Kelsey at 4 days' old. Me... a lot less gray!

Apparently, I need to say something TODAY on my website, or else post something tomorrow and futz with the date settings to make it look like I posted today! Because I can do that. I have the power. See that Twitter feed over there? I did that. I have some skillz. You may bow to my awesome now. *waits*

Anyway, this July, I celebrate the anniversary of my 100th month of parenting, and also my 100th month of non-consecutive-seldom-updated-oh-wait-I-have-a-blog? BLOGGING ABOUT PARENTING!! I put my first post up on my shiny new blog–which lived at the very ingeniously named URL “www.kelsey.thunderdog.com”– on March 18th, 2002. Want to read it? It is here. Feel free to go through the archives if you want to follow my insanity from its messy origins!

This website has been a labor of love for me for more than 8 years. We’ve gone through a number of website names: kelsey.thunderdog, kids.thunderdog, The Adventures of Kelsey and Laurel, ROAR, Dancing Stars, and finally MotherMirth. Allen Holt (who also has his own blog, and it is AWESOME!) has been my co-conspirator, my cheerleader, my pillar of support all these years. And he still likes me! Wow. I think I’ll keep him.

Thank you, readers. Without you, I… well, I’d still be writing here because I need the catharsis, but I would be just talking to myself. And thank you to my 3 amazingly wonderful children, who continue to do funny and interesting things to make me think, laugh, and cry. I adore you.

To get a fresh start on the NEXT 100 months of blogging, tell me what you like to read. What are your favorite posts/subjects? Want more photos? What do you like and NOT like about the site redesign? Talk to me!

Me with my 3 orally fixated kids

Back in my wild, child-free years, I had a lot of uninformed opinions about feeding babies. They drank milk from bottles. I didn’t even question the kind of milk. It was white. Babies drank it. In my defense, I seldom saw nursing mothers because I grew up in the 70s and 80s, when a whole lot of American mothers were convinced that the science of formula-making was superior to the messy biological functions of breasts. I thought that boobies were simply, to quote Kathryn Blundell, deputy editor of a British parenting magazine called Mother & Baby Magazine, “fun bags.”

I know Ms. Blundell has taken a lot of flak for her comments about HER choice not to breastfeed. And there are many panties in wads over fear that the message we’re trying to send to women worldwide that breast is best is somehow compromised because of her essay. And you know what? I understand why Kathryn Blundell didn’t want to nurse her child. And, as a writer who likes to foist her own opinions and stories out into the world, I support the magazine’s defense of Blundell. Because it turns out that although I’ve got a lot to say about breastfeeding, I am really quite invested in reminding folks that it’s all about choice. Some women want to and cannot breastfeed. Some women don’t even want to try. Some women try so damn hard that it breaks your heart to see them struggle. And for some, it is easy. The choice to breastfeed or not is fraught with enough emotion and privilege and politics and cultural taboos already without adding any more, or judging someone for making a choice that you disagree with.

Yes, I am super. Try telling ME to feed my baby in the bathroom. *RAWR*

I chose to nurse my babies. But breastfeeding did not come naturally to me. It was foreign and a little weird. I had to be shown. I had to learn. I had to tolerate it when a CLEARLY PUT OUT maternity nurse with too much make up and not enough empathy jammed my innocent, virginal nipple again and again into my screaming, starving newborn’s gaping maw, while explaining the process as if I were an idiot. And I was, indeed, an idiot. There weren’t enough women in my life to role model the nursing mother. I had to figure things out for myself after that rocky start. My own kids are growing up in a whole different culture! They feed their babies, lions, tigers, and bears (Oh my!) from their chests, and when they use a bottle to feed their various special offspring, it’s filled with breastmilk. THEY get it *dance of triumph!*

Today, I nurse my son every two hours, all day long. He sleeps with me, and he nurses during the night, too, both for hunger and for nurturing. This is my life and has been for this latest iteration of my motherhood. I have a 9 month old, a 6 year old, and an 8 year old. I’ve done the math, and it appears that 51 of the 100 months that I have been a parent have been filled with breastfeeding one of my kids. So, to say that my life is 180 degrees different from those wild early years may be the biggest understatement I’ve ever admitted to.

Simply put, breastfeeding is what I do with my breasts. But that doesn’t mean it’s ALL I do.

These fun bags attached to my body are complicated. Like most things in life, boobies are complex. And their function is dependent on my whim, my choice. Are they sexy? Damn straight. Are they functional mammalian apparati from which my babies feed and are nurtured? You bet. It’s this duality of function, this slippage, that Americans, at least, have a lot of trouble with. If you admit that your breasts are used for feeding an infant AND ALSO play their role in some really hot sex scenes with consenting adults, well, be prepared for some criticism. There is something creepy and wrong with you.

I guess I’m creepy. Oh well. Hooray for boobies!

My friends reuse hundreds of Stoneyfield Farm yogurt containers to make homemade ice cream during our annual camping trip!

Today I want to talk about PLASTIC. Part of Project Simplify is my plan to reduce what goes into our trash can AND into our recyclables disposal. We’ve stopped buying bottled water and are using stainless steel bottles filled with our own tap water instead. When you consider that Americans use an average of 2,500,000 plastic bottles every HOUR, the little any of us can do would make a huge difference. What an easy way to make long-lasting change. Use a refillable bottle. Use your tap water. Let’s make use of that amazingly convenient privilege most Americans take for granted in their houses: the faucet and access to clean water.

What about plastic bags? The answer isn’t as simple as STOP USING THEM. Most Americans use plastic bags to transport store-bought items to their homes from the store.  But if you think of the amount of oil used to produce plastic bags (about 12 million barrels per year to produce plastic bags for Americans’ use, according to one source I found ), it makes it a lot more compelling to make use of those reusable shopping bags. But even if you use reusable bags for most of your shopping, you still end up with some plastic bags. Don’t throw them in the garbage, please. Plastic bags are clogging up landfills, killing more than a million sea creatures every year, and they don’t break down for approximately 600 years. Plastic bags are hard to rid ourselves of. My town doesn’t take them in the recycling, so I have to bring them to the grocery store to recycle. What I end up doing is reusing them a ton of times for transporting things, and then returning them to the holder in the kitchen. When the holder overflows, I take a handful to the recycling box at the grocery store. It’s a little bit of effort that goes a long way.

It’s taking slightly more effort to rid ourselves of *plastic baggies that seal, for food storage and for lunches. Getting rid of these is causing trouble in my marriage.

Allen, my long-suffering co-conspirator, who happily goes along with all my nefarious plots, turned to me one day when doing the agonizing exercise of putting the kids’ lunches together and said, with some level of exasperation, “My gods. Can we please just buy some EASY disposable-type stuff to put in the kids’ lunches?” He was, at the time, washing out some containers to put fruit into, while looking for more containers for the crackers. My response was not helpful. “Well, honey, if we order out for more Indian food, we can re-use those containers for the kids’ lunches!” Since he’s in charge of the family budget, and eating out is one of those things we shouldn’t do often, well…that wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

What Allen is lamenting is the ease with which we used to make the school lunches. I would buy serving-size bags of pretzels or crackers, or those neat little plastic bags filled with cubed or stick cheese, or tiny bags of perfect little organic baby carrots. Now, we have to clean out the myriad of containers we use and find healthy snacks to fill them up with. We now use REUSIES, which we adore. We have stainless steel containers to send water or juice, instead of disposable juice boxes (with plastic straws). We use plastic containers over and over again for goldfish crackers, carrots, fruit–all that stuff you put into your kids’ lunchboxes that you hope they aren’t just throwing away. Making lunches for the kids is, to put it bluntly, a pain in the ass. But it’s small change that we CAN do, and that makes a difference, and thus is worth the effort and inconvenience.

What are some ways you’ve found for saving resources/reducing your use of/disposal of plastics? Don’t tell me I’m the only one who washes out the bags the bread comes in ….

*Most of our food still comes wrapped in plastic, in plastic bags, in plastic containers even. Making more changes will mean buying food differently, which I’ve begun doing, or *ahem* making things like bread myself. Eek. But it’s hard to imagine getting things like cereal or noodles in something other than plastic. In so many ways, plastic has truly been a boon to the modern world. A cheap way to preserve and transport and store food. But our over-reliance on plastics in the US  is having serious environmental impact.

I’ve been thinking a lot about food. More than normal, and not just the normal fantasizing about food because I’m always starving, because I’m producing milk for the ever-feeding-hungriest-baby-ever who nurses every 2 hours. I’ve noted that, for me and for many people I know … food has become problematic. And I want to help reverse this. The American diet has undergone a lot of changes, most of which aren’t good.

So, let’s begin with the basics. What do you eat? Are you a vegan, an omnivore? Something in between? Do you pay attention to the food you buy, or are you just blissfully sailing through the aisles at your local grocery store, unconsciously voting for the status quo? Do you snicker at the hippies buying the organic food? Where are you on the food awareness spectrum?

I ask because I’m looking for fellow agents of change. There’s a food revolution happening quietly. The Western diet is under fire. Some of the food we* eat is killing us or, at the least, making us less healthy while at the same time, bankrupting the American farmer and making a very few people rich. If your response to this is “Well, we DO have a free market in this country” then just move along and read someone else’s blog. Thanks! *waves*

Every time you purchase a product in the supermarket store to feed yourself or your family, you are voting. You are telling the producers of our food just what you want to be eating. And those food producers are more than happy to comply. Not because they’re good chaps, but because that’s just good business. The problem is that the business model for the American food production industry is broken.

The script that big multi-million dollar food producers are following says, in effect, “Make what people want. Make it cheaply. Continue to make it as cheaply as possible in order to get even bigger profits.” Our food has become industrialized, produced in factories, with little attention to quality, and mass marketed to you via commercialization and lies. Worst of all, we can’t even turn to the FDA as the beacon of truth about the safety of our food because it’s a puppet farm infiltrated by special interest groups and lobbyists. When you actually follow the dollar, it goes into the pockets of a small handful of corporations who control a vast majority of what we* eat.

So, what do you do about it? If any of this is at all news to you, the first step is to get informed. Don’t take my word for it. Do your own research. Find out what’s in your food and who profits. Turn off your TV and stop the marketing message from entering your house. Make up your own mind about how you want to eat, and stop being influenced by commercials and ads.

The next step is to start voting. Buy from companies that have a different business plan. Read ingredients and stop buying food that has questionable content. Consider buying a meat share from a local farmer. Look into community supported agriculture. Go here to find a participating farm near you. Get involved in farms and food companies that promote sustainable agriculture practices.

Try to find alternate resources for the foods you eat. Grow tomatoes on your back porch. Start a garden. Go to the Farmer’s Market. The prices will be higher, because they reflect the care and attention it takes real farmers to produce real food that really FEEDS you, food grown without chemicals and toxins. Beef fed in pastures instead of being fed indigestible food in disgusting living conditions. Don’t be the guy sucking down the $5 latte, complaining about the cost of a dozen eggs from free range chickens. Think about how you are spending your money.

Start reading articles from sources that aren’t being paid by the industry. Check out writers like Leah Bloom, the sustainable food examiner at the Boston Examiner, for things you can do on a small scale to make big changes in your eating habits. Read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food for eye-opening treatises on the food industry in America. For more info on sustainability, pick up a copy of Living Green: A Practical Guide to Simple Sustainablity by Greg Horn. I don’t agree with everything Horn says about how to live “green”, but he gives some good basic information. Watch Supersize Me or Food Inc for more motivation. Finally, join the revolution and make some noise about it.

I like the way Pollan sums up how to eat. He writes in In Defense of Food that we should “Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.”  To really solve the problem of food, we need to change from being a country of soda-swilling, fast-food horking, indifferent consumers of processed foods, and start thinking of how our food is produced, making sure it is worthy for our bodies, and using our collective power to effect change. Your dollars will tell the food producers what you want. The message you send will be clear: I want to eat food that is healthy and tastes good, produced with respect for the farmer. There is an ethics to food production that has been lost. And it’s time to find it again.

I have smart readers. You know that when Velma or Daphne removes the mask from the bad guy/gal in every episode of Scooby Doo, the villain always says that he/she would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for those meddling/pesky/ kids. Stop letting them get away with it!

*by “we” I am basically pointing to the average American consumer. And my mother.

A lot of people who know that our third and FINAL offspring is also our only male child have asked how I and my husband are handling the “boy” stuff. I’m assuming they’re not talking about the logistics on how I physically handle the fact that my baby has a penis.

They are, in fact, wondering how we’re  handling all those DIFFERENCES.

When my usual blank stare doesn’t clue them in, I just tell them that we have noticed no difference at this stage. Because, for fuck’s sake, he’s 6 months old. What I wish they asked me was how my husband and I intend to make all three of our kids into really awesome people of substance. But they never ask me that. *snf*

Yes, those differences. I’ve actually been thinking about it a lot– like since I became a parent. I’m fascinated with the idea of gender-specific play. But more than that, I want to get ready for the ensuing battle. My kids are going to public school with the children of traditional families. They won’t be spending a majority of their play time with the children whose parents I hand-picked for being awesome, open-minded, LGBT-friendly people.  I want to parent my kids in such a way that they are less liable to fall into those adolescent patterns of behavior where they segregate by gender and take on some of what I see as the more noxious of peer-driven behaviors: exclusion, teasing, bullying.

I see the playground at my kids’ school as THE PLACE WHERE IT ALL BEGINS! The boy running around pulling down the girls’ pants, the “let’s tease that GIRL for wearing camoflage” behavior — basically, to be quite blunt, the place where sexism and, yes, even our rampant rape culture, starts. In my humble opinion. I want to raise warriors for social justice, people who will BE the change.

I know there has been lots of science committed to figuring out the biochemical reasons there is so-called  “masculine play” and “feminine play” in children — and, although there is evidence that suggests such play is attributable to hormones during fetal development, I think even the words we use in such experiments doom us to failure. What is “masculine” and what is “feminine” anyway? These words are becoming much more nebulous as my world view has changed. It’s not so much black and white in my mind.

I, surprisingly, or not, am no scientist *shock!!* My own interest in the way kids play is more of an interest in watching the effects of society and culture on child’s play. Because I want to raise good people.

We didn’t choose “gender-appropriate” toys when the girls were babies. They didn’t get Barbies and the fucking pink Legos. Their toys were oriented around their interests. So, puzzle books, musical instruments, blocks, dolls, science/experiment kits, Matchbox cars, dress up, books books and more books. We haven’t tried to impose a certain type of play onto them. When Laurel played gleefully with a friend’s kitchen set, we figured that would be a great thing for her. So we acquired one. And she was thrilled. Yay for thoughtful parenting! We try to get them toys and books that speak to the complex bundle of interests that make up their play.

I’m really quite interested in watching that intersection of how the 8 year old plays with other girls than how she plays with boys. I honestly haven’t seen a huge difference in 8 or so years of parenting. The boys who play at our house go for the same things Kelsey does: Lego stuff, Star Wars lightsabers, dolls, and the train set.

It’s interesting to me that when the 6-7 year old girls are playing together, there seem to be more “family” scenarios, where there’s a traditional family unit consisting of mom, dad, baby and sibling. Often I’ll notice that the girls have decided that there are two mommies in the family, and that’s absolutely acceptable in their play. *squeeee!*

When one or both of my girls play with the boys in our community, I notice different motifs, but I can’t be sure if they are attributable to gender or to age, or just a difference in the instruments of play. They pretend to be dragons (but.. still a FAMILY of dragons!) when B comes to play. When M comes over to play, there are sword fights, and the play is more physical. But the girls do these things on their own, too. When J plays, he just wants to join the kids in whatever they’re playing with. He’s very versatile. As are my kids when we go to other people’s houses. They play with what’s available, with whomever will play with them. Sometimes someone doesn’t play fairly. Sometimes, someone gets smacked in the face, either on purpose or accidentally. All of this is within the norm of kid play. We talk it out, apply the band-aids, give a cuddle, make sure everyone is playing fairly with one another. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work?

So, now we have this little boy. I can’t wait to get to that point where I can gauge his personality and put interest-appropriate toys in his reach, and help him develop all the different parts of himself through child’s play. The nurturing person, the innovator, the creative type — we are complex animals. Play is that amazing space where we learn about our world, and how we want to interact with it.

What do you think? Do you view child’s play as a neutral gender zone?

Andrew has cut his first tooth. I shall call it Rocky. We’re playing the “If you bite my nipple with your pointy little new tooth, I will suffocate you!” game. So far, I’m the winner.

Rocky would like a cookie. So maybe Andrew and I will have a *HealthyTimes Maple Biscuit. Cuz they are yummy for babies. And their mothers.

*No, I’m not endorsing this product. Unless they want to send me money?

I could tell at pick up time yesterday that Laurel’s day at kindergarten had not gone well. She had red, puffy eyes and a bad case of the obnoxious. Her teacher looked relieved when my child left her care. I actually heard her blood pressure lower as we walked away. And felt my own increase. Swooosh. I could tell that THIS would be an afternoon that would challenge my parenting skills. And that I’d have to be ON for her. No taking shortcuts, no taking some time for myself to WRITE the dozens of articles taking up space in my grey matter. It was time to be innovative mom.

So, I took a deep breath and got her into the van along with her sister. We arrived home 3 minutes later with the van’s windows still intact, even with the shrill, decibel-quaking screaming that came out of the six-year-old’s mouth. Although I felt like doing a couple of shooters of whiskey in the bathroom when we got home, for courage, I don’t keep liquor in the house. Damn. Instead, I sent her to my room for cuddling and talking.

Laurel and I snuggled with the baby while Kelsey got herself a snack in the kitchen. I asked my distraught daughter to tell me about her day. She sat up, her big blue eyes overflowing, and listed all the ways the day had gone wrong. The workboard stuff she got WRONG. The game at gym time that she LOST. The dinosaur figure she couldn’t quite glue together. The friend who said something she perceived as NOT NICE. I hugged her close and sympathized. I listened. And with every bit of sadness counted and itemized, the avalanche of pent-up feelings that had been careening, unstoppable, down the mountainside, rumbled to a stop in a scattering of tears onto her lightly freckled cheeks. And then she un-tensed her shoulders and slumped into my arms.

We snuggled some more, and then I got up to get some paper and markers. When I returned, I asked if she’d like to write a book about her day. So she did. She spent the next two hours writing, coloring, and illustrating her book: Laurel’s Bad Day.

Did it make the entire day go by much easier? Was everything perfect afterwards? Hell no. But she was better able to deal emotionally with the rest of the day. And I stopped fantasizing about whiskey shots and instead felt entirely too proud of myself and sneaked a couple of well deserved chocolate chip cookies.

Ah, springtime. A time of rebirth. The flowers begin blossoming, and the trees begin to regain some of their clothing finally after the bleak naked wardrobe of New England winter. Springtime is also a time of rain, flooded basements and mildew. It’s a complicated season, full of contradictions. And then.. there is Easter.

Being Unitarian Universalist is rather like being invited to a smorgasbord of spirituality. Our family has the opportunity to honor many Pagan, Wiccan, Jewish, and Protestant holiday observances. But the Easter that we celebrate in our home has often been a rather weird holiday for us. Since we have kids, we do the bunny thing. We paint eggs. In past years, we’ve told a story about Ostara. Last year, we explained the crucifixion story that Christians believe.  But, basically, because we have little investment in any one flavor of spirituality, we take a lighthearted approach to this holiday. And sometimes, just sometimes, we get a bit irreverent.

This is the year of the Peeps of Death.

Yes, Peeps — those sticky sweet strangely hardened colorful fluff animals that ANY OTHER TIME OF YEAR ARE COMPLETE ANATHEMA TO ME AND MY CRAZY IDEAS THAT KIDS SHOULDN’T HAVE HFCS AND ARTIFICIAL FOOD COLORING. We had 7 children at our house, from age 12 down to age 3.5. They represented faiths that include Judaism, Wiccan, and UU. I set out a tray of bunny and chick peeps, toothpicks, plastic cocktail swords, markers, glitter, and paper plates. I wasn’t sure what would happen. I had eggs to boil, coffee that needed drinking, and a baby to take care of. It didn’t take them long to either massacre or masticate all the Peeps before these adorable children returned to being dragons and dressing up as princesses and pirates, their swords and lightsabers clashing in a strange uber-pop-culture casserole of tropes, with dialogue spewed from a mishmash of Dr. Horrible, Star Wars, Pokemon, Princess Bride, and songs from Jonathan Coulton and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A bunch of weird and completely amazing and creative kids.

THIS is Easter. It’s a complicated season, a weird holiday. Full of contradictions.

So, I picked up this awesome high chair off the side of the road, because I am *that* kind of thrifty. It didn’t have a tray, but I figured I could get one cheaply. So, last week, in a hurry, I look through Fisher Price’s replacement parts catalog online, and ZAP! I order a replacement tray, its base, and a cute toy that goes on the tray to amuse/distract da baby. All in all, free high chair that will cost me a total of $25. Not bad, as they go for $100 in store.

And to defend myself against those OTHER thrifty friends of mine, YES, I looked on Craig’s List first.

So, anyway, the box arrives from Fisher Price, and the base tray is the wrong size. No worky. And, umm, *hangs head in shame* it’s because I ORDERED THE WRONG STYLE! I ordered “Ocean Wonders” instead of “Aquarium.” So I just called Fisher Price, expecting a fight. And instead, a very nice customer relations person tells me she is sending the right base for my high chair, free. FREE. Umm. Did I mention FREE?? And this is even after I admitted that I ordered the wrong part!

I’m a little bit in awe. Yay Fisher Price!