PICTURES

It's been a while...so here's some pictures taken in the last week.


Marital Bliss
Hey! Why did you leave me inside?
He's walking!
Peekaboo!
Morning smiles
The Boy and his Papa
Reflective faces
Thoughtful faces
Sleeping angel
Sleeping in the rain
Funny faces
Kisses
So sad, don't leave me!

And the big news....Corwyn is walking!

25 THINGS

I've been tagged about 5 times for this 25 Things meme, and so I've caved and completed it. It's a sad excuse for a blog update, but it's all your getting for now. I'm not tagging anyone because I don't want to perpetuate the torture, but if you actually like these things, and haven't already been tagged by 27 people on facebook, have at 'er to your hearts content.

1. If I ever quit my job, the thing I will miss the most is the cafe down the hallway that makes my breakfast every day. When I walk in, everyone knows my name and says hello and when I place my order I just say "the usual" and they know what it is. This makes me happy
   
2. I like pop music
3. I wish I could dance better
4. My son is the coolest, awesomest, most fun person ever. I can't get enough of him. And he gets awesomer every day
5. When my husband I were dating, I didn't let him kiss me (even though he tried often) until after he proposed
6. If I'm cranky, 9 times out of 10, it's because I'm hungry
7. I love re-reading good books, and have read some of my favourites dozens of times (not exaggerating).
8. I want to star in a days-gone-by historic period film - preferably one set in the 1800s - because I want to wear fantastically awesome huge dresses and hats for extended periods of time
   
9. I'm outrageously incensed at Thyme Maternity for selling their client lists to Nestle so that pregnant women can be sent formula samples and glossy magazines touting the magical scientific wonders of their shit formula
10. I think placentas are really awesome
11. Although I loved my son dearly, for the first three months I thought I had made the biggest mistake of my life
12. I believe abortion is wrong, but I am staunchly pro-choice
13. I forget to eat (see point 6 for repercussions)
14. I just culled my bloglines list - I'm down to 57 from 103. I think I save myself 20 minutes a day by not reading blogs I don't care about but that showed up in my reader anyways.
15. I am giving up Facebook for Lent. Depending on how that goes, I'm open to trashing it completely - or at least deleting most of my "friends" - I'm tired of being subjected to a news feed full of information that I don't care about
    
16. I love sewing and knitting
17. I'm learning how to knit Cowichan sweaters
18. I think American politics are much more interesting that Canadian politics
19. I really want to go to Russia and Poland
20. I have no problem breastfeeding in public because if someone says something to me about it, I know that I can charge them with harrasment as per my rights under the BC Charter of Rights & Freedoms
21. It's embarssing to admit, but I actually like the $1 hot dogs from Ikea
22. There are three non-functioning fire hydrants on our front lawn, we rescued them from the side of the road where they had been abandoned
23. I have begun collecting art images of mothers and babies with the intention of having them on the walls of my office/meeting space when my doula business is up and running
24. I want to be able to take really fantastic photos
25. Memes annoy me, and this is the first one I've ever done.
    

BYE BYE BOOB TUBE

I wrote this a while ago and then forgot to post it. I have breast-feeding mush brain.

Transcript of a recent telephone conversation I had:

"Hi. I'd like to cancel my cable TV subscription. "

"Alright ma'am. May I ask why?"

"Because all we do is watch TV, and we have become lazy and we hate it. We want to do cool stuff."

"Watching TV is pretty cool."

"It's not cool at all. We want to do way cooler stuff. We want to go outside. We want to make art, and friends. We don't want our baby watching CSI. We don't want to have cable anymore. It ruins our lives"

"Oh. Alright then. I understand. Did you want to cancel your internet as well?"

"OH MY GOD NO." *

Chris and I have been doing some examination of our life and have found that over the last few months we've turn into boob-tube watching boobies and we hate it. We would talk about watching less TV, but it just didn't happen. The TV controlled us, and we were unable to not turn it on if we knew there was a show on that we liked.

After much discussion, we decided that we had two options.

1. Get a PVR so that we could record the shows we liked and watch them when it was convenient for us and without commercials. With a PVR we could control our TV watching rather than molding our life around what night the next episode of CSI was on.
   
2. Cancel cable and stop watching TV entirely.

We almost bought the PVR. Then we realized that TV adds absolutely nothing good to our lives and it really made no sense to spend MORE money and get MORE channels to watch LESS television.

So, I called Shaw and they sent the man over to turn it off. We had a few nights of withdrawl where we wandered around bereft and talked about the shows we were "missing" and didn't know what to do with ourselves. But now that the shock of it has passed and we are so glad we unplugged the tube.

We listen to music and talk. Our house is cleaner. I've been reading books or sewing in the evenings. Chris spends more time playing with Corwyn. It's been lovely.

The TV Turnoff has been step one in an effort to make our lives more relational, more community focused, more creative and more loving.

*my guilty secret is that I can watch full episodes of Grey's Anatomy and The Office online on the CTV and Global websites, so that is the salve to the burn of the TV turn-off. But I watch them on my laptop, during the day, and I can't flip channels when they're over and watch something else, so it's all good.

WHITE CHRISTMAS

One clear, cold night we bundled up and adventured up the street 7 blocks to the Christmas Tree lot...We found a nice little Douglas Fir, complete with miniature cones on some of its branches, and it followed us home. As this was the first year we've had a tree, we didn't have any decorations, so I spent a few cozy hours making them - salt dough hearts, painted red, icicles made of buttons strung on wire, little gold stars cut from a piece of gold leather I've had for ages. The only items I didn't make were the tiny red glass berries wired to the branches. I picked three dozen of those up at Chintz & Co a few years back at their always fabulous Boxing Day sale. They set me back a whole $3. It's a frugal, but lovely tree. It makes me happy to look at it. Corwyn points at it and says "Wowww!" (Christmas Tree pictures by Libby - Thank you Libs)

We've had a massive dump of snow and some really cold weather (-14) all week, so the snow hasn't melted as it usually does here in temperate Vancity. Although the main roads are mostly clear, Chris needed to purchase chains in order to get out of our community, which is snowed in under about 50 cm of snow.

Corwyn hadn't seen snow before, and the first day he stood by the window for half an hour pointing and saying "Wowwww!" Half an hour is an extremely long time for him to stay in one spot. He loves being outside at the best of times, but the snow makes it even more exciting. Although getting bundled up is not his most favourite activity and he quickly learned how to remove his mitt with his teeth while I was putting on the second one.

It's so much fun to watch Corwyn have fun. He's so adventuresome and curious and interested in everything new. My baby grew into a toddler in the blink of an eye. I love this age he's at so much though - the joy, the giggles, the cute little things he does. Every day is better than the one before.

Well, we're all cozy for Christmas, and we hope you are too. Enjoy time with family and friends and make sure to spend lots of time cuddling - we sure will be!

WHERE'S THE SWEAT AND THE PLACENTA?

When I think about Christmas, I think about Mary. I actually think about her more than Jesus – which sounds rather heretical – but I have had my most profound and personal Christmas revelations while reflecting on Mary. The Mary I picture is not the one on your holiday card wearing a splendid blue head-covering with bright eyes and white robe glowing amongst pristine straw and a cheerful, silent, odor-free cow. The Mary I picture is young, humble and strong, having endured stares, whispers, judgment and embarrassment through her pregnancy. She is dirty from the dusty roads of Israel and she is tired from a long trip away from her family. The Mary I picture is, as the Bible succinctly states, “heavy with child”. Her joints ache and she is cranky because all pregnant women tend to get a bit cantankerous at the end of a pregnancy. I’ve never seen this Mary on a Christmas card. There’s no romance in this reality.

In the Catholic church I go to some Sundays, we say “Hail Mary full of Grace…” but I doubt if there was much grace to be found, bouncing on a donkey down a dusty, rocky road with your fiancé on your way to a town you may not have been to for a census that you probably don’t want to take part in. There is very little grace in the ninth month of pregnancy, with your ribs crushed, pelvis aching, limbs swollen and we all know that the ninth-month pregnant waddle is the antithesis of graceful.

Mary, on her way to Bethlehem is without her mother, sister, or best friend. She is traveling away from the village midwife and healing woman she’s known her whole life. She would know that this baby is coming any day, she would know she was going to give birth away from those she trusted and those who cared for her. In a culture where birth was a rite of passage to be walked through surrounded by those sister-friends closest to you, it must have been terrifying to travel further and further from this circle, knowing that you would labour and birth away from those you loved.

We see these pictures of Mary on cards, all glowing and pristine. We see her kneeling, fully dressed and prim and proper with a beautiful baby Jesus. I can’t reconcile these gilded images with what I know about birth. I’m a doula – I have been with women when they birth and I study birth and I have never, ever seen a woman look like this after giving birth.

Birthing is hard work. It is sweaty and loud and intense and physical. Birthing women sway and groan and chant and sing. Birthing women clutch their support people and puke and cry and laugh and shake. Birthing women sweat and sweat and sweat. Birthing is hard work.

I see Mary with her baby – a baby that is a little bloody, covered in vernix and has a cone head from being squeezed down – dare I say – her vagina - and he is screaming and hungry. And Mary, suddenly becoming a mother, has instincts that kick in and she gets naked and she puts him to her breast and she cries out “Oh! My baby! My baby! Look at my baby! Oh hello baby!” Her eyes glow and she is triumphant. She wears a halo of victory.

Someone paint me that picture.
That’s a Christmas card I could send out with conviction.

But even that picture isn’t enough. That picture isn’t the whole picture, that picture is still missing something.

Every Sunday School Christmas Pageant shows us Joseph, desperately trying to find a room in the inn. Certainly, this must have been a stressful situation for him. But once Mary got into active labour and Joseph heard his fiancé get into her labour groove, once he heard her start to vocalize with her labour pains and sway her hips, and close her eyes and go rock and moan - quite simply, Joseph would have shit his pants carpenter pants and went and found a woman. Guys didn’t do birth back then. There were no couple’s prenatal classes, no Bradley Method of Husband-Coached Childbirth. Birth was women’s work. Men waited outside.

If Joseph was desperate to find a room in an inn – imagine his panicked desperation to find a midwife to care for his labouring woman. I am just as sure that Mary did not peacefully lie in the straw without breaking a sweat during labour as I am that Joseph did not calmly deliver a baby by himself.


So, where are the midwives in the holiday card pictures?

As I mentioned, I visit a Catholic church and every Sunday, we say:

Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.

The word “midwife” simply means “With Woman”. Although it has medical connotations today, its meaning is not strictly medical. With Woman. It means I am here with you as you journey through the most challenging and triumphant event of your life. I won’t leave you alone. I will support you and encourage you and care for you and protect you. I am with you.

Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.

There were women who were with Mary. God’s presence, working through the hands of women. Grace in the labour space, God’s presence in the labour room. Midwives with Mary in her moment of triumph.

Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.

Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Jesus - but the actual birth gets overlooked. We say “blessed is the fruit of thy womb” but we don’t think about the womb.

When I celebrate the Christmas season, I think about the birth, I think about the womb. I think about the physicality and the power of birth. I think about the power of the midwives, bringing God’s grace into the stable. I think of the triumph of the woman Mary, bringing her baby into the world. There is victory in every birth – but what incredible victory Mary would have felt; knowing that she just birthed the Son of God. As I contemplate the humility of Jesus, God’s son, coming to us in the form of a baby, I am awed and amazed by the miraculous power of birth. A woman birthed Jesus. Messily, physically, intensely birthed.

It is this realness of the birth that enriches my connection with the realness of Jesus. It is the knowledge that the God that I love did what we all do – he was born. I love that in order for Him to come to us – He had to do so by way of a womb, by way of a woman. He did not come in a cloud, or on a boat, or just flash sterilely into existence on the planet. He was real. As I am real, as you are real. As you and I were born, he was born.

Sometimes, I feel that my faith becomes disconnected from reality. It seems complicated and ethereal. But when I picture Mary, triumphant after birth, with her son in a manger, I also see, as the old song says “a cradle in the shadow of a cross”. With this picture, my faith crystallizes – hard and solidly unshakable. I remember that His birth was real and raw and moving because life is real and raw and moving. With an understanding of the realness of His birth I am aware of the realness of His death, the realness of His sacrifice and the realness of His love for me. His sacrifice and His love have transformed my life. They have given me purpose and peace – and that is what Christmas is truly about – the love and sacrifice of a man who was born to us.

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
~ Isaiah 9:6

ADVENT

Today, being the first day of Advent, inspires me to share a short film clip with you. I hope you take the 2.5 minutes to watch it and I hope it makes you stop and think for a moment, as I did.



Later this week, I'll be sharing a rather long post with you. It's a collection of my thoughts about Mary and what we are actually celebrating when we say we're celebrating the birth of Jesus. So stay tuned!

RANDOM PHOTOS FROM THE LAST FEW WEEKS

My friend Christina and I attended the Regional Assembly of Text's monthly letter writing party. It was very lovely. I wrote some nice letters, drank tea and ate a delicious scone. Oh Remington Typewriter, you are beautiful.

A gratuitous shot of my very adorable child looking extra cute in his present to his grandmother. (Now Ema can have Corwyn over to her house and feed him somewhere other than on the kitchen counter)

This is my Lamaze Teaching Skills Class. We spent three days learning how to teach prenatal classes. It was awesome and Corwyn was the class distraction mascot.

This is 7:45 am on civic election day. Corwyn is knocking on the locked door. We were the first to vote in our riding because I had to hurry out to New West to go to my Lamaze class.

It was way too early and we hadn't had coffee yet. Civic ballots are CRAZY, there are so many people and questions to vote for. My hand got tired colouring in all the little black dots. And our guy lost. We might have been the only people to vote for him, because the other guy really, really, really won, so maybe we should have gotten coffee instead. Anyways, we have three years to say "I didn't vote for him. Remember the other guy? You should have voted for the other guy." when the new mayor screws up.

Chris and I left Corwyn with my parents and went out for night on the town to celebrate my dear friend Libby's birthday. Then we all went and crashed another friend's party down on the The Drive. It was a good night. It was nice to drink red wine and hold hands with my hubby in a bar. But then we missed Corwyn and we went home, because.....

Oh my freaking goodness my child is so cute I want to eat him. Hand-knit caps made with love by Grannie only make the cuteness more overwhelming.

This is Corwyn at the open house for a very cool preschool that now has him on their enrolment waitlist. I know I also said "What the heck?" Preschools have wait lists? I had no idea. Fortunately I found out before it was too late. There were people wandering around wistuflly with their three-year-olds, realizing that they had missed the boat because there were pregnant women there, enrolling their unborn babes. Crazy. The place was magical though, so I understand. I want to go there and play with all their beautiful stuff. Corwyn loved it, and two more years, bub, and then you can go three mornings a week and it will only cost me my arm and leg - this one being cheaper than the really fantastically amazing ones at UBC that cost your firstborn child.


And that's about all for today. Lots of love from us to you!

PARENT'S CREED

I love thrift stores, and there is one close to my house that has a small, but always changing and always interesting selection of books. I usually find something great for less than two dollars. This week I found an old hymnal for sixty-nine cents, and upon reading it at home, I found that it has some really beautiful little prayers and creeds. This one stood out and Chris and I read it together last night as a prayer:

I believe that my children are a gift of God - the hope of a new tomorrow.
I believe that immeasurable possibilities lie slumbering in each son and daughter.
I believe that God has planned a perfect plan for their future, and that His love shall always surround them; and so
I believe that they shall grow up! - first creeping, then toddling, then standing, stretching skyward for a decade and a half-until they reach full stature-a man and a woman!
I believe that they can and will be molded and shaped between infancy and adulthood - as a tree is shaped by the gardener, and the clay vessel in the potter's hand, or the shoreline of the sea under the watery hand of the mighty waves; by home and church; by school and street; through sights and sounds and the touch of my hand on their hand and Christ's spirit on their heart. So,
I believe that they shall mature as only people can - through laughter and tears, through trial and error, byt reward and punishment, through affection and discipline, until they stretch their wings and leave their nest to fly!
O God - I believe in my children. Help me so to live that they always believe in me - and so in Thee. ~ Robert H Schuller

THE BIG SECRET

In the first few days after Corwyn was born, he would cry if you put him down. he needed to be held all the time. I remember trying to stay awake in the hospital, holding him, because the nurses would come into the room and enforce the hospital's strict "No Bed-Sharing" policy. When they would come in I would force my eyes open and tell them I'd just finished feeding him, or was about to, or some such lie so that I didn't have to put him in the bassinet and have him cry.

When we got home, we planned that Corwyn would sleep in the Arm's Reach Co-sleeper that we purchased before he was born. (pictured at right) The three-sided bassinet handily scooted up to the side of our bed and I could easily scoop Corwyn out when it was time to feed. We used it, and it was handy, but it was obvious to us that Corwyn preferred to sleep closer to us, and once I figured out the whole breastfeeding while lying down thing, baby pretty much stayed in our bed all the time for the convenience of barely having to wake up to feed him. Once he got semi-mobile he'd find my breast and latch on by himself. I'd wake up with a little mouth sucking me dry. It was beautiful.

Once he started crawling, the co-sleeper wasn't an option, as he could crawl out of it, and it wasn't safe. We tried putting him in it while it was on the lower setting, but he would always wake up an he hated it. So we scrapped that, and he was just sleeping with us.

But I felt guilty. People ask the question all the time "Does he sleep through the night?" (No.) "That must make you really tired, getting up that often" (It doesn't really. I don't really get up, he just gets some milk himself, we have a kiss and a cuddle and we go back to sleep) "Oh, he sleeps in your bed?" (Yes) Then one of two things happen: they don't say anything, which I insecurely interpret as disapproval or they make some comment along the lines of "You must want to break him of that habit".

My doula friends all co-sleep with their babies. They wear their babies in slings like we do, they breastfeed into the toddler years like I plan to. They are unapologetic and confident. But I don't see them that often, and the majority of families that I am surrounded by have babies that sleep in cribs in separate rooms, they carry their babies in car seats and only breastfeed for six or twelve months, if they breastfeed at all. This week, a woman I trust and admire made extremely negative comments about a woman she had observed breastfeeding her three-year-old in public. When I responded that this practice was in line with the World Health Organization's recommendations, she said "yes, that's for the world, breastfeed the starving Africans for that long, but we don't need to do that here." People laughed. I left.

I realized, as I left after that encounter, that my feelings about bed-sharing with my baby were a reflection of the attitudes of disapproval that I get from people that surround me. I actually like bed-sharing with my baby. My husband absolutely loves it. He doesn't like it when Corwyn is sleeping in the co-sleeper. he likes him to be between us, so that he can look at him and touch and him and sleep nose to nose with him. While I have the whole day of cuddles and connections with Corwyn, Chris gets significantly less time with his son, and at night Corwyn reaches for him and pats his shoulder and buries his head in Chris's chest. When Corwyn is sleeping, he will often throw his arms out so that he has a hand on each of us. These small acts of affection are priceless to Chris. Having Corwyn sleep in another bed would mean that he would miss out on these treasured moments of connection. Corwyn wakes up to breastfeed two or three times a night, and it is so, so easy for me to roll over, give him milk and a kiss and then roll back over to sleep. Bed-sharing works for us. It not only works, it is enjoyable.

So, the secret is out: we have a family bed. We love it. It works for us. We will not apologize for our choices. I will no longer gloss over this fact in order to avoid judgement from people who oppose it. I don't judge them for putting their baby to sleep in a crib in a separate room becaus this is what works for them. As families, we have to find what works for us and then do those things with confidence. We have chosen to have a Family Bed and we are choosing to be confident with that decision.

Our cat approves the Family Bed. (NOT a safe co-sleeping arraignment, but so cute I had to take a picture before shooing the cat away!)

RECENT ADVENTURES

We love the Autumn sunshine & leaf collecting

We love playing at Babyeats

We are unsure about climbing through tunnels

This is Corwyn at 4 am. He wanted to party. We finally went for a walk in the rain to help him go to sleep. Daddy did not want to party, as you can see below.

We love the Seabus

We had a pirate Halloween with the grandparents.

We like squash from the UBC farm

We like playing with Daddy

We like exploring outside

We like growing

We like listening to stories at book launches

SNIP SNIP SNIP

Time for a new look. 12 inches donated here.