The subtleties of babywearing

Anyone who knows me well knows my love (verging on addiction) to babywearing - using soft carriers to carry babies and children for anyone not familiar with the term. I've been using baby carriers since Nick was a baby and my interest really took off once I entered the world of woven wraps.

I took some training and I now help parents learn how to use baby carriers as part of my business. I'm really drawn to combining my background in holistic health with babywearing. The workings of chakra systems and subtle energy are hugely important with babies and young children, in my opinion, and I spend chunks of time mulling over things like the implication of babywearing and a child's energy.

The following piece is one that I first jotted down back in March. I'm not sure if it's done yet, but it will eventually make its way over onto my business blog once I figure that out. There's a part of me that has this far-fetched dream that it could someday be a piece of something much bigger, but here's what it is for now:

We are more than our bodies, more than the steps of our feet or the smiles on our faces. We are ideas, dreams, thoughts, and feelings. We are the energy that swirls around inside of our minds, pours out of our mouthes, and reaches into the world around us.

As a baby begins his growth in this world, he is a tiny speck from a physical perspective. But from an energetic viewpoint he starts out with such a large energy that it takes many months to settle into his body and become separate from the world around him. While growing inside his mother, he lives within his mother's energy as well as within his own. At birth, the baby makes the transition out of her body but he still has an intense need for her. He needs the sound of her voice, the taste of her skin, the feel of her energy, the love from her heart. He depends on his mother's familiarity for comfort and reassurance, a safe and secure place from where he can meet the world.

Wearing her baby in a carrier allows the mother to keep her baby close during everyday life. On her chest, the baby rests in his mother's heart chakra, the center of love, where he can feel surrounded by the swirlings of maternal warmth. Looking out from a place of unconditional love, the world is an interesting and wonderful place. She sends him unspoken messages throughout their day: “This is our life, our world.”, “You are precious to me and I keep you close.”, “I invite you into this experience.”. The baby is too young yet to understand words, but her messages are sent clearly though her touch, her movements, and her energy.

The small baby has no barriers. He doesn't know where he begins and his mother ends. His cheek, her breast, his contentment, her unconditional love. They move and mingle without barriers or restriction. In much the same way, the baby has no sense of separation from the world around him. The sound of a car horn, the smell of freshly cut grass, the swell of emotion in a crowd listening to beautiful music. All of these sensations wash over the baby. On his own, these experiences can overwhelm and confuse him. Within his mother's energy, though, he is sheltered. Sensations are filtered, refuge is offered. He can sample and experience the snippets that are intriguing, leaning into the comfort of his mother's chest and drifting off into sleep when he is done.

First off, here are a couple of progress pictures of the island.

Liam, getting the drawers together:

The space where the got-together drawers will go:

This blog entry, though, is about the following picture:

These are a couple of glass jars. The jars themselves are from Ikea. The jar on the left is a jar of Kefir that I started this morning. The one on the right is applesauce I made this evening.

Two things stand out to me from this photo.

First, food that has significance is immensely pleasing. My kefir was started from the kefir grains we brought back from Saskatoon. Kyle and Erron had some extras and packaged them up for us so we could make our own yumminess at home. The milk is raw milk from our cow share and was delivered to us by my friend who boards and milks the cows. The applesauce was made from apples the kids and I picked tonight. Our neighbor invited us over to pick some of her apples and as I filled the bag (and all three kids filled their faces) my neighbor and I had a nice visit. They honey I used to sweeten the applesauce comes from one of our Scout leaders who keeps bees locally.

Each time I use these foods, prepare these foods, eat these foods, and serve these foods, these are the stories that fill my heart. These foods with stories bring love into our home and they feed so much more than just our bellies.

Secondly, I'm struck by how food prep in our home has evolved. It used to be that I pulled ingredients together to make a meal and that was that. Sometimes we had leftovers so we would eat the meal a second or third time, but it was a stand-alone deal. These days it seems like there's always something starting or waiting. I'm starting kefir, soaking flour, scooping things into the slowcooker for a meal 9 hours away. The applesauce and kefir of tonight will dip their toes into many meals and recipes in days to come. I'm feeling more and more drawn to this slow food thing, this moving away from opening a jar or can when I could get something ready myself ahead of time.

The food we eat as a family is meaningful. It gives us fuel for our days and a reason to sit around the table a few times a day. I love that I can bring to our table foods that I'm excited to have my kids involved in making and eating with me.

Bigger and Better

Last week we made a trip to Ikea to pick up a bookshelf/room divider for the kids' room and while we were there we made a spur of the moment decision to buy a kitchen island. (Well, I call it spur of the moment but in reality I'd almost bought it a few months ago when I was there last.) Liam and I were both drooling over it in the store and the $149 price tag marked down from $500ish from when it was a current model convinced us to make the leap.

We were going to leave it as an empty tabletop for the time being and pick out the "guts" (drawers and/or cabinets) later on but we discovered this morning that you can't actually assemble the island without the inner framework. Personally, I think it would have been nice if the Ikea lady we talked to had pointed that out when we discussed our plans with her but oh wel...

Anyhow, we went back out today and I got to choose what I wanted to put in the island. I ended up with four small drawers in the top row and then two layers of deep drawers, leaving me with four small and four large drawers all together. We picked out some white drawer fronts and some stainless steel hardware.

The choice in drawer fronts is a bit of another leap in faith because our current kitchen cabinets are woodgrain, so I'm working on the assumption that we'll be able to change them out at some point. It's an upgrade that is really worthwhile since our current cabinets are old and gummy and two panels are missing while one door is totally mismatched.

It always seems that one upgrade leads right into another, but I'm more than ok with making some changes in our kitchen. We really haven't put much money into updating our house in the 4 years we've lived here and either we'll stay and enjoy the fruit of our work or we'll be making worthwhile changes for sale potential if we make the move out into the country.

And on that note, off I go back to help Liam who's still chugging along in the island assembly!

Whole Again

The big kids are home!

After heading out on Tuesday afternoon to go camping at Miquelon with my Mom, the kids are back home tonight. We ended up picking them up on our way out to weed and mound some potatoes we have planted at a friend's farm so our day together consisted of an afternoon at the farm and a late supper while watching America's Funniest Videos.

This week has been like a fantastic mini vacation for me as I tend to spend very little time away from the kiddos. I've cleaned, I've spent some one-on-one time with Olivia, I've had date nights with Liam (and Olivia of course), and I've had all sorts of quiet space to air out my mind.

But man, if it doesn't feel good to have Nick and Lily back home. The quiet turned to emptiness at times without their incessant happy chatter and I found myself frequently looking forward to being able to tell or show them things when they got back. They were thrilled tonight to see how beautiful I'd made their room. Lily jumped up and down with her huge surprised face and both she and Nick spent most of their time in the house playing up there. I got to show Nick the special places I'd put his wool felting supplies and his Transformers collection. Lily was thrilled to meet a couple of new stuffed animals we'd picked up for her from Ikea.

I just went and tucked a sleeping Olivia into bed a few minutes ago and I couldn't help but steal a few moments of snuggle time with my sleeping kids. Lily was mumbling and flopping around in her sleep. Nick had the blankets pulled up right under his chin so his brow was sweaty under my kisses.

The time apart from them has helped remind me what a joy it is to share my home and heart. These kids of mine are beautiful and inspiring and I'm so very blessed to be their mother.

Monkey See

One day, we were hanging out in the playroom and I grabbed a pad of paper and some felts and crayons and I drew the picture on the left. The kids watched as I was drawing it and asked some questions about what I was drawing and why. Shortly after I finished, Lily pulled the pad of paper over to herself and carefully picked out the same felts and crayons as I had. Looking back and forth between my paper and hers, she drew the picture on the right. She was very pleased with herself and pointed out to me all the ways that our pictures were the same.

This photo, right here, represents my approach to parenting. I wanted to do something (drawing an abstract picture for the fun of it) so I did it. My kids observed and imitated. There was no lesson, no expectation, no token reward at the end. There was simply the normal imitation of adult behavior in a child who is a social being and the shared pleasure in a moment of closeness.

My kids' eyes and ears follow me throughout our daily lives. No amount of lecturing, praising, cajoling or punishing makes a bigger impact than how I live my life. I make an effort to act in ways that I want to model to my children, whether it's speaking kindly, expressing frustrations, enjoying music or making healthy food choices. Sometimes my words and my actions are not the best and I try to make amends and discuss it with the kids after.

Those moments when I see myself played out in my children fill me with a sense of joy and sometimes with a sense of enormous responsibility. These days, this life, these moments are going to form the images of their childhoods and will serve as a platform from which they build their adult lives. Trying to grasp the enormity of it is inspiring and sobering and I hope that I set the best example that I can.

******

As an add-on, if anyone is interested in reading more about children being social creatures who are naturally geared towards wanting to please and fit in, the book The Continuum Concept is a good read, and the book Why Love Matters has a lot of solid research backing its ideas about how love and affection are so very important in laying the adult brain's foundation in the early years.

Short and mostly sweet

I've no idea
What to write
And it's already
After midnight.

I could tell you
About my day
And how I cleaned
So much dirty away

Or the pudding I baked,
Such a total flop
Not even Liam
Would eat that slop.

But I have few words
On a day like today
My thoughts turn in
And I have little to say.

G'night!

Making Space

Last night's ponderings followed me into today and I've decided that it's the official Kim's Decluttering Week Extravaganza. The big kids being gone camping for the week with Grandma make the timing all out perfect. I've got a bit more physical space and a whole lot more mental space with only one little person underfoot!

My big goal for the week was to get the kids' bedroom cleaned and organized. Nick and Lily currently share a bedroom upstairs, though we're all sleeping in the basement for the summer as a way to avoid the heat. I spent a good period of time yesterday and pretty much all of today clearing off the floor, organizing toys, going through all the clothing, washing walls, dusting, and moving everything around.

I really wish I'd taken some before photos to show what a change there is so far. I hadn't cleaned the room properly since somewhere early in my pregnancy with Olivia and virtually every last inch of floorspace was covered with Lego pieces and clothing. It looks fantastic right now, and once we get the new shelving unit in (we got this one from Ikea!) the room is going to thrill the kids to bits.

I continued the clearing and decluttering by deleting all my e-mails off my BlackBerry and by sending off an e-mail that helped me to let go of a frustrating situation. I've also been thinking of some ways to make better use of my volunteer hours and I think I've come up with some solutions that should leave me better meeting my responsibilities and feeling better about my work.

I feel like tonight I have more space inside my brain. Whether it's from the physical decluttering, the emotional decluttering, or just the fact of not having been with the two big chatty kids since yesterday morning I'm not sure, but I'm feeling more centered inside of myself which is never a bad thing.

I'm excited to see what I can accomplish tomorrow!

More is less

For as long as I can remember, I've always liked to cram as much stuff into my life as possible. As a kid, I took part in Brownies/Guides/Pathfinders, baseball, soccer, pottery, gymnastics, choir, and then the world of horses. I always wanted more time for more friends and more activities and more fun.

As I've grown up (relatively speaking, of course) I don't think I've changed much. I always seem to want to do 50 things at the same time and have 40 good friends who I spend time with regularly.

I want to be a good homemaker, cook mind-blowing foods from scratch, offer my kids an incredible homeschooling life, be the supportive and attentive wife Liam deserves, help moms through vast amounts of LLL volunteer work, spend time growing our Attachment Parenting of Edmonton Society, and impact many families through My Nature Baby.

I want to keep in touch with all of my friends. I have my friends who I grew up with, my crunchy mama friends, my friends I've met through Liam, my friends I've met through college, my homeschooling friends, and all the other friends I've nabbed along the way.

I struggle with the desire to take more and more into my life. I'm passionate about things and I feel like I want to commit time to all the things I'm passionate about. But there come the moments of imbalance where it becomes obvious that I'm stretched in too many directions and not filling any role properly.

Today I'm reflecting. I'm reflecting on the things and the people and the activities that bring me (and my family) true joy, the things that bring more positive energy back into my life. I'm pondering how to recognize and cut loose the things that don't serve me on a deep level. Ho hum. Heavy thoughts for a Tuesday night.

Foody goodness

Today was our first day back to normal in our house. We've had a weekend in Saskatoon, a week of sick crabby baby, and then the weekend of Folk Fest all of which have meant that cleaning and cooking have been totally haphazard and at a bare minimum.

We had an awesome food day in our house today, which is always super satisfying. A breakfast of steel cut oats and a lunch of warmed up leftover spaghetti were alright, but supper was totally amazing if I do say so myself (which I do, because I spent the better part of my afternoon getting it made).

The main course of the meal was pizza that we made from scratch. I bought a piece of Pampered Chef stoneware a while back and it came with a really super pizza dough recipe that lends itself really well to spelt flour.

I had my two little helpers who were more than eager to roll the dough out with me. I'm not too sure why there were little finger-shaped holes in the bottom corner of the pizza.

To add to the oomph of the meal, I made the pizza sauce from a can of tomato paste and some random herbs from my herb garden. Mmm, herbs...

And since I'm doing things in non-chronological order, here's a shot of the finished product. (We were all so hungry that I forgot to get a shot of it before chopping it up.)

On the side, we also had a Caesar salad. Most of the lettuce was from the garden but I also supplemented it with some lettuce my uncle had gifted us from his garden. I don't have a picture of the salad, but here's my pretty lettuce. It's so happy looking.

The kids, oddly, went totally nuts over the salad. While they didn't manage to quite finish their pizza they polished off their portions of Caesar and were rather put out that there wasn't enough for seconds.

And finally, to top off the meal (and to make up for the fact that the only fresh fruit we have in the house today are these really sad brown bananas) we made a fruit crisp. We threw in a huge pile of blueberries from the freezer as well as some rhubarb from the garden. Olivia was my tiny helper who may have swiped a few frozen berries.

To make the crisp super special, we made the butter that we put in it. We pulled some of the cream out of our fresh raw milk and gave it a whirl in the food processor until it looked something like this:

The kids found the whole food processor thing to be quite fun. Lily would turn it on, Olivia would randomly crank the speed up and down, and Nick would yell and jump up and down. They made lots of noise and we all laughed our butts off.

We strained the butter in a colander, pressed it, rinsed it, and cooled it in the fridge. (Although in retrospect why did I cool it if I was just going to toss it into a hot oven? Hmm.)

I stirred some local raw honey into the berry/rhubarb combo to sweeten things up a bit. Olivia got to lick the spoon after, which was apparently a blissful moment.

I also took a bit more cream (we've got almost 4 gallons of milk in the fridge today!) to make some fresh whipped cream to go on top of the crisp. The end result looked something like this:

And there you have our supper of awesome food! You don't even want to know what my kitchen looks like, but we all had an enormous amount of fun and it all tasted better than I could have hoped.

Folky Finale

Folk Fest is come and gone for another year, and once again I feel like I've skidded sideways into Sunday night just barely hanging on.

We spent fewer hours on the hill this year partly due to missing out on Thursday night and partly due to getting such late starts on our Saturday and Sunday mornings. I thought we'd make up for it a bit by getting there early today but we slept in until the blissful time of 9:30 and then by the time I baked muffins, we made breakfast, and Olivia had a nap it was well after lunch.

My overall impression of the festival this year was that while I didn't get to listen to nearly as much music as I would have liked, our total family fun level was really high. Everyone enjoyed their own thing a bit, whether it was the music or playing or stealing other people's water bottles (that one would be Olivia) and we made it through without any major meltdowns from anyone.

I think the performance I enjoyed the most was Tanya Tagag with Chris Derksen and Celina Kalluk. The two women were Inuit throat singers and the guy did sort of a beatbox backup. Throat singing is really totally funky and I'm not really sure how to describe it so...here's a video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwd2XJCQLjI

It was really much cooler with the three of them, rather than just her in the video. They got in all close to each other and totally swayed and moved and fed off each other. Really neat to watch.

It was great to hang out with so many friends this weekend too. We had an never ending line of friends to visit with, it seemed, and it made the weekend that much more enjoyable.

This is the part where I finish off the post with a great picture of us all standing at the top of the hill. If, of course, I hadn't forgotten my camera at home. You'll have to picture Liam with his dyke shirt (ask him about it!), me with my new pink Folky hat, and the kids each wearing their Folk T-shirts and great big smiles.

I have all these ideas for things I want to write about. Things that are more interesting than what I did today or what funky virus Olivia may or may not have had.

Vlad told me this evening I should write about midwifery care in Alberta. I want the brain power for that. I want to write about birth options (and the lack thereof). I want to write about why we chose to have an unassisted birth last year. I want to write about public breastfeeding and why people need to be supportive of breastfeeding mothers. I want to write about barefoot running and why my Vibrams aren't just funny looking shoes. I want to write about flower essences. I want to write about babywearing and why seeing tiny babies danging in Bjorns and other crotch-dangling carriers makes me cringe. I want to write about why we left the public school system and how our family got on the path to unschooling.

And yet...I'm tired. Too tired to feel passionate about writing anything. Too tired to translate the thoughts in my brain into words on the screen.

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe after I get a real night's sleep? It might be a few years...

Folky Festing

I've been to Folk Fest each year for the past 13 or so years and it's become a tradition for our family and a way of marking the passing of the summers. There's the year my Grandma died, the years I was pregnant with Nick and Lily, the year Olivia was just a couple of weeks old, the year we were Folk zombies as it was two weeks before our wedding and we were mega stressed.

This year, our arrangements for tickets fell through and the festival sold out in only a handful of hours which was something that had never happened before. I went through a panic of trying to get tickets through a swap board and Kijiji, but nothing panned out until this afternoon. (I like to think that the two hour nap Olivia and I took this morning was a magic nap that made all sorts of good things happen.)

So anyhow, we've got our weekend passes and we were out at the hill tonight. The weather turned out to be great despite the threat of thunderstorms and we ran into quite a few people we know (Hi Kim and Vlad!!!).

I've come to the conclusion that the more kids we add to our family, the less music we actually get to listen to. When it was just Nick, he'd bebop around on the blanket and would often go off with my parents for long stretches of time. The year before we got married was filled with these long blissful stretches of just listening to the music and holding Liam's hand. Tonight, Liam spent long stretches of time at the playground with the big kids while I held Olivia's hand as she walked circles around me on the blanket.

It is what it is, though, and I think that the music itself is only a fraction of the fun. The atmosphere, the so so yummy foods, the kids activities, and the visiting with friends are all a huge part of the event for us too.

Tonight ended on a rather sour note for Nick since he had to walk to the bus in his bare feet. For some reason (that only makes sense to 9 year old boys I think) he decided to bury his Crocs in the sand. He got distracted and then couldn't find them again, despite the help from Liam and then Kim and Vlad.

The super tired kids are all tucked in bed now and once we've all had a good night's sleep and hit the store for some new shoes for Nick we'll pack up our bags and hit the hill again. Woo!

I'm having one of those weeks where I feel like motherhood is swallowing me whole. It's inevitable, this losing of myself from time to time, in the land of little people and their intense needs. Olivia's illness has meant that I've only had one evening in the past week where I haven't held/nursed her all evening or fallen asleep putting her to bed. This has meant practically zero personal time in a week and that's just not good for the brain.

Sitting here trying to think of a blog entry for tonight I keep coming up with ideas about homeschooling or breastfeeding or babywearing and I want nothing to do with any of those things right now. And so I'm going to write about the things I love that have nothing to do with my kids. (Sending mental "Nya nya"s to Olivia as she sleeps in bed right now)

I love to read. My love of books took root early in my childhood. I went through the Black Stallion series, the various Sweet Valley books, and everything about Ramona Quimby. I moved on through Piers Anthony, Mercedes Lackey, and Jean M. Auel. I've also spent some significant time with Belva Plain and Rosamunde Pilcher along with Marion Zimmer Bradley, Nora Roberts, and Morgan Llywen. I've delved into some really fantastic non-fiction along the way, but there's something so truly satisfying in being swept away in a great story line.

Scrapbooking is also something I greatly enjoy. I'm not sure if I love poring over old photos or coming up with new layouts more. There's something very satisfying in pulling papers, pictures, and embellishments together to make a piece of art. I don't consider myself to be artistic, but when I scrapbook I feel like an artist.

Running is another "me" activity that I love. I love the aloneness of it, the quiet space that it carves out in my day where all I hear is my breath and the music coming from the headphones. The repetition of my footsteps is like a moving meditation and somewhere along my route my life all seems to fall into place.

Looking at these things and remembering how they make me feel leaves me feeling sad at how little they've been a part of my life these days. I've been reading very little, mostly picking away at The 7 Habits and reading short things online. I don't think I've scrapbooked in at least 6 months and I've only gone for a handful of runs so far this summer. It's so easy to let it all slide, to let the never ending work in the house take over during the days and then to have some brain-dead screen time once the kids are in bed and I'm too tired to do much of anything.

For someone who talks about balance and health I'm doing a darned poor job of living it lately! Sounds like I'd better do something about that...

Riding the wave

No two days in the life of parenting are quite the same.

There are the days when things run along all tickety boo and the kids are happy, the meals are easy to prepare, and we do amazing things. These are the days I feel I can do it all: new projects, adventurous outings, huge amounts of housework.

And then, then we have the days like today.

I'm tired. The kitchen is a mess. The baby is a huge, feverish, sobbing disaster. I'm too tired to remember to make coffee until almost lunch time and I can't seem to get the dog fed because I'm too busy cleaning up baby poo.

I get frustrated. And it does no good. I wish everyone would just chill and let me do my work. But still it does no good.

Eventually, even if it takes most of the day, I get to the point where I realize that it's ok if all I do is nurse the baby for hours on end and let the rest of it go. The mess will stay. The dog got fed eventually. My coffee will make its way into the microwave eventually.

And tomorrow? It might be a better day. For now I'm going to hold my sleep-nursing baby and do puzzles with the kids.

Gratitudes

It's the start of the summer blogging challenge. OooooOOOOOh!

I started a post earlier today which I was going to finish off tonight, but between my hollow brain this evening and the feverish baby in my lap I'm lacking some oomph in my writing abilities. Instead, in the name of starting things off on a positive note I give you my list of things I'm grateful for today.

1) Liam. Coming up on our 6 year wedding anniversary has had me reflecting on our relationship lately and gosh darn if I didn't pick me a stellar husband. Liam, you rock my world and I love you more each day.

2) My kiddos. Every day these little people I live with teach me so much about the true priorities in life. They keep things real and I can't imagine life without them.

3) Good friends. We spent this past weekends with old friends. We've seen each other through births, deaths, marriages, and all the little moments in between. There is something deep down good for the soul in spending time in friendships of such depth.

4) My home. Being away from home makes the house feel so much cozier when you come back to it, no matter how fantastic the trip was. I love my home and the way that yesterday's memories and today's noises fill it up with joy.

5) Breastfeeding. Olivia's fever and funky belly issues over the past 3 days has meant that she's pretty much off solid foods and is nursing quite a lot. I'm grateful that breastfeeding allows me to keep her hydrated and comforted throughout this illness.

And on that milky note, the little hot-head and I are off to bed. Happy start of the summer blog challenge!

Today

Today was a good day.

There was nothing exceptional about today, no big excitements or anything of huge significance, but it was a day and it was good.

I accomplished a lot of work in the house and it made me happy. I fed my family three good meals and a couple of snacks.

I had fun with my children. We had a tea party in the morning and we played at a spray deck in the afternoon. We laughed, we danced, we sang, we talked. We hugged, we snuggled, we dozed off to sleep together.

All of these things are little things, but they're oh so big that they fill my heart and my soul if I give them room. When I don't worry about the fight we had yesterday or the things I didn't get done last week, my eyes are filled with the sight of my children playing and the sounds of their laughter spilling out of them.

As I think of this, I think of the principles of Reiki:

Just for today do not worry

Just for today do not anger

Honor your parents, teachers and elders

Earn your living honestly

Show gratitude to everything

There, right there, are the words I need on my wall and in my mind for those times when I get swept up in the negativity.

For tonight, I sit with my heart filled and happy.

The Momness of it all

Being a mom is an experience like nothing else.

I parent day and night, day in and day out without predictable breaks or vacation time. My home is filled with toys and craft supplies, my bed has little people sleeping in it, and my shoe size has been dictated by the widening of my feet through three pregnancies. The skin of my belly is striped with stretch marks and my breasts do a great impersonation of an all-hours buffet. I spend my days pulled in fifteen directions at once as dirty laundry, hungry bellies, and chattering mouthes all clamor for my attention. I wake up in the mornings with overwhelming amounts of work waiting for me and I go to bed at night wondering where my days have gone.

And yet...

I watch miracles unfold daily. I see moments of deep and heart-melting tenderness between siblings. I see lightbulbs flashing over heads, I watch dreams swirling behind eyes, and I witness wonder and intrigue awakening in young minds.

I spend my days with these beautiful young souls who pounce on each day like it's a fresh adventure and I watch in awe as they squeeze in every last moment of fun. I stand beside them as they step into the world like its' animals and plants and people are the greatest treasures ever, and I get to see the world through their eyes.

My body has played a part in making people. I have felt the flutterings of tiny feet dancing beneath my skin, the rush of milk flowing from my breasts into hungry mouthes. I have birthed three babies, bringing them from deep within my body out into the world that awaits them. I have held their soft little bodies against my chest and I have experienced a pure love that I have never seen elsewhere.

And so the days may sometimes be long and the pile of dirty dishes may grow bigger by the day, but the struggles and the difficulties in parenthood can never come close to being equal payment for the joy and love of which I am a part.

Playful Playroom

Shortly after moving into our house, we converted what is meant to be the master bedroom off the kitchen into a playroom for the kids. It suited us better to have everyone sleeping upstairs and a play area in the main living area for the kids.

As anyone who has been to our house knows, the playroom typically looks like...well, a typical playroom. It gets played in, stuff gets dumped into it, and the mess grows quickly.

Last night, the kids headed to my parents' house for the night and Olivia and I started decluttering the playroom. I ended up working on it for an hour or so last night and then most of today. In the end, I had 11 garbage bags of stuff pulled out of it and I finished just in before the kids got home.

It was the most satisfying cleaning I've done in ages, both because of how much I got accomplished and because I had in my mind that I was creating a beautiful space for my family. The typical resentment, frustration, and overwhelm when I tackle that room disappeared when I set family happiness as my goal. It made it super easy to toss stuff into bags too. I didn't worry about how much items has cost or who had given them to us. If they didn't fit into the context of a happy space, out they went!

When the kids came home they totally flipped out over the room. It hasn't looked anything like this since early in my pregnancy with Olivia. Lily screamed and then fell over. Nick kept jumping and yelling and acting like a total goof. It made a Mama happy and totally validated my work.

Here's what the room looks like now. Liam, by the way, is not beating Lily up even though it looks like he is. They're reading a book. Promise.

See? There's the book. Dollhouse and random toys on the far wall.

Craft table:

Games and some toys in the closet:

Bookshelves! I culled quite a few, if you can believe it.

Reading area next to the bookshelves. There was another chair here earlier but someone peed in it. I'll let you guess who.

Someone made a mess...

True selves

As a homeschooling mom I spend a lot of time with my kids. I'm with them practically all day every day, and while it's an enormous blessing to witness the multitude of moments and the slow unfolding of their personalities, sometimes I realize that I'm in too close to really see their true present selves.

I notice it most with Olivia because her changes are so rapid. In my mind, she is firmly set in the "Baby" box. She's brand new, my life revolves around her needs, and she's really not her own person yet. And then I find that she's crawled across the house and is playing in the open toilet and I realize "Holy crap, this child here in front of me isn't a newborn. She's a baby blossoming into a toddler!".

With Lily, she was for so long my baby girl. She was independent but her youngness was magnified by the 5 years between her and Nick. Physically and emotionally she was nestled right in next to my heart all the time and then all of a sudden Olivia was here and Lily was bumped over a bit. When Lily was born and Nick got nudged over, I remember feeling such guilt. But with Olivia's birth I recognized that it's normal and that there isn't any way that a relationship between a mother and an older child can be quite as intense as the one between a mother and her new baby.

So these days when I look at Lily I feel like I'm searching to see who she is. At 4 1/2, she's got one foot in the preschooler world and one foot dipping into the world of big kids. Sometimes I see her as being my young baby still, and at other times I expect her to be more independent than is fair.

And then my Nick! I used to know every tiny speck of him so intimately. I knew where he picked up that phrase, when he'd pooped last, how many bites of supper he'd eaten. And now he has this swirling depth to him, this whole level of experience of the world through his own adventures and readings that I'm not a part of. So many times I've seen him as such a big kid only to have Lily reach that age and make it look so young. Is it because Nick feels older than his age? Is it because as my oldest I always expect more of him? Only time will tell I suppose.

All of this really makes me wonder who my kids really and truly are. If I were to take away the filters of who I expect them to be now and the shadows of their past selves, what would those kids standing in front of me look like?

Living and Learning

Tonight I was chatting with some homeschooling moms during a child's birthday party. One of the moms and I had just met for the first time and we ended up talking about our family's transition into unschooling.

Unschooling, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is a type of homeschooling and an approach to learning and living. Every unschooling family seems to have their own definition of the label but the basic premise is that the learning which takes place is delight-driven and done without coercion. Learning and exploring are not seen as activities which are limited to classrooms or workbooks. In our family, I view myself as a facilitator in my children's education. I offer resources which I think might be of interest, I answer questions, I help out when I'm asked.

The mom I was talking to asked me what a typical day in an unschooling home looks like, and I gave a really basic description of how we have screen time til 8 or 9 am then we have breakfast and then...we do stuff. Later on as I was driving home, I was thinking over the conversation and realized that I really could have been a lot more clear on what exactly it is we do.

Upon further reflection, I've come up with this far from exhaustive list of what we, the unschooling Johnstones, do:

We read. We read comic books, chapter books, reference books, and poetry books. We read cereal boxes and newspaper articles. We read traffic signs, name tags, t-shirts, and grocery lists. We read on the couch, in bed, in the van, and at the kitchen table. We read to ourselves, we read to each other, and we read together.

We create. We build sculptures out of clay and robots out of boxes. We draw pictures of our family, we make puppets out of sticks, and we create poetry and stories as we recite them out loud. We draw on the white board with felts, on the pavement with chalk, and on our bodies with pens, felts, and make up. We put on puppet plays and invent gymnastic routines. We dig into the dress up box and fill our house with characters and stories who do whatever we want them to. We build space ships and swords with Lego, vehicles out of K-nex, and animals out of paper.

We spend time with others. We visit old friends in their homes and talk with new friends at the grocery store. We play and talk with children and adults of all sorts of ages. We spend time with some friends on a regular basis through Cubs, swimming, and music classes and we see some friends infrequently when we go on trips or host guests.

We talk. Oh my goodness do we talk! We talk about our plans for the day, why some dogs have puppies, how cereal is made, and why Dad goes to work. We talk about our feelings, our ideas, our questions, and (sometimes) our fears. Lily asks Nick questions that only a worldly brother could answer, Nick talks to Lily about the most exciting thing he just did in his Pokemon game, and I talk to Olivia about how much that bump on her head must hurt. We talk from the moment we wake in the mornings til the moment their eyes close at night and they are swept away by childhood dreams.

We do housework. I cook oatmeal, Lily cuts up vegetables, Nick sets the table. I wash the laundry, Lily sorts the socks, Nick puts clothes into drawers, and Olivia throws everything on the floor. We tidy the livingroom, we unload the dishwasher. We sweep, mop, dust, wash windows, and vacuum. We work together, we do our own thing, we clean happily and sometimes begrudgingly.

We live. We learn. We explore. We enjoy. We work our ways through the ups and downs, the growth and the regressions, the fun and the boring. We do and we try and we ponder and we expand. Left to our own devices, we are constantly doing something.