A little shout out

I wish that we could just accept and respect that everyone's is different and what works for me doesn't have to be what works for you but we can still be friends. If we bother to look, our commonalities always outweigh our differences. I feel like so many people see others as being narrow minded and intolerant when they're often more culpable of bigotry and intolerance, just in the other direction. Some of us might lean more towards a grueling schedule and focused ambitions like Simone de Beauvoir. Some might need a cow for inspiration and average only 30 minutes of "work" a day like Gertrude Stein. Arguing about who was "better" would be rather silly. Both were great. Neither was insulted or lessened by the fact that the other was different.

This post is dedicated to everyone who realizes that
1. equality doesn't necessitate sameness
and that
2. Working without a salary doesn't indicate a lack of contribution to society any more than working for a salary indicates a contribution to society

I stay at home. Full-time. And I don't get paid for it. And that doesn't make me a bad or lesser person. I suppose if we didn't have kids and my spouse went out to work while I sat at home and ate bonbons while watching reruns of Days of Our Lives I would feel like I sucked. But that's not the case. And if I felt that life required me to work outside the home then I would take the leap and figure it out. But that's not the case either.

I actually still want to "have it all", the kids, great marriage, strong career, beautiful home, etc. I just don't feel obligated to have it all at once. Life has many parts, but I don't think they're all meant to be lived at once any more than all the verses of a song are meant to be sung at once. That typically ends up being a cacophony. At least for me. I'm terrible at juggling a million things at once and moving at the speed of light gives me a headache. Some people thrive on that though and they're amazing too.

What triggered these thoughts is another book, of course. I love reading about brilliant people (or people who made brilliant contributions) and sometimes it's wonderful to read about the more mundane aspects of their lives. They often become more human with quirks, habits, and faults unique to themselves and sometimes quite foreign to me. Their simple humanity has the strange effect of simultaneously making them less daunting and more inspiring. While walking past a shelf at the library a little book caught my attention so I grabbed it and if your in the mood for a little mundane and often quirky inspiration perhaps you should grab it as well.

A Dietary Tragedy

One of my bigger pet peeves about diets is the tragic change in the word “diet”. Originating from Greek diaita meaning  “manner of living”, diet  evolved to indicate the type of food a person usually consumed. However, when we say “he’s on a diet” we’re not talking about the fact that he eats food, we’re saying he’s on a special and probably restrictive diet. He’s dieting.  How depressing! “Diet” should have a beautiful  connotation, the sum of all things delicious and nourishing that we consume from day to day and year to year. The bringer of health, longevity, mental acuity, and physical balance.

Maybe this all starts with the fact that I generally don’t approve of the idea of a short term special diet. Logically lasting change is formed by ongoing habits and practices, not temporary fixes. Especially in the area of food, if it’s not healthy on a long term basis I can’t help but question its claim to healthy if just consumed in the short term. I suppose you could argue that a problem with low iron should be remedied in the short term by iron supplements, but actual underlying problem of not getting enough dietary iron would still have to be fixed by a diet that includes iron. My solution? I’m trying the Eat Great Food Diet. Food Diet. So far it’s been pretty amazing.

Where stuff came from:

1.       http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diet

I art because I am

To me good art is something that is alive. Something that stirs one's soul or captures a particular moment. Something that looks like it should be breathing regardless of whether it is a still life or a statue or even a splattering of color. Obviously the life doesn't come from the subject, it comes from the perception of the artist.

I think I see myself as an artist the same way 5 year old might. It's not a mater of being good or bad as much as the fact that I create "art" and therefore I am an "artist". Art is a way of expressing myself, coping, having fun, and capturing things that capture my imagination. I know that has nothing to do with books, but since I enjoy both I've decided to share both.

I thought at first that colored pastel paper would be a difficult medium to work with simply because normally I draw on white papers using a pencil to draw in shadows and line.  With colored pastel paper some of the shadow is already in there and my job is to bring out the highlights and deeper shadows.  To my surprise I like it very much!  And I thought that for a first attempt at drawing something on my own it was pretty good.  (I once copied the work of a master in a drawing class, but that was only once and at least 4 years ago.)

I choose black and white pictures thinking that they would be easier to draw.

Art draw from pictures looks flat because, duh, you're drawing a 2D object.  To lessen this effect I try to imagine the actual image of what I'm drawing, and since I'm so familiar with one baby's face in particular, it's easier for me to picture the sparkle of wide-eyed innocence and the curve of soft, adorable cheeks of other babies in my mind.  It's still not quite the same, but better than just copying the image.

You may also notice that I drew everything twice, once on scraps of regular printer paper (courtesy of our local library) and then on pastel paper for the actual drawing.  I did this to avoid roughening up the pastel paper through repeated erasing and pencil indentation by becoming familiar with the picture and any trouble spots I might encounter.  I also drew a grid on top of the original paper and each drawing to increase my accuracy (i.e. erase less, it all comes back to being a little lazy and saving the paper :)

Here are my later attempts:

My favorite!

And, speaking of little ones . . .  I think someone just woke from a nap!

The Pregnancy Series: Prepregnancy

Books on pregnancy and babies are almost like books on food. You could read into infinity. Although at first I felt overwhelmed, now that I'm contemplating baby number 3 in the not too near future I love the options. It's like ice cream. Most of the time you might be fudge type of person but then one day you want a root beer float so you get vanilla and perhaps on another occasion you go with sorbet just for kicks. Each pregnancy has been different and that has come across not only in the baby and the birth but also in my reading.


How do we make a baby?
As anyone trying to have kids can testify, it's difficult to want something so badly and be able to do so little about it. While preparing for attempting child number one, I read  Get Ready to Get Pregnant by Michael C. Lu.  I can't completely recommend it since it came across a bit dogmatic. I also can't testify to the effectiveness of any books regarding fertility since that doesn't seem to be a problem for us. (Don't worry, we have plenty of other problems.) But what I loved about the book was how it gave some of the control back to me. I felt like I could do something about the outcome of trying to get pregnant and the physical well-being of our children. While I found the try and then wait game stressful, at least I felt like I was doing something to help things move along.

Wait, can we order that baby in blue?
For baby number two I really wanted a boy. Coming from a household of girls I desperately didn't want all girls.  Too much estrogen in one house can get . . .  exciting. We were only planning on having three kids so if the second wasn't a boy I already knew I would be stressing about the third child. One day I was talking to my aunt who said, "You know there are lots of things you can do to increase the odds of having a boy" "Really????"

I admit I was skeptical at first, but I checked How to Choose the Sex of Your Baby by Landrum B. Shettles out from the library and read it anyway. Apparently sperm for males swim faster and sperm females live longer and tolerate an acidic environment better. So according to Shettles, if you figure out when your ovulation occurs, time the intercourse right, and adjust a few other things you can increase the odds of having a boy or a girl. It made sense to me so I spent two months tracking my basal temperature and we gave it a shot. Nine months later VOILA! out popped Branden. He was even born the month that I wanted. I've also heard really good things about Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler and plan to read that before my next baby.

Special diet special baby?
At present I'm trying to figure out how to improve our diet as a family, and I bumped into  Deep Nutrition by Catherine and Luke Shanahan. I didn't find the entire book worth reading, but she did have some very interesting ideas. The first was her explanation of how diet drastically affects how our genes are expressed over multiple generations. This makes sense to me considering the wide range of health issues and allergies that seems to be growing rapidly in children. The other idea that resonated with me was the idea that while we are unaware of how malnourished we are it shows up in our children. For the first child a mother's body can takes nutrients from her for the baby but for later pregnancies, especially those close together, the body cannot provide the same level of nutrition and the baby is often just slightly less "beautiful" and thus healthy. Our first child is quite attractive and while our second is a darling he's just isn't as show stopping as his sister. They were born about two years apart (vs. the 3 to 4 years the book recommends.) Obviously there are a lot of other factors involved, but we're going to give the whole "make a baby with better epigenetic expression" a shot starting with our diet now. I still have a bit more exploration to do, but more on my foray into the world of "good diet" is coming up.

Staying Inspired, Effortless Success by Michael Neil

Sometimes as parents I feel like we get stuck in the day to day hamster wheel and after a while the joyful life seems to turn into a life of drudgery. Too keep myself inspired and help myself move forward as a person one of my many solutions is self-help, self-improvement or inspirational books. During any given month you'll find me listening on and off to some random audio book and sometimes YouTube videos (particularly ET's TGIM series). While improving my parenting and home making skills is not my goal in this, I find them deeply intertwined. As we learn to create our own successful lives, we can better help our children become their own unique brand of successful.

At the moment I'm listening to Effortless Success by Michael Neill courtesy of the amazing King County online library. I love it because it's easy to listen to in bits and pieces, a baby feeding here, a flossing my teeth there. It doesn't require a pen an pencil to jot down your current plan to change you life in 3 minutes, and I typically walk away with one or two interesting thoughts that I can share with my husband or chew on for a couple of hours or a couple of days.

The current thought I've been digesting is "What do you want? No. What do you really want?" This is a difficult question for me to answer because I'm not a particularly driven, passionate, this is my destiny I'm going to change the world type of person. I don't have an "I was born to do this."

After much thought I've decided there are a couple of things that I really, really want. I want to live my beliefs. I want raise a wonderful family. And I want to express myself as the creative, artistic person that I am. Nothing brilliant or earth shattering, but right now this what make me whole and complete.

This caused me to reflect on the thought that a woman's (or a man's :) song has many verses, and we are not intended to sing them all at once. Success seems to be less of an end goal and more of an constantly evolving, never perfect juggle where our physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual needs are mostly met. Sometimes one takes preeminence, sometimes one takes a backseat for a while, but none are denied. Yes I would like more sleep. No I don't get to be an artist nearly as much as I would like. But I've come to the conclusion that if you ask me "Are you living a successful life?" my answer is yes and I thank God daily for the ability to live such a life.

Confident Parents Remarkable Kids by Bonnie Harris M.S.Ed.

I recently started reading the book Confident Parents Remarkable Kids by Bonnie Harris M.S.Ed. Based on just the introduction and the first chapter it seems ok and has some good ideas.

There are two things that keep this book being amazing. First, I have to figure out what she's trying to convey instead of it being completely clear. For example she mentions several times that punishments are an inappropriate way of dealing with misbehavior but there should still be good discipline. The key to this is understanding that your children want to be "successful" and be good people and treat them that way. Ummm . . . so what you mean is that you treat them like they are essentially good kids trying as hard as they can, and although there should be consequences for bad behavior, your first step should be to try to discover how their situation is causing them to act out of character but you should never punish them. . . .

I agree with their desire to do good and inappropriate punishment having negative results, I do. But here's my second issue with her book: I think there's nothing wrong when kids sometimes act out of a desire to achieve rewards or avoid negative consequences. (Dallin H. Oaks explained motivations well in his article "Why do we serve?") I believe that our primary motivating factor should be love. Our children should treat their siblings kindly because they care about one another. They should study because they enjoy learning and growing. They should take care of their rooms and toys because they appreciate them and love their home. However, this perspective is a challenge for most full grown adults. This is the ideal. There's nothing wrong with using other motivating factors as we work towards the ideal.

Desire for reward, social approval, and avoiding punishment are arguably the most self centered reasons and not what we want our kids to ultimately seek, but they're kids. They're learning. At birth they are naturally completely self-centered. Babies don't even understand that there are persons besides themselves. So my toddler can choose between walking into the house or being carried into the house, and she'll often choose walking for perfectly selfish reasons. I'm ok with that. As they get older we encourage them to move towards better motivators such as a sense of duty, loyalty, and to obtain long term goals and benefits. We do chores because being part of a family means having responsibilities. We're not going to spend money on fancy shoes because we want to go to Disney Land next year. And woven throughout all of that is the message that because of love we want what's best for you and what's best for our family. Love motivates us to do what's best and what's right. But if in the not to distant future Hana 's chooses to sit in her chair because otherwise Daddy will pin her to the chair, well, that's life.

Simplicity Parenting Applied, Part 3: The Rhythm of Routine

In my mind routines and schedules have often meant a twisted combination of boring predictability and uncomfortable constraint. Simplicity Parenting has changed my perspective. I loved Dr. Payne's description of life as a tune with the rhythm of routine and the  melody of schedule being played out in infinite variations. Without the background melody the symphony of life tends to descend into cacophony. A beautiful metaphor, but when it came to application I found myself struggling. We have routines, we do, but there was (and still is) room for improvement. So I do what I do when faced with any problem requiring pondering. I pulled out a post it note (or several notes), made a list, and tweaked it over a period of almost a month. I confess I'm still tweaking, but I doubt a polished, finished schedule and routine list is what Dr. Payne had in mind anyway.

Rhythms for infants and young children are like magic. The first time my daughter smiled was actually during her bedtime routine. It felt like she "got it" and was thrilled to know what was happening. (She wasn't much for smiles when she was an infant so this was a BIG deal.) When there's a routine you don't have to explain everything anew, "going through the motions" requires less energy, and shifting gears moves more smoothly. Almost like driving. In the beginning there seem to be a million different things to keep track of and then after a while you begin to do things automatically.

First there's the day. What happens when we wake up? What happens after breakfast? When we walk out the door? What happens before we take a nap? If it's repeated it can become more rhythmic. My goal is consistency. Now after breakfast there's a potty break, teeth brushing, hair tying, a 5 minute clean up, and book reading. Hana argues less about brushing her teeth and even 5 month old Branden understands that he's going to be playing in his rocker for a set amount of time.

Next there's the week. My goal was to distinguish each day from the next. Of course the kids don't have the days sorted out in their heads, but when I say Tuesday Hana says story time. That makes Tuesday Tuesday. We're still learning the other days. Sunday is church. Monday is Walker Family Home Evening. Wednesday Mommy has Tai Chi. Thursday brings the garbage truck. Friday is Zumba (sometimes). Saturday is pancakes (also sometimes). Our very imperfect song of the week is starting to come together. It's strangely comforting. Predictable.

Then there's the months and seasons. I'm still working on extending rhythm concept throughout the year with traditions for holidays, birthdays, and changes in seasons. I think the most memorable, favorite aspects of holidays are the ones lived over and over and over. Carving pumpkins. Hanging ornaments on the tree. Coloring rocks at the start of spring. Barbeques on the Fourth of July. Beautiful. (Btw, Meg Cox wrote a wonderful book on this entitled The Book of New Family Traditions.)

There are of course exceptions, changes, and unplanned spit-ups, but with a little bit of transparency and flexibility we seem to able to jump most of the hurdles with ease and often a smile. Dr. Payne emphasized the need to help children create visual images of what will happen and this is definitely essential for young children.

There also needs to be balance. Moments of release to talk, play, and relax. Calm days to detox after busy ones. The messiness of free play along side the order of organized activities. With all of the emphasis on organized athletics at younger and younger ages I thought Dr. Payne gave a timely reminder. He stated that the "messiness of free play, with its many changes and possibilities mirrors life and builds an inner flexibility." Truly in life there are no referees, team uniforms, and clear cut rules of play. There are few things that can better prepare us for the game of life than the spur of the moment, made up children's games.

Having a "melody" for the family protects the family. Routines and rituals help us bounce back more quickly from life's unexpected storms. Traditions tie us together. Weekly patterns help us recognize more quickly what stresses threaten to overwhelm us. Having a plan helps us cope with the unplanned. I've come to realize that far from restraining us routines and rhythms seem to loosen the stress that often ties us down, provide comfort, and give us the predictability necessary to enjoy the new and unexpected.