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Last weekend we went for a walk to collect nuts. There are city trees everywhere with nuts that plummet to the ground and nobody collects them (except the squirrels), so we were able to gather heaps and heaps of chestnuts just a few blocks away. I’m not sure if we’re going to eat them, but they make lovely decorations for now.
Still tipsy and toddling, but definitely a walker.
My first reaction to learning that Isabela was going to have a sleepover camping trip with her class was, “What? NO WAY!”
Chris’ reaction was, “Hey, that’s great!”
Which made me realize that the problem was that, whether or not Isabela was ready, I was not ready.
At first Isabela did not want to go, but as the time came closer, and as they talked about it more and more in their class, she started to get excited. Just a few days before the trip, without any prompting from us, she decided to sleepover.
After dropping her off at the camp and helping her set up her things on the bunk bed in the cabin, we said goodbye and without a flinch or second glance she bounced off to play. My, this is a different child than the one who used to sob and sob every morning at school drop off, during recess and when I was not the first parent in line to pick her up.
They hiked, created nature art, visited a salmon hatchery, the water reservoir and dam, roasted marshmallows, sang camp songs and SLEPT OVER in a room with 25 giggling girls. Granted, I’m not sure how much sleep they actually got.
Isabela is growing up.
“I hate school! I’m never coming back here!” screamed Isabela to her teacher.
This came after a huge blowout on her second day of full day school – a mixture of tears, temper tantrums and Isabela yelling at her teacher. Not terribly surprising since it took her 8 months to get used to kindergarten last year. I brought her home after lunch and spent an hour and a half with her crying. At which point I was crying too.
Chris came home early from work and did one of the most spectacular parenting jobs I have ever seen in my life. He immediately went into her room and played with her. Created a really strong attachment. Was silly and playful. Then told her about his school experience. And then talked, consulted, encouraged and honored her tears, her fears and her experience at school.
It took 4 hours.
By the next morning Isabela was ready for full day school. (And Chris was ready for a day off.)
When we got to the school, this is what she said: “I’m really scared, but Papa said that in order to get used to something new, I have to try it. So I’m going to try going to school all day today.”
She went the whole day without any problems.
The next day, with a little attitude in her voice she said, “Diego, if you want to get used to something new, you just have to do it.”
This girl is now 6 and I am in amazement – in fact flabbergasted and in awe of the things she can do now.
Like the other day I overheard her say, “Diego, I know I fight with you over wanting your cars, but actually, I was just fighting. I don’t really want them. Here you can have them back.”
WHAT?
Is that the same Isabela?
Or this one: “Isabela it’s time to get ready for bed.”
“O.K.” she says. And 1 minute later she’s got on her pajamas and teeth brushed.
WHAT?
I think I’m liking this.
Isabela is my child that teaches me to be a parent. First of all, she’s the first. So everything I do with her is trial and error. And unfortunately, a lot of error. But she’s also my most sensitive and challenging child. And because of this, she is really the child that MAKES me become a better parent.
When kids are easy, we don’t have a lot of motivation to change, as a parent, or to learn new things. But when we’re pulling our hair out, screaming into a pillow and cursing under our breath, well these are the things that trigger us to search for new solutions.
The greatest parenting investment I have ever made was to purchase a set of parenting videos by Gordon Neufeld about attachment parenting called “The Power to Parent”. Not cheap. And NOT easy to do. But so incredibly helpful, practical and inspiring. For me the proof of these miracle parenting videos is how dramatically my relationship with my children has changed. Read more about how I have been re-learning to parent here.
And now I leave you with some birthday party photos.
Decorations courtesy of Isabela and Diego.
To all the parents out there. I have noticed that every single time we go outside to play in our yard or we have children come over to our house to play, they ALWAYS end up in the sandbox for a significant amount of time. Sandboxes are CHEAP (especially if you buy them used – we buy all our used stuff from craigslist.org) and sand is CHEAP ($5 at Home Depot for a huge bag, or free if you get it from a beach).
You will never lose with this investment. It will provide HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS of entertainment. So my advice to you is this: Go out and buy a sandbox.
I’m not really sure what the deal is with mermaids and princesses and that crap, but I decided I can get over my issues – at least for the birthday cake – and let Isabela choose what kind of cake she wanted. I was hoping for something more like this cake from here:
But who am I kidding, really? At this stage in my life, I need the simple solution. And so off we went to the dollar store, bought a couple of mermaids, and then a bunch of bags of candy from the Quickie Mart down the street. “Whoa! That’s a lot of candy!” says Harry, the store clerk.
Then the kids iced and decorated the cake themselves. And which kid wouldn’t want a cake covered with candy? The irony, of course, is that I don’t ever eat sugar and hardly ever let my kids eat sugar, but what the heck. Birthdays only come around once a year.
We were searching through Google Images to get some ideas for mermaid cakes and I taught Isabela how to click on the image that she wants, enlarge the photo, then go back to the main page to continue searching through the images, then click to the next page of images. This was out of a matter of necessity, since 3 kids requires so much multitasking and Fiona is at the “pounding the computer” stage and so I didn’t have a lot of time to sit down and look at photos with Isabela.
To my complete amazement, I only had to teach her once and she remembered exactly how to do all of those steps.
I got my first email address when I was in university. Not because I was technologically repressed, but because NO ONE ELSE HAD EMAIL ADDRESSES. There was no Google. No Facebook. No Wikipedia. And look, I’m not really that old. That was only 13 years ago. But it was all so new and I used to curse the computer endlessly because it didn’t do what I wanted it to do and I didn’t know how to fix the things I had by some magical mistake messed up.
And now, here is my 6 year old daughter, going, “I can do it. I can do it.” And she really can.
And then there’s my three year old picking up my Ipod Touch, turning it on, scrolling through, finding the game he wants, opening it, playing it, closing it, checking the weather, closing it, and turning off the Ipod and putting it away. Not that he does it that often, because just like the sugar thing, I also have a TV/computer/electronic anti-thing for kids. So they don’t use it that often and that’s why it just amazes me that when they do it, they remember all of the steps all on their own.
He is so comfortable with the touch screen that often forgets that my computer is not a touch screen and tries to open and move things around on the screen instead of with the mouse. I suspect that his first computer will probably be a touch screen computer. I’m sure those will come out sometime soon.
Whoa. I started out with Mermaid birthday cakes and ended up with predictions about touch screen computers. I bet you weren’t expecting that, were you?
I made this blackberry crumble last week at a dinner party and you know you’ve hit the jackpot when everyone there tracks you down later that week for the recipe. It’s oh-so-yummy.
And did I mention that it’s also sugar-free, egg-free, dairy-free, and wheat-free (gluten-free)? It’s hard to find a good dessert that EVERYONE loves that falls into that category. Well, if you’re looking for one, here you go:
(The best ever) Blackberry Crumble Recipe
2 1/4 cups flour (any kind of flour ie. rice, spelt, wheat, oat, etc.)
1 1/2 cups rolled oats (or quinoa flakes, kamut flakes, rice bran or ground up nuts)
3/4 tsp stevia (or 3/4 cup sugar, if you like that stuff)
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking soda
Mix all the dry ingredients together. Then add:
3/4 cup butter (non-dairy butter for the dairy sensitive ones)
In a baking plan, spread out:
4-5 cups of blackberries
Optional:
1 cup of blueberries
1-2 cups of peaches
Sprinkle the crumble topping evenly over top of the berries.
Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes.
You can make this recipe with any combination of fruit. If you use apples, your baking time will increase to about 50-60 minutes.
When you are picking your own blackberries, the biggest, blackest berries will always be the sweetest. Look for them by sunny roads, train tracks or trails.
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Even though blackberries are considered a weed, it’s hard to find them here in Vancouver, where every inch of land is developed and consequently, weeded.
Last night I took Isabela out on a special outing to pick blackberries, made even more special by the fact that it was just her and I, out late at night, way past her bedtime, doing something that we both love. We had to drive out to Richmond, a nearby city, and went to an industrial area with blocks and blocks of blackberry bushes.
We were both sort of giddy and singing and playful the whole night. Every few minutes Isabela would say, Mmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!! These are the best blackberries I’ve ever eaten in my WHOLE life!
And then every once in a while she’d find an enormous one and she’d yell, I found THE QUEEN of the blackberries! It’s going to save it for my birthday cake. And then she’d eat it a minute later.
It was a wonderful mother-daughter bonding experience, the kind of time where I can step back from my life and look at my daughter with fresh eyes. What an amazing girl, I kept thinking to myself. I was also thinking about how much my own mother would have loved to be there with us.
This blog has been around long enough for me to recognize a clear pattern now. Every summer, the blog stops. Somehow even just writing an email feels impossible in the summer.
Between family, visitors, a full house, late nights, daily outings and the general mayhem that summer brings, I can’t seem to even get myself to my computer.
Well, we’re at the end of summer. Which means two things. First off, I’m somehow magically able to get back to my computer. Maybe it’s the hundreds of emails that have been piling up in my inbox and awaiting a response that finally did me in this morning, but I think it’s also a freeing up of my mental and emotional energy, turning the page to a new start.
I love having my family here. It is a such a blessing for our kids to have incredibly attentive, loving, playful grandparents and aunts and uncles. And to reconnect personally with everyone. My biggest test is that I often find myself feeling like I’m 10 years old again and reliving all of my childhood patterns. This summer was very unique in that we, as a family, really started opening up to each other in a way that we never have, sharing things that we have wanted to say for, well in the case of Juliet and I, our whole life, to our parents.
Diving in deep into our family issues brought up A LOT of emotions – anger, frustration, tears, resentment, guilt. All those emotions were pretty exhausting and we all got sick a lot this summer from the intensity of it all. But the amazing thing was that it also brought an incredible sense of unity and love.
One thing that really helped us work through a lot of our issues was using Byron Katie’s 4 Questions, which she calls “The Work.” It is a simple set of tools that has helped me to free myself from some very painful thoughts and beliefs I had.
1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?
Then turn it around (the concept you are questioning), and find three genuine, specific examples of each turnaround.
Her website has some really great examples of how to do this work and some great free downloads. I’ve listened to two of her audio books over the last few months (I usually listen while I’m putting Fiona to sleep at night) and one of the concepts that I really love is about trying to stay in my own business, my own work, instead of spending my time and energy in other people’s business. This seems simple enough, but there are a lot of subtleties to it that I have been trying to work through.
The second big news is that Isabela is turning six years old in a few days and the following week she starts Grade 1. Saying that I have a six year old makes me feel sort of old and also somewhat experienced. Like, Hey! I’ve been parenting for 6 years full-time! I guess I know a thing or two by now. But at each turn, as she gets older and moves into a new stage, there is always something new for me to learn as a parent.
I was just visiting a friend with a newborn a few days ago and thinking to myself, Thank God I’m not at that stage anymore. Going from no children to one child is the biggest, most difficult leap that I have ever done. I know I’m not alone in saying that when I had brought my first baby home from the hospital I knew NOTHING. I didn’t even really know how to change a diaper. I had so many fears and worries because I didn’t know what was normal or abnormal. What I should be concerned about and what I should just ignore. Everything was new and everything was difficult. So let me say it again, Thank God that stage is over. And for all of you new moms, let me reassure you that it does, in fact, get easier. Even though you don’t believe me.
Last week Chris and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary. Hard to believe. 10 years. Since I’m 33 years old, that means I’ve spent about a third of my life with Chris.
But it got me thinking a lot about my grandparents, who celebrate their 67th wedding anniversary this year. 67 years with the same person is truly phenomenal.
Just a few months ago I was cleansing my old photo albums and threw out bags and bags of wedding photos from all the weddings we attended of friends who are now divorced. I just couldn’t believe that so many of our friends are divorced. Except that I can believe it. Because we have been through our own share of tears and struggles during our 10 years. Years of counseling and therapy (thankfully, much of it was free) was probably the single most important thing that helped our marriage.
After 10 years I am still amazed at how lucky I am to be married to Chris, a loving husband and a devoted and playful father. And I am still amazed at the ability of my love for him to grow with each passing year.
Well, I decided it was time to finally get rid of my wedding dress, despite the fact that I still love it, I’m definitely not planning on wearing it again. And I’m not into dying fabric. Nor do I have those type of fancy outings to attend anyways. So I put it up for sale on Craigslist and low and behold, a friend of mine who I haven’t seen for a few years found the ad, came over, tried on my dress, it fit her perfectly and she will be wearing it this summer at her wedding!
Sometimes the smallest thing, that seems insignificant at the time, can make the biggest change.
A small little fly can start an epidemic of cholera.
A mosquito can give a week-long itch.
An “I love you, sweetheart” can open up the heart.
An extra bedtime hug can ease the night time fears.
Putting on my rollerblades, while the kids are on their bikes and Fiona is in the stroller.
A seemingly small and insignificant act.
But it brings me playfulness and joy throughout the rest of my day.
Despite having just learned to crawl last week, as soon as Fiona hears the fridge door open, she races (as fast as a new crawler can race) over to the fridge. And all that motivation to reach the higher things actually inspired her to pull herself and stand now too.
Top that off with a few new teeth (for those without kids means A LOT of night waking and daytime crankiness). And boy, has this been a full week.
But thankfully my parents have been around and have taken the big kids out on plenty of adventures. The lake, the pool, a boat ride, the zoo, the park, the ice cream store. Life is good when grandparents are around.
With the arrival of summer comes the arrival of much loved family.
These two have a special connection already, even though they just met. They’re both the third child.
And these two just love to hang out in the garden together.
Kindred spirits.
Grandparents are wonderful.
Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, our little newborn baby is now a crawler and no longer a newborn.
It has been a busy week. Fiona learned how to sit, crawl and pull herself up all in one week. It is by the virtue of sheer determination that these incredible babies learn how to move. From the instant Fiona wakes up, she sits right up and starts crawling. She spends the whole day, the ENTIRE day practicing. Practicing, practicing, practicing.
To develop all of those muscles she has spent a lot of time doing the “downward facing dog” yoga position. I can last for about 1 minute doing that. She does it ALL DAY LONG.
Needless to say, all this new movement has brought with it a fresh new wave of bumps and bruises. But that is the beauty of determination. There is nothing, neither pain nor tears that will stop Fiona from practicing and moving until she has perfected and mastered these new skills.
It is an incredible reminder for me about the determination that is needed when I am learning something new.
Or”der*li*ness\, n. The quality of harmonious arrangement.
I love this virtue. Orderliness helps me create beauty and harmony in my space and in my life. As I create harmony in my mind, my physical surroundings naturally reflect that and become orderly and organized.
My sister-in-law, Courtney, with her newborn. Isa swinging (by herself!) on the swing set.
I love newborns. Soft, sweet, squishy and sleepy.
Just in case you were ever wondering what would happen if you put a pot on a hot stove element for some length of time without any water in it, let me show you. It will save you trouble of needing to try this experiment at home.
The bottom of the pan melted right off and all sorts of lovely hot metal oozed and dripped all over the stove.
If you do decide to try this experiment at home, do be sure to borrow Isabela. She will warn you just in the nick of time about what is going on, in order to prevent your whole home from turning into a hot metal forge.
We are now on the fourth day out of the nineteen day Baha’i Fast.
No food or water from sunrise to sunset. For nineteen days.
As I described to my kids, Everytime your tummy grumbles, it reminds you to think of God.
But it’s been 7 years since I’ve participated in the Fast, since I am now in my 7th of year of being either pregnant or breast-feeding (7 years!) Having children has been the single most challenging thing I have ever done. But it has also been the greatest time of spiritual transformation for me. Which is the whole purpose of the Fast. So in a way, I have been spiritually “fasting” (fasting from my own desires) for 7 years.
For a little inspiration, check out: nineteen days
Google + Wikipedia = Googlepedia
It is a free application for the Mozilla Firefox web browser. When you search something in Google, your search returns come up on the left side and the Wikipedia entry is shown on the right side. It’s very cool. It looks something like this:
Dr. Harvey Karp in The Happiest Baby on the Block, describes the first 3 months after a baby is born as “the fourth trimester.” It is a fascinating idea that our babies are “evited” 3 months early, when they really need all the benefits of the womb still. But if they stayed inside of us any longer, their heads would grow too large and they could get stuck and die.
I like the analogy of the fourth trimester because it reminded me that I needed to be her “womb bubble” to protect and care for her with great gentleness and love. And all of her reactions are based on instincts. The amazing thing is that all of the calming reflexes from the womb are still intact and you can tap into them to calm your baby.
Now that Fiona is four months old, I can see new light bulbs switching on in her head all of the time. While she has definitely moved out of the fourth trimester, she still settles down quickly with the Happiest Baby on the Block techniques.
We tried her in the Jolly Jumper today and I’ve never seen her get so excited. She was giggling, smiling and bouncing. Just knew exactly what to do.
In my mind, Ayyam-i-Ha is almost synonymis with painting cookies. It was one of the activities we did each year when I was growing up, and something I looked forward to the most.
So, as one of our Ayyam-i-Ha activities this year, we brought in small presents to Isabela’s kindergarten classmates (playdough and a deck of cards) and I organized an edible art activity: PAINTING COOKIES. Yum.
I baked a huge batch of Roll Cookies from the Joy of Cooking recipe book and cut them into hearts and stars. Then I brought icing sugar in four different colors (the paint) and tons of paintbrushes from the dollar store. After they painted the cookies, they then decorated them with sprinkles.
I heard comments like, “This is the funnest activity ever!” and “I wish I could do this everyday!”
I had a little bit of anxiety about Fiona, wondering if she would scream the whole time we were there, since it was right during her normal nap time. Fortunately some intense affirmations of “Everything will go smoothly and Fiona will be peaceful,” as well as some extra guidance from above, enabled Fiona to take a short nap in the sling and then she was kept pretty busy and happy watching all of the activity in the classroom the rest of the time.
I also had one of the other stay-at-home moms help me out. There is a small handful of us, we’re definitely in the minority, but I couldn’t have done it without her.
Diego joined right in with all the activities and sat down with the class to eat the cookies at snack time.
Next year I’m planning to add a little card for the students that tells them and their parents what it is we were doing and why, since the memories of kindergarteners can last about 5 seconds.
“What did you do at school today?” “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
Or, as recounted to me by one of the parents when they asked their child: “What are the cookies and presents for?” “Oh, just because. They like to do that sort of thing.”
MORE ABOUT AYYAM-I-HA
And if you want to know a little more about Ayyam-i-Ha, here is a great write-up that I just found from Kurt Hein, father of luckybeans, and the witness at my wedding.
The Baha’i year consists of 361 days — 19 months of 19 days apiece. To bring it into conjunction with the 365-day Roman calendar, a four-day period is set aside in late February and early March. These four days, referred to as “the time outside of time,” stand apart from the rest of the Baha’i calendar and commence the holy day cycle.
Known as Ayyam-i-Ha (pronounced: Ah-YAHM-ee-hah), the four days are traditionally a time of gift-giving for Baha’is, ever since Baha’u'llah founded the faith in the 1840s in Iran. American Baha’i children often await Ayyam-i-Ha the way Christian and Jewish children anticipate Christmas or Hanukkah.
As with those holidays, Ayyam-i-Ha has another dimension: “The Baha’is view the world as a place where people have been bestowed with enormous gifts — the gifts of love and generosity, kindness and forbearance,” says Suheil Bushrui, a Baha’i scholar at the University of Maryland who was born in Nazareth. “Baha’u'llah speaks of the human being as a treasure house — as a mine of treasures. And as you go about your life, you begin to dig out the diamonds and rubies and pearls. And the days of Ayyam-i-Ha are days of giving love and generosity. Perhaps the world needs a little sharing.”
American Baha’i families typically visit nursing homes or clean up neighborhood parks during Ayyam-i-Ha. “We’re supposed to do all those things all year-round,” says Jean Quinn, a former Catholic who converted to the Baha’i faith with her husband, Mike. “But it’s like Christmas — we finally bring the toys over to the homeless center.”
We LOVE Ayyam-i-Ha (pronounced: Ah-YAHM-ee-hah), a special time of year for the Baha’is where we show hospitality, service, generosity and thankfulness.
Juliet and I inherited the gorgeous Ayyam-i-Ha banners that my mother made about 25 years ago, and we divided them up. I don’t know how, but I lucked out with this 5 pocket Ayyam-i-Ha banner.
Each day we put a small present inside the pocket along with a clue that leads them on a treasure hunt throughout the house toward another present in the end.
I just heard that when my brother-in-law, Shane, was growing up, his parents would put their clues underneath their pillows at night when they slept and so he would wake up at 4am and run through the house on his treasure hunt.
And alongside the pocket banner was the Ayyam-i-Ha countdown calendar that I made last month. Juliet also made a beautiful Safari-theme calendar, since Olee is quite in love with animals.
Since I lucked out with the pocket banner, Juliet took to making a new one this year for herself. She is amazing.
The top banner was one of my Mom’s. And all the ones that follow are my Mother’s amazing craftwork.
“THANKFULNESS” tree
“SERVICE” tree
We also started a new tradition this year with a Thankfulness Tree and a Service Tree.
On the THANKFULNESS tree each day we write something that we’re thankful for on a leaf and tape it on.
And on the SERVICE tree we write down how we showed helpfulness to others that day.
This has been a wonderful exercise for the family, reminding us of our blessings and also being conscious of helping others.
Some of the leaves read:
“Isabela showed service by saving Mina (a toddler) from falling down the stairs!”
“Diego showed service by helping Isabela pick up the popcorn that she spilled.”
“Mama is thankful that Fiona slept well during her naps today.”
I got the idea for making the trees from An Ordinary Mom, who got it from Chocolate on My Cranium. Amazing how the circle continues.
Just last week we were at a friend’s house for her son’s birthday party and I saw, hanging on her wall, an Ayyam-i-Ha calendar that she had made, after getting inspired by the one that I made. So the circle continues.
I once read that “copying is the highest form of a compliment.” We all inspire each other, and through this we make our life a little brighter.
The rain clouds have come again, but I feel all sunny inside.
Fiona is sleeping again!
For close to three weeks after we came back from our trip to Mexico, Fiona was waking up every 40 minutes (one sleep cycle) and it would take me FOREVER to get her back to sleep. Made me a little bit grumpy.
But, Hallelujah! She’s sleeping better now. Which is why I’m back on my computer again, instead of spending hours upon hours during the day trying to get to her sleep.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Elizabeth Pantley for your No Cry Sleep Solution and No Cry Nap Solution books!
I’m long overdue to do a posting about her lastest book, the No Cry Nap Solution, and it will be coming soon. I promise. It is a fabulous book.
My nephew, Will, 7 months now, has a mouth full of teeth already and is suddenly crawling and getting everywhere.
And into everything.
And suddenly making me realize that I need to BABYPROOF! It’s a great warm up for getting things ready for things to come with Fiona, now 4 months.
Um. Ok. Don’t freak out family.
We’re all safe.
But we did have a real live C.S.I episode in our back alley today. Last night there was a shooting. No one died, but most of the alley was closed off. And the Vancouver C.S.I. (Crime Scene Investigation) team spent the whole day sweeping the neighborhood.
Once I got over the initial shock and the non-stop stream of media knocking on our door, it was actually pretty interesting to watch. They combed through everyone’s yards and roofs. Juliet got interviewed by CBC news and might be on the news tonight. An action filled day.
This was the first time something like this happened so close to home. Chris heard the shots at 10:30pm and called 911, then went out talked with the police.
I went to bed at 9pm (with my earplugs) and slept through the whole thing. But I got a jolt of adrenaline when I woke up in the morning, opened the curtains and saw a line-up of cops in our back alley.
This episode reminded me of two things.
1. God is always watching out and protecting my family. Despite the chaos around us, we are always safe. And usually violence (as was the case with this episode) is very target related. We’re not a target.
I have traveled to so many potential dangerous places, but I have learned to trust my intuition, and so I have always felt safe.
2. Don’t trust the media. I was interviewed several times today and my knowledge was based on what Chris told me right after I woke up. We both had fuzzy morning brains with three kids demanding our attention. And how do we know what happened anyways? Why trust us?
Also, all of the interviews were trying to “feed us” answers, like “Aren’t you so concerned about your safety and your neighborhood now?” “Wouldn’t you like the government to crack down on this?” They feed you the line they want to hear and then unconsciously you repeat it, even though it might not be what you feel at all.
After Chris and Diego barely recovered from a traumatic hospital visit last fall that required three stitches, this time, when Diego got a huge gash on his chin, we opted for the Sterile Suture Strips, that act like stitches, without actually needing stitches.
Oh, Diego.
Sweet, Diego.
Being the younger sibling of a boisterous older sister has definitely shaped his personality and thus far, given him two scars.
Sweet is the word that sums up my Diego. He is gentle, thoughtful, innocent, generous and a lovely person to be around. He is hugely kinesthetic and loves massages, hugs and cuddle time. He can spend hours upon hours in the sand, feeling the texture of it between his fingers.
From the moment he was born, he was the complete opposite of his older sister, and his easy going nature was such a merciful gift to me, as a parent.
We celebrated his third birthday in Mexico (Mets-i-to) with a huge party with all of the family at the beach.
Two days later his aunt got married.
He was melting in the heat in fancy suit we made him wear, but ever the sweet non-complainer, he just sort of melted onto the floor. That’s when Chris made a quick trip back to the hotel to get him some different party clothes, a little more weather appropriate.
I have a love/hate relationship with traveling with kids. I love to travel. It inspires me and opens up my eyes to new possibilities and new ways of life. When I come home I feel tired, but re-charged, renewed, and re-excited about life.
Traveling with kids helps them to see themselves as a world citizen, that despite our differences, we are all very much the same. It helps them open up their minds to a world that is much greater and larger that what they see in their daily life. It fosters an appreciation for diversity and creates opportunities for practicing flexibility and adaptability.
We are not, by any means, well-off. But somehow we have managed to travel a lot since we’ve had kids. 12 trips in 5 years, to be exact. I think that because the first 5 years of our marriage we lived as poor, full-time university students, we learned how to live frugally. And to be OK with that. In the entire period of our marriage, almost 10 years, we haven’t had more that a span of a few months where we both worked full-time (at the same time). A double income allows for a lot more frivolous spending. We have chosen, for the well-being of our children, that one parent (me) will be at home with our children, to take advantage of the short, but crucial period in their lives for character development and maintaining a strong parental attachment, and all of the benefits that go with that. And so the other parent will bring home the income.
There are things that we just don’t do very often, like eating out at restaurants or buying lots of the newest, latest gadgets and toys, in order to live within our means, and maintain the choices that we have made. But one of the things we do value is travel. And so the money we are able to save, usually goes toward that.
When Isabela was 4 months old I flew to California and Arizona to visit grandparents and relatives. A month later my grandmother passed away and we all flew to Minnesota for her funeral. Later that year, just before she turned one, we spent a month in Venezuela, visiting all of Chris’ old stomping grounds. A year later we flew to California again to visit family and after a particularly rough trip, by myself with an almost two year old who wouldn’t sleep and wouldn’t nap during our trip, I came home exhausted and said, “Chris, let’s wait a while before we have any more kids!” Ironically, I had been feeling pretty sick during the trip and went to the doctor later that that morning, only to find out that I was pregnant with Diego. I figure that God had a good laugh at us over that one.
A few months later we did an overnight road trip (Chris stayed up all night driving while Isabela and I slept in the car) to Alberta for a family wedding. Later that year we visited California again and then went on a 5 week adventure to Taiwan (to visit Chris’ aunt and uncle), Malaysia (to visit my parents) and Bali (for a family vacation). Since then we have been to California again, this past summer, and now we have just returned back from Mexico.
Our trips have been so outstanding and memorable, but as is the case when traveling with kids, they have also been downright exhausting. The problem is that for an older child who can go to sleep by themselves AND sleep through the night, they can adapt and ajust quite easily. Not so easy with a baby. When we went to Malaysia, Diego was 11 months old AND SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT! It was wonderful. But after we came home from our trip, it took him 1 month to get over the jetlag and another 3 months before he started sleeping through the night again.
Which brings me to the present moment. I have been working HARD, VERY HARD, to get Fiona into a good sleeping routine and before we left she was doing great. Going to bed at 7pm, waking up a few times at night to feed, (which is normal for a three month old) and taking regular naps through the day. Now since we’ve been back, the only thing that’s predictable is that she will wake up crying 40 minutes after she fell asleep. And it will take me another 30-90 minutes to get her back to sleep. It will eventually straighten out again, but it feels a bit like all my hard work got flushed down the toilet pretty quickly.
But despite all of that, I have loved all of our trips and would do them again. But maybe I’ll wait until the two naps a day are gone. Or even better, until all the naps are gone. I had visions of fun, adventurous vacations in 3 years when we can frolick at the pool and beach all day and not have to worry about the disasterous effect of a child who has missed her nap.
And so, since we have been back from our trip, I have been exhausted. Falling asleep everytime I breastfeed and going to bed at 7:30pm (right after all the kids are in bed) kind of exhausted.
But yes. I would do it again.
TWO THINGS THAT HELPED FOR TRAVELING WITH KIDS:
1. The bag of tricks for the airplane.
I stocked up at the dollar store before we left and when we were traveling, particularily for the airplane when we have to sit in one place for so long, we systematically pulled a new item out at strategic intervals to maintain the peace. Playdough, plasticine, stickers, markers, paper, new books, new toys, lots and lots of snacks and juice.
And the icing on top of the cake was my iPod touch, which I dowloaded 50 children’s video podcasts (free on iTunes) with all their favorites: Sesame street, Dora, Diego, Blues Clues, etc. This was such a lifesaver for us on the trip. We even pulled it out during the second ceremony of my sister-in-law’s wedding when they started getting fidgety. They just watched the videos (without sound) there and everyone commented about how well-behaved our children were (heh heh).
2. Rent a condo
The second thing that I did right on this trip was to recognize our need for a 2-bedroom condo/apartment style place to stay. It cost a little more, but it was well worth the extra expense for the piece of sanity that it gave us. Isabela and Diego in one room, Fiona and I in another, and Chris out on the couch. That way we could all get a good night sleep in order to actually be able to enjoy our vacation. Plus there was a TV with tons of children’s channels. I am not a fan of TV in anyway at all, but I do appreciate it for those times when I think to myself, “OK, I could kill them, or I could let them watch TV.”
The other great thing about staying at a condo was that it had a kitchen. Let me tell you, after two days we got completely sick of restaurants with kids. We hit the big supermarket in town (it was like Costco – enormous!) and stocked up. After that we ate most of our meals in the condo, which saved us a lot of money and gave us more time for hanging out down by the pool and the beach.
Some photos from our trip, still to come.
This is a watercolor painting that I created as a wedding present for my sister-in-law, Emily and my new brother-in-law, Juan Pablo. The background of the painting is where Juan Pablo proposed to Emily, in a small village in Italy, and amazingly ended up looking a lot like where they got married, in Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo, Mexico. I had my other sister-in-law email me what the wedding dress was going to look like and included that in the painting as well, in order to surprise them!
The wedding was amazingly beautiful and seamless organized. It started out with a civil ceremony at a gorgeous Villa in Ixtapa that Juan Pablo’s family was staying at. It was then followed by a Catholic ceremony in Zihuatanejo (a town 10 minutes away), and then followed by a Baha’i ceremony back in Ixtapa at a beautiful restaurant just as the sun was setting. What a view! Dinner, dessert and dancing followed, but my night lasted until about 9pm when the kids started to melt down and we had to leave for them to go to bed.
More about the rest of our Mexico vacation to come…
This amazing photo is taken by Scott Miller or Blair Kent (thanks to Arezu who lead me to this link to figure out who took the photo.) It was sent to me as one of those email forwards and could be a bit tricky to figure out if you don’t know what you’re looking at.
FOG. We have been immersed in fog for the last two weeks. A rare thing for our city. This photo was taken from the top of Cypress Mountain, one of the local ski hills, with just a few of the skyscrapers from downtown peeking out over the clouds. Amazing.
The fog has been so beautiful and I have been itching to go out in it to take photos, but have been using every spare moment I have to pack and get ready for our big trip to Mexico tomorrow. My sister-in-law is getting married in Ixtapa, Mexico to her Mexican sweetheart which she met several years ago when she was doing a study abroad program there. When they mentioned that they would have the wedding up in Canada to make it easier for the rest of the family up here, we all said, NOOOOO! WE WANT TO GO TO MEXICO!
Now we are about to embark on our first “Family of Five” traveling adventure.
I decided not to take my new camera because I didn’t want to be worried about it during our stay. I am missing it already. Juliet just upgraded her camera and has a very sweet Nikon D90 now. She is teaching me so much about photography by sending me all sorts of interesting links and when I said I wasn’t going to take my Canon XSI, she said, “You will regret every photo you take.” Alas, this is true. But if last weekend, at the Baha’i Regional Conference was any indication for me, I will probably have Fiona on my lap the whole time and not even have a free hand to take my camera out of the bag.
So I am taking my point and shoot, Canon G4. Which really is not a crappy camera. When I bought it 5 years ago it cost $1100. But now that I have gotten used to a digital SLR camera, there is no turning back.
Well, speaking of crappy cameras, I took some shots on my camera phone (2 megapixel) at Isabela and Diego’s first dance class yesterday. Isabela has been asking me, twice a week for year, to go to dance class. Everything was a write-off when I was pregnant. The world came to a standstill. And now, almost exactly a year later I am just starting to get back on my feet. And so they began dance class.
(Not a bad photo, for a 2 megapixel phone camera!)
Diego spent the whole class hiding out behind a chair. I am determined not to push him into anything before he is ready. I still have vivid (and scarring) memories of Isabela running away from her swimming class, me running after her screaming to stop while holding Diego (still a baby), and the lifeguard running after all of us, blowing his whistle and telling us all to stop running. Ahhh. Some memories I’d rather forget.
So this time around, no pushing. When they are ready, as I have seen so clearly with Isabela, they are ready. And they just dive in on their own.
Fiona spent the whole dance class screaming on my lap. In the last two weeks, her routines have sunk in and her awareness of life has multiplied. If things are out of the ordinary, out of the normal routine, than she is not a happy girl. For example, most of the time I breastfeed her lying down. So now she gets really upset if I try to breastfeed her sitting up. This should be interesting on the airplane….
By sheer coincidence, both Fiona and Will were wearing the same outfit today (different sizes) that we got as gifts for Diego and Olee when they were babies. Which means, of course, photo shoot.
It has taken me three children to finally let go of the cultural stereotype that boys wear blue and girls wear pink. Fiona wears Diego’s hand-me-downs, which are blue, and Diego wears Isabela’s hand-me-downs, which are pink. When I first had Isabela, getting her all dressed up like a girly-girl was fun. And I still felt, in the back of my mind, that my children’s appearances reflected on me, as a mother.
Once she hit about 2 and a half years old, she refused to let me dress her or pick out her clothes. And so I started detaching. Now I applaud their efforts at dressing themselves and don’t care at all if their clothes are on backwards, mis-matched or pink for a boy, or blue for a girl. Generally I find that people who don’t have kids notice that kind of thing. But it seems that other parents with kids generally don’t care either.
I learned this lesson from Elizabeth Pantley’s book, “Hidden Messages: What our words and actions are really telling our children.” She used the example of a child making her bed and the parent praising her, but then straightening out a corner of the bed. It is a subtle thing, but when we correct their mistakes (on things that are really not that important), we teach them that they will never be good enough in our eyes.
And so I let them wear their pants backwards and their shoes on the wrong feet, because eventually they will figure it out. I am just thankful that they can do it by themselves.
Isabela so desperately wanted to be in this photo of moms and babies that she was sobbing and sobbing and kept diving into the photo. Which gives the photo a bit of character, I think. Full-fledged, do not forget me, Isabela character.
It seems to me that the most captivating photos are the ones that tell a story or that show real emotion. Like this one.
The Big Picture is a website that tells news stories through photos. It is captivating, disturbing, amazing and I couldn’t pull myself away from it.
These would be the news headlines of my life from the last few days:
WOMAN GETS PEED ON BY 3 YEAR OLD, THEN PUKED ON BY BABY.
WOMAN HAS MELT DOWN WHILE TRYING TO PACK FOR 5 PEOPLE.
BABY PICKS UP WOMAN’S STRESS, TAKES 3 HOURS TO FALL ASLEEP.
Fortunately all of the packing is done (I literally started a month ago) so I have the rest of the day to relax and let go of my stress before our travels. Some intu-flow, a hot bath, and lots of prayer, meditation, and affirmations is exactly what I need right now.
