Postpartum Jeans Shopping – Part 1

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Looking fierce in skinny jeans.

Looking fierce in skinny jeans. Photo by Edward Liu.

My everyday clothing for the past six months has been exceptionally casual due to my expanding and contracting waistline, the general business of having a newborn, and the lack of time I have to spend on my appearance.  I mean, I care about how I look but not enough to be uncomfortable in any way.  I’m really one step away from pajamas most days.  So those of you in need of style guidelines from a woman six months postpartum of her 2nd child, here they are.

1. If my jeans are roomy enough that I can’t feel my muffin top with every move and flexible enough that I can pull them over my hips without unbuttoning them, these are jeans that are a “good fit.”

2. If said jeans are on and my maternity t-shirt does not have poop, urine, spitup or breast milk stains, this is called an “outfit.”

3. If I have not only shampooed but also conditioned my hair, this is called “primped.”

4. If my nursing bra does not smell like breast milk, this is called “lingerie” and is appropriate for a date night out.

I went shopping at Macy’s recently for jeans, as my pre-pregnancy jeans are too small and no longer fit me, and my maternity jeans are too big.  The experience was sobering.  It seems there’s a difference between checking myself out in a mirror from the waist up after putting on an “outfit” as I’m running to catch a screaming toddler and actually being alone, viewing myself in a full-length mirror in a well-lit dressing room.   Even though my maternity belly is no longer there, the rest of my body still looks pregnant.

I also found that my understanding of my own body was in a time warp.  I had selected some roomy looking size 10’s and some slimmer 12’s thinking, “These are cuuuute.  These will look great.”  Not so.  My mind had been fondly remembering the pre-baby butt, the pre-stretched belly.  It became crystal clear that my brain had some catching up to do.  Reality check: those 14’s are the only ones you will be able to pull over your widened hips.

Will she buy the 14’s? Will she run screaming from the dressing room? Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow….

Rejected. Then happy.

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Recently, I submitted a few essays to a very cool organization that awards grants to writers who are also parents. Today I got word that I was not winning any of their awards, which made me sad. But then I got happy because their rejection caused me to say, “f*ck it” and share one of my application essays here rather than keep it tucked away in preparation for a book essays.

I am not giving up on that book of essays. It will be heartfelt, humorous, and poignant (says the author.)  Or, in the words of the very best jacket cover review quotes, it will be “Astonishing.”  That book of essays is still getting written. But it’s probably going to be more along the lines of the work I read at Listen to Your Mother. More poetic, like….while the essay I’m going to share here is more likely to make you laugh. (I hope.)

So next post, you will find Part 1 of my musings on my postpartum body as I tried fitting into my pre-pregnancy clothes. It was written when little Wyatt was about 6 months old.  Enjoy.

Children’s Book Review: National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book of Dinosaurs

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National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book of Dinosaurs
By Catherine D. Hughes, Illustrated by Franco Tempesta

Cars and trucks. Trucks and cars. These have been the two main interests for my kids for the past 3 years.  So, let me tell you, after years of trucks and cars, I am openly thrilled that we now are exploring the world of dinosaurs. I had never really paid much attention to them, to be quite honest. But as a newly initiated mom, let me just say: dinosaurs are so. cool.

What I love about this book is that it works for my 5 year old but is also pretty darn interesting for me too. There are 4 chapters: Small, Big, Giant, and Gigantic. (Gigantic! So. Cool.) The illustrations of the dinosaurs are wonderfully real and fill out the pages. My favorite feature is the snapshot of how big each dinosaur is compared to a human being. It’s hard to believe the size of these beasties.

My son wanted to start at the beginning of the book and read it start to finish, but I had to interrupt a few minutes in to at least just get a glimpse of a Gigantic dinosaur (Brachiosaurus! Awesome!) This book would easily take an hour for an adult to read aloud word-for-word. There are basic facts about each dinosaur including what it ate and when it lived. My son enjoyed the map that includes which continent each dinosaur’s fossils have been found on. So. cool.

Blood and gore on a Sunday drive…

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My family and I drove out to rural Wisconsin today to check out the Fermentation Festival, specifically to see the art installations on local farmland, otherwise known as the Farm/Art DTour. The tour is an hour driving loop from Reedsburg through LaValle, Ironton, and Lime Ridge and features huge art installations by local artists and residents.

As we were approaching the start of the loop, we passed through Reedsburg, driving down Route 33 (Main St,) and we came upon a dozen or so protesters holding up lettered signs stating their anti-abortion, right-to-life beliefs. Adults, little kids and even littler kids were holding up their signs, stationed there, no doubt, to catch the hundreds of cars that would travel down that road on their way to the 50 mile driving loop of the art festival.

OK, protesters- no biggie for us. I’m not anti-abortion, but I actually thought: kudos to their group-someone must have been thinking ahead in planning to be on such a visible route.

We drove further on and came to the intersection where Main St meets Route K- the beginning of the art loop- and on this corner there were additional pro-life protesters. It took me a minute to register what they were holding, but given that we had to slow down for the turn, my whole family got a clear view of their signs: full-blown photographs of aborted fetuses. Blood, guts, gore all poster-sized and being held up by middle-aged women on the corner of the street, three feet from our van.

“What are those yucky pictures?” my 3-year-old says from the back seat. I tell him to close his eyes and then I try to block his view.

I was appalled, not by the philosophy of these right-to-lifers, but because I spend hours each week wondering and plotting how I’m going to protect my children from images of violence and bloodshed that saturate mass media. And here on the corner were people claiming to be advocates for protecting the lives of children, and they were purposely displaying visually violent images on a route specifically designed for families with children of all ages to pass through.

“You need to put those signs away! There are children in this car!” I yelled to them from our mini-van. And I caught one woman shaking her head saying, “No, No, NO.”

I imagine they were seeking some kind of moral justice by planting those images in the atmosphere for all to see, going for shock and gross-out tactics that might work on adults. Or maybe wanting to get a conversation started or to get people thinking about their beliefs? Whatever their intention, all it did for me was piss me off.

I was incensed. If I had been walking by, I may have destroyed the signs.

Do you have a right to protest?  Yes. Do you have a right to expose my kids to graphic, grotesque images intentionally and without warning when I spend my life protecting them from that? No. I’m sorry, but you don’t.  We haven’t even met, and you’ve disrespected me and my family by taking it upon yourself to throw the images our way without my permission.

In seeking your purpose, trying to shine light on the rights of children to live and be well-cared for, you chose to willfully expose children to disturbing, R-rated photographs. Basically, you destroyed the exact same philosophy you were demonstrating for. You’ve proven yourself unworthy of having a chance to even speak out. And you haven’t shocked me, scared me, or made me think or re-examine my own philosophy. The only thing you’ve done is infuriate me. Because my kids are in the back of the car and my three-year-old is saying he doesn’t want to see those yucky pictures.

So let me help you, at this point, by teaching you what most middle-schoolers know before they reach high school. When you’re trying to make a point, don’t use images that are so horrific that people immediately turn away from you and won’t listen to your message. Don’t argue for life if you don’t care about my kids’ lives. And don’t try to use shocking, scary images on a demographic that is out for a joyful family outing. People like me won’t listen to what you have to say. And you will never win anything except more people who don’t care to listen to what you’re saying.

And, by the way, I’m not mad at people who get or give abortions. They are not throwing scary images in my kids’ faces.

A Mother’s Rights

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A Mother's Rights

Being in the midst of the first few years of motherhood has got me thinking about all the things I need but don’t ask for, ask for but don’t take, and take but feel guilty for taking. To help set my head straight, I came up with a Bill of Rights for mamas.  Things we need to pay attention to in order to preserve our mental, emotional and physical well-being.

A Mother’s Rights

1. You have the right to eight hours of sleep in a 24 hour time period.
2. You have the right to eat a meal start to finish while sitting down at the table at least once a day.
3. You have the right to wear clothes  that fit.
4. You have the right to revise your sex life as needed without pressure to meet a quota.
5. You have the right to shower or bathe every day.
6. You have the right to exercise every day.
7. You have the right to listen to music that you like.
8. You have the right to explore who you are now.
9. You have the right to not always be your best.
10. You have the right to make things easy on yourself when it comes to grocery shopping and meal planning.
11. You have the right to feel however you feel about whatever phase of parenting you are in.
12. You have the right to enlist help for everyday tasks.
13. You have the right to say no to invitations.
14.  You have the right to disagree with your friend’s parenting styles.
15. You have the right to change any or all of your priorities.

The Details….

1. You have the right to eight hours of sleep in a 24 hour time period.

Don’t think for one second that your partner somehow deserves more sleep than you do (stay-at-home moms, I’m looking at us.) Humans need sleep to function. In all likelihood, if you are a new mom or your toddler is a rough sleeper, you won’t be getting eight uninterrupted hours regularly for a while. But eight hours spread out over a full day and night can happen.  And I am here to remind you that it is your right to claim those hours – interrupted or not- without guilt, whenever you possibly can. Sleep is crucial. Divide nights up with a spouse, practice early bedtimes (for you, not just the kids.)  And of course, get your nap on. If you need a nap and can find a way to get one, do it. It’s your right.

2. You have the right to eat a meal start to finish while sitting down at the table at least once a day.

I say once a day because anything more than that is too lofty an ambition (for me, at least.) But like anyone else, you have a right to sit while you eat- start to finish. Usually this means planning and prepping – like cutting up baby-sized bites for little ones, setting water, napkins, and other necessities out- before your butt hits the chair.

3. You have the right to wear clothes  that fit.

After pregnancy, don’t expect your body to shrink from its expanded size and proportion back to the exact same size and shape it was before. It may not ever be the same, even if you lose all your baby weight (which you might not and that’s OK too.) Instead of trying to squeeze into your old jeans and feeling fat about it, or wearing postpartum pants a year after baby arrived and feeling un-sexy as hell, get thee to some sort of clothing store and buy some clothes that fit you now. And don’t forget the shoes. I outgrew most of my shoes after two pregnancies and thought I could just deal with it. Finally breaking down and admitting my gd shoes didn’t fit was a step toward mama-freedom. Mama needed a new pair of shoes, y’all and I had a right to fulfill that simple need. Just like you do.

4. You have the right to revise your sex life as needed without pressure to meet a quota.

Don’t even try and compare your sex life now to what it was before you had kids. If you wait six months, seven months, or a year after having a baby to have sex, it’s OK. If you used to have sex once a week before kids, and now it’s once a month or every other month or practically never, it’s OK. If you are up all night with your baby and would rather sleep than have sex, it’s OK.  Sheer lack of time and opportunity are huge variables. It doesn’t mean you aren’t sexy or your relationship with your spouse isn’t strong if you aren’t having regular sex. Becoming a parent changed your whole world, did you think it would change everything except your sex life? Nope, that changes too.

5. You have the right to shower or bathe every day.

Water is a great healer. It rejuvenates and replenishes on many levels. In ten minutes, you can wash off a stressful night or mentally prepare for a busy day. It is a safe place to just be with yourself.  Not to mention showering makes you smell good- always a bonus in a day filled with breastmilk, diapers and baby food.

6. You have the right to exercise every day.

Even a little bit- I’m talking 10 minutes of walking- either with or without a stroller or baby carrier can do wonders. Or taking a few minutes to stretch your legs up to the ceiling and do some abdominal twists before getting out of bed in the morning can really feel good.  Do not forget about this grand instrument that is your body. It is your right to work it out every day, even for a few minutes just to say hello.

7.  You have the right to listen music that you like.

Most toddler music sucks. True, there are some exceptions. But there is absolutely no reason why your little one can’t listen to the music you like starting at age 0. They’ll be better off for it. Music is so good for little ones and it’s good for mamas too.Music makes us happy.  And if mama’s happy, everybody’s happy.

8. You have the right to explore who you are now.

A few years of motherhood and your life is unrecognizable. Suddenly things got different. You’re nursing every two hours, driving a mini-van (which you swore you never would do), sharing your bed with three people (none of them is your partner and all of them are under age five) and shopping with the whole family in mind. Where are you in this picture? Your life is different, but are you?  Ten minutes of journaling or meditating can give you the chance to hear your voice again. Same goes for a night out with friends. Or even thumbing through a Pottery Barn catalog to ask yourself- “What do I like now? What’s my favorite color? What would I like to see on my walls?” You don’t have to actually buy anything, but you do have the right to carve out time to hear your voice, your interests, your breath, your rhythm.

9. You have the right to not always be your best.

Some days you dial it in and you have a right to. You do not have to be 100% every moment, every day. For one thing, your kids will learn that they can have off-days too. For another, you will suffer less by accepting your off-days as totally normal and acceptable. You don’t always have to do the full blown puppet show with five characters, costume changes and funny voices. Sometimes it’s OK to throw a read-along book into the cd player and go read a magazine while your kids listen.  Spending all your energy on your kids will get you tired, sick, resentful, depressed, and doubting yourself. So if that means your kid watches a little TV while you spend some time on Pinterest looking at things that make you smile, do that.

10.  You have the right to make things easy on yourself when it comes to grocery shopping and meal planning.

Did you know it’s ok to eat Cheerios and non-organic strawberries for dinner? Did you know that many grocery stores offer online ordering and delivery services? Did you know that many people in our generation grew up eating Spaghettio’s, Twinkies, and Kraft Mac & Cheese regularly and are now running Iron Man races and marathons? If you like meal planning and it helps your budget, great. If you don’t, eating simply (think: grilled cheese, rice and beans, noodles and sauce) is easy on the budget too and just…easy. And easy is OK.

11. You have the right to feel however you feel about whatever phase of parenting you are in.

Bored, angry, excited, lonely, nervous, anxious, impatient. Maybe your toddler is brave and reckless and it scares the crap out of you because you think he’ll be that way forever. Maybe you are bored senseless by nursing and can’t wait for the day when you wean. Maybe your one year old is learning to walk and you are dreading the changes you must make to your house to child-proof it. Don’t even try to push away the many, many emotions that come from parenting daily. Most of them come in phases just like every single aspect of a growing babe comes in phases. Try to just be with whatever you feel even if it’s not all flowers and rainbows. Denial will actually make the joys harder to come by. Let “this too shall pass” be your mantra.

12. You have the right to enlist help for everyday tasks.

Have you ever hired someone to come in and clean your house? It is like a dream come true. They scrub your toilets, wash the smashed blueberries and peas off the floor, dust the shelves you haven’t looked at in months, and scrub the microwave. (Are you fantasizing yet?) And that’s just for starters. If you have the extra cash to pay someone to do the hard cleaning once a month, do it. It is worth every single penny. Hiring a mother’s helper can also be a huge payoff for a small investment (as little as $5 an hour for responsible pre-teens) if they’re willing to straighten up toys, fold laundry, or watch the kids while you do the household stuff. You do not have to do every little thing on your own. The feeling of support from getting a little help on the side is an exponential boost.

13. You have the right to say no to invitations.

Don’t want to go the outdoor picnic in 90 degree weather and have to chase down your little ones for three hours while getting maybe half of a conversation in? Don’t go. Don’t want to try to parent your two squirmy kids through a meal at a restaurant? Don’t go. Or how about a house party at the pristine, no-kids home of a friend? Just don’t do it. If your friends are coming with you into this phase of your life- where your whole evening revolves around doing bedtime, and you don’t enter any facility or event unless there is a kid-friendly area, and sometimes the thought of rallying to get everyone out the door and in the car is just too much- they will understand.

14.  You have the right to disagree with your friend’s parenting styles.

They yell at their kids. Or maybe they are so hands-off that their home is a zoo without consequences.  All of sudden, how your friends parent their kids matters to you. And it should. You are a parent now. Here is when friends might float in and out of your life. And when you might decide you don’t want your kids hanging out with their kids. It’s your right to have your own opinions and go your own way as a family.

15. You have the right to change any or all of your priorities.

At any moment, you could change your mind….but right now, you’d rather hang out with your kids than do almost anything else. You stopped using pesticides on your lawn, started donating money to environmental groups and PBS, and quit your job to be home with the kids. You have changed your priorities. That’s your right. Maybe you’d rather go camping as a family than take that solo trip to Ireland you’d always dreamed of. This is not a problem to be fixed. It is a shift in priorities that tells you how important you are to these people you are helping grow. And how important they are to you. You deserve to let yourself change over this thing, motherhood. It’s OK to remap your life, and change your destinations or how you want to get to them. Slowly, simply and easily-maybe with a big fat smile on your face knowing no matter what your goals are, you are making a difference in those kiddos lives just by being you, mama.

CO trip 003

Squishy Chair Etiquette

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I would like to talk for one moment about squishy chair etiquette. By squishy chairs, I am speaking specifically about those soft comfy chairs found in coffeeshops and libraries. They are usually set apart from the four-top tables, and are sometimes set up in groupings like a friendly family room.  Like you could be sitting in your pajamas or boxers and it would be just fine, because you’re in the squishy chairs. You know what I’m talking about.

chair

I love the squishy chairs. When I’m going someplace to write, as soon as I walk in the door, I scan for them. Is there one empty? Good, it’s mine.

According to the book of etiquette that I have written in my mind, if all the squishy chairs are empty, you have a right to sit in any one you choose. But if there is one squishy chair occupied, you have a right to sit anywhere except directly next to the person who is already sitting in the said chair.

Let me give you a real-life example. I walk into my second favorite library the other day to do some writing. I’m excited because I am by myself! I have an hour or maybe even two to be in my own space and write! No one is crying or smashing toys together or eating day-old cheerios off the floor! Obviously not your typical Thursday evening for me.

I find the quiet reading room where there are: two work tables and chairs on one end of the room, and a fireplace and eight squishy chairs on the other end. The squishy chairs are lined up against two adjoined walls, so they form an “L” and all of them face the fireplace.  In other words, no seat is worse than any other- they all face the fireplace, they all have a view of the door- not a bad seat in the house.

When I first walk in, I have the place to myself and I choose the chair furthest from the door, in the far corner of the room. So there is one chair directly next to me and six chairs on the adjoining wall. I am blissfully writing when I glance up to see a very nice looking lady walk into the room. I immediately look back down to my screen to let her know I’m all business, no chitter-chatter to be found here. She pauses for a second and walks past the two tables and six empty chairs and sits down right next to me.

To me, this was the approximate equivalent of sitting in my lap. This kind of squishy chair intimacy was totally uncalled for. The appropriate social distance would have been to sit with at least one chair in between us, if not more. But the line had been breached and now I was listening to her breathe and turn pages from a distance of not more than 24 inches. My bliss bubble popped and I powered through my work and headed out.

If this were an isolated incident, I probably wouldn’t be writing this post, but I tell you, I have some concern because the exact same thing happened again today, just now, in fact. I was sitting on a squishy chair in a coffeeshop, this time we were dealing with a rectangle formation- two chairs on one side, one on the other, one on each end and a coffeetable in the middle. I’m again blissfully writing, when all of a sudden a sweaty yoga guy comes and sits directly next to me. Three other empty chairs not next to me and he picks the one where I can reach out and touch him…Too close, my friend, too close!

Is this a direct result of social media? Are we so far away from each other metaphorically that now we have to sit in a stranger’s airspace like we’re on an airplane in order to feel connected? I’m disturbed. Because the etiquette book in my head distinctly states that there really isn’t an appropriate response to this behavior other than staying put. Getting up to move into a different chair as soon as someone sits down next to you is rude.  As is saying something like, “I’m saving this seat for Daniel Craig.” Plus, what if you get up and move one chair over and they get up and move next to you again, following? That’s just awkward.

I must ask, is this a normal trend? Is your etiquette book different than mine? Am I just so attractive that people can’t keep away from my airspace? I’m looking for answers, people! I await your responses.

Kids are people

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One of the things that I took with me from childhood (and that landed me in therapy) was feeling invisible. I distinctly remember feeling like I had Important things to offer–and I did not measure them against the fact that I was a kid. To me, they weren’t a kid’s thoughts. They were just Important thoughts. So why were the adults around me treating me like a kid, when what I felt like was a human being with important things to say and observations to share?

What got me thinking about this today was the fact that I caught myself in a moment of gross adulthood. That is, behaving in a way that, as a kid, I swore I never would.

My kids and I were meeting my husband outside my doctor’s office so he could drive them (in the van) home while I had my appointment.  And I would then take his truck home. So the kids were in the van, and Justin and I were standing outside the van, talking about schedules and the agenda for the evening.  Then Justin got in to take the kids home. I said goodbye to him and walked away from the van.

As he was driving away, I realized I had not said goodbye to my kids. This might not seem like a big deal. Kids are often in their own world. And a three year old and an eleven month old might not notice their mom not saying goodbye. But honestly, I know kids do remember things just like that.  Because I remember being a kid and wondering why adults acted like I wasn’t in the van, or in the room or wherever I found myself being passively ignored.

I felt bad. I’m usually pretty good at including them as small people in my world, and offering them the same courtesies as I would an adult.  But I slipped.

OK, that’s part of parenting. But it got me thinking about sharing the test I have that keeps me in check.

Here it is: In any moment involving common courtesy (saying hello, goodbye, please, or thank you; apologizing if I’m wrong or rude), I pretend the kid is an adult. It’s a litmus test to see if I’m treating my kids like people.

In the case today, if I had been saying goodbye to Justin and two of my friends were in the backseat, and I had walked away without saying goodbye to them, it would have been rude. The fact that the two people in the back seat were little people doesn’t make a lick of difference. I should have taken a second to say goodbye. Kids are people too.

Baby, We Were Born to Run

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Last year in my mama support facebook group, I posted these words, “I’ve got a runner.” I was referring to my then two year old who had taken to sprinting away from me as soon as he saw an opening. “Can’t catch me!”  he would shout. And I would think, “You are right! I am eight months pregnant with what must be a fifteen pound baby and I can barely waddle fast enough to catch a caterpillar!”

He thought running away was fun, hilarious, a game. I was panicked. I could not stop him from running and, being a slow-moving planet, I could not catch him.  In my mind, as happens often in parenting, my sense of time collapsed and the phase we were in became an always/never situation. He will never stop when I ask him to. We will never be able to walk down a sidewalk together. I will always have this panic that he will run into the street.

He didn’t have a sense of danger at all: traffic, bikes, losing sight of each other in public places. These were all amusing to him- they had no consequences that he could see other than the consequences I created for him which mattered little to him.

Perceiving danger was my job. And I’m damn good at it because I tend to be an anxious person when it comes to my kids safety.  (I cut blueberries not just in half, but into quarters for the baby, just to be safe.)  But during this phase, unless I had him strapped into a stroller, shopping cart, or car seat, I could not keep him safe.  He would almost always hit the ground running.

Below you will see pics of B in action during this phase:

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Throwing down his best juke moves on Justin to get past him.

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Justin is foiled again!

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At last Braden listens to reason and comes back when we call him.

The advice given to me by my facebook group was outstanding, as usual. They recommended having consistent consequences and rules, and saying things like this:

You must hold my hand in the parking lot.

If you don’t stay where I can see you and you can see me, we are leaving.

But what I learned in this phase was that, despite our consistent warnings and consequences, there was no way to keep him safe other than strapping him into something. I wanted him to have the freedom to learn, but I couldn’t keep him out of danger if we did.  So anytime we left the house, it was like we were flying through turbulence- because he was always buckled.  He went directly from the car seat to the stroller and stayed locked in until we were done with our errand and I could put him back in the car seat. Same for shopping carts. I could not let him try and walk next to me on the sidewalk holding my hand because he could never resist the temptation to run, no matter what consequence I could offer. And given that I would not be able to catch him, I really had no choice.

This lasted for a few months. I would see other toddlers walking across a parking lot holding their mom’s hand and I would then want to cry. (Time collapses: We will never be able to hold hands in the parking lot.) But I am happy to report that we do now.  He still really loves running, but usually not away from me.  He listens when I ask him to stop (usually.) He even turns around to check in.  “Is this too far?” he will yell if he’s run ahead of me on a path.  And I am so glad to shout back, “That’s far enough! Just wait there for mama!” And he does.

Bubble Boys

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The other day, my 3 year old was invited to watch a video with some other little ones while the grown-ups talked. My husband and I usually let him watch TV or play ipod learning apps pretty regularly- almost every day- but his exposure to different shows has been pretty limited up to this point. He’s watched things like: Baby Einstein, Sid the Science Kid, Mary Poppins and the most PG-ish of the bunch, Cars.  We don’t watch adult shows when he is around or have the TV on as background noise. We feel like we want to protect him from the media saturation that can happen if we don’t keep a close eye on when screens are on and what he’s viewing.

On this day, he had been watching the selected movie with the other kids for about a half an hour before coming to find me to let me know he didn’t want to watch anymore.

His reason? The movie was “too scary.”

What they were watching?  “Winnie the Pooh.”

This made me so, so happy.  Some parents might worry that this was an indicator that their child is too sensitive.  For me, preserving his sensitivity is a good thing.  I want him to have a lengthy, sparkling childhood where he sees examples of kindness, cooperation, and curiosity in the characters he observes.

Consequently, I can be extremely protective of what he’s exposed to.  This will be the same for my 10 month old, too.  My bubble boys.  Like every parent, I try to protect them from concepts they don’t need to know about.

I used to have a book called The Hidden Messages in Water, that described how the crystallization of frozen water can be affected by the presence of either positive or negative words.  Words like harmony, peace, and love created symmetry, radiance, and beauty.  Words like hate and war had the opposite effect. It’s kind of a cool concept and the pictures of the water crystals from this book really stuck with me.

So when I think about what I want my boys exposed to, it’s the words that created symmetrical, radiant crystals- those that contribute to a harmonious inner life and don’t bring up questions they have no need to answer yet.

Here are some words I don’t want them to even have in their airspace until absolutely necessary.

hate, war, guns, fight, ugly, combat, war, poor, horror, battle, terror, first place, last place, loser, winner, bad, extinction,

Ok, the list goes on and on. As of right now, he lives in a world where people are kind to each other, take care of each other, are gentle, mindful, musical, and fun. I hope that we can keep the media he’s exposed to be reflective of this gentle world for as long as we can.  Hopefully he’ll learn that TV and movies aren’t just about entertainment, but also about learning and really great stories. They’re such a powerful tools…I hope we can teach him how to use them wisely.

 

 

 

Sad about the bees.

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I was two paragraphs into the Time magazine article about Colony Collapse Disorder when I had to stop reading.  Too furious that our actions regularly seem to destroy worlds like the world of the grand little honeybee.  What must these animals think of us? “Tyrants! Idiots!  Watch out, butterfly! You’re next!”

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Turns out the world of the honeybee is our world, too.  And compromising any ecosystem compromises us. I don’t really think this is new information.  You could have asked Chief Seattle and here is what he would have said:

“All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth
Befalls the sons of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life,
He is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web,
He does to himself.”

I can still see the picture from my earth science textbook from 4th grade illustrating ecosystems and how everything in the natural world is connected.  There was the underwater life where the big fish was eating the little fish, and the clouds above producing rain, and carnivores nibbling on smaller carnivores and herbivores nibbling on berries.  And then there was the human beings spraying green science-fiction chemicals on everything.  No, wait.   I don’t remember seeing humans in that picture at all and I think that’s where the trouble lies.  Somewhere along the line, we decided that we aren’t in the picture, we just draw the picture. Where did this concept come from? That we can just be plucked from our ecosystem, lifted right out into another plane of existence.  Conveniently we have also decided that we can lift various species out at our whim, as well.

I hear my dad chortling at me from the afterlife as I actually shed a tear over these bees.  “Why don’t you go hug a tree or something? Save the whales, Kris. Become a vegan.” I can hear him now. But it is just too sad that what finally draws our attention to the bees is the possibility of our favorite foods going away, rather than just the fact that we are killing off a species with our idiot chemicals. Don’t think for once second we would be this freaked out if it was the earwig that was threatened.  And shame on me because damn right, I want my blueberries too.  I care about the luxuries of non-buggy, plastic-looking summer fruit in winter and that is such a 1st world problem.  But at least I know when I’m being an obnoxious 1st World brat.  We know exactly what needs to be done, so there is no excuse to keep at destructive practices so that we can have our cushy -strawberries in winter-unbruised gigantic apples-abundant corn crop- survival.

This issue has become so depressing that I now want my own garden, which is saying something for someone who can barely handle one potted tomato plant and doesn’t have a yard.  I don’t want to think about whether I am killing bees by not buying pesticide/fungicide/insecticide-free produce. I don’t like that my salad is contributing to the bees possible extinction. And I recently learned that organic produce might not even be free of gross-icides and I don’t like that either. I don’t like that Colony Collapse Disorder was the name chosen for what is essentially Consequence of Human Interaction Disorder.  Collapse implies the colonies mysteriously dissolved from some weak internal structure.  When we all know the biggest cause of their trouble is that big, human black boot coming down on them from the sky.

So here is my naïve, simplistic, tree-hugging take.  I’m thankful that Time is drawing more attention to the issue.  Trying to analyze and solve the problem= Good.  Spending a fraction of a second thinking about: 1. Money and 2. Convenience= Bad.  When dealing with a problem as far-reaching and spectacularly important as keeping honeybees alive, once there is even a shadow of an idea of what’s causing the problem, you fix it.  It is disaster relief.  Call in every available resource nationally and internationally.  We must find a way to stop using the pesticides, herbacides, fungacides, whatever we have used to make our lives more convenient, cheaper, and tastier at the cost of destroying our environment.  We must find a way to support the farmers who are relying on those toxins and give them alternatives. Restructure, refinance, redesign the way we do growing. We must make it illegal to use chemicals on our lawns and fields.  We must grow our own gardens, buy local.

I’m just exhausted from reading stories about how we are trashing our world. Enough, already. Just who do we think we are?

Save the bees.

And P.S.: Time Magazine, after an uber-f***-ing depressing article, please include action steps that tell readers what to do about the problem.  Like so:

Did you know that it’s legal to keep bees in Madison if you adhere to a few regulations?  If I had a backyard, I’d be keeping some myself. Here’s the link to an article about the ordinance.

Find a few things you can do to help bees with this article here and a PBS article here.

Find resources for being a Dane County beekeeper here.