Wordless Wednesday: Play Date

Sasha's First Playdate
August 2010

Leilani, Aiden & Sasha
Aiden tried to bite Sasha's ear!

Click on over to the Natural Parents Network Wordless Wednesday to see more Playgroup photographs and to link up your own Wordless Wednesday post!

Monday Minimalist: Truly a Trend

I've given you some minimalist links before, so this should come as no surprise to you. Taking up less space is becoming more and more popular as more and more people are moving into cities. There is only so much space to be had.

Here is yet another article on building small living space. This is more assembly line type, but they say the quality is higher (and give reasons). What do you think?

I have an appreciation for this bit, "I like to provide a large sink, so that the person who's using it doesn't feel like they're lacking or living smaller and everything is miniaturized."

Click here to read NPRs article: As Population, Consumption Rise, Builder Goes Small.

What size living space would be ideal for you & yours?
How many people does that include?


Click over to Anktangle for more Monday Minimalism! Let me know if you have a Monday Minimalist post to include in my link list.

Click the icon to grab the button for your MM posts or for details on how to join the movement.

Sunday Surf

Not much to report this week. How about a few links?

• A Brooklyn performance artist plans to give birth before a live audience at her new installation, "The Birth of Baby X." I was kind of following along and thought it was interesting until I reached this bit: “Raising Baby X,” in which she will "re-contextualize the everyday act of raising a child into a work of performance art,” the gallery says. Um... okay. It just seemed like it discredited the entire thing. Your thoughts?
  
  
• National Geographic Photo Contest 2011 includes a strong image of a woman after a home water birth. I think any woman that has gone through birth (consciously) can relate to the expression on the woman's face. Click over to being pregnant to see it.
  
  

  Bonus Pic for stopping by!
  Plus its just too cute not to share.

  
  
• This next article is so good! Much like discovering Natural Parenting (the title for what I was already doing), this article backs up a lot of my thoughts. It covers delayed cord clamping as well as being gentle with a newborn (rather than drying them or scrubbing the vernix off of them). I was so irritated when Sasha was born because I couldn't get the nurse to stop rubbing it off. The article doesn't specifically refer to vernix, but rather goes over being gentle in general. Click over to read The Newborn Baby's First Moments of Life; Transitions After Birth.
  

Have you read anything shocking or beautiful lately?

Anti-Faith

This is a re-posting of an article I wrote for Natural Parents Network and had published in August:

I kind of admire parents that want to expose their children to many different religious beliefs without pushing their own. I was raised Catholic and even attended a couple of Catholic Schools. When I took the time to read the bible, it did not speak to me. Sermons did not speak to me. For me, church felt like a fashion show / popularity contest (much like school). For a while, I wanted to be Wiccan and I still feel that it is a beautifully romantic belief system. I don't share those beliefs either, though. What I believe shouldn't really matter to you and isn't really my point.

Jorje's 8th Grade School Picture
Monte Cassino
Catholic Benedictine School

When Ronni was very young, just old enough to have play dates, I found myself to be a bit of an anti-Christian. You do find a lot of Christians as well as Pagans in the homeschooling community, especially right here in the buckle of the bible belt (Oklahoma). You would have thought I was protecting my child from... troublemakers, I guess. I didn't want her hanging out with "those kinds of people!" Yes, this is judgmental and awful. I also wound up becoming very close friends with people that have strong religious beliefs.

The other trouble with my attitude was that I did still want Ronni to make his own decisions regarding faith. I just didn't want it pushed on him. And as an Agnostic (at best), leaning toward Atheist, I probably didn't (deep down) want him to have faith. My sister has two daughters and they go to church every Sunday. Another close friend of Ronni's goes to church every Sunday. This complicated sleepovers. When he had his friend over on Saturday nights, she had to leave early for church. And when Ronni stayed over there or at my sister's? Well I finally gave in. Ronni really liked going to church. I don't think he has ever asked me to take him, but he does believe in God. And that is okay. Really.

I've made a point with him, when asked, to make it clear that what HE believes is all that really matters. That carries over into other parts of our lives, such as Santa. When arguments came up with classmates about Santa and he asked me if Santa was real, I asked him what he thought, what he believed. He believed he was real. That was all that mattered. His classmates opinions and beliefs didn't matter, so long as he knew in his heart what he believed.

I support my son's rights to believe whatever speaks to him. It doesn't have to be what speaks to me (or, more appropriately, doesn't speak to me). I still support his right. I want him to be able to discuss his beliefs with me, just as I can discuss my own with friends that don't share my viewpoint. It doesn't have to be a battle to convert each other. We aren't bad influences on each other. We can coexist.

Gratitude Challenge

Let's Take the Metro offered an awesome challenge a month ago: The Gratitude Challenge: Write a list of 100 things you are grateful for and post it on Thanksgiving Day. I've been working on it all month and have my list ready to share!

Tyler and Sasha
August 2011

1. I am thankful to have two healthy daughters.
   

Wordless Wednesday: Being Prepared

Spencer's Spiders @ The Buddy Walk
One thing we've done to prepare for having a son with Down syndrome is to get involved with our local Down Syndrome Association.

Click over to the Natural Parents Network Wordless Wednesday to see more photographs of how families be prepared and link up your own Wordless Wednesday.

Monday Minimalist: Giving back to our Community

Last Sunday morning, Elmo and I cleaned out my daughter's room while she was gone. Then Monday we worked on the remaining boxes in an extra room at our new place.

Boxes that were "keep" stuff, but the items had no "place."

We actually have more stuff in the attic, but this was stuff in the extra room that really needed to be cleared. Elmo brought all of it into our tiny room and we went through it together. I got ruthless once again. I tossed my diaries dating back to 1982. I can't believe I was finally able to do it. I had been transcribing them into my online journal, but stopped some time ago. I couldn't see me getting back to the project any time soon and honestly found it humiliating.