store.  This morning I toasted a couple slices and spread on a little butter and honey.  It was heaven.  You should make it.

Also? Oats are fantastic for increasing breastmilk production!  Maybe I should have titled this recipe as Lactation Bread!

1 cup wheat flour

3/4 cup oats or oat flour

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup honey

2 teaspoons fast-acting yeast

2 teaspoons salt

1 3/4 cups water

Instructions:

Add the dry ingredients (white flour, wheat flour, quick oats or oat flour, yeast, salt) in a standing mixer or a large bowl and stir until combined.

In a separate bowl, stir the honey into (slightly warm) water until honey is dissolved and then add it to the dry ingredients.  Stir (or mix) until a sticy, wet dough is formed.

Cover the top of the bowl loosely with a clean towel or plastic wrap and let it rise for 6 to 8 hours- I let mine rise overnight.

Liberally sprinkle flour on a clean surface and dump your dough right in the middle.  You will probably need a spoon detach it from the bowl.  Rub your hands in flour and gently stretch the dough into a rectangle, then roll it up.

Place the dough in a lightly greased bread pan (seam side down). Let dough rise again (about 2 hours) until it is cresting the top of the pan.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and bake 40 minutes to 45 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool completely before slicing.

Ingredients:

5 slices bacon, chopped
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 stick cold butter, cut into small pieces
1 3/4 cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 1/4 cup heavy cream, plus 2 tablespoons

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

In a medium skillet, cook the bacon until crisp. Remove and drain on paper towels. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Cut in the butter, cheese,and pepper with a fork, just until it starts to come together. Add bacon and 1 1/4 cup of the cream and work  until it becomes a sticky dough, be careful not to overwork it.

Turn onto a lightly floured surface and pat until it comes together. Form into 2 circles, about 6 inches in diameter and 1 inch thick and cut each circle into 8 wedges. Transfer to baking sheet using a spatula, leaving space between wedges. Paint the tops lightly with the remaining 2 tablespoons of cream and bake until golden brown, 20-22 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool slightly on the baking sheet.

I know I talk about this a lot.  Chalk it up to the fact that I am still in the “birthy, boobies, babies” stage of my life which makes me passionate about my baby’s right to eat whenever he is hungry, no matter where we are.  And every time I think I’ve made my point, some close-minded, puritanical idiot craps all over it.  And then I can’t stifle the urge to get out my soapbox and start all over again.  I don’t know how much more I can say “it’s just a boob, get over it.”  It isn’t going to hurt you.  It isn’t obscene, or dirty, or wrong to feed my baby.  It isn’t intimate or sexual.  It isn’t the same thing as removing waste from my body because it is a FOOD.  I promise I won’t chase you down and slap you with it.

You know, some of the easiest places for me to nurse in public have always been at pagan functions. RI Pagan Pride 2006 was the first place I ever nursed in public without fear. After that we started attending meetings and potlucks and I got braver and braver. I felt safe because most of the pagans I’ve met have been comfortable with bodies and nudity in general. I could probably walk around topless and no one would bat a freakin eye!  I mean when your belief system has an entire subsection on going “skyclad” you assume showing two inches of boob while feeding a baby is no big deal, right?

Last night, a woman in the pagan UU group I’ve been attending posted my cartoon…

And another member responded:

Of course I couldn’t stop myself from responding… And yes I could have been a little, um, gentler but between my aunt unfriending me and dealing with some other shit it’s been a rough week.

Really?  Your response is that boobies make you want to “barf” –I didn’t even know what to say to that.  I kind of can’t wait to pop out another baby and “whip out” (because that’s what we do, right?) my boob at a meeting, smack-dab  across the table from her. Too bad Cooper is only nursing in the morning/ at nap time.  Maybe I can borrow a baby from someone, just to make my point.

Honestly, I am so disgusted with people this week that I just want to withdraw from everything and cement myself inside the house.