The Beginning: Tales of the First Tri-Master

First of all, I am thankful. I am thankful that after months of trying and years of considering we were able to conceive. The answer of weather we would have a second child has been answered. I am thankful that I got to prepare for this one and make a fully conscience decision that I am ready to be a two kid mom. I also see how my Sweetpea is really ready to be a big sister.

Next we got pregnant. The first time this happened was a surprise. Being in my senior year of college I thought I would follow the laid out path for me of MFA programs, artist residency, and maybe a few years down the line start a family. The evening I found out I was pregnant, I reached for the third pregnancy test and again, seeing a positive sign, I really freaked out. We could have been in a lot worse of a situation, I had a stable, committed and happy relationship with the dad. I was 28, not totally a spring chicken. I had a lot of really cool experiences under my belt already. I decided to be ready, then motherhood came flooding in as the biggest adventure of my life.

5 years down the line I took my pregnancy test in the afternoon and jumped for joy! Leaping across my bathroom in a Tigger type fashion. When Sweetpea woke up from her nap I told her, we squealed around the house. Then I patiently waited for two more hours till daddy got home from work. He was over the moon we all were, it was just getting to the point where I was starting to wonder about my fertility, then bam it happened. The baby waited till we moved into our new home. We conceived soon after moving in.

After a week or two of blissful excitement my little bubble popped. Pregnancy and me are not good friends. My body is not a big fan of sharing all its resources. This shows up in long bouts of violent vomiting and hours of nausea. The pattern I developed was eat a little, sleep a little, eat a little sleep a little all day long. I was in survival mode, only doing the bare minimum to get by. Daddy really stepped up to the plate, taking over a lot of Sweetpea's routine on top of working. I would show up to work and try to not vomit or fall asleep for 5 hours. Then go pick up my daughter from pre-school and spend the rest of the afternoon/evening on the couch.

I felt like I was doing a crap job with Sweetpea but she seemed to understand. When I would start randomly crying she would come over and pet my head. We watched a lot of my little pony.  I was eating like a small child so that worked well in feeding her. The vomiting started at 4 1/2 weeks for me, the only solace it provided was proof that my pregnancy was sticking and I was less likely to have a miscarriage. Though that might be something they tell new sick mothers just to make them feel better.

After days of not being able to stop hacking I decided enough was enough, medicate me. I was really anti-meds with Sweetpea. I struggled along through my whole pregnancy believing I was doing best by my baby. Maybe it is best, but this time I was not going to mess around. I had a vacation coming up I refused to be completely sick for all of it. I also have just felt more relaxed in general this pregnancy. I don't have the time to notice every little change.  I am too busy trying to keep up with my 4 year old.

I went to my first doctor's appointment and got prescribed the generic version of Zofran an anti-nausea medication. Lucky for me it worked! I still felt pregnant, had bouts of nausea and even occasional vomiting, but not nearly as much as before. I was finally able to eat without having to take a nap right afterword to keep from vomiting. The best part is I could just feel like a normal person in my body for some of the day.

I also kept this as perspective; I am building a human brain! This part is so incredible it’s hard to explain. I can't believe I have the capability to make a brain. I am crafting one of the most incredible things that nature has provided to humans. What an ordinary and extraordinary act to be pregnant. It makes me feel more connected to humanity, growing a life force is so fierce.

This is defiantly my second time around. The first time I was walking on eggs shells sure every little thing I did would affect the baby. Now I know it take s a lot to screw things up. If I stick to the tried and true resources I have a sense that this kid will be fine. I am already in good communication with "Little Pickle Lollipop" (the womb name Sweetpea and I came up with.) I gently remind the baby within how much we like food and how loved they already are. I also do a lot of deep belly rubbing, this seems to help with nausea and keeps me feeling more connected to the wee one swimming around inside of me.

I am now at the end of my first tri-master and am noticing a marked difference. Like the stages of babyhood pregnancy is an ever-changing state that you just have to role with. I can't predict how I will feel day to day but I surely remember the amazing thing that happens at the end. There is nothing like holding your little one for the first time and hearing their voice. Knowing my precious baby will be at the end of the roller coaster ride of pregnancy makes it worth it.

Kids & Stuff

As an activist and penny pincher for most of my life I have figured out a lot about not being materialistic, making do and up cycling most things. After becoming a parent I had to figure out a new relationship to stuff. There was all the baby stuff, needs verses wants I am still unclear of, we got almost all of it used but still accumulated a lot more things in our lives. Then it became toys, we love toys as a family and daddy and I kept a lot of childhood stuff we eagerly have passed onto Sweetpea. Then presents from family and friends just kept adding up. It worked in our favor that we moved so often so we could not accumulate too much but still our stuff factor is higher then I would like.

I am not only talking about what we own but also what my kid desires. Daddy and I recently had a very different take on what desire and stuff should look like in our lives. Daddy says that there will always be stuff my daughter will want in this world. He thinks we should support her desire to want things and be perfectly happy not getting any of it. His philosophy is she can always ask for it. This falls under the "we have integrity to set a firm boundary and stick to it style of parenting. "Also, she can desire all she wants knowing that she will not necessarily get whatever she has momentarily attached to.

Daddy and Sweetpea on their Saturdays together often head to the mall. They usually window-shop and spend spare change on the little rides there. They look at everything, she asks for it and for the most part he says no. Then they move on. She is so used to this interaction now that it does not seem to faze her that she will not get most of what she is asking for.

I never take Sweetpea to the mall. This window-shopping would drive me bonkers. Her asking for everything she comes into contact with overwhelms me. I only go to stores with a specific purpose and let her know ahead of time what we will be getting and that is it. She is not confused by our different styles and can get pleasure out of both experiences. 

We recently ran into a divergent point around some dolls. Sweetpea desired dolls that resembled tweaked out partygoer divas complete with gogo boots. I deemed the dolls to adult like for Sweetpea to be playing with at her age, daddy agreed, but seeing how much she liked them, printed out a picture for her to carry around of the dolls as if she had them. I was not sure how I felt about this but tried to be open and see what would happen. Would only sort of having them lead to her more greatly wanting them or would it curb the obsession? After a week of carrying the picture everywhere I decided to hide it. I was done having conversations about these bazaar dolls I was not ready to have my 4 year old playing with. Once the picture was gone she has not asked for it sense or brought up the dolls. 

Kaya' Bedroom James Mollison

  This was an experiment, mixing our two styles of parenting around stuff, in this case my "get rid of the temptation and the desire will go away" approach seemed to work best. Though I really appreciate my husbands chill nature around objects and desire. He can be very practical and light about it. Growing up I felt a burden to really want something in order to get it. I remember feeling guilty if I said in the store I wanted something and then when I came home not wanting it anymore and not knowing what to do. This happened more in my teen years but still brings up that fresh confusion around how crazy our culture is around stuff and the need for it.

How much do we actually need? I feel the desire for things now even stronger with the closing date for our first home approaching. Suddenly I am staring at websites looking at furniture just a few months ago I would never have considered a necessity. I know my little one is watching me react to stuff and the importance or lack of importance of it. I want her to see an un-materialistic and happy family valuing togetherness over money and objects. Still she lives in this culture that just seems to be getting more and more obsessed with us personalizing and buying everything, ahem, the new cokes with names on them, makes me gag. 

By Katrin Wells-Stein

Ultimately I want a healthy, happy kid who can read between the lines when she is being sold a bunch of crap she knows she does not need. I also want to be flexible enough myself to remember what it was like being a kid and saving up my allowance for weeks to buy a Barbie doll. I remember the feeling of excitement getting an American Girls Catalog and leafing through every page. I turned into a radical person who listened to riot girl, was self educated and traveled the world. I don't think Sweetpea needs to see the world through my adult eyes.  I will watch out for her and these more and more garish versions of kid’s stuff they seem to come up with but will at the same time not trample on her desires. It’s a fine balance as is all of parenting.

Breaking The TV Habit

Dear readers, I will level with you. We watch TV. Media is a part of our world. I use TV to unwind and to connect with friends, family and my sweet hubby. In parenting I use it to get a few moments all to myself during the day without interruption. I am by no means an expert in the department of choosing weather to have my kid watch TV or not. I am striving to reach more of a happy medium with it in my life. I imagine a utopic place where my kid has a gaggle of pals always around to keep her company and I have a gaggle of friends to connect with, village style, so TV would be completely irrelevant. I would love to have this village and have figured it out some in my adult life. However that village is partly long distance and not always around. The habit of TV is still prevalent.  I watched TV as a kid, a lot of which was un-monitored. Sometimes it was happy memories, of fun puppets and story lines. Sometimes it was very violent and scary, lots of it I did not understand and had the images stay with me, disturbing me as a sensitive young one, sending me into haunted, unsafe feelings that were hard to digest.

 When Sweetpea was little I worried about TV, a lot more then her daddy did. TV was monitored in his household, with lots of rules about what he could watch and when. This made his rebellion even stronger. His attitude became, "I get to watch what I want when I want." I have read all the theories out there about kids having too much media. The harmful affects of low attention spans, expecting to be entertained all the time, also the way media affects our developing human brains. I did not want that for my kid. Then we had her and life continued on. I started noticing how I got a much needed break when my little one was transfixed on a show, how I could carve out that very important me time when she was completely engaged in something else.

I felt like we kept it in check. She never watched a lot and mostly TV that I deemed age appropriate and worth watching, not just any children's programming. Still it did not always sit well with me. I watched her get completely absorbed in something, the whole mouth open, staring that I had always looked down upon in some of the kids I watched as a nanny. Now here it was, my kid, looking like a fish glued to a screen. There are many things I have had to let go of in terms of the "ideal world" and my parenting, this one was hard to swallow but felt like an essential way for me to stay being myself and be a happy parent.

As Sweetpea has gotten older her engagement with media has changed. She never wants to sit through a whole movie, if I let her go for as long as she wants in front of the TV she gets up all done after 3, 20 minute shows. I like seeing her self monitoring, knowing when she is done. We have hit some kind of balance, Daddy had faith that if we exposed her to media she would not want to engage with it all the time, that it would just be another thing going on and she could make good self decisions on weather or not to be a part of it. For the most part this has worked.

Then I re-picked up a book I read and reviewed earlier in this blog, "Heaven on Earth, A Handbook for Parent's of Young Children." In this book Sharifa Oppenheimer lays out the Waldorf philosophy of keeping kids media free. She puts it in a way that feels more accessible to me then the other more critical, judgmental books I have read on keeping kids media free. She says "You may be thinking, how will I have a minute to myself without the TV? I would never have survived with media in our life! I was far too busy to deal with the whining, discontent the media creates in children. Because I relied entirely on my children's innate capacity to create, imagine, be active, and entertain them selves, they did exactly that."

This struck a cord with me. Sweetpea does have a brilliant imagination. Once we get passed that nagging phase of desiring the TV, she will just chose something else to do. I have slowly taken media out of our transition times. When I make dinner I tell her what I am doing and ask if she wants to help. She typically does a combo of things, helping a little, singing, getting out all the utensils to play with and setting the table. At first she would whine if a show was not on, but if I ignored her complaints long enough, most of the time she choose to self entertain. 

Oppenheimer also talks about a rhythm way of parenting, where each day has a rhythm and beginning it with outdoors time. I really liked this theory. I tried testing it out these past few weeks. Often the morning is a draw for Millie to watch TV. There is a TV in the kitchen at her g-parents house that is usually on in the morning. We have come to an understanding that News goes off when she is in the room. But once the boob tube is on she wants to watch a show. I call this “wake and bake” and have always disliked how this was the start to our day. I often catch her a little bit after her daddy and her have already gone to the kitchen. He almost always obliges to putting a show on for her. I have started to strategize a different way to handle the mornings with him. When she wants his attention, try giving her different things to do other then TV.

I also have been pushing her to just go outside with us. Weather she wants to or not. I ignore the nagging, "I want to watch a show" complaint and walk outside. Once outside I start asking her lots of questions like, "what birds do you hear? What do you think that sound was? Was the bird saying hello, or go away? What kind of tree is that?" These work enough to get her into her surroundings and from there I get a good 20 minutes of playtime, sometimes with me sometimes alone while I sip my coffee and stare at the clouds.

Our system is not perfect, I still rely on some screen time to be able to get other things done during the day without interruption but I feel like we are heading towards a balance. The path I am always striving for in life.

Post 50! On What I Have Learned About Being A Mom

This is my 50th post on Mullet Mom! When I started this blog I wondered how long it would take me to get to 50. Here it is, 3 years and two cities later. I made it this far as a mom of an almost 4-year-old.  I look at my Sweetpea, she is my very intelligent, cuddly, artist, sassy, fashion preschooler.

Mary Cassatt

 When I started writing this blog she wasn't eating solid foods. I was navigating the waters of new parenting, celebrating the moments when my arms were full of baby, and being so happy to put that little, squishy, treasure down and get my head back into my own creativity. I did not know where I would end up living or how I could manage having a job and parenting. I was trying so hard to adapt the person I knew I was with the role of being a parent. I am still figuring this out but it’s not nearly as intense. The two selves have melded together for the most part, the happy parent and the happy person I have always been.

Mary Cassatt

Life brought me to this point and I know I will just continue growing from here, one blog post at a time. After 50 posts here are some thoughts on what I have learned, so far, about being a mom. I look forward to reviewing this on post 100!

-The most important thing I have to offer as a parent is good, thoughtful, listening, acknowledging and owning my mistakes and staying really close with her. If I stick with this mantra I know we can accomplish anything together.

-Being my daughter’s biggest fan. I got this from my parents. Even when I was being bullied as a child I had a deep sense of my own importance in this world.  I owe that to their thoughtful encouragement. I know they have my back and will always think what I create is remarkable.

-Everything seems to be a phase. Just as I am getting used to how she is, she will change. Some parts of the phase are difficult, like I guess we are not done with tantrums yet. Others are pure pleasure; wow she can unstrap her own seat belt and put on her own shoes!

-Constant flexibility is essential to equal Librium.  I have to question my assumptions daily in my interactions with her and find the balance of setting a boundary when I see fit. I can forgive myself for being harsh or irritated when I do it and I can also be straightforward in guiding her in the right direction.

-Deciding to love being a parent. All the joy, hardship and connection I get from being with my little one is worth it.  Knowing I will have this relationship for years to come and it will morph and grow. There is someone in my life that worships my tummy that hangs on my every word that wants to engage with me from sun up to sun down and all through the night if she had it her way. I use the tv show “The Gilmore Girls” as an example of how moms and daughters get to grow together and cheer each other on. I hope I will get to be as close to my daughter through out our lives.

Mary Cassatt

 

-When I listen to her and follow her around I get to see life through her eyes. What a gift this is! She has all these ideas about the world and moments of whimsy I get to delight with her in. Listening to her tell me what she thinks is one of my favorite things about parenting

-Sweetpea wants me to be myself and pursue my passions so I am not distracted when I spend time with her. I can be in the pure “being” present when I know some of my needs have been met and now I get to share myself with her. Artist hours, self dates, naps and adult time make for a happy, present, mom who is ready to play.

-It really does take a whole village. I delight so much in seeing her connection with her Cece (G-mom) and Daddy on a daily basis. I get to be her world and so do they in a big way. I want to have even more familial and friendship connections that bring her into contact with lots of people that can adore her mind and spirit as much as I do. She is starting to build that community at preschool and with friends. I am so pleased to watch her circle of connection grow. Knowing she gets to have lots of people.

Mary Cassatt

 

This is dedicated to all you amazing parents. I am in awe of all you manage to do. This is also dedicated to all you lovers of parents. Some of my biggest fans are just my dear friends and allies in this project of raising a young person in our scary and wonderful world.

Venezia: Perspectives On The City Of Canals

And now for a little travel post, a summer read for your pleasure:

Oh Venice, Venezia, the beautiful city, poetry in boat and bridge form. There sits the indy young female traveler. She unbuttons her leather gloves preparing to nibble a Margherita pizza at a tiny cafe on the harbor overlooking an ancient basilica, drinking in the ambiance. A Venetian woman hardened to the charms of this touristic wonderland. She holds still, eyes glazed on the water boat metro (Vaporetto) as swarms of people scrunch past her with the ever-present inflection of "Permesso, Permesso," (excuse me.) The small child, buttoned up in a wool coat and matching hat, heels clicking across a cobblestone square. She only knows life within the confines of narrow alleyways, piazzas with only one tree planted in the middle. The withered leaves holding all the oxygen of the appartamento’s lining the square built in the 14th century surrounding the Jewish ghetto.

This city, where people breath deep and long sharing the same cluttered archways with pedestrians, boats, scooters and bicycles. Where the same stories are retold on Latin tongues buried deep in cappuccinos at restaurants where recipes are passed down through each generation. A city where the modern artists mimic old ideas retold from the floors of Cathedrals transforming to canvas in techno colors in a galleria stinking of formaldehyde or sewage. A smell that is the base layer of Vencie, stinky, fanciful, man made and imagined. The very wealthy living in a bubble of comfort. The very local living down secret alleyways never touched by the tourist track.

Mist comes in soft puffs down the grand canal, leaving a tiny veil on the fine china cups used to sip espresso in the morning. A cloud of moisture over the calloused hands of the rope tiers who bring the vaporetto to a stop for loading and unloading. The same damp that musses the feathers of pigeons ready to dance in the puddles of Piazza Saint Marco. This veil that captures the mystery of this thoroughly man-made city.

How perfect that glass blowing is the chosen art form of this place. What a delicate and strong art form for a city steeped in fantasy and hard labor.  

From 20's to 30's

Lately I have been thinking a lot about what it was like being in my 20's. Most of these thoughts turn to nostalgia. I think about being care free and untethered. I remember what it was like to pick up and go and find myself in all kinds of excellent adventures. Free spirit was the name they attached to my life style. I tend to marvel at the audacity of my younger self. Life was really cut open at that point and I intended to experience it all. Lots of lovers, travels, activism, jobs and experiences. The 20's mullet mom always said yes to random occurrence and often spent time in new and unusual ways. She would call people out on the bus for negatively catching her attention. She would spend dark nights at cafes writing then walk the 5 miles home after missing the late bus. She rode her bike in the rain and picked up odd jobs, mostly playing with kids, then would save enough to travel and go on escapades all over the world.

I sometimes miss that whimsy and envy that freedom and then I remember the not so rosy side of being in my 20's. A good show to watch as a reminder of the hardship of being in your 20's is HBO’s "Girls." Lena Dunham does an excellent job portraying her generation’s age and the time that happens for some folks post college entering the adult world. Mostly she shows how awkward it is to discover oneself. All the insecurity and pain experienced in this age of trying to find connection and home. Dunham shows all the insecurity in her main characters as they go through gross sexual experiences, labor oppression, striving for dreams and falling flat, trying new things and being put in painful and awkward situations.

Not feeling like you have people or a home is a really challenging experience. In my 20's I went from house to house. I had high hopes for a career then had to look through the realistic lens of making money. I had to fake so much experience to try and fit into an adult standard of how to act in order to get a job. That sense of freedom came with the price of an intense un-rootedness. I definitely had people close to me at that time, very close considering I moved so much but still felt that sense of isolation and needing to figure it all out with little help. At the same time I cherish what I did in my 20's and am so proud of that younger me who tried so many things and was this punk rock queer radical who didn't let oppression get her down and also I am glad to be done with that time.

From Mylifescoop.com

In my 30's I am still considered a free spirit but it looks different now. I live my life in connection with a family that nourishes my soul. I have found ways of being safe and taking care of myself while still pushing the envelope. I live a little less on the edge and am benefiting from it. I know myself more and what I am about. I know there are surprises yet to be discovered in my future but now I know I have that safety net to return to at the end of it. I still consider myself a punk rock queer. I still shrink at most things adult, like investments, making lots of money and status through objects. I am coming into my own with the balance of being ok with embracing some securities of the adult world and at the same time living it on my own terms. Part of this is moving to Tulsa, the happy medium of my adult life. I don't know if we will be here forever but I do know I will be here long enough to have Sweetpea be a teen and grow a fruit tree to fruition.  I will see what life dishes out in the coming years. I turn 33 this June, my lucky number.

A Tale Of Dry Nights

No one told me going into this parenting thing that my daughter would still be struggling with having dry nights at 3 1/2 years old. We mastered dry days by 2 1/2. Dry nights have been a different story. On her 3rd birthday her dad and her decided there was no need for diapers at night. So we did it. We took the plunge and tried having her go without diapers completely, trusting she would let us know if she needed to go.

6 months later and I think now we are just getting the hang of it, knock on wood. This could be the biggest jinx post I have ever written. Sweetpea is consistently having every night dry for the past 3 weeks. We have tried everything. We have consulted all the parents we have known, we read all the books about it and talked to a doctor. Everyone told us this was normal. I wondered why I had never heard of it before. Years of being a nanny and I never noticed how long it took to get the night diapers out of the picture.

The thing is Sweetpea is a deep sleeper and we nursed to sleep when she was young. She really wants a drink before bed, after nursing we switched to a bottle of milk before bed, then water. She associated going to bed with drinking beverage.  I personally need to get up in the night if I consume tea before bed, I get it, your bladder can only hold so much. So she needed to go. At first it was only sometimes she would wet the bed, then it was every other night for months. It would seem like we were on an up curve, 2 weeks here and there then she would plummet back down to every two nights. Meanwhile I was doing a ton of laundry.

I had friends who said it was completely normal to have kids up to 5 years old in pull-ups. We were actually the only people in our friend circle who were even trying at 3 years old to take away night diapers. They all agreed they were too young at this age to be able to hold it all night long. It could be this was true. Though we had another friend I didn't see often who's son stopped having any accidents at 2 1/2. They just stopped putting diapers on him and he was done, end of story.

Daddy was fierce about sticking to our guns, rarely is he fierce about any parenting issue so I decided to side with him, as the laundry continued piling up. And I, being home more, was doing more of it I decided we needed a big change.

First we made a rule, no more liquid before bed. This was a struggle.  We got it down to two sips of water after she brushed teeth, which seemed to work as a compromise.

Second, I started a sticker chart. Just in case wetting the bed might be psychological I thought some incentive might help. Every dry night she got a sticker, two in a row she got a little plastic gem, 3 dry nights got a candy and 7 dry nights got a trip to Chuck E Cheese. I never thought of myself as a parent that might have this kind of reward system, but I was feeling desperate and if I have learned anything from parenting, you got to try all manner of ways of doing things and see which one works. She seemed to like all the rewards but it never added up to having dry nights on a consistent basis.

Lastly, we woke her up to pee a few hours after she goes to sleep. Friends had told us they woke there kid up in the middle of the night to pee, this seemed to daunting for us, so we stuck to 2 hours after she went to sleep, typically right before we went to bed. This worked for a while, and then it started being a struggle. If we didn't get her up right at 2 hours she would pee the bed, also she would fight us to get up and go, after tons of screaming and crying, plus 15 minutes to get her back down and calm, I could see that this strategy was not working.

This is when I decided to research the affects of reintroducing pull-up diapers after 6 months of none. Daddy really fought me on this, he was sure it would break her confidence and he felt she was just on her way to learning. He had more patience and less laundry doing then I. I found parenting forums all about this subject. I especially loved this one California moms list serv that had all kinds of opinions but seemed to all go with trust your gut and don't worry about harmful long term affects.

With all this research and strategy under my belt I just decided to go for it. We went to Target and grabbed a pair of 4t-5t pull-ups with flowers. I explained to Sweetpea these were only temporary, that would help her to remember to wake up and pee in the potty. She went along with it. Her dad was not happy but after my research was willing to try. And the thing is they worked!

Miracle of miracles, once she felt that squishy, diapery, plastic texture between her legs she was not happy. She didn't want to wear them. I set the rule that once she could go a full 3 days with them on and stay dry she did not need to wear them anymore. The next week we went on a trip. The struggle to put them on at night intensified, so after having her pee right before bed, I would put her to sleep. I would then sneak in an hour later and put a pull up on her. She was so deep asleep she did not wake up. Some magic made it so she did not pee the bed or the pull-up the whole 5-day trip.

When we got back home she reverted back a little and then started getting mad that she woke up with a pull up on. She told us not to put them on her at all. We listened, one night I just had her pee before bed. Then a few hours later I went to bed, no secret pull-ups, no waking her up to pee. When we woke up that morning she had a dry night! Going back to pull ups actually worked for us!

As I look back at all we did I am thinking, geez, parents are super heroes. We will do anything to make life run smoothly, we have to be always thinking, always strategizing, always being hopeful for a change of events. What a creative and intense job!

Now, 3 weeks later she has consistently had dry nights. Maybe our friends were right, maybe her body was finally old enough to wait it out through the night. I still go into her room and ask if she wants to try 2 hours after she goes to sleep. She always turns me down. We shall see what the next manifestation of this is. Now I know I am ready to take on the challenge.