On our tv free home

I live in a beautiful home. It's a fact. I am an incredibly lucky woman. I walk around, running my fingers along mahogany, antique fixtures. But, if you were to walk around my home, you may notice there is something missing. There is no tv, and we like it that way.

We didn't always go without tv. When I was pregnant, we had full cable, a flat screen monstrosity, right in the middle of our living room. We bowed to our glowing god, morning, evening and night. However, i started to notice that it made us stop talking to each other. In fact, we weren't even looking at each other much anymore. I felt like it had become a default to just plop down in front of the tv. Finally, when mike was tired of staring at it, and i was tired of watching him stare at it, we got rid of our tv.

It makes me really happy to think that we will raise our little boy in a tv free home. Studies have shown time and time again that television exposure reduces attention spans, and increases umpulsive behavior in children. In my Natural Life magazine (which I love) it said that the average girl will see eighty thousand ads on tv before she reaches kindergarden. So, not only do i have concerns about the negative effects tv has on Ender's growing brain, the content is bizarre to me as well. I find it disturbing that children as young as two are trained in brand recognition and conspicuous consumption (mommy those shoes look cheap!). The idea of spending your way to happiness is one that i have been grappling with most of my adult life and i am going to try my best not to pass on to my children. Television makes that goal difficult, if not impossible.

I remember telling my dentist, who had two young children, that we had gotten rid of tv in our home. "it's going to be hard," he said "television is the best babysitter we ever had." Maybe so. I know that sometimes I would really appreciate a little screen time, a little quiet time. But with even the american pediatric association recommending no tv for children under two, i feel onfident in my choice. We still watch the tv shows we like, but we do it online, and it lacks the constant oppressive flow of television, one show after the next. We watch what we want, and stop. Our consumption has gone down from approximately 25 hours a week to 5.

I am glad that we are a tv free home, and i hope we stay that way.

Identity

I've been thinking a lot lately about who I am. Maybe it's because I'm living in a place that I lived in when I was a kid, and for me, that's unusual. I remember being little kid me, seeing the same sights I see today. Being a child is in a way having no identity, or having all identities possible. You are malleable as putty, your personality changing daily.

I'm not sure why, but lately I have been paranoid that I am not my own person. I've been accused of this in the past, and shrugged it off. Some people say I am too much like the people who surround me. While I have always accepted this as true, it somehow suddenly seems inadequate. Now, here, I am reassessing who I am.

I know I am a Leo, a lion, a fire sign, passionate. I burn hot and cool slowly. I yell when I'm happy, mad, and impatient. I always know what I want, but am not always sure how to get it. I have spent many years seeking out experience as some kind of badge of honour that states: "Been There, Done That." It is a quest to be an Interesting Person. I have gone on a Vipassina retreat, and not spoken a single word in ten days. I have been a student of religion, and a student of academia. I have let myself fail. I have enjoyed the persuasion that my looks have had over others. I have modified my appearance, again and again, not out of any self-hatred, but again, a burning desire to express the multitudes of selves that I have. I love food, the lifeblood of experience. I eat and I think of the tongues that have experienced the same flavour. Food for me is emotion. I love clothing; caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly. It can simultaneously hide and reveal our best and our worst. I am afraid of repeating mistakes that I have seen. I am afraid of being misunderstood. I am afraid of being alone. I am afraid of wasting any moment with boredom or lack of action.

I think in this quest to become interesting, I have learned that once you truly have become such, you don't feel any different. I think I've done my fair share of experiencing the world for my age, and yet there is a grace in the fact that most people I meet don't know anything about it. It's not about saying "This one time in Italy...", it's about letting my experiences enrich the way I view the world. What began as an arguably superficial pursuit has improved my ability to consume and digest my environment.

Perhaps, in my impatience to find my identity, I've found that it is an overrated concept. I am a collection of (at times, bizarre) experiences, and that is undeniably unique to me.

Breastfeeding and its effect on the division of labour - and also school

When I was pregnant, my husband worked in construction with a bunch of brawny he-man types. One of his coworkers gave him this piece of advice: "Make her breastfeed! That way you won't be getting up in the middle of the night with a bottle of formula." Obviously, things turned out that way. Throughout Ender's childhood, I got up in the middle of the night for feedings (until we began cosleeping and I slept through them too) and Mike took on the responsiblity of being awake during the day. Often I had fantasies of what it would have turned out like. Studies have proven that formula fed babies sleep better at night, and for a lot of mommies, the lack of stress over breastfeeding enough, and properly, is a significant improvement. At one and a half years old, Ender still only sleeps in two to three hour increments. That is, until I come to bed, when he sleeps perfectly fine.

Not that I'm complaining. It should also be noted that at this age he has had approximately three colds, zero ear infections, etc. Knock wood. He has been a very, very healthy baby boy.

Now, he is old enough that breastfeeding to sleep doesn't work. He falls asleep mostly through motion, though sometimes will nod off on his own. As a result, tonight, Mike is going to put the baby to sleep. For the first time. Ever. He is scared. I am scared. Ender is oblivious, but I can imagine he won't be impressed. Debate continues in our household on whether it is time he has his own bed. It is set up in his room, perfect and unused. I think of our ambivalence as representative of the world, one that recognizes the importance of breastfeeding, but has a hard time making cultural space for it.

------------------- other news

I am in my second month of costume studies and abso-lute-ly loooooving it. Every second is sheer amazing awesomeness. I have some younger girls in my classes and I appreciate that they have the bravery to follow what they want to do immediately after highschool. Still, the have the same assumption that I did, back in the olden days that upon graduation a job would follow -- they don't necessarily see the fact that networking has to occur within school, that volunteering during your education is the best way to ensure future employment in your chosen field. These were hard won lessons for me. I'd pass them on, if anyone was listening, but I guess you have to be older than 26 for that.

I think my favourite thing about costume studies is learning to sew properly. I mean, I have been the exception from most people I know in that I know how to sew. But I never really knew how to sew professionally, and never really took the care to learn all the little tricks that make things well finished. As I pick up my needle (with my teacher enforcing an always-wear-a-thimble rule) I make sure every stitch is even. When I pin, I pin twice to make sure the fabric doesn't shift by one thread. When I sew on the machine, I begin a half inch forward, backstitch, and then continue on so that I only have two layer of threads, instead of three to reduce bulk. This kind of inane attention to detail usually wouldn't be my style.

Except that I love it. Dearly.

I am surrounded by people to whom I can gush about farthingales, and not only have them know what I am talking about, but gush back. I can talk about historical accuracy, and no one rolls their eyes. Five hundred dollar books on the history of costume are owned by my colleagues. *gush gush*

I guess I don't really have much else to say.

Mike is putting the baby to bed now. Anxiety reigns. I need to do my homework!

On Loss

I wanted this next post to be a positive one, but life doesn't always work out that way. Recently, I was saddened to find out that an old friend had lost a baby through miscarriage. As it may shock my readers to know, I too have experienced this loss. I think it is common to a lot of women, though not frequently and openly discussed.

The baby that my husband and I lost was not far along. I started miscarrying at work and called my husband immediately, we went to the doctor's office, who sent me to the hospital. I knew there wasn't anything that could be done. I sat in the hospital, regretful and slightly shocked. The emergency doctor informed me that my pregnancy had terminated healthfully and that I shouldn't be upset because it was early along and therefore 'not really a baby at all.'

It was quite possibly the worst thing he could have said.

While I do maintain a pro-choice attitude about abortion, and recognize the usefulness for the letter of the law to describe a fetus as a bunch of cells for a certain period in the pregnancy, this is not necessarily the case from the perspective of the woman carrying the child. It may not always be useful to dehumanize the person that she has carried inside of her. I grieved this little person that I would never get to meet. My body ached. My heart hurt.

After I stopped being sad, I started feeling ashamed.

We hadn't told many people, not our family members, and only a few friends who raised their eyebrows when I refused a drink at the bar. I felt ashamed that they knew. I was ashamed that I had stopped in front of a few baby stores, lingering just a little longer at the window. I felt stupid for being so confident and assuming that everything was going to work out.

I realised, after my friend's loss brought all these memories back, I still feel ashamed. I'm not a person who wears their weakness on their sleeve, and this thing that had happened to me made me feel unable to discuss it with anyone. I feel so ashamed that it still brings tears to my eyes. Pregnancy is a huge leap of faith. You have to trust your body, you have to let go of control and let yourself love something that is not fully formed. My second pregnancy was full of fear, wonderment, and finally, relief.

I hope one day I can stop feeling ashamed, and just let myself feel sad. I hope I'll be able to talk about it openly without a catch in my throat and embarassment in my voice. In the meanwhile, I will just feel lucky for the beautiful things that have come into my life, and live for those.

Hurricane

So as is to be expected when my family moves to a place, something catastrophic happens. In this case, it was a hurricane.

Hurricane Earl was a long nosed, shriveled little bureaucrat of a hurricane. He yelled from his car, but never on the sidewalk. He wrote long winded letters to the editor that he never sent. He wasn't very impressive.

The wind and rain began in the morning, a few hours before we all woke up. We had stocked up fully on batteries and canned food and a large 20L of water. Partly because of our survivalist tendencies, and partly because Nova Scotia Power has a terrible reputation of taking a very long time to get the power back on. In preparation, Mike had fixed the evestroughs, downspouts and put engine weld on an old cracked spout that took our rainwater down into the sewers.

The rain was really only spitting, but the wind was getting stronger and stronger. We listened to the radio, as the speed of it raised incrementally. I put the baby to bed, feeling the bed shake along with the house, watching the trees bend over sideways. The power went out, and my child, my rock, my bastion in the storm, slept through the hurricane.

It waxed, and then finally waned. I went outside and sat on the park bench outside of our house. Our neighbour played his saxaphone, the strains of which floated into the eerie greenish sky, not quite mournful, but sad nonetheless, and I surveyed the damage. Trees had lost large clumps of leaves which nestled themselves against cars, some leaves were stuck flat against the side of our house. I heard the damage was worse elsewhere.

Ender fussed because he wasn't allowed outside, and I placated him with horrible preprepared toddler meals that reminded me of kitty chow. We cracked open a can of meatballs and gravy for ourselves, and ate while it was still light. After the babe fell asleep, we read by the light of our flashlights until we fell asleep from the deathly silence of a city without electricity.

After it all, I feel Nova Scotian again. And my family has been baptized by a hurricane.

100th post

And after the expected hiatus, I'm back. And at the 100th blog post, to boot.

After a lag in posting I'm bound to leave something out, but I'll try my best:

Through most of July and August, my husband and I were packing, stressing, packing some more. We saw more of our friends than we had the entire year past. Everyone refused to say good-bye. There was a common element of denial where they all gave a crooked smile and said they'd come visit us before we left. While these didn't (and couldn't have) come to fruition, it was still nice to know people will miss us. Ender became rapidly more able to walk around this time, parading like a small tyrant unpacking boxes and causing general adorable misery. The movers came. The movers left. Our fish tank cracked. The fish were moved to a beer cooler, and seemed happy enough about it. We waved our things goodbye and made final preparations.

Ender and I took the plane together a few days later, which was a generally pleasant experience. It was his fifth plane trip, so by now he's an old pro. He waved bye-bye to each person leaving the plane, in turn. He crawled the walls of the bus shuttle as we made our way to the hotel. Upon check-in, I stripped him down to his diaper, where he giggled and rolled around on pristine linens. We napped. We had room service.

My dad and Mike travelled by car, taking various things we didn't want to wait to arrive with the movers. They arrived in the morning and slept in my fairly gracious suite, after 24 hours of straight driving.

The house closed without issue, and we entered it with awe. It is a gorgeous home. The pine plank floors have a gorgeous patina of age, the crown mouldings are simple but add formality to the master suite and parlour. The back yard is made up of overgrown trellises of English ivy and Virginia creeper. The old owners left us a Victorian style park bench in the back, and we sit on it, enclosed in a kind of dewy silence. Our neighbours introduced themselves, each in turn. All leave their doors open at all times of day and shout hellos over the fence.

While we've been much caught up in the general messiness of setting up a house, we've still had time for the simple pleasures of true home ownership. Ender splashes in his pool, learning to spray us with the hose and then laugh maniacally. He rips off the heads of flowers, and I don't scold him. Those flowers are there to be dessicated at his will! They belong to him! It is truly a glorious thing, to have space. Space to breathe and grow and love. It was immediately and irrevocably home.

Now to start school.

The mathematics of possibility

So as much as I love being a mother, there are things about it that bug me. Mostly, I hate the incompatability of having a large brood of children and having a career. I'm not quite sure how it works, with my style of parenting. I suspect it is nearly impossible.

I mean, I'm an only child so I don't really know how big families function. I like to picture it going on, I like to imagine how it would work, and then I come to a full stop. When, exactly, am I working? Where is the money coming from? What job do I have that happily lets me go on successive maternity leaves without finding some excuse to fire me? Of course, I have stalked enough fundamentalist Christian blogs to know the answer to these questions.

First of all, the woman works from home. It is a necessity by virtue of nature of pregnancy. The work force, even some Forbes' top ten employer, is not a great place to be pregnant. Ask any woman who is still at work in her third trimester. It sucks. Secondly, the money comes from a gainfully employed man and maintained by an obsessively frugal wife. Let's face it folks, my husband has an amazing work ethic, but he is an artist. This is historically not gainful. I also am only *okay* at being frugal. If you've been following my blog long enough you'd know that frugality was a lot easier when my kid couldn't crawl. Now that he can do that, and walk, it's almost impossible to bake bread, let alone anything more involved. Every day is a battle to prevent some disgusting food from rotting under the couch.  So I guess there is the seemingly impossible picture of what it would be like to have more kids in our household: my husband would have to stop following his dreams, I would have to get a lot better at the internet and sell costumes online, and I would have to become adept at juggling babies and compromising my beliefs regarding their care and my attentiveness. My dreams for my family seem impossible as our numbers increase.

I think this is why bohemians usually only have 2 kids. We are inherently selfish.