Christmas and why my parenting is different

I love Christmas. Like really really really love it. I cannot wait until Christmas morning to see the looks of joy on the faces of my children as they come downstairs and see the lit tree, the presents and their bikes!

I have so few good memories from my childhood, but Christmas was almost always one. I want my kids to have that joy, that magic, that complete delight that I did.

My mother was not a good mother. She was just not. I'm not going into specifics publicly, but it wasn't a good childhood. I had absolutely no trust for her by the time I was four.

The memories of Christmas is part of why I wanted to change the way I parented my children. Christmas was such a joy for me as a child, at least until I was about ten. It was a day when I wasn't scared, or angry, or sad, or lacking trust in my mother. It was a day that I knew that she could be counted on. And that is a wonderful thing.

But it is so sad that there was only one or two days a year that I could feel that way about her. The fact that Christmas and my birthday were so hugely different than the rest of the year is not a good thing. I looked forward to those holidays with such a passion because they were safe days. I don't want my children to look forward to safe days, I want every day to be a safe day.

So I comfort them when they cry, I don't scream at them, I don't hit them, I feed them healthy foods and wear them when they need some extra snuggles. Every child deserves those basics in life, to live a life where they trust their family.

Where will they go

My three year old is obsessed with being a doctor. She talks about it frequently. When people ask her what she is going to be when she grows up she always says a doctor. She loves to read the pages in her books about doctors, and asks what schools she has to go to to become a doctor. When she goes to the doctor she asks the doctor to look in her ears with the otoscope.

Sometimes she'll also talk about when she is grown up and is a ballerina, or a farmer, or a mommy, or a dog. Yup. A dog.

As we are looking on a new and unexpected phase of education for our kids next year, we are thinking about their future in different ways. Something we have always said is that we don't want them to be pushed toward college. There is an unhealthy push to get a college education in our country. Some people probably question that, but college is overrated. Not all children are cut out to go to college. Some kids aren't designed to do four years of post high school education and work in a cubicle, but that is where our American society is leading kids.

I want my kids to have the freedom to go to college and excel if they choose. Even if they choose a major that doesn't seem to have a lot of job potential like art history, if they are passionate about that, they can make a wonderful life and career out of that. But I also want them to have the freedom to go to trade school, or start a business, or become an apprentice or go to ten years of college and medical school.

I am sure at this point that God is calling us to send our kids to school. At least for a few years. Just like homeschooling families we say we will take it year by year. This might only be a season, and it might be a long term venture. Who knows. But there are a few more worries with sending my kids to school rather than keeping them home.

The biggest worry I have is that my kids will feel forced and pressured into college. The school that we are sending them to has a 100% college matriculation rate. And the kids who go to this school don't go to east handkerchief state either. They go to tier one schools. I want to set up an environment in our family where they know college isn't the end all be all and there are other paths they might follow. I want to guide them toward their strengths and interests and callings, not push them toward college.

How can my children still explore freedom when they are being tunneled toward college?

And these big questions honestly make me wonder if school is going to last beyond the elementary years, and they will be homeschooled in high school. I know that is the opposite of most homeschooling worries. Many parents wonder if they can teach the upper division stuff, and don't worry about the lower division stuff. But not me. The elementary stuff does NOT interest me, and in fact I have never been sure if I could teach my littles the three Rs. But I have never worried from about sixth grade up. From that point on I was quite sure I'd be able to teach.

It is going to be interesting to watch this unfold.

On letting babies cry it out

Babies cry. Thats how they communicate. It sucks as a mother to hear your baby cry. Especially when you are over tired, frustrated, overwhelmed, and just want to sleep. I know how tempting it is to put your baby into their bed and "teach" them how to sleep, by letting them cry and cry and cry until they finally go to sleep, and repeat until they have been taught to sleep.

But it is cruel. You might not want to think that or admit it, but it is. You are taking a tiny little baby, who trusts you. Who looks to you for everything they need, and teaching them that you cannot be trusted. That you won't be there when they need you. That they are alone and have to fend for themselves. You aren't teaching them how to sleep, you are teaching them how not to trust other people.

I've heard from several people lately that your baby will try and manipulate you. Babies honestly think that when you leave the room you are gone. They don't know that two halves make a whole. They don't know how to say their names. How can they have the cognitive ability to manipulate. It just isn't possible. Testing boundaries is NOT manipulating. To assign such an intent to an infant, shows a major misunderstanding of babies.

But think about it from your perspective as an adult. If you were alone, and tired and scared would you like to be left alone to scream yourself to sleep night after night?

my fuzzi bunz are for sale!

Well we have a new front loading washer and dryer and they just won't wash my diapers well enough for my liking. So sadly we aren't going to be cloth diapering anymore :(

I'm selling 13 fuzzi bunz in gender neutral colors (though there are some dark blues and one pinkish) All are in great condition, and I have the inserts for all. I also have 5 hemp inserts that we used at night!

I'm asking $140 for all of them. Please respond with your email if you are interested.

sauteed garbanzo beans

There is this amazing restaurant in Berkeley and Oakland California called Cesar. It is a tapas bar and an Alice Waters restaurant. If you are any sort of foodie you know who Alice Waters is.

Every spring for a few weeks they have fresh garbanzo beans still in their shells fried with cumin and spices. They are amazingly fresh, and spicy, and yummy. When the bee was ten months old we ate there five days in a row, eating those wonderful beans and my ten month old could get those shells open herself to eat the inside of the bean. She loved them!

She still does. Garbanzo beans are wonderful for so much more than just hummus. They are great in minestrone soup, and other multi bean soups. I even like to use them in chili sometimes because of their meaty texture. They don't ever fall apart when they are cooked.

But one of our favorite quick and easy breakfasts is sauteed garbanzo beans. Sure it isn't a traditional breakfast item, but combined with a piece of whole wheat bread it makes a complete protein that keeps you from getting hungry in twenty minutes.

2 cans garbanzo beans drained.
1 shallot
2 Tbsp cumin (or less to taste)
1 tsp chili powder
1 clove garlic
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

Mix all but the butter in a food processor until garbanzos and garlic are chopped fine. I sometimes add a tiny bit of olive oil to get the beans to hold together well and make patties. Form patties and fry in olive oil. They will fall apart a bit, and won't ever be firm patties, but it is still yummy. If you add eggs you could make a more firm patty.

I like a LOT of cumin because it is just yummy and I want a big strong slightly spicy cuminey flavor.

Balancing two futures

I think our country is on its last legs. Honestly I do. I think our Dollar is in very big trouble, and will likely collapse within a few years, and that our country might not survive in the way we know it. More it will go from super power, to something more like Russia is today. So I prepare for that future.

We store food, stock up on clothes for the kids several sizes in advance, and plan on chickens as soon as spring comes. We prepare for a future that I believe will very quickly in the future be very bleak.

But I could be wrong. Perhaps our nation is on the road to recovery or at least maintaining the status quo. Perhaps things will continue to limp along in a nature very similar to where we are now. I can't dismiss that that is a valid option. So I go back to school, prepare my family and my kids for them to go to school and grow up and be responsible citizens of our nation.

Flu season

Well fall is in full swing here, and I'm starting to be able to breathe again. Though I know it is short lived as the Holidays are right around the corner.

But fall also brings flu season and that is the topic of much news lately.

We of course don't vaccinate against the flu. I understand that the flu can be deadly and that it is a serious illness, but I think the vaccine is more dangerous for my family than the actual flu. If we had someone in our home who was immunocompromised, we would absolutely vaccinate. But we are all healthy in our home and I don't see a reason to compromise our immune systems with a vaccine.

But we aren't arrogant about the flu either, we do stay on top of things and do our best to remain healthy during the flu season, just as any other time of year. We have never suffered the same sicknesses that our friends do and I believe firmly it has to do with our diet and prevention.

First and foremost I wash hands a lot. The bee also washes her hands regularly. But we do NOT use anti bacterial soaps. Those soaps breed super germs like MRSA and there is no need to use them. I do keep products like purell in my purse when we are out. I'm not thrilled with them, but I do think that sometimes it works well when we don't have good hand washing options.

Secondly we eat healthy real living foods. We have green smoothies several days a week to make sure that we are getting a good amount of raw foods as well as lots of vitamin C and Iron. I often add cod liver oil to the smoothie, but honestly it does not taste that good. The Lemon flavor does the best and is the only one that my daughter will drink anymore. We also don't eat much sugar. That is a big one actually sugar is a immune depressant.

My kids don't eat processed foods. I'm probably the only parent who doesn't send store bread and lunchables to the bees school. That isn't to say they have never had processed foods, they have. But it isn't very often.

But there are a few other things that we do. Both kids take a multi vitamin and a vitamin D supplement every day. Vitamin D is huge in fighting the flu, especially the H1N1. We also take elderberry syrup every day. Elderberry syrup is great for building up an immune system, and some say more effective against the flu than tamiflu is. Vitamin C is best gotten from citrus fruits and veggies, but supplements are easy to find and usually easily eaten by kids.