Candace Walsh

a la mama

Guest Blogger Lisa Nave on Building Community, Literally.

November 15th, 2009

kids at Serendipity

Over the past few years I’ve become keenly aware of the social fragmentation in our society. What began as a personal experience of feeling somewhat isolated as a parent trying to make my way quickly evolved into a full time examination of family, community and social structures in our society.

As a psychotherapist in private practice, I also noticed that an increasingly high percentage of my clients were having similar struggles. In many families both parents had to work, which meant that they had little time left for grocery shopping and preparing family dinners, or carpooling their kids after school to soccer practice or ballet, or reviewing homework at night, or getting that house project completed. Most of the parents I talked to felt overwhelmed by their responsibilities, and didn’t know how to improve their situation. They had to work long hours to make ends meet, and they often had no family nearby to help with the kids. I recognized these to be modern challenges that needed new solutions.

Beyond the economic difficulties of social fragmentation, I was concerned about child development. I worried that many children were not getting what they needed from their parents or our society. They needed their parents to be consistently present to form secure attachments from an early age, and to feel that they belonged to something meaningful. Whereas being present with our children used to be the norm, it now seemed like a luxury, reserved for those with enough income to fund a nanny, gardener, and perhaps a home chef or trainer. Parents with these luxuries were certainly not your average Americans trying to raise a family.

I continued to read and write about the topic of social fragmentation, and out of it came a manuscript, a workshop, and Alloparent.org, a social networking website for parents that provides a forum for parents to exchange services and support. The idea behind Alloparent.org is ancient: the idea that communities help each other raise their children. As humans we are wired to parent together as a result of millions of years of evolution. But the industrial revolution, among other events, left the modern family isolated—left to fend for itself in an increasing expensive and fragmented culture.

With Alloparent.org, parents can create a group in their city, or a sub-group on their street. They can also create groups for specific needs, such as childcare or carpools or meal exchanges or gardening. And it’s free. Some parents will be interested in forming on-going groups, and others will choose the a la carte option, where they initiate an exchange on a one-time basis. Alloparent.org is there to help serve the individual needs of each parent and family.

More than anything else, I think Alloparent.org represents a mind-set and an awareness that parents need more support in our society. When people join Alloparent.org, they feel that coming together as a community and wanting to collaborate as parents and families is acceptable. They are not embarrassed as they might otherwise be, because the culture of Alloparent.org supports and advocates for community collaboration.

Lisa Nave is a psychotherapist in private practice in Mill Valley, CA. She is also a writer, speaker, and the mother of two boys.

[ 0 comments ]

Guest Blogger Stacia Kelly Returns with Crystal Clear How-To

November 9th, 2009

The Stillness Game:
a script to help you relax your child down to sleep

Sunday morning candace kids 2009

In a previous post, I discussed the art of creating a ‘stillness game’ with our young one to help him learn to relax down to sleep. While there are a plethora of CDs, books, and MP3s (I know, I’ve made one too) out there to help you, sometimes, it’s best for your child to hear your voice in helping them to relax down to sleep.

I’ve found that the keys to relaxation with children are voice and music. There are a variety of methods out there from Transcendental Meditation to using mantras to relax. I’ve found the simple methods of focusing on your breathing or following a step-by-step muscle relaxation work the best for the majority of the adults and children I’ve worked with.

Most children find their parent’s voices soothing when we’re trying to help quiet down a pain or discomfort. Sometimes, they fight you on sheer principle. You’ll need to test this process for a few days to see if you’re going to be able to use your own voice, recruit a family member, or find something or someone else out there to help. Please, test it out for at least a week before moving on to another solution. I’d really recommend trying it for a month so they have some consistency and a chance to succeed with it. But, if you’re still feeling frustrated, move on to something else to see if it will help.

We want both you and your child to have a relaxing evening.

Our focus here is to teach you how to use your voice to help your child relax down to sleep. (You’ll learn to, this can and will help with temper tantrums and general screaming fits.) With your voice, you need to work on cadence and levels. You need to slow your regular speech pattern down so that almost every word comes across on a single slow and steady breath.

To record yourself, you can use such products as GarageBand on the Mac and Magix for the PC. I switch back and forth between both. Make sure you use a headset to help cancel out any background noise. And, if you or your spouse is a musician, all the better! As for music, you want to select something with less than 60 beats a minute. Any of the meditation CDs you find at Target or in iTunes will work just fine for your personal recording. I’ve steered away from things such as nature sounds or thunderstorms, as these make our son agitated in his sleep. Instead, I selected a soft ocean theme with some light harp and flute music in the background. Your music selection will depend on your child. I know one who loves bagpipes!

The script below should last at least five minutes. I start with about 20 seconds of music before I start the script below, giving them a little bit to adjust to the fact it’s bedtime. The music lays just below the voice for the first part, the first five minutes. You want the voice to be loud enough for them to focus on it. When I’m done recording the main session (the first five minutes), I add in enough music to last about 25-30 minutes and then layer in the voice recording just below the music 2-3 more times (you don’t want to be able to consciously hear the voice, on mine, I can hear it at certain parts, but my musician husband can’t, go figure) and then let the rest just run as music.

Ok, time to lay back and relax. Find your spot. Get all nice and comfy. Take a deep breath. And a big yawn. (You will actually yawn.) Letting your body relax. Eyes closed now. Feeling your head relax. Getting all nice and comfy.
Feeling your face relax. Warm, soft, secure. Letting your neck and shoulders get nice and warm. Soft and relaxed. Letting your chest relax. Warm and comfy. All safe and secure.

Eyes still closed, baby. Nice and relaxed. Imagining all the good things you got to do today. All the fun stuff.

Letting your arms get nice and heavy. Quiet and relaxed. Tummy relaxing.
Another deep breath in. And a big yawn. That’s right, nice and relaxed. Winding down now.

Letting your legs get nice and heavy. Feeling warm, safe and secure. All nice and cozy.

Hmm, that’s good. Finding your spot. Letting your body unwind. Let go. That’s it. Safe and secure. Nice and relaxed. Knowing that mommy and daddy love you very much. And that you’re safe, secure, and relaxed here. Nice and warm. Happy. Secure.

Just letting go now. All warm and loved. Knowing that you’re very good and we love you very much. That’s right. Safe and secure.

If you would like to hear a short sample, click here.

Your important items in the script are (and ones you should make sure show up in your own version):
1) getting your child to find their spot
2) repetition
Working with them on “finding their spot” allows them to choose where they’re going to relax and gives them a verbal cue to do so. You are giving them a choice, giving them the power rather than initiating a power struggle. And, if you think about it, don’t you fall asleep in the same position night after night? I know I do. I curl up on my stomach, tuck the pillow under my head and sling my arm over another pillow. I’m out. I watch our son, he curls up on his side, throws an arm over a stuffed animal and once he gets still (i.e., stops kicking his feet) he’s out. As for repetition, this is key in relaxation or guided meditation. Using the same words over and over again helps the brain naturally slow down and focus. Use whatever words you normally use when trying to calm them down, and no, not the ones you use when frustrated, the soft soothing ones.

Practice the script a few times without them around. Find your natural rhythm with it. Use it as a guide to write down your own, adding in your own phrases and terminology. I kept the body parts generic so that even very young children can respond to the process. I’ve seen success with kids as young as two.

A couple of great resources I’ve found and actually used in our efforts, because sometimes, he’s just tired of hearing mommy’s voice, are:

• Bubble Riding: A Relaxation Story, Designed to Help Children Increase Creativity While Lowering Stress and Anxiety Levels. (Book) (Indigo Ocean Dreams) – beautifully illustrated, slightly too repetitive and can cause a school aged child to ask you if it’s “going to keep doing that”, but it does help them relax down. He still asks for it sometimes before bed.

• Turtle Island: A Bedtime Story (CD) by Monroe Products – you’re supposed to use it with a special device, but it works just as well for them on your standard iPod. He doesn’t ask for this one as much. He prefers the next one.

• Softly to Sleep (MP3) by myself – the one I recorded that seems to work the best for our son using the exact methods as I have written about here. I can play it on a road trip, and he’s out. We always take our iPods and a player on vacation, and it seems to help being in a new environment.
Whatever method you choose to use, the books, your own recording, or someone else’s recorded voice, know that you can get them to stop the battles and really give you back your evening sanity. It just takes a little ingenuity and some soft, quiet guidance, and you’ll have your little one sleeping softly through the night.

Stacia D. Kelly, PhD, MHt is a writer and Holistic Health Coach living
with her husband, son and three cats just outside of Washington DC.
She takes a whole mind-body-spirit approach to health and well-being
and teaches her clients to do the same. Blog:
http://www.mindbodyspiritworks.com

[ 4 comments ]

Guest Blogger Simone Snyder: A little destiny in the Mothering library

November 6th, 2009

I tell pretty much every pregnant woman I know to come check out the Mothering lending library. It has an extensive collection of books and other materials ranging in topics, from natural parenting to childbirth preparation to medical texts. Knowing that at any given moment there could be someone rummaging through the books, I should have been more prepared when I was confronted by that book.

I was astounded to find What to Expect When You are Expecting lying on the floor. Thinking my co-worker, who is a midwifery student, had selected the book, I shouted my objections loud and clear, only to turn around and discover that there was a bewildered pregnant woman staring back at me.

I apologized profusely, but instead of being offended she was quite interested to learn why I objected so. My life revolves around pregnant women. Not only do I work at Mothering, but I am a doula, childbirth educator, and prenatal massage therapist, so any opportunity to sit down with someone to talk shop is a welcome one. I told her about my experience 8 years ago; I remembered it so well; I was about 3 months pregnant sitting in the bathtub with highlighter in hand. I was so ready and so eager to learn all I could and well, let’s just say What to Expect When You are Expecting was not what I was expecting at all!

Don’t get me wrong. The book was informative, if all you want to read about is every possible complication you could experience while pregnant. The book terrified me. The diet portion of the book was militant, and everything about labor and the birth of your baby was quite medical. I believe that pregnant couples should take an active role in their education, and should inform themselves about all aspects of this miraculous journey. But at the same time, there is power in the positive and for one source to focus so much on all the bad things that could (though rarely) happen is unfortunate.

I felt relieved and could only wish that someone had been there to warn me all those years ago in my bathtub. This library visitor and I had chosen that book for all of the same reasons (because it’s popular, because we wanted to learn all we could) but now she had placed it back on the shelf. However, now she looked to me to provide her with some alternatives. There is nothing I enjoy more than sharing a good book, especially books about pregnancy and birth, and I have pretty much read them all. Lucky me, right at my fingertips I had my favorite books to bless her with.

The first one I recommended was Having a Baby Naturally by Peggy O’Mara. Sure, she is one of my heroines, but in addition to that, it is just such a wonderfully positive and empowering read. It is pretty much the antithesis of What to Expect. It is full of ideas for achieving memorable, healthy pregnancies and empowering births.

I also strongly suggested she check out Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth. In our culture we are inundated with images of women in agonizing labor—screaming at their doctors and partners, rushing off to the hospital the second their water breaks, and because drama sells, eventually something goes wrong and the woman and/or baby must be saved. In both of Ina May Gaskin’s books (Spiritual Midwifery and Guide to Childbirth) the reader is exposed to beautiful birth stories as well as practical information about pregnancy and childbirth. The stories are not overly idealistic. Occasionally there is a complication, but the reader learns that even these obstacles can be handled calmly.

An additional favorite is Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Newborn by Penny Simkin, Janet Whalley, and Ann Kepler. I always recommend this book because I read it first as a pregnant woman and the second time as a student doula. This book is no-nonsense, and covers everything from the anatomy of the pregnant woman to the history of infant feeding. I think it is very well organized and not at all overwhelming. I continue to use it as a reference and have worn the binding down.

Another Penny Simkin treasure is The Birth Partner. This book comes with me to every single birth I attend, even my own. Everyone should read this one—moms, doulas, and partners—because it really is “everything you need to know to help a woman through childbirth.” All the tricks of the trade right there in your hands. It is simply invaluable.

In coming to look for informative reading materials this woman stumbled upon me who was only too willing to spend the day talking about natural childbirth and all of the options available to her. We discussed the difference between doulas and midwives as well as the difference in care under a midwife, family practitioner, and OB.

As a doula and educator, by the time I meet the pregnant couple they are usually already in their third trimester. When I was pregnant the first time around, I chose my doula before I had a doctor, or even before I told my family. There is great value in establishing this relationship early on. It allows for a level of comfort and trust that grows with the pregnancy.

Some of us are fortunate enough to have been given the message early on that birth is a natural, normal, process. Others discover the beauty of childbirth along the way. I am eternally grateful to the student doula in my woman’s studies class whose presentation sparked the interest that put me on this path. It’s fascinating to consider that had I just skipped that one class, I may never have been exposed to the concept of a doula, natural birth or Goddess forbid, Mothering Magazine. I have a funny feeling something similar occurred that day in the library.

Simone Snyder is the Product Fulfillment Manager/Street Teams Coordinator at Mothering Magazine. She is a certified doula, childbirth educator, and licensed massage therapist, specializing in prenatal and postpartum massage.

[ 2 comments ]

Getting Through a Terrible Preschool Year

November 4th, 2009

Nathaniel’s last year in preschool was horrible. There’s no other way to say it. He’s in kindergarten now, and I had anxiety over the summer–would this be a horrible year, too? At the same time, I knew worrying wouldn’t help, and that “worry is using your imagination to create things you don’t want,” one of my favorite wise things Ashisha (Mothering’s editor-at-large and resident sage) told me.

He loves kindergarten, and seems to have a new peace about not only school, but his place in the world. It wasn’t good for him to be one of the oldest kids in preschool. He was bored silly, and boredom generates a very naughty Nathaniel. He was consistently freaked out by random physical lashings-out by younger children who bit, hit and kicked. “He doesn’t hurt the kids back, but he breaks things in the classroom later,” I was told. I had a really hard time having a dialogue with the teacher, who didn’t have a phone at home and also did not use email.

He missed his aftercare teacher from the previous year, an angelic young woman who spent the whole aftercare period on a comfy couch with him, reading him stories, stroking his back, and giving him lavender foot rubs. I bet you twenty bucks that when he falls in love with a woman (if he falls in love with a woman) some day, she will resemble the lovely Kelsey.

One day in preschool, Nathaniel ran away from school with a pal and was found a few blocks away, throwing empty glass bottles into the street. I mean, nightmare! That scene could be made into a cartoon about what future juvenile delinquents look like.

Nathaniel stopped breaking things, but he started fighting back. At home, he talked a lot about being kicked, punched, and pushed. There didn’t seem to be a sense of cutting down on that. As if they were puppies, or bear cubs wrestling. Except that I could tell that he felt traumatized by it, and couldn’t relax and enjoy his day. I cried a lot. I cried because I felt for him, and I wished for him that he could avoid conflicts when possible.

Perhaps selfishly, but very humanly, I also cried because it seemed like my child was being seen as “the bad kid” and that made me feel like I had failed him. I cried because I felt like I couldn’t get through to the teacher, and that my concerns were being dismissed and that I was being punished by bringing things to her attention, because that was the only time she would give me a litany of what he had done. And she didn’t tell me beforehand, even though I had asked to know what was going on.

I went to the principal/the head of the school. I felt heard by her, and we even discussed moving him up into kindergarten for the last three months. But…it would rob him of a sense of closure, and not give him the chance to feel like part of an entering class. It might be too stressful and set him up for another uncomfortable school experience.

His dad and I started picking him up every day at 1pm. It seemed to help a lot, because he got more one-on-one time with us AND he missed out on the afternoon vibe, which seemed to get progressively wilder as the day went on. We gave him extra cuddles, and made his bedtime a stricter 7:30pm, so that he was well-rested. I also bought an amazing story book, Healing Stories for Challenging Behavior, by Susan Perrow. I read him stories each night that were captivating and delightful, and also addressed his challenges (bullying, grieving, feeling victimized, being uncooperative and destructive).

I also talked to his big sister about going easier on him right now, because he was having a tough time. Unchecked, she will do all of the classic one-upmanship older sibling stuff, but that was just adding to his load. We needed to support him, build up his confidence, and reinforce positive traits. I was very pleased that she “got it” and changed the way she spoke to him.

To help them both understand, I made up a thing called “friendship bricks” and “friendship smacks.” If you say, “I made this picture,” and someone responds, “I can make a better one,” or “I don’t really like it,” that’s a friendship smack. It undermines a relationship. If you say, “Good job!” or “It’s beautiful!” or even, “Tell me what’s happening in this picture,” that’s a friendship brick. It’s a brick in the wall of a friendship. I reminded them both of this whenever I heard friendship smacks going on in the back seat of the car or at home.

I thought about changing schools, but I also had a strong, deep intuition that he would be okay once he got to kindergarten. It’s a different environment, with different expectations, lots more to be engaged with, and older kids. I feel very committed to our kids’ school overall, and wanted him, in the coming years, to experience what his sister had. We just had to make it through three months. And things did improve, a lot.

We met with his kindergarten teacher yesterday for a routine conference. I had a tight feeling in my stomach. Would it be another upsetting meeting? It was not. His kindergarten teacher told us wonderful things. He’s busy, loves to build elaborate forts, with other kids and on his own; he can be set down next to any child in the class and he has a great time talking/playing with him or her; he is beginning to “sparkle” and his eyes are gleaming with a sense of mastery and enjoyment. He enjoys playing with kids a little younger than him and a little older than him. He’s having fun and he is thriving.

Last week, he told me, “Daddy gave me the striped lunch bag because he couldn’t find my cars lunch bag, and that made me upset, because I had that lunch bag in preschool and that’s when the younger kids were hurting me. I don’t want to see that lunch bag ever again. It makes me upset.”

I became suffused with a flash of bittersweet emotion. I felt proud that he was so lucid about his feelings and associations. I felt sad about the terrible year. “Sweetheart, if you want, I will throw that lunch bag in the garbage as soon as we get home.”

“No, Mommy, don’t do that. Just put it in the garage. I don’t want to use it, but I don’t want you to throw it out, either.”

And so I did. It sits on a shelf next to the extra coffee maker and the leftover paint. For some reason he wants to keep it around, but out of sight. Maybe he gets on some level that this experience was like a ring of a tree, showing growth and also, closure.

[ 7 comments ]

Sticks and Stones and Eyebrows, Noses

October 30th, 2009

eyebrows clafouti

My daughter came home looking worried the other day after school.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Some kids ran past me on the playground and yelled that I had evil eyebrows,” she said. “They said, ‘Evil eyebrows girl, you have evil eyebrows!’”

My first instinct: justice.

“Who were they?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “They were older.”

“You have beautiful eyebrows,” I said. “They’re not evil at all. Besides, eyebrows can’t be evil.”

“I…know…” she said. But I could sense that thing knocking around inside her, that little thing that happens when someone says something shocking or mean or silly or random and we wonder how much weight to give it. Adults are generally more cordial with each other and don’t yell out stupid remarks just because they have a slight urge to do so. Kids have less of a filter.

“If that happens again,” I said, “Say, ‘Why are you running away, chickens? If you care so much about my eyebrows, let’s all go talk about them with the teacher.’” In a perfect world where comebacks come out in time, that would be a decent one, I think, to lob at the Pony Express Eyebrow Dissers.

“Kids used to make fun of my eyebrows when I was little,” I recalled,

Her eyes widened. “They did?”

“Yup. “But then grownups would say that I was lucky to have them, because they were like Brooke Shields’ eyebrows. Brooke Shields was a famous actress with very thick eyebrows.”

I also remember a red-haired boy on the school bus who turned around apropos of nothing and scornfully told me my lips were too big. As if he were the arbiter of middle school facial feature size. He had his own issues, but maybe he thought if he told me first, I wouldn’t wise off about his big white Chicklet teeth.

I related this eyebrow story to female friends my age and they all recalled some feature of theirs that had been ridiculed, although it tended to be their favorite feature as adults. We were sitting around a table in our thirties and forties, couldn’t remember piles of things from childhood, but the Thing We Got Picked On For, that popped right up to the surface in half a second. Susie remembered being called “Miss Piggy” because of her upturned nose. “And I love my nose now. It’s so youthful.”

I can’t control what fool thing comes out of someone’s mouth on the playground–I can’t even control what things come out of my kids’ mouths, although I can respond to what they say in a way that I hope guides them and teaches them about what effect it might have on others.

And, I can say, “I love your eyebrows. You are beautiful. I love you,” channel Tina Fey, and feed her some good response zingers for the next time the Pony Express Fill-in-the-Blank Dissers gallop through town.

[ 5 comments ]

awesome craft from www.ourbigearth.com

April 26th, 2009

We made this, and it was fun. Notes: I used solid card stock instead of patterned scrapbooking paper. Now I want to make more. It’s a rather wholesome addiction, this crafting.

Family Craft – Waldorf-inspired Winter Birds

Posted using ShareThis

[ 0 comments ]

Random Top Three

April 13th, 2009

1. the book Healing Stories for Challenging Behavior by Susan Perrow (Hawthorn Press). As a writer, a reader, and a mom, the idea of telling stories that engage my children’s imagination, vs. giving direction that engages their rational minds (which can just feel like it initiates a series of slamming doors) is quite inspiring. There are A LOT of stories in the book, but the book also talks you through creating stories for particular situations. It’s like formulating an Rx for a particular ailment, on the spot, or over a few days. She talks about “story medicine.” How stories can be actual medicine. I love the way that my kids relax against me when I read them bedtime stories. Their weight becomes like sleep weight–peaceful, planted where they are. Sometimes, I’ve ad-libbed a story in a situation that is rapidly spinning out of control–on a long car trip, or in the store. It catches their attention and gives me some leverage. They want it, too. They need me to provide a yummy place for them to go. That’s why they’re fussing and acting out. (Not because they’re horrid beasties…although it sometimes feels that way.) I can not wait to try out some of the stories…and to repeat them…some of them are retellings of tales I remember from childhood, like the Elves and the Shoemaker. Some are ones Perrow composed, some are collected from others. I look forward to having a well-exercised and wise story generator inside myself. You can get the book at steinerbooks.com, or hunt around for a second-hand source if you want to save a few bucks.

2. Hilary Meyerson’s essay “Endgame” in this spring’s Brain, Child magazine, and on their website, www.brainchildmag.com. It talks about what the real point is–of exposing your kids to things like violin, ice skating, gymnastics–and that real point has nothing to do with Carnegie Hall, or cutthroat competitiveness. It has to do with having fun for fun’s sake–something we all need to experience on a regular basis.

3. (Fair trade, sustainable) Shea Terra Organics…I love their Miombo Mango Shea Butter Dead Sea Salt Scrub, their Bourbon Vanilla Indigenous Shea Body Butter…both things that ready my winter skin for spring. Ay, crocodile. You know what I’m sayin’. So as I cavort around the tennis court, I can do so with glowing, revitalized limbs…all part of my goal to have fun for fun’s sake. (www.sheaterraorganics.com)

[ 1 comment ]

Puppet Show

March 4th, 2009

My son is a funny combination of a morning person and a morning grouch. He hops out of bed before any of us, but is most prone to be in a skutchy* mood. He is not an early bird who is cheerful. Oh no. He is an early bird who is truculent and absolutely sure that he gets less cereal in his bowl than his sister does, no matter how much I strive for visual parity.

It doesn’t exactly make our mornings flow more harmoniously. However, when I woke him up yesterday, I absentmindedly picked up his plush wolf puppet (I think it’s a Folkmanis), and let the wolf wake him up. Soon the wolf was attempting to dance with his penguin, and being an absolute goofball…Nathaniel woke up with a GRIN on his face. His good mood lasted all the way till school dropoff. I have no idea how long it endured, but yeah. Morning laughter. Good. I think Wolfie will wake him up, or greet him first, from now on.

*skutch (n.), skutchy (adj): pronounced with oo as in book. Walsh family term for irascible/touchy. May also be a word others use. If so, let me know : )

[ 0 comments ]

chicken, little

February 12th, 2009

So, I’ve really been trying to stretch my grocery dollar. I can be guilty of spending more on recipe ingredients than I would on going out to a restaurant. Lately I’ve been trying to see how little I can spend, and I’ve even come back to clipping an old college love, coupons.

Lately, I buy one package of boneless chicken thighs and make two dinners out of them. You can also use chicken breasts, or tofu. I know chicken breasts are more popular, but I prefer the moistness and tenderness of dark meat.

Saturday, we braised the chicken in a mixture of chicken broth and a can of diced tomatoes, with liberal use of dried basil, oregano, and black pepper. We ate it over brown basmati rice with wilted baby spinach, yum!

Sunday, we marinated the chicken in a mixture of peanut butter, soy sauce, green onions, chicken broth, and lemon juice. Then, we braised the chicken in the sauce and had it over jasmine rice with…the rest of the spinach.

The week before, we had chicken breasts provencale-style, with roasted onions, olives, and roasted fresh tomatoes, with lots of garlic and broth…over barley, with baby green salad on the side.

I imagine I will get sick of chicken breasts at some point, but I’m not looking forward to that day.

[ 1 comment ]

fever in, fever out

January 30th, 2009

Honorée had a fever last night, poor budgie. At one point she said, “Mom, the bed feels like it keeps on getting higher and higher, and it’s scary.” I rubbed her feet with lavender and peppermint oil…at around midnight, I gave her a bath infused with peppermint, lavender, and Young Living Thieves oil blend. She noticed that she was now as long as the tub. That’s a big moment, isn’t it? Her eyes seemed huge in her small white face, but she had a certain placidity. I never enjoy being sick but there’s something about fevers that feels very enlightening and related to altered states of consciousness. Purifying, raising the temperature to drive out what is not the essence. In Sanskrit, tapasya means “heat,” and is used to describe spiritual ecstasy, spiritual suffering, and “essential energy.”

This morning, she woke up chatty, famished and thirsty, and ate dry Mighty Bites cereal faster than I wanted her to. She had a brief, low flare-up of fever and then mellowed out again.

It was hard for me to fall asleep because I was worried about her. I came in at one point and put my hand on her chest to feel the rise and fall of her breathing. I used to do it when she was a baby, but haven’t done it much lately. Sometimes, to me, being a mother feels like being at an amusement park five minutes before it closes. So much there, so much to do, so much I want to be present to but as I am present, I become aware of what I have not been present to in the past, what I’ve missed, what I’m missing right now, what I will not have the omnipresent superpower to soak up in the next five minutes and for all time. Breathe…

I love.

[ 0 comments ]

Candace Walsh

a la mama

Guest Blogger Lisa Nave on Building Community, Literally.

Guest Blogger Stacia Kelly Returns with Crystal Clear How-To

Guest Blogger Simone Snyder: A little destiny in the Mothering library

Getting Through a Terrible Preschool Year

Sticks and Stones and Eyebrows, Noses

awesome craft from www.ourbigearth.com

Random Top Three

Puppet Show

chicken, little

fever in, fever out

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