We got new family pictures taken yesterday in the woods behind our house. While I love words very much–very, very much–sometimes there’s nothing like a picture to say what you really feel… đ
âFor months I just looked at you
I wondered about all the mothers before me
if they looked at their babies the way I looked at you.
In an instant I knew what moved humankind
from continent to continent
Against all odds.â
âMichelle Singer (in WeâMoon 2011 datebook)
This guest post is part of my blog break festival. The festival continues through December, so please check it out and consider submitting a post! Also, donât forget to enter my birth jewelry giveaway. This post falls into the Motherful category and was written by my own mother (I’m the 11 year daughter mentioned in the story)!
The Womenâs Lounge
by Barbara Johnson
âExcuse me, thereâs veal in your babyâs ear,â whispered the stolid-looking, well-groomed businessman seated next to me on the crowded airplane (who had spent the entire trip trying to project himself into another realm where traveling women with multiple children were prohibited from invading his space). I glanced down. Sure enough, there was a pool of tomato sauce, with veal, in my sleeping 6 month old infantâs ear. I grabbed an inadequate airline napkin and swabbed ineffectually away, while Mr. Businessman began searching around in his brief case â presumably to avoid further contact or conversation with me. I seized the moment of his inattention to duck my head discreetly and quickly lick up the remainder of the mess. Slightly gross, but highly efficientâŚ..This episode apparently unleashed some hidden reservoir of chattiness and my seat partner proceeded to produce volumes of photographs of his family, accompanied by amusing anecdotes. No further mention was made of veal.
I managed to extricate myself (holding sleeping baby girl and an insanely oversized diaper bag), my two âyear-old high-needs son (understatement), and my two older daughters (ages 9 and 11) from the plane. I was met by an airline representative to be transported to our connecting flight gate. This had been carefully pre-planned, as I knew I had only a 25 minute layover and many small bodies to transport. I was smugly proud of my maternal organizing skills, never reckoning on the embarrassment of hurtling through the Salt Lake City air terminal, honking warning sounds at innocent travelers. We were crammed onto the hindmost seat, facing backwards with our feet braced to avoid being thrown out on our faces every time the vehicle accelerated. The cart reeled past all manner of passengers, including many people certainly more in need of transport that we were. A young man pushing 2 occupied wheel chairs, an elderly woman with a walker, and a blind man with a cane. My humiliation mounted as we beeped them out of our path.
The diaper bag was a massive affair, having been carefully selected for maximum capacity. Its depths contained not only diapers, but boxes of juice, a variety of snacks, my purse and personal items, as well as activity selections for 4 age groups. Oh, and my book that I had been carrying with me for 10 years, hoping for random opportunities for quick reading (hah!). Toys, crayons, tiny cars, stuffed animals, granola barsâŚâŚIt weighed a ton. The relevance of this information will be revealed later.
I could have saved myself this ride had I bothered to check any of the departing flight monitors. They would have told me what I found out upon my jubilantly prompt arrival at the gate. My connecting flight was delayed. Well, thatâs not so bad! We can surely occupy ourselves for a while in the airport! No problem! Since there was no departure time listed, I parked the kids in a waiting area and lined up to ask a few questions.
Traveling companions circa 1990
My organized-traveling-mom-with-four-children veneer cracked a bit when I heard that the plane was delayed for 6 hours. This was not good. Must make the best of it! Not to worry! Iâm a 24 hour a day parent! A woman of the 90âs! I can do this! No problem!
I returned to my gang, suggesting that we tour the airport and see all the fun sights, like airplanes taking off and landing over and over, and expensively fragile gift shops. Everyone was tired of this after an hour, so I broke out the snacks. Not good enough â the restaurants and vending machine items looked vastly superior to the eyes of my children, but not to my traveling budget.
My 2-year-old son began to melt down. My daughters needed to use the restroom, but I had an irrational and paranoid fear regarding restroom perverts, so we all had to shuffle in together (including the burdensome diaper bag). Exiting the facility, my toddler spotted a candy machine and hurtled headlong towards it, shrieking and maniacally pulling knobs. The baby in the backpack was pulling my hair while bouncing. The big girls were totally loaded down by the diaper bag (it took both of them to lug it around). We were a public spectacle! Oh, the shame! There were still 5 loathsome hours to wait in that sensory-overloaded airport. It was too noisy, to bright, too loud, too hot and too stinky for any sane person to endure for that long! Argh!
There was a gentle tap on my shoulder and I turned to look way up into the face of a burly security officer. Was I to be arrested for disturbing the peace, or possibly vandalizing the candy machine? I cringed.
âExcuse me, maâamâ, he said. âDid you know thereâs a womenâs lounge over there?â, and indicated a door near the restroom that had a small plaque reading âloungeâ on it. I, in my ignorance, had supposed such doors thus marked to be solely for the secret use of airport personnel, and certainly NOT for traveling mothers. But no, apparently I was allowed to enter! The large and kind officer hoisted the diaper-bag-from-hell and led the way, tipping his hat politely at the door as I staggered through it.
An amazing oasis in that desert of chaos greeted me. It was a small, cool sitting room with a couch, table, several chairs and a sink (with paper towels! Oh joy!). As I removed the baby pack, using the handy counter, and collapsed into a chair, a woman of greenish-white complexion emerged blearily from beneath a blanket on the couch, offering weakly to make room for us. âNo, no!â I gushed. âWeâre fine! There are plenty of chairs. Just settle back down!â She gratefully did. We exchanged stories while I nursed the baby and passed out snacks. She had been compelled to actually miss her connection due to motion sickness, and was actually too ill to continue. Well, that was certainly not fun and possibly worse than my situation. At least we werenât throwing up. I like to use the reverse psychology of âit could always be worseâ to comfort myself under adverse conditions⌠âHave a cracker?â I offered. She took it and actually seemed improved. Maybe the diaper bag was worth it after all.
The door opened, admitting a cacophony of airport noise, along with a desperate-looking young woman loaded with a rotund infant and a crying 3-ish girl, clutching her stomach. She thrust the infant into my arms, saying âWould you mind holding him? Sheâs going to throw up!â, and ran out. The baby and I stared at each other. I offered a cracker, which he solemnly accepted, and I hoped was acceptable to his mother. Actually, she looked harried enough to not even notice or care. He was content to merely hold it and watch my kids as they played.
The door opened again, and all eyes turned towards it, expecting the return of the babyâs mother. But no, it was an Asian woman accompanied by a miniature, elderly woman using a walker. They looked around hesitantly, smiling shyly and bowing. HmmmmâŚâŚMs. Airsick, revived by the cracker, shifted around to make room. The elderly woman inched through the children, avoiding fingers and toys, and eased down with an audible sigh. âMany babies!â said the first woman. âWell, theyâre not all mineâ, I said. She looked puzzled. âI donât know this oneâ indicating the solemn fellow on my lap. âAhâ, she replied. âHis mother left him with me because her daughter was throwing up, but I never saw any of them before in my lifeâ I babbled. âAh!â she repeated, clearly baffled. The tiny raisin of a mother (I guess) barked a question in what I supposed was rapid-fire Chinese. âAh!â said the woman. They both beamed at me and I beamed back. I asked them if they had a long wait, but apparently our conversation about babies had exhausted their English vocabulary. They did say âHong Kong, many hours, much troubleâ. I could read the rest in their eyes. Without a working grasp of the language and a special-needs traveler on top of that, they were trying to travel home and it was not going smoothly. After a while, an Asian-American airline representative came to fetch them. They bowed away, repeating âThank you very much! Bye-bye!â I wished I could have understood more of that story.
Meanwhile, Little Vomiter and her mother returned. We discussed various stomach complaint home-remedies. Ginger Ale? May try that next time, but of course thereâs none available in the airport â perhaps on the plane? Our babies had birthdays only 2 days apart and before you knew it we were exchanging labor stories. Ms. Airsick looked better. Perhaps tales of other peopleâs discomfort helped take her mind off her own stomach.
The door opened again, admitting a woman with twin four-year olds who looked miserable. We squeezed together to make room. She was having a nightmare trip in which her flight had been totally cancelled and there was a luggage mix-up causing her bags to be sent to Atlanta (they thought). My paltry delay was beginning to seem like a pleasant gift.
This pattern continued throughout my sojourn in the womenâs lounge. Women of all ages and backgrounds took solace there. We helped, comforted and commiserated with each other, waving a cheerful farewell as each departed, knowing only the basic fact of TRAVEL INTERRUPTED. In the minutes of our contact, we each forged a bond. It felt as if we were all connected, and fulfilling some cosmic destiny by being thrown together in that haven to support each other. I never asked anyoneâs name or more than their travel destination, but we learned so much about each other anyway. The bond of femaleness and motherhood bound us together, allowing us to trust and help each other. I sent my daughters to the restroom with a total stranger, no longer fearful of lurking criminals. We shared an unpleasant, but not unbearable, travel experience and emerged from it enriched. We were like ships that pass in the night, recognizing our bond in a vast ocean. We were all suspended and isolated in a sea of people sailing towards their destinations.
I passed through the Salt Lake City airport many times in the subsequent years, but never faced another delay and never again sought out the womenâs lounge. I picture it still exactly the same, with an ongoing stream of stressed women finding peace, comfort and support. Iâve felt this support before, from family and friends in troubled times, but never before I had I been stranded in such a way. The womenâs lounge was a haven for us all. The interesting part of it was how quickly we bonded and trusted each other. We were completely united in our efforts to protect our families from the rigors of the airport, and recognized that it was time to band together â no whining allowed. We took care of each other, but it wouldnât have been possible outside of that room. That space provide a place for us to focus on the needs of ourselves and our children without the mad, jumbled stimulus of the terminal. Bolstered by the peaceful interlude, we were all able to withstand our delays, gathering strength from each other as we prepared to travel onward.
Barbara Johnson was a homesteading, homebirthing, homeschooling, traveling mother of 4 when this trip happened in 1990. Her children are now grown and married, and she enjoys spending time with her 3 grandchildren. She is the director of Shannondale Craft Camp in southern Missouri.
This guest post is part of my blog break festival. The festival continues through December, so please check it out and consider submitting a post! Also, donât forget to enter my birth jewelry giveaway.
I was happy to preview Peg’s book earlier this year and enjoyed receiving a post from her reflecting on being Motherful at midlife…
Motherful at Midlife
by Peg Conway
âLife is so unnerving
for a servant who’s not serving.â
These opening lines from âBe Our Guestâ in the musical Beauty and the Beast popped to mind during our daughterâs recent fall break from her freshman year in college. The departure of our oldest son two years before had certainly impacted the household, but with both of them away and the youngest now a licensed driver, the house feels like the empty castle that Belle happened upon in the story. A sense of expectation surfaces, waiting for . . . what?  Like a phantom limb, my routine was accustomed to more coming and going, more conversation, just more people around.
The Sunday when Kieran was home, we planned a brunch for after church. As Joe and I worked in the kitchen together to put the meal on the table, a sense of having donned a familiar garment came over me.  âThis feels like âusâ in a way I havenât known in a whileâ I said.  Although our family table has long anchored our life, especially through the busy teen years, something didnât fit quite the same way. Providing a nourishing meal was not creating the same satisfaction as before. In early September, my life felt unnerved by fewer nurturing tasks to perform. Just six weeks later our adaptation became clearer, with Kieran home on a weekend when I was booked with several activities related to ongoing commitments I have made. I had less time and energy for the style of nurturing that had been an essential part of my life for a long time, and I didnât mind.
Yet at the core I remain a mother. The emotional and spiritual transformation wrought by the physical processes of pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding feel permanent. What does this mean? Does one cease to be motherful when the children are grown? Or rather, how is one motherful at midlife and beyond?  Physician and menopause specialist Christiane Northrup advises that the hormonal changes as childbearing wanes cause a shift in women. We truly are less nurturing than when we were caring for young children, but what emerges in its place can be creative, powerful, and immensely fulfilling. Rechanneling motherfulness, womenâs midlife initiatives may arise from old passions re-discovered or the pursuit of new paths. I know several women who have entered politics, local and state-wide, now that their children are grown. Another started a school for young children to implement her unique vision for learning. Someone at my church took up pottery making and donates the proceeds from sales to charity. I can think of two other women who have started consulting businesses.
My own standard for future endeavors is the deep satisfaction I derived from homeschooling, especially being part of a weekly co-op where I team-taught writing and history with other mothers. I have struggled to articulate just what made it so rewarding, but I think it has a lot to do with community, forging relationships with a diverse group while engaging in a project of personal importance. Of course my enjoyment also related to spending generous time with my children, but I have had to accept the finitude of that experience. Grieving and letting go are significant motherful activities at mid-life.
Professionally, Iâm still finding my way, but writing is figuring prominently. I started a blog two years ago, and last month realized a long-held dream by publishing a book, Embodying the Sacred: A Spiritual Preparation for Birth. Involvement in several local non-profits is helping me discern further.  Iâm also discovering that simply being present to young people is a motherful mid-life outlet. Recently I began spending delightful time with my 2-1/2-year-old niece. We read books, take walks, play with plastic food and dishes, dolls, and blocks, talking all the while about whatâs happening then and there. I also savor moments with my young adult children as they become companions present to me. The memory that endures from my daughterâs visit is not the food that I cooked on Sunday morning, but the hike we took together with our dog on Monday afternoon…
Peg Conway is a writer and community leader in Cincinnati, OH.  She blogs about life and faith at pegconway.com. As a childbirth educator and doula, she was certified with Birthing from Within, Doulas of North America, and BirthWorks. She earned degrees from Xavier University and Northwestern University. Peg is in the process of becoming certified as a celebrant through Global Ministries University.
This guest post is the first in my blog break festival. The festival continues through December, so please check it out and consider submitting a post! Also, don’t forget to enter my birth jewelry giveaway. This post falls into the Motherful category…
by Veronica of Mormon Monkey Mama
We put the girls to bed at 8:00. That never happens here. SM is usually up until 9:00 or 9:30. She went to bed easily. But OM, who usually goes to sleep pretty easily, was fussy because she couldn’t breathe.
So the mother abuse began…
FACTS:
*Baby toes are like a velociraptor‘s. I have bruises on the insides of my legs from OM taking her big toes and digging them into anything she comes in contact with. Most of the time, especially when we are nursing lying down, that is my leg, groin, or stomach, as she writhes around being frustrated about her inability to breathe easily.
*It’s especially uncomfortable, verging on vomit-inducingly painful, when the baby goes from nursing peacefully to clamp-and-twist in 0.2 seconds. It’s even worse when you have a recurrent plugged duct because of said baby’s latch. I know from experience… a lot of it.
*Babies have unbelievably strong fingers… the better to pinch you with. I have bruises on the insides of my arms and the tops of my breasts from aggravated little fingers that find purchase and CLAMP DOWN! Hand wrangling should be a class for pregnant moms.
*Toddlers/preschoolers have sharper elbows than the coffee table corners we protected them from a couple of years before.
My normally sweet and gentle Owl Monkey has become a baby badger. Ow. Add that to the bone crushing antics of a testing toddler, well, is it any surprise why I avoid any sense of intimacy on a day like yesterday? By the end of the day, when I have been poked, prodded, pinched, and pummeled by tiny hands, feet, and toothless gums, I don’t want to be touched. By anyone. I don’t even want to hold hands. My lucky poor husband, who has been away from his doting family all day, wants to come home and have some sort of physical closeness, even if it’s just to sit together on the couch and watch our show. It’s not fair that our jobs give us seriously different needs. But such is life so we both make sacrifices. So sometimes I snuggle, though it makes me feel like crawling out of my skin. And sometimes he takes a cold shower. đ Such is this life of parental bliss. And bliss it is. For just as you think you can’t handle any more, your 3-year-old crawls into your arms again and needs you to snuggle her to sleep. Your 5.5 month old flashes that gummy, milky grin. And suddenly your heart is full again, the bruises don’t matter, and you hug your husband that much closer knowing that only the two of you truly understand…
Veronica is a semi-crunchy stay-at-home mom to two girls and a sweet English Bulldog boy. She is passionate about breastfeeding, gentle parenting, co-sleeping, and babywearing. She spends her days chasing her 3.5 year old with her 23 lb 9 month old on her back! She hopes to encourage and support other LDS (Mormon) moms as they embrace the mommying counterculture and parent instinctively.
Originally published on Friday, July 13, 2012 at Mormon Monkey Mama
Blog Festival Entries to date:
On recent mini-vacation.
In my family, we have a saying about being, “my own best friend.” We say it when we’re helped out by something we did, or something we plan to do—i.e. “I picked out my clothes in advance last night when I knew I had an early morning ahead of me. I’m my own best friend!”
So, I’m going to be my own best friend right now and host a blog festival as well as a blog break for myself!
I have a crazy October/November ahead of me. I’m teaching three classes—two in-seat and one online—and I’m feeling overwhelmed by that already and they don’t start until Monday. I’m also planning a Sagewoman ceremony for my women’s circle and really want it to be special. Alaina needs a lot from me lately and the boys are really busy with their classes and activities and so my usual opportunities to have alone time to work are becoming markedly diminished lately. And, like a genius, I decided to sign up for FIVE new classes in my doctoral program in addition to the three I’m currently in the progress of finishing! (Luckily, they’re all self-paced and so I don’t have to work on them all at once. If I did, I wouldn’t have been that crazy to sign up for five more.) As I look ahead at the next couple of months, I realize that I need to take a moderate blog break in order to free up my attention and energy for my other projects. I don’t want to totally put my blog on hold, but I do want to, finally, figure out how to write SHORTER posts for the time being and save the involved, insightful posts that I put a lot of thought into for my winter break. I also just really need to give myself permission to be “off” here and direct my attention towards other roles.
Blog Festival
So, for my blog festival, I’m seeking guest posts to publish during my blog break! Rather than a blog carnival, I want to host the posts here (with links back to your own blogs/sites of course). I hope this is a mutually beneficial idea and can showcase the work of other birth/women’s health bloggers! Your post does not have to be new content, it can be a personal favorite, or, related to the specific topic ideas for which I am soliciting content. My wishes are for…
I’m also collecting stories about labial/clitoral tearing for a future article or blog post on the subject. More specific follow-up post to follow about this.
Please email me your contributions for this Blog Festival experiment and I will merrily schedule them!
Permission & Radiance
So, once again I’ve found myself staring at The Mountain of Too Much and a familiar a crisis of abundance. This happens routinely. I should be used to it by now! But, I feel this creeping sense of overwhelm and dismay as I look at my calendar, my commitments, and my neverending to-do list. And, as I continue to try to be more and do better and yet always feel as if I’m not enough. I feel myself getting ragged and I don’t like it. I also have a feeling that I’m forgetting the self-care mantra, “the things that matter most should never be at the mercy of the things that matter least.” I keep getting distracted by little bits and bites and losing sight of what I most value. I’m also not taking care of myself—not eating enough, running out of time to exercise, being preoccupied rather than present, always doing the “should dos” instead of the “want tos.” I crave rest. I fantasize about just being able to rest. But, then I discover I’m not sure I know how.
So, I very much appreciated this extremely thought-provoking audio-blog Women in Cyberspace ~ Our Blind Spots – IndigoBacal.com. She makes a lot of important observations about how women use social media, including blogging, and she shared: “What I discovered was that
sharing as much of myself as possible, as much of my inspiration as possible [online] was actually diminishing my radiance…”
I actually have quite a lot more to share about this and various navel-gazing meandering thoughts about me, me, me, but I think I’m going to keep my radiance to myself for a bit. And, practice this whole SHORTER posts goal…
As I listened however, I became aware that at some level almost all the time is the thought, I can’t stop/rest, because I might die. Meaning, what if I die before I “finish”—what if I run out of time for my dreams and plans, what if my life ends before I “get around to it”? And so, this compulsion to do it all now. In case this is my only opportunity. And, what if I don’t matter? Isn’t that stinky? I need to work on this in myself (or not, because I’m really sick and tired of my never-ending, relentless self-improvement project and never, never being enough). I also read/listened to this piece: You Have Permission (Right NOW!) and decided that I MUST give myself permission to rest without worrying about dying. I must! So, I am. And, you, lovely readers, can help me do that by sending me delicious blog posts to publish during my blog festival…
Thank you for reading! đ
Oh, and by the way, contributions about how you rest are also most welcomed…
This post is one of those primarily-for-myself/family members-as-well-as-memory-record/virtual-scrapbook sorts of posts. Will return to more appropriately birthy, womanist posts soon…
My college classes run on 8 week sessions, 5 sessions per year. This means I get five breaks of 2-3 weeks each during the course of the year. We have a family tradition of taking a vacation during my October break. This year, due to multiple weekend commitments (my brother got married! Yay! It was beautiful! Our close friends are building a straw bale house and the big bale-raising is this weekend. More yay! I’m really excited for them!) and due to the fact that Alaina is still too young to be a very awesome care traveler, we planned a mini vacation rather than a full-fledged vacation.
Since long before we had kids I’ve wanted to visit Grand Gulf State Park in Thayer, Missouri right by the Arkansas state line. It is billed as a “little Grand Canyon” and while the real Grand Canyon is also on my bucket list, it doesn’t make any sense to go to the big one when the little one is right in your own two-hours-away back yard! Grand Gulf is a collapsed cave system that collapsed about 10,000 years ago, leaving a true chasm behind. The Gulf is a mile long and 130 feet deep. Water flows underground in the remainder of the cave system and emerges two miles later in Arkansas at Mammoth Spring, where it produces nine million gallons of water an hour and is the tenth largest spring in the world. After driving for about 2.5 hours, we visited Grand Gulf on Sunday afternoon. Then, we continued on for 18 miles to our hotel in Hardy, AR which is a small, historic town with little shops. On Monday, we spent the morning checking out Mammoth Spring and then the afternoon visiting the shops in Hardy. On Tuesday, we ate homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast at the hotel and then headed back home, arriving in plenty of time to take the kids to taekwondo and to get me to my faculty meeting that night.
Here is a gallery of pictures from our three destinations! (if you click on any picture, it will open up a large version and then you can page through all of them like a slideshow)
Family mini-vacation officially earns a two-thumbs up from all of us. It was low-key enough of a destination to do everything in the time we had without feeling rushed at all and being able to take leisurely pace with detours as need be. It was close enough to get there in under three hours with three kids, but far enough away to be located in “exotic” Arkansas so we could feel like we actually “went somewhere.” The trip was short enough in duration that we’re not exhausted and struggling to recover and the kids didn’t get overdone in the car. We’ve already thought of some other potential destinations for future class breaks and also discussed drawing a circle on the map with a four-hour radius and see how many places we could go.
My family is in a whirlwind of activity and excitement preparing for my brother’s wedding on Sunday and we have relatives visiting from out-of-town. The wedding is at my parents’ house and so there has been a frenzy of cleaning! During said frenzy, my mom found several sweet little smocked dresses made by my grandmother. Alaina wore one to homeschool co-op on Wednesday where she was complimented on her “vintage look.” That night, my grandma arrived from CA and we were talking about the dress. I said I thought it had been mine and a vague memory of Easter pictures of me wearing it surfaced. I snagged my infant photo album and sure enough there it was! (and, appropriately, I’m actually wearing it when we were visiting them in CA.)
Check me out:
I took a picture of my aunt holding Alaina before I found the pictures of myself and coincidentally, she was looking off the same direction!
Hmm. Look familiar?! I’m only about a year old here though and Alaina is now closer to two.
Since my grandma is visiting for my brother’s wedding and she is the person who made the dress in the first place, of course I had to get a photo of her with Alaina:
Back to me with the Easter egg I was happy to find!
And then one of the former dress-wearer and current dress-wearer together:
In this picture, I’m also wearing a lovely new sweater that my grandma knitted for me. It is gorgeous!
If I feel weird about this picture, how must my mom and grandma feel?!
Moments like these are sweet and beautiful, while simultaneously feeling shocking and almost depressing.
And, I’m reminded of this poem I have previously shared:
âHolding tight to my neck, my son
trusts â he knows no other way â my touch lightly
dries his tears. I am his queen, his goddess, handily
his slave. Blink, itâs a photo again, a trick of the eye,
a frozen captive of time, paper, light and silver: my son
is a grown man: he drinks from his own hand.
Reader, I urge you,
spin slowly, take pictures, remember to laugh.â
(emphasis mine)
I would say, remember to look. Remember to feel. Remember to notice. Pay attention. Tell about it.
This is what I looked and noticed yesterday when we went to pick my boys up from taekwondo class:
Oh, does my heart both swell and ache to see those little tippy-toes.
Homemade Baby Food
           Given the recent trends in DIY projects and healthy, homemade concoctions, itâs no surprise that baby food is also on board. Making your own homemade delicacies for your child is not nearly as complicated as it sounds. Homemade baby food projects can be just as fun as they are economical. Listed below are some of the best recipes Iâve encountered in my days as a DIY baby food maker.
To begin, any baby food recipe is going to require the use of some type of blender. Getting the food pureed to a perfect consistency may be essential to pleasing the palate of your young one.
Sweet Potato Based Puree
No baby food recipe arsenal is complete without a good sweet potato based purĂŠe. Infants almost always take sweet potatoes without complaints and the many health benefits associated with them donât hurt either. To get this recipe started you will need to
Apple Based Puree
               Appealing to your babyâs sweet tooth can be a difficult challenge. You donât want to overly emphasize sugar and sweetness but you still want to have your little one have a great treat once in a while. I found this following recipe to be the perfect marriage of both of these and my son (whoâs sadly now a little too old for this) thought so too! To whip up some awesome apple inspired baby food you will need to:
Bean Based Puree
           Beans are a great staple for any growing youngsterâs body. With their complete proteins and fiber, giving your baby a great homemade bean purĂŠe is a great choice that requires a little more elbow grease than the last recipes. However, this can really pay off with the happy grins and smiles of a satisfied and full youngster. To get the ball rolling you will need to make sure you have:
Youâll want to make sure your kale is properly cooked or steamed before you add it to the blender. A great thing you can do here is steam the onions, oregano and the greens all at once. Place all the ingredients in the blender and purĂŠe until everything is smooth. Make sure this meal is cooled properly before serving and see how fast your baby will eat this treat up.
Cynthia Dorsch loves writing about health and wellness. In her free time she can often be found researching and catching up on trending techniques and new innovations in the medical field. She currently writes and blogs for My Egg Bank, a company specializing in third-party reproduction.
So, an interesting new feeling for me as I got ready to write a happy birthday post about my oldest boy this week…I realized I should probably ask his permission before writing things about him to share on the internet! He said it was fine. I do already ask before sharing quotes/pictures on Facebook usually, if I think they’re potentially embarrassing at all.
See what I mean?! Snaggly teeth and big nose is my default, self-esteem-blow, embarrassment self-concept. Though, actually this picture was taken when I was 11, so perhaps really 9-11 are the awkward years!
I’ve been a mother for nine years now! As I said in my post from this morning, I feel weird about this because I remember being nine. I remember other ages too, of course, but nine is when I first start journaling and so I have more concrete memories and records of that time. I guess it is the age that marks the beginning of my own conscious awareness of myself and the world in a way that still feels familiar today—it was beginning, the dawn, of my adult thought processes. I also remember starting to feel self-conscious for the first time at nine, like my teeth were too big, my knees were too knobby, etc. And, personal remarks made by others about my appearance stuck for life at that age (i.e. the knees thing—a friend of my grandma’s commented to me, “when my daughter was your age, her knees looked just like yours and I too her to the doctor because I thought something was wrong with her.” Gee, thanks.) I also have this thing that I’ve had for a long time in which when I get embarrassed about something or something goes wrong, I say, “I feel like I’m nine again!” Nine was an awkward age for me. Feels weird that it could be Lann’s future self’s embarrassing archetype too!
His birthday always feels like my birth-day too. It is my birth-of-a-mother day, though as I shared last year I felt forged rather than born as a mother. Today, I made sure to put on the necklace I bought for myself as a first-birth-day-present in 2004 (it was my first goddess pendant too–who knew how that collection would evolve!)
PMC pendant made by a Canadian artist and carefully selected by me as a birth-day gift to myself 8 years ago!
Anyway, so back to my actual kid instead of me, me, me! This year has brought good changes for Lann. As I’ve alluded to previously, our work party relationships have enriched all of our lives. I’ve watched Lann develop tons more self-confidence and create friend relationships that do not have to be encouraged/guided/forced by me. Something that hasn’t changed is that this boy is an artist! He’s recently been thoroughly engaged by needle felting and created lots of awesome monster heads and action figures:
Both the boys also started taking taekwondo lessons as well as gymnastics and they love them both. Again with the self-confidence—two years ago, Lann would have been too scared to go to something like that without me. Now, I drop them off and he loves it. It is a good reminder to me about waiting until people are ready rather than pushing them. It happens eventually!
Look at this big kid!
Birthday cake request was for a chocolate/vanilla swirl. We bought a mix and discovered to our dismay that it had both red and yellow food coloring in it! (We cut food colors our of the boys’ diets early this year and it has been a very good thing.)
So, as I stood there in my pajamas, I had to make a quick re-adjustment in plans and I made a swirl cake from scratch instead even though I’ve never ever made a vanilla cake from scratch before (I used my usual chocolate cake recipe and left out the cocoa. I’m smart like that.)
Pretty nice, Molly, pretty nice! ;-D
Blowing out the candles! I almost didn’t find nine of them!
Lann remains very devoted to Minecraft and Baba surprised him with a homemade Enderman toy! (Zander and Alaina both got one too)
Aren’t they lucky to have such a talented and crafty Baba?!
In addition to TKD and gymnastics, the boys also signed up for homeschool co-op again this year after having taken two years off. They’re taking a mythology/dragons class and also animation. I neglected to take a “first day of school” picture of the boys, but I did take a cute one of Alaina:
For Lann’s birthday, Mark took the day off and set up a laser tag arena in the field in front of our house. He bought special colored lights and set up obstacles and things to hide behind, etc. We also have five, count ’em five, laser tag guns and a visiting friend brought three more. So, we had spirited nighttime battles with a group of eight at a time—I played too, at first while nursing Alaina (and running in the dark. I rock!). It was super fun. Originally intended as a “money saving” option rather than paying $65 to go to the laser tag arena in town, after we bought the extra guns, and light bulbs, and tarps, and fence posts, I think we “saved” approximately –$50 đ
So, having a nine year old is awesome. He’s funny and smart. Pretty responsible (I’m feeling apprehensive about the iPod touch many family members chipped in to buy him this year–sudden he doesn’t seem quite big enough and is kind of slinging it around. He did send his very first email this morning though, with coaching!). He is a good big brother and super helpful with Alaina. He makes movies, he does art. He draws comics. He is more packed with ideas for businesses, products, and money-making plans than any kid I’ve ever known. He is creative and amazing!
Some more pix!
Make up for movie a little more uncomfortable than bargained for!
Nice big brother!
Flashback: Playing with Tom! (grandpa)
I found out I was pregnant with Zander right around Lann’s second birthday!
The baby who made us parents and us a family! Look at what a small little family we were! (though, it felt plenty full then. Sometimes I’m amazed that I’ve been able to expand to add more people to it!)
Happy ninth birthday, first baby boy!
Related posts:
Tree pose…
Most of the time I love and feel very grateful for the opportunity to work from home. The work is interesting, stimulating, and fulfilling. I feel like I have a real opportunity to have a positive impact of my students’ lives. I love not having to drive in bad weather and I love being able to work around the rest of my life/schedule and around the lives of my kids. I enjoy the income and the professional development. I like contributing the our family’s financial health and feel optimistic about my potential to eventually be able to release my husband from “wage slavery” so we can both enjoy a predominantly home-based life. I enjoy the relationships I create and I enjoy the (admittedly, fairly limited!) “status” of my role. I love gathering and sharing information in a field I care about.
I recently got home from spending four days at of town at a festival in Kansas. On the long car ride there, Birthing Beautiful Ideas posed the question on Facebook: what does working at home look like for you today? My response was: Leaning over the car seat nursing on the way to Kansas while checking in with my online students via iPad! (bless the iPad, possibly the greatest addition to my life this year. I don’t know what I’d do without that thing!) Mondays are always on the rough side for me because I have to enter my grades for the week and that “extra” duty tends to topple me from got-it-under-control-territory into slightly too much territory. This Monday, however, I now have my first batch of 25 papers to grade. As I’ve alluded to in the past, usually online teaching blends seamlessly into my day, often taking roughly the same amount of time and energy that checking in with Facebook would take. During the two weeks each session that papers are due (fifth and seventh weeks out of an 8 week session), the work suddenly feels unmanageable and incompatible with motherhood and I feel taut, tense, and drawn. The kids are need-factories and I’m distracted and impatient and consumed with the NEED to get these freaking things GRADED and OUT OF MY HEAD! So, imagine how I feel today when the getting home from being gone coincides with the first batch of papers! Whew. This morning I happily experienced the modern motherhood sweet spot in which I snuggled comfortably in bed with my nursling, smelling her sweet head and holding my iPad with the other hand while I entered my fairly simple weekly grades. Then the day devolved slightly with people wanting to go outside and me not eating enough and being inexorably pulled into the swirl of un-responded to email backlog from the weekend as well as those dang papers.
Luckily, past self had some advice for me that came to the rescue this morning. At the close of the last paper grading session I typed myself the following note in my trusty iPad of goodness and beneficence:
Reminders to self about grading papers:
This is temporary
You are guaranteed to finish them. It will happen.
Remember you’ve done it before and it is normal for you to feel stressed, overwhelmed, and unable.
You need:
Two days, part days (Monday and Tuesday) or one whole day to finish.
Write on calendar in advance so you can prepare and give advance warning to helpers.
Don’t schedule anything and/or cancel commitments on those days (including LLL if need be)
Don’t try to do them while Alaina is awake
Skip school with boys–it will be there later
Don’t do any blog posts, school assignments, FB, or any other “work” on those two grading days–don’t secretly plan to do some anyway.
Take breaks for self-renewal
*Ask for help*
*Be kind, but firm and assertive about needing time and space to work. Expect to have this available and “allowed.”*
*Ask clearly for what you need.*
Plan to get up early and stay up late as needed–trust that these times can be backup if naptime/grandparent-visit times get messed up.
Don’t cook real dinners on those two days.
Be nice to the people you love. If you are mean, increase self-care and respectful requests for aid and be compassionate with own feelings of tension and irritation–respect them as “normal,” even though they aren’t desirable. Remember that it will pass as it always does and equilibrium will be restored.
Say no.
Remember–again–this is temporary and you’ve done it many times before!
Still pray. Listen to music. Take time for spirit.
Have a reward when you finish.
Release your shoulders. Breathe.
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Wasn’t I smart?! It really helped to read these things and among other things I called Mark and asked him to bring home Papa Murphy’s for dinner. I told the boys it was “school-off day,” but we still ended up walking on the road and finding cool rocks and having an impromptu geography learning time. I said no to some things even though I felt badly about doing so and tried to figure out some other way to make them work. And, I’m trying to be okay with leaving my bubbling brew of blog post idea/updates (I want to write about my trip!), jewelry ideas, birth art ideas/writing, and more, and more, and more for “later” and trusting that later will, indeed, come. I am trying to feel compassion rather than hatred for my ragged self.
Why post this here? Who cares? Well, I do. I often use my blog as a “storehouse” of things to remember. And, when the next batch of papers rolls around, I want to easily be able to read my reminder list again! I also thought it might be of interest to the other mothers out there who continually teeter on the edge of finding that elusive and possibly-not-actually necessary “balance” in their work tasks and mothering tasks. I have a friend who describes balance not as making things “equal,” but as being like tree pose in yoga—you want one leg to be firm underneath you so you can stay standing up, but your two sides do not have to actually be “equal” in order to be balanced. Today, my balance is weighted towards the work-at-home tasks, but it will shift again and I’ll still be standing. Find your center. That is the mental reminder that instantly pulls my own literal tree pose into balance for me during my (formerly daily, now erratic) morning yoga. Find your center. Perhaps those words should find a home on my reminder list above as well.
Today, I also resisted the temptation to blurt out a giant laundry list of to-dos in my Facebook status, even though the panicky urge to do so was potent. I was reminded of my own prior reminder post about this tendency: Busy is Boring. I shared the link on Facebook this morning in lieu of sharing my to-do list and a friend responded:
“Not sure I completely understand. You write ‘Iâd rather talk about the things weâre doing that fuel us and excite us’, and I completely agree with that, but these are also the very things that keep us busy. If I look at a really busy day in our family…I am excited about every single thing on the list: I love working, I love it that my kids are involved in activities that are exciting and stimulating for them, I love being part of that… so, all this busy-ness serves to enrich our lives.”
So, I clarified. What I’m talking about is trading litanies of, “I have this and this to do…” and “well, I have this and this to do…”—essentially trading to-do lists without actually hearing or talking to each other, but just rattling off semi-stressful lists of places we have to be, things we have to remember, and things that are on our minds that we have to do.* Talking about busy plans that we’re excited about and care about and are looking forward to is something totally different than just sharing to-do lists without really listening to each other. It is HOW we talk about/share the busy-ness that makes the difference to me. And, I’m trying very hard to stay mindful of the difference and not share the exhausting list that just adds to the cortisol levels of all around me who are already dealing with their own busy schedules and lives.
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(*this is a pet peeve about myself that I’m trying to adjust/remember/fix. I occasionally experience it with others in my life too and it bugs me, because it also bugs me in myself. ;-))
Talk Birth 