Category: Mothering without a licence

Lucas the amazing interactive baby

I’ve always said that six to nine months old is one of my favourite baby ages. Old enough to sit up but not old enough to creep around; old enough to love you obviously and joyfully but not old enough to be prone to tantrums; old enough to babble but not old enough to talk back yet.

Lucas at almost nine months is a delightful baby – if you don’t mind the 32 minute naps. I forgot how early babies become interactive, instead of just slobbery little blobs. He is fascinated by the boys and the pets, and loves when the boys pay attention to him. The other day, I was putting his coat on telling him that we were on our way out to get Simon at school, and as soon as I said “Simon” he started craning his head around looking for him. Way too cute!

He’s very talkative. I’m really so very not surprised about that. Hell, you have to be vocal to be heard around our house. What’s cute is how he imitates us. He not only repeats one of three varieties of babble (ahhhh, ba-ba-ba, or da-da-da) but modulates his voice to mimic us. We’re working on ma-ma-ma, but he’s not quite there yet. And there’s no doubt he understands a lot of what we say. I just about fell over the other day when I said, “Lucas, where’s your toes?” and he reached over and grabbed them.

My absolute favourite baby trick, though, is this. About a month ago, I was rocking him to sleep and singing to him when I realized that he wasn’t just cooing softly to himself — in itself almost heartbreakingly endearing — but he was humming along with me as I sang to him. At which point I became a gelatinous ooze of maternal love and forgave him a years’ worth of 32 minute naps.

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Isn’t he delicious?

32 minutes

For the last two days, Lucas has been averaging a 32 minute nap, a couple of times per day. That would explain, for those of you who are hanging on my every word (hi Mom!), why posting has been so light this week. For what it’s worth, 32 minute naps also make for one cranky-assed little baby who wants to be held and entertained all day, thus further reducing stolen minutes online.

This is a list of things you can achieve in 32 minutes:

  • read/write Twitter updates or read/write e-mails (but not both)
  • fold one basket of clean laundry (but not put it into the drawers)
  • pick up all the clutter off the floor so you can vacuum or actually vacuum (but not both)
  • eat breakfast or clean up the breakfast dishes from the rest of the family (but not both)
  • read the last three or four entries on one favourite blog (but not comment)
  • shower or get dressed (but not both)
  • compose a kick-ass clever blog post in your head (but not write it)
  • write one lame placeholder of a blog post (but not one worth reading)

And right on cue, there he is…

Edited to add: yeah, Lee beat me to it again:

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Doodle by Lee. The code for this doodle and other doodles you can use on your blog can be found at Doodles.

Another dream comes true

Around the time the boys started school in September, I started truly panicking about the idea of going back to work. It was still five months away, but I knew back-to-school season was only a quick hop to Halloween, which would start the slippery slide down to Christmas and before I knew it, February would be upon us and I’d be back at work. I was so upset about it I cried with dread when I thought about it, barely half way through my maternity leave.

I love being home with the boys. I love the chaos, I love the routine. I love picking the boys up from school. I love arguing Lucas into his four or five daily naps. I love the minutiae of daily errands in the afternoons. I love having the flexibility to know that if the laundry or the groceries don’t get done today, I’ll get to them tomorrow. Or the next day. I love preparing lunches and dinners during daylight hours. I love the feeling of killing time, of having time to kill, even if I have to kill it pacifying a fussy baby or playing endless rounds of Uno and Trouble and Wiggles Memory Game. Even when it all drives me bugshit and I’m sure I’ll lose my mind if I have to load and unload the dishwasher one more time, I still love it.

When I started thinking about it, I realized I’ve been home with the boys almost three of the past six and a half years; basically, I’ve been a stay-at-home mom half of my parenting career. It’s a hell of a hard job, but I can honestly say it’s not nearly as difficult as trying to balance a home life with a full-time day job. I know I’m out on a limb here, but I truly believe that it’s way, way harder to be working outside the home than it is to stay home full time – especially with small children at home. Being home has it’s own set of challenges, but I was sick to my stomach trying to imagine how I’d balance the mother I wanted to be, the wife I wanted to be, and the employee I knew I would be expected to be. I couldn’t reconcile them all into a single person; there just wasn’t enough to go around.

That’s why I approached my wonderful boss, who happens to also be a wonderful friend, and proposed that in February I’d return to work part-time, working four days a week instead of five. She was on board, and her boss seems to be on board, too. I checked out the ramifications (the biggest of which is the drop in salary) and figured we could make it work.

It actually took me a couple of weeks to believe it could be possible, that it could really happen. I still feel giddy about it, like I’ve won the lottery. I’ll be able to work four days, but stay home for three days. There will be one day a week I can still hang out with the other moms at the kindergarten door, waiting for the JKs to come spilling out. There will be one day every week when I don’t have to rush out the door to catch a 6:25 am bus, so I can have breakfast with the boys. There will be one day a week where Lucas and I have a few precious hours with just the two of us, so I can continue to baby him. There will be one more day when my day with the boys doesn’t begin in a mad rush to get dinner ready, with bedtime shortly behind.

Working part-time has been something I’ve been coveting since I first went back to work after my mat leave with Tristan, way back in 2003. It didn’t seem like we’d ever be able to make it work financially, and then it didn’t seem like my workplace would ever consider it. But, with fingers crossed and breath bated, the cosmic tumblers might have finally aligned in my favour on this one.

Now, when I think of going back to work, my heart is light. Instantly, I stopped dreading it and started looking forward to it. I miss my old colleagues, and there is something validating about being a respected professional. I even love the work I do. And now, like a gift, I’ll be able to have the best of both worlds. I can’t believe how lucky I am.

Ottawa Moms: Join the Breastfeeding Challenge!

Did you know that in 2005, the National Capital Region came in first out of 234 participating locations in the breastfeeding challenge, with the largest number of participating mommies? Join us to beat the record in 2008! Moms will be lactating large at the St Laurent Shopping Centre, CHEO, the Monfort and both campuses of the Ottawa Hospital!

I’ll be there, delightedly so. When Lucas and I ran into serious trouble with breastfeeding back in February and March, I desperately wanted to be able to make it to the six-month mark with him before my milk gave way completely. Despite adding two bottles of formula per day to his diet and his newfound love of solid foods, we’re still going strong today on his eight month birthday! Yay us!! I still nurse him first thing in the morning, midafternoon and just before he goes to sleep, and to be honest, it’s going better than ever. Here’s hoping we make it to his first birthday and beyond.

And can I take just one second to say how proud I am to live in a city that officially endorses an event like this? Yay, Ottawa! Moms, babies and boobies unite this Saturday, October 11. I’ll be at the St Laurent location, if all goes according to plan. Hope to see you there!

Edited to add: Doh!! Saturday = skating lessons. Rats!! I’ll be there in spirit, anyway.

Baby-led weaning

A couple of weeks ago, on my post about baby food and the culture of fear, Marianne left a little comment about “baby-led weaning.” (Don’t you love Marianne’s comments? Her perspective as a teacher is awesome!) She suggested I google the term, so I did.

And I was enlightened!

After doing a lot of skimming on the subject, I’ve gleaned that baby-led weaning (or, baby-led solids) is an alternative way of getting your baby to eat solids by bypassing the spoonfed purees and soupy cereals stage. Instead, from as early as baby is able to hold up his (or her, but I’ll stick to the male gender because it’s all I know!) head and grasp something the shape and size of your finger, you provide baby with an array of finger foods and let him pick and choose whatever he wants.

The theory says that baby will first lick and then start to chew on and eat food when he’s biologically ready to do so. The benefit is that baby will learn to listen to his own hunger cues and regulate his intake accordingly. Babies are also (they say) less likely to become fussy because they are exposed to a wide variety of textures and flavours right from the beginning. And finally, they profess that baby will be happier eating at the same time as and the same food as the rest of the family.

I’m skeptical of the latter points above, but have nonetheless embraced a baby-led weaning for most of Lucas’s meals. In fact, I’d been leaning toward this anyway, without being aware of the theory. (Kind of how I stumbled into attachment parenting, too.) I posted before about how happy I was the day that Lucas was able to cram his own Cheerios into his gob, if only for the liberation it allowed me. Now, I find that the ideas encapsulated by baby-led weaning mesh rather nicely with my own new eating habits and ideals. I think a lot of this is strongly influenced, too, by the fact that as a family we are eating much more healthily that we were back when Tristan and Simon were babies. Baby-led weaning liberates me to eat my dinner while it’s relatively warm AND saves me preparing a completely separate meal for him. In other words, it’s better for me, and it’s ALWAYS about what’s best for me, right?

The result is that Lucas’s introduction to the world of solids has been considerably different than that of his brothers. For one, I waited a little longer. (Tristan and Simon were both on baby cereal at four months.) Second, I’m offering him foods that I would never have thought a baby of not-quite eight months old can eat — cucumber spears, potato chunks, kidney beans, raw apple slices, broccoli and cauliflower florets, diced ham and chicken and steak, even bits of spinach. And he eats it all, with gusto. There’s nothing that I’ve offered him so far that he’s refused. As a matter of fact, that’s where the baby-led weaning theory falls apart for us. His satiety cues seem to be broken, or maybe he’s still recovering from his early hunger issues, but he will eat and eat and eat until he’s eaten the cubic equivalent of his body weight and then go back for more!

I haven’t completely abandoned the spoonfeeding, though. For one thing, I think one of the great joys of life with a baby is watching that round little mouth in an O of expectation as baby waits for the next spoonful. Second, I’m rounding out his veggie intake with purees because he doesn’t have any teeth yet, and even steamed veggies are a little tough to masticate without them. And third, I still want him to have iron-fortified cereal every couple of days (although he eats tonnes of bread — it’s his favourite!) and we’ve just introduced those fromage frais minis that babies love so much.

But I wanted to say a public and thorough thank you to Marianne for opening my eyes to baby-led weaning, and to let y’all know about it, too. It’s a direction I was drifting on my own, but after a spin around the interwebs I found lots of stuff that’s helped me implement the majority of the theories of baby-led weaning.

Granny’s Revenge

I was flipping through Tristan’s baby calendar the other day, comparing Tristan and Lucas at seven months of age. (Heartbreakingly, I seem to have lost my 2004 kitchen calendar with all of Simon’s baby milestones. I have every other year since 2001; I’m hoping it presents itself out of the clutter one of these days.) It was interesting to compare my first and my third. I can see, for instance, that they’re nearly the same weight, give or take half a pound on twenty pounds. (Simon, I seem to remember, hit 20 lbs around four months of age!)

What really surprised me, though, was that Tristan was standing and “cruising the furniture” and up on his hands and knees rocking in a pre-crawl motion at this age whereas Lucas has only just reliably mastered sitting up. I’m sure this has everything to do with their own developmental clocks and nothing to do with the fact that every time Lucas begins to lift himself up I sweep his knees out from under him and squash him back down to the ground. Sorry, kid, I’m just not ready for you to get mobile. How’s two years from now by you?

On the other hand, my mother is on the cusp of getting banned from the house. Every time she gets near Lucas, she’s got him standing up on his feet, holding him while he bounces and encouraging him to walk. And muttering something about “Granny’s Revenge.” I don’t think she believes me, but so help me I’ll ban her from the house if she teaches that baby to walk before his first birthday!

Putting the kids on the payroll

Last month, we started giving the big boys an allowance. Tristan and Simon each get $2 a week, paid each Saturday. Simon now thinks of the weekend not as a day without school, but as the day he gets paid. That didn’t take long!

We debated for a bit about whether to tie the allowance to chores. I’ve seen it argued both ways: either you do, and the kids have to do their chores to get paid, or you pay the allowance out of the benevolence of your parental goodness and the chores are something that are done simply as a cost of being a member of the family. In the end, we leaned more toward the latter, but I have already threatened Tristan a few times with withholding part of his allowance if he didn’t do a better job of keeping up with his chores.

At four and six, their chores are fairly simple. They are also things I am not overly fond of doing. Fancy that! Simon is responsible for putting away the cutlery after the dishwasher is run, which happens at least once a day. Tristan is responsible for giving the dog food and water twice a day. They are both responsible for putting their schoolbags in their cubbies, putting their own clothes in the laundry hamper, and cleaning up after themselves if they’ve made a particularly spectacular mess (art projects come to mind.) I’m working on getting them to clear their breakfast dishes, too. And they’re on the hook for assignment of random chores, too: bring this basket of laundry upstairs, shuck this corn (that was a fun one!), go entertain your baby brother for two minutes while mommy finishes this blog post. So far, they’ve not only endured their chores without complaint but have actually said they like their assigned tasks. I’m obviously not working them hard enough!

The tricky part has been letting them spend their money on whatever they want. To me, the allowance is as much about introducing money management as it is about chores. So far, Tristan has spent the entirety of his allowance each week on Pokemon cards. Sigh. It’s his money, though, and he’s earned it, so we’ve been letting him get what he wants even though his mother is mildly offended by the idea of a universe in which Pokemon exists.

Even though he’s younger, it’s Simon who seems to be more willing to save up for something for a couple of weeks. He’s got his eye on a black cat Webkinz that would cost about two months worth of allowance. We’ll see if he makes it that far. He also said he’s saving for a remote control R2D2 they saw at the retro toy store. It’s only $169. Think he’ll still want it in a year and a half?

How do you work allowance and chores with your kids?

Baby food and the culture of fear

On Sunday morning, we were driving to meet friends for breakfast and I caught a snippet of a show they were doing about making your own baby food. The guest, whose name I didn’t catch, said something to the effect of “with the state of food safety the way it is, you just can’t trust even baby food makers to be vigilant, so you should make your own instead.”

This rankled me. More maternal guilt, that’s just what we need. And where do we get the ingredients to make our home-made baby food? From the supermarket, of course. The same supermarkets which have recently had e-coli scares with such wholesome foods as tomatoes and spinach. Making your own baby food is a great choice if you have the time and the inclination. You can control the ingredients and, sometimes more importantly, the texture. But it’s certainly not the only choice and I honestly don’t think it’s a lot safer than the commercial options.

Which reminded me that I don’t think I’ve ever told you the story about the first time I made baby food for Tristan, because I too thought it was the best choice from a nutritional and economic standpoint.

I bought a book of baby food recipes for $26, and decided to start with something simple: carrots. Organic carrots, of course. In fact, organic baby carrots, because they were for a baby. I bought two bags, which at the time set me back about seven dollars. I also bought a steamer pot from Ikea for $40. (I still have that pot, and it’s one of my favourites, FWIW.) I prepared one of the bags of carrots by scrubbing them and cutting the ends off. I steamed them within an inch of their lives, for maybe six hours. Okay, I exaggerate, but it was surely close to half an hour of steaming.

I put the carrots in the blender with a tablespoon or so of the reserved water, just as the cookbook recommended, and turned on the blender. The carrot mash was sticking to the sides of the blender a bit, so I used my also newly acquired wooden spoon (I really didn’t do a lot of cooking in those days) to scrape it down a bit. Without turning off the blades. And promptly filled my freshly made organic baby carrots with a healthy dose of splinters.

So I dumped that batch in the trash and washed out the blender and the blades and started all over again with the other bag of carrots. Wash, cut, boil the snot out of them. Put them in the blender. Forget to put the lid on the blender before I hit the “puree” button. Bits of wet carrot splatter everywere, and I mean everywhere. Weeks later, I was finding carrot bits under the microwave and on the underside of the range fan.

In the end, I got about four servings of carrots out of the whole thing. Net cost per serving, excluding the cookbook and the fancy new pot, was $1.75 or so, compared to 67 cents for the jars at the grocery store. You do the math.

I’m no longer welcome in the school yard

Second week of school, and I’m no longer welcome in the school yard. Well, not just me. In fact, no parents are welcome in the school yard. But, I have decided to take it personally.

I can see why the school has asked parents to drop their kids off at the school yard fence instead of walking them to the back door, as we have been doing. They have no idea who is a parent and who is not, and their first priority has to be keeping the kids safe. It’s only a couple-50 meters difference, and the school yard is supervised the last quarter-hour before the bell rings.

I still hate it. And worse, Tristan hates it. He said it makes him sad, which breaks my heart. He liked it when we hung around with him, waiting for the bell to ring. Now we kiss him off in a crush of kids bottlenecking through the gate instead of near the door where he queues up. Myself, I liked the time before and after school where I could scope out the other kids and their parents, and maybe even strike up a conversation with the familiar faces. It’s been nice being able to get to know the kids in his class and some of their parents over the last couple of months.

The funny thing is that in not traversing that final couple of meters across the school yard, we’ve cut a significant amount of our morning walk. If I’m only going to be escorting him to and from the school yard fence, I’m seriously wondering whether it’s worth doing at all. In other words, I’m wondering if at six he’s old enough to walk to and from school on his own.

What do you think? I’m torn on this one. Myself, I walked back and forth from the time I was four years old, and it was twice or three times the distance that Tristan has to walk. (And it was uphill both ways, in 10 feet of snow, and I had to park my dinosaur at the stable around the corner.) I don’t fear for his safety in any way, and I find that in general, Tristan’s a smart and responsible kid. I’m more than half-way inclined to let him try it.

But. But, but, but. It’s always the niggling little voice of worry that does me in. What if? What if something happened, what if he got lost (he can actually see the house for the entire walk and knows the neighbourhood like the back of his hand), what if something even more awful happened?

I’d be inclined to let him try it in the mornings (why do mornings seem less threatening, less full of potential mischief?) but I have to walk Simon over there anyway. It only really makes sense to let him walk home by himself after school. I’m sure he’d be fine, absolutely positive. But.

There are other options. I see tonnes of kids wandering by the house each morning and afternoon on their own treks to school, so I could try to find an older kid to escort him home in the afternoons. And I love the idea of the “walking school bus” so if I were feeling really keen, I could even try to organize something like this.

What do you think? How old is old enough to walk to or from school by yourself?