Soccer MOM!

I had this flash of myself this morning and it was SCARY. G is out of town this week... so it was just me. I dressed Thing 1 in his soccer uniform, piled all four kids into my Honda Odyssey minivan with organic snacks and drinks in a cooler for the whole team, got a curb-side pick-up vanilla latte, and drove 2 miles to the soccer field where I cheered on my 6 year old son while he ran around a soccer field aimlessly kicking the ball! I am officially a SOCCER MOM! How did that happen?? I have to admit, I had a blast out there watching Thing 1 and his three cutie pie sisters cheering him on (well, Thing 4 didn't say much, but she was having a good time). So yes, I'm a minivan driving, latte drinking, soccer mom and I'm proud. (no big soccer ball stickers on the back of my car though... I will draw the line at that!)

A few of my favorite things (#1, #2, #3)

Being the mom of four, I have an opinion on practically everything from sippy cups and slings, to products and diapers. Here are a few of my favorite things (note... I am not being paid for any of my opinions here... this is all me!):

1. Slings: The moby wrap and ergo baby carrier. I honestly don't think I would have survived kid 3 without the moby. Thing 3 had reflux and literally would scream if she was anywhere other than the moby. I think I kept her in there pretty much all the time for her first 4 months of life. I still love it with Thing 4. It's a great hands free sling that goes over both shoulders to distribute the weight. It's soft and stretchy. The baby feels like they are back in the womb. love love love it! When the babies get a little bigger I love the ergo (you can use this for little babies as well, but I think the moby is just better). The ergo is easy to get on, comfy for a variety of ages, and easy to transfer to person to person. It's comfortable for moms and babies and super easy to wash. I've tried a lot of different slings (Cat, you've tried more... so feel free to give your fav's as well!) but these are my favorites, and have been all around accepted by my kids. I had a pouch sling (hotsling and new native), but Hudson was the only one to really like that. All the other ones just got agitated in there after awhile.

2. Rainbow Products (this is the amazon link, but you can get it in a lot of places)

I was just giving the kids a bath tonight and I was thinking how much I loved the smell of their shampoo and conditioner. It's made by Rainbow. They have this cherry vanilla scent that is amazing, and their original scent is great too. The detangling conditioner actually works (unlike most I've tried) even on Thing 1's crazy dread head. They sell a fantastic body wash , hand soap, and bubble bath as well. Most if not all of their products are organic and they don't test on animals. LOVE IT!

3. Petit Bateau and Tea Clothing: ok, I know it's expensive (especially Petit Bateau), but I can't help it. The colors are fantastic, the clothes are soft, they wash well, make great hand-me-down's and for some reason, I am drawn to these brands in the store. I don't have a lot of them (most of the kids' clothes are from target and old navy), but if I could shop these brands all the time I would! Tea usually has great sales on their website, so I try to stick to that. It's great for mix and match clothing that the kids can put together themselves (a necessity with my kids who won't wear anything that I pick out), and for my son who at 6 years old still refuses to wear anything with a button or snap (yes, they still make elastic waist shorts for a size 7 that are cute and not your standard sweats!). I'm still searching for good sales on Petit Bateau, so if you know of any, please pass them on!

The times, they have a'changed!

Does anyone else think that childhood today is a teeny bit, oh, more apesh*t than it was ten-fifteen (30?) years ago? There are so many technological distractions out there these days that I cannot even IMAGINE what my children will be facing in ten years! Right now, my kids are pretty much interested in what kids have been interested in for, oh, the past history of humankind. Toys. Fun. Exploring. My children are two and almost one years old, so, I suppose they are pretty easy to entertain. But in a few years, oh man! What am I going to do?

For example. When do kids get cell phones? I am not talking about getting my kids iPhones with unlimited text messaging or anything, but I can see the value of a limited minutes simple phone they can use to call us in emergencies. I KNOW my parents would have gotten me one, but it would have been HIGHLY controlled. I remember getting my first phone in my room when I was in Junior High. Pink, plastic, and connected to my parents land line. No private number for me! But still, I felt very awesome. I didn't get a cell phone until Graduate School. That's GRADUATE SCHOOL folks. Did I miss not having a phone all prior to that? Well, no. No one had one, really, except fancy folks. I was not fancy. Am not fancy. Okay, so cell phones. Any suggestions?

Next. The internet. HOW? What? WHEN?! No longer do you worry about the bully on the playground, but the bully on Facebook, or Myspace, or whatever. Hearing about children killing themselves because of being bullied on the internet sends tremors of anger and fear through me. I suppose I can have "parental controls" and "keep conversation lines open" and "monitor" to the best of my ability, but seriously? kids can get around you! I was once a child. I understand this. I harbor no delusions that I will a) have no problems when my children become tweens and teens and that they'll always think the sun sets and rises by my dictate, or b) that they (even if we have an amazing relationship) will tell me everything. I was a pretty well rounded teen and fairly happy, I think, but embarrassing trips through some old journals (now tossed, because really, I do NOT need that stuff lurking around in some box) and rereading the inky scribblings of teen angst, proved a clear reminder that I was trying to deal with lots of emotions on my own. Not fun. Not cool. I can only imagine how much weirder and more angsty it would have been if I had been trying to prove myself not only at school, but also on the internet! Yikes. I truly feel that technology today has advanced MUCH faster than young children and teens are capable of handling.

And not only is the world of technology far more invasive than I'm currently comfortable with (mind you, spoken by someone whose own iPhone is never farther than four feet away) but I have lost pretty much all confidence in the American Education System. Not in teachers, please note, but in the system. I hate how underfunded schools are, how important curricula is phased out, how sports are overglorified and how little focus is placed on the individual. I'm not sure the school box is the way to go.

To be quite honest, I am very much thinking more and more about homeschooling, or other form of alternative education. Not so much to protect my kids from things they might run into in the school yard, but because maybe I think that this whole world is really far, far too complex. Much more than it needs to be. And I think, honestly, that I can do a better job. I have no more faith in the system. I'm no longer confident with putting my kids in school to be told later that my child is "acting out" and likely ADHD because energy and creativity are no longer appreciated as it makes it harder to ram the FCAT (or, insert your states BS standardized test here).My goal is definitely not to produce children who are obsessed with some vague notion of "success" as defined by American capitalism. What DO I want for them? I want them to be happy! I don't want them to have homework in Kindergarten and I don't want their schedules filled with so much work and sports and clubs and etc. etc. that their dayplanner is busier than Hillary Clinton's. That is not living, at least in my opinion. I'm not suggesting I hope to raise slacker waistoids, but maybe, just maybe, I want to try something else and let THEM decide who they want to be, and what they want to do. Less pressure... I'm sure that sounds so naively idealistic. But it's how I'm feeling right now. It's how I feel most days. And I think about this a lot. Especially since I'm feeling the "preschool pressure" to get my son in the "best" preschool I can find (and afford). He's not even three and I'm already getting sucked in. I can feel it. And it's freaking me out.

How do you navigate this 1000000 x more complicated world? Or am I making a big deal out of nothing?

Does anyone wonder if our priorities are skewed?

My Fears: A list.

I'm pretty sure he doesn't have too many worries. I hope it is a long time before they begin to settle on his wee shoulders.

I am an anxiety freak. I worry worry worry about so many things that I cannot control. I know it does no one any good. Especially not me, and definitely not my kids. But I do know that just admitting things and writing them down is a good way to face your fears and get things off your chest and help deal. So, here I am, dealing. So, listen if you want. Add your own if you have them, and mock me if you will. :)

1. Fear of losing one of my children.

This is obviously my number one fear. By losing, I don't mean a "Oh shit, where are they?" in Costco for a few minutes, but full on loss. I don't know how people cope and go on living.

I worry about car accidents, horrible terminal diseases, freak accidents, forgetting them in the car on a hot day, kidnapping, drowning, falling down stairs, banging their head on the pavement, impalement, SIDS, EVERYTHING. For a few months this winter, it got almost debilitating. Didn't help that I was living in a place with very few friends and basically no one to share this with (except my husband, love you and thanks for listening, and Kiki). It was probably some post partum depression manifesting along with seasonal affective disorder thrown in, but, whatever it was, it sucked. I worry about my kids so much, I sometimes don't know how to do anything else, but I always manage and I am supposing that everyone else does the same thing. So, I'm not going to stress myself out thinking I'm a freak or anything. I know I have some mild OCD, so I'm sure that that feeds it. I'm dealing.

2. Loss of husband. This one sucks too. What can I say, insert the above fears and it's the same thing.

3. You know, the only real sadness I have about the thought of my own death, is missing out on watching my children grow up. That would blow. I'm more worried about losing one of my parents, though. That would really mess me up too. *sigh.

4. The fact that we are totally screwing up the planet and I'm pretty sure it's not reversible.

Humans. We suck. I am seriously scared for the world my children are going to inherit. It's not even about no polar bears. It's about the absolute devastation of the world. It's some scary shit. And it's amazing that the people in power in this world would rather continue to line their pockets than work towards preserving the planet and put their hands over their ears and tell people that there is no such thing as Global Warming and la la la la la, buy a bigger car and buy more STUFF from Wal Mart and consume consume consume. And trust me, hellooo, I am not living off the grid here, I have a big car and a Target habit that I am trying to curb, so, you know. I am part of the problem. But at least I see that. It's a start.

5. Getting fat. Yeah. That's a shallow one, but I thought I'd end it up on a light note. LOL I don't want to get fat. I like being small. I'd like to be a bit smaller and I'm not going to apologize for that.

So there. There's my current list of the things on the top of my mind that fly through my head at random times that make me a bit melancholy (more than I usually am). I'm working on it.

Glorious Vacation Nannies

I've always been a very hands on mom. We get babysitters every now and then to go out to dinner, but for the most part I have a hard time asking for help and pretty much just do it all myself. It typically doesn't even enter my mind to seek help when things get chaotic. I am just the type of person to plow through it and hopefully make it to the other side safely with a little bit of my sanity remaining. I don't really know what it is about me that makes it difficult to ask for help, but with each kid I've actually gotten better and better at it because I physically can't do it all anymore. When my mom told me that she was going to bring help (in the form of a 24 year old girl) to stay with us and help after Thing 4 was born I actually wasn't that excited. In my mind it was just another person that I was going to have to take care of in terms of food, entertainment, laundry, cleaning etc. What the heck was I thinking!! After living with the super nanny, I learned how fantastic help actually is! It was a big step for me to feel comfortable asking someone (that wasn't my husband or my own mom) to do something... help with the kids, change a diaper, grab a milk, make a bed, read a story, etc, etc. It sounds silly, but it took me four kids and a forced nanny situation for me to learn this lesson. Well, LESSON LEARNED! For our trip to Hilton Head, I jumped at the chance to have our 15 year old babysitter come with us! She drove down with the kids and me and was incredible! She would take the oldest 3 kids in the gas station to pick out a snack (not a fun job!) while I nursed Thing 4. She played with the kids, took them to the potty, got them dressed, held Thing 4, went swimming in the freezing cold pool with the kids... whatever I needed her to do. She was incredible. I think 15 is actually the perfect age of a babysitter. They are young enough that they still enjoy playing with the kids and watching their movies. They aren't really into the teenage angst period yet... they don't have their own agenda in terms of going out etc. Granted, it would have been nice if she could drive, but all in all it was fantastic! I hope we didn't scare her off with the craziness of 4 kids and a 12 hour car drive. I would love to have her on all our road trips!

Icky? WTF?

With all the talk about breastfeeding happening on the blogs/facebook/net lately, it's hard to click a link without running into a nice friendly debate. Not that I think there's much to debate. My most favorite (because it's alarming as hell) reason NOT to breastfeed that I've read so far? Because it's icky. Which I found here. Read the delightful comments. And, once one courageous mom was bold enough to put that out there, LOTS of other mom's chimed in echoing the icky war cry and patting her on the back for being so bold. Honey girls... this is what I have to say about that. If you think BREASTFEEDING is too icky to deal with as a new mom that says to me that you have not only bought into the American cultural notion that breasts are nothing but funbags for the boys, but that you don't actually have kids. Because really? Do you have a full time nanny or something to deal with all the truly icky things? Um, see my post poo hands. I'd take a milky boob over that any day.

Oh, and yeah, I know that there are rare instances when a woman truly is unable to breastfeed and it is especially sad when she really wants to. That's hard, and those women should not be made to feel guilty or inferior. And in the spirit of mom's shouldn't be pitting themselves against one another in a sort of of modern, blogosphere cage fight, I will say that how you feed your baby is, of course, your choice.  But I'm also not going to apologize that my feelings towards this tend more towards the mind boggling "WHY? is this such a debate?" instead of the, "hey man, live and let live".  I just can't get behind the "'I just think it is icky' moms" saying "breastfeeding isn't for everyone".   Breastfeeding is for every baby, "icky" for you or not. I realize fully how bitchy this whole post sounds. And I'm really not a bitchy person, but I do have strong feelings surrounding just how insidiously our culture has perverted nature right down to the very things that kept us alive as a species throughout time.

Can I just say...

I love you?

Dear Gina of "The Feminist Breeder". You rock my ever-lovin world with this post. I am glad that you server crashed because your rockin' amazing post caused such a rush to your site for women to read your WORDS OF TRUTH and zero apologies. LOVE IT. So I am linking your post to my blog. Here. Friends, READ THIS!

The Feminist Breeder: When it comes to Breastfeeding, we can't handle the truth