it’s like falling in love

by dailies

My son is tall; his coat from last year, a favorite, reaches the top of his hips and the sleeves end above the wrist. His hair is growing out from a short cut; in the morning, there is invariably a disturbed cowlick on the left side. I’ve taken to calling him “Tufty” and when he comes in close to hug  me, he is fast approaching my height.

He calls my mother this evening and – although I can’t hear her end of the conversation – it is obvious she is asking him on a date. Good; as Phoenix will enjoy undisturbed study time. She has a very hefty Biology book  – the sucker must weigh several pounds! – and today we discussed isotopes, radioactive decay, covalent and ionic bonds. The material is familiar to me but the last time I studied it was two decades ago! The rhythm of s and p orbitals, however arcane and antiquated in my memory, is nevertheless a familiar one because that long ago, that was my world.

So strange to be discussing quantum physics with my “little” girl.

I enjoy a walk with a mama and her young son; he is happy and scampers about, mindless and with a runny nose. Then he falls and cries; inconsolable. No one can carry him except his mother, who is heavy with another child. Eventually he calms and he carries his little stuffed bear in a blanket; we retire to his home and he shows me how he puts the bear down for a nap. I’m unsure if there is anything more beautiful than listening to a two year old putting together sentences – crude but, if listened to, easily understood.

The day draws colder; now, with my family and another neighborhood moppet in tow, we head for a lunch of hot noodles and then ice cream for the younger children. Home and Phee and I will hit the books; Ralph will eventually make dinner.

And to bed anon.

A good Sunday.

Starlost

a li’l something

by dailies

A wee baby ensemble for a local auction – size 15 lb. baby!

Starlost

A bunting (100% cotton shell, same color fleece lining, stenciled glitter-star front, and snaps with underlap), reversible hat with tied ears, and a baby sleeping bag with snap front. The front:

StarlostFlannel shell on sleeping bag; large red snaps. Love it!

Starlost

 But … my favorite i sthe hat. I am a huge baby hat fan. I wish I had a baby to model this one. ONLY too adorable!

Starlost

So yeah – as mentioned, I’ve been asked more and more for donations or contributions – either garment construction, or writing.* In between clients, getting the kids to school, and running last night’s benefit, I managed to put this together. The pieces made up a simple, pleasing project. Putting together the color palette – and the design – is one of the best parts of design.

Starlost

I also just adore the idea of a baby sleeping bag. Why have I not thought of, or seen one before?

These pieces go off to a local auction. Always happy to help!

* Let’s make a deal: you know it’s totally okay to ask, ever (promise) – because you know I feel okay saying Yes or No. I’ll let you know if things change.

How do I deal with a toddler who hits?

by writings

Last night, with Nels, watching “The Adventures of TinTin”. We typically don’t get five minutes in before I’m sleepy. He loves the show; I find it quite clever and sweet.

***

So it’s been a minute since I wrote about parenting issues here; I do get asked for advice fairly often. Yesterday I received an email yesterday so I thought I’d post it, and my response:

Hi my name is m*** and I was reading through comments on the “spanking facts” video on YouTube and would love to know what methods work for you. I have a 16 month old who hits everyone bites growls very angrily at myself and others when he doesn’t get his way. I have spanked yet as he isn’t even 1 1/2 and that’s awful but I need some kind of structure with this before he’s kicked out of anotherrrr daycare :/ love&light  <3 m*** 

m***,

I have a few resources for you, that other parents recommended to me. First, a little about my history.

I have always known it wasn’t right to hit children. When my kids were toddlers (as yours is) I tried not to hit them, but I did anyway. “Positive discipline” books and sites didn’t help me much. That said, here are some resources that other parents have recommended (so I can’t speak to them personally); I will then give you some of my own writings and recommendations.

Hold Onto Your Kids: Why Parents Need To Matter More Than Peers, a book recommended by Carla Bergman (@joyfulcarla on Twitter).

Positive Discipline A-Z: 1001 Solutions to Everyday Parenting Problems, as recommended by MaLora (@MaLora_Ann on Twitter)

http://shop.kidsareworthit.com/, a site featuring the works of Barbara Coloroso, as recommended by Carla Bergman (@joyfulcarla on Twitter). I have not looked into this author but probably will take the time to do so since Carla sent this along.

Now here are some works I have found helpful.

Anger: Wisdom for Cooling The Flames by Thich Nhat Hanh

For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty In Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence, by Alice Miller (this book is very dry and also very intense, but quite wonderful).

And here are some things I’ve written personally about non-punitive parenting. They have helped others; perhaps they will help you:

https://kelly.hogaboom.org/tag/non-punitive-parenting/

I more have a few thoughts. If you know you don’t want to hit your kid, but you are afraid that his hitting and growling will get him thrown out of a daycare, those two things may eventually come into collision. Your situation will feel strained, and that doesn’t help us be gentle with ourselves, so that we can be gentle with our children.

It might be worth the time to talk with your daycare supervisors in a calm moment and ask that they help your child in a gentle way, to not hurt others. Tell them you are sure your child’s behaviors will wane if he is in a kind fashion removed from hurting others when he hits, and treated with patience. If they seem unwilling or non-receptive to this, you may want to find a daycare that is 100% gentle and well-staffed enough they can handle a child who growls and hits. A little one who growls and hits is not a monster or “spoiled” or anything – he just needs some help! Even if a better daycare costs more or it is a bother, it is worth it because you are learning not to sacrifice your child’s wellbeing to other people’s harmful concepts of discipline. It is your child’s childhood and that is so important.

I did my best not to hit my kids but I kept hitting and yelling. Eventually I discovered that I was very sick with a disease I did not know I had. When I took responsibility for myself and my illness, things got better. I am a gentle mama today and although I can’t change the past, it is at times painful for me to think about. If anything I write or say helps others to be gentle with themselves and their children, I will consider it a partial amends for my early parenting years.

Kelly

my heart beats like a drum

by dailies

One hour at the roller skating rink for the kids; I help them lace their footwear and gather them into my arms again before I go. Their hair falls across my cheek and smells sweet, dusty and dry and delicious. As they get older these embraces mean more and more to me. My children, in skates, are nearly as tall as I. They thankful for the two extra dollars I give them for candy or pop and do not complain about the small sum. They have spirits of gladness and gratitude; by the time I was there age these things dwelt within yes, but they were eroded and corrupt.

A few minutes later, at home, my phone rings and it’s Nels. He excitedly informs me his sister is dominating in the rink’s game of tag. “She is doing so good, I wish I could take a picture,” he chirps. I hand the phone to the other ear and take out the rising yeasted bread, flip the oven on. I thank him for calling and put the phone down. My children are half a world away, competent and enjoying themselves, all at once vibrant and alive yet strangely vulnerable and precious to me. This cold weather even with the sun, I have a sense of wherever they are and I hold them close and I want them provided for at all times. Ralph comes home to a house full of fresh bread and new lightbulbs, then he’s back on the road to pick the children up along with a u-bake pizza for later tonight.

Later tonight,

dark now and at the side of the road, the car idles as my friend in the passenger seat applies her baby to her breast. I no longer even feel the ache, the letdown an infant’s cries, and the huffing-little suction sighs the child makes are familiar but they are from a past that sometimes feels another era. The mama’s breast glows milk-white in the dashboard lights and she is unselfconscious and I think good for her, I’m a bit tired but a respect and a gladness throbs within me, all the more so as she’s close to a year off meth and she’s doing her thing pretty good. I fiddle with my scarf and we talk a bit and I wonder if these memories of early sobriety will be fond ones or if she’s one of the many, the most, who will go back into the night and get lost for a little while

I’m contemplative, this evening.

Home and finishing up a soft shirt for my daughter. Ralph and the kids play Dungeons and Dragons at the dining room table

– hot water and lemon and honey –

 

make sure it’s worth watching

by dailies

My son just about stifles my heart. He’s tall, just like his sister, and extraordinarily competent in anything he sets his mind to. It doesn’t help last night I got to meet and hold a brand-new baby, a hungry baby whose mom wasn’t ready to nurse, and the baby kept spitting out her soother and rooting up against my breast in my fancy coat after an evening soirée. I placated the baby with a pinkie (old trick I’d forgotten about for years) and she fell asleep again for a while. And the nurse came in and we got that baby on the tit. And I hope it works out.

So my son, yeah this morning I sliced the kids apples and made them pancakes with warm syrup then after the kids cleaned up breakfast Nels get got dressed to the nines (“Where’s my tuxedo?” he asks about his favorite coat I made him) and after we went through and thoroughly cleaned the kiddo’s room and separated those things we wanted to donate, Nels packed a satchel with two books and a cell phone and arranged a date with the bookstore and his grandmother. When he returned he’d used the books for store credit to get his sister a book on leopards. He is a wonderful, wonderful citizen, son, and brother.

Today was suppressed and sad for me, at times. I was at home for medical reasons (I snuck out once with Phoenix, for tacos and coffee) but it wasn’t just that. Last night my husband and I had an unfun argument, starting with me bringing up my desire to raise another child, but sadly the bitter words did not confine themselves to that subject. A nasty argument, something that doesn’t happen too often these days but always takes the mickey out of me and him too.

This child thing. I really really can accept I might not get my way, or get what (I think I) want. I probably couldn’t handle it anyway. I’m probably being an asshole. Impulsive and stupid. What tortures me is the question, is this something I want SO MUCH that I need to take some kind of new action, or is this something that will in time fade and I will accept I won’t have it?  For years now I’ve done what seems like the right thing, defer to my husband’s strong preference that we not take on or support another child. I am as lost as anything on this though and I don’t know right from wrong or down from up. If I’m not to have what I want I wish I could accept this or that the desire would disappear.

I’ve gotta admit this is a painful entry to pen, but I’m committed to being honest and I don’t think I’ve brought this up directly in this space, even though it’s been in my heart and on my mind for a few years. Today I decided to change that. I guess that’s why I’m writing about it, because Secrets don’t work for me.

Sometimes I’ve resented how honest and how much I’ve written about myself and my life here. I have of course tried to maintain scrupulous considerations for other individuals on many subjects, and I have not shared my Every Thought or emotion by any means. Sometimes I worry that when I write that other people will use this information against me, or use it carelessly. This is certainly a reality and I have experienced betrayal before,

but the cost of not sharing what troubles me isn’t one I want to continue to pay.

when shit gets real

by dailies

Why Do I Not Have A Subscription To This?!
This post is dedicated to the wonderful & talented Idzie, also Maine Coons magazine.

***

Today I’m lying on a table getting myofascial massage for my  head and neck pain. The bodywork feels amazing and strange and all of a sudden the pain and lack of movement in my neck are drastically reduced. I am not only given incredible massage and manipulated but shown the weirdest fracking exercise I’ve ever come across, like seriously I’m embarassed to have to do it in a room with two people watching my technique, and no I’m fully clothed and mostly lying down, it’s just an incredibly weird series of movements.

The practitioner and her assistant find out I homeschool, because they ask about my “workday”. Four minutes later they’ve forgotten already as they ask in the kid in the lobby is with the Hoquiam school district. “My kids are homeschooled,” I remind them.

What follows is the very typical, OH SO TYPICAL I could write it out verbatim, series of questions and statements (this happens a lot when I’m a “captive” audience, dentist etc). Including, “Homeschooling works, but only if the parents are educated” and horror stories of totally messed-up kids that are a direct result of homeschooling (no totally messed-up kids are ever credited as the direct result of public schooling, just so you know). I know I should be long past this, but I am always surprised when people who did not or do not homeschool and display profound ignorance about those worlds (including not knowing state requirements or legalities of home education nor, even more importantly, having delved into the autodidactic tradition with even one toe), proceed to tell ME with authority tons of Truthy realities, I mean just go on and on. And then, comically, end the often one-sided conversation (one-sided as far as openmindedness, assuredly) with a version of, here’s today’s: “Well, I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other.” Pro-tip, Yes You Do.

Today I have a life lived in gratitude and I can tell you, no matter how cheeky I sound here, I am in full acceptance of these varieties of limitation and I don’t hold a grudge (I mean come on… I have my limitations too, like everyone). Maybe I feel a twinge of sadness. I find it’s pretty easy to have a conversation with consideration to person going on, and with a good deal of kindness. “Yes, reading and math are frequently issues of controversy when it comes to home education.” That is a statement of fact and I can say it. The fact I get queried, very rarely, what I believe or how we do things, lends me to further consider that yes, People Do Have Opinions, and they aren’t availing themselves of mine, and that’s cool. This is made all the more comical given how many parents, adults, and teachers have taken me aside to ask me How Did I Get My Kids To Read So Early or, Wait, Kids Can DO That? It’s like I get the recognition something is working, but a constant stream of opinions as to how it Can’t or Won’t.

Since our family is in quite the minority in America by not only “homeschooling” but also not following school-at-home edicts nor centering our parenting in an authoritarian/authoritative fashion, we’re regularly asked to not only defend our very lives but give a treatise or exposition on how Stuff Works, like college. And the law. And free-range kids. In conversations I try to be kindest to the adult in question while being entirely honest (many people who don’t school stay in the closet, so to speak – and there are many compelling reasons to do so). This keeps me relaxed and enjoying the conversation. No, really. But I really do get the vibe that when my children display epic talents or literacy or math skills or social skills I’m looked at as an exceptionally “good mom” (I’ve already written on this), whereas, in the case of questioning and commentary on the lines I received today (Ignorant to Semi-Hostile, with Socially Polite Overtones), I can feel the beady eye on my kids and any, at all, “backwards” or squirellyness or even unusual sartorial expression is received with an arch eyebrow. Whatever.

Anyway, today my son had kids at the door all day long begging him to come out and run the neighborhood. My daughter (after putting finishing touches on her new blog) in her evening frock attended the hospital with me to visit a newborn and new mom, speaking directly and considerately to mom, friend, and hospital staff. Earlier she and her brother cooked and did dishes and laundry with me entirely peaceably, took care of pets, and socialized and assisted at an evening party of my mother’s. It’s not like I’m writing about Performance, I’m just saying, it’s really weird to be considered default=Batshit by so many for doing things that are Entirely Normal and work out really, really well.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

by dailies

Today I visited my doctor, the one who months ago spoke to me in a way I was ready to understand about the possibility I might be an alcoholic. The next day I had gone to a recommended place and discovered this was a certainty, for me, personally.

The day I knew I was an alcoholic was one of the best days in my life.

So before I talk more about that, well, today – the doctor’s. We reviewed how I was doing. He asked me how the summer went, with all the barbecues and beer and booze flowing. I told him quite honestly it hadn’t been a problem. I talked to him about a few of my concerns. We straightened all that out then he said he didn’t need to see me for another year.

He shook my hand firmly and told me succinctly, “Good job.” I looked right at him and said simply, “Thank you. You can’t imagine how different my life is now.”

And since then I’ve been reflecting how much it means to me, that he thinks I could handily do a year on the track I’ve been on.

I only sat with him ten minutes today. I’ve had so little time with him over all this – the biggest change in my life, besides the birth of my children – and I suppose he’s just another person of many who has influenced me in such a deep-down amazing way – but I wonder if he realizes the gratitude I feel for his assistance, his intervention in my life (although, truth told, I did go see him for help because I wasn’t getting answers elsewhere… and I have followed suggestions every day since). After we said goodbye I walked out to the reception window, made that seemingly way-off followup appointment, then stepped out to the waiting room where my son waited. Then my boy and I went out to lunch together.

I write this out a bit because I am so incredibly grateful for my life today. I’ve come to know entirely new meanings of “help”, and love and care and wisdom. I’ve come to see the folly and death inherant in the myth of self-sufficiency. I’ve experienced serenity for the first time since I was a young child. I’m slowly growing up my emotions and shedding some of those horrible drives I’ve lived with since long before I took my first drink: shame, blame, guilt, remorse. Terror and anger.

I really didn’t know how much I lived with them until they started to slip away. As they say, this didn’t happen overnight, and I say that because if you’re suffering now I want you to know you won’t always be suffering.

I expect to keep growing.

Today was a good day. I went on a wonderful morning run in the fog, I took my son somewhere wonderful in the morning, I had time with both kids separately, I helped a few people and someone who needed support told me I made her day, I made her smile. I stand to have some hot tea with honey and a good rest.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

***

In other news, I CAN’T STOP MAKING BABY MITTENZ

Trivial Coloriffic Mittens

Fly-Dyed Softies

Made With Love

Big cold sunless skies, tumbling down, down

by Uncategorized

Today I had one of those breakdowns… a good one. Hot tears that just came and flooded, no congestion or anger. Crying and crying but it was okay after the first surrender, I didn’t mind. Crying at first from confusion and despair and then of brokenness and then finally of healing, sitting in a living room and crying with people I knew to trust, who were there for me. Like a home I never had but would have been there for me had I found it earlier.

Yeah, today a few people saved my ass, and in a totally separate incident (or was it?) today I witnessed an act of anonymous generosity that was hard to believe but only to be experienced.

Today I live a different life than I used to. Life before seems a bit alien.

The kids played on a giant wooded hill and ran about with the hose to cool off; later they hit Grandma’s and harvested her carrots (she paid them). I came home late-ish and Ralph made Taiwanese spaghetti – delicious, if you’ve never tried it.

Oh, and as I’m typing and waiting for the kids to be ready for bed? I’m watching a live #twitterbirth. Fuck. Yes.

Life is incredible.