Cosleeping

Two of my favourites this month were about cosleeping. I love cosleeping. I can’t imagine not having my babies right there next to me all night long, where I can reach out to touch or stroke them. Meredith has started sleeping in her own room, sometimes more than others, and I’m really cherishing the times she’s in our room now (which recently have increased again). It’s hit home how short a period it really is in the scheme of life. Yes, we have hard nights, and often the ones with Meredith in the room are harder because my stirrings with Fiona can disturb her too, but waking up with two little girls snuggled into me, being able to kiss their heads and hug them close to me, having them wake up and see me watching them and smile up at me… it’s priceless. Nothing can replace those moments. Meredith napped on me every nap in the mei tei until she was 14 months old (and still many naps after that too), and now that’s generally where you will find Fiona napping too. Either there, or in my arms if she’s fallen asleep nursing.

Annie wrote about A Sleepy Moment and also shared a favourite album, which we ended up downloading from iTunes. Meredith loves it. Rachel shared her thoughts on Co-Sleeping, Night-Waking, and Growing-Up. I loved this post. Her descriptions of nights with a small baby are so spot on. And though Meredith isn’t as old as her son yet, I often have the same feelings about her growing up when we’re cuddled up together at night. Her post is so eloquent and beautiful, and has really made even some pretty difficult nights recently a lot easier. As she says: “I chose to have both of my kids know that I was there and I was their mama, no matter what the clock said.”

Living and Learning

September is back-to-school month, and so I think school is at the forefront of most parent’s minds, even unschoolers whose thoughts are how nice it will be to have the parks back to being quiet again. I loved this post on the Flow of Love blog about Limiting Beliefs and Freedom from Fear. She discusses the messages that we as parents send to our children through our words and actions. We try hard not to use labels (even unschooling), because I feel like you can become stuck in this rigid box with limited sides, and labels can be interpreted differently by different people. I try not to label Meredith in front of her (she’s shy, she’s outgoing, she’s a leader, she’s a follower), because she can be all of these things, and none of them, depending on the situation. Even positive ones can create a box. I was labelled “gifted” as a child and suddenly I had this label I had to continually live up to for fear of disappointing those around me. This post is a reminder that children and people aren’t the only ones who are labelled, but the world around us as well.

I loved the Solace comic on Mama-Is. There are many times while wearing my babies (either of them) out and about that I just have to stop and kiss their heads and give them a hug and forget all about whatever’s happening around us. It’s one big reason I prefer to wear them on my front as long as possible.

A local unschooler wrote a post on her blog in response to an article about stay-at-home moms that was going around Facebook that really connected with me: Thinking SAHM. I adored this post, and I think it’s one I will be going back to. It is another that pretty much sums up my own feelings much better than I ever could. And I love Wendy Priesnitz’s comment to the post too: “If we don’t value our work as mothers, how can we expect society to do so?”

Another great post is Sarah‘s guest post at the Mahogany Way on Allowing Ownership. It’s a great reminder to me to really look at the reasons behind any rules or requests we may have, and to examine my underlying fears. It was timely too. Shortly after reading the post, Meredith started drawing on her Jenga blocks. It’s a not-even-full set we got with a bunch of other wooden blocks from Value Village for something like $3.99. My first instinct was to ask her not to draw on her toys, but I was able to step back and just watch her having fun and being creative with her own things.

Nutritionism

I first heard the term “nutritionism” when I came across the Food Renegade post Food – Not Nutrients – Is the Fundamental Unit in Nutrition. It’s not a September post but I just came across it so I’m putting it here. It makes so much sense. For a class I’m taking, I recently had to do a report on my eating habits and how well I follow the Canada Food Guide. I had to answer questions like “Do I choose low-fat dairy products?” My husband and I joked about how easily I could make a case for a McDonald’s diet being healthy using the criteria listed on the homework page. There is still no emphasis on real foods… ones that don’t come from a package. As long as you’re meeting some arbitrary minimum based solely on gender and age (but not body type, weight, health), you’re supposedly getting the nutrients you need, but are you really getting the food you need?

This month, Breastfeeding Moms Unite had a great post on Understanding Nutritionism and The Problem with Infant Formula. It really puts into perspective for me what the problem with formula really is, and why it’s only fourth or fifth best and can never be “just as good”. (First being directly from mom, second being pumped from mom, third being pumped from someone else (preferably not pasteurized), fourth is debatable but some say a homemade formula made of raw goat’s or cow’s milk, and last comes formula.) I feel for those women who can’t breastfeed for some reason, I really do. I would be devastated if it were me. But there is no way I could honestly say that formula is “just as good” or even “almost as good” as breast milk. It’s just not. It doesn’t mean I think women who knowingly choose to formula feed should feel guilty, especially not those who really can’t breastfeed (I know it’s hard to get enough donor milk), but just because you don’t have any other choice doesn’t suddenly make it better than what it is. I think this post had a very good point, in that formula alone is certainly not a deciding factor in future health, and a lot of the studies done on the effects of formula may not take into account that people who formula feed may not place as much importance on food as a whole and may be more likely to feed less real foods later in life too.

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Considering that we went to four different grocery stores on Saturday, spent the whole evening cooking, then spent all day Sunday and I spent most of the day Monday cooking, Meredith was so patient. She mostly was happy to entertain herself and seems to realize that something is going on. I had a dream about the baby last night (I dreamed it was a little girl and I gave birth to her in water), and then the first thing Meredith talked about this morning (after asking if Daddy was home, which is always her first question in the morning) was about how the baby was a girl. I hadn’t mentioned the dream to her at all, so that was a bit odd. I still have a feeling the baby is a boy though. Not sure why. I don’t think I put much stock in all those old wives tales, but if you do, most of them point to this baby being a boy. So maybe subconsciously I believe them more than I think. We’ll see in just a few weeks or less at this point. (My ticker on the side is almost down to single digits, eep!)

I got a package in the mail yesterday that’s making me really want to have this little tiny baby to dress him or her in these adorable, tiny clothes. They’re from my sister-in-law. I have a few more shirts in the works too and another pair of pants, plus I am making a shirt for Meredith and one for a friend’s son and hopefully a few as gifts too. I’m not sure they’ll all get done before the baby gets here, but it shouldn’t be too hard to sew at least a little bit with a newborn in a wrap. On my to-do list for this week though is the baking, Meredith’s and my friend’s son’s shirts, and trying to clean out our study so we can move the change table down here. I’d like to get at least one more coat of paint on the kitchen and our living room painted this weekend, and then I feel like we’re mostly pretty much ready for baby to come whenever.

I’ve always wanted a spring baby. The weather has been absolutely beautiful and it looks like I’ll get my wish, even though it technically won’t quite be spring yet.

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1. In her own time
2. Hi baby
3. Happy Birthday Meredith!

Things are still moving right along. I occasionally get mild heart burn, but other than that this has still been an extremely uneventful pregnancy. I’m not complaining at all lol. A few more weeks to the third trimester. We’ve pretty much decided on two girl’s names, though we won’t decide which one for sure until the baby’s born probably. Funnily, neither of them were on our list before I got pregnant this time. Boy’s names are once again harder. We have about ten on the “short” list still. That’s better than with Meredith’s pregnancy though, where we could barely get a short list at all that we were both happy with.

I guess I’m nesting. I’m still doing some major decluttering and reorganizing, especially upstairs though over the weekend we reorganized our living room too. It feels much more spacious the way we have it and Meredith’s toys don’t feel so cramped. Her room is starting to actually look fairly empty. I have the change table set up so I can start putting some baby stuff away on it. I need to sand and paint her bed and finish getting rid of the stuff that’s left, but compared to how it looked when I started it’s looking great. I’m not going to post any pictures until it’s done though, the before pictures will be too embarrassing without seeing that I really did get it done. I’m excited about it. We plan to use it as a space where Meredith can keep things she doesn’t want the baby to get into. She can nap/sleep there if she wants but I don’t plan to push her into that at all, I just want her to have the option because she’s such a light sleeper and I’ve read some kids actually prefer their own room with a cosleeping new baby. I may set our crib up there too and if this baby will actually sleep out of arms I have a feeling he/she may end up being put down more often for naps, so that I can spend some one-on-one time with Meredith and won’t have to be constantly asking her to keep her voice down. I haven’t decided about that though, as it would mean when the baby is sleeping she wouldn’t be able to go up there, and I also really loved having Meredith nap in the mei tei on us and didn’t find it too disruptive. But I didn’t have a two year old at the time either. I’m not really a fan of cribs though (we only have it because my mom bought it for us after I told her we didn’t want one), so more likely if baby goes down for naps it will be in our bed like Meredith does now.

I’ll end with a picture from Halloween. My talented friend Kyre made the shirt and it turned out perfectly. (Check out her site to see the gorgeous cake she recently made for a birthday party.) I got a lot of comments on it when we were trick-or-treating and I’m sad I only get to wear it once. Meredith was Nemo, which was perfect for her as she loves the colour orange and she adores fish (it’s her favorite part of the zoo when we go). She loved Halloween and still talks about the candy and balloon she got that day, even though she really doesn’t eat much candy besides Smarties. Kris and I ended up eating most of hers while she chose to eat healthy things like eggs, bananas, and avocadoes, even though we left the candy bucket out. She would open a bag, sometimes have one or two, and then give the rest of it to one of us. I think just the excitement of everything was really neat to her though.

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I have a couple of meme’s I’ve been tagged for that I would like to do at some point, and a few ideas for other posts. Otherwise, we’re doing well. Getting ready for Christmas, sort of… We haven’t actually really started gifts, and considering we want to handmake them all that’s not a good sign! I think I might make bathrobes for our nieces and nephew our of towels, and embroider their names on them. I’d really like to make one for Meredith too and they don’t look too hard. We’ll see though. I need more ideas for younger kids though. We have baskets planned out for most of the adults that should be good I think. I love everything about Christmas except the consumerism, so we started handmaking gifts last year and I think they ended up going over well with most people.

We are discussing selling our car. We bought it brand new 2 1/2 years ago and it has been great, especially when we lived in Sidney, but now that we’re in town we walk almost everywhere. It seems silly to be paying the payments on a car we use a couple of times a week. If it sells, we might buy an older American car (because they depreciate so fast, it’d be cheap), and just plan to rent a car for trips to Calgary. It would still be far cheaper than the payments on our current car. I put the car up yesterday just to see if there was any interest and already have someone coming to look at it today. If he decides to buy it I’m not sure what we’ll do, we can’t afford to buy another car until January when Kris gets his bonus. (We’ll just barely break even with what we have left owing on the car if it sells.) We’ll make do though, I’m sure. Maybe we’ll find we don’t really need a car that much anyway. In our ongoing efforts to declutter, I’ve also put a bunch of other things up for sale and had some interest in those too.

Meredith is really starting to become quite vocal. She still doesn’t have many “real” words but she makes a lot of new sounds and has started to string sounds together a lot too. She loves to say “uh oh”. She’s also making up new signs too. She will use the signs we use a few times, and then make up her own and stop using the one we’ve tried to teach. I’m not sure why but it’s pretty cute. I have a cousin who is deaf and was hoping Meredith would learn ASL, but even if not, at least it’s a way we can communicate with her.

Her favorite activity lately is to look through books, or have us read to her. She has one book in particular she loves. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? was cute the first time, and the second, and maybe even the third. But Kris and I both have it memorized now we’ve read it so much. She also seems to be teething again and has been less willing to play independently so I can clean up a bit or do dishes. I hate how messy that means the house gets, and would like to raise Meredith to appreciate a clean house (something I feel I didn’t get from my parents forcing us to clean our rooms once a week and otherwise our house was often messy), but really, I know that this is another phase and a messy house for a few weeks won’t hurt anyone. Sometimes if she gets really clingy or I’m tired of Brown Bear, Brown Bear yet again, I’ll take her outside and we’ll walk and explore. If it’s near nap time I’ll put her in the mei tei and walk until she falls asleep. A good friend just moved into our complex and she has a two year old son, so she will often come with us on the walks and the kids will play. It’s wonderful having someone so close by with similar parenting values.

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It was fantastic though. We had lunch at a great little cafe, wandered around, ate frozen yogurt, and explored the shops, and found a private little area where we rested and read while Meredith napped. We caught the bus back to the ferry, had a little snack in the restaurant and then back on the ferry again.

Back at home:

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Second, the wedding was so much fun. I only wish the weekend could have been longer. Unfortunately, because it’s a bit of a drive, we really only had one full day there. We didn’t get there until 5pm Friday night and had to leave at 11am Sunday. But I loved seeing my family and my cousins. The wedding was a beautiful, outdoor ceremony and my cousin was stunning.

Meredith was friendly and social as usual. (I love that my mom thinks I’m making her antisocial by cosleeping, and yet comments constantly about how happy and friendly she is. Does she think it has absolutely nothing to do with my parenting? Or maybe she says differently about us behind my back?) She (Meredith, not my mom) did get a really bad diaper rash Saturday evening, and started acting clingy. Even though we changed her frequently, I think she’s not used to being in diapers that much, especially not the PUL (plastic) covers, since she’s generally coverless/diaperless at home and we use wool overnight. She got extremely fussy (very unusual for her), so we took her upstairs to our room. Her bum was super red and I touched it and she started to scream. We put some rash cream on it and I gave her a small dose of baby Motrin. I try to use it very sparingly (I think we’ve only used it once before, for teething), but stuck in a hotel in the mountains at 8 o’clock at night I didn’t feel we had a lot of other options besides just letting her be in pain. We also started just using the wool covers and not using the plastic ones. I had hesitated to use them because some of them are borrowed and she often has poo blowouts when we travel, but I do have some of my own this time so I used those. I imagine babies in disposables must be really uncomfortable with this heat if one day of plastic gave Meredith a diaper rash that bad. Anyway, the Motrin and nursing seemed to help, and we went back down to the reception just in time for the speeches.

Meredith has been taking steps for a while now, but just this past week she actually started walking. Now already, she prefers to walk rather than crawl. It seems like it happened overnight. She wants us to help her still though, even though she can walk on her own. (She even ran down the hallway last night!) So when we got down to the wedding again, she grabbed Kris’ fingers and pulled him around. He was trying to be discreet and just stay low and let her walk around the tables, but she decided to lead him onto the dance floor in the middle of my cousin’s speech (the bride). She stopped her speech to call out: “Meredith! I can’t believe you’re walking!” And then my aunt yelled “Kris! You and Meredith are not supposed to be the first dance.” (All in good fun. My aunt is like a second mom to me and adores Meredith.) She also made friends with another little girl there (who is three) and they crawled around together for a while. We got some really sweet pictures of them. Then I put her in the mei tei and she fell asleep, so we stuck around for part of the dancing. A testament to baby wearing for sure, since we didn’t have to leave when she got tired. Her diaper rash was mostly cleared up by the next day and it’s gone now.

Our next big thing is Meredith’s birthday in a week. Kris is taking the day off and we’re planning on taking the ferry over to one of the islands and spending the day either touring the islands, or just picking one island and staying there all day. We haven’t really decided yet, but it’s something we’ve discussed doing for several years and never done yet. I had also wanted to buy a tree and plant it in our yard for Meredith, but I’m not sure I want to do anything like that until we have our own house. We’re having a barbecue with friends the weekend after too. I didn’t want to go overboard for a first birthday, but I think doing our own family thing the day of and then having some friends for a barbecue at a nearby park on the weekend will be a lot of fun.

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So the other night we decided to do the longer loop. We were almost to the end of the forest part, the last bit is along a road. There’s a very dark part at the end where you basically can’t see anything, and our little lantern doesn’t help much. We had just started through that area when all of a sudden the bush right next to the path started moving and we could hear what sounded like an enormous animal moving around.

I’m going to back up a little bit before I get to the punch line. I have always fancied myself as pretty independent. I don’t need a guy to go and get the car when it’s raining, I have no need for my chair to be pulled out, I’ll change my own oil and fix my own computer, thank you very much. In school, I’d rather play sports than dance. (I actually think I used to be independent to a fault, but that’s a post/rant for another time.) I also don’t think about things like clothes or shoes much. (This is obvious in the fact that I wore the $110 pants my mom gave me to a co-op maintenance party (and not the celebration kind, we were doing gardening and painting)… oops.) I actually like most bugs and spiders and I don’t mind getting dirty.

So what do you think I did when we heard the rustling in the bushes? Did I grab a nearby tree branch and jump in front of D2 ready to save the day? Did I yell and wave my arms and try to scare it off? Or did I backpeddle ten feet leaving poor D2 alone with our 15 pound dog to save the day by himself?

Yep, that’s right, I skedaddled out of there. My excuse is that I was the one with Bebe and I needed to protect her. Turns out, whatever was in there (my guess is a giant cougar or a bear, D2′s guess of raccoon just isn’t nearly as impressive) was as scared of us as we were of it and it turned and ran too. D2 admitted he was pretty freaked out too though, so it wasn’t just me. We both decided we didn’t actually want to go through the dark part and we just turned and went back the way we had come. We actually haven’t walked that way since. Last night when we got to the short part of the loop and Bebe wasn’t quite asleep, we just turned around and did the loop again backwards instead.

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The weather has been fooling with us recently. The sun will come out, but by the time I’ve gotten Bebe and I both ready to go out, it will be pouring rain. It is off and on like that all day. I try to get out walking a lot, but I’m not always successful. There is a little local grocer about 20 minutes away so when we need groceries I’ll walk up there with Meredith in the mei tei.

Some friends and I went out for a walk this morning. It was cold for most of it, but we went to a playground and watched their kids play together while we chatted. Meredith fell asleep in the mei tei. When I got back to the car I assumed she’d wake up transferring to the car seat, but to my surprise I was able to very carefully transfer her. She woke up briefly but settled again without needing to nurse. When I got home I got her in the house still asleep in the car seat, and she slept for another hour. I have been able to transfer her into the house in her car seat before, but normally actually moving her (ie. from the mei tei to the car seat) wakes her up, and then she doesn’t go back to sleep again very easily. I wonder if that was a fluke or if she’s starting to be able to settle herself back down to sleep when she wakes up a little bit? Part of me is a bit sad if it’s the latter. She’s still so tiny, but she really is growing so much.

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Bebe is starting to show an interest in books other than as food. She still will only sit for a page or two, but she looks at the pictures and tries to turn the pages. I love Mama Mama/Papa Papa. One of the lines is: “Mama, Mama, soft as silk, give me warmth, and give me milk” and shows a baby leopard nursing. Another is “Mama, mama, hold me tight, we sleep a cozy sleep tonight.” There’s also a line about baby wearing. It’s a very sweet book and now that Bebe is saying “Mama” a lot, I think she likes listening to it too.

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