mama is a four letter word

maybe not?

2011-08-11T07:26:00.001-07:00

I haven’t been posting. And that’s not like me, but it’s pretty indicative of my current life. I was always motivated to continue working on what I had started, to get to completion and accomplishment. The theme of my life lately has been giving up the things I thought I would be able to continue doing, and this may just be one of them.

I haven’t been terribly motivated to write lately. And that’s kind of weird for me. It had been my solace, my connection to others, my “friend” when I lived in a place without friends around. And now that my Mountain Man isn’t commuting 3 hours a day I find myself with less time. Since I’m closer to friends I have been seeing them occasionally, which is taking up a bit of time. Since we’re better able to really search for a home we’ve been spending a lot of time on that, as well. All of that has left me with less time to write and a lack of motivation to make room in the day.

I still feel like I have a lot I want to say. I still feel like I may be working toward a book. I still like the idea of the connections I built through blogging. But I also feel like it may not be the best use of my time right now.

So I guess this is fair warning that posts may become sporadic or cease. I may write and write and write and never post. I might find motivation again as soon as we get this house hunt settled. I don’t know. It isn’t like me to quit something that I’ve chosen to take on without putting in a lot of time and effort.

But that has seemed to have been the theme for me this past year, so I guess I should go with it. I don’t want to post a lot of insubstantial yammering because I don’t have the energy to really write. I don’t have the energy (and never really had all that much interest) in the blog promotion side of it.

If you want to get all the updates (if they happen) put me in your reader. I promise, if I don’t have anything to say I won’t bother you!

Thanks for being along on the ride… this could be a blip or a splat. We’ll find out together.

Congratulations! Here’s your bill.

2011-08-08T10:56:00.001-07:00

“Congratulations! Can I take your picture? Maybe with the Pie holding the ‘sold’ sign?” He asked.

“What? Take our picture? Why?”

“You know, you just bought your new car! Here’s your ‘sold’ sign. Let’s take your picture holding the sign in front of your new car!”

“But it’s not an accomplishment to buy a car. All we had to do was spend months researching, then spend an entire day sitting here doing paperwork and then take on another loan shortly after we paid off the truck. I don’t understand – it’s debt, not success.”

“Oh. Well maybe we can just move on to putting the car seat in.”

We took the car home and went on a camping trip. We got the car muddy in less than 24 hours and put 500+ miles on it in less than a week. That’s what I would call an accomplishment.

Then as soon as we got home from our camping trip we pulled into the driveway and began the car-shuffle necessitated by parking on city streets.

As the Mountain Man shuffled the Pie and the camping gear out of the back of the wagon, I turned the key in the old volvo.

Chug chug chug chug. Chug chug chug chug. Black smoke was spewing out of the tailpipe. I tried to remember how long it had been since I had last driven it. 4 days? 6 days? Either way, it should start!

The Mountain Man got in the car and finally got it started, drove it around the block to it’s new parking spot, and suggested we try selling it right away.

For sale: One sweet old volvo. Runs great (once you get it started) for at least one square block.

Congratulations on your new car! Let me print out a “sold” sign for you.

loose connection

2011-08-01T06:17:00.000-07:00

The Mountain Man and I had a rough weekend last week. We had a lot of fun and stayed busy. We ate out (a rare luxury for us) visited with friends, went on a hike, and enjoyed a ride on the ferry and a drive through the peninsula.

Somehow though, we just weren’t connecting normally. We weren’t fighting, but things just weren’t normal. We had a loose connection.

Nothing was wrong, but in the cracks and spaces, things just felt off.

I guess it’s normal to have these kinds of waning periods. This post-partum marriage is a slightly warped reflection of what it used to be. It’s like looking into a mirror made of old, wavy glass. It’s you, just a little distorted.

I adore my Mountain Man, I can’t imagine my life without him. We work together so well, enjoy each other’s company, laugh at each other’s jokes. But after baby, our lives have changed. We can’t spontaneously do the things we’d dreamed of – at least not for a couple more years. We had had the luxury of time and focus and each other, and now our time and focus are shifted. We still have each other, and we still have time - just less, and more fragmented.

I have everything, even if I had nothing but the Pie and my Mountain Man. So I have to keep working through these strange days of loose connections, to make a point of connecting even when it feels awkward or forced, and just know that we’ll pull back into the normal soon enough. As long as I keep making a point to keep the love going, it won’t run out. Even when there’s an occasional loose connection.

Intentional parenting

2011-07-29T08:28:00.000-07:00

Today I’m chatting with Nina of Shalom Mama about her experiences with parenting and living with intention. Nina and I met through another blogger and found that we had a lot in common – intentional living, loose attachment parenting, natural living and (of course) blogging about it all.

Check out our conversation!

How do you define intentional living and parenting? How do you make it happen on a daily basis?

I define intentional living as identifying the values and actions most important to me and making a daily effort to live by them. Wellness (body, mind, soul), building meaningful relationships, generosity, gratefulness, simplicity, creativity and flexibility are incredibly important to me. These values apply to the way I interact with my husband, kids, family and friends.

I try to grow in those areas every day by: Eating nourishing whole foods. Spending focused time with my kids, husband and friends. Giving thanks throughout the day. Taking time to exercise. Creating something every day - be it writing or crafts. Having the flexibility to throw plans aside and pursue an exciting opportunity. And having grace with myself when I fail miserably. I'm really working on that last one.

How is your parenting style informed by your values?

My style is attached-ish. Being a loving, gracious mom is important. However, I often come up short when I'm stressed and I am grateful for the forgiveness my kids willingly extend to me. I want to build meaningful relationships with my kids as much as with anyone else and I do that by including them my daily actions when I can.

My aim as a mom is to model to my kids the values that I want them to embrace - generosity, creativity, simplicity, curiosity, living passionately. Right now I'm struggling with giving them each quality time (there are 4 of them). They seem happiest when I'm reading to them or snuggling or pushing them in a swing. But I feel like I should be doing more. It seems that they understand simplicity better than I do. :)

Does living and parenting with intention make it hard to connect with other moms?

Yes and no. The Internet makes it so easy to find like-minded moms. The communities available online make unconventional living much easier. However, I find it more difficult locally. I don't know if it's the small town I live in or my tendency to be shy, but this has been a challenge for me.

I'm overcoming this, though, by sticking to my mission to build relationships and approaching women that I'd like to get to know better. Like the other day at the park when I saw a very pregnant mom with 5 other little kids. She just looked like someone I wanted to get to know. I approached her and found that I had actually heard about her from several people and that my midwife was her midwife as well.

Sometimes my efforts go well, sometimes I just don't connect with other women. It's a risk that I'm getting more comfortable with taking.

Did anything surprise you about parenting? How was the adjustment for you, in the early days, to becoming a mom? What is the adjustment like now as your kids grow?

What surprised me most about parenting was my reaction to it. I thought I'd be an uptight germaphobe. Instead, it made me really mellow, which is good after the things I've seen my kids put in their mouths. :) My husband has helped me to be less fearful and I let my kids explore more than I would have before I had kids. I can trust them more than I thought because they really are careful with themselves.

As they grow older, I'm really enjoying their independence. Having 4 kids in 5 years means a lot of the baby stage. That is really challenging! The youngest one is ~~walking~~ running now and they're mostly able to buckle and unbuckle themselves in the van. (I'm SO glad about this).

We're able to do more together and we're slowly breaking the kids into festivals and other outings. This is helping my husband and I let go of unrealistic expectations of our kids and enjoy as much as we can before the meltdowns begin. Everyone I know that had kids close together keeps telling me it gets easier. That's proving to be true.

Nina Nelson is a student midwife, mama to four and wife to one. She writes regularly at Shalom Mama, providing health and herbal resources and inspiring others to live intentionally. She loves reading, snuggling and giggling at miniature horses.

sand, snow and screams

2011-07-27T05:27:00.000-07:00

This weekend we headed up to the peninsula to enjoy some time with friends, visit Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park and enjoy the unusual sunshine.

We headed out early, but we missed our ferry. Since we had almost an hour to wait we decided to hit the beach and enjoy the Pie’s first experience with sand.

When our boat pulled in we loaded on, rode across the water and arrived on the other side. I was trying to conserve camera battery, as mine suddenly started flashing “warning! danger! low battery!” I missed some great shots, but enjoyed the moments.

We met our friends and took off across the peninsula and up the mountain roads to Hurricane Ridge. We got out of the car and met a lovely little ladybug. The deer were feeling rather social and the trails opened up for us. We hiked across snow, mud and dust. We found shade and had a picnic, smelled the wildflowers and found native onions. I love the gentle smell of those wild onions.

While we picnicked, we realized that it was getting late. 5pm lunch came too soon, and we realized that we would be fighting the worst of the summer ferry traffic coming home on a Sunday evening after a beautiful weekend. We headed back to the docks instead of the second trail. We had to wait as a ferry docked, unloaded, loaded and left. The next one came in and we were lucky to board. The short ride back to the mainland was enough for the Pie to learn to drive and to use navigational technology. I think from now on I’m going to buy touch-screen GPS systems as baby toys.

We spent the ferry commutes realizing how different life and travel and recreation is with baby. Our plans to drive to Alaska will have to wait until the Pie is a little older and able to handle the car ride a little better. Long-distance hiking doesn’t make a crawling baby very happy. Camping in the Northwest is complicated, since there’s no wide stretches of grass for babes to crawl. We realize now why so many families stay close to home when they have small kids. I swear everyone told me that babies love car rides, but not this Pie. She screams in frustration when in the car, and isn’t in love with riding in the pack anymore.

That’s not really what we had planned for – we had always intended to pack the little Pie into her carrier and go on with our hiking, biking, camping lives. We just hadn’t planned for that little Pie to have a preference of her own. We have to modify our expectations and our trips.

So we let the Pie crawl around off-trail, illegally. We let the Pie out of her seat to drive and navigate while we were on the ferry. We comforted and consoled while we drove.

Our next trip will have to be a little bit better planned, with plenty of breaks for crawling and cruising and nursing and snuggling. We’re not wiling to give up our days in nature, so we’ll have to figure out how to make them work a littler better for all of us.

Shalom Mama interview

2011-07-26T08:26:00.001-07:00

Today I’m featured over on Shalom Mama – a site I’m enjoying poking through written by a mama I’m enjoying chatting with. I’ll be featuring her here later this week.

Check it out here and stay a while to poke around Nina’s site!

Well, totally unrelated but this baby loves cheese. And making a mess.

combating consumerism by creating

2011-07-26T06:40:00.000-07:00

The passion that leads most of us to buy things is not the passion for the item itself – or for the act of the purchase, but the joy we get from the passion in it. The item is the embodiment of someone’s art and passion, and offers the potential to live vicariously through those who are living their own joy.

To combat consumerism, we have to create from our passions, to make out of love. To be able to create the things or the feelings that we want is so much more fulfilling that collecting the products of someone else’s passions.

I think that passion is meant to make work more enjoyable, more desirable. A passion inclines people to want to get up and do something – whatever it may be – and to be productive. Passions are about doing, creating, improving, investing – not about consuming.

In our culture, happiness has become so enmeshed with consumption that it’s sometimes hard to differentiate life from purchase. Shopping to cure boredom or loneliness or to create an experience is empty. I know this – yet I still sometimes find myself pining away for what others have. I want the sleek, sexy pumps that in reality I hate walking in. I want the art hanging on the walls. I want the new TV or the fancy phone or the library full of books. I want to collect and consume these things, all the while knowing that consumption of more things won’t make me happy – it will in fact make me more frustrated with my life, looming over me from shelves stacked too high and too many things to maintain, clean and keep track of.

I find so much more joy when I actually take the time to be content with what I have, to pare my life down to what is functional and what I truly love, and to spend my time and energy creating.

A new TV, purse, pair of shoes or fancy toy won’t fulfill that human need – passion – for more than a few moments. We watch sports, movies, TV, we buy clothes and shoes and video games, we eat out, drink wine, and walk through design showcases in order to be closer to the glow that comes off of the product of someone’s passion. Purchases are exciting because they are the embodiment of passion – someone else’s passion.

I don’t intend to say that I should never buy anything – that’s certainly impossible. When I do buy things, I try to buy things that were made with passion, inspiration, joy.

As I continually combat the excess and consumerism in my life and try to allow more space for contentment and moments of joy, I have to remind myself to turn away from consumption and toward creation.

cross-pollination

2011-07-24T06:04:00.000-07:00

While the Mountain Man, the Pie and I are out in the wilderness today, check out some goodies in my other space, including a guest post from Laurie in Churchill Manitoba: http://newsuburbanhomestead.blogspot.com/

push & pull

2011-07-24T05:44:00.000-07:00

Moving closer to the Mountain Man’s office has been wonderful. He commutes by bike in 10 minutes, we’re in pleasant walking distance to the grocery store, restaurants, shopping… and there are sidewalks to walk on! We’re near friends and my activities.

I have been noticing that I seem to have so much less time in the day. I can barely get an errand done or a project in the house started between naps, and the next thing I know the Mountain Man is rolling his bike in the front door. My days have become condensed, and my writing time has taken a huge hit.

I realized: by gaining so much family time, I’ve lost a huge part of my day, and it was the time that I used for processing my thoughts, for sharing my experiences, for writing – my catharsis.

Last night I had a slow-cooked dinner ready when the Mountain Man rolled his bike in the door, so I continued to write. I sat in my modern-style folding chair at our tiny antique kitchen table and tapped away at the keys. A slew of characters poured forth on my screen while the Mountain Man and the Pie chased each other around the living room.

I got three pieces started, and felt like I had missed out completely. I had taken time for myself and let the Mountain Man take on childcare responsibilities, had spent an evening doing what I love, and left the table feeling like I had wasted my evening.

By the time I stood up from my computer, the Mountain Man and the Pie were brushing their teeth. I had tried to regain my day and had lost my entire evening.

I climbed into bed, feeling the sting of what I had given up. I didn’t feel ready for sleep, didn’t feel ready for closing the day. The push and pull of my time hasn’t found its balance yet.

I am so happy to have regained so much time in the evening – we take walks, eat a relaxed dinner, have time to sit and talk and snuggle and connect. But by gaining this time I have lost time for myself and for what makes me feel relevant, connected with the outside world, productive, accomplished. Now I feel disorganized, frantic to keep up with my responsibilities, desires, expectations of myself, and disconnected.

I’m still trying to figure out this balancing act of self and family. They don’t have to be at odds with each other, but I haven’t successfully made them happy housemates.

So how can I hold both family time and time for self on my hip when gaining one means losing the other?

Loganism of the week

2011-07-23T08:19:00.000-07:00

The Mountain Man and I have been inundated with decisions lately, and it has become crippling. So many major decisions happening all at once – well, it’s just too much.

We’ve been battling with whether to buy a car, which car, how much to spend? Whether to buy a house, which house, how much? Whether to start a 529 plan, and how much? Whether to start a tiny bit of night weaning, when and how much? It is all too much.

The car decision has been the most complicated one, because we know we’re going to need a new car – we just don’t know when! My car is so old and unreliable that we can’t take it on long trips, although we’ve consistently taken it on 1-3 hour drives and it has been ok… so far. The truck is too small to have a rear-facing car seat and a wife at the same time, making travel complicated. Although our decision has since changed (12 times…) at one point we had decided to wait until my car actually dies before buying a new one, and plan to rent a car for our upcoming camping trip. Problem solved, right? Out of that decision to wait came this gem of a Loganism:

I feel really good about the decision to not make a decision.

Nice one, Mountain Man.

family bed

2011-07-22T06:50:00.000-07:00

I little rustle begins to wake me. I roll over, face to the wall - a now-useless instinctual action meant to settle myself back to sleep.

I slide my hand under my cheek and the rustle quickens to a squirm. I roll back to face the center of the bed, nose to nose with the Mountain Man, the squirming Pie between us. I scoop the baby into my arms, and sleepily wonder how she can be so huge and so tiny at the same time. I pull her close.

Across the bed I hear a shuffle and a murmur as the Mountain Man rolls himself over, back now to us. He’s probably got an arm flung over the edge of the bed, pushed further and further as the Pie and I move in the night. I close my eyes as she roots and latches, snuggling close and pressing her feet into my thighs. Her hands search and settle on my breasts, rolling skin between her fingers.

I don’t remember falling asleep, but I know we did. I don’t remember whether the Pie was still nursing as I drifted off, but she probably was.

In the morning another round of rustling wakes me, this time the Mountain Man rolling over to climb out of bed. The Pie bolts up in bed, excited to be awake. The Mountain Man greets her with his excited whisper “Morning, Pie!” and she squeals with morning glee.

I grab that huge-tiny Pie and climb out of bed. We change a diaper, start the coffee and pull some clothes on. Only a few short hours before the Pie and I are back in bed for nap time, and few more hours before the whole family is back in our big bed.

the day I married my brother

2011-07-18T20:31:00.001-07:00

I know, that was a dirty trick.

Over the weekend I officiated my brother’s wedding. He married Danielle. They were married on an overcast afternoon in my parents’ home overlooking the Puget Sound. Immediate family and a few friends were there to celebrate with them.

I was honored to be asked to officiate and was excited to be able to write the ceremony and lend some of the bride’s jewelry. I also cooked up some grub for the party.

My favorite part was that when their babe became fussy at the beginning of the ceremony, Danielle just picked her up and handed off her bouquet. They were married as a family.

The ceremony discussed the choices that are made every day to be a family, and the complications and joys that life brings. The Mountain Man and I took a few pictures of the day. This just might have been my second favorite wedding ever.

moms should come with warning labels

2011-07-15T06:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the Pie and I enjoyed another local farmer’s market. We visited the vendors, talked with the local farmers and bought some goodies. We filled our basket with a bunch of carrots, fresh Rainier cherries, handmade fig pies, fresh asparagus pancetta raviolis, cabbage and new potatoes. Then as we always do, we sat in the grass and relaxed.

A cellist set up camp right behind our little spot, and the Pie enjoyed watching him pull out his cello, set up his music stand, put his case out on the ground… and then was a little surprised when he began playing – she was watching something interesting, and then suddenly music came out of nowhere! How funny to not yet have that expectation. And how strange would it be for the adults if the performance was the setting up, and the musician never played?

While listening to the music and watching the people shop at the market, the Pie sampled a cherry. I think the tart-sweetness is a bit complex for her. Her palate is not yet very sophisticated.

After eating the cherry, she noticed a boy drumming a ways away from mama. She took off to visit him, never looking back. My babe is brave. And that makes me scared.

While the Pie was off wandering, a family with a baby just younger than her showed up and sat next to me. All seemed well enough, another family enjoying the sunshine and the locally-grown food. We chatted a bit, and I tried to force my tired, sludgy brain to keep up with the mom, who seemed cheerful, alert, not… sludgy. I wondered how she was so perky with a nearly 10-month old baby. I don’t remember being that awake once in the past year!

And then, after a few minutes of chatting and playing peel-a-boo with each others’ babies, she asked if I had been here long.

Seems like a simple enough question, requiring very little in the way of an answer. Ultimately I did pull “about an hour” out of my brain, but before I could appropriately answer the question she asked, I had to go through a few phases of mom-brain question processing and answer articulation.

The story that is about to be retold is not pretty.

After she asked if I had been here long, I looked at her for a moment, confused. My brain couldn’t adequately process that question. We had been talking about teething and drool, and this question made no sense in that context. I was not following her line of questioning. What on earth is she talking about?

Then, the sludge parted and I realized she was done talking about teething and was trying to change the subject.

Aha! said my brain. I know the answer to this one!

So I began telling her the story. Well, we just moved in a couple weeks ago, but we’re not new to the area. In fact we lived just down the street for a few years and…

As I my mouth continued spewing nonsense, my brain recognized the mix of confusion and pity on her face as she let me answer a question she hadn’t asked. Oh shit I thought… she meant how long have I been here… like at the park. At the farmer’s market. HERE. Right here.

My brain made quick calculations of social norms. (ok, it probably took a couple minutes) Should I continue on the answer I was currently giving, and ask her how long she’s lived here, leading her to believe I thought she asked how long I’ve lived here? Or should I admit insanity, stop mid-thought and return to the question at hand? Or the tried-and-true alternative, should I get up and run? But now that I have a baby and a stroller, getting up to run away would require a lot more time than it used to.

Finally I deftly said “oh, you mean here… like right here? Yeah, about an hour. Well we haven’t been RIGHT HERE for an hour, you know we walked around first.”

She smiled, and said “ok, buh-bye!” and went back to her little spot, 2 feet away from me, and pretended I wasn’t there.

I think sleep-deprived sludge-for-brains mamas should be required to wear t-shirts reading:

WARNING: SLEEP-DEPRIVED. DO NOT ENGAGE IN SOCIALIZATION. DO NOT FEED. DO NOT PUT HANDS THROUGH FENCE.

(Hey look, that’s another one of my fine social presentations. We were trying to take a family picture on our hike, and a bug flew in my face. Or maybe that’s just my smile…)

habits vs. values: the smackdown

2011-07-14T09:50:00.001-07:00

It can be seriously overwhelming to see a laundry list of “bad” habits to break, and I fall short of living my values on a daily basis. We have to offer ourselves patience as we try to change old habits. It’s critical to be honest and realistic about the amount and depth of change we can really handle at once. We have to be willing to get back on track with our intentions when we don’t meet our expectations right away.

Today my final installment of my 4-part guest post series airs over at the Nonconformist Family. Please jump over, take a read, and share your thoughts! Thanks to the Nonconformist Family for inviting me over, and to you for coming along on this guest-post journey, I’ll be back to regularly-scheduled programming tomorrow, just in time for the weekend!

Naptime & the productivity panic

2011-07-12T12:03:00.001-07:00

I usually count myself among the lucky – most days the Pie will take a good nap. Sometimes it’s in the form of one 3-hour nap, sometimes it’s in the form of two hour-long naps. Some sad days it’s a 10-minute morning nap followed by a 90-minute afternoon nursing session, but I usually get some time in the day.

While laying in bed with the Pie, nursing and humming and whispering rhythmic stories, I begin thinking about all the things I need to do, and get restless.

I create a plan for beginning the tasks in a specific order, and prepare my naptime itinerary of productivity. I will get so much done, and I might even have time to relax and read something!

Then, when I can finally slip out of bed and silently shut the door behind me, all the planning and mental scheduling disappears, and the naptime productivity panic sets in.

So much! Where to begin? PANIC!

Work to catch up on!
Emails to return!
Start the laundry!
Get something to eat!
Take a shower!
Start dinner!
Run an errand!
Call a friend!
Write something!
Write thank you notes from my baby shower!
Call and ask about my insurance deductible!
Weed! Read! Clean! Sleep! Think!

I often end up wandering around in a confused frantic state, picking up stray socks and leaving them in the kitchen where I begin to unload the dishwasher, but get distracted when I remember that I need to unclog the shower drain or that I left a bag of veggies on the front porch when I came home from the farmer’s market. It’s overwhelming and discouraging and I end up not being very productive with my time, and now that the Pie is more mobile, chores are less easy with her around.

As infrequently as I am actually caught taking my own advice, I believe it to be true – nap times are best spent on self-care. It is possible to to chores with an awake baby – here I’m in the middle of folding laundry, planting seeds, cooling bread and prepping dinner with the Pie awake.

She likes being in her chair only for a few minutes, but in that few minutes I can actually get a few tasks partially done, or one task (like loading the dishwasher) almost done. Conversely, if she’s awake and I haven’t done anything for myself during nap time, I will end up angry, frustrated, sad, overwhelmed, sometimes even crying. Because it’s pretty impossible to sit down with a glass of wine and a good book with a baby trying to pull up on you (for this reason, I recommend a nice crisp, fruity white) and screaming for attention.

So I am challenging myself and all of you to practice better naptime productivity – the productivity of self-care. Some days I may need to stay in bed and nap with the Pie, some days I may need a shower or to read or to sit in the garden. Some days I may need to write or eat or watch funny videos online. I can’t promise to not to any chores during nap time, but I will try to focus more on self-care during naps rather than a list of chores. They will still be there when she wakes, and time for relaxing won’t be. I suspect I will be happier after having restored some sense of self to my day, and will be better able to handle the chores once I’m in a good mood and feeling a little refreshed.

What’s on your list for nap time?

Defining your values–Guest Post part 2

2011-07-08T07:41:00.001-07:00

Hey friends, I’m over at the NonConformist Family again, with part 2 of a 4-part guest posting series I’m doing for them. Today I’m sharing my process of identifying my family values – and my mourning process over this move we’re still unpacking from!

While I was taping up boxes and cleaning in the dark corners of our old house, I lamented the fact that we would be less able to save money toward one of our goals – buying a home – by moving closer to my husband’s work. I mourned the money that would be trickling away from us every month in the form of higher rent. I tallied the number of months we would have to add to our savings timeframe to meet our goals. Then I walked past my wall of values –on-post-its, and remembered that this move meant that we would have more time as a family to live the life we envision for ourselves. This move allows us to live closer to our values, and although one of our goals requires saving money, money is not one of our values…

Please hop on over here and read the whole post, and leave some love for the nonconformity of it all!

Family values as nonconformity

2011-07-05T14:34:00.001-07:00

When the NonConformist Family asked me to write a guest post, ideas were flying through my head as I chased a far-too-mobile infant around the house, packed our belongings in boxes and readied the family to move. We had been grappling with the decision to move, which involved spending more money but regaining 3+ hours of commuting time a day – and we decided to go ahead and do it because it better fit our values as a family.
I realized that the fact that we have a clearly defined set of family values which we use to direct our decision making and to keep our lives in balance, and that they’re posted on the wall in our home – is pretty non-conformist…

Today I’m featured on the NonConformist Family blog, in what has turned into a series of 4 guest posts I’ll be doing about establishing and working with a set of family values. I’m so excited to be writing for Joshua & Sarah and hope you enjoy the post! Stay a while and read some of the archives over there, and check out the NCF ebooks!

Lessons in letting go

2011-07-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

Lesson 1: This baby likes to crawl on the sidewalk. Without shoes. After having crawled through the sprinkler. Let go.

Lesson 2: This baby will find where the water and the dirt meet, and will mix them. Then play in them, and probably eat them. Let go.

Lesson 3: It takes a while for this baby to warm up to Papaw (and Opa, too). Don't force it, it will happen. Let go.

Lesson 4: This baby is happiest when naked, and happier the closer she is to naked. Clothes are irrelevant. Let go.

Lesson 5: You will never get any two members of this family to look at the camera, smile, or have their hands away from their faces. Photograph anyway. Let go.

Lesson 6: Beauty is in imperfection (like fresh-picked, sun-warmed strawberry slime all over your face). Let go.

settling in

2011-07-01T08:03:00.001-07:00

We’ve moved. We’ve returned to our beloved city and our old neighborhood. Although only 7 blocks from our old apartment, the new house is technically in the adjacent neighborhood, but really, it’s on the cusp. We’ll still call it the old ‘hood. The Pie loves the expanses of sidewalk to crawl down. I don’t understand this. Doesn’t it hurt? Yet she can’t be bothered with the grass.

Did you know that moving with a baby is hard? The packing, cleaning, moving, cleaning and unpacking is remarkably difficult to juggle with a baby who wants to be held and a cat who wants to dart out the front door.

Next time, we’re hiring movers.

(We’ve said that about our last 2 moves.)

But here we are, getting unpacked and figuring out where all the pieces of our lives go.

My little pie safe houses heavy cookware, cookbooks, spices, my mixer and food processor, bulk popcorn and lentils and tea. It’s behind the kitchen table, and represents the only clean corner in the house. Sadly I don’t even chairs to go around my kitchen table, so I can’t sit there and stare at the serenity.

This little entryway table has been repurposed to hold a casserole dish and my crock pot at the threshold of the kitchen.

Our living room, of course, is being lived in. The Mountain Man now commutes by bike, and we haven’t quite found the right landing spot for it in the evenings, so here it sits, in front of the fireplace. Half-unpacked boxes fight with toys and books for space. The cat is shedding like crazy. The Pie hasn’t yet discovered the fireplace but she loves jumping on the couch while holding back the curtains and looking out the window. This morning she waved good-bye to dad as he rode off, and then hello to the garbage truck.

The kitchen is more “efficient” (read: stiflingly small) than I’m used to, and I’m trying to figure out how to use it most efficiently. Much of the cabinet space is going unused because the openings are too narrow for occasional appliances like the yogurt maker, crock pot, wok, and the food processor. The windows are wonderful. We bought a portable dishwasher from an old friend and it has been wonderful (except for the leaky faucet currently preventing its use. If you look really close, you can see the repurposed plastic bike bottle which now acts as a funnel to direct the water back into the sink) I simply can’t imagine hand-washing everything while also needing to spend an hour+ nursing a baby down to sleep each night. How did our mothers and grandmothers do it? Even with the dishwasher full and waiting to be run, I am hand-washing heaps of dishes.

Walking around the neighborhood we stumble across familiar and new things. So many urban growers have raised beds built up in their parking strips, or rhubarb taking over the corner between the light pole and the sidewalk. People walk and skate and ride past our house on their way to work, and the evenings are filled with kids and neighbors on evening walks. The public life of the city is a cloudy memory – it had been so easily forgotten when we were away from it, but now we exclaim to each other “look at all the people walking around!”. We’re amazed and confused when people walk by and say hello – the only pedestrians in our old neighborhood were power-walkers, who couldn’t spare a breath for a pleasantry.

We’re home.

Our budget is certainly taking a hit to live so close to the Mountain Man’s office, but the time we’ve regained as a family has been amazing. Even while we frantically trade baby duty while the other unpacks a box in the evening, we’re realizing what we had lost by having such a long commute as an unwelcome third partner in the marriage. Where our evenings were all business there is now space for quietly taking in and processing the day together (assuming, of course, the Pie has gone down for the night). We may get to enjoy this summer after all.

We are of course still unpacking and shifting things, and all the manual labor (and no internet access for 6 days!) has left me to ruminate on plenty of post ideas. I have some guest posting coming up and will be writing as much as I can, but we may be seeing each other a little less often than normal for a while still. I’ll shoot for 3 days a week while I start re-building my queue.

Thanks for coming along on this ride. And for local friends, we’ll be having a garden party soon – by which I mean I will feed you beer and snacks if you bring your weedwacker and sweat equity to my yard.

my life as wife

2011-06-30T06:39:00.000-07:00

Baking bread while the Pie sleeps in this morning, I saw my pretty rings with a dusting of flour. I realized that this quiet moment is a beautiful reflection of my life as a wife and mother, a life I never expected, a life I didn’t think I wanted, a life I would have never thought would have brought me so much happiness.

I stood there for a moment, mid-knead, and appreciated my life. I appreciated my wonderful husband and the life he has given me. I appreciated my (sleeping) baby and all that she has brought to my life. I stood a little bit dumbfounded that I have all this in my life – a full, happy life that I might have avoided.

I kept kneading. I set the bread aside to rise, washed my hands, and went out to tend my garden.

I feel my pain

2011-06-28T06:09:00.000-07:00

I’m trying to un-clutter. Constantly. I want to build a calm, peaceful, functional home for the Pie, filled with love and laughter and space for experimentation. If my home is full of stuff, this is counter-productive to the childhood I want for my Pie.

In my un-cluttering extravaganza (ongoing) I found this hilarious set of pictures that my assistant and I created on a particularly difficult day in the office, about 4 years ago.

I pretended to be doing something on my desk without cracking up, as she went to town with her frustration. I couldn’t even look at the screen because I would laugh hysterically every time I saw what she was doing.

My life is a lot like that some days, with the frustration bubbling to the top. Sometimes I try not to look at it, for fear of overwhelm. Sometimes I look right at it and laugh. Sometimes I just hang my head and know that this will soon be over.
Now that I’m no longer in an office, I don’t have the camaraderie with co-workers to make the difficult days easier. I have nothing but my own thoughts and the knowledge that other moms are going through the same thing, probably this very moment. This baby does not get my dark, dead-pan sense of humor.
So I try to look past the frustration instead of hiding from it or lashing out. I try to see the temporary nature of my experiences, and to laugh at what I can. It’s hard, but I think if I keep reminding myself that I can get through it, I will.
I’m scanning this photo and tossing the original, since there’s no context in which to meaningfully keep it. It’s been floating around my house but it will no longer clutter my life. It was a difficult moment, but we made something better of it.
I feel the pain of my previous life, but in a new way. I’ll repeat that to myself, and try to let that direct my life a little more: It was a difficult moment, but we made something better of it. Relevant to my work life and my mom life.
It was a difficult moment, but we made something better of it.
(And then we de-cluttered)

the mommy walk of shame

2011-06-27T06:21:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, the Mountain Man, the Pie and I were in our neighborhood grocery store, cheerfully grabbing veggies for dinner. We meandered over to the ice cream section, and got some milk.

The whole way through the store, from an aisle or two over, I could hear a woman yelling at what I assume was her child. She was calling her names and telling her to shut up and stop moving. As we moved through the store, the woman and child continued to be an aisle or two over. I was getting really angry, not only because it was a horrible way to speak to a child, but also because I never actually heard a peep out of the child.

I felt a bit abused just from hearing it.

I stopped talking to the Mountain Man, and listened as closely as I could. I wasn’t sure what to do. If the woman hit the child – if I heard a slap and a wail, would I get involved? Are words enough to justify butting in?

I couldn’t decide. It seemed to be that the woman spoke like this frequently, and the child was probably used to it, defeated by it. It seemed like that child knew to speak in whispers and not be too active.

When we were ready to go, we walked to the register, unloaded our cart and waited. The woman (who I by now knew by voice) and her child pulled up behind us. The woman’s tone had improved, probably because she was in closer proximity to others and realized that she could be heard. This sweet little girl, probably 5 or 6, sat inside the cart and spoke so quietly I couldn’t hear her from just a few feet away.

We paid for our things and began walking out, but stopped and talked with someone we knew on the way. By the time we were making our way to the parking lot, the woman was pushing her wait out of the store right next to us, barking orders to the little girl the whole time.

I was hurting for the little girl, mad at myself for not knowing what to do or say, almost thinking I saw something really inappropriate so that I had good reason to step in. It was painful to see the blank face on that little girl, to see her hesitating about everything. I was questioning how far things could go on the spectrum from unkind to abusive before it’s socially acceptable to intercede.

Walking out of the store and into the parking lot, holding the Pie and with the Mountain Man by my side, I watched the pair move out of my life. It felt like the mommy walk of shame to be quietly walking to my car, packing the Pie and the groceries in, and driving off.

I totally get that parenting is hard, and that people do it differently. I didn’t step in because it never got dangerous or harmful. It was just verbally unkind and bordering on abusive, as far as I could tell. The girl obviously knew how to interact with her mom, and did it carefully. Maybe mom was having a horrible day, maybe the girl had been behaving poorly all afternoon. I only know what I heard, for that brief time.

What do you do when you hear a child being spoken to by his or her parent in an unkind way? How far does it go before you feel OK stepping in? What do you say? Or do you just walk away and try not to hear it?

Authentic parenting – part 4: combating guilt

2011-06-24T06:19:00.000-07:00

Mommy guilt is so pervasive, so ever-present in most of our lives, and at the same time dealt with in the way we deal with shameful secrets - hidden and never really discussed.

Our guilt exposes our most vulnerable places, our doubts and fears and worry. Mommy guilt stems from the unending questions about whether we’re doing enough, doing it right, being too selfish or too indulgent. We want validation that comes from discussing our fears and worry and guilt, but discussing it also opens us up to the horrifying possibility that someone we trust and love may judge us, or tell us how screwed up we are.

So we don’t talk about it.

We feel guilty when our kids cry for comfort but we can’t handle one more moment of non-nutritive nursing, or rocking, or singing or bouncing. We feel guilty when another parent questions our decisions. We feel guilty when our kids beg for candy and we say no, or when we give them candy to quiet them. We feel guilty when we lose our cool and yell. We feel guilty when we lock ourselves in the bathroom to get 5 uninterrupted minutes of peace or when we volunteer to load the dishwasher to feel like we’ve finally accomplished something in the day. We feel guilty for staying home and not contributing financially. We feel guilty for leaving our kids and going to work. We we guilty when our kids don’t possess the maturity of adulthood or when their childhood seems cut short. We feel guilty.

We are afraid our kids will be damaged by our choices as parents, or damaged by those moments when we set sett parenthood aside for a moment and did what we needed to do to meet our needs as people. We worry that we’re not doing everything right and that be extension our kids won’t be successful, healthy, happy. We worry that we’re making mistakes and don’t even know it. So we look for advice, experience, someone to tell us what we “should” do.

Sometimes that advice undermines our parenting, makes us question our choices and beliefs. When the guilt and worry and fear doesn’t make us second-guess ourselves, the “should statements” we hear from others certainly do.

I try to create a more closed-system of parenting. I have figured out what kind of parenting is most natural to me, and it’s my own version of authentic parenting. I limit the outside input and make decisions based on what’s best for me and my babe, regardless of what I “should” do. I certainly read and hear parenting ideas and advice, but I try to only let concepts seep in and not “shoulds”.

Should = guilt.

I feel like the more I embrace my own authentic parenting, the more true to myself I become, the better parent I can be and the less I deal with parenting guilt. I am not doing everything right. I might even be screwing up. I struggle with what to do about sleep and feeding and naps and teaching the Pie everything. I struggle with ideas about childcare and working. But I am making decisions based on my truth, rather than on someone else’s experience, and I encounter less guilt because of it.

How do you combat the mommy guilt?

Does combating guilt help you be a more authentic parent, which in turn helps you combat the guilt? Is it an upward spiral?

expectation, adjustment, regret & improvement

2011-06-23T05:57:00.000-07:00

What I wanted for my child’s daily life and what I wanted for my daily life were so dramatically different, sometimes the reality of the choice I made to be a SAHM was shocking, painful, complicated.

It took me a really long time to adjust to being a mom, and even longer to adjust to the loss of my previous identity.

I had an expectation that I would smoothly transition into my new role, just as I’ve been able to smoothly transition in other times of my life. I knew what I wanted for my child, I knew the life I wanted to build for her, but I just couldn’t see how I would fit into that life I had built in my head. I envisioned a life with mama at home, to hug and hold and play. I envisioned a childhood of coming home from school and having a snack waiting, having help with homework and fun afternoon activities. I saw my Pie growing up with a devoted and happy mom. I just couldn’t see myself as that mom. I wasn’t interested in unwavering daily routines. I wasn’t prepared for the isolated drudgery of motherhood. As much as I wanted the life for my Pie, I hadn’t expected this for myself.

I spent a lot of time in those early weeks and months struggling with who I was, what I could be and accomplish as a mom, what my purpose in life was now that my life was so different that what I had envisioned.

I clung to my previous self, I cried, I gave up, I tried to re-define. I cried some more. I over-committed all while saying I wanted to be “present” with my baby – because while a focused & committed mom was what I wanted for my baby, a lonely life of menial tasks was not what I wanted for myself.

During the adjustment, I missed out on a lot. It took me a long time to really know how deeply I loved my Pie – I couldn’t quite touch the wholeness of that mama love while I was struggling with who I was as a mama. I saw all the little baby moments, I expected to enjoy each development as she learned to be a little person.

I feel like I missed out on so much – I was there, but I wasn’t always happy about it. I went through the motions. I trudged through the muddy, messy sleeplessness. I cooked and cleaned and diapered and wiped up a never-ending font of spit-up. I was there, I was doing the care, I had happy moments and even some good days. But now when I see other tiny newborns, hold and watch them, see all the little facial expressions and watch them drift in and out of sleep, I think of how I didn’t always look on the Pie with this kind of wonder and adoration. Sometimes I just held on and tried to get through.

I regret not having those moments of endlessly staring at her little sleeping face. I wish I had been able to find myself as a mama sooner, easier. I wish I had been more emotionally present. I wonder if the Pie felt the emptiness that I now think was an occasional presence in our lives.

But I look at her smile now, and her outstretched arms. I listen to her laugh and chattering and playing and clanging. I see her dig in the dirt, lunge for the water, pet the cat and touch her nose. She’s OK. We’re OK. We made it through that tough part together, and it will keep getting better. I can be more present now, as I’ve further adjusted to my new role as a mama. I can be a better mama than I feel like I was. She had enough care and love and consistency to feel secure, but I still feel like I cheated her out of the best mama she could have had.

My desires and expectations, coupled with my complicated adjustment to motherhood, took me away from my baby even when I was right there. I continue to make the adjustment, to find my purpose and my direction as a person and as a mom. I feel like I didn’t take in every passing moment with my tiny baby, but I can take in every moment coming.