Bridging the Winter

Today the weather is hot and sunny.  And I know someday soon the rain will start. Then stay. Part of what helps me get through the dreary days of February is anticipating when our bulbs will start poking up through the dark, wet soil. Daffodils, narcissus, hyacinth and tulips brighten my day like mini suns.

With the yard remodel (I'm still brewing up before and after pictures) and the bulldozer that raked out huge swaths of grass and yard, I assume most of our bulbs disappeared.  So when the kids and I were trolling Costco this week and came across the racks of bulbs, we loaded up the cart. Vowing to have the bulbs all in the ground before Bill returned from his business trip, I took advantage of the glorious September day.

My bulb planting technics fall into the category of "good enough," developed through a combination of web surfing and watch squirrels. I open all the bags and place handfuls of bulbs strategically around.  Then I grab my shovel, lever open a wedge of dirt, stuff the bulbs in the hole under the shovel and then drop the dirt back down over the bulbs. Stomp on the little mound, chase away the dog and move onto the next pile of bulbs.

Satisfyingly, I planted all 8 bags of bulbs today.  Here's what I will be dreaming of in February.
- 25 narcissus
- 150 tulips (pink/yellow, red/white, red/yellow)
- 28 hyacinths
- 3 giant allium
- 80 crocus
- 50 daffodils

That's 336 spring flowers during the April showers!

Busy Summer Fun

Being gone for 10 days in August allowed our garden to go crazy. With Bill and Rosie off together on a business trip (her first!!), Theo and I took advantage of the lovely day to harvest some bounty.

We got giant squash and 16 (count them 16) cups of basil leaves.

Of course, that much basil calls for some serious pesto preparation. Theo and I took turns adding ingredients.  Our recipe turned out to be a little creative because I didn't have enough of most anything in the house to make 5x my normal pesto recipe.  For nuts we used almonds, pecans, cashews and pepitas.  For garlic we used some fresh, some roasted giant garlic I happened to have on hand and some whipped garlic from Lebanese Breeze.

 Theo adds in the first layer of basil for a lovely stratification of ingredients (if that looks to you like a lot of salt on top, it is.  I got a little confused in my converting).

After a thrilling time mixing the ingredients, we scooped out the pesto into 1/4 balls for freezing.

Now, we have a large bag of summer sunshine ready for those cold gray days ahead. As a bonus, we really enjoyed our time together as just two, and I got some good sidewards homeschool math and problem solving into the mix.

Next project: doing something paleo with those giant squashes.

Chatting about Collecting

As part of my collecting research, I brought the subject up with a group of friends who have also done the Neufeld Intensive 1 and 2 courses.

I loved everything they said and so enjoyed hearing their perspective. Too busy listening to take notes, here is what I currently remember from the conversation.

- Collecting has various iterations.  My previous post focused on the collecting we do after a separation - be it a physical separation like being in different locations for a couple of hours or a mental separation of a kid involved in media or a book for a length of time or an emotion separation as in a disagreement that creates discord and distance between us.

Collecting is also part of a more constant state.  It is the moments of connection between us and our kids that grow the strength of love between us.  Someone referred to it as growing and strengtheing the cord of love that connects us, and used a hand gesture that reminded me of a tree branch getting thicker and more complex with time and the stresses and strains of life.

- One friend referred to collecting as the sauce that makes everything else go.  He talked a lot about how collecting, more than being things that we do, is a posture and the way that we ARE with our kids.  Warmth came up over and over in this part of the conversation - lighting up when our kids come in the room, letting know that we're crazy about them, so in love with them and really enjoy being with them.

Warmth, as I wrote before, can seem like a pretty alien concept to me.  But in listening to my friend, I remembered how often Neufeld talks about offering a complete invitation to our children to be fully themselves in all their glorious and less perfect ways.  Warmth, and invitation, then might just be other words for unconditional love.  Both sides of the unconditional love - the unconditional "I love you no matter what" part and the love "my heart delights in seeing and knowing you" part.

I'm thinking then, and let me know what you think, that a large part of collecting is letting our children know that they are wholly and completely embedded in our hearts forever more.

Back from Pact Camp 2011

We're back from another amazing year at Pact Camp. This makes year number 5!

Major props to the Pact staff for their continued drive to create this experience that changes our lives year after year.  Beth Hall, Susan Ito and Deanna Matthews deserve gold medals for all they give and do to support our families. Here are my highlights for what their dedication brought to us this year.

The counselors were amazing. Every year Pact brings in young folks as counselors from all over the country, though mostly the Oakland area.  Pact spends 2 days training them on race, adoption, behavior as an expression of struggling emotions, and how to handle most of whatever our kids might come out with while in their care. These young people come back year after year, their love and dedication for the campers shining through.  Both of my children adore their counselors (some of whom they've worked with for 5 years now!!) and thrive under their care.

The adult programs were, as usual, superb.  JaeRan Kim (blogger of Harlow's Monkey fame) and Mary Sheedy-Kurchinka (author of "Spirited Child," "Kids, Parents and Power Struggles, " and "Sleepless In America") both spoke as keynotes.  JaeRan inspired me to think in the long term about our kids' journey and identity development in life. They are children for such a short time. We as parents we need to aim towards adulthood, equipping our kids with the skills and relationships they need once they leave our homes. JaeRan showed a beautiful combination of professional, expert presentation and authentic personal vulnerability.  It is truly an honor to sit in the presence of someone so willing to share so deeply of herself for the good of my child. It stills makes me weepy to think of the depth of the gift she offered us.

Mary Sheedy-Kurchinka's talk focused on how to connect with our kids - calm, collect, collaborate.  Almost everything she said came back to sleep - no-one in America seems to be getting enough sleep and being tired makes everything harder. I loved her overall messages, and I was blown away by her dynamic presentation style that was fun, entertaining and seemed to take into account reseach-driven principles about how people learn best.

Behind the scenes with our kids I know there were professionals prompting thoughts and conversations with our kids.  While I didn't hear much back from kids about the conversations or their own thinking, I know the people working with my kids did a great job because of the enthusiasm both Theo and Rosie showed in sharing their art with me. Sessions were set up to communicate back to parents the work that was being done with the kids, however I missed or opted out of them. Because....

One of the draw backs, always, about camp is that there is too much wonderfulness going on for me to absorb it all.  This year camp organizers created a multitude of small group sessions.  Each afternoon I benefited from presentations and conversations while longing to duplicate myself so I could attend other sessions at the same time. I sat in on conversations about blended families (adopted and born to siblings), the racial achievement gap, "can kids of color thrive in a white environment?", and very sadly napped through two spoken pieces by adult adoptees that I deeply admire.

What really makes camp amazing is the people.  Not just in their roles as presenter, therapist, adult adoptee, counselor or adoptive parent, but the people as their whole selves.  The insight, sharing, pain, regret, struggles, victories and resources that so many people shared with me teach and inspire me how to be the person and parent my children need.

Set near Lake Tahoe, the logistics of camp were much easier for us this year than in the past.  Real beds and fully insulated walls helped with sleeping.  The food worked great for our family, hallelujah!  The site was beautiful, easy to navigate and had a truly lovely swimming pool with an actually hot hot tub.

Finally, a giant bonus for my family, there was sunshine!  With this very wet Seattle summer, we were all grateful to be warm and dry for a few days.

These 4 days at camp will bring lasting change to our lives again this year.  While the changes we make for our family are no longer so abrupt and visible, the depth and honesty of the conversation allows space for each of us to grow and learn.  It is an amazing experience.

I hope you will join us next year!

On Talking Terms with Dogs

On his show, Cesar Milan often talks about reading dog's body language and off-handedly mentions various behaviors that he sees.  The behaviors are so quick and subtle, I often have to stop the video and go back several times to really see it on the screen.  Cesar is so confident about what he notices and what it means that I've been longing for a clear list of behaviors and their meanings.

Imagine, then, how thrilled I was to discover On Talking Terms with Dogs: Calming Signals by Turid Rugaas.   While the book doesn't cover every doggie movement, the focus on calming signals is quite fascinating.  With a list of about 15 calming signals, I've found the information useful for both communication with Mason and other dogs and for better understanding the state they are in.  Each page includes lots of great pictures to illustrate each signal.  The book is short, concise and easy to read. All the pictures makes for a super kid-friendly dog guide, too, as my kids are compelled to leaf through, enjoy and try to interpret every dog in each photo.

In the past few weeks, I've focused on a few signals, getting comfortable at recognizing them as dogs use them.  I've also started adding them into my communication repertoire.  Somehow even though I understand this is how dogs communicate with each other, I'm amazed at the success.  Mason, a little low on exercise this week, was having a full-out puppy crazy session upstairs.  He usually gets on all fours really low and then tears around at a berserk pace knocking people and things down as he goes.  Normally getting him to stop and calm down takes a while (or a really big treat) and involves some personal risk.  Instead, I turned sideways to him, yawned a few times and then as he watched me, I knelt down and scratched the carpet for a bit. He relaxed and sat down, calm for the moment.  Pretty cool!  Pretty easy!  (I did take him down to the lake for a serious swim shortly afterwards.)

For fun, I'm going to do a quick run down of the signals - if you're interested in using them I highly recommended checking the book out as Rugaas' clear descriptions of the signals and what they mean are invaluable.  Here are the major signals: head turning, softening the eyes, turning away, licking the nose, freezing, slow movements, play bow(!), sitting down, lying down, yawing, sniffing, curving approach, splitting up two animals and tail wagging.

Enjoy experimenting on a canine nearby and let me know what you learn!

Chemistry of Collecting

Somewhere along the way I read something that lead me to google something that linked me to youtube videos by Bryan Post.  Post* bills himself as one of "America's Foremost Child Behavior Experts."  While I seriously doubt this is the title I would give him, his work seems to focus on attachment and connections rather than on behavior modification, so I started listening to him.  His videos intrigued me because they combine discussions on neurology and attachment - two of my favorite things.

The work horse of his method for being and expert with kids and their behavior is oxytocin, the hormone responsible for bonding sometimes dubbed the "love hormone." Through his videos I learned that the release of oxytocin that creates feelings of warmth and trust is a learned response.  Not an automatic physical reaction, but a learned response. If you really think about this, it is a pretty mind-blowing fact.  In actuality, we aren't born knowing how to love or being pre-programmed to do so.  We have to learn how, from our mommies (or our primary care giver that fills the mothering role).  Wow.

I know Holly van Gulden has illustrated this before in reenacting the interactions between baby and mama, showing how the baby feels and expresses mild stress, mama comes in to provide comfort and baby relaxes into her care.  But somehow I never got that as parents we are building a neurology of love and connection right into our kids' brains. Good thing the brain is plastic and we can form new neurological pathways at any age - I'm sure many of us humans don't get the positively patterned oxytocin response we need in our first 6 months.

My guess is that part of what makes Neufeld's collecting so successful in the moment and in the long term comes from stimulating the oxytocin response.  I've been reading one of Post's sources on the oxytocin response, The Chemistry of Connection by Kuchinskas and the smile and nod of Neufeld's collecting technique come to mind in so many of the oxytocin positive scenarios Kuchinskas sites.

This means, each time I take the needed 3 minutes to get my child's smile and nod, I'm stimulating a dump of warmth, trust, and reward hormones that help my child feel good about themselves and me (oh, and I get a shot of happy hormones, too).  Thus they physically are more inclined to do my bidding, and I'm physically more inclined to be nurturing in supporting them.  At the same time, I'm creating for them a habit of feeling good, happy and cooperative.  The more I do it, the better it gets as the pathways become more refined until the child's oxytocin response becomes automatic, like riding a bike.

Seems like a good idea. Next, I need figure out how to remember in the heat of the moment to aim for those smile and nods and actually figure out how to get them.


*********************************


* Post has obviously read a lot of books on attachment and child development, think pretty clearly about the subject and have quite a bit of experience in the area, so I found much of his information familiar with some exciting new bits.  I feel compelled to disclose that in doing a google search for him, I found at least one issue that causes me a little concern about his personal integrity or at least  discretion (having to do with challenges to his title of "dr").  It didn't discredit his thinking for me, but if you plan to put much energy into looking at his videos or programs, you might consider looking into this for yourself.

Collecting about Collecting

One of the key concepts from Neufeld's work is the idea of collecting children.  Not as in acquiring a large houseful of them, which I am also enthusiastic about, but gathering their attention and goodwill.

Collecting my children is something I'm confident I don't do often enough or well enough, and I see the negative results of this everyday. I've made it my goal to learn everything I can about collecting over the summer.  Maybe I'll become the world expert on it someday. I'm going to try to gather some of what I know and my thoughts about collecting here on my blog as I go along.

Here is my take on why we collect our children based on the Neufeld material.  I'm pretty sure I'm missing some key components, but here is my initial understanding:

Humans are creatures of attachment, and nobody wants to do anything for someone they're not attached to (sort of a built in safety valve to prevent coercion).  When we are given direction or instruction by someone we don't perceive as connected to us, we're likely to feel manipuated, resist and exhibit what Neufeld calls counterwill - either not doing or even doing the opposite of what is requested.

Secondly, if children aren't focused on us, they aren't focused on us. Especially when children are young and do not have mixed feelings (the brain develops the capacity for mixed feelings somewhere between 5-9 years old), they are unable to focus on more than one thing at time.  From van Gulden, the more important something is the harder it will be for any of us to focus on two things at once - try talking to my husband when he's concentrating on an interesting book. Its not that he's ignoring me but that his brain is so focused on the story coming from his eyes that it isn't relaying the information coming from his ears. And he's in his 40s, so consider the implications of trying to talk to a 10 year old reading an exciting comic book.  All this to say if we haven't collected our children's attention, they aren't focused on us and we'll get no further. Period.

Collecting a la Neufeld includes, at its core, the idea of warmth.  I can get my children's attention by coming into the room like thunder and demanding their attention, but I'm not likely to garner any goodwill (or cooperation) in the process.  When I come in and gather their attention in a friendly way, I increase our connection, demonstrate caring and increase the likelihood of cooperation.

How to collect-
(Neufeld actually does a lovely version of this on some of the videos which is the best way to get a sense of it, but here it is from my notes.)
- Get into their face in a friendly way, try to get their eyes (but don't ask or tell them to look at you). With older kids we need to intercept their attention by sharing in what they are attending to.
- Get a smile - say something pleasant or funny.  If no smile, then no connection, yet.
- Get a nod, agreement to something you say.
Don't proceed further until you have both the smile and the nod.

Neufeld's advice is to always collect before we direct - have our children's attention and hearts before we ask them to do something for us.  The times I do remember to get friendly with kids, find the smiles and the nods, things go much more smoothly.  Yes, it takes longer on the front end but I'm sure at the end of the day it is a big time and goodwill saver.

Interestingly, it isn't just children we collect - we all collect people every day.  In speaking more generally, Neufeld calls it the human courting instinct.  I've also seen it referred to as the dance of attachment several places. I notice people do this all the time at the bank, the grocery store, the quick hellos on the phone before a logistical conversation. Sometimes I think of it as social flirting, not really sexual or just heterosexually aimed, but a way to endear ourselves to the people we need before we make our requests of them.

The Mindlessness of Privilege

Last night, I was taking a big-picture look at my blog.  In particular, I was thinking about categories.  It occurred to me that in the past month of posting, probably the only category I didn't post in was "How White I Am."

Somewhere between surprised and sad and embarrassed, I decided that this in and of itself is a signal of how white I am.  I think about race and its effects on my family most days. But there are days when I can easily not and rarely a day when race related issues are really up in my face. Heck, I can go 29 days without a post mentioning race.

The mindlessness of being white is a privilege most of us white folks probably never fully recognize or understand.

Cooking in Denial

Long, long ago when Bill and I were married, Teflon cookware was the prized object of the kitchen.  Non-stick and health because it required little fat for cooking, all the books and magazines recommended it.  We dutifully listed the whole Calphalon Teflon series on our registry and received most of it.

Fast forward over a decade and it turns out Teflon kills small birds and poses respiratory and cancer risks to those who use it.  

I know about the dangers of polytetrafluoroethylene (that's what they call it when it isn't trademarked) - I've been hearing this information via my various quirky health newsletters for years.  Yet each night at dinner time, you'll find me pulling out my Teflon lined Everyday Pan with my fingers in my ears singing, "lalalalalala I can't hear you lalalalala."  

It's not that I don't think the stuff is dangerous.  I just don't know what else to do.  There's the aluminum option, but coming from a family with history of Alzheimer's that risk is too high for me.  There's stainless steel, but it turns out it leaches something like 23 other metals that have undetermined safety levels.  There's straight-up cast iron, but it is heavy, hard to care for and doesn't come in the happy array of pan styles I need.  There's anodized aluminum, which sounds like it might be safe but I over-cooked beets in my one anodized pot and it lost all its finish and color which seems totally freaky and compromising to me.

That leaves, as far as I can tell, two options.  Ceramic lined cast iron (think Le Creuset) or a rumored line called Safe Pans (I think).  

One of my friend raves about the Safe Pans, from Australia (?).  They are apparently, true to name, safe.  Also the seem to come in good sizes that are reasonably priced. But for the life of me I can't find them on the internet. Hey friend-who-I-happen-to-know-reads-this-blog, maybe you could post a link to them in the comments section?  

Now Le Creuset defines sexy in the cookware world - amazing variety of shapes and sizes and eye-candy colors.  Super high quality, it lasts forever and can be passed down from generation to generation. Nobody in on the internet registers any safety concerns.  But I balk for two reasons.  Mostly, the stuff is expensive.  My Everyday Pan now goes for $64.  The Le Creuset equivalent (the iron braiser) runs $200.  The cost of replacing my entire cookware set would be phenomenal.  Still a factor, though less shocking, is the weight of these pans.  Cast iron is heavy and I wonder how I and the kids would manage working with such heavy pieces.

And here I am back where I started.  A house full of hungry people and likely unsafe pots that are actually in my kitchen ready to use.  I guess they'll have to do for another meal or 100.

How about you? Do you cook in the land of denial, too?  If not, what pans do you use?  Anyone think the concerns are all  red-herrings raised by a jealous industry?

How (some) Homeschool Parents Party

image from evergreenmoms.com

Last night, I hosted about a dozen other homeschool parents (sans kids) to a "Parents Night Out."  Besides the fun of sharing potluck dinner together, the purpose of our gathering was to create art!

Years ago in Florida at a similar gathering, I and a lovely bunch of mamas from the community at OneHotMama dyed playsilks.  Besides being fun, this was a very frugal move, considering that one can buy a silk scarf and the dye for about $4 when they usually cost about $12. My kids played daily with the silks for 5 years until the silk disintegrated.

With my ever-present "how hard can it be?" approach to new projects and a serious reluctance to overpay for new scarves, this summer I proposed the outing to our local homeschool yahoo group and got a huge response.  Many hours on DharmaTrading and plenty of phone calls to customer service later, I'd worked out that I really had no clue what I was doing.  Enter another mama who actually loved dying and knew what to do.  A short conversation with her lit my way and within the hour I'd ordered over 150 silk scarves and a rainbow of dye. Now the adventure was truly afoot.

Back to last night, we supped on the potluck feast and started our project.  Our start was a little slow while we worked out how to set up and what exactly to do with so many people, buckets, silks and dye choices.  And then people got comfortable with the project.  We saw beautiful designs, fun color combinations, people cheering successes and helping each other with problem solving.  Twelve people rinsing in only 2 sinks created little niches for chatting and those same 12 people trying to get at 7 buckets in a small space created plenty of intimacy.

At midnight the last friend left, having helped me finish cleaning up the kitchen.  I went to bed with a washing machine swirling with vinegar and over a dozen gloriously decorated silkies.  Better yet, the happy glow from a house full of laughing, learning, sharing friends.

Adult vs. Grown-up

Over the course of our life time, people age from baby to (hopefully) senior citizen.  However, I've noticed (and I'm sure you have) not everyone will manage to grow-up - if we define growing-up as becoming fully mature.

According to Neufeld, there are three drives to maturity.  These are internal drives that exist in each human being, and they develop naturally unless they are squashed. In order to mature each of us needs to achieve:

Adaptation.  This is when we let life change us.  It is the origins of the Serenity Prayer.  Basically we fully feel our frustration and sadness when life doesn't go the way we want.  Integral to adaptation are tears of sadness.  Researchers dehydrated different types of tears (I'm guessing something like sad, mad, happy, scared) and found that the toxins in tears of sadness are potent enough to kill a small rodent. We need, emotionally and physically, to get the frustration and sadness out of our system so we can move on.  The magic of really absorbing the futility of the moment is what comes next - new ideas and/or the knowledge that we can live through hard times and survive.  Neufeld calls these fruits resourcefulness and resilience.

Integration.  This is mixed feelings.  We are integrated when we can hold two feelings at the same time. As in, I'm mad that you dropped my iPhone in the toilet and I can feel my love for you at the same time.  Or I feel mad about how messed up the institution of adoption is and sad about the fact that a mama is going say goodbye to her baby and I'm so looking forward to being mama to another child. Mixed feelings lead to the virtues in life because they balance our negative moments with our caring parts.     

From Neufeld:
self-control = caring about our impact + impulses to react
patience = caring feelings + frustration
courage = caring about what we treasure + fear
consideration = caring for another + concern for self
forgiveness = caring feelings + impulses to get even

We are also integrated when we can see our friend's point of view and still hold onto our opinion. One of my favorite clues that someone isn't integrated is the 180 degree turn.  Friend hates the Beatles music until I mention how I grew up on their music and know the words to most of the songs by heart.  Then suddenly Friend has always been a fan of their songs.

Emergence.  Neufeld defines emergence as venturing forth, vitality and viability.  I'm still chewing on what this really means to me.  His examples have to do with children playing happily on their own and creating from their own minds.  Or as we grow, finding our own creativity, opinions and ideas. Neufeld says he thinks a relationship with ourselves is the highest point of emergence.  My take-away is that this is very complex and is the sort of thing we hope to begin to master before we die.  In order to be able to emerge, we need to be able to focus on ourselves and relax about our general safety in the world. For children, this means they need secure attachments with those who are responsible for us so they can be free from the concern of making those relationships work and can spend their energy figuring out who they are. Non-emergent people are our typical couch potato, I think, spending all their time watching TV, letting others' ideas flow in with no interests or hobbies of their own.  I'm guessing I haven't absorbed the larger idea of emergence.  Perhaps I'll write more later as my understanding deepens.

I love looking at this material from two perspectives - where am I at in my development and growth and where my children are.  Understanding this about myself, my kids, and others in my world creates lots of space for true understanding with creative solutions to the challenges through out our day. 

Sometimes Things Go Well

Oddly, the start of our new homeschooling year seems to be going smoothly. Knock on wood.

The children vary between excited and accepting of our work and routine instead of the all out mutiny I expected.  The smooth transition from summer to fall probably comes from a variety of things.

First, my kids are older.  Maturity makes a huge difference.  Actually, Theo's maturity makes a huge difference. A few days into our new schedule, he confided in me that this year he plans to do all of his work by the end of the year.  Apparently over the summer something happened in Theo's brain that made doing his work a priority. And since Rosie imitates 90% of what he does, she's into doing her work as well.

Second, I'm confident keeping a summer schedule prevented the usual shock of entering back into a full school year routine.  The kids' summer work list stood more as a place holder than an engine for getting lots of learning done, but it helped.  Each morning we were in town they did morning routine, chores, practiced guitar, did a 15 minutes clean-up of the house and worked in their handwriting workbooks - about an hour and a half of work.

Of course, figuring out to do light schooling over the summer points to another reason for these easy first few weeks: more expereince on my part.  We're beginning our official 4th year of homeschooling, and we did years of neurological growth programs before then.  I guess I've been mucking out how to make an agenda-packed day run smoothly with my kids for about 8 years now. Over the course of time the most important lesson I've internalized is the metaphor of the marathon.  The work I'm doing with my kids blossoms years from now.  Getting every detail and lesson just perfect right now looks good in the short sprint of the day, but if I make us all crazy and exhausted now how will I ever teach our life goals of peace, ease, connection and love of learning? In short, I'm becoming flexible with an eye to the long term.

Finally, a great trick I learned from the Neufeld course: steer into the skid.  If I know my kid is going to hate something, whine, scream and complain about it, I announce that to them before presenting the offending work. While it sounded at first like crazy manipulation, somehow it seems to magically give my children permission to feel their feelings, be known by me and let most of the drama pass.

It sounds like this, "Honey, next I am going to ask you to do something I know is usually hard for you, and you don't like.  And to make it worse, I'm going to ask you to do MORE of it than I did this summer.  I'm guessing you're going to feel really angry and want to scream and yell at me, and that's okay with me."  I assign the handwriting task and the response is, "Oh darn it Mommy.  That's going to be hard.  Where's my pencil?"  Weird but true. Of course, one should always be prepared to accept the angry shouting if that comes about, too.

Now that I've shared about our lovely first weeks and my guesses as to what made them so, I'm off to make copious sacrifices to both the parenting and homeschool gods in hopes of preventing serious retaliatory disasters next week!

Queen Big Mama in Charge of the Universe

This morning I was pulled from the far, far away land of dreams by some loud, obnoxious, repetitive sound.  Emerged enough from the deep fog of sleep to put two thoughts together, I figured out it was the alarm clock I set last night.

Almost 10 years of life as a stay-at-home-mom and homeschooler with a working-from-home husband, I'm accustomed to the luxury of waking up more or less when my body fills most of it's sleep debt.  Travel turns out to be the only time I set an alarm as those picky people at the airport don't hold planes for my personal sleep needs.

Why do this to myself now?  Especially now that my kids can wake up and pour themselves cereal or yogurt and play for hours?

So I can be the Big Mama In Charge.

Since January quite a bit of my learning time has gone to an intensive study of Gordon Neufeld's material.  His basic theory covers attachment - postulating that our primary human need is for connection with others.  One of the main realizations I've taken from the 22 hours of video lessons and 10 weeks of discussion group is that my kids need to be able to feel totally safe in my care.  They need to believe being their mama isn't too much work for me, that nothing will jeopardize our relationship, and be sure that I have a plan for their well being.

When my kiddos wake up first, scrounge for food and create their own structure for how to spend their time, it becomes almost impossible for me to wrest the direction of the rest of the day away from them.  Our day becomes a long series of bickering and power struggles with both parents and siblings. I think starting their own day out communicates, however subtly, that taking care of them is too hard, and they must work to meet their own needs.

When I get up, get dressed, take a few minutes to myself and start breakfast before they come down, they treat me as Queen of the Universe*.  They listen, they help, they do! My educated guess is that the kids see their needs being met, they know there is an adult in charge with a plan, and they relax into that care.  The tone of these first moments of the day sets their little systems to either feeling nurtured for and compliant* or anxious and demanding.

Clever being that I am, I've managed to circumvent the getting up part by asking my morning lark of a husband to be the Man of the Morning.  Thus reaping the benefits of Queen of the Universe without the ugly early morning issue. Sadly the Man left for NYC yesterday, leaving me - and the alarm clock - to rise to the challenge of starting the morning off in charge and in peace.**

But I can handle it. I'm the Queen Big Mama in Charge of the Universe!
Wish me luck and send coffee.



*For everyone's sanity and good perspective, please keep in mind that this Queen of the Universe can still be an idiot poopy-head and my compliant children may still scream in agony when asked to get out their handwriting.  But these are mere hiccups on our day rather than the defining tone.
**Anyone else notice that accidental, yet clever, play on words?  Hee hee hee!

Dog Days of Summer

This Saturday, Mason joined the Barnacle crew!

Described as 75 pounds of handsome, he is a one year old black labrador rescued from a high kill shelter in Idaho.  Aside from being truly handsome in that dorky lab sort of way, Mason is one mellow and awesome pooch.

Our family took the ferry over to Port Orchard to meet him and instantly fell in love.  At first sight he showed all the right signs of friendliness and moderate levels of activity, plus the tendancy to sit when confronted with odd sites (the huge black cow down the lane qualified as very odd in his book.) With a lovely, thick, soft coat, some level of leash training and few obvious commands in his vocabulary, it is clear he lost himself from a careful, loving home.

The weekend whizzed by in a lovely mishmash of getting to know Mason and teaching him about our home and family. I think we're all going to be very happy together.

Welcome, Mason!

How Legos Are Made

A truly awesome video.

Why Underwear

Here is one of the more random things I learned this summer.

Underwear exists for a reason.

I figure at least several of you reading this are thinking, "well, duh."  But as a parent, I try to pick my battles around most things that create resistance from the kids.  Our modern culture seems filled with so many random rules, I prefer to hold my ground for the more meaningful ones.

Coming from Montana, I guess I always figured panties served as a second layer of protection for my bootie from the harsh chill of winter (can't explain much about the summer reasons, though).  So when certain short members of the family began fighting putting on unders, I just shrugged it off.  Winters just aren't that cold here.  Recently, though I learned better.

If you're squeamish, this is the point at which you might like to move on to the next task in your day.

Turns out, underwear serve two purposes.  First, they absorb any little extra drops of urine that a good wipe might miss.  Second, they act as a protective layer between the world and our more funky parts.  Underwear end up being a nice little social convention that keeps our everyday interactions with others fresh. Basically, it keeps people from being too stinky.

Pretty random, isn't it?  But good.  Good to know.

Racism Defined from RaceBending.com

From previous posts, I'm sure you've gathered I really enjoy Racebending.com and support their mission.  Most of what prompted me to add their blog to my RSS feed came from my deep admiration for their succinctness regarding the identification and definition of what racism and it's resulting symptoms are.

In the hopes of keeping my thinking and communications clear, I copied these definitions into my email so I could revisit them from time to time (I'd link to the exact page, but now I can't find it). Take a few minutes and read over them, it might help you see your world differently this week, too.

Institutionalized racism:  a form of racism and institutionalized discrimination that takes place in institutions of societal power and influence. These policies and practices are generally set in place and remain unwavering because:

1. they have been in place for decades/centuries, despite the evolution of civil rights

2. they are advantageous to the people who are part of this institution, whether they know it or not

The difference between individual bigotry and institutional racism lies in the set policies and practices of an organization that actively or unintentionally discriminate against an ethnic group and subsequently disadvantage that particular group or race. We want to make the distinction between individual 'racism' (eg: bigotry) and institutionalized discrimination, which is a pervasive societal system.

Discrimination: A distinction based on the personal characteristics of an individual resulting in some disadvantage to that individual.

Prejudice: most commonly used to refer to a preconceived judgment toward a people or a person because of race, social class, gender, ethnicity, age, disability, political beliefs, religion, sexual orientation or other personal characteristics. This judgment does not need to have any basis in fact.

Bigotry: A bigot is a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.

Colorism: is a form of discrimination in which people are accorded differing social and economic treatment based on skin color. Colorism occurs across the world and can occur within an ethnic group or between different ethnic groups. In most entertainment industries–including Hollywood–lighter skin tone is given preferential treatment and darker skin tone is considered less desirable. Oftentimes, heroes are cast with lighter skin and villains are cast with darker skin.

I Suck At Finances

While this is by no means a sudden revelation, it dawned on me this summer that right now in my life, I suck at finances.  The part of finances that requires attention to detail on a regular basis.

Actually, I'm sort of a disaster at anything that requires my focused time and attention, because honestly I make no space in my life for such things.  Mornings and afternoons are scheduled to homeschool work and activities.  The gaps of time that I leave unscheduled for children to play and create, I seem to fritter away instead of scheduling time for the work for which I hold myself accountable.

The poor results create waves of anxiety and frustration for me.  The avalanche-worthy mountain of paperwork that is my desk, the constant fire-fighting of taking care of things that should have been done yesterday, the fines from late-paid bills, even the stress of never really quite understanding where we are in the broader financial picture.

Years of being organized and great at attention to detail reminds me that my skills for getting things done exist.  Somehow, I'm not making time or priority for important tasks.  What I struggle with defining is why I don't make time.  Am I lazy?  Are my expectations for what I can do in addition to a full homeschool day totally unrealistic?  Am I creating to do's that are actually unnecessary? Do I spend my time on the wrong tasks?

These are questions I'm not even sure how to find answers for, though I keep looking.  How about you? Do you struggle with similar issues?  How do you handle the drone of logistical tasks in your life?  Any insights to share with me?

On Tent Camping

Bill and I love road trips.  We once spent 9 months RV'ing around the country.  That trip hugely influenced us in our decision to homeschool our the theoretical children.  We traveled 30,000 miles and experienced many great adventures.

Now with 2 kids and RV-less, Bill and I still love the idea of road trips.  So this summer we decided to try a 3 week trip.  Our destination was Pact Camp in Monterey, with plans to camp back up the Pacific Coast to Mt. Rainier where we'd meet with about 30 other homeschool families for the mother of all car camping experiences.

As homeschoolers, we spend a large amount of time in the car.  The kids and I are clear on what makes car travel fun and bearable.  We packed the minivan full of books, drawing materials and snacks.  In the end, the driving part was a breeze, especially as Bill brought the first 2 Harry Potter books along to read aloud.

What took me by surprise turned out to be the assembly process.  With an RV, we'd pick our spot, back in and spend a few minutes settling our rig.  Done, time to play.  Leaving is equally simple. With tent camping, we'd pick our spot, drive in and spend the next hour unpacking our gear, setting up the tent, setting up our bedding, setting up our "kitchen."  Which was fine the times we arrived early and settled in for a few days.  And a SUPER giant drag the times we struggle with traffic, pulled in close to supper time and then needed to move out early the next morning.

Next year - because I love road trips and hope to do several next summer - I'll plan our travel differently so that each stop involves at least 2 nights stay, with several much longer stays so that the set-up amortizes better.  I'm pretty sure next year Bill plans to buy an RV.

Funny how married people don't always carry the same goals and expectations. Secretly, I'm sure I'm the more realistic of the pair, but I hope he's the one who's right!

September NaBloPoMo

Well.  The rain has set in (Honestly, it's summer, it's August, it's pouring rain and 67s degrees out.  Do I get some sort of winter credit for this?  Like say a trip to Arizona in February? Somebody please talk to the rain gods for me and straighten this mess out.).  Our school schedule starts up again in a few days.  My summer, though cold and cloudy, filled my brain with new information.

Sounds like time for a NaBloPoMo.  For September, I commit to blogging everyday.  I'm also going to add a new category, "What I Learned On My Summer Vacation."  Because I learned a ton and because it amuses me to no end.

Hope you enjoy the ride!