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Mama Bean has some more thoughts on introversion (or: the drunkenness of being your Self)

2011-12-08T21:42:00.000-06:00

I was commiserating with my guitar teacher, after my busy overly-social weekend, about burning out my introverted resources. I made an observation I've been mulling for a few months now - sometimes, it seems like an extroverted person, deprived of social stimulation, can then get a bit abandoned in a vibrant social setting (their! favourite! thing!), and it's almost like they're drunk - they're just a bit more punchy, a bit less inhibited, saying or doing things they might not otherwise, or might think better of outside of those circumstances. My teacher agreed with the analysis. I don't actually have many extroverts in my immediate circle, so I've been piecing this observation together for a while now.

But then I took the next thought-step which I had not previously considered: well, what about an introvert, deprived of time alone, suddenly gifted with solitude? Would they do the same? And my teacher kind of joked, "Yeah, that's why I stay up all night by myself." And he's right! The corollary for introverts exists: with an abundance of solitude, we will likewise get drunk on it - get punchy about the tasks we undertake, lose inhibitions on needing rest or other sustenance. Because it just feels so damn good to be alone :)

As I thought about this later, I wondered if it applied to other aspects of the MBPI categories. For example, I myself get a bit punchy and "social-drunk" in certain circumstances. Friends from real life might recall some sugar-fueled moments near the end of a recent day-long scrapbooking event, which involved many repetitions of the phrase, "Up your bum!" Yeah.

(Well, and I'm not claiming to be a paragon of self-control on the best of days, regardless.)

I was thinking this might be explained by the Feeler aspect of my personality sort of reveling in a surplus of Relationality. Social situations with an abundance of people I know and trust and love surrounding me provide a lush environment of friendly, relational thinking and interacting, which is my natural state, the way my head works (albeit, not always healthily.) And so, in those circumstances, I get similarly trippy and uninhibited, my brain skips some steps between The thoughts in my head and The saying them out loud.

In a way this is almost doubly dangerous, because at the same time the social-ness is depleting my introverted resources, it's potentially uninhibiting my feeler sensibilities, making for some very goofy, sometimes ill-advised behaviours. It's like simultaneously acting against type and acting totally within type. Yikes.

So what would be the "drunken" situations of the Thinker? Unlimited opportunity to sit and be logical? lol. Or for the Judger/Perceiver pairing? Or the Intuitive/Sensing pairing?

You know, I think this just underscores the effects of trying to live a lifestyle which too often demands you behave against type. Under those circumstances, it's not surprising that the opportunity to behave as your inner being desires, as it most naturally is wont to do, will result in some relaxation, like your Self just breathing a sigh of relief, "Oh, thank goodness I can just Do Me now."

And I think I'm going to become a bit more observant of when I feel this sort of personality-drunkenness (hopefully I can be self aware about it...) Because I think it will point out to me what parts of my current priorities are depriving me of the chance to be my most natural self. I realize we can't get too entrenched in our Type - because there are weaknesses/challenges to every aspect of the Index. Life won't allow us to Never Act Against Type, and it is important to be flexible. However, I do think this phenomenon exists when I've been acting against type for too long, and that's a good reason to make some changes to lifestyle, so it's most in line with creating situations that don't constantly over-tax and over-stress the natural resources of my personality.

Just thinking about it now, I think this might be why I've been staying up so late at night, despite knowing a baby is going to wake me up several times during my sleep, despite knowing the toddler is going to wake up at 8 no matter what, despite knowing I'm sick and need rest, despite knowing what responsibilities face me the next day. It's because this is the only chance I get to be alone. And I relax a little desperately into it, trying to squeeze as much downtime activity into these brief hours as I can. I think it's also why I've been so frustrated with Sprout's unwillingness to go to bed at the same time as Bean. This is a good revelation for me to have. It will help me release the frustration, and help me go to bed at a reasonable time, instead of unreasonably indulging in meaningless, not terribly exciting late nights that only make the next day harder to get through.

Mama Bean is so utterly introverted

2011-12-07T20:28:00.000-06:00

I've been musing lately that nothing demonstrates your introvertedness quite like becoming a parent. Introverts find social interactions - being with people - uses up energy, instead of giving it. They prefer being in small groups, because it uses up the energy less quickly. But ultimately, an introvert requires time alone, to rebuild their resources. Stock the reserves.

Children are people, too. And when they live with you, they are, like, always there. And chances are, they need something from you. If only your attention. In a small family, like mine, they use up my introverted energy less quickly than a large family would, but they use it up, nonetheless.

I think, before kids, I convinced myself I wasn't really all that introverted. Compared to my husband, I'm a veritable social butterfly. And you know, it is possible to behave "against (personality) type", to be extroverted in some situations, on purpose or otherwise. But behaving against type uses up resources - so, in an extroverted moment I might find myself energized by the party, as it were, but I have to have mental and emotional stockpiles available to make that possible.

Guess what I don't have. Mental or emotional stockpiles. I mean, whatever, this is parenting, this is what we sign up for. So yes, I'm sleep deficient. And low on patience. And lacking compassion, many days. So, behaving against type? Ain't. Happening.

In fact, it's quite fascinating to see how having low resources highlights my personality, and really shows me the strengths in it, and also its challenges. Being Introverted when there's kids buzzing around all day is a challenge. Being Intuitive when there's clutter and toys and general disarray all over my Big Picture is a challenge - I can't just brush it to the edges and ignore it so long as it's not directly in my way or affecting my convenience (as PB does. And that's not an indictment. I often wish, these days, that I could just function through the chaos. But I can't.) Being a Feeler when my responsibilities to my relationships with my kids often feels like it isolates me from relationships with anyone else (including my husband) is a challenge. If I could be more logical about the division of my time and efforts, I might be more emotionally efficient, and have some love left over for myself at the end of the day. I don't know a mom who can do this. If you know one, or are one, tell us all your secret fortheloveofGod. Being a Judger when any given task may go four times faster, or (more likely) a thousand (million kajillion) times slower than you expected, or a tandem poop might upset your baby and your nostrils at any given moment, or your best intentions to always carry a snack for your unpredictably hangry toddler have once again gone awry - it's a challenge, friends. I am not so good at changing course on the fly. I like to know The Map. Parenthood is like a magical map that never looks the same the next time you look at it. It is unknowable...

Anyway, I'm just saying parenthood has taught me a lot about myself. What a cheesy thing to blog about. What has parenthood taught you lately?

Mama Bean is singing Bruce's song again

2011-11-25T23:17:00.001-06:00

Bean is such a dear to put to sleep. He gets in bed, we do a ritual, kisses and good nights, close door, walk away... wait 12 hours, good morning!

The ritual involves saying the child's prayer ("Now I lay me...") which was accomplished with a stuffed giraffe that recited the prayer when you pushed its toe, when Bean was an infant, but the batteries ran out, and the toy designer thought it wise to provide no access point through which to replace them. Smart designer. (It's fear-based design, if I had to bet on it. A child could somehow get into the access point - zipper, velcro, whatever - click open the battery cover, pop out the batteries, which would be oh so chokeable AAs or AAAs, and so, in the interest of avoiding litigation, they chose to create a toy that would die. Well, or/also, depending on how attached your child had become, you'd be compelled to frantically source a new, identical toy, with fresh batteries, and someone would make more money, again. Either reasoning works.) We still call that toy Nowilayme, but he lives in another room of the house.

Sprout was also given a Nowilayme toy, but somehow the voice on its recording sounds wrong, and it creeps me out to listen to it. So we don't play it for her. Beyond the fact that she has no bedtime ritual. No no, what am I saying? Sprout's bedtime ritual is, y'know, that nurse and then rock and then give a bottle and then rock and then gingerly lay down in a pre-warmed crib with the softest of 400 thread count baby sheets and cuddliest of unicorn fuzz and fairy sparkle blankets and fuss and return soother and collapse in bed and wait for her to cry and fuss and return soother and collapse in bed and wait for her to cry and pray she doesn't wake up her brother and just bring her to bed so we can finally gettosleepalready ritual. I'm sure you're familiar with it.

Like I said, Bean is such a dear to put to sleep.

Okay, so we say our prayers, which Bean doesn't really get, sometimes he closes his eyes, sometimes he holds our hands, but usually he wriggles around and waits for us to be done. Then, we run the checklist of bed toys. First, and of utmost importance, blanket. White, satin on one side, soft minkie on the other, lovely feminine blanket. He eschews the more masculine, blue options. Second, handmade stuffed alien-demon Mup Mup. Third, soft hippo-with-wheels. (These latter two, incidentally, both gifts from the same best friend; hi, K!) Fourth, sometimes, a small stuffed giraffe, named Giraffey, identical to another giraffe with the same uber-original name which belonged to Bean's daddy. Fifth, except it's lost right now, a weird Thomas the Tank Engine turn-y toy thing that Bean can play with for many minutes sans interruption. It sounds like a lot of bed toys, I know. I'm not even sure if he plays with them, or is especially attached to them (other than blanket) but, oh well, they're there. Bean sleeps with a t-shirt blanket I made, a blanket his grandma made, another blanket his daddy slept with as a baby, and a fleece blanket given by his great-aunts. It's a very full bed.

For a little while, Bean would request a song ("Dinkle dinkle" little star...) then say nono when I started singing. Then he'd request another song ("Baa baa" black sheep... the same melody, mind you) then say nono when I started singing. Then maybe a few other requests in there, but not usually. Then he'd point his arm to the door and say Go. Well then! Haven't I been told? lol

This transitioned; I'd ask if I should go, and he'd say nono Stay, and pat his pillow. Awwww, who can resist such commands? So I'd stay and pretend to nap, which involves clutching a "banket" with eyes squeezed shut and snoring exaggeratedly. He likes when we pretend to snore. We'd go back and forth on Go and Stay commands for a bit, and then I'd gently say it was time to go, and off I went.

This transitioned; for a week or two now, he's been going to bed regular time, but super over-tired and hyper. We weren't sure if we should move to an earlier bedtime, so he wouldn't get over-tired, but to be honest, I wasn't ready to risk the earlier mornings that might ensue. When he went to bed hyper, it'd take him a long time to settle (we can hear on the monitor. Yes we still use a monitor, don't judge :S) and then after a half hour or so, he'd wake up suddenly bawling. So one of us would go back upstairs to calm him down, do the songs, a second bedtime.

I think this may be a normal 2 year old thing. I've started calling it Testing the Tether - this sorting out of the radical notion that he is separate from us, that he is his own person. He's not at the I-can-do-it-myself phase, yet. Just testing it out, how far can I go, how far is too far, how do I get back, how do I get them to come to me, it's an exploration. I think he was testing the bedtime tether - where do I go when I sleep? are they sleeping, too? can I bring them back to me? am I still me when I sleep? or when I wake? Maybe it's scary, to him, to fall asleep sure of his self-ness, and wake up in a dark space disoriented and disconnected, and he pulls on the tether, as it were - where are you come back I need to see that you are still you, and that must mean I am still me. Am I over analyzing this? It's fairly heart-wrenching when he starts up with the crying, especially from a child who previously/otherwise goes to bed without much emotion.

When I'd go up to calm him, I lay down and sing Bruce's song. I had not been singing it very often, because he knew the words to request other songs, and so I followed his requests. But it is a lullaby after all, composed expressly to put the children in my world asleep. And now, he requests it by saying moon, because of the first line, "When moonlight falls..." And he covers his eyes, then holds his hands together for "You'll close your eyes/and say your prayers..." It's pretty much the most adorable thing ever.

He lets me sing the whole song without saying nono or Go. It calms him down, and then I can leave and know he will sleep. For some reason, at the last line "It's time for your lullaby" he always smiles, a lovely soft smile of anticipation, I wonder what he's thinking of... Tonight, he asked me to Stay and sing Moon during the first sleep-summoning ritual. It was effective *knock on wood* as we did not have the half-hour bawling and repeat ritual. So, we're singing our song, again. Makes me feel warm. Makes me feel, surely, I'm doing at least this thing right.

Mama Bean is stuck at the crossroads of OWS and feminism and motherhood and also, the internet has themes

2011-11-22T22:45:00.001-06:00

My husband posted this story to his facebook. And now we're going to have two heavy, sort of political posts in a row on here. Weird times, friends. (There's a lot of linkages in this post, sorry. ) (I promise to return to light-hearted anecdotes of my adoring toddler and baby soon.)

There are some who will say this woman should not have knowingly put her pregnant self in such a charged situation. Which sounds, to me, a bit like saying, well she shouldn't have been wearing that dress and walking down that street at that time of night, if she didn't want to get raped. As if anyone wants to be raped. As if this woman wanted to be kicked in the stomach and pepper-sprayed and miscarry. As if anyone wants to encounter violence and assault. As if anyone should expect violence and assault.

Because we have a right to personal safety. And the police are supposed to uphold that right, not counteract it. And we have a right to protest peacefully, and to be met in our protest with non-violence. (At least the St. Louis police got it right.) Again, maybe this sounds terribly naive of me. But I want to believe I still live in a world where this is true.

In the vein of Eve Ensler's brilliant words at HuffPo (seriously, just stop reading this, go read that, and call it a day), I am over it. I'm over blaming the victim. (For example, this guy. I am so over this guy getting nothing but a slap on the wrist.) I'm over the kind of privileged thinking that presumes it can judge the necessity another person feels to protest, because it is privilege (and I am privileged, too, and fully acknowledge it) which allows us to think, "Geez why don't they just shut up? What is there to complain about anyway?" Let them eat cake, indeed. I'm over a culture that continues to "hystericize" women - that continues to tell us we're too emotional, too vulnerable, too precious, to have our opinions and passions and yes, our dirty "hysterical" emotions count for anything. I'm tired of apologizing for being naive and "crazy." (Here's some great thoughts on that whole thing.)

Do you ever find the internet has a theme? Like, all these disjointed posts and facebook links and current events are all speaking to the same thing, for no apparent reason? For me, the theme lately has been the intersection(s) of motherhood and feminism. How do I raise a feminist son and daughter, when so many societal messages tell us feminism is no longer relevant? How do I respond to those societal messages, when it's women telling other women to stop being so "hysterical" or we "won't get anywhere"? (How can someone, in the same breath, acknowledge there's somewhere else we need to get to, and disdain of using our voices, the only tool we have, for getting there??) How do I deal with what television has done to my favourite Canadian character on TV ever; are we really rehashing this poor beaten dead horse that motherhood and career success are not mutually exclusive? In fact, while I am writing this post, this comes across my facebook wire, and I just...really? The answer to hormones is "Buck up and have some self control?" What about helping young women actually understand menstruation, how about taking the shame out of it, how about taking responsibility for the sexual education of our children instead of leaving it to their schools, how about providing meaningful social support for at risk teen women so they're never in the position of feeling their only choice is throwing a baby away? And I don't just mean literally.

Seriously, the internet has themes. Roseanne's got me feeling all warm and fuzzy about menopause, for pete's sake.

I just bristle at it all. These tensions between the responsibilities I feel toward my intellect and dreams and career, and the responsibilities I have toward my children and my family. And why does that have to be a dualism anyway? Eurgh! Pregnancy and motherhood don't make women suddenly weak. Having small humans who depend on us, who we are driven to protect at all costs, doesn't mean we ourselves become dependent and needy of protection. Motherhood has revealed to me strengths I didn't know I had, or indeed, did not have before.

The world is dangerous, I get that. The dangers are real, including the dangers of protesting. But I can't reconcile myself to sacrificing my right to speak out or have an opinion or even get a little "hysterical" just for the sake of playing it safe. I don't think that's the call of motherhood. Because if I do that, if I am cowed by the overbearing danger of simple existence into silencing my voice and hermitting my family, all I will succeed in doing is raising dependents who, in addition to fearing the real dangers of life, also fear they have no voice, no tools, no means of fighting back. And I refuse to do that to them.

(My response to PBs post, btw, was "i have no words. and i have no grace. someone must pay for this shit." Because I am having trouble finding grace in these stories coming out of OWS. I can't see where redemption is coming into this Story. It troubles me. Maybe that's why I keep writing about it, because that's how I deal with being Troubled. I was reading some poignantly topical chapters in Brian McLaren's Naked Spirituality, which focused on praying compassion into the lives and world around us. I couldn't quite get where he was leading, but I know it was God whispering out some answers to me, showing me the grace. I will continue looking for the faith to seek and live that grace out.)

Mama Bean can't get UC Davis out of her head

2011-11-21T21:37:00.001-06:00

I feel a little late to this story, as it happened days ago, and I saw flickers of it hitting my facebook and twitter, but didn't really take the time to read anything until last night. And then I just cried. I couldn't help it. It made me feel sick. And I couldn't even actually make myself watch the video. This entire visceral reaction was just to reading about it.

I don't talk about politics much on here, because I shy away from the kind of traffic (i.e. trolls) that attracts. But, as a so-called mommy blogger, I think my heart and stomach are reacting to this as a mother, and I want to write about it as a mother. I read the UC Davis details and Nathan Brown's open letter through the lens of my experience, because that is what I have, and that is what we do.

In my experience as a student: when I went to the University of Cowtown, there was a protest that lasted several weeks on the central lawn of campus, because of proposed tuition increases. About fifty (? my memory fails me...) students camped out in tents, and ate ramen noodles, and told anyone who would listen why we couldn't afford higher tuition. I don't remember if it was effective. I don't even remember how or why it ended - were they forced out? I do remember, for sure, that pepper spray was not involved. At my Chiropractic college in the first few months of my very first semester, our (generally) beloved Chancellor was forced to resign. There was huge student outcry (well, as huge as a small Chiropractic college can get), protests in the streets, angry letters to the powers that were. It was not effective, he is now president of a different Chiropractic college. Pepper spray was not involved.

I am not (have not yet been?) a camping-out in protest kind of person. But I'm a sign-a-petition kind of person, which I did during the U of C protest. I am a write-angry-letters to politicians and boards of directors type person, which I did as a member of my Chiropractic college's student council. I have an Activist sort of mentality, though I don't express it very loudly. Papa Bean would say I have Causes, in a way that he does not.

In my experience as someone's child: during these events, I'm sure I didn't tell my parents anything about these things happening, or my participation in them, peripheral as it was. I don't really talk to my parents about my Causes, because we have differing opinions, because we have enough things to talk about without introducing new opportunities for conflict, because there have been times when I felt I was not taken seriously, just because. Because that is not something my parents and I do. If it were me getting pepper-sprayed back in my college activism, I'd be more worried that they'd just be mad at me for getting into trouble than anything else. Come to think of it, that's probably what kept my activity peripheral to begin with.

In my experience as a mother: well. I mean... God, if that was my kid? Father God, that was someone's kid, those were all someone's kids. And this is the world they've grown into? I would just lose my mind. Because I am a mother who believes in a student's right to protest, who believes a fundamental property of The University is its place, its foundational identity as A Place for Discourse. Is this naive of me, in this day and age of mixed corporate and government funding and 1% and lobbyists over us all, to still think that this is what universities exist for? That if there's anywhere for a tent city to exist it would be on the campus lawn of a post-secondary facility? Then I am a naive mother, and perhaps my kids will be embarrassed by my naivety, but they will also know that protest is not only a permissible response, sometimes it is the necessary response. I am a mother who wants to know what her kids care about, are moved by, feel passion for. I want them to tell me their Causes, even if we disagree, even if we sharpen our positions in the potential conflict, even if that's hard, just because. I want them to say, "Well, that's just what me and my parents do" and shrug it off. I don't want them to be afraid to step away from the sidelines just because they could get in trouble, if it's the right thing to do. And I want them to know, if it were them being brutalized by a police state that I cannot even fathom is real, except the video is right in front of us, viewed over a million times already, if that were them, that I would stand with them, and fight back with them, and not back down. Because that's my kid. And you don't do that to my kid.

We don't do this to our kids.

Right?

Look, maybe I'm just a Canadian with no real bone to pick in this fight. You can write me off like that, if you want. But I can't sit back and let this be our new reality. I can't mother kids into a reality like that. And I hope you can't either.

Mama Bean doesn't look good in green

2011-11-13T21:56:00.001-06:00

I've recently been dealing with feelings of jealousy. I wouldn't say this is rare - I get consumer envy all the time. But in the context of relationships, it's relatively uncommon, and I don't know how to deal with it. On top of feeling justsohighschool, it's also problematic that jealousy is fundamentally a problem in myself, in my own head and my own heart. And I'm the only one to blame for it (really) and to fix it, I have to change my Thinkings and my Feelings, and I, frankly, suck. at. that.

It took me awhile to really figure out what was going on. At first, I just collected a bunch of situations in my head that made me feel bad, in an unidentifiable way. Bad in my stomach, like losing your appetite. Bad in my chest and shoulders, like a suddenly cold day. Bad like a buzzing, nagging thought, "This hurts. I feel hurt. But why?" From there I embarked on a convoluted emotional extravaganza, fueled by hormones and sleep deprivation, and bless my husband for listening to it all.

First, I wondered if I had done something wrong. Maybe I'd unintentionally done something offensive or inconsiderate or whatever. And there are possibilities, I'm not a perfect friend...

But then again, nothing I'd considered I thought warranted the coldness and distance I was sensing, so then I got a little defensive...

But then again, it's not like people intend to be malicious, I'm sure it's just about busy-ness or busi-ness or any other combination of factors...

But then again, these situations just kept/keep happening, and I haven't changed my behaviour or done anything new that might explain it, so...

Then I'm back on the defensive train, defending my actions against accusations I've only imagined could possibly explain what's going on, and also leveling my accusations, and backing them up with exquisite prosecution. All completely in my head.

Am I the only person who does this? Like, seriously, it felt like I was running a trial, in my head, and making up the dialogue for all involved parties, in my head. It was exhausting! What the hell was I thinking?

Anyway, at some point I just had to acknowledge how truly high school it felt, how it was keeping me up at night the way being nerdy and unaccepted did when I was a teenager, how it was truly exhausting my already exhausted resources, how it was so horribly fueled by hormonal fuckery, all of it

And I guess I'm just jealous.

Which really just feels like square one, in the sense that it doesn't fix anything. I still have the hurt stomach feelings, the situations keep adding up to more, confirmed hurt feelings. I can't escape the sense that a little glitter and sparkle is being progressively scattered, when I like to keep all the glitter and sparkle I can get.

Being an IF (in the MBPI), I have a complicated Mental Handbook for managing myself and my relationships. (I'm thinking the above mental meanderings don't make a convincing case for my Handbook's effectiveness, but, uh, moving on...) I take this stuff way too seriously (obviously) and it almost always blows over without confrontation or consequence. I don't know why I'm blogging it, except that it's sort of eating a hole in me, and I only have so many places to getitoutalready. (And I think Papa Bean is sick of hearing about it.) So, well. Here it is on the not-at-all private internet. Maybe now I'll feel better.

By the way, I actually look fantastic in green :)

Mama Bean once again did not miss PMS

2011-11-07T10:55:00.002-06:00

Is that too much? Should this be a "TMI Tuesday"? Too bad!

Menstruation happens - and I don't care what kind of google hits that gets me. I saw this preview for a documentary about it recently, and I really want to see the whole thing. Menstruation happens! All the time, too much of the time, and I don't want to be ashamed of it. Gah!

You know, I didn't used to get PMS. Not in any noticeable way. You could ask Papa Bean about it, and he might tell you different, but then I'd get annoyed with him, so maybe he'd just tell you the same :) I didn't get cramps, I didn't get terribly moody, or have my appetite or sleep patterns go all wonky. Thank goodness I didn't get hormone related headaches. I did get low back pain, but only slightly moreso than my status quo LBP. Anyway, there were problems enough with menstruation - you know, bleeding, profusely, for several days, covered in a slimy film of shame, because noone should know so it's like your body becomes a Big Secret once a month, but you still have to walk around where everyone can see you.. Yeah. So I was happy - happy, I tell you - not to bother with PMS.

Now, two kids later, I have PMS. Every month. For like, half the month. I hear tell your hormones post-partum don't return to normal for two years, so y'know yippee, I only have to wait through sixteen more cycles to see if this is my new normal or not.

My PMS looks like being pregnant. Which, I guess, shouldn't surprise me, since the second half of our cycle is your body pretending, waiting, hoping it's pregnant, and then dejectedly sloughing hormone and hormone by-products (oh yeah, I just called my endometrial lining a hormone by-product) when it turns out you're not. If pregnancy is the mentrual cycle stalled and then amplified exponentially over forty weeks (which it is), then it should not surprise me when they look the same.

Here's what I mean. I get heartburn. My appetite is a rollercoaster, and my stomach goes wobbly when I've eaten too much. Especially too much sugar or too much fat. All I want to eat is sugar and fat. Why? Because I'm eating my emotions. Which are all over the place. Places like: angry, angry, and pissed off. Good places. I have no energy, beyond mere sleep deprivation, so that I take two B vitamins instead of one, and my pee is extra extra yellow (okay, that might qualify this for a TMI...) If it sounds like I'm bitching, it's because I am. But I know it will soon be over as soon as my hair starts falling out. Oh yeah, I get "post-partum" hair loss once a flipping month.

I'm looking for the silver lining here. I'm trying to remind myself that this is womanhood, that the reason I can write posts about my beautiful children, the reasons I can celebrate motherhood is because of menstrualhood. But motherhood is like All silver lining and bright sunshine and love love love with some Tired and feelings of Ineptitude at the edges. Menstrualhood is, well. not.

And that's all I have to say about that. What say you? Is your period different since having kids? Feel free to comment, this is a Safe Place... :)

Mama Bean is thankful for happy surprises

2011-10-07T16:30:00.002-05:00

This was going to be titled "Mama Bean is having A Day" but then there was a happy ending (not that kind of happy ending, you pervert.) (Oh I know, there are no perverts that read this blog. I have no perverted friends. Not one.) (Anyway...) ~~Do you ever have A Day?~~ Why am I asking, of course you do! We all have those days when everything is Crap and there is no Beauty left in the world, and the sum total of the Universe is things that Piss You Off.

It started with my last patient of a very not-busy morning totally no-showing, and being totally no-apologies about it when my staff called her, when I could have gone home half an hour earlier if she'd had some Common g*dd*mn Courtesy. Then there was Dreaded Traffic. The people of the Prairie Valley City (bless their hearts) are so unaccustomed to seeing someone use a turn signal, they seem utterly flummoxed as to its meaning. Let me fill you in, folks! It means I want to tuuuuurrrrrn maybe possibly into your fricking lane so it'd be superawesomewonderful if you'd leave. a. gap. kthxbai.

Fast forward an hour or so, and I'm changing the Bean's poopy diaper before his nap. I let this change go too long, and it was a soft poop, it sort of mushed around the sides of the diaper and onto his jeans. Not fun. Took about seven wipes to clean up, I should have just tossed the kid into the shower. (Figuratively. We are not about throwing babies into baths around here.) So I go to throw the mess away, only to find a) the bag in the diaper garbage pail has not been replaced since garbage day Thursday, and b) there are about twenty dirty diapers in the bagless pail.

There may have been yelling. And curses.

I realize I should have just replaced the bag myself when I emptied the diaper garbage (for the fourth week in a row < cough cough >) on Wednesday evening. I realize I should not have piled up the dirty diapers on the change table while muttering good intentions of Getting-To-It-Eventually under my breath. I realize I am not Without Fault in this situation. But I was still pretty mad. NGL, I was mad at Papa Bean.

It's just... I just... oi... I mean... what is so hard... ugh... you know... *throws hands up* The man has a personality ~~defect~~ quirk that makes him put things where they Fit as opposed to where they Belong. Does your man/partner/exasperator do this? Do YOU do this? It's just part of his SP personality that contrasts (muchly) with my NJ personality. In between episodes of frustration, I laugh about it. I have to laugh about it. And then, I take pictures of things he has "fit" places, before moving them to their rightful homes. I should start a facebook album of his creative housekeeping.

Well, so, fast forward a little bit more, and Bean is napping, Sprout is sitting on her mat playing with crinkle toys, and I hop onto facebook. As an IT professional, PB is basically paid to be on facebook all the time, it's really unfair. We often chat during naptime. Here's how our conversation went:

MB: twenty dirty diapers in a garbage with no bag, PB? seriously?? are you trying to make me yell at the air???

PB: lol, i thought you put those in there. I didn't.

MB: ?? really??

PB: really

MB: bean put all the diapers from the change table into the garbage can by himself?

PB: LOL, I bet you Bean did. he was playing in the bedroom when I was bathing Sprout and saying yucky.

MB: BAHAHAHAHAHA that's awesome. and here i was all pissed at you. oh that's funny

PB: oh my MB

MB: well that's a lesson in not jumping to conclusions. and it's gonna be a blog post

PB: i didn't think anything of it, b/c he'll sometimes do that when smelling the frog's feet

MB: GAH our kid is so cute

PB: You really shouldn't think the worst of me. :):) I'm a pretty good guy 99% of the time. ;);) And I love you 100% of the time. :):)

(Word for word, except with bloggy names substituted in, which I realize comes across a little awkward sometimes. Like, it's a lot more endearing when PB says, "Oh my [real name]" We have this IKEA frog hanging in Sprout's room, and apparently Bean plays the stinky foot game with it that I play with him, namely, sniffing his feet and saying P.U. Sooooo stinky!!)

So now I feel simultaneously better about life (because my kid is so cute) and bad that I jumped to conclusions about PB (because he really is an amazing husband who I love to bitzesez) and sad that I reacted angrily in front of Bean (because he might think he did a bad thing now, when really he did a super cute and helpful thing) That's one :) and two :( :(

Oh well, I probably haven't scarred him for life, right? Bonus happy ending: now the pail has a bag in it, and Bean watched me take all the diapers out, put them in said bag, and replace the bag in the pail, so at the very least, he learned that. Right? /sigh.

Tomorrow is another opportunity to be my best self. And for everyone else, too. (You hear me, PVC drivers? Learn to drive!)

Mama Bean wonders if these things only happen to her...

2011-10-05T22:22:00.002-05:00

On Tuesday morning, I took the kidlets to drop off some veggies at the Food Bank and then grocery shopping. It's taken awhile to figure out the logistics of getting the two of them ready and out the door in a minimum of time. Right now, that means starting, oh say about, half and hour before I actually want to leave. It doesn't always take half an hour... but just in case...

It's kind of fun now that Bean can walk out the door and down the steps and over to the car by himself. I used to take them in two trips - lock Sprout's bucket onto its base, come back with Bean and into his straps. Now, theoretically, I take one trip. Usually, this means hustling over to clip Sprout's bucket in, while Bean is still perusing the flower beds and kicking at pine cones, or circling the car to see if some door is open on a more interesting seat than his own boring, strappy seat. (For example, the seat behind the wheel. That's the door he really wishes to be open.) On Tuesday, Bean was all ready to climb into his seat, except my camera was there. So I put it on the roof, and strapped him in. Then I had to grab the bags of chard from the garage and put them in the trunk, and we were off!

We took four bags of chard, which was about 16 pounds. I parked right out front, Bean really enjoyed coming in with me. The lady at the desk even gave him a little fun-size chocolate bar. Then we went to the Superstore on the way home, which is not our usual Superstore, and for some reason that's really disorienting. Isn't it weird how you get used to these things? Somehow, even when I think we don't need many things, I end up spending too much. I hate how the Food In Boxes adds up so quickly (crackers, cereal, coffee, stuff in boxes, you know. Not to mention diapers and stuff, oi.) If I was only buying produce and dairy, life would be so much cheaper.

Sprout fell asleep in her bucket at the store and then again on the way home. She is so much better at this than Bean ever was. He was such a Schedule Baby, and his sleep cues included his Swaddle and his Crib, he didn't (still doesn't) like sleeping out of the house. It was nice that his schedule was so predictable, and since he was our only baby at the time, it was easy to work around. But now, with two, it's so good that Sprout is adaptable :)

When we got home, I herded Bean into the backyard, to play with his trucks in the garden dirt. This has been his favourite thing to do for a week or so. I am getting more comfortable letting him play while I do stuff in the house, checking every minute (Thirty seconds? Ten seconds? He's very cute to watch, runs around telling himself stories, caramel highlights in his hair caught by the perfect Autumn sunlight...) I carefully took sleeping Sprout into her room to keep napping, then started putting groceries away.

And that's when I remembered my camera on top of the car.

Hours later, many many kilometers later, taking Bean in and out of the car more than two times later, I mean seriously, how did I forget my brand new Nikon DSLR on TOP OF MY CAR???

Do you feel the sickness in your stomach that I felt in that moment? I think you do...

Will you believe me when I tell you it was still there? Srsly. I mean, you have to believe me, because I would not be blogging this story if it had fallen off the way one would expect to fall off. I would be crying a lot and then hoping Papa Bean didn't get too mad at me. I considered not telling him, except then I couldn't tell the Internet about it, so I told him, but only after making him promise not to get mad at me. And he didn't. Phew.

Somehow, in all the openings and closings of the door, the door kept closing onto part of the strap. And I suppose the material of the camera's base/body is kinda grippy. I am just crazy grateful it was still there. Does this kind of thing only happen to me? Tell me about some crazy thing you thought you lost and found again. Tell me I'm not the only one with stories like this. For one thing, it will make my husband feel better!

Mama Bean wants to explain why sometimes she doesn't write anything in a long time

2011-10-02T23:05:00.000-05:00

Or rather, why she doesn't publish the things she writes. Here's a step-by-step peek into my stupid writing process. Enjoy! (That is, if I publish this... lol)

1) Have a thought or opinion about something that people do that is weird or irksome or annoying or downright infuriating. Spend a few mind-blogging moments thinking up clever and funny and hyperbolic ways of describing why this behaviour is so weird/irksome/etc.

2) Then, at the peak of clever, funny, hyperbolic vitriol, think to self, "But surely, Self, I do this very same thing sometimes. In some ways. It is unkind to think such vitriolic (though clever and funny, etc.) things about people who do this."

3) Then, think about the ways I do said activity differently, which makes it less weird/annoying/etc. That is, engage in The Rationalization. This is listed as part of my Skill Set on my Resume of Life. Perhaps it is part of your Skill Set, also?

4) Use the insights garnered from Rationalization to distill the essential weirness/infuriatingness/etcness. of the activity, and separate it from the intentions of the person performing the activity (including when said person is myself.)

5) Muse over the particular personality traits that make me so prone to dissecting intentions and underlying motivations.

6) Realize not everyone else cares about intentions and underlying motivations the same way.

7) Realize also I don't want angry comments from angry people I've offended, because they do the thing I find weird/annoying/etc. and/or don't agree with my secondary opinions/rationalizations behind their (and my, admittedly, on occasion, under certain circumstances thus dissected in step 3) behaviour,

8) Fear these people may wish to offer (angrily) their own rationalizations for the behaviour, which I will then have to disagree with (maintaining my Correctness) or, even worse, agree with (attaining Incorrectness.)

9) Decide not to write about it, and just tell PB instead.

Apply this process to almost anything related to parenting, Christianity, politics, and you have hundred of posts-worth of excellent blog material that stays in my brain and never gets out. Ha!

Oh!

I should also mention steps 10 (wonder if this all merely stems from my insatiable need for acceptance and approval) and 11 (chastise Self for the terrible Feat of Ego is takes to think people would even care enough to get offended or comment.) Okay, that's all the steps.

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (the end)

2011-09-30T16:25:00.001-05:00

I have had such a good time participating in KinderGARDENs this year. It has provided good focus for my gardening and photographing efforts. In many ways, with a new little Sprout on the scene, gardening would have taken a complete back seat, if I hadn't committed to myself that I wanted to do KinderGARDENs from start to finish (minus a few missed weeks, oops!) I can't wait until next year, for a variety of reasons, including seeing everyone else's KinderGARDENs again, and simply the sheer untapped potential (for better weather, for more diligent weeding, for tastier harvests) that next year holds. But first - a rundown of how this year finished...

Here is Bean walking through the weeds at our big community garden. To be honest, we just gave up on this garden, there was no time to redeem the lack of watering during this hot dry summer, and I just figured what could grow would grow, and everything else... would not. In front of Bean you can see the radishes that bolted like crazy. Radishes are awesome, I recommend growing them to boost the confidence of any gardener. Behind Bean you can see our kohlrabi and chard, which remain to be harvested, probably this weekend.

Here is a sample plant of the first member of the brassica family I've ever grown successfully. We picked three about this size and I chopped and stirfried them and thought they were delicious! Just like broccoli stem, which I happen to like a lot. I'm the only person in my family who will like these, so we probably won't grow it again. But I'm gonna go harvest the rest of it and eat it all by myself! Ha!

Here's Sprout keeping warm while we picked carrots. Luckily, PB's parents, who are visiting from Cowtown, met us at the garden with a truck and extra manpower, to help pull in the carrots. I wasn't sure how big or tasty they'd be, and I'm pleased to report carrots are pretty darn hardy :) We had a great harvest of at least this one vegetable from our whole plot lol. I also pulled up a few onions, and there are potatoes to be discovered at the back of the plot. We've got this weekend to accomplish the task, before the garden is shut down for the season (they plough it under each fall.) And then we're done with it. I am sad to leave the community, but we never really plugged in with other gardeners there anyway. I think if we hadn't been so busy growing a family, we'd have had a better experience growing a garden.

But, here is our alternative - two new raised beds! Altogether, this puts us at a little under 150 square feet of growing space at home, with beautiful sunlight, close to our rain barrels and water taps, and all round more convenient. Next summer, these boxes will be bursting with produce, I am SO EXCITED I'M WRITING IN ALL CAPS!!! (!!!) We'll be layering garden clippings, compost, and new topsoil in the beds over winter. We're also putting some fall onions and garlic in for tasty tasty harvests next fall :)

This is the beautiful delicate flower of the stinky coleus plant. I consider this plant a success story, and I'll be buying two (or four) next year to keep the rabbits out of the beds. We were able to grow lettuce and cabbage at home without the rabbit eating them, even though he still lived across the yard under our mugo shrubs. It sustained some freezing at the beginning of spring/summer to grow into a lush healthy plant. The smell is strong but surprisingly not that unpleasant, or maybe I just got used to it. Anyway, I'm happy to include it in my garden.

This summer was terribly dry, after such an insanely wet/flooded spring. These carrots show the effects of the dryness, I think, in their banding. See how they are all constricted at about the same level? I think the roots experienced good moisture levels above and below the bands, but at the constrictions, they grew thinner and more slowly. They are tasty, but maybe just a little harder to clean and peel.

Here's more or less what we harvested this week. Some potatoes, some carrots, some onions, some kohlrabi, some squash. Kim can add about 6 pounds of chard to the KinderGARDENs donation tally, and there will be several more pounds of chard donated in the next week, I'm sure. Along with some of this other stuff. The acorn squash are from our volunteer plant. My tomato plants are near done, still with tonnes of small green tomatoes to pick off and let ripen in our warm kitchen. All in all, for a kind of busy summer with really weird weather, I'm happy with the harvest. For sure, once again, we learned a lot of lessons, and I leave the year encouraged about next year. Make sure to swing by Kim's and check out everyone else's final summaries. Thanks for an excellent year of KinderGARDENing!

Mama Bean believes there are only two kinds of people in the world...

2011-09-16T11:01:00.000-05:00

...those who put the toilet paper on going OVER and those who put it on going UNDER.

Sometimes the internet conspires to make everything come together at once. Please refer to this recent blog post for a clarification of terms.

I am very very much an OVER person. It just. works. better. Why? Well, the more important question is when. When does OVER work better? In the dark. At night, when you are half asleep going pee as quickly as you can when you're half asleep because the baby woke you up and wants to be nursed but first you desperately need to empty your bladder because you're drinking like three fricking liters of water a day in a feeble attempt to boost the amount of milk you're pumping when you're not half asleep nursing your baby in the middle of the night but are, instead, half asleep pumping your milk at work (half asleep because of waking up the night before, oh but you didn't need me to clarify that) not to mention not to mention the liter or so of decaf coffee you drink, also, decaf because your baby will not sleep but will cry and cry and not sleep if you so much as inhale a milligram of caffeine, and so you must empty your bladder very quickly before the hungry baby that has only just started to wake up wakes up more fully and makes noise more fully, noise which threatens to disturb her brother, her brother who otherwise sleeps peacefully through the night but has some sort of bizarre mindmeld with his sister, so that the smallest sounds from either of them will magically wake the other one or otherwise impede the other's good mood, and so it is imperative that bladder emptying be accomplished quickly prior to stumbling into the poor hungry baby's room to feed her, poor hungry baby, and in that moment of needing to pee in the most efficient way possible, it is absolutely easier to simply paw at the toilet paper roll in a vaguely downward fashion until gravity induces the overhanging tongue of toilet paper to naturally fall forward and down into your half asleep little hand, so that you may complete your task and move on to the much more important task of feeding the baby.

In the dark is when OVER works better. (Even before kids.) Tell me I'm wrong. (You're wrong.)

Do you know what wandered into my perfectly OVERed little world? A husband who doesn't think it matters. How could it not matter?! Do you know how long it took to convince him it was important enough to my middle-of-the-night voiding activities to properly secure the toilet paper roll in an OVER fashion for him to actually comply? It took almost ten years!

Do you know what wandered into my perfectly husband-compliant OVERed little world? A toddler.

Toddler's are gravity-finding machines. They toddle around their little worlds discovering and discovering and rediscovering gravity. What happens when I turn over my breakfast bowl? Oh! Gravity! What happens when I open the hand carrying this toy? Oh! Gravity! What happens when I climb onto this chair and swipe my hand over the pretty shiny (breakable) objects up on this shelf? Oh! Gravity! What happens when I reach too far onto the shelf near the edge of the chair? Oh! Gravity!

He doesn't know his colours or his numbers of his letters or his shapes. But he knows gravity. Or does he? If he knows it so well, why does he keep testing it out???

Unfortunately, the same gravity that makes the OVER roll so much easier to deal with in the middle of the night is the gravity my toddler discovers when he bats at the toilet paper roll in a vaguely downward fashion. Oh! Gravity! Lookit that spiiiiiiiiin, wheeeeeee.

I didn't so much mind re-rolling the toilet paper. I didn't mind trying to remember to keep the bathroom door closed. I didn't really mind. But the fact is, an UNDER roll is less easy to unroll. For a toddler. It defies gravity.

So.

The rolls in my house are UNDER. For now. I only have to get one more child through this phase, and then everyone EVERYONE in this household will be taught how to do it Right.

Which way is the TP in your house?

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (19)

2011-09-13T22:33:00.000-05:00

It's been a few weeks since I did a KinderGARDEN check in - I missed week 17 and week 18. So far, Kim hasn't posted a week 19 sign up. In fact, she hasn't posted anything in over a week, and I hope it's not because something is wrong. Thinking of you, Kim, and praying everything is okay with your family! [Update: Kim came back! Her son needs back surgery, so she's been battling HMOs to get his precious spine the very best care she can, because that's what all spines deserve! Please head to her blog to check out everyone else's KinderGARDEN updates.]

I missed the week when the assignment was to take pictures in the glorious golden light of a rising sun, but I still did the 'homework.' I went out early on my way to work one Friday morning, but actually missed the golden morning sun by about 10 minutes. Instead, I have the cool cool tones of pre-sun. It was still peaceful to be out when no one else was around and putter about taking pictures of my (sad) garden.

Here are the tassles on the corn-that-wasn't. Next to that corn are the potatoes-that-didn't, followed by the beans-the-weeds-ate, and then the squash-the-drought-killed. Let's not forget the onions-the-grass-drowned, the carrots-bravely-growing-despite-the-weeds, and the cucumbers-of-mass-patheticness. I also have kohlrabi and chard, so much I don't know what to do with it. I have a few twigs of cinnamon basil which will be cooked into a small batch of tomato jam. And the peas were done long ago. I know my big garden suffered from a) having two babies to care for (/sigh KinderGARDENing will one day be easier, yes? promise?) b) too little rain and c) laziness, because we know we're giving it up next year. This land, which will grow pretty much anything with a bare minimum of attention, deserves the respect of people who will care for it. We are not (currently) those people.

Our garden at home has confirmed for me that raised beds are the absolute bestest thing EvarintheUniverseWow. The tomatoes are rampant, the vines have cascaded over the cages and are spreading across my lawn. I roasted some for a pasta salad. I turned five pounds of just the yellow ones into a lovely glaze/jam concoction that tastes delightful on grilled chicken. I would have had beautiful cabbages if I'd combated the slugs with any sort of consistency. I have EGGPLANTS! And I really do think the stinky coleus plant did it's job, because we had lettuce, and the rabbits didn't eat it. Most importantly, raised beds grow an amount of food we'll actually use, instead of rows and rows of stuff four folks couldn't possible consume. So, I'll happily post pics of our two new beds when they are completed (in a few weeks!)

I may have mentioned a few times we had a remarkably hot and dry summer. It has virtually disappeared overnight (though the forecast promises a return to warmer temperatures for the weekend, when we are having an early birthday bbq for Bean *fingers crossed*) The past two days have been gray, rainy and super windy. Tonight we'll drop near freezing and will probably frost later this week. On the one hand, I'm glad it will kill the wasps. On the other hand (wringing hands) my tomatoes! I sort of covered them with sheets, but the tomato jungle is really rather uncontainable. I picked the eggplant, even though I don't know if they could have used a few more days on the plant. I hope they are tasty anyway - I'm just excited to have them! They grew much bigger than I expected. And the flowers were so pretty, I'd grow it just for them :)

We planted these raspberries our first full summer here, and I must say we've been a little disappointed in their yield. I think we need to feed their soil with some compost and mulch, and probably watering them would help. Anyway, we've grown enough that little Bean hands know what to do with them - the trick is stopping him from picking them all!

His face is tear-streaked because we had a Bonk right before this. He wasn't hurt, only scared, but he knows he gets hugs and cuddles for Bonks and he maybe milks that a little right now. (Parenting aside: previously, we've tried to teach him to just "brush off" the Bonks and get on about his life. However, he is lately going through some separation/anxiety/stuff, not really sure what it is, probably typical 2-year-old neurology, and I feel like he needs the extra cuddles and reassurances. We are building a relationship, you know, and a big part of that is really laying the foundation that we are Here For Him No Matter What. Plus, he's never really been a cuddly kid, and to hear him ask for hugs is so heart-warming and adorable I can't help myself. So maybe I will regret in a few months that he's running to me for pats on the back every time he Bonks, but for now... I'm just gonna keep doing it!) I used the raspberry picking as a distraction, and it was successful. A little too successful. As in, Papa-Bean-didn't-get-any-berries-too-successful. Sorry PB! You've got dibs on the next ones, if Bean doesn't sneak them, ok?

Mama Bean's hands are Sprout's to hold

2011-09-12T23:24:00.000-05:00

The golden dappled heady sweet sunshine laden days of summer are drawing to a close. The flowers are gone, the fruit is gathered, and I have stewing vegetables in the ground waiting for harvest. This transition is my favourite time of year, hands down. I like to watch things dry and curl in on themselves and prepare for The Long Sleep. I am always a fan of sleep...

But the passage of time is always bittersweet now, in a way I never thought about before parenthood. This summer has been richer and hotter and brighter and lovelier than any summer of my life, except perhaps the summer Papa Bean and I were falling in love. And every summer is an extension of that summer, naturally. But now, every day brings a bigger Bean with more! words! Every day brings an older Sprout with more! smiles! Every day is another step, a growing distance, between the babies I brought into this world and the adults they will be, the adults who will leave me, to go and change this world in their own Bean-y Sprout-y ways.

This little girl is killing me very slowly with her mink hair and doll's eyes and big smiles and tiny, grabbing hands. She is wringing my heart out with those hands, because they are always looking for mine. And never letting go. She wants to hold my hand when she's nursing - and I want this, too, or else she's scratching with those impossibly sharp nails, laying claim to the b00b with kneading kitten fingers. She wants to hold my hand when she's fighting sleep, as in the picture above (which is actually PBs hand) because it calms her down. When you go to put the soother in her mouth, she latches onto your big hand with both of her small ones, and pulls it to her face. I think she is more interested in the hand than the soother. When she's chilling in a seat or mat, she wants a hand, to know you're there, and nothing more. When she's chilling on my lap while I'm on my computer, she wants to hold specifically my mousing hand - so perhaps there is something more she wants. For me to stop. So I do.

And I feel the blood in her hand meet the blood in my hand, and I know she carries chunks of my Being in her Being, and I feel those chunks drift inexorably away from my Body-self, with Time, always with Time. So it's comforting to know we can connect here. There's still an interface, more human than words (which can divide as easily as they unite), and it's our skin. She won't always want the things I can give her (my words, my "wisdom"), and she will sometimes want things I cannot give her (a pony, her dreams) (Though I will try, you know I will try). For now, she wants my hands. It is so very much the least I can give. So I do.

Look at this big boy! Running! Finding life, finding trees and sticks and rocks and sunshine and so. much. mud. This kid doesn't know how not to express his heart. If it's angry and "nononono" then it's angry and no. If it's cranky and when's-nap-time, it's thrown food and gritted teeth and when's-nap-time. Sometimes it's bonked knees or head and "hug" with kiss-y noises. Sometimes it's gentle (and less-than-gentle) petting of sister's mink hair. And when it's pure joy and look-how-fast, well... well, just look. How fast.

when did summer

my summer

turn cliche

how fast

time flies

beneath the leaves

how fast

so fast

too

fast

Mama Bean was born on a Friday.

2011-09-07T15:40:00.002-05:00

monday's child is fair of face, tuesday's child is full of grace, wednesday's child is full of woe, thursday's child has far to go, friday's child is loving and giving, saturday's child works hard for a living, but the child who is born on the sabbath day is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

I was born on a Friday in 1981. Bean was born on a Thursday morning. Papa Bean was born on a Monday, just like his daughter.

Now it's a Tuesday, six months later, and I figure I need to get this down "on the page" before I forget it all, because this writing thing, I've determined, is wrapped up in the exercise of memory keeping, for me, and so I should get on with it. The memory keeping.

(Subsequent birthing stories are always remembered in reference to the previous ones, so forgive me if this sounds like a list of what was different and what was the same, instead of a story. But this is still a birth story, and if you don't want to hear about the gory details, this is not the post for you! Rest assured, a baby came out at the end.)

For two midwife visits prior to Bean's birth, I had an internal exam and a stretch/sweep. Two days before his birth, I was dilated to 3cm, my cervix was soft, but still posterior. I am amazed at how many changes the cervix must undergo before contractions can be most effective (and less painful). It should move from posterior-facing to anterior, it should soften before it can think about thinning, it should thin before active dilation. All of this happens without (m)any outward signs or symptoms, but it's really important work. With Sprout, I had an internal before going away on a weekend retreat, to make sure I wouldn't deliver while an hour away from home (and twenty minutes from a hospital, regardless of homebirth being the plan.) At that time, cervix was softening but not soft, still posterior, and not very dilated (finger-tippy.) At the midwife visit (a week before?) Sprout's birth, the midwife demurred to perform a stretch and sweep, as I was still only 38 weeks, and she didn't think we needed to encourage anything just yet. I did not have any other internal exams with this pregnancy, even to check my dilation during active labour.

I never felt the Braxton-Hicks with Bean, probably because I didn't know what they were, and I'm unfamiliar with menstrual cramping in general (I know, I'm very lucky.) I was more aware of the cramping this time around, and I knew this time it was part of the work my body was doing to prepare my cervix. I knew it was soft, and I knew a little together time with PB would give it a good prostaglandin kickstart. In a way, I feel like any night of the weekend would have worked, but for some reason we waited until Sunday. At 2:30am that night, I felt an especially sharp kind of cramp and thought, "Pay attention" then went back to sleep.

I woke at 3:00 with another sharp cramp and then small gushes of liquid. I did not have SROM with Bean - my water broke during pushing, and almost got midwife LH in the face. I suspect if she had broken my membranes earlier in my pushing with him, I wouldn't have needed to push so long, but I think we didn't effectively communicate to her that they had not yet broken. It was a disorganized kind of birth for him, despite it feeling very calm at the time lol :) Anyway, it was neat to feel the "traditional" water release, and I was careful to maneuver myself out of bed and to the toilet without making a mess. I woke PB.

I called the midwife on call right away, as instructed, because my first delivery had gone so fast, we expected this one to be faster. I had only met midwife C once, at the home visit one week earlier (!) but we had hit it off and I felt really comfortable with her. In fact, I was really glad we "timed" the birth to be on the weekend she was on call. She let me know midwife KK,who would be her second, would reach me first. KK was on our midwife team with Bean, but had not been there for his birth - I was glad she would be there for this one. C asked me questions about how the contractions felt and I didn't know how to answer her. As with Bean, I woke with active labour - the contractions were already a minute long, and about five minutes apart. On the other hand, they weren't terribly intense and I still didn't know if it was just cramping or needing to poop or something. I felt a little muddled talking to her!

While we waited, PB pulled the futon mattress off the frame and laid it flat on the living room floor, covered with the shower curtain and a dark bedsheet (same set-up as with Bean.) We also set up a little table for the midwives to lay out their equipment. KK arrived at some point. I did most of my dilating standing up this time, which had been too painful with Bean, but worked this time. I would feel a sharp wanting-to-poop with an internal stretching/tearing kind of thing - and I envisioned the orange birdcage with the golden bars pulling out and back on the tight round muscles around the uterus (I will explain this image in a later post - it's part of my hypnobirthing strategy, although I wouldn't say I practiced or used much hypnobirthing in this delivery. I think having gone through it once, I had a deep abiding sense of my capabilities, and probably these images came to mind because I had previously thought so much about them.) I did a little dance, from foot to foot, on my toes, while moaning and breathing. I felt these contractions as both more intense than with Bean but less painful, if that makes sense. I had a flash of fear with Bean, alone in my basement wondering why it was so intenese so fast, when I understood why we want the drugs to take it all away. I did not have the fear this time, but I had more self-pity. I had more moments of why-must-this-be-so-hard kind of thing. I remember this time my face would get all crampy and scrunched with pain. KK listened to Sprout's heart a few times and all was well.

C arrived and met PB for the first time (lol) and my next contraction felt push-y. I went to lay down then got back up, I couldn't get comfortable (ha! Is any of this comfortable??), I felt restless, like an animal pacing a cage, looking for something productive to help myself. I guess this was transition, my thinking brain took a backseat. I remember asking rather pitifully, "What's next?" by which I meant, "Please check me." I wanted some reassurance, that this would be over soon, that I was making progress, that I could push the way my body felt. C suggested a hand and knees position on the mattress - I leaned on the futon frame and had some more face-scrunchy, push-y contractions. I was still waiting for confirmation from the midwives that I could push, and I felt a little angry that they weren't giving it to me. They are wise women, and I think they knew I needed to take back responsibility for my birth, stop giving my power to them, and know within myself when I was ready. (I know that sounds hippie dippy as all get out, but that's what I felt!)

It had been about an hour and a half. I didn't know when to call our friend N to come take care of Bean - it was the middle of the night, he was sleeping through it all, and I hated to disturb her needlessly if this was going to go on for awhile. But it clearly wasn't. I'm glad we called her when we did.

C asked if I'd like to take my underwear off (a good idea for having a baby!) and we found the infamous mucus plug (there is no good phrase for this. Bloody show is just as bad. Whatever. It is what it is, but someone should come up with a nicer way to name this thing.) I suddenly felt hot and sweaty and took off my nightgown, too. C asked if I felt hot, and when I said yes, she said, "I think your baby will be here very soon." This was as close as she got to telling me, you're complete, you can push, and she did it in very midwife-y way that mostly meant, follow your body. I had no internal exam to confirm I was at 10cm, I just did what felt right. I had two or so more push-y contractions against the futon frame, where I felt a perineal bulge and back pain. I knew I preferred pushing on my back (darn my weak low back!) so I knew it was time to turn over and get this show on the road!

PB had been helping me with low back massage throughout, because it really helped me handle the pain and pressure. I needed him to push against my lumbosacral junction, right in the middle, as hard as he could. He smiled through most of my labour, and encouraged me to smile. His joy was contagious, he said to me, "I like when you're in labour. It makes me laugh. You're so fun to watch." I suppose this would enrage a lot of labouring women, because it doesn't feel very fun, but being his wife, I knew what he meant and the love behind it. If he didn't have this joy and was all serious, I think that would have scared me - it really picked me up to have him keep smiling. He's the best birth partner, well, whole life partner I could ask for <3

Once laying on my back, I propped up my head and shoulders with pillows (called the inverted J position, because your body looks a bit like a backwards J leaning back.) PB knelt/lay by my left side, holding my left hand with his left hand,for me to squeeze, and supporting my head with his right. This helped me keep my chin pulled to my chest during pushes, which is really important and helpful for me to keep the energy of my pushes directed downward. (I know not every woman likes the chin-to-chest thing...) I remembered to keep my mouth open and loose, instead of clenching my teeth. (This is a Gaskin thing, about keeping all the body sphincters loose, because they run off the same neural circuits, and if an upper muscle ring is tight i.e. the mouth, the lower muscle ring i.e. the cervix, cannot loosen.) I would hold my breath from the start of a push until the most active,peak of it, and then let it out in a whoosh. This is the very same purple pushing hypnobirthing taught me not to do, but it's how I got Bean out, and I figured to just go with what works. I think it was helpful that I let myself sort of sink into the contractions and really feel the wave of it, and know the most productive times to bear down.

C knelt in front of me and put my feet on her knees. This was much nicer than with Bean, when each midwife grabbed one of my feet, and I had to pull back on my thighs, to spread my legs during pushes. C kept the right pressure on my legs without me having to hold anything, and all I really wanted to hold was PBs hand, anyway. But I did feel bad pushing on her legs so hard, I wonder what the longterm effects on her legs and knees are - I can't imagine it feels very good to be in that position for so long with such strong forces being exerted on her joints. That's just the Chiropractor in me speaking.

I was having hamstring cramps and worried I would run out of steam or get a cramp at a key moment during a key push. This time, I knew how to push into my perineum and was not afraid of the bulging feeling, like the baby was going to come out of my butt instead. This was a fear I had to overcome during pushing for Bean. N arrived shortly after I started pushing, and I managed to introduce her to the midwives through my breathing, they all laughed at me. She went downstairs and folded laundry because she is a sweetheart. I was worried about how loud I was being, but she says I wasn't very loud at all. I didn't wake Bean, anyway.

I did remember I didn't like the burning feeling of crowning, I was afraid of how long it went on with Bean, but I let the fear go, and I needn't have worried, because it didn't last long this time around. During a contraction, I would have a set of two maybe three good pushes, then rest between for a bit. I had two or three sets of burning when Sprout's head first started peeking-and-retreating. Then there were two or three more sets to where Sprout would crown and the head would stay, which C called "bringing baby around the pubic bone."

KK checked Sprout's heartrate every two or three sets of pushes, and was very reassuring. During Bean's delivery, the constant heartrate checking sort of irked me, because that midwife had been more serious about it, with her serious face on and seriously writing it down with her serious hands. I suppose that is just her demeanor, there was never any concern with Bean's heartrate. I thought that I might ask the midwives to just forego Doppler during this delivery. Then I was privileged to support a friend (N! Who was sitting patiently in the basement folding my laundry :) through her delivery in a hospital, and saw what continuous fetal monitoring looked like. By comparison, a few Doppler checks didn't seem so intrusive after all, and it is, of course, very important to monitor the heartrate, as it is one of the first indicators of baby's distress. So it would have been irresponsible to drop it, and I'm glad KKs methods were calm and reassuring.

There were many comments as Sprout crowned about her having lots of hair, and I remember the sense of joy building like electricity during this time. It is so amazing to hear how powerful and strong you are at the height of delivery. The burning became constant, even during the rest periods, as I stretched around the head. C was an absolute genius about coaching my pushes to give time for the head and perineum to shape around each other, so I wouldn't tear. I could have pushed Sprout out very quickly, because I am powerful in my pushes. As it was, I pushed for an hour, which is half the time I took for Bean, so it felt quick to me. C told me to pant through the second part of my later contractions and not push, because she wanted to slow me down. It's not instinct to slow down at this point, everything points to let's-be-DONE-already! But I'm really (really really) glad she directed me in this, because I would have torn otherwise, and in every way possible I can think to express it, not tearing is a gift beyond measure. I would gladly push for two hours if it meant I wouldn't tear.

I had a set of pushes when I felt Sprout's head was halfway out. A second set of pushes and I felt her head push through, and very loudly said, "Thank God!" C quietly said, "One, two...three! nuchal rings. Another push please" then unwrapped the cord from Sprout's neck. I didn't know what a nuchal ring was (oi!) which was maybe good, because I might have had a panic moment then. As it is, C was super duper calm about it, just asked for another little effort from me to push Sprout out enough to give her the room to loosen the loops, it was very quick. Nuchal rings are very common, though three is a little rare. They are nothing to worry about, in the grand scheme of things (they can become something to worry about, I suppose.) I would not have pushed just then, because once her head was out I wanted to rest before the push for her shoulders and body (unlike with Bean, once his head was out I just kept pushing even though the most active part of the contraction was over because I just wanted him out!) But C very calmly did what her training told her to do, and I am grateful. Sprout's cord was much long than Bean's and seemed much skinnier. I wonder if the nuchal rings were why she seemed less active in the womb than Bean (other than simple activity differences of personality and maybe gender) and I also wonder if they are why her head stability was not as good as his at birth, and took longer to strengthen.

I had one more easy push for Sprout's shoulders and body to slide out, and then she was up on my chest and we were saying hello. She did and does have a whole pile of beautiful, dark hair. She was also covered head-to-toe in thick white vernix, even more than Bean. Is this from the heartburn?! It took way longer for her vernix to rub into her skin, and I did have to wipe it out of some of her creases, because it made the skin raw underneath (poor baby.) It was a great relief to be done, a great rush of love hormones, and I drank it all up. That's why I don't remember the pain - I would actually say I didn't find the process all that painful (I know, I am a cliche.)

I don't remember precisely what happened next. At some point we looked to see she was a girl. This was a surprise in the sense that, statistically the Y is strong in PBs family, and so another boy was more likely. But it was not a surprise in the sense that many things were different in this pregnancy (less nausea, more heartburn, carried lower and wider - all things that can be explained by 2nd-pregnancies-are-different, but if you give credence to folk wisdom...) and everyone (my mom, staff, patients) had been predicting a girl all along. I had that mom gut feeling she was a girl later in the pregnancy, but just kept telling myself and others it was probably a boy.

C carried out the newborn exam, Sprout's Apgars were 9 and 10 or something like that. We moved the futon back onto the frame so I could sit up and try nursing. I was nervous about this because starting Bean on the b00b had been such an ordeal. C has a long career history as a lactation consultant, she was so helpful it's ridiculous, and Sprout was a natural. We did a little hamburgering to help her latch, and then she just took to it like a fish in water. C actually perched on the arm of the futon, which is not padded, and held my b00b for me, so I could concentrate on orienting Sprout's body, which demonstrates her commitment and support of good breastfeeding - she is a gem. Sprout ate from each side for more than 20 minutes, which C assured me would really help cement the breastfeeding relationship. It was lovely.

Normally the 2nd midwife doesn't stick around much past the birth, but KK stayed so she and C could go get breakfast. N stayed all day to play with Bean, while I nursed and napped and got to know Sprout (thank-you, N!)

Both of my labours started about the same time of night: 2:45 for Bean and he arrived at 7:17, 7 pounds 4 ounces and 20 inches long, on a Thursday I was scheduled to work, five days before due date.

3:00 for Sprout and she arrived at 5:25, 7 pounds 7 ounces and 21 inches long, on a Monday one week after I stopped working, a week before due date.

I don't know about "fair of face" or "far to go" but everything around here is bonny and blithe and good and gay as far as I'm concerned.

Mama Bean is an INFJ, what are you?

2011-09-03T00:11:00.000-05:00

Do you know your Myers-Briggs personality type? I was told my type during therapy during a depressive episode when I lived in Iowa, as it was one of the favourite therapeutic tools of my psychologist. In my case, it was exceedingly instrumental in helping me solidify my identity, find language for explaining my self and behaviours, and establish healthy boundaries in navigating my relationships. It helps me in these things, I'm not saying I'm, like, perfect at them ;)

A facebook friend recently posted her type, with an interesting site explaining the characteristics of all the types, which I'd not perused before. I love reading more about my type - I like recognizing myself in the description :) This one and this one were really fun, because I recognized a lot of myself! (Though it is necessary to look past the sort of frou-frou hippie-dippie lanuage that makes it read like a horoscope at times.) For example, I know that I get excited about organization systems and efficiency in organizations, which the first site described as:

Counselors...make every effort to help an organization run smoothly and pleasantly. They understand and use human systems creatively, and are good at consulting and cooperating with others. As employees or employers, Counselors are concerned with people's feelings and are able to act as a barometer of the feelings within the organization.

I read this, "The Counselor can become stressed when they are required to deal with too many unexpected events or required to be too extraverted for too long a time" and think about how annoyed I get when my work schedule suddenly changes (patient cancels, or empty space gets filled) and I didn't know about it. I like to know what's coming, especially because my job is All Extroversion, All The Time.

[Incidentally, the counselor who told me my type was, himself, an INFJ. Cute, right? We're a rare type, and we have exactly the type of personality to get a little ego kick out of that lol.]

The second site explains how my type is sort of obsessive about parsing out the inner motivations of others, how we like to understand the "hidden psychological stimulibehind the more observable dynamics of behavior and affect." Which is, like, Yes.

I also agreed with this bit, "They are, in fact, sometimes mistaken for extroverts because they appear so outgoing and are so genuinely interested in people - a product of theFeeling function they most readily show to the world...While instinctively courting the personal and organizational demands continually made upon them by others, at intervals INFJs will suddenly withdraw into themselves, sometimes shutting out even their intimates...As a pattern of behavior, it is perhaps the most confusing aspect of the enigmatic INFJ character." Any IRL friends out there want to comment on this?

Papa Bean and I are pretty much type opposites; he's ISTP. We share Introversion, but I often joke that I'm an extroverted introvert, and we're at opposite ends of the introversion spectrum. He has very strong needs to be in the cave and decompress, and has struggled with social anxiety. I think my introversion is more obvious under stress, but in general the F makes me so relational, it outweighs the I, in a way.

Speaking of stress, there's this little nugget, "The INFJ understress may fall prey to various forms of immediate gratification.Awareness of extraverted sensing is probably the source of the "SPwannabe" side of INFJs. Many yearn to live spontaneously." Teehee "immediate gratification" That explains the midnight ice cream binges, yes?! bahaha :P And I do often wish I could be more spontaneous - but I fail at it, spectacularly. Planning is my lifeblood. I used rainbow highlighters to colour code my daytimer at Palmer.

I suppose it fits my personality that I find personality typologies themselves so interesting - Myers-Briggs, enneagram, etc. I like these human systems that concisely categorize behaviour and help me explain why people do and are the way they do and be. I get so totally geeked about it, I will help you do your personality test (which is generally frowned upon, but c'mon! I gots talentz! This is my thing!) [In fact, I helped PB do a test while writing this post, because I know his answers to the questions better than he does. When he did it by himself, he got the wrong type! rofl]

I can get a little entrenched about it, though - I resist people acting "against type" because, frankly, it confuses me. And now I know what elements of my personality (N F) feed into that need to understand motivations and drivers, and how anything which derails my understanding makes me all... flustered. This is one of the best things my therapist showed me; when I identify a personality pattern that creates maladaptive feelings or behaviours, if I can name them, it's easier for me to overcome them. I can sort of calm my personality down, "Hey, self, little INFJ self, I see that you're upset about this situation, it's just your personality. Deep breath. Try on a little S or T or P for a bit and see if that helps. Act against type (horrors!) and things will be better in the morning." And most of the time, it works!

When I write it out like that, it sort of looks like one of those positive parenting scripts. "The next time your little Beast is doing [x] try talking it out like this..." That's right, I parent my personality :D That's awesome. If you enjoyed any part of this post half as much as I did, I encourage you to go find your type! (There are any number of sites with similar tests, but that link has a good explanation of all the letters. There's even a Harry Potter version! INFJ is Dumbledore!)

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (16)

2011-08-21T15:40:00.003-05:00

These are the happy ending to my gardening adventures - Tiny Tims, sweet golds, and Juliets. I didn't think the Tiny Tim plant was producing, because its squat determinate plant got buried under the monster indeterminate vines of everything else (especially the sweet golds.) But I poked under there, and it had a bunch of teeny tiny Tims! They are such a weird cherry tomato - they taste just like a big, meaty beefsteak (not sweet at all) but are sooooo small. It's actually been very interesting to taste these cherry varieties next to each other, makes me feel like a tomato connoisseur. The sweet golds are definitely the sweetest this year, the Juliets taste and feel very much like a roma, and the sweet 100s are just your average tomato (this year.) I have three larger tomatoes ripening, can't wait to put them on a sandwich!

This is a before picture of my weed harvest. I don't recommend letting your garden grow to look like this - it takes hours to change it's appearance. And when you put in those hours, the plants you wanted will be stunted, sad, and less than productive :(

As I weeded, I disturbed at least 10 nests of these little red and black beetles. They didn't seem to be hurting anything, but it was creepy to lift a plant out, and see them swarm out of the cracks in the ground.

Here's the "after" picture of the back half of my plot. Dying corn because we didn't water, dead potato plants we should dig up soon, anemic bean plants with overly mature beans that were not picked, and a few cucurbits also suffering from lack of water, with a few flowers, but no fruit.

I don't have any pics of my kinders helping me garden this week, but Bean has been eating peas from the garden (he likes the edible pods more than the peas inside, which actually I do, too.) He also helped me kill some of the slugs that I find feasting on my cabbages every morning - what can I do about slugs? The BTK isn't meant for them, only the looper caterpillars. As the nights get longer and cooler, I feel summer slipping away, and after the weeding fiasco, I've given up on any upkeep, only harvest!

Please check out everyone else's updates at Kim's blog! Hopefully this next week I'll sneak away one morning (when I'm not exhausted by waking up with a newborn) to do her early morning photo assignment :)

Mama Bean often doesn't mind the 45 minute drive home at all

2011-08-18T21:31:00.002-05:00

When I left work, the clouds were pale yellow. Fluffy in a cartoon way, the way that spells rain, and backlit by the setting sun, with bright white edges. An actual silver lining. A swoosh of cotton ball storm came out from the east. There were too many layers of weather happening at once. By the time I turned west, a thick rain cloud had squatted itself directly in front of the sun, its silver lining blazing like burning metal, sunlight streaming through cracks in the rafts of cloud, and to the north I saw the flat gray paintbrush of rain and wind, a backdrop for lightning. If I was the type of person who thinks saccharine things like, "This must be what Heaven looks like" that's what I would have been thinking. If I were that type of person...

It can be heart-rending to see that big sky every evening I drive home. When I am tired from giving to my work, and annoyed by some who take too much, and a little worried about what the night may hold, in terms of interrupted sleep, in terms of inane minute-counting, I don't have a mind big enough to really see so much sky. But my soul, emptied in the peculiar way that my soul-fulfilling work has (It's hard to explain, but I think parents understand. Is it weird to equate how I care for my patients is like how a mother loves a child?) is desperate for the view. And so I pull over to the side, internally berate myself for leaving my fancy new camera at home, and drink it up.

The cartoon clouds around the sun are still white-edged, and the cotton swoop is bearing down, filtering out the heaven-streaks. Along the horizon, an edge of storm gray has gathered, is gathering, feeding into that north and east expanse of single layered heaviness. Below this bank, the sky is orange, dusty. It is the sky of the setting sun, if the clouds weren't getting in the way. It is a reminder that the sky still happens behind, above, around the clouds. We may not see it, except in glimpses, but somewhere on that side of the storm, someone is enjoying a gloriously bright sunset. I have people on the other side of the storm, and I send up a little prayer for them, and drive on.

When I turn northward, the storm is all I can see, but I turn to follow what's happening to the light. It is progressively crowded out, now only a shaft of yellow is reaching onto the storm. It is like a flashlight seeing how far it can reach into the forest. It shows the texture of the storm - this one is woolen and slate, and if I could, I would curl up in it to sleep. I want to turn west again before the light is totally gone - when I get there, all I can see is that strip of orange below the cloud bank, and then, the sun comes below the storm. All above and behind me is gathering dark, but the sun is still setting, and I don't understand how I can be blinded by light and dark at the same time. Everywhere I look, I can't see. By the time I reach the city, the streetlights have turned on. And the lightning has begun.

The weather is making people drive like idiots, or moreso. No one is doing the speed limit, they are all gawking. I scoff (only a little) because what can you see of the sky in the city? It is bounded, by roads and light noise, and buildings buildings everywhere. Even the low profile of this Prairie Valley City is enough to get in the way of Prairie Sky grandeur. I just want to get home, before the rain starts (oh please let the rain start.) My soul is full now, I want to see my children.

The rain starts. In sheets, driven. The back spray off the pavement hazes the road, and there is steam, because the ground was hot today. I can hear my garden sobbing in relief. My husband worries how my tomatoes will handle it, but I don't care.

It's amazing what can change in forty-five minutes.

Mama Bean and Papa Bean listened to Sprout scream for an hour last night (also, some thoughts on heart pantries...)

2011-08-15T09:20:00.005-05:00

When my kids are happy, and being cute, my love for them is right at the surface, it's "easy." I don't have to dig too far into my psyche to feel it. I just look at their smiling eyes, and it's right there, reflecting back at me: Pure. Love. And those moments, oh how they feed a mother's soul, am I right? We store those moments away, in the heart's pantry, for a rainy day... ("the heart's pantry"? Did I honestly just write that?!)

Ooh those rainy days. When my kids are unhappy, or being less-than-cute, I have to dig ~~a little~~ deeper. I have to look down, past the (mis?)behaviour and the feelings, and really pull up on my love for them, and heave it up up up to me, and sort of internally inhale. Re-oxygenate my mothering soul. And then exhale (slowly slowly) the frustration and the exhaustion and the mother hurt.

Okay, examples. Bean has lately discovered spitting out liquids. For fun. He dribbles water onto the floor, onto his lap, onto his parents, whatever. He doesn't find it uproariously funny or anything, he's just kind of... exploring? Seeing what happens? He's being a(n almost) 2-year-old. I don't really think he's doing it for a reaction, and we're trying not to give him one, but it's so ugh. Like, I can handle pee and poop but for some reason saliva makes me squiggy? I'm weird. And I'm trying to go all Positive Parenting about it, and look for the underlying reasons or feelings or unmet needs or whatever. And I'm thinking, as I wipe it up, that in this moment, that Pure Love reflection is a little clouded, a little slimed, y'know? I have to dig down and pull up...

Last night, Sprout screamed for an hour before falling asleep. We don't know why, maybe burps, maybe farts, some incarnation of the Eeeeevil Gassesses. She hasn't had a bad evening for a long time, and this time definitely felt like one of the most (if not The Most) intense. She gets so upset, she chokes on her own teary mucus :( We tried swaddling and not swaddling, soother and no soother, upright and tummy and laying back and in between. I gave her a tummy massage. Mostly, we just held her until it was over. We all have evenings like this, right? And it was hard, to dig past the frustration and the ugly thoughts and the please-just-be-quiet, to pull up the love...

Have you ever been the jerk that tricks someone into pulling and pulling and pulling on something and then suddenly letting go, so all their effort rolls over them and they fall backward with the force of it? I have older brothers, so this happened to me a lot. Or that trick where you push your arms against a door-frame and hold hold hold and then suddenly step out and your arms float up involuntarily with incredible weightlessness?

When I carried Sprout up to bed, and marveled at how her long body no longer curls against my body, but rather curls around me, so big and stretched out and five-months-old (gah!), it was like whatever I was pulling against suddenly let go, it was like stepping out of the door-frame. All the love I was digging down for just rushed up and smacked me in the face and soul and heart (and yes, even the heart pantry /sigh.) I nursed her and brushed her sweaty hair from her face until her dark eyelashes rested on her cheeks again, and thought about the calm after the storm. The clarity. The Love Rush.

We always love our children, but we don't always love parenting. When I complain about some parenting thing, and some status bubble burster comes along to remind me to "cherish every moment" I kind of internally scream (or externally, Papa Bean can definitely attest to some external screaming...) Because, like, yes of course I always cherish my children, but sometimes this parenting gig is not all that cherishable.

And we already know this from all our other relationships - from our family and friends and spouses. I always love my husband, but I don't always feel it. When PB is being sweet and handsome, my love-y feelings for him are very immediate and present and right there, at the surface of my smiling face. But when I'm tired and out of resources or patience and I'm annoyed with him, oi, those bad feelings can really cloud over my decision to love him.

But I do think it's different with children, the effect is maybe more pronounced, because my relationship to them is so much more permanent. As in, there is the possibility within the universe that PB and I could decide not to be spouses anymore (it's a microscopic possibility, don't worry ;) but no matter what, my kids are my kids. So that undercurrent of love, whether surface-immediate or sunken-deep, has a unique constancy.

I hope you're having a bubbly, happy kind of day, but if you're not, if you're having a dig-deep, pull-up kind of day, well... I hope you get to step out soon, and stop hold hold holding, and feel the weightlessness of Love lift your arms, and make carrying your child (physically and metaphorically) easier. Soon.

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (15)

2011-08-13T20:54:00.003-05:00

I will try to be less depressed than last week. Who can be depressed when beautiful cucumber tendrils are snaking across sunlit leaves, promising... promising things?

On the other hand, who wouldn't be depressed with this weed-ridden garden plot? If you have a particularly keen eye, you can sort of see rows of bean plants in there - lots of flowers, but because we've had no rain, and because I am too busy and too lazy to haul buckets for an hour every day to water my plot, nothing is turning into beans. But I am undaunted. I think I'm learning that every year of gardening is going to be unique in it's own way until I'm many more decades into it, and one more rainy year or one more hot year won't feel like The Worst Year Ever anymore. Ha!

Bean likes to help! Here he is helping Papa Bean wrap up our row-marker tool. I'd left it marking the final row of carrots I planted and just never cared enough to wind it up. And then when we visited this last week, the line was getting overwhelmed by weeds and some carrots, too! Tell me something - do carrots from a dry year taste different? Like cucumbers without enough water are bitter, and radishes with too much water are spicy, so what about carrots?

Papa Bean accosted my new camera and took pictures of me picking peas. They're pretty tasty, just not many of them. We'll have to get in another picking tomorrow, maybe. You can see Bean on the side there, helping by pushing Sprout in the stroller. It's one of his favourite things to do. He only gets ~~completely~~ a little bit in the way while he's doing it.

These are the flowers on the volunteer cucumber plant by our BBQ. Fingers crossed they'll fruit in time to mature before cold weather hits. The other volunteers seem to be acorn squash, but weirdly hybridized and spotty/stripey. I've had a slew of male flowers with no females to put their pollen onto, now I see a bunch of female flowers coming up, but I'm not sure if any males will be around for them (gah!) I love to eat cucurbits, and I love the way they grow, but they do seem so prone to whims of... plants. The whims of plants are not that whimsical, turns out.

This is another volunteer I just noticed today by our compost bins in their new location. Yes, I only noticed it when it got this big. Let's say I'm good at filtering out the plants I don't want to see - my eyes see, but my mind ignores. Anyway, there's no way this will flower and fruit in time, but I would've liked to see what kind of tomato it was that held on so tenaciously in our compost.

I finally have an eggplant growing! At least, I think this is a viable, growing eggie. So far all the pretty purple flowers have just bloomed and shriveled. I don't know how to nurse an eggplant, but I'll do whatever I can for this little guy. At least for my plot at home, watering is easy and close and, most importantly, happens.

Don't these leaves look like a cartoon? Our front shrubs flowered crazily this year, and now they're shooting off all these new branches with these crazy cartoon coloured leaves. I've got to trim them soon, the branches are blocking our front door, and Bean gets scared, in that little two-year-old way, of long grasses and branches touching him. He'll go fearlessly wandering around some plants or something, then realize those very same plants are now blocking his way back to mama, and gets all antsy and agitated. It's pretty cute, but don't tell him that ;)

After taking the pictures of our shrubs, I noticed our neighbour's shrub, which is a totally different type of plant, also has crazy cartoon colouring this year. Weird, right? Like, these bushes have different branching, different flowers, different leaf shapes, different... weird. I have to say I've really appreciated how KinderGARDENs gives me a focus for my picture taking. Like, when you're just running around with a camera, kids and life give you any number of things to photograph, in a really undirected way. But having a project (creating a post each week) gives me reasons to push the shutter, it directs me eye, y'know? I really like it :) And I'll miss it when it's over for this year.

Sprout likes to play with her toes. That's all. I mean, she likes lots of things. I just meant that's all I have to say about this. Without gushing about how cute she is and how much I love her nose and and well, you know.

I pick tomatoes every day, three types so far, Juliet, Sweet Gold and Sweet 100s. They are all rather thick-skinned this year, maybe from the heat (?) The sweet 100s are not as sweet at the first year, the Juliets are like small romas (so maybe I can sauce them?) and the sweet golds are truly little jewels, if I leave them to ripen to a deep, rich, goldenrod. I am trying to teach Bean to only pick the colourful ones, but a few green ones come off the vine regardless. He loves to pick them, and bites into each one, even though he doesn't like them. My son, the optimist, "Maybe this one will taste good. Maybe this one!" I also planted a Tiny Tim plant, but it's getting shaded out by the bigger vines, so the teeny tiny tomatoes under there may not ripen. I've also seen, deep in the tomato jungle, some of the Ultra Sweets, they look the perfect size, I'm so excited. Sadly, our pepper plants are also being shaded by the tomato monsters, so no peppers this year.

This is his face after biting into yet another one. He is also perturbed by the seed fluff on top of that green tomato. It's another of these new little toddler freak out things - they pick the strangest things to be scared of.

Kim's on vacation, but everyone else is still posting their garden updates - check it out!

Mama Bean's Chiropractic ego is a bit bruised tonight

2011-08-09T21:40:00.004-05:00

I am having an off week en generale and in specific at work. (En generale because Sprout had a bad night before my early work morning and that just made everyone tired and cranky...) Yesterday and today, I've had a string of patients return for second treatments of problems they presented with last week (Thursday and Friday of last week, in particular). They are returning because their problems are not better or have worsened. Tonight, after the fifth or sixth such incident, I started to take it a little personally.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, it's just that usually I make people feel better. That's, like, my job. (Oh oh Chiro friends, please don't lecture me about Innate. For the purposes of this post, it's my job, okay?) Usually, if people come back for a second treatment, it's a week later, and they tell me they feel better but it's still there a bit, or they feel better but they just want to be sure. Or they come back in a month for a regular tune-up and tell me how great they've felt. Or they don't come back for awhile, for whatever reason, and that's just life. But overall, I do my job, and folks come back and tell me I've done it well. Good for the ego, my job is.

Except when it isn't. Like when a gobsmack of patients come in after four days and tell me I didn't do squat. Oof.

It's hard not to question myself - what was happening last week? Was I not paying attention, was I not fully present, was I half asleep? (I have a baby, I am frequently tired, this is not beyond the realm of possibility...) I have doubts, and then I feel terrible. These people trust me, with their money, with their health, with their bodies.

On the other hand, there are plenty of reasons why this has nothing to do with me. Sometimes (often) one treatment is not enough. And for some of the folks this week, we're dealing with significant injuries that I should know will take more time to resolve. It is much more likely that this is all a case of bad timing, because in any given week I'll have a patient or two with persistent or stubborn situations, and they don't cause me a crisis of self doubt - it's only that all these cases seem to have ganged up on me in a few short days.

This is a paradox of Chiropractoring for me. My Chiropractic education drilled into me that people are their own healers - that this is what our bodies are designed to do! Fix! And so the Chiropractor cannot get too proud or too invested in their abilities, because fundamentally, the patient is the real Healer. On the other hand, I don't do nothing! (Obviously, I hope...) Chiropractors move things that need moving, remove Interference that's getting in the way of Healing. We do Something! (How's that for a professional motto? "Chiropractors: We Do Something!")

Paradox. On the one hand, I wield influence over people's health. They come to me requesting aid, and I know I do Good. On the other hand, I am only one tiny part of their life - ten minutes in my office is followed by the next ten days of where they work and where they live and where they parent and where they have hobbies and where they sleep and where they wake up to do it all again. I have no control over all that other stuff (all my suggestions about ergonomics and stretches and icing aside.) So in that grand scheme of things, I bear comparatively little influence. It is a paradox to mentally balance my perceived impact on people's lives versus their expectations of my impact versus the realities of their daily lives. And somewhere in there is the true change an adjustment can bring. Which is real. Which is what they pay for.

Anyway, I continually find this to be the hardest patient education lesson to teach: I do Good for you, but you are responsible (and able! and naturally designed!) to do much more Good for yourself.

It is especially hard after a day like today. However! Tomorrow = new day, new opportunities. Tomorrow also = my day off (Huzzah!) And maybe that is exactly what my bruised self-confidence requires, so I can face Thursday with a bit more verve. And whatever it is that shadowed last Thursday will not re-create a dismal Tuesday like I had today.

(The picture is bachelor's buttons and poppy seedpods from a neighbour's plot at our community garden. This year, before we leave the garden, I am running around asking folks for seeds from their wildflowers - poppies, bachelor's buttons, borage, cosmos, lavatera, all of it!)

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (14)

2011-08-07T14:30:00.002-05:00

I think I'm in the summer doldrums, folks. Is it the (unending, insufferable, relentless) heat? Oh probably. When I think of gardening these days, all I seem able to focus on is failure, and I feel like maybe this happens every year (in my soooooo grand total of three years gardening) around this time. Things have been growing long enough that I've forgotten the miracle of sprouts (oh those green specks against all that dark dark earth are so incredible!) and enough summer has passed (the days are shortening ack!) that I become convinced we'll have nothing to harvest.

This picture was taken after a brief rainfall one morning. Squash blossoms are beautiful, but almost none of mine are turning into fruit. That little green globe at the bottom left has already yellowed and shriveled from lack of pollination. Despite tonnes of bees around! Despite this particular plant growing next to a bush of lambs' ears that attracts swarms of bees every day! Ugh. The cucurbits at the big garden are not growing, not flowering, not fruiting. They need water, and I have no time to provide it. I love cukes, squash, and melon, all of it, I love them, and I was so excited for the haul this year. Last year, it was the unending, insufferable, relentless rain that got me down - this year, the lack thereof. If every year I'm to suffer beneath the tyranny of weather, I may simply be unsuited to this level of melodrama.

Those evil looper butterflies are going MAD this week, they are every. where. Can you see the tiny eggs on the leaves in that upper picture? All over my cabbages! I wiped those off with glee, GLEE I tell you! mwahaha The lower picture was taken after that same brief (why why so brief) rainfall. If we can all ignore the holes in the leaves, can we all agree that's one beautiful cabbage right there? /sigh. We've been treating them with BT (I'm telling myself it's almost natural...) so I think maybe there's no new damage to the heads, and the holes in the outer leaves are just from before we started treating. I'm trusting the inner parts of these cabbages will not be mush and worm poop by summer's end. And I'm daydreaming what to make with them, to lift my spirits - I think some coleslaw, and some cabbage rolls, and some corned beef and cabbage, and maybe some "spring rolls" with cabbage skins instead.

This is one of my edamame - they seem too flat to me, but I'm hoping they plump up, and I'm not at all sure when to pick them. Cute little fuzzy thing, though. The legumes at the big garden suffer from the dryness - the beans were flowering, but I haven't even been out again to see if that's turned into beans yet, and they're so overcome with weeds, who knows if I could see the beans to pick them at this point. The peas flowered briefly and made flat little snow peas. Except I didn't plant snow peas. So I assume the lack of water is to blame for that, also. Maybe this evening, I can pop out for a picking.

This is one of several (like, twenty or so) funnel webs on my lawn - the spiders love the dry weather, and it has driven the ants back underground (during last year's wet conditions, all the ant hills emerged above ground, making infuriating mounds in the grass). It's amazing how gardening makes you so much more aware of insect life in your yard - I've been enjoying the other KinderGARDENers photos of their buggies. My remaining update is this: we'll have no corn this year, and the plants didn't grow high enough to be the wind break they were intended to be. Our potatoes were not hilled, which will compromise our yield, and they'll be small from lack of water, but potatoes we will get, and at least one row of them was grown to be donated. Our beans remain to be seen lol. Our onions I think are okay, and we have some at home doing fairly well; a row of them will also be donated. Our carrots are patchy and I have no idea if the lack of water is making for small roots, but we'll see. My cucurbits, as mentioned, do nothing. I have tiny kohlrabis, I have some basil, I have lots of chard, actually. What should I do with chard? And the peas also remain to be seen.

Here's one of the (always) bright spots, my sweet boy. Even when we turn our backs for a minute and he uncaps his breakfast smoothie and proudly pours it all over himself (all the better to lick off himself, of course) he is a bright spot :)

And here's the other (always) bright spot, my sweet girl with her sweet pursed lips and tiny button nose. I get lost in those eyes, and I forget about weeds and rain, and just smile at her smiles.

If my tomatoes grow like this every year, I can almost forgive the rest of the garden for being stupid. These plants have been amazing, the branches are bending to the ground from the weight of the fruit. They're all cherry plants, so they mature early, and I eat a cup or so every evening. But I think that's about to explode, because there are an awful lot of green ones all at the same stage of ripening, so I'll be drowning in sweet 100's soon enough. This is a good problem to have :) Thank goodness for the tomatoes, or I'd be giving up on gardening for sure (no not really. I'm addicted. It's a sickness, perhaps you're afflicted, too?) And, because my little monkey man must monkey-see-monkey-do, I had to teach him to only pick the yellow or red ones, and surprisingly, he has listened. Won't eat them, though haha. His dad is to blame for that.

This was a salve for my gardening ego, as well. I went searching back through my photos for the first few pics of the volunteers that sprouted where the compost bins used to be. From L to R, that's June, July, and August. They probably won't make fruit, but it is amazing just to see what has grown - a miracle! Gardening is humbling in so so (so so so) many ways, and maybe these August doldrums are precisely meant by God to remind us of that. At least that's what I'll tell myself!

(Did you even know chickens and hens flower?! This stalk is over a foot tall. Apparently the blooms can be red, but ours were not, unless the heat/dryness somehow shocked this one out of its normal progression. It's been very fun waiting for it to bloom. Also, I got a new camera. All of this week's pics were taken with a Nikon 3100. I don't suppose it's a very obvious difference in the pics from our Canon point-and-shoot, but it has been a pleasure to use, and that's really why I bought it.)

Please head to Kim's for the other Kinder posts! Also, over forty pounds of food have already been donated!

Mama Bean is all Reinforcement-ed out

2011-08-04T16:03:00.001-05:00

My Intro to Psychology course taught me that Reinforcement is the way a person's reaction to a behaviour encourages repetition of that behaviour - it reinforces continuation of the behaviour. Basically, we all like to get a reaction. And when we do, it encourages us to keep doing That Thing That Got The Reaction.

(For example, when I blog, and you write a comment, I like getting that reaction. So I keep blogging! Now hopefully, when you comment, and I keep blogging, you like that reaction, so you keep commenting. Reinforcement can be Reciprocal! W00t :P)

There are different flavours of Reinforcement, Positive and Negative. Positive Reinforcement is when we react to things we like, to encourage continued performance of things we like. (See above re: blogging and comments.) Negative Reinforcement is when we react to things we don't like, which encourages performance of things we don't like, and that's why it's Negative and Bad.

And so Behaviourism 101 tells us: react to things you like to encourage things you like (Do Positive Reinforcement) and don't react to things you don't like, so you won't encourage things you don't like (Don't Do Negative Reinforcement.)

Reinforcement has turned this momma upside down! It's this weird parenting reinforcement paradox around here, and it makes me want to scream, except I can't because that would probably negatively reinforce something-or-other-idontevenknowwhat!

I cannot be the only parent going through this.

On any given day, I am going out of my mind with excitement for things that, in the Real World of Adult Interactions are normal and natural and nothing to get excited about. I'm going cuckoo for Pleases and Thank-yous. I'm going gaga for Sharing and Not Hitting. I'm jumping up and down and all around for Listening to My Words and Using Your Words. I am cuckooing and gagaing and jumping up and down because I want to Positively Reinforce all these lovely behaviours from my Bean. And it's become so ingrained in everything I do, I excitedly positively reinforce things from Sprout, who understands few motivations more complicated than, say, Hungry and Tired. So I'm grinning and mugging for Good Nursing or Sitting Quietly While Mom Makes Dinner.

And on the flip side, I am quietly and carefully having internal fits over things that, in the Real World of Adult Interactions are not normal or natural and are forsure something to get excited about. I'm calmly providing food to a mouth that Spits it out or Throws it on the floor. I'm placidly wiping poop while legs Continually Kick Me. I'm oh-so-gently carrying the Cranky and the Crying and Won't Go to Sleep up to his bed to sleep anyway. Without reacting. Because I don't want to reinforce these less-than-lovely behaviours. And again, it extends to Sprout, so that I suppress my reaction to anything unpleasant, like the poop explosions or the fussypants or the spitting up down the back of my nice shirt that I just changed into for going to work, even though she has less than zero concept of what Reinforcement is even about.

It's like living backwards, amiright?

This is the kind of thing that makes me feel like I gave up half my brain when I gave birth. Sometimes I find cynical thoughts running through my head, "I have a university degree. I have a doctorate! People rely on me to make life-changing decisions about their health! Why am I dancing like a clown because he ate two more bites of green beans than he ate yesterday? Why am I crowing in victory over unintelligible "words"? Why for the love of Pete am I pantomiming for this tiny tiny human tyrant?!"

Oh right. Because I gave up half my brain and gained a couple extra pounds of Heart-bursting Love. /sigh.

Anyway, it's not that it's so so infuriating, more like a disembodied feeling at the end of some days, when I feel like I actually have not Been Myself, because instead I've been participating in this parenting paradox of Reinforcement Win. And I know it's all worth it in the end, that eventually they will do the Pleases and Thank-yous and Sharing without needing a Cheering Section. And they will learn to self-regulate negative behaviours, too. And by then we'll be trying to cheer them on in more sincere ways and they'll be adolescents who no longer care about our opinion lol. Not to mention, by that point, solving negative behaviours will be so much more complicated than simply quietly ignoring them ha!

Oi. Parenting. Please tell me about the silly things you go crazy about to positively reinforce - or, even better, tell me what you've been trying to ignore to avoid negatively reinforcing it.

Mama Bean stews in Disappointment, and blogs for your edification

2011-08-03T21:42:00.000-05:00

You know, there are so many things we do differently in this electronic age. We communicate differently, we spend our money and our leisure time differently, we raise our kids differently. It's all so different. For so many of these new things, the rules are still being written. It feels like some kind of Brave New World. And as a momma, I wonder how I'm going to teach my kids to navigate this world, and still behave in a proper and respectful way. Sometimes I wish there was just some sort of Guide or Book - Here! Read this! And you will never make a mistake on the Internet EVAR!

Haha. If only.

Let me present this scenario, which is woven through and through with Sour Grapes, so keep that in mind - but let me present it anyway, for the google searches of the future, for the people out there looking for the Dos and Don'ts of this Brave New World; When you're selling something on kijiji, don't tell someone they can buy your thing and then sell it to someone else. (In fact, when you're selling something anywhere, but for the sake of this post, we'll talk about the great K.) If the Great Rule Book of the Interwebz is ever written, I think that should be in there.

Shall I get more specific? I shall. Let's say Seller wants to sell a Doodad, and lists it on kijiji for $45 OBO. Let's say Buyer A offer $40. Let's say Seller says, sure I'll take $40. Let's say Buyer A asks for a pickup location and time. Let's say Seller doesn't answer. Let's assume (accepting the inherent risks of ass-making of u and me) Seller has received a better offer from Buyer B. Let's say Buyer A asks again for a pickup location and time the next day. Let's say Seller has already sold the Doodad to Buyer B.

Let's say Buyer A feels angry.

Just for an example.

When you're selling something on kijiji, don't tell someone they can buy your thing and then sell it to someone else.

There are no rules in the wild wild west of the online garage sale that is kijiji. It's all Seller and Buyer beware - we're all flying by the seat of our pants up in here! But I think there can be an appeal to human decency, and here it is, my appeal, "Please, don't do that! Don't be a jerk!" I know there isn't some Terms of Use that was clicked on without being read (because nobody reads those things, srsly) that says you have to be nice. I know we're not business people, and there's no public way in which buyers can offer feedback about sellers, and there's no obligations for anyone to do anything but buy and sell their crap. I know. But in the interest of Keeping the Peace...

Shall I get specific again? I shall. Let's say Seller heard from Buyer B(etter offer), but had already agreed to sell to Buyer A(waiting purchase). Let's say Seller is excited about the better offer, but realizes it's necessary to chat with Buyer A first. There's no rule that says Seller must abide by the terms with Buyer A, but there's also no rule saying Seller can't negotiate new terms. And in the interest of Keeping the Peace, with a little effort, new terms are easy enough to secure. Let's say Seller tells Buyer A about the better offer, and Buyer A is unwilling to pay full price (or match the better offer, whatever). Buyer A says no thanks, Seller still sells Doodad. Let's say Buyer A is willing to pay full price, or more out of gratitude to Seller for being such a nice person. Buyer A is a happy camper, and Seller still sells Doodad. A little extra effort for the sake of Keeping the Peace, and money and goods still exchange hands.

To be fair, there's a disappointed party in each scenario. But it's my blog, so I'm writing from Disappointed Scenario A(ngry). And I realize the caveat "OBO" gives sellers plenty of leeway, in the online and offline worlds of business. I totally agree that any Seller has the right to get as much money as possible for their Doodad. I wouldn't be writing this if I hadn't been told my offer had been accepted. And I also wouldn't be writing this if the solution to avoiding disappointment and hurt feelings wasn't so simple as whipping off a few extra emails.

Bottom line, I just don't think it's okay to tell someone they can buy your thing and then sell it to someone else.

So, Buyer B(etter offer), I hope you enjoy your Doodad. I'm off to search for a different Doodad to buy. And at least this situation has provided the Internet with one nugget of Webizen etiquette for all posterity. Say it with me, kids! Don't tell someone they can buy your thing and then sell it to someone else.

/ end rant.

Mama Bean had an Icelanditacular day!

2011-07-30T22:00:00.002-05:00

It's a good thing I had Papa Bean pack the diaper bag the night before...

Sprout has "forgotten" she likes to skip the middle-of-the-night feeding, and has instead started skipping the middle-of-the-day feeding. Thus, we have fitful nights. For everyone, since her restlessness somehow translates to Bean, who sleeps on an entirely different floor, and makes him restless, too. Morning came early to the Bean household.

So we hit the road. We went to the annual Icelandic Festival at the lake community just north of the Prairie Valley City, about an hour away. We had planned to meet up with friends summering up there, but worried they might be too ill. However, upon arrival, lo and behold there they were, so we went about our merry Icelandic ways together.

Truth be told, we didn't participate in any of the Icelandic stuff. I know boo, hiss but, well, we just followed the toddler(s). (t)He(y) rule(s) the roost, you know :) We strolled the farmers' market stalls (I bought some cute earrings, and some flavoured honey sticks for a treat) then checked out the murals along the harbour/pier. It was nerve-wracking having an excited toddler so close to the edges of the docks, and of course, that's exactly where Bean had to be, so he could throw rocks into the water. oi. But fun to watch him have fun, of course.

Bean and M held hands along the painted walkway. This was much more preferable to being on the edges of the docks by the water :S

I was glad to leave the docks and meander down the beach and boardwalk. L is an extrovert's extrovert - she meets friends old and new every twenty steps or so, which suits the pace of toddlers walking just fine. We watched a woman pole-vaulting on the beach, she was trying to beat a provincial record, but didn't quite make it. The physics and physicality of pole-vaulting are quite something to behold, in real life.

This lake is basically a really really big puddle that collects from the various rivers of the province. In typical years, because of farming chemicals, it is prone to algae blooms, and other nastiness. The high floods in spring and the high temps this summer have conspired for a beautiful year of warm water with relatively little algae (I don't know why.) Bean found the waves to be Most Awesome :)

Bean loves to discover a new playground. This one was roasting from the hot sun. But you can't beat the view, even if your hands and knees are burning from crawling around!

Bean also loves to smash sand-castles, which would have been bad for the sand-castle competition taking place. One pour soul was being fried to a crisp, pretending to be eaten by a sand shark.

From the beach, we walked to the midway taking place at the park a few blocks away. Bean was too small for any of the rides, but we enjoyed some french fries. Long weekends are for unhealthy eating! That's my philosophy lol. We were disappointed at the lack of authentic Icelandic grub, we may have come on the wrong day of the festival for that. Next year!

Papa Bean looks like an Intrepid Viking of Parenting Win in this photo! Don't tell him I said that, he'll get embarrassed teehee.

Bean doesn't meet a splash park he doesn't like. He got quite adventurous in this one, running through some of the sprayers, instead of just running around things and stomping in the puddles. I'm glad the kiddos (and adults) had this refreshing hiatus, because it was really getting hot. Bean's little cheeks get so red in the heat, and he wilts, poor thing.

We wandered back to town, and should have gone home, in terms of preserving nap time. We went to get lunch in town instead, and here the afternoon got derailed by the crowds - I (stupidly) ordered shrimp and chips. It took forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes. I know, I know #firstworldproblems. It's only that, if I'd known, I would've had ice cream for lunch, as originally tempted (L had the right idea here!) Anyway, it tasted good. But I'll never go back there again.

On our way out of town, we bought Papa Bean a birthday present - a large framed picture of a moose in a snowy birch forest. The kiosk was selling everything for more than half off, it was a good deal. We weren't hopeful Bean would nap in the car, so late from his normal naptime (we left town when he'd normally be waking up) but a few verses of The Wheels on the Bus calmed him down (miracles!) We drove into a neighbouring area to the west of the city, where Papa Bean has lately been cycling (on his spanking new road bike - a birthday present to himself.) We went to cruise the big houses out there, which he'd been cycling past, and then just kept driving to the provincial park at the end of the road. It was amazing to see how high the water remains on the river - the walking trails around the provincial park are all closed because they're underwater. We took a brief stroll down a dry part of the path, it was lovely dappled and breezy and free of bugs, which is another miracle of this summer.

I can't believe how much we packed into the day. Poor Bean suffered a bit, his sleep has been disturbed, it will take a quiet day or two to reset it. We never did this much during Bean's first summer - I felt inept, unable to leave the house and keep us both alive for more than a few hours at a time. Plus, he was a major schedule baby, he wanted his swaddle and his suck and his bed at very prescribed times. And I was not a mom who nursed in public well, then, probably because it always involved a nipple shield for him, and that was always so messy.

I'm much better at nursing in public now, though Sprout doesn't like it much. She prefers to be on her familiar pillow, at a comfortable temperature. The summer heat, laying on her diaper bag as pillow, with a nursing cover over her head, makes her fussy. She is not so much a schedule baby, mostly in the way she can sleep anywhere (but sleep she does in a schedule-y kind of way). And mostly we go out and do more now because Bean is bigger and needs to go out and burn off steam and be smiley and stuff. It's kind of gratifying, to see the trajectory and think, hey, we're actually getting better at this! I'll keep that in mind when I'm dredging through my next day of feeling like a Parenting Fail. Oh the highs and lows, friends. Today was up there :)

Mama Bean, Papa Bean, Bean and Sprout went to the zoo.

2011-07-30T10:01:00.000-05:00

And we saw some animals :) Top row, L to R: a heron in the duck pond, which was drained for much of the spring, so the bird population is low this summer; the ~~ugly~~ handsome hornbill, these guys always hang out at the front fence of their enclosure, I think they like showing off for people, so I call them handsome while they preen, even though their beaks are actually pretty freaky looking; a gopher, because the best wildlife isn't in the cages; and the birds of paradise (I think?) in the new tropical house. Bottom row, L to R: a baby markhor, one of twelve in the herd this year, we watched them being fed, all their little wiggly rumps in a row, it was pretty adorable; a pelican all turtled into himself, resting in the duck pond; a reindeer drinking; and a baby-wearing momma ape (?), I love how he's just hanging there, hugging her tummy and letting his arms chillax.

These are the many faces of my little monkey :) We had snack time by the monkeys, and he showed us his teeth and his eyelashes and his sweet sweet toes.

This about captures the goofiness that is my son. Just prancing around, not a care in the world except his careful grip on his snack cup (heavens preserve the precious snack cup!), cool guy shades on top of his hat, instead of under the brim where they belong...

Baby girl fell asleep just before snack time. We don't want to spend the $90 dollars (srsly) for the sunshade that goes on the rear toddler seat, so we've been draping my nursing cover over the handlebars for a quick hack, but it's not perfect (let's a lot of sun in the sides, blows around in the wind) so I'd like to sew something similar, that attaches with velcro, out of something heavier and maybe even a little water resistant.

Of course, we didn't actually go to the zoo to see the animals! Naturally, we went to see the construction equipment!! It's too bad we didn't see this until we were ready to leave - because there was a mini-meltdown getting him back in the stroller and away from the backhoe. Nothing like seeing a Real. Live. Backhoe. Aaaah, such a boy :P

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (13)

2011-07-28T22:06:00.003-05:00

We're taking a trip to the garden! Wheee! We've got our bucket of tools, and our bucket for gathering, and our sunglasses and hats, and our shorts and sandals, and a truck to keep us occupied *please keep him occupied* and we are going to GARDEN! See? This picture shows us following daddy to the garden. (Alternate interpretation: this picture shows us picking up rocks and clods of dirt and meandering everywhere except towards daddy and the garden.)

We're at the garden! Wheee! We've got our mosquito net and our blanket shade against the sun, and our hat and soother, and we're ready to relax and watch the FUN! See? This picture shows us sitting happy and sleepy in our bucket. (Alternate interpretation: this picture shows the calm before the storm of fussing and cranky whining between repeatedly spitting out my soother, before napping eventually in the sweet sun and wind, and mosquito free wonderment.)

We're picking radishes! Wheee! We're gonna pick them ALL! See? This picture shows us plucking beautiful orbs of perfect radish loveliness from the earth. (Alternate interpretation: this picture shows us barely beginning the 60 or so foot harvest of unthinned radishes, along with stunted cucumber plants and a ridiculous number of weeds. Please please ignore the weeds. I know I am...)

We're putting radishes in the bucket! Wheee! We're listening to instructions and gently placing radishes in the bucket, which is rapidly filling up after only the first 10 feet, and daddy has a meeting in less than an hour, so my helpfulness is really APPRECIATED! (Alternate interpretation: this picture may in fact show a radish being pulled out of the bucket, and it definitely shows the moment before said bucket being dumped over, and radishes rolling out, much to Bean's amusement. Not pictured: tools and gloves scattered throughout the garden after being pulled from the tool bucket. Also not pictured: ignored. toy. truck.)

We're almost done gardening! Wheee! I am sitting calmly while mommy starts to panic about having three shopping bags full of radishes that she doesn't even really like to EAT! This picture shows me pulling up weeds. (Alternate interpretation: he's not pulling up weeds. He's just... pulling up whatever's in his reach lol. But, it was keeping him happy, and the current condition of our garden ensures that almost everything within his reach is a weed, anyway. No harm, no foul. I wouldn't even have minded if he started pulling up kohlrabi, because it needs to be thinned.)

We're done picking radishes! Wheee! This is the perfect time to play with my TRUCK! This picture shows a few radish plants remaining, because lord know we need to leave a few for radishes down the road, in case we RUN OUT! (Alternate interpretation: I don't know why we left some plants, I think I told myself we were just thinning the rows, instead of decimating them to make room for the cucumbers, which are stalwartly refusing to grow taller than six inches. Also, I'm sorry to show so many pictures of the greens being wasted. If we'd kept the greens, we would have needed three garbage bags instead of shopping bags to get it all home. One bag went to friends, half a bag is in our fridge, and two other bags went to the local food bank this morning - 14.4 lbs to add to Kim's Grow to Give tally!)

This week's KinderGARDEN assignment is about colour - go check out everyone else's contributions to the rainbow. I am mostly proud for having pictorial proof that my kinder(s) came out to the garden plot and did things sort of garden-y while we were working, because for most of this year, we've been gardening alone, as in, one of us alone goes out and does garden work while the other stays with the kids. It was a nice exercise in building parenting confidence to see that we can indeed kinderGARDEN without major meltdowns or terribly destroyed plants/harvests. All in all, a successful week!

Mama Bean has (at least) 25 things that make her feel good

2011-07-28T10:58:00.000-05:00

Papa Bean invited me (that sounds better than dared me, right?) to participate in something he picked up from Twitter, a meme, a sort of Self Care exercise (oh I mentally composed a doozy of a sarcasm-riddled post on Self Care last night. I'll have to re-muster it from the haze of genius-posts-that-happen-as-I'm-falling-asleep one day...) okay sorry, too many brackets, this meme, where I list five things for each of the five senses, that make me feel good.

In turn, I ~~dare~~ invite you to do the same!

Things I see that make me feel good:
- My son's velvet eyelashes against his cheeks or backlit by sunlight as he stares up with joy and love at my husband (or me or a truck or whatever)
- Tree branches bending low, dripping leaves into the river
- My clean white counter after doing dishes
- Tomatoes turning colour so slowly (too slowly) on branches so densely grown, I can barely squirm my fingers in to pick them
- My husband's epic farmers' tan

Things I smell that make me feel good:
- Onions and garlic (in general) being sauteed in butter (real butter, in specific)
- Baking (in general) banana bread (most recently)
- My daughter's hair
- My husband's hair
- Coffee

Things I hear that make me feel good:
- Bean saying "ee-oowh, ee-oowh" in response to "What sound does a cat make?" (well, hearing him say anything vaguely reminiscent of a real word is pretty awesometacular)
- Sprout's happy noises, especially the coos of amazement ("Oooo my toes, Oooo b00by, Oooo Daddy's nose, Oooo brother's face kissing me, Oooo...")
- "Goodnight I love you" from my husband for the gazillionth night in a row. Every night, never fails.
- Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" (this is just the feel-good song that popped into my head, but we can't go too indepth into songs that make me feel good, or we'll be here aaaaaaall night)
- Silence on both baby monitors, oooh mama yes...

Things I taste that make me feel good:
- The afore-mentioned tomatoes, sun-warmed
- BBQ anything, in particular, today's salmon (though in general, I have renounced fish)
- chocolate-mint squares from the bulk bin at Superstore, my newest cocoa obsession
- homemade strawberry jam
- kisses from the three people I love most in the world

Things I touch that make me feel good:
- The afore-mentioned daughter's hair
- Also, the chubs of her schenkelbeins (she is born Mennonite, while I merely married into it, but I can still use that word, I'm allowed lol)
- Lambs' ears leaves
- Patients
- Papa Bean's shoulders (for example...)

Mama Bean thinks the shine is off the rose, as they say

2011-07-27T15:06:00.004-05:00

Warning: I'm having a cranky day, so this post will sound equal parts bitchy and whiny. Huzzah & Enjoy :P

Breastfeeding group just isn't cutting it for me anymore. I used to really love my Wednesday afternoon time, but now I'm finding it a chore.

It used to be this weekly outing gave me Something To Do, which is important, in a string of days that all look suspiciously like the day before (feed baby, change baby, nap baby, make faces at baby, worry why baby isn't making development leaps on a daily basis, count hours until spouse or other suitable adult will be home, feed baby, repeat.) Now, it gets in the way of Magic Happy Afternoon Nap Time, when both children (*fingers and toes and fingers of my toes and toes of my fingers crossed times eleventy*) are having a Magical Happy Afternoon Nap at the same time. And momma goes skipping merrily to the cool cool dark dark basement where her computer purrs waiting, and mindlessly peruses her RSS until one or the other makes noises. When momma goes to BF group instead of having Magic Happy Afternoon Nap Time, it's just... not magical and happy, folks. It's, like, Road Rage and Caffeine Withdrawal, y'know?

It used to be a convenient time when all my mommy friends were in the same place. Now, most of my mommy friends have children Bean's age and are working again. Those with babies still needing/wanting to attend group are currently out of town. So, in the future, I think I'll be double checking that someone I know and love will be there. I also must acknowledge that I am not a Community Maker, I'm just a Community Sitting-There-er. I don't have the necessary extrovertism to, like, makes friends and draw people together, so I fully admit that my own introversion is getting in my way. But I can still get cranky about it :P

It used to be I had a baby with troubles breastfeeding and troubles with this and troubles with that, and basically, I used to be a first-time mom who worried about my ignorance regarding the most basic skills of keeping tiny humans alive. Every week was a revelation of some new thing I needed to be doing Right Now (!!!) to ensure the future success and wonderfulness of my little Bean's life. And with each passing week, I learned the catchphrases and communal knowledge that meant I could now contribute something Valuable and Worthwhile to the discussion. It was great. I really do shine when given a chance to be a know-it-all haha.

Now, I know for a fact that I know justalittleless than I need to know, and the rest, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't really matter. When I try to contribute, no one cares. And who am I to be the grumpy curmudgeon standing in the way of their time to be the know-it-all? Those moments were honestly, super important to building my momma-confidence. So, I'm okay stepping back, but it does make it a little boring not to talk. Also, I imagine my eyes and my tone lack the earnestness of first time motherhood. I'm well into the blase exhaustion of second time motherhood. It has not escaped my notice that no one comes to breastfeeding group with their third child...

My point is NOT that breastfeeding group is awful and useless and why did I ever bother with this. My point is that breastfeeding group was wonderful and awesome and exactly what I needed when Bean came along. And I'm guessing that experience was so great and so amazing that the present reality is having a hard time measuring up. Or maybe I'm just cranky and cynical. And it bears emphasizing that my second baby is way too adept at nursing and I barely concern myself with whether she's gaining enough because, like, srsly people, her thighs get stuck in the bumbo. She is gaining just fine. And in the almost two years that've passed since we embarked on this parenting thing, I've gathered various other resources to answer my questions, and I still have all those wonderful mommy friends from my original group, we just don't meet up on Wednesdays anymore. So maybe I've just outgrown (?) it, and it's painful to see that.

Or maybe I just need to give it another chance on a day when I've had more sleep.

Oh man, that could make up a lengthy aside. The Endless Talking About Sleep. Even back when I was going with Bean I got bored and frustrated with the weekly discussion about sleeping. There is just too much information to have a complete discussion about sleep every. single. week. Not to mention, uh, kid's gonna do what kid's gonna do. Every week, everyone's gotta have their chance to tell their story or the story of their friend or the story that they're telling themselves is what's happening just to make themselves feel better ("Last night he slept 2 hours and 20 minutes, which is five whole minutes longer than he slept, on average, the week before, so like, I really think it's getting better...") and that just takes up somuchfreakingtime and every story conflicts with the others and who the heck knows what fantastical forces of nature must combine with fairy dust and unicorn sparkles to make babies sleep?? augh.

Sorry, that was the bitchiness I warned you about...

It's just that I'm sleep-deprived ;) I understand, in a sincerely heartfelt way, the value of these discussions. Sometimes, we just need to know that we're all going through it, together, and we're all doing our best, together. And when the babies are ganging up on us it helps to find our sisters-in-arms. I know, I get it. It's only the pragmatist in me that sits impatiently tapping her foot and thinking "There are no solutions! It's all just luck!" And I say that as someone who's been exceedingly lucky, because, by all metrics out there, my babies are to be considered "good sleepers." So. What was my point? My point is... I know why breastfeeding/mommy groups are wonderful, because my group was wonderful to me at one point, and maybe that point has now passed, and it's making me a little sad and cranky, but we'll see how it goes next time, for now I have to go feed the baby, change the baby, nap the baby... you get the idea...

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (12)

2011-07-24T22:21:00.005-05:00

To be honest, I don't feel like I've done much gardening, with kinders or otherwise. Winter in these parts is soo long, and summer is really really soo short, and when I have the choice between a) pulling weeds or b) going to the park and chilling in the sand, well... park wins.

Sorry.

These pictures, then, represent in no particular order what summer's been all about, and some of that is gardening (!) We have more than 60 feet of radishes ready to harvest and less than no idea what to do with them. I imagine several pounds of Kim's Grow to Give tally will be our radishes making it to the food bank :)

We went strawberry picking - I don't think this picture fully captures how covered in dirt Bean's hands and face are. We were picking in the 'black field' which is not yet strawed over, because they're young plants (I guess?) The more mature fields were already done for the season.

The berries were small and over-ripe, it was hard to hull them for jam. We picked 8L, which turned into 12 or 13 cups of mashed berries, which turned into 8 cups of strawberry jam with regular pectin (so sweet! won't make it again) 6 cups of strawberry rhubarb jam (our rhubarb plants are hella-prolific, this is our third cutting from them this year) and 8 cups of strawberry jam with light pectin (much less sugar, much fruitier tasting.)

He likes these disc swings quite a bit - ever since we showed him how to do it laying down, that's the only way he does it. And justincaseyouwerewondering, we do put shoes on our children. He's just pre-emptively barefooted because the sandpit it next.

I often feel like I'm the only parent actually playing in the sand. And then I feel a little foolish, but it is fun! That truck has been at the park since it opened, and no one has taken it home with them, it's so nice. Although, Bean thinks it's his and that can get sticky when another kid is playing with it.

Papa Bean got excited that Sprout is big enough to be in the swing now. She looks kind of excited about it, too! Compared to Bean's under-dressed feet, she looks prepared for fall in this pic. It was a gray day, so we put pants and a sweater on her for the first time in a long time.

Then there's a gratuitous picture of Bean in his cool-guy shades lol.

We are enjoying salad from the gardening (ooh look, words that are actually about gardening!) We thinned the lettuces waaay too late, so they've 'hearted' all topsy-turvy, but they are still yummy. This is my idea of a 'fancy salad' with radish slices, blueberries, and walnuts. But it's not that fancy, cuz I'm still eating it next to someone's snack bag of berries, water bottle, and newest favouritest dump truck. That's KinderEATing!

My tomatoes are getting colourful! Those yellow ones may or may not be in my belly now, all sun-warmed and tasty :P

These berries are in my belly now, too!

This lily kind of just popped up in my 'fairy garden' Good thing I didn't weed it! Please check out Kim's post for the other participants this week :)

Mama Bean wonders why she keeps going to bed so late

2011-07-22T22:56:00.002-05:00

I didn't sleep last night. I went to bed with six hours of available sleep. Well, you know what happens as soon as you've put a number on it; your brain dutifully keeps you awake doing the math to count down the minutes you've already lost trying to fall asleep instead of actually sleeping so that you can do some more math and find out it's fewer minutes of sleep than the last time you tried to do the math but is it the right math because you're just so darned tired but yes that was the right math oh wait it's a new time, now I have five hours of available sleep.

Who thought it was smart to set her own clinic hours at 8 am on Fridays? I mean, isn't the perk of being your own boss that you set hours you can like live with? So I chose this 8 am crap? Weird.

Although last night was blessedly cool (less than 20 degrees) it was hot in my house, which made my baby wake up, which made me wake up (but not my husband, who's sung that song before?) but in a perfect world of temperature controlled living space (What's that? You say I live in such a thing?) she technically went more than six hours without eating. So, y'know, six hours of available sleep. But I didn't sleep last night.

Work took a long time.

What is it about being a 13 year old girl that makes it impossible to talk coherently with adults? I remember 13, I remember I was chatty and loud and tactless at the best of times, with my peers, but I was positively mute in the face of most strange adults. Why do the parents of 13 year old girls think this is a good age to start sending them into my treatment rooms solo? I mean, ok, confidence building exercise, maybe, but no one is winning in this situation. It's just awkward and... awkward. You know, when I was in Chiropractic college, I was worried I wouldn't be able to handle the babies and the toddlers. But I'm good with the wee ones. It's the long and gangly ones I have trouble with...

I got home in time for nap time, but I didn't nap. That was dumb.

We went and picked strawberries. I don't know why we can't figure it out that strawberry season is July. The fields were practically stripped bare, and the berries we got are small. They're perfect for jam, which is their intended destination, but still. Pain in the butt to pick. Other than the lateness of the season, we picked a great day for, uh, picking. It was overcast and windy - didn't overheat in the sun, no bugs. Bean's hands and mouth and hat and shirt were covered in mud and red juice. I shudder to consider which he consumed more of - berry or dirt. Either way... Actually, I was kind of blown away at how well-behaved he was. I expected one of us would do the picking and the other would chase the Bean around the rows, but he followed us, more or less, picking his own berries, and then picking the stem/leaves off by himself before munching them. It was so cute! Sometimes (mosttimes) I feel like he is learning how to do this thing called Life on his own, because I'm too clueless to see what he's ready to learn next, so he just sort of picks it up, and I shake my head at how big he's getting.

It's been awhile since Sprout had a cry-fest bedtime, so I suppose we were due. To be honest, it's nothing like those Delirious Early Day Pseudo-Colic Hormone-Blitztasticular cry-fests where we both end up with wet cheeks and snotty... everythings. She just had some 'bubbles' and she wanted to tell me about it. Once successfully swaddled and soothered into oblivion, we watched How to Train Your Dragon, which was lovely. Huh. Two nights in a row, who'da thunkit?

Tomorrow's plan is jam.

Mama Bean feels like doing a plain old web-log type post

2011-07-21T21:37:00.002-05:00

The Prairie Valley City (along with the rest of the continent, except The Brackets) is experiencing a Heat Dome of Epic Proportions. It's... sticky. Last night, despite the non-materialization of the forecasted/promised/much-needed thunder and rain, the wind picked up and blew some of the sticky away, making this morning dry and breezy and gloriously less than 30 degrees out (Celsius). We trotted the kids out to Bean's playground with glee, and played with glee, and snacked with glee, and wore Sprout in the sling while she napped with glee, and walked home in slightly-cranky-hungry glee. Bean has justnowstarted walking up small or medium sized stairs (like those at children's playgrounds) standing up, without holding on to anything! He's such a big boy! On the other hand, children's playgrounds are a good place to remember how small he really is. Next to the school-aged creatures, his pre-verbal baby-beastlet nature really comes out. He's such a wee boy!

After lunch, we put the kidlets to nap, and I got ready for work. Work was slooooooooooow. I saw about half the normal number of patients I would see on a Thursday. It wasn't so bad though, because I got to come home early. Thursday nights are tough for me, and Bean, because I say bye-bye before his nap, come home after his bedtime, leave before we wakes up, and get home after he goes to Friday's nap, so often don't see him from lunchtime Thursday until Friday afternoon. It makes me sad. It makes him angry at me, and sometimes he won't warm back up until Saturday :( So it was a treat to come home and have him still awake. He was being extra super cute, too! His PoPo (my mom) got him an early birthday present - a Little People construction site thingy that makes noise and has rocks and is all around awesome. He's into the whole watch-once-and-copy mode, so Papa Bean showed him the various ways the rock is loaded and unloaded, and then Bean just patters around with it for ages. Srsly cute.

I biked out to the garden (again!) because it was so cool and breezy and not sticky. I pulled an armful of weeds, that made no difference at all to the overall look of the garden, and left my arms full of thistle-pricks. Then I picked a grocery bag full of radishes. It was about two feet of them. I planted about 80 feet total. We're, uh, swimming in radishes. I twisted my ankle in a large crack in the ground - that's how hot and dry (despite the humidity) it has been here, the ground is cracking. Riding home was the lesser of two evils - walking my bike home would have taken three or four times as long. A shower and ice pack is the perfect end to this evening.

I have time to do this (a daily log post) almost every night, and yet I almost never do it. I won't promise to do it more often, because that's an almost sure way to ensure it won't happen, but I will say this post was easy to write and a joy to post. I hope everyone is enjoying an equally normal and pleasant summer day!

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (11)

2011-07-17T21:39:00.003-05:00

I took a short bike ride to the big garden tonight. The Weed Offensive is gaining strength, I feel weak against it. Especially with a sore bum from bike riding...

On the other hand, I ate the first sun-warmed raspberry from our yard today. (Shh, don't tell Papa Bean...)

There are things about gardening that are very big picture - crop rotation, succession planting, soil amending. All this long term stuff, and big project stuff, and thinky thinky stuff. But most of the tasks of gardening are pretty focused - look at this plant, look at this flower or leaf or root, look here. When I sit myself into the Teachable Moments of Gardening with Bean, that's the word I hear myself using a lot. "Here buddy put the water here no not there, over here. Look buddy, look here at this flower, this will be a cucumber. And look here this is going in our salad tonight. And over here is a weed, you can pull that out, no no not that. That is was a carrot..."

I get overwhelmed by the big stuff, because I want to do it all now. I want all the weeds gone now. I want the soil perfect and loamy and amended now. I want my crops perfectly successioned and rotated rightthisveryminute. And nothing about gardening happens now.

But pulling a weed. Smelling a flower. Picking a bean. That can happen now. And I think that kind of immediacy is something that can grab kids' attention. And keep it. For an instant. And an instant is all I need.

This week's KinderGARDEN assignment was getting up close and personal, getting into the now, and capturing the small. It was nice to ignore the ~~weeds~~ big picture (cuz it is srsly dismal, y'all) and let myself do what I want to do anyway, and just focus on the Good.

Like hundreds of baby tomatoes all fuzzy and shiny good...

And white orange red lilies blooming good...

And creamy smooth cabbage leaves just starting to makes heads good...

And dirt splattered lettuce because Bean helped me water good...

And shocking Christmas in my garden chard good...

And confidence building crazy productive too bad I don't like how they taste radishes comingoutmyears good...

And pumpkin blossom buds lifting puckered lips to the waning sunset good...

And potato flowers unfurled with pale purple serenity good...

And delectable eyelashes on kissable cheeks good...

And barrette-wearing bubble-blowing fingers-and-toes-discovering good...

Thanks, Kim, for the invitation to see the Good this week. Please stop by the other KinderGARDENers to see what they saw :) Also, I missed the link up last week, but here's my post anyway!

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (10)

2011-07-11T22:41:00.003-05:00

This week's post should be called Please Pardon Our ~~Dust~~ Weeds, because we just got home from a ten day vacation. I actually dreamed about what our garden was doing while we were away and how it would look when we got back - oh, to be gone during such exciting hot summer days of sprouting and growing and wonderosity! - so I rushed out to take a few pics for this week's KinderGARDEN post without tidying up first. And now you'll all know the weedy truth...

This is a collage of our large garden plot. Top left is our pea shoots pushing against their trellis. Bottom left is our potato patch, which is truly hard to distinguish against the weeds. There are also corn plants about a foot tall at the very back, and then our north neighbour's thistle patch. Of course, your neighbour's weeds are your weeds... Centre pic shows our rectangle of radishes around two squares of cucumbers plants, which are quite small. I hope we chose short enough season plants for them to mature to fruit before cold weather comes. We don't really like radishes, but, as I have commented on others' posts, they are wonderful confidence boosters, and in this case, I want them to cover some ground until the cucumber vines mature and take over. You can see some of the grass mulching we've been brave enough to try at the community garden, at the risk of others calling us crazy. Top right are barely distinguishable bean plants against a weedy quack grassy backdrop. Bottom right are a few stands of potato and zucchini plants. They grew the most - cucurbits can be real confidence boosters like that, too. Big seeds, big sprouts, big growth. But they take awhile to sprout, and successful fruiting depends a lot on weather and pollination, etc. At least in my short three years' experience :) I am excited by those zucc plants. I'm not gonna thin them, I'm gonna transplant them!

Our little Bean seemed quite pleased to be back in his own domain. Our home garden went crazy cakes while we were gone, it's wonderful! Top left is how far our compost volunteers have progressed. Bottom left are crowded cabbages, which will be thinned tomorrow (I thinned them right before we left!) and treated somehow (salt and pepper?) because I saw the telltale white butterflies around them today. Centre pic shows our tomato jungle. Srsly. We've never had tomato plants that actually required the recommended spacing, so we just crammed our six plants in there /sigh. Bean is about 3 feet tall, so the plants are about 5. I know indeterminate types can get much taller, but I've just never had to deal with it before lol. Top right is our lettuce, which was also just thinned, and will be thinned again in the morning. Bottom right are some of the hundreds (no exaggeration) of tomatoes we have brewing. /rubs hands with glee.

I'm excited about Kim's assignment to do some upclose photography. I love pushing that little macro setting on my point and shoot. If all goes as planned, I'll be getting a new dSLR by the end of the summer *drool* and then down the road maybe a real macro lens. /more hands of glee.

Mama Bean is thinking about priorities and spending and priority spending and ugh

2011-07-07T23:03:00.003-05:00

For most of our marriage, Papa Bean and I have lived in We Can't Afford It mode. Because we, uh, couldn't afford it. Whatever it was, we couldn't do it. We had a huge mortgage, we both had student debt, mine significantly larger than his, we had two cars, we wanted to eat, whatever. We couldn't afford it.

We have now reached a point where we have to stop saying We Can't Afford It. Because the reality is, we can afford most of it, if we want it. The reality is, It's Just Not A Priority. Which means we won't find room in the budget, we won't save, we won't make it happen, if it's not a priority.

Guess who defines our priorities? Us. Me + Papa Bean. It's a genius system. Because it's our money.

There's plenty we don't know or understand about it, but we're getting better, and we've enlisted the help of experts that we trust. The truth is, few people have earned the right to help us define our priorities, because it's so important that we get them right, we have to be really careful who we're listening to, y'know?

Bottom line, we still have our mortgage. And though PB's student debt is gone (hallelujah!), my student and business debt is essentially a second mortgage payment every month. Plus, as we've become more financially responsible (oh I know, it doesn't look like we have, but, y'know, see above...) we've started getting more of those things financially responsible people are supposed to have, like insurance and RESPs and stuff. And that all costs money.

Money's such a tough subject, isn't it? It's just coins and paper, but we have a relationship with it, like it's a person. And that relationship is Fraught, amiright? And it only gets more complicated when marriage turns it into some kind of weird love triangle. We spent so long in We Can't Afford It mode, I have serious guilt about spending. It creates indecision and anxiety. I waste a lot of time worrying, and that indecision often costs me opportunity and costs me money, ironically. So, we're trying on a new mode. It can be hard to say That's Not A Priority when someone's giving static. But I have to remind myself about the genius system, I have to remember we've enlisted help that matters, and I have to free myself from guilt.

Do you struggle with a poverty mentality? How do you let go of spending guilt?

Mama Bean enjoyed the picnic very much

2011-07-05T11:31:00.001-05:00

The Sunday before our vacation, we had a church picnic at the park where Bean's playground is located. They have a little steam train in the same park, which passes over the bridge by this gorgeous little pond, and that's where we set up our picnic! We are blessed to have a professional chef in our church family - mmm, mmm, pulled pork sandwiches, coleslaw, traditional church potluck salads (think Waldorf and potato and taco and yumminess), chips, unlimited pop (oh my aching pancreas!) and more (MORE!) As can be seen, Bean had a ridiculous amount of fun. Our guest preacher for the morning brought the family dog, which Bean loved. Our friend brought a Bean-sized chair, which Bean loved. Someone brought watermelon, which Bean loved. Someone brought ketchup potato chips, which Bean loved. Actually, I think that was us. He basically had watermelon and ketchup chips for lunch - it's so hard to feed him when there's so much Distraction around, and no high chair or booster seat or something-with-straps-for-the-love-of-Pete in sight. In that one pic where he's looking all sly, he's taking another chip off the table after we'd told him to stop. In that other pic, he's crouching behind a tree eating a seventh or eighth piece of watermelon, which he slyly took off the table in similar fashion, after we'd told him to stop. Clearly, this was a day of Choosing Our Battles. Whatever. He ate. 'Twas good.

Also, this ridiculously cute baby wore a ridiculously cute dress, with a ridiculously matching barrette. Yeah, that totally happened. Her expression is so fierce in this pic! And the toes - the Toes! I can't handle it, I nibble on them every day, if she makes it toddlerhood with all her toes intact, it will be a miracle. Srsly.

And then she took a nap. All cute style /sigh. It was a really lovely day, full of sun and food and green and happy happy hearts.

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (9)

2011-06-30T23:48:00.002-05:00

This little Bean likes to help us water. It's his new favourite game. We're still working on getting the water onto plants, instead of the sides of the box, the dirt/mulch, or the front of his pants. But it's progress. And 'helpful' :) Whatever keeps him smiling while we're out in the yard is something I am happy to do.

I sort of suck at thinning plants. I just hate the thought of taking something living out of the ground, that grew from a seed I purposefully put there for it to grow. I know it's good for the plants and will improve things overall, but sometimes the gardening big picture is just too big and I get caught up on the little seedlings I'm murdering. On the other hand, thinned lettuce is so darn tasty! I call this picture "Still Life of Gardening with Toddlers"

We thinned the lettuce in the morning, partly because, as good smart gardeners (ha!) we know that's when the lettuce is full of water and nice and sweet. And partly because that's when Bean wakes up and we (he) hit(s) the ground running. And running. Here's the dew beading on my (also thinned) cabbage. I will need to start thinking how I want to protect these guys from the moths.

There's just something about peonies that says 'LUSH' isn't there? I'm so glad the previous owner of our home loved peonies as much as I do. The lighter pink variety used to be even whiter, but this year's blooms are significantly streaked with bright magenta. Do peonies blend this way (like roses)?

This is the edge of where we put down the sidewalk blocks for our makeshift BBQ pad. The compost that used to live here has offered up some volunteers - they look like cucumbers, right? Or some sort of cucurbit, cucumber seems the most likely. We're gonna leave them to grow up and around the rhubarb as best they can and see what fruit they provide :) We have another volunteer bean plant growing out of the compost pile where they were moved to, also. I'm increasingly aware how vegetable gardening does best with a bit of flexibility, because you never know what's going to pop up. And I'm fully aware I couldn't/wouldn't have had that flexibility our first year, because I wouldn't have known the difference between a cucumber sprout and a weed. So it's kind of gratifying to see this stuff happen and feel all smart-stylez because I like know a little something (ha!)

This is Papa Bean, holding Sprout in my sling, while Bean played in the beach part of his playground. Not strictly speaking a gardening picture, but I wanted to point out a) how great he looks with that sling on and b) how much I appreciate growing a life with him, in our garden and otherwise. We recently celebrated 10 years of being together (i.e. from when we started dating) and it was Father's Day a few weeks back, and it all got me thinking how thankful I am for him, and all the hard work he does, again, in our garden and otherwise.

We're meandering around the prairies, and it's killing me to be away from the garden, just as everything was starting to sprout. I hope there's enough rain to sustain things, because I didn't arrange for anyone to water our plants, aie. Though, it is kind of fun to wander off for a bit, because it's such a surprise how things burst to life (weeds included /sigh) When you're out in there (several times, chasing a Bean) every day, the changes are more subtle to catch, but it's blatantly obvious after 3 or 4 days how much progress has been made. It's pretty humbling, too, realizing how little I actually have to do with it - the plants are just following the code, doing their thang, being all green and grow-y. I like it. Hope you do, too. Pop by Kim's to check out the other KinderGARDENing action - everyone's showing off the pics their kinders took in their gardens, it's quite impressive!

Mama Bean has an anger problem

2011-06-30T22:04:00.001-05:00

Ever since Sprout's birth, I have found myself irrationally angered by almost anything, and it's really starting to get me down. I try to tell myself that I am hiding it well, and keeping it from affecting the people around me, especially the kids. But I know it's not working. I know I'm taking it out on Papa Bean most of all.

I am brittle and defensive, seeing judgment in any little thing that's said. Or even in what's not said. Especially in what's not said. I read condemnation into innocent actions. I am convinced I am being deemed lacking. It's feeding into my naturally isolationist tendencies.

I have felt like this before. For example, during:

my entire adolescence
the months leading up to my deepest depressive episode
a few days in the Delirious Early Days after Bean's birth
a few days, occasionally, pre-menstrually

Not to turn this whole angsty mess into something "merely hormonal" but there is a theme to all those bullets.

Anyway, I've been dealing with this passively, which is to say, not at all. Just allowing myself to be buffeted and shattered by the ebb and flow of fury. My fingers typing these words is the most active thing I've done to acknowledge, yes-this-is-happening, no-it's-not-good, what-should-be-done. This isn't even a post requesting help, it's a statement of what is.

I am glad to be headed away now. Though usually I find travel stressful, and the gist of that remains true in this instance, it is overridden by the relief I anticipate in escape, if only for a few days. When I return, I hope the wide prairie sky will have mellowed me, in the way only hours watching the wind play in fields of grass can do. No doubt the proximity of the mountains will help also (quick, someone say something about big rocks being "grounding"...)

Mama Bean "probably" didn't want to smack you in the face, "probably"

2011-06-28T15:10:00.005-05:00

A friend posted "What Not to Say to a Pregnant Woman" on her fbook and it prompted some (bad) memories, which I felt like sharing.

Story number one:

"Wow, you're HUGE!"
Cue: me staring blankly, uh...
Cue: disastrous effort to make it not sound so bad (?)
"I was the same way, carried it all in my ass and thighs."
Cue: me starting blankly, uh...

Story number two:

A rambling sort of speech from an elderly woman who knew me through both pregnancies.
"Oh, well, you look pretty good this time, but I wouldn't worry about it, I mean, it's the way of life, this is what's supposed to happen, although I remember you didn't get all that big last time, you were quite small the whole time, I was surprised when I found out you were off already and had the baby, but he came early didn't he, anyway it's different every time, maybe this time you're having a girl, although I think that maybe you, well that is, it seems like probably you didn't uh lose as much in between as you were hoping to."

"Probably" I didn't lose as much as I was hoping to???

Really, lady? This is what you say to the 38-weeks pregnant woman?

It was worse than chubs icicle, srsly.

I still sort of don't know how to talk to that lady (who I see fairly regularly) without mostly just staring blankly at her and hoping to leave the room quickly.

Tell me your war stories! Let's commiserate together!

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (8)

2011-06-26T15:18:00.004-05:00

This week at KinderGARDENs is the Kids and Cameras assignment. Alas, little Bean still hasn't totally grasped the camera concept, though he does like to look at the pics on the little screen at the back, and he recognizes himself now, which is pretty adorable. Anyway, I thought I'd just put in a bunch of pics of him around the yard lol. This little corner by the lilac is his favourite spot back there, I think because we leave him to dig and mess around and don't say 'No' the way we do everywhere else :) Note his little weed patch there haha. We actually didn't even know this bush was a lilac, it didn't bloom the last two summers we've lived here. Everything seems to be going bloom crazy this year, on our flowering shrubs and in the neighbourhood, it's quite beautiful. There's a grapevine on a fence we walk by often, and it is covered with teeny tiny grape clusters, it's so exciting! Not sure what confluence of factors (weather, etc.) conspired to make it that way, but I like it!

Bean does like to dig around everywhere else that we do say 'No' Here he is by our tomatoes and peppers trying to thin the cabbages. Note the handy dandy whirly-dos that label the rows, they were like 6 for a dollar or something at the garden store. We have tomato, pepper, carrot, peas, and onion ones, it's fun. In the week or so since this pic was taken, the tomatoes have like mutated into Huge Plant Beasts. They have outgrown their cages, I don't know what to do about it. I hope the flowering they're doing means they'll soon be putting more energy into fruit production than branch production. I've seen more bees this year than last, which is so encouraging. They must be happy about the extra flowering I've noticed, too.

At the other end of the home garden bed, we have our onions and lettuces coming up. I want to thin the lettuces, they're a hearting variety, so I need to give them room to actually heart. In the rest of the bed, I've added a little eggplant uh plant in the midst of our soybeans. Only four came up, but I'm thankful for those four! Edamame, here I come! One package of lettuce seeds seems to have died over the winter, so our third row of lettuces needs to be replanted with the seeds that lived. It's kind of convenient how this turned us into succession planters lol. We've always wanted to be the kind of people who use things like Forethought and Planning to do succession planting, so we don't have like forty lettuces maturing at the same time, much faster than we can eat them ourselves.

I thought Bean would be more enamored by the peonies actually, being such large blooms and so accessible to his little hands, but he seemed satisfied to (mostly) just look. A heavy rain has hastened their wilt-age. I wish peony blooms lasted all summer, they smell so beautiful. The irises are already done for the year :( I'd like to start pilfering some of the other colours of irises I see around the neighbouhood. How do y'all ask people for plants? I know most gardeners are probably pretty generous about it - well, I can't say that. I know my mom and Papa Bean's aunts have been very generous about donating plants and seeds, but I don't know about perfect strangers. But if someone walking by asked me for some of my irises, and I had some that'd be easily divided, I wouldn't hesitate to share. There are some very very dark purple ones a few houses down that I'd love, and there are several houses with all yellow ones that I've never seen before, very unique!

I planted seeds for a number of cucurbits at the big garden: white marrow, yellow zucchini, green zucchini, acorn squash, cantaloupe, and butternut squash. I planted them in circles (like the packets always suggest) instead of rows (as we've done in the past, only to have the vines run out of room) and with some of the seeds being from last year, I worried it wouldn't all come up. But I have six little circles of sprouts just like the picture coming up, so I guess the seeds remained viable. It interesting to see them all so close together, I always felt their sprouts all look the same, but they actually have (subtle) differences, and it's a nice learning experience. I realize there are waaaaaay too many sprouts in the circle pictured: I'll thin it down to about three plants. I may even transplant some of the extras, because I fear there will be bald areas in our big garden. None of the beans appear to have germinated (!!) and I have four rows of them... I don't know why I thought we needed four rows of beans, other than to fill space, but I also don't need nine plants of zucchini LOL. And I think it's easier to give away beans... everyone gets sick of donated zucchini in a few months. Have you heard people joke about Ding-and-Dashing their neighbours, leaving zucchinis on the steps? We may have to resort to that.

We also have a pumpkin plant and a giant pumpkin plant. There'll be many viney-vines out there this year! Hope we can coach them to stay in our plot and not encroach on our neighbours' plots. One part of community gardening we've really enjoyed is watching how other people do things. There are some garden superstars who have the cleanest (weed-free-est) plots with plants that look weeks and weeks ahead of anyone else's growth. There's another woman who mulches aggressively with grass clippings. All the superstars call her Crazy Grass Lady, which is sad. As you can see, we mulch with grass in our home plot, and it is wonderfully effective at keeping weeds down. But we bow to peer pressure and don't really use it at the big plot, we don't want to be called crazy, too... I do admire Crazy Grass Lady for sticking to her gardening guns and standing up for her techniques. On the other hand, she really over waters, and I don't like seeing her waste that resource.

I've conveniently labeled the last pic to show where the actual potato plants are, because it's understandably confusing when there's so many other green things around. Blasted weeds. This is a pictorial representation of how overwhelming the weeds get at the big garden. This is why grass mulching (or any kind of mulching really) would be such a good idea out there (yet still we are chickens...) I spent about an hour pulling up just the biggest thistles to get this area cleaner. I'm getting so tough, I don't even wear gloves for the thistles anymore - RAwR! See me be TOUGH Mama Bean! I'm really digging (heehee punny) the take-off of summer - spring can be such a looooong exercise in patience; waiting for them to mark out the plots, waiting for it to dry up enough to till, waiting for the guy you're paying to till to actually till it, waiting for magical days when one spouse can watch the kids while the other goes out to frantically plant things, waiting for the things you've planted to germinate, waiting to get to the store to buy more seed because you woefully underestimated how much you'd need for your giant garden, waiting waiting waiting. This is what gardening is about, right? But now that the heat is taking off and there are actual green things coming out of the ground, now is lovely and exciting and fun! There's just one month of this until the crazy superfluousity of August arrives, when the plants and weeds are huge and the heat is intense and everything sort of starts to mature way too quickly, and it's the opposite of waiting, it's everything piling up at once. I like August and everything, it's just a little stressful, in the opposite way that the waiting of May and June is stressful. So this little pause in July, when everything's just starting and revving up and is beautiful, this is nice. This might be my favourite time of summer :)

This is a long post for KinderGARDENs, sorry! Check out Kim's blog for everyone's Kids and Cameras assignments - I'm excited to go read them myself!

Mama Bean does not play well with others

2011-06-25T22:22:00.003-05:00

The other day, at the park, Bean started stamping his feet, probably in frustration over being told no. Again.

Life's hard for toddlers.

A nearby mom said to PB, "Ooooh, he's about to meltdown." But actually, he was doing precisely what we had asked him to do instead of melting down. For awhile, several weeks, maybe months, itfeltlikeyears, Bean had been getting progressively screamy. I think (hope...) all kids go through this screamy phase.

It's, y'know, a little wearing. They are shrill, these little humans. Shrill and impossibly loud. Sososoooooo loud.

To save our sanity, we started asking Bean to stamp his feet when he's frustrated. I like this strategy because we're still acknowledging that he is, indeed, frustrated, we're not denying it, we're only asking for a quieter expression of it. (When he screams out of excitement, we invite him to clap his hands. But really, a scream of joy is so much easier to take, and under appropriate circumstances (e.g. not in the nursery during church lol) I'll let him yell with glee as much as he likes, cuz that's just part of being a kid, right?)

Anyway, we asked him over and over. He kept screaming and screaming. We asked some more. He screamed some more. We asked and asked and asked again. He screamed and screamed and screamed again.

It really didn't look like it was going to work.

Until it did. That's when he started stamping. And we thanked him. Both to reinforce that he's doing the right thing, and also being we are genuinely thankfulpraisetheLORDhestoppedscreaming. (Mostly. He still screams sometimes. It's okay, though. We can take it now.)

Anyway, this post is not about stamping out our frustrations.

This post is about discipline in public, or maybe just parenting in public, and how I suck at it. [In a fit of internet serendipity, see also these posts by Her Bad Mother re: spanking, and Real Child Development re: letting children problem-solve. Aaaand, here's tidbit from Roots and Wings re: giving choices within boundaries.]

I like parenting at home, by myself, in private. At home, by myself, in private, I start to feel like I am getting the hang of this. I feel kind of warm and cuddly and safe and private. I feel like a bird in her nest. I am making mistakes, but at least the only people who witness them are my husband and my kids, who love me.

Starting out on this parenting adventure, I steeled myself for feeling the mompetition, feeling the mamageddon, feeling judged for my decisions, feeling beat down by the Baby Pundits, feeling unsure, and attacked in the vulnerability of that uncertainty by alpha moms much more certain than I. I don't know why I started out with this persecution complex, it was just there. It seems to be just part of the parenting culture, the rhetoric of it all.

But actually, it was much easier to deflect judge-y moms when Bean was just a baby. Because you can't really judge a baby, babies are sinless, whatever they do is pure innocence, they're just being a baby. And so any judginess, real or imagined, is only directed at me, and I got really good at not caring about that, really fast. Because we're all just doing our best here, and I don't mind deflecting whatever flack you're sending my way, because I know I'm just doing my best as well as anyone else.

It got harder after Bean turned one and started walking. With mobility, his destructive power increased many-fold, out of simple exuberance really - I'm Bean, I'm curious, I want to touch everything! RAwR! So his actions were still innocent, but now I felt a little more responsible for the real consequences of those actions. (There are few consequences to your infant, like, drooling on things. I find it hard to apologize for drool. But I do apologize for that expensive vase my toddler just licked off your coffee table, because he wondered how it would taste.) Now I felt the judgment for not being able to somehow control my 14-month-old was maybe a little justified, if not a wee bit far-fetched. But it did kick off the isolationist drive - I preferred to simply stay home, where the crap he was breaking was my crap.

Now, he's a toddler. He's expressing self-hood, he's pushing boundaries, he requires guidance, which is what I see as the ultimate goal of discipline. And it's a process, right, he's learning, he's growing, we're all learning and growing. And it's all okay to me, though we're muddling through it, though we're trying on new hats and new roles and new ideas, it's all okay, because we're watching it and doing it and living it within an arc of time. We, his parents, who watch him 24/7 and know his intimate person-ness, and love every molecule of it, can see the progress. We may get impatient, we may feel uncertain, but with a little help from God, we can see growth, in context, and it is beautiful. That stamping is beautiful.

The lady at the playground doesn't see this. She only sees a snapshot, a moment taken out of time. And she's judging my child based on this. And she's judging me.

This is why I struggle with parenting around other parents. On the one hand, I feel they're judging me based on my child's perceived misbehaviour, which can feel like maybe their judgment's a little justified, even when it's not, but I can sort of put myself in the shoes of their standards, which may differ significantly from my standards, but out of congeniality, I feel like maybe, yeah, they're right, I'm a 'bad mom.'

But on the other hand, they're judging my kid, and I can't help getting quite defensive and more than a little angry and fairly BigMamaBear about their snapshot-out-of-time judgments of my child. I'm not saying his behaviour is perfect, I'm saying his misbehaviour is part of a context, is part of his growth, and no one knows that growth like I do, can know that growth like I do, so they can't judge.

So it's like this totally crazy ambivalent defensiveness anger guilt craziness reaction that I've just spent far too many words trying to encapsulate, all to say, I don't react well around other parents. Sheesh.

We all want the angel children, I know, I want it, too. Those perfectly behaved polite angels that exist only in our fantasies and on television. But I know that I am only normal, and so are my kids, and I mostly just want to let my children be children. And I want to guide their childhood with gentleness. My heart resonates with Sarah's thoughts on attachment:

See, I want their hearts. I want their hearts so connected to mine and to my husband's that the love between us will be stronger than any thing else that comes along. So, I do these "things" not because they make me a good mother but because they help me to capture their hearts. And once I have their hearts - and I do - I can lead and direct and train them with their full trust and confidence.

For me, that means raising them to love God and love people. I can't enjoy mothering without a strong connection between our hearts. Our relationship is not adversarial in nature - they know I love them and they trust that. And vice versa.

As my tinies grow older, I marvel at their security and confidence. They are deeply attached to both of us (not just me!) and have a deep connection with each other and their extended families as well. They are deeply compassionate and intuitive, trusting our instincts and us implicitly.

What is my point? I've lost it. The internet is so full of parenting Win, I lost track... my point is... that I can't get away from feeling judged by other parents when I'm doing discipline, which I don't even like to call discipline, because I just see it as guidance, but whatever, when I'm doing guidance in public, and it makes me angry and feel brittle, because it's just a moment out of time, out of the whole time of their whole life, and I wish I didn't feel this way, because it makes me want to stay at home all the time, and wrap myself around them like a giant blanket, and protect them from everyone, which is impossible, and I've lost my point again.

My point is I love my kids, and I don't know how to reconcile my parenting style or whatever, with the static I feel off others sometimes. That's my point.

I'm probably just taking it all way too seriously. I'm definitely taking it all way too seriously. What say you? How do you stay consistent in your parenting and stand your ground when all the world's a judgmental mamageddon crazy-place?

Mama Bean had a favourite bedtime story

2011-06-23T22:15:00.000-05:00

When I was little, if a bedtime story was offered, I almost always asked to hear the story of how I was adopted. (My parents never hid my adoption, I knew for as long as I can remember.) I imagine I liked this story because I was the protagonist and it had a happy ending, just like all the other princess stories :) This is the story I remember:

Mommy and Daddy had two boys who they loved very much. For many years, they really wished they had had a little girl. One day, the Adoption People called them, and asked if they would like to come down and pick up a little girl. So, the whole family went to the G Hospital, which was a special hospital just for women having babies they couldn't keep. They went to a big room full of rows of little cribs. Each baby had a little information card with them. Mommy and Daddy and the boys found me, and instantly fell in love. I was two weeks old. They liked that I was Chinese like them, and I was so cute! My birth mom and birth dad couldn't keep me but they wanted to make sure I was raised in a good family. So, my parents and brothers took me home and I became a part of their family forever.

Of course, this story is only how I remember it, not literally what was told to me as a 4-year-old. And once I grew out of the bedtime story age, we didn't really talk about how I was adopted. The story has been distorted by time and culture and the rest of my life's history, and is clearly a fairy tale, because this is not how adoption works, then or now.

There are some things I laugh at because they are so removed from reality: who are "the Adoption People" and why would they be just calling up random families, handing out babies? The G Hospital was the primary birthing hospital in Cowtown, but how did I come to think it was only for relinquishing mothers? I'm sure my vision of the room full of bassinets is influenced by tv and movies, showing the dad going up to the window of the hospital nursery, with the row of little babies, blue cards for boys, pink cards for girls. I guess I imagined a place for adopted babies would just be a bigger room lol.

Some things are endearing in how I've remembered them: my memory places my brothers in the hospital when I was 'chosen' because all my life, my brothers have made it clear how much they love me. The first few pages of my baby album are filled with photographs of my brothers holding me, and the love in their eyes is palpable. (I am reminded of it every time I see Bean looking at Sprout.) But of course, they were not involved in the process of 'choosing' me, because the big room of bassinets is not a real place. It's just that I feel like my whole family chose me, not only my parents. It's also endearing how I remember the emphasis placed on my race; I must have felt it was important to my parents that I look like my family. When I read transracial adoptee bloggers, I realize this really did protect me from some of the more insensitive comments people make to adoptive parents. More often than not, people are very surprised to learn I'm adopted. When strangers would tell me I look like my dad or my eldest brother, I used to chuckle a little at the inside joke.

I recently heard the more detailed, more real account of how I was adopted. It made me realize how comfortable I was with my toddler-sized fairy tale - how could I be thirty years old before learning the truth of my origins? I am happy to know it, but there are some uncomfortable feelings that come with it, that I am still processing. While dealing with the gulf between childhood stories and adult truths, I want to extract the meaningful touchstones, the underlying truths upon which any fairy tale is built.

Some of those touchstones include the undercurrent of my brothers' love, my parents' effort to create a good fit for me, to achieve real inclusiveness, and of course, the fact that I was and am deeply loved. There are things that don't change, that are true, even if the fictional baby room is not. This is the process I must navigate now, and although it is work and sometimes hard, I would not go back to the fairy tale.

Mama Bean can't shake the fear from her heart

2011-06-21T22:54:00.002-05:00

At our MOPS group a few weeks back, when discussing prayers we repeatedly send up for our children, my friend N said that, as the mother of a daughter, she especially prays for her little girl's safety. Because girls, in particular, seem so vulnerable and targeted. Because television makes us afraid.

We agreed that Criminal Minds is the worst.

That show is seriously like a sociopath home invasion four times in every episode nightmare.

I. can't. stop. watching.

Even though it gives me nightmares. Even though I don't feel safe after watching it. Even though. It's ridiculous. But I have bought in. I have fallen for the Culture of Fear, since childhood, I'm sure. I'm not even all that inclined to snap out of it.

Because just when I think I'm being unreasonable and start to talk myself back from the Ledge of Hysterics, I find out a violent repeat sex offender, who preys on little boys, who targets homes based on toys in the yards and in rooms he peeps into, who attacked these children while their families slept, this beast of a dare-I-say-human (except I choke on it) is being released into my city.

He has served his time, and now he gets to go free.

He is very likely to re-offend. It's in the media release. Although he has received treatment while in custody, he is very likely to re-offend. And even if it wasn't in the media release, we already know this. Of course he's likely to re-offend.

And I just... internally collapse.

The media release advises, "This information is provided to enable members of the public to take suitable measures to protect themselves. Any form of vigilante activity or other unreasonable conduct directed at [the offender] will not be tolerated."

What are suitable measures? Hide all evidence of children in our residence at all times and never let them outside evereveragain?? Never let my child away from physical contact from me evereveragain??? Never sleep and always keep watch and generally stand guard over their tiny bodies foreverandeveramen???? Because that's what feels suitable here, that's what feels reasonable, in the sheer terror of finding out this guy could be my newest neighbour. Seriously.

Look, I read FreeRangeKids, I know crime is down, I know violent assaults are very rare, I practice what I feel are genuinely reasonable risk-reduction strategies, I know most people are fundamentally nice and safe and wonderful and lovely.

I know it with my head.

But today? Today I do not feel it in my heart.

Talk me down from the Ledge, folks. Tell me how to feel safe again.

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (7)

2011-06-19T22:23:00.003-05:00

[Our version of a kiddie pool. Klassy, I know.] I took advantage of the nice weather to finally get more seeds in the ground. Awhile back, Papa Bean was able to plant our potatoes and a row of corn (to act as a windbreak at the north end of our plot, because the wind comes from the northwest in our community garden's field. I doubt we'll get corn from it, planting so late in the season.) They are starting to break the ground! Along with all the thistles lol. Then, last weekend, I trotted out to plant some vines (pumpkin, zucchini x 3 types, acorn and butternut squash, and cantaloupe), a couple rows of red and yellow onions, and some flowers along the front of our plot (the garden association 'requires' us to plant a flower border on edges next to paths, but not everyone does it.) There's a healthy population of cutworms at the garden - previously we've used collars cut from yogurt containers and milk cartons, but this years I just sprinkled crushed egg shells around them. The soil is so clay, it was hard to position the collars properly. Finally, today I ran out after church to plant five rows of yellow and green beans, a row of sugar snap peas, some chard, a bit of cinnamon basil, and some kohlrabi. Many of those beans will be donated to friends and the food bank. I don't really know what kohlrabi is, and we may be too late in the season to plant it, but I needed to fill the space, and I had the seeds (why?) Tomorrow **fingers crossed** I will plant four-ish rows of carrots, and our cucumbers, and the main garden will. be. planted... finally.

It's too much, y'all. I met another family doing a plot for the first time this year, with an 18-month-old little boy. They were looking mighty overwhelmed by the weeds that sprung up everywhere in the short week since they'd last been to the garden. I feel their pain. The plots are very large, and your weed control is only as good as your neighbour's... it can be soooooo discouraging. I'm feeling pretty good about giving it up next year - it will just be so nice to walk out into our own yard and take care of everything - without putting stuff in the car, without driving, without leaving a spouse at home with the kids.

[Does anyone know what this foamy stuff on this plant is? It's some kind of sage plant, I think it's a weed I didn't take care of, and now I act like I want it there on purpose. Anyway, several branches got this foamy stuff on them, some with these tiny bugs nearby. I cut it all off, but was still wondering what it was, and if I can prevent it??] The other night, PB stepped out for the evening, and I decided to weed our front flower beds, as Bean was in bed and Sprout was having her pre-bedtime nap. (Oh to be a newborn, napping six times a day!) (Please don't mention how a three month old hardly qualified as 'newborn' because it already depresses me /sigh. < cliche > They Grow So Fast < /cliche >) Because part of gardening with children is of course gardening by yourself, in stolen half hours and hours when they're (blessedly) asleep but it's still (blessedly) light out, and you can just work without supervising anyone. It's the other side of kinderGARDENing, amiright?

[To be fair, Bean is getting pretty independent in the backyard. He likes to be off by himself, just... chillin'. Check out our rhubarb :)] I don't *like* weeding, nobody likes weeding, in the sense that it's a chore, it's something that has to be done, because there are gross consequences if it's not done. Buuuuuuuut I'll tell you a secret. The actual act of weeding, I kind of enjoy. It's kind of... satisfying. I mean, I get to start at one end, and move steadily to the other, systematically removing what I don't want, leaving a clear line of accomplishment across the soil. It's so tangibly successful - here I have weeded, there I have not, look how pretty I make the world! And it is meditative. I was thinking it'd be fun to hook up my iPod, but realized I'd miss the silence. Y'all know this - the silence of garden work is not really silent; there are birds, there's the wind, there's the gentle sound of just the earth or something. It's peaceful. I think about things. (I think about blog posts about weeding lol) I have developed a technique, it's probably the same as yours - I've learned to pull at the base of the stem, because then I'm more likely to get the root, too. So I sweep my hand under the leaves, low to the soil, passing from stem to stem, tugging with a firm and steady pressure, until I feel that familiar giving way, as the roots give up their purchase in the dirt. It's such a subtle feeling, like the plant is sighing. How do I teach that to my children? It is something that can only be learned by experience. Repeated experience.

[Look at these edible toes! It's mosquito season here is the Prairie Valley City. When you live in a Prairie Valley, which is basically just a giant floodplain, you essentially live in a giant mosquito breeding ground. There is so much 'standing water' here, I mean, the soil itself is moist enough to breed the suckers, I swear! Grass even an inch high is a skeeter city! And we aren't even in the full throes of it yet... but I brought out the netting, just in case]I feel that same giving way in my soul, when I give up on the dishes to cuddle up to my son with a book, when I give up on reading the computer screen to just hold my baby girl as she cries into sleep. I know how it feels to be pulled and pulled by the realities of motherhood, until I become untethered from the dirt of the Daily and the Mundane, and let go. It feels like sacrifice, it feels like being pulled from the earth, and it feels like love.

Or maybe I'm trying to make poetry from something as utterly prosaic as weeding. But isn't that also true of motherhood, making Pretty from the Plain and Regular and Sameoldsameold. Don't we take the stuff of life -cookingcleaningchildren - and make it something poetic, something of concentrated beauty? Don't we dissect the truths of Life from living life, and hold it up to our children, and teach them with it? Teach them how to value it, how to use it, how to survive and thrive and love through it all... Yes, I think that is what we do.

Love yourselves through this week of kinderGARDENing and kinderEVERYTHINGELSEing, friends. And, as always, check out Kim's blog for everyone else's input this week.

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (6)

2011-06-11T21:34:00.003-05:00

It feels like we have done no vegetable gardening at all. Here's what I have planted at home - tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, soy beans, lettuce, onions, and herbs. That's a lot, but our main garden is so much bigger and we have plans for so much more, and it's just not happening (!!) because it hasn't been tilled yet (we've hired a guy to do it, and he's... MIA? I dunno. Frustrating.) We should have just rented a tiller and done it ourselves. The rain is a factor. I throw my hands up, I tell you! Up!

Papa Bean snapped this pic for me when he went out to plant the potatoes at our main garden. He planted three boxes, it took up five rows, he worked really hard, and I'm happy something is in the ground out there. It keeps my frustration at bay. The reason we need tilling is because there's a big mat of dead quack grass that we (read: PB) doesn't feel like forking through by hand. But if it doesn't get done tomorrow, we're gonna just plant in the untilled ground, leave the grass patch alone (and slowly fork it over the summer) and, I dunno, deal. My hands are up! Up, I tell you!

Okay, we're still having fun, we're still having summer (Finally!) This little Bean-boy of ours is just endlessly entertaining. Top left, he's looking around for the robin he chased into that tree. Bottom left, he's playing with a wheel. Nine times out of ten, when you look at Bean during the day, he's playing with a wheel or something that has wheels or pointing at a wheel - kid likes wheels. Centre pic: hotdogs = summer. Interesting foot placement optional. Top right, walking with dad. Bottom right, poking a 'button' with a stick. Nine times out of ten, when you look at Bean during the day, he's playing with a stick or something that has sticks or pointing at a stick - kid likes sticks. (I think my math may be a little faulty somewhere in there...) Oh, and Sprout's up there, too, sleeping. Judging by this blog, all she does is sleep; not true. justsayin.

Here's some of the pretty that is growing in our yard. Of note are the cabbage and lettuce sprouts in the bottom right area. They're the only edibles in this collage. Alas, some of the cabbage fell victim to the resident rabbit in our yard. Timely, since Kim is talking about pest control this week. The stinky coleus has not worked, as far as I can tell. Strewing human hair (from PBs quarterly buzzcut) didn't help. I sprinkled some blood meal around tonight, we'll see if there are cabbage sprouts in the morning. Do marigolds and geraniums really keep rabbits away? Our neighbour swears the the onions he plants keep them out of his flower bed, but I'm dubious (though that is why we planted onions back there, most of our sets are really intended for the main garden.) Anyone out there think a scarecrow might work? They aren't terribly afraid of us, we have to actively chase them for them to move out of the yard. In fact, we watched a little showdown between bunny and crow which revealed the rabbit had actually built its nest under our lilac bush in the phlox patch - crazy rabbit! We dug it up (no babies) and dumped a shovelful of topsoil in there.

I know we're probably just gonna have to put up chickenwire around the bed - any suggestions on a minimum height? We put up a 5 foot fence our first year of gardening, and it negatively impacted my weeding, because it was cumbersome to move every time I wanted in there - and that was pre-kids, so. yeah. The whole point of raised beds is Ease of Use. We'll concoct some sort of bracket, easy-to-move system, in all of our 'spare time' this summer. Or we'll just give up and not have any veggies - that sounds like an awesome idea.

The thing is, with all the headache getting our main garden started this year, we've pretty much determined we're not doing the community plot next year; it's just not working out with the kids and time and life and stuff. Instead, we're going to build two more 4'x12' raised beds in our yard, which was the plan all along. We'd like to build them before the end of summer (so we can plant fall onions and garlic!) So, I want to come up with a really good rabbit control strategy!

As always, cruise on over to Kim's to check out the other KinderGARDEN action - maybe someone has already written about all the answers I need for rabbit eradication!!

Mama Bean is getting a little hand-wringy about writing and focus

2011-06-09T20:59:00.005-05:00

Today, I was lamenting all these blogs posts rattling around my brain that I can't seem to get down on 'the page.' (Sprout's birth story, homebirth advocacy, not washing my hair, washing dishes, baking and domesticity, the list goes on...) I was wishing that there was some way to just curl up somewhere warm and comfy and just be able to write and like not have the internet or distractions or the internet or facebook or the internet or my RSS feed or the internet nearby - like, seriously, why can't I just be on my computer and just be writing and not thinking about my email or my facebook or minesweeper for eff's sake!

Oh! How glorious that would be! What productivity! What golden moments of blogging wisdom would fall from my fingertips!

Wait, Mama Bean, you mean with, like... a pen? and paper?

ohyeahright. that stuff.

Can you imagine how quaint the idea of pen and paper will be to our children?

Tell us the story, mama, about the strange tools that could only do one thing at a time, when multitasking was just a dream of the future! Tell us again, mama!

I am not getting all curmudgeonly on y'all, over here. I am not a Luddite who wrings her hands at what Beastly Technology Hath Wrought. I'm not a so-called first adopter, but I'm also not the last. I was on myspace, I left before it got totally uncool, I've had at least four blogs in my lifetime, I have Twitter, people! So. I'm not gonna go on about the death of print media or anything like that.

On the other hand, it does make me sad, that. Print media.

On the other hand, I do like paper.

I am a paper person. Before blogs, I had those funny things we used to call journals or diaries. lol. I continue to be a Little Pieces of Paper Person, or L3P. Papa Bean is, too (but differently). Are you an L3P? Are there little notes and lists and phone numbers and store receipts with measurements for that shelf you want to put up downstairs and three month old schedules and appointment reminders and candy wrappers just littering your car and countertop and pockets?

If so, we are kin.

It used to strike me (and designers of sit-com sets) that this sort of paper paraphernalia was part of motherhood. All moms on my TV were L3Ps. I embrace it. But I'm getting left in the techno-dust here, folks. I don't even have a cellphone, let alone a smartphone. When I try to use Papa Bean's Blackberry he winces at my ineptitude. My new ipod is driving me crazy because the darn thing won't just do. what. I. want.

Paper never did that. /whine. /pout.

[Here's a lengthy aside: this is what gets me about all these small, portable electronics - the mother effing batteries. I just gah! I don't want to be a freaking battery babysitter! I don't want to have to coddle and care and worry about one more thing dying on me and leaving me helpless in the midst of my most desperate need! Or, you know, when I want to listen to a song or whatever. I am a terrible cellphone mommy, I'm turning out to be a terrible ipod mommy, there is No Hope For Me. Why can't these things charge themselves from the air? Can someone get on that already?! End aside.]

Anyway...

We don't write with pen and paper anymore. How will I teach my children to write in this electronical screen-y way that I, like, get, obviously, or I wouldn't be all bloggy and facebooky etc. but still... are we losing something? (Here comes the hand-wringing...) Are we losing the skills of focus and attention and whole-bodiedness of writing with just our hands holding the pen to the blank sheet of paper? Is there something magical in that which should be sustained, and not merely remembered as... quaint?

And how timely, that Veronica Mitchell should be writing about reading books with the whole body, too:

I bought a book today because of its scent. Because some day my children may want to browse our shelves on their own in the cool basement, and smooth slim volumes may call to them (now where did I leave that pencil?). I bought a book because reading is a dangerous endeavour, and I should be grounded in case of lightning strike, my hands touching something real, my feet rooted with the tree its paper comes from.

So I bought the book with the dusty-rose cover. I will read it with my whole body, even if I only use my eyes.

So maybe that is what I was lamenting - not only my inability to focus and leave the goshdarn RSS alone! I was lamenting writing with my whole body. And now I've got it all out in a shiny shiny blogpost. Aah, irony.

(Ack, Irony! How will I teach my kids about irony?!)

Mama Bean is happy to have a little house

2011-06-08T10:09:00.000-05:00

We live in a mid-century mid-sized 1 1/2 story house. It's very cute and has, generally speaking, plenty of space for all our stuff, and our wee humans. The layout is very 1950s - kinda chopped up, each room separate, not the open plan of more modern homes.

There was a period when Bean had just started crawling when we were convinced we needed to move to a bigger house with Sprout coming along. Bean was getting into everything; we couldn't be one room away from him to do anything, because who knew where he was crawling to or what he was pulling himself up onto or when his fingers would eventually get into the wrong stuff. And that was the same time the Toys distinctly mounted their offensive Takeover of our living space - it felt so sudden! We were unprepared! Now? Now we are... resigned. I wish all parents were resigned to the Toy Takeover, but I know enough moms with pristine homes to know I'm just... I just want... I have... focused on other priorities? Yeah, that sounds noble. Better than lazy, right? :P

But a bigger house was not to be, as yet. In a few years. Sprout arrived, in the same living room Bean arrived in, and lo and behold, our mid-century mid-sized 1 1/2 story house has more than enough room for both wee bodies. I'm not sure how much room we thought a newborn was gonna take - turns out she's quite small :) I'm sure resignation towards the toys and Bean's increasing independence help.

Anyway, we really quite love this little house. We've made a lot of memories here. We've built a home.

Here's what I've learned to love lately - I can hear all of Bean's little pitter-pattering activities, and monitor them accordingly. When he's in the basement having a bedtime bottle with Papa Bean, and I'm feeding Sprout in her (mainfloor) nursery, I can hear him finish, and hear PB ask him to take his empty bottle to the kitchen sink. I can hear him climb the basement stairs, pausing on the landing to look out into the garage through the screen door. I can hear him trot through the kitchen, past the sink, across the hallway, and stop at the entrance to the living room (play room). I can hear him pause and consider, where's-mom-look-at-my-toys-was-there-something-I-was-supposed-to-do-hmmm... And I can gently remind him from down the hall, Bean please put your bottle in the sink. And then I hear him do it.

And thank him.

And hear him smile, because he's always pretty proud when he knows he's done the right thing.

It's a good little house we've got here <3

Mama Bean finds there's a fine line between being a Proud Mom and being a Smug mom.

2011-06-06T10:56:00.000-05:00

I think it is natural to be happy when some aspect of parenting that is confusing or challenging works out for you. You're happy when teething goes smoothly. You're happy when time-outs get the biting to stop. Whatever. It's happy when something that could be tough or was indeed tough turns around and is good or easy or not tough anymore. This makes mommas smile. I like to be happy about my own parenting victories. And I like to be happy about my parenting good luck, too.

I think it is natural to be proud of your children, when they learn something new, when they overcome a challenge. It's good to be proud of ourselves, too, to give ourselves some momma-credit when we overcome or succeed or, ~~sometimes~~ often, simply survive a particular parenting moment or phase. I am proud of my children, and I am proud of myself.

I think it's silly to get (too) proud about things your children do that are out of your control. Some kids are better sleepers than others. Some kids teethe sooner and easier than others. Some kids potty train earlier and easier than others. ~~some~~ All kids are different from others. So, like, be happy about the differences that make life easier. And maybe be sad and a little envious about the differences that present challenges. But recognize that it's not anything kids do on purpose, it's often just luck (even the sheer luck of passing on the more positive aspects of your genetic make-up versus others, it's not even our genes we can be proud of...) so there's nothing to be (too) proud about. Smile. But don't gloat.

That link is a little piece of bloggy history. Yeah, I gloated. I was a smug mom, for like, two paragraphs. Mea culpa. Please forgive me.

It's a very fine line, but at that fine point, pride becomes gloat. Becomes boast. Becomes smug. And smug? Makes me want to punch you in the face.

I'm trying to identify and navigate and be very careful about this line, because I don't want to be smug. I don't want to be something that makes me want to punch myself in the face.

I took pains in the post about how we chose to space our children to avoid sounding at all like I was implying in any fashion that our choice was the best choice for everyone, that our choice was anything beyond simply the choice that worked for us, and I still had defensive comments on facebook from people with different spacing.

What is the line... and how do I keep myself on the right side of it?

I think smug is the point when your pride in your parenting victory is expressed as pity for others. Smug goes beyond saying, "I'm so happy about [blank]" and sounds more like, "It's too bad you're not experiencing [blank] like I am." Does that make sense? I mean, no mom actually walks around saying, oh it's too bad your kid isn't just like mine. But it's implied, somehow, it's insinuated...

Or am I just being oversensitive? When you're on the receiving end of Smug, even the most innocent comments add their voice to the chorus of insecurities already running around your head, amiright? And then, what Smug sounds most like is Pity, and I don't know about you, but hate feeling pitied. Even in the most hormone-addled, sleep-deprived, low self-confident moments, I'd hate feeling pitied. Feeling pities makes you resist and push back and... punch smug people in the face lol.

Anyway, there's always a danger in writing a post like this. There's a danger in saying "This behaviour is kinda sucky" because then, whenever there's a whiff of me behaving that way, all the trolls that took it personally come out and let me know what a hypocrite I am. Or they go back in the archives of my (online or off) life and point out past examples. That'll suck... Anyway, I'm not saying I have this all figured out, I'm saying it's been on my mind. I've been noticing just how fine the line is, and I'm aware that I want to be on the right side of it. For the good of my family, and the community of mothers (online and off) I belong to, and for myself. So, I say the following with great humility, hoping that I will be treated with grace:

I'm (over the moon) happy with my experience as a mom. I'm (really quite) proud of my kids and my family, and on a good day, myself. But I'm not smug. Please, punch me in the face if I ever am. (Figuratively... :P)

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (5)

2011-06-04T23:09:00.002-05:00

These weeks of KinderGARDENing are just jetting by, and I feel like we've barely started any real gardening! The sun has only just started to show up - here's the babies practicing good sun safety with their hats :) At least today I put my soy beans into the ground, andandAND we have cabbage and lettuce sprouts :D My staff member told me to put salt and pepper on my cabbages (when they're more than sprouts, obvs) to keep the caterpillars/worms away. Does anyone know if this works?

It's not that we haven't been busy! Here's a little collage of yard changes - our compost bins are now against the back fence, flanked by rhubarb plants that have already been harvested for some fresh rhubarb platz earlier this week. And where the bins used to be we laid down some sidewalk blocks for a little BBQ patio. Except we didn't properly level the ground under the blocks, so we may have to redo it, if rain during the summer makes it obvious the blocks will be undermined and liable to crack over winter :( But it is a much tidier little corner now without the compost bins right against the house. We have a trio of herbs potted - summer savoury, chocolate mint, and cilantro. Will the mint come back if I leave it in the pot? What about the other two - are they perennial? I know I could just google it... Those purple flowers are planted en masse at Bean's playground, they smell delicious. It's a bulb, but I don't know what they're called - anyone recognize them? They seem to bloom a long time, I'll have to see if I can find some at a greenhouse to plant at home. Wonder if they spread... I was so excited to see my hens'n'chickens had developed all these little balls between the leaves, I thought they were going to turn into new chickens. But PB discovered (with google, of course) that they are seed pods, which should be removed if you want the hens to keep growing (i.e. not send their resources into seed making just yet) so we brushed them off, but not before snapping some pics.

Clearly there is no gardening happening in this picture. We went to a massive neighbourhood garage sale, and I wanted to show our haul. I could wax on about the importance of reusing and recycling, and how important it is to the environment, and our desire to raise our children with proper attitudes towards the lifetimes of usefulness in consumer goods... but mostly we like a good deal! (Kids are expensive, spread the word!) PB is especially happy with Sprout's little chair thingy, and Bean very much enjoyed his new kitchen and Tonka truck.

Check out Kim's place to see what all the other KinderGARDENers are up to!

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (4)

2011-05-25T22:57:00.003-05:00

There are actually things in the ground now! Not in our main garden, oh no, it will be at least a week until that is dry enough and weed-free (weed-lessened?) enough for planting anything. But in the backyard, the little veggie plot has two rows of cabbage seeds and two rows of lettuce. Plus sticks marking where the tomatoes and peppers will go. I've decided to grow those in the yard this year so I can 'nurse' them a little more. I find the heat-loving plants need a little more nursing. Last year the tomatoes grew in our front flower bed (last year was a comedy of weather-related errors I only revisit in my gardening nightmares...) and it was nice to keep a more daily watch over them.

Here is Bean holding our row marking tool. Our very first year at the big garden, we were putzing around trying to plan things out and the 80-some year old veteran gardener across the path from us gave us this simple tool (two sticks + string, so useful!) because clearly we looked as inexperienced as we actually were. I think of this tool as something precious, and I enjoy using it a lot. And evidently, Bean does, too.

Lately, there isn't a box Bean sees that he doesn't feel he belongs inside of. This box is half-full of twigs from some shrub or something, it can't be comfortable to sit in, and yet, sit he does. With the trowel and weeder we had been using to mark our rows in the dirt. Because whatever tool we're holding is the tool he wants. Until we give it to him and pick up something else, and, well, you know the drill lol. He's so cute when he's being 'helpful.'

This week, our hostess Kim is encouraging us to stay purposeful and deliberate about including our little ones in the garden process, because it is (at least partly) for their future that we're bothering to do this at all (when buying produce is so very easy and growing produce is so less easy.)

So this gardening season lets be purposeful and deliberate with the small gardeners in our lives. It won't always be easy, expedient, convenient, or remotely clean. But remember that just like spring, the season we get to spend gardening with them when they are little is all too short.

We call this the gardening bucket. It was a wedding gift from my best friend K and her mom - they filled it with garden tools, including our favourite weeder and garden cutter thingy, plus seeds and work gloves. We've added all manner of miscellaneous garden crap. We use it every day. Four years ago, I would never have predicted we'd be the gardeners we are now. And maybe, without this bag, we wouldn't have... :)

An updated pic of my ferns (dance of glee!) There are five plants now, almost double the three I ~~stole~~ uh, yeah, I can't even come up with an alternative explanation for how I got them. I stole them. From an alley. They're practically a weed here. I refuse to feel guilty }:) If they double in number again, I'll have ten plants next year!

Proud Papa Bean, Bean (making his 'picture' face, I don't know what he has against the camera) holding our weeder, and Sprout tucked into the background.

Lest you think she's always stuck in a car seat, here she is soaking up some rays. Yummy fist!

It's raining here all weekend. I'm telling myself this is not an indication of how the rest of summer will go. I am praying (deeply) this is not an indication of how the rest of summer will go. I'm desperately hoping... you get the idea. In a gesture of eternal optimism, we bought tomato plants today. I have set aside room for six: Juliet, Sweet Gold, Ultra Sweet, two plants of Sweet 100s (I'm sensing a theme...), and Tiny Tims. We're also growing Baron sweet red peppers. I was surprised to find 'hothouse' fruits like these grow so well in our province, because it takes heroic efforts to make tomatoes work in Cowtown, where I grew up. Apparently, the trick is that our nights stay warmer *shrug* I'm just happy to grow 'em!

See? Happy Mama!
Come visit the rest of the festivities at Kim's place!
Also, I didn't get last week's post up in time, you can read it here if you'd like...

Mama Bean and Bean have a new playground

2011-05-25T21:48:00.004-05:00

We live across the river from a large city park, with an outdoor stage and a zoo and lots of grass and trees. It's a 10 or 15 minute walk from our house. This will be our second summer with membership to the zoo. I like to think of it as our very own park. I call the pedestrian bridge we use to cross the river Bean's Bridge.

The city and province have dedicated a significant amount of money to revamping much of the park and zoo. Part of the rejuvenation has been the construction of a giant new playground. It opened last Friday; we went Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. We'll probably go tomorrow. I've taken to calling it Bean's Playground.

The playground is dominated by a large hill with twisty slides and pseudo-wall-climbing handholds. There's a beachy area with water features (mess factor extremely high!) There are two alcoves with percussion playthings. There are flowers and topiary and willow-tunnels everywhere. The designers pretty much thought of everything. There are so many distinct play areas, lots of variety for different age groups, plenty of opportunity to challenge motor skills and get adventurous but somehow it all feels safe, and so much room for families and community to grow.

Bean playing on the eggs in the robin's nest.

I wear Sprout in the sling when she gets tired of being in the stroller.

These disc swings are a great improvement on the old-fashioned tire ones I grew up with (and was terrified of, I don't know why.) Here, Papa Bean and Bean try a little role reversal.

Topiary beasts afoot!

There's a reason we call him monkey. He climbs everything and is virtually without fear. Though he doesn't like slides yet, just likes to climb the stairs, and then stamp nervously making anxious noises at the top until someone rescues him. Silly boy!

We're totally smitten with the place, I feel like we'll be living there this summer. It's nice to play awhile, have a snack, wandered over to the zoo for a bit, then go home for naps. Here's hoping for lots of sunshine this summer! (And a comparably small mosquito swarm, aie.)

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (3)

2011-05-24T12:54:00.012-05:00

I am very late to post my kinderGARDEN update for this week! We've been spending lots of time outdoors - the Bean pretty much demands it! However, it has been rainy over the long weekend, so we didn't really do any planting yet :( Hopefully in the next two weeks our large garden plot will be ready to plant and I'll have some really exciting things to update...

We had 3 yards of 4-way topsoil mix delivered, to make the new bed under our spruce tree, and fill in the veggie bed and flowers beds in our backyard.

Bean did his best to help us out :) It's fun to watch each week as he gets more adept with tools and getting in the way. He's just such a little sponge, watches everything we do, and then wants to do it himself. But he's also becoming more independent, moving off to explore the yard by himself while we putter at the weeding or somesuch. He likes to watch the birds and the leaves and I like to watch the world through his eyes, pretending what I'd feel if I was seeing these things for the first time. It's a good way to learn something new about things that feel old and familiar.

We moved our compost bins from behind the house to the end of the backyard. Although they don't smell terrible, they do attract flies and mice and even a nesting rabbit last year. It will be a pain taking the kitchen bucket all the way to the end of the yard in the middle of winter, but so be it. This is the more or less finished compost PB discovered in the bottom of one bin - it looks awesome! We'll throw that onto the veggie plot in the fall, to replenish the soil :)
Many other kinderGARDENers have plans for various vegetation tunnels and mazes, they will look amazing by the end of the season. Bean is enjoying the willow tunnels at a new Nature Playground near our house. It just opened this past weekend, and we've gone three days in a row. I can't wait for the willows to grow up and around and over the tunnels completely. I wonder if they will tie the branches to the frames to keep them in the tunnel shape?
While walking home from the playground we found four eggs under a large tree. No obvious nest could be seen, just a number of woodpecker nest holes, but these eggs seem a little large for woodpeckers (?) Not that I'm some bird expert. Three of the eggs were hatched (or eaten?) but one of the eggs was whole. As far as wild bird eggs go, I've only ever seen robin's eggs and little speckled sparrow eggs, so it was neat to see some so large. I know this isn't a strictly gardening type thing to share here, but it's a nature type thing, and that's part of kinderGARDENing, right - to help them appreciate all parts of the natural world and our (small, but destructive) part in that world. So that through appreciation, we can strive to have less destructive impact. Not that Bean really cared, he can't even say 'egg' yet lol. But I thought it was cool!
And here's a gratuitous picture of Sprout being cute, all snuggled down while the rest of us are busy working :) Don't forget to check out the other kinderGARDENs at Kim's place!

Mama Bean is guest-blogging for the first time!

2011-05-22T13:19:00.002-05:00

"It's just like the adoption folks are always saying, "Family isn't always blood." So, okay, maybe I have a church 'family' or a profession-related 'family' or a hobby-related 'family'. Each of these groups represents its own culture, that I have learned about and internalized as something important to me. Each group has a history and a value-set that is bundled up in a 'family' code - this is the essential information. This is the group's heritage. Know this, act accordingly, and you belong."

Amanda graciously asked me to guest post in honour of May being Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Come on over and check it out!

(If you read this on my RSS, you might have seen a sneak peak of an unfinished draft of the post. Sorry! Come read the real deal.)

Mama Bean never wants to smell milk vomit again. Chances that'll happen? ZERO.

2011-05-17T10:49:00.001-05:00

In the early morning, I wake up and feed the Sprout. Breakfast I. Then she goes back to sleep, sometimes in her crib, sometimes with us in bed. We sleep. Later, at a more Godly hour, Bean wakes up, and we pretend we don't hear him. Eventually, I pout, "Don' wanna" enough times that PB gets up just to get away from me. Then I groan out of bed to get ready, then feed Sprout Breakfast II.

It's always ominous when PB comes downstairs without Bean, and says, "You need to go upstairs."

Extra ominous when he then goes into the bathroom to put on rubber gloves.

I was pretty sure I was going up to an open diaper and poop smears. But I knew it was vomit has soon as I hit the wall of smell just inside the door. It was all the gloriousness of typical vomit (sour) plus the True Aromatic Beauty that is Milk Vomit.

God was having a bad day when he created Milk Vomit.

It smells like the unholiest of rancid cheeses mixed with vinegar that has then been left to rot further in a black car with black leather seats on a hot day, with a wet dog in the back.

I might almost have preferred poop (no, not really.)

We don't know when he puked; it was early enough that it still contained bits of incompletely-digested dinner, early enough to get spread into blankets and pj's and hair (ugh), but late enough that it didn't completely dry.

How do you get the smell of vomit out of hair?????

PB shampooed and showered him immediately, we played outside almost all day, and he was bathed and shampooed at bedtime as usual, and his head still reeked!

Anyway, the good news it doesn't seem he was sick with anything. No fever, totally normal mood, no further upchucking. So. Thus concludes another parenting milestone: cleaning up your kid's vomit without vomiting yourself.

But seriously... how do I get his hair to stop smelling...

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (2)

2011-05-14T21:20:00.005-05:00

I once participated in a survey that asked me to describe how I'd feel if I were in a position where I could not feed my family. When I tried to imagine this, the number one feeling I identified was shame. This was not something I wanted to imagine. It hurts my heart to think that could ever happen, and yet it does happen, of course, to far too many children and Canadian families every day.

Kim has invited all the kinderGARDENers to purposely grow some extra vegetables to donate this year. She's going to keep a tally. I think this is a fantastic idea. In fact, part of the reason PB and I decided to plant half our community plot in potatoes was to give the bulk of those taters to our local food bank. We'll also likely have extra zucchini (don't we all?) and beans and peas and carrots. We don't have much (any) cold storage in our house, so we must immed-o-eat, can, or freeze everything we grow. Or give it away :) We're also planning to put up a little sign that says part of our garden is grown for the food bank, to hopefully encourage some of the other members in the garden to do the same. (Although, there is a rule in the Community Garden rulebook that says we can't post signs, but I'm sure there won't be any objection to this.)

*****

PB's parents visited us on their way to and from a road trip to the States to see Bob Seger in concert. Whenever they visit, we have The UberProductivity, getting things done around the house and yard. It's basically the most awesome thing ever, The UberProductivity. I wish I could bottle the way PB is suddenly inspired to actually do the things he thinks about doing, so I could secretly put it in his water. (Not to give the impression that PB doesn't do anything, because he is, after all, a SAHD, and hence does A LOT. It is only the bigger projects that are frequently put on the backburner. We both do it. Somehow, the Internet always seems like a better way to pass the time lol.) Much of the benefit of having parents around is simply the extra hands, to hold a Sprout or wrangle a Bean.

Witness said Bean-wrangling, which is especially important around power tools. The men are building a box to house our lawnmower, so it doesn't have to take up a bunch of room in the garage, but also isn't subject to the weather. It's a mighty nice box. Recycled the wood from the way-too-expensive box we had built for our piano when we moved here. Said wood was also used to build a house for our air conditioner to wear during the winter.

Here he is helping Grandma pull grass out of a flower bed along the back of our house. The previous owners had built a lovely box around this bed, which we deconstructed, to pilfer the dirt from the bed into our veggie garden box. At the time, we really wanted the veggie box but couldn't afford a delivery of soil. I thought we would either gravel or grass over this bed, but instead we put our compost bins down and planted stuff. Weird. Without the box, the grass encroached. So PB took the old walls apart, and used the pieces to build several box-like structures, including essentially reconstructing the box that was originally here. Did you follow that? The compost bins are being moved further from the house (they attracted mice near the house/garage, and a bunny nested beside them last year) and we're putting down a small patio for our BBQ. The bed contains rhubarb, lambs' ear, irises, a random sage-like plant that I think may be a weed, a clematis that might be dead this year, and some columbine and pansies. And grass that I now need to extricate. Those plastic veggie spinnies are going in our big garden plot - aren't they cute?

As predicted in last week's kG post, Sprout was kept trundled up and napping in the nice sun and breeze. No bugs yet! During the power tool time, she was moved to a less noisy location :) Incidentally, we are getting a load of dirt this year, to fill the veggie box, the bed along the house, and a new box under our spruce up front, where I will plant snow-on-the-mountain, ferns, maybe some pansies, maybe some phlox. (Don't worry, she didn't stay there all afternoon, she didn't overheat, she didn't have too much sun exposure, she wasn't cold, etc. etc.)

This is a coleus variety called Dog-Be-Gone (coleus canina) that smells like skunk, presumably from the sticky-oily stuff that gets on your fingers when you touch the leaves. Humans don't really smell it unless the plant is disturbed (e.g. when watering, in windy conditions) but apparently it keeps animals (#$%@# RABBITS) out of garden beds. I would need a lot of plants to keep them out of my yard completely, but it roots where it touches the ground, so I can put transplants in the two beds I'm really concerned about protecting. If it works even a little bit (i.e. I can grow carrots) it will be worth the $4.

Ferns don't grow very well in Cowtown, but they grow like weeds in the Prairie Valley City, because it's much wetter here. We not-very-surreptitiously stole these ferns from a back alley and transplanted them last year. They did not thrive as far as I could tell - I thought maybe the soil wasn't good quality, or I didn't water properly, who knows? The leaves withered. But here are the fiddleheads pushing bravely up again! I did a little dance :)

The community plot has not yet conducted the survey marking out the plots, so we haven't planted anything. It will be weeks, because we have some initial weed control to do, then we'll get it tilled, and finally planted. Our growing season seems ridiculously short compared to all the American bloggers I follow, some of whom are already harvesting things (!) but rest assured, we will get food! :) Happy kinderGARDENing for another week! Check out Kim's blog if you want to join the fun (it's never too late!!)

Mama Bean likes the space between

2011-05-11T09:55:00.003-05:00

I appreciate the way my job gives me access to a wide range of people (age/income/etc.) so I can conduct informal surveys about stuff. It’s really helpful for parenting - I get to hear an array of experiences and explanations for different parenting choices and it’s totally fascinating and informative. When I tell older patients (i.e. from my parents’ generation and older) that my kids are 17 months apart, they are almost universally encouraging. “That’s how far apart my kids are.” “It’s great to have them close together.” And so on. When I tell younger patients (my age, with one or more children), they are almost universally incredulous. “Wow, you’re brave.”Or simply, “You’re crazy.” Uh... thanks?

We decided to have kids close together essentially to get the Baby Stuff over with. We have always planned to have two children (and by ‘we’ I mean me. I spent most of my life thinking I didn’t want any children, but with Papa Bean, I discovered a love big enough to contemplate two children and only two children. And, happily, he was good with that.) When I had each of my babies, I took about two months off, leaving my clinic to a locum who provided treatment for my patients. I don’t make money with this arrangement, but I don’t lose money. This latest leave, I have to say my business has suffered, so while it pains me to be away from my littles, I am relieved to be back in control of my practice. It’s still a really good deal, since I only work part-time. When I go back, PB takes parental leave, which is essentially EI – he brings home about half his normal pay. Obviously, this affects income, both in the short-term budgetary type changes, and in the long-term access-to-credit kind of way. The bottom line on our tax returns impacts our ability to apply for a car loan or a mortgage or whatever, and this affects our long-range forecast. When can we move into a different house? How will PBs pastoral education fit in? Can we afford this new car or those new renovations?

Then there are the Baby Logistics – diapers, breastfeeding, stroller schlepping, nap schedules, sleep deprivation, baby-proofing – the stuff of living with infants. I wanted to just do all that stuff, and do it intensely for a short time, and then be done with it, and on with the logistics of older children (school, extra-curriculars, ensuring they aren’t jerks, etc.) Ultimately, standing in the midst of that logistical intensity right now, I am totally convinced this was the best decision for our family. It works for us. Which is not to say, standing in the midst of it, that this is not without challenges. Bean does not yet Have Words, as they say; a day with two preverbal small humans makes you lose your own words by the end of it, sometimes! And yes, we have Two In Diapers, as they say; actually, I haven’t found this to be a hardship, but ask me again when Sprout starts using cloth (we’re sticking to disposables until she gains a bit more weight/size.) I did not count on the vastly increased energetic needs of an 18-month-old boy; he is a human-puppy hybrid who must be walked multiple times a day, or all that energy explodes through his feet, hands, and mouth (mostly the mouth) and we don’t have good naps, and nobody. is. happy.

But I’m pretty sure there are unique challenges to whatever spacing your children end up having. And there’s the inherent uniqueness of no two children and no two families being the same. Not to mention the extra complexities of adding more children into the mix - that just happens to not be part of our agenda. (Any Catholic readers out there? Is this whole discussion of spacing sort of moot?) Basically I'm writing this only as an encouragement to anyone thinking of/facing children with relatively close spacing that it is doable, and if your reasons are similar to ours, you’ll be happy with the decision. That being said, I would never ever presume that this is the right choice for everyone, so please don’t take this as an indictment against whatever family planning you’ve planned, m’kay? Because I have heard stories, from my totally scientific analysis of patient anecdotes, of all sorts of family spacings, and it seems like everyone, like, survives. And even ends up pretty happy. Eventually *grin*

So tell me: what’s the spacing like with your kids? Is that similar to the spacing between you and your siblings? Do you find perspectives differ between your parents and your peers on this issue?

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (1)

2011-05-08T21:15:00.002-05:00

I’m gonna try and keep up with a blog carnival over here called KinderGARDENS. This is a little introductory post – it looks like fun, come join us over at Kim’s blog!

Tell us about your family. What are your plans for this year? Well, our gardening adventures this year will include our one-year-old son, Bean, and our teeny-tiny daughter, Sprout. We will be adventuring at our community garden plot, which is 10x20 yards, and at home in our yard, which has a 4x12 foot veggie plot and several flower beds. Sprout will probably just be carted around in various carriers and strollers, guarded from too much sun, but otherwise left to the whims of fresh air and passing bugs. Bean has already proven to be a fun age to have in the garden. And by fun, I mean destructive, wild, and very very messy. Whatever tool we’re using, he wants to try it (and run away with it.) He has no regard for things like staying out of the beds, staying out of the dirt, staying out of... everywhere but the grass. And he likes to pick up handfuls of dirt and throw them around – which is preferable to when he picks up rabbit droppings and crushes them between his fingers. He hasn’t started pulling up plants yet (unwanted or otherwise) but it’ll happen eventually. And I don’t know what to do about that. Ideas?

Are you a first time gardener who needs help and encouragement or are you a veteran gardener that can help others here? We are neither n00bs nor L33ts at gardening – but clearly, we are nerds! Outside in the sunshine may not be the natural habitat of nerds (trust me, our internet basement haven is still perfectly functional) but Papa Bean decided we should grow more of our food, for economical reasons. Which, now that I think of it, may be a suitably nerdy reason to get outside after all :) This will be our third year growing veggies.

Are you going to expand on last year’s ideas or are you going a whole different route? Mmm, I dunno... we’re tweaking. At the large garden, we’re planting half the area with potatoes, about three varieties. This will be more than a hundred plants, way more taters than we need, so lots will be donated to the food bank. We’re doing this to a) let the tubers break up the heavy, clay soil with the Power of Plants, b) gain some measure of weed control (we’re hoping the plants crowd out some weeds, the leaves self mulch a bit, and maybe coordinate some digging efforts vis a vis quack grass control) and c) be lazy. Potatoes don’t take much work, comparatively. They just grow and grow all summer, you hill the dirt around them occasionally, you pick some baby ‘tots in late summer for tasty tasty eats, and then there’s the motherlode harvest in the fall. Yay potatoes! (Boo potato beetles! Not sure what our strategy for them will be this year...)

We have succumbed in the past couple years to trying to grow too many varieties, because all the seed packets look so fun, and everything seems like something we might plausibly eat, and we have so much room to fill, and we’re just plain silly. I’m hoping to keep it simple this year, to things we know we’ll eat in abundance, and things that require little maintenance, because our kinders are just not at an age conducive to complicated gardening. We’re anticipating that only one adult will ever be really available to do actual gardening work, while the other wrangles the ~~beast~~ Bean. We’ll be growing squash (pumpkin, acorn or butternut, yellow and green zucchini) because we like to eat it in soups, and they take up lots of room. If it’s not too rainy/is nice and sunny, we’ll grow a few rows of corn, to act as a windbreak across the north end of the plot (the field is subject to high winds.) We’ll have peas and beans, two types of cucumber, two types of onions, and carrots. I want to keep the backyard plot for easy-pickings, i.e. greens. Lettuce and chard, maybe some more peas. We have a rabbit that has lived in our yard since we moved in – it decimated our mugho pine over the winter, so the gloves are coming off! We don’t want to kill/trap it, we can’t get a dog, so we’re gonna try sprinkling hair around the garden as a repellent. I’ve also been tipped off to a type of smelly coleus that keeps animals away. Any other advice is appreciated!

Our kids are kind of little to be too involved in the planning of actual work of gardening, so I suspect I’ll mostly be reporting what we-the-adults are doing, with cute pictures of little people surrounded by leaves. Or pictures of vegetables compared to how big Sprout is lol. This spring has brought record flooding to our area, though it doesn’t really affect us here in the city. I know the ground is very wet. We haven’t had too much rain yet, but we’ll see what the rest of May brings us. Last year was just dismally rainy, so I’ve got all my fingers and toes crossed for a sunnier year. Happy Kindergardening, everybody!

Mama Bean is no longer Delirious - let the Rejoicing begin!

2011-05-07T10:22:00.002-05:00

Sprout is two months old today, and I am happy to report, I think we can officially say the Delirious Early Days are over. Phew.

I say The First Six Weeks Are The Hardest, like a mantra, to myself and others, so often, it becomes (more than) a little cliché. And when you are in those six weeks, it is beyond cliché, well into trite, and mostly just not believable. Some days (nights... usually the nights...) it feels like everything is the hardest forever and ever and nothing will ever be easy again and how could you ever have thought that anything was easy about anything ohmygoshwhenwillthisend.

Some days.

And then it’s week seven, and you finish feeding one kid, and then you feed the other, and you smile at your husband over your breakfast cuppa, and the smile feels Real. And a little angel chorus sounds somewhere quietly behind your head (is that a glow?) Or maybe that’s just the oxytocin and sleep deprivation singing... cuz the sleep deprivation don’t stop. Y’all know that.

Here’s the Good: for the most part, in a very loose and general way, the Delirious Early Days were easier this time. I wasn’t healing from stitches, and Sprout is easy to breastfeed – these things are Revolutionary. Also, we didn’t have the crash course in Baby Logistics – babies are blessedly all pretty much the same, you feed/clothe/change/clean them in pretty much the same way. So, we weren’t floundering around feeling baffled by the complex technology of diapering. Go us. And then, of course it helped that I was expecting the Crazy, so it didn’t sneak up on me. I knew the hormone crash out would come. I knew it would be like PMS times a bajizzillion for ever-too-long. (Although, I did kind of fool myself for a few days into thinking it wasn’t going to happen. But the birth endorphins and adrenaline did eventually run out, and it all came crashing down. What a lovely layer to add to the Delirium – realizing you were only lying to yourself) So. In hindsight, yes, it was easier the second time, but I’m not gonna test it and see if it gets ever easier with a third...

Here’s the Bad: I found this time the hormonal crash-out manifested quite differently. With Bean, I primarily became weepy and hopeless feeling. Very sadsack, in my sticky clothes and weak body, feeling pathetically incompetent at motherhood. This time, there was all of that and also anger. A lot of anger. I mean, this should not surprise me, because it really is just PMS on overdrive. In a non-reproductive cycle, the hormones that sustain the build-up of the uterine lining stop being produced, which tells your body to menstruate. In pregnancy, you make bucketloads more of those hormones, to sustain the pregnancy/placenta, and when the baby leaves, the buckets of hormones leave. And you bleed, on overdrive; and you get irrationally emotional, on overdrive. So, I was really peevy and tetchy and angry. Here is where you feel bad for Papa Bean, because he bore the brunt of this.

I imagine the Delirium preys upon each mother’s particular insecurity. For example, if you have a lot of insecurity about your looks, your DEDs might contain a lot of anxiety re: the havoc wreaked upon your body by growing and expelling a human. For me, my insecurities centre on feeling Good Enough, creating much anxiety about not being Good Enough, and in fact being distinctly insufficient. This time, I also found the feelings of incompetence were magnified by having two children; I felt like I was failing both of them. Even though the Baby Logistics are the same, Sprout is still a different baby than Bean (duh.) She cries differently, she burps differently, she sleeps differently. And everything she did not quite the same as Bean made me feel like I knew nothing about raising a baby¸ and that made me sad and scared and pitiful.

At the same time, we are taking a crash course in Toddler Logistics –new feeding/clothing/toileting/cleaning/communicating/disciplining/etc. needs that are a mystery to discover with each new day. And I didn’t get to put that on pause just because I’m trying to figure out a new little beastlet. This led to many moments of feeling pulled, physically and emotionally, between opposing demands that could not be simultaneously satisfied. And toddlers aren’t good at the concept of Waiting. Leaving me feeling like his needs were too frequently sacrificed for hers, but I felt like Newborn trumped Firstborn, or something, I don’t know. I just felt like I was failing them. (I still feel this, but not in the intensely overwrought way that Delirium produces.)

Here’s the Ugly: I became convinced that people wanted to see me fail. I was sure that everyone else felt I was as incompetent as I felt myself to be, and that any sign of weakness or challenge or overwhelmedness would confirm this to them. And they would gloat. And be happy in my failure. And I was bound and determined not to give them the satisfaction. Contributing to the anger mentioned above. But also leading to me thinking they might be right. And then contributing to me imposing upon myself a great deal of isolation. Which was not helpful. Leading to Papa Bean suggesting I seek treatment for PPD. Which was not all that off base. And I am grateful to him for the suggestion. But I think we're out of the proverbial woods now.

Yes, I believe the Ugly has passed (phew) along with the Bad (yay) and the Good was, well, Good as Delirious Early Days can be, so I hereby declare me Free From Delirium, forever and ever. Amen. Thank-you all, especially Papa Bean, for surviving it with me.

Mama Bean loves being married to Papa Bean

2011-05-05T21:18:00.004-05:00

Four years ago today, Papa Bean and I promised to face life together forever. I was laughing with him last night that I'd thought we would wait about three years before having children, and here we are with two after only four years. So much for that plan! Though, in the bigger picture, we've been together for ten years, and to me, married in spirit for about nine of those. So, I'm not worried about our "rush" to have babies, lol.

A few months ago, I mused aloud that I have turned out to be a much more submissive wife than I expected to be. Papa Bean agreed. I know submission and obedience are sort of bad words in this day and age, or at least I used to feel that way, and yet here I am. I don't really know how to unpack what I mean by submissive - this is an anniversary post, it's supposed to be light and fluffy and loving. It was just a telling moment in our marriage (that happened in the middle of an innocuously normal day, as so many of those telling moments of life happen) and I want to bookmark it, here on the world wide web. So, there it is. Four years into this, and I have surprised myself by how easily I fall into a traditional, wifely sort of role. Weird.

Then I read this article by a Catholic momblogger I respect, even when I don't agree with or understand her point of view, being a 'cradle Protestant.' Here's the take-home I took home:

When I am pregnant, I know my husband will care for me. When I’m tired, he will help. When someone insults me, he will defend me. When I spend time caring for babies and the house, I’ll be met with gratitude, not mocked and belittled. I’m no shrinking violet, but sometimes I just plain need him—and he needs to be needed.
Women walk a fine line: it’s tempting to surrender to lazy ninnihood—to confuse femininity with feebleness, and to let our minds and our wills atrophy. And so women lash back against this feebleness, squashing any signs of softness under their executive high-heeled maternity shoes. Let’s be clear—feminism brought many necessary goods to the world, and I don’t want to go back to the fifties. But neither do I want to pretend that I can do it all by myself.

Here’s my advice for a woman looking for that middle road between harsh feminism and stunted daughterhood: be strong, be smart, take responsibility for yourself—and never, never bind your life to a man who doesn’t want to care for you.
-Simcha Fisher, "Someone to Watch Over Me"

I don't agree with every molecule of this article, but I agree with its spirit. It is easy to obey a man I know, with absolutely every molecule of my being, has my best interest, has our best interests, and the best interests of my children, who mean everything to me, at the core of every beat of his heart. And I've realized how easy he makes that for me since watching him become a father. (That post, by the way, remains one of the most read posts of this blog.)

The first few years of our marriage, I was still keeping a lot of my daily life independent from my marriage, from my home-building. After children, I don't have the time or resources or desire to do that any longer. We have to depend on each other to keep this ship together - for each other, and for our family. I can't afford to keep myself aloof from needing him. My need bleeds out of every exhausted, frustrated day that I'm left feeling incompetent, not enough, and unbeautiful - and I am strengthened every time he meets that need. With quiet listening, or an I love you, or just a hug in his big, strong arms.

I'm sorry if this sounds sickeningly unfeminist. I'm sorry if I've lost your respect or offended. I don't know how to explain how this has happened in a way that I feel still upholds my Womyn-ness and independence and empowerment - it just has, it just does, I just am. And today, I celebrate the marriage and the man, and the faith in our God, that has allowed it to be so. Love you, honey...