Flats Challenge Day 3: Wordless Wednesday

You Get a Star!

Charts.  Sticker charts, chore charts - I'm not a big fan of charts.  We can never keep on top of them for very long, the enthusiasm wanes quickly, they put the focus on getting stuff for what you do  instead of doing stuff because it needs to be done and being a participating member of the family.  But sometimes what we need is a good chart.  Charts always have a nice honeymoon period where they inspire the kids to do great things and life becomes easier for a few days (a few weeks if the rewards are good enough and frequent enough).  Grandma left for Arizona for a week and things have kind of taken a turn for the worst around here simultaneously.  I have been frazzled, to say the least.  So I said to myself, "Self, let's make a chart".

What kind of chart to make?  A chore chart?  A sticker chart?  What should earn stickers?  Hmmmmm...

I decided on an awesomeness chart. 

You get stickers for anything that mama deems awesome.  Brought your homework home and did it without screaming?  Awesome!   Put your boots and coats away without being asked?  Awesome!  Sat in the doctor's waiting room without making a total scene?  Awesome!

When everyone gets to the top, we're going to Chuck E. Cheese's.  Awesome!

Basically I'm setting up an economy in my home where the currency is stickers and I am the Federal Reserve Bank.  Is it bribery?  By the definition set forth by some of my friends, no.  Bribery is when you give the reward before the good behavior.  Incentives are what you give afterward.  But it feels a lot like bribery.  Especially when I sing out after dinner, "I'm coming upstairs in five minutes and anyone who is wearing jammies and has clean teeth gets two stars!", and my offspring scurry for their toothbrushes and footie pajamas without any help or cajoling or yelling from me.  It feels wrong, it feels like bribery and lazy parenting.  But if this is wrong, I never want to be right.  It just works so well!  At least it does this week anyhow, and this week is when I'm feeling kind of crappy and really need to not fight with anyone.  Just today I handed out stars for playing quietly together and for shoveling the driveway, no fighting involved.

I feel a little dirty...


How do you feel about charts?  Do you use them?

Don't Push Me!

This last week or so I've been learning a lot more about homeschooling.  As you may have noticed, we've been struggling lately.  I have tried everything I can think of to make homeschooling a positive, inspiring experience for Mitch, and I keep coming up short.  I tried some different curriculums, a stricter schedule, a more relaxed schedule, focusing on the basics and letting the rest go, trying to be more well-rounded in our learning, doing hands on things, doing more bookwork, you name it.

I was feeling pretty frustrated and incompetent.  And I'll go ahead and say it, I was considering that maybe Mitch's special needs were more than I could handle.  Maybe teaching him was just always going to be a battle and by positioning myself as the teacher, I was inviting many more arguments and meltdowns into our home and our relationship than need be.

But then I had a conversation with a certain wise farm mama and I realized that maybe I was being too pushy.  I had tried everything I could think of to make him learn, but I hadn't tried NOT making him learn.  At least not since this summer, when we weren't "technically" homeschooling yet.  Over the summer our "cave lessons" were a big hit with all the kids.  We were just exploring something intriguing and not doing English or Math per se.  But lately I've been more panicky and worrying about what will happen next year if we get him back into his Montessori school and he's fallen behind.  I'm forgetting to just live a day at a time.  So with that in mind, instead of trying to make Mitch learn, I tried to make myself see the learning in what he was already doing.  I tried to get back to my Montessori roots and "follow the child".

So where did I find his "school"?

He and Henry have spent plenty of time learning about physics by building and knocking over towers made out of various materials...

Lots of great storytelling going on, even if none of it makes it to paper just yet.  Dress-up is a game the whole family can agree on.

He loves videography and was receptive to my requests that he storyboard his scenes instead of just screwing around with Grandma's camera (though that's fun too).

He discovered the computer game "Timez Attack" (a great free multiplication game) and I had to kick him off of it eventually for fear his eyeballs would melt from staring at the screen for so long.  He got discouraged at level 3 because it was getting too tough for him and so he decided to delete his profile and start all over at level 1 so he could get more practice.  Cue the angels singing "Gloria"...

And tonight he fell asleep rereading "Diary of a Wimpy Kid".  I think I can live with this.

It also seems like if I set out things that I'd like him to work on, enticingly displayed on the shelf, he gets around to asking about them or taking them down eventually, in his own time.  I'm usually just not that patient.  I need to work on that.  So, going all Montessori on y'all again, I need to work more on preparing his environment and putting all kinds of 3rd graderish work close at hand and work less on "teaching" him anything.

Everyone did like our themed lessons over the summer though so I asked Mitch if he'd like to do some more of those again and he said yes.  So at Mitch's suggestion I'm working on getting some car and truck lessons going. 

I'm also praying more.  Dear God, I'm at a loss with this boy, show me what to do with him (or not do with him as the case may be).  And I feel like He's answering.

We're Heeeere!

I've been missing in action for quite a while now, but the move is DONE!  Well, in the sense that we are living fairly comfortably in the new house anyways.  Our old house is still full of miscellaneous stuff that we still need to move either into the trash, the Goodwill pile, or boxes to bring over, but the heavy lifting is done.  Besides the physical move, we've also been having quite the homeschool journey as well.  More and more of my ideas about what to teach and how to teach just keep flying out the window.

Mitchell just keeps rebelling against any attempts on my part to TEACH him.  Though now that I think about it, he's been that way for the last eight years.  Even as a toddler and preschooler, if you tried to show him something, like say how to hold a baseball bat properly, he would always say either "I already KNOW how to do that" or "I don't want to".  He always wants to do things his way.  Partially out of orneryness I guess, but also because he has so darn many ideas about the world and how it works and how it SHOULD work that he doesn't have time for anyone else's ideas.  And I suppose he's been "spoiled" by his last five years of Montessori schooling (in a good way).

I was having a really hard time finding anything that would let him have the level of independence he was used to.  There were some computer based curriculums, but those were pretty spendy and I don't think he would have allowed himself to be chained to a computer either.  But God watches over us and a book that I put on my PaperbackSwap wishlist a long time ago arrived in the mail.  It was Elizabeth G. Hainstock's book "Teaching Montessori in the Home: The School Years".  It has been a lifesaver!  Not only does it tell me how to introduce the different activities, it also gives me tips on how to make or buy the Montessori materials I need cheap or free.

So far for Mitchell i've just gotten together the materials for the multiplication board and the multiplication summary sheets, but my plan is to try to make at least one new material a week for Mitchell and also for the rest of the kids. Watching Mitch work on math happily and excitedly (and independently!) inspired me to start introducing Montessori works to my other children as well.

We've already been doing a pretty good job with our Montessori baby I think.  She uses the potty, has toys of all different materials, eats the kitchen utensils, and doesn't wear restrictive clothing so she can move and groove on the floor with the best of them.  Last week I started introducing some cursive to Henry and he's just eating it up.  My goal is to slowly but surely increase my collection of Montessori preschool and elementary materials so by the time Ivy is ready for them, i'm ready for her too.

That's the bummer about being the oldest I think - you are always the guinea pig.  But you also get to be the teacher too.  Mitchell has taught me sooo much about what it means to teach, what it means to be a mom.  He took all the ideas I had about kids when I was a high school babysitter, how I was going to parent someday, and just ripped them to shreds.  Sad kind of, but i'm older and MUCH wiser now thanks in no small part to him.

The View From Here: Ivy

I have a nice little corner set up for Ivy and bought her a great little toy arch to hang things on for her.  Guess what?  She hates it.  She doesn't mind a little floor time in the corner now and then, but she has absolutely no interest in that toy arch.  I've tried to hang different things on it to catch her eye, but to no avail.  I made some really neat high contrast thingies out of cardboard for her that I hung on there - she wouldn't even look at them.

I'm still not sure why things on the arch don't interest her, but I did notice something when I was changing her yesterday.  It seemed that she likes looking at the grate on the little metal wipes shelf over her changing table.  So I said to myself, "Self, if the baby won't go to the cute developmental thingies, bring the cute developmental thingies to the baby."

I hug my black and white and red masterpieces from her wipes shelf and bazinga!  She DEFINITELY noticed them at the next diaper change.  Her eyes were open wide and she held very still and just stared.  She was mesmerized.  Here is the view from Ivy's changing table...

Now as you can probably see, she was already getting some interesting patterns and contrast from the stuff that I had placed on the shelf.  But mamas like to feel useful once in a while so i'm going to leave the hanging things up there anyway since she seems to like them even better.  It's hard to tell from the picture, but i've also hung the three objects at three different heights, so there is some depth perception work going on there too.

If you'd like to make something out of these nice high contrast infant patterns, you can print them from here.  Then make them into whatever you want.  I glued them onto cardboard and hung them with curling ribbon (what I had on hand).  You could just tape them up on a wall or car seatback or wherever your baby might want something interesting to look at.  Make a little book out of them for you and baby to sit together and look at?  Be creative!

Oh My Goodness, There's A Baby In There!

When Violet was a baby I got introduced to the whole attachment parenting idea.  I didn't immediately fall in love with all of the principles, but I dabbled a bit.  One of the principles recommends babywearing as a way to connect more with your baby.  We wore Mitchell in a backpack out in the Boundary Waters when he was six months old, but it wasn't a day-to-day kind of a thing.  Over the last three kids we have owned a Baby Bjorn and a woven Ellaroo wrap, besides the big hiking backpack.  I used them occasionally, but it always just seemed easier to have whichever baby it was in their baby bucket seat or to hold them.

When I found out with Violet that it was supposed to be pretty beneficial to them to be worn, I tried to wear her more, but she was pretty content just sitting in a highchair or bouncy seat so it didn't become a very high priority.  Besides, the Ellaroo was a pain to get on and off and the Bjorn hurt my back, so it was more of a chore to wear her, than a benefit to me.  I even bought one of those death bags that were supposed to be so great to see if that would work better, but that one hurt my shoulder and it seemed like Violet couldn't breathe very well in there so I quit using it.  I figured babywearing just wasn't for us.

But as Violet grew we started hanging out at a local mecca for urban hippies called The Parenting Oasis.  It seemed like everyone was wearing their baby, and it was so EASY for them!  The babies looked happy and comfortable (and breathing just fine) and the mamas were able to pop them in and out of their carriers with ease and no apparent back pain.  I became determined to figure out their secret.

After some research and impromptu surveys I figured out that my problem was bad products.  This time around I tried a Moby wrap and lo and behold, it worked!  It was kind of a pain to get on and off, but the beauty was that since it was stretchy, I could easily get Ivy in and out without taking the whole darn thing off.  The super wide shoulders not only made it very comfortable to wear, but a hidden benefit was that when she was out of it, it looked kind of like a funky shirt instead of an empty carrier, so I could just leave it on.  Another hidden benefit - it was so cozy that it was like a magical sleeping wrap.  As soon as I popped Ivy in it she would fall asleep within about five minutes and would sleep until I took her out.  This made trips to the grocery store with four kids a little less scary than it sounds.  Ivy would sleep the entire time in the wrap so it was like I was only taking three kids (which is still a daunting task in and of itself).

The Moby served us well in May and June, but July it was just too darn hot to be wrapping all that fabric around me every day.  I went looking for other options and found the adjustable Hotslings sling.  Another great find.  We use this one pretty much every single day lately.

Something that we did to try and encourage ourselves to wear her more was to outlaw the baby bucket.  We have been using the convertible Britax Marathon right from birth and skipping the infant seat altogether.  So when we get to our destination, we have to either carry Ivy in our arms or wear her, there's no temptation to just carry her around in the bucket instead.  Part of this was a conscious decision to try to offer her more stimulation, interaction, and bonding on a daily basis, and part of this was just the fact that for the life of me I can't find the base to the infant seat.  It is lost somewhere in the depths of my storage room (I think... but maybe I got rid of it?  But why would I do that?  I don't know...).  Another one of "the hidden benefits of disorder" (read it!).

All this babywearing has yielded some pretty interesting effects.  It seems like every where I go, there are twice as many people cooing and smiling at Ivy than ever interacted with my other children as infants.  Every store or place of business we go into, customers and staff are always saying "Oh my goodness - there's a baby in there!  Awwww, doesn't she look snug and cozy right there next to her mama."  I thought maybe Ivy was just exceptionally cute (but what mama doesn't think that?) but then the receptionist at the pediatrician's office said something that made me think.  She said "Oh how sweet!  What a cutie!  We never really get to see the babies because they are usually in their seat on the floor."

Wow - I was stunned.  They are receptionists at a PEDIATRICIAN'S OFFICE and they never really get to see babies?  But it makes sense.  You aren't supposed to put those buckets up on the counter, for safety, so people set them down on the floor.  All the babies get is a good view of everyone's ankles.  Ivy, on the other hand, up in her sling, gets to see everyone's faces, watch what i'm doing (she loves to watch me wash dishes from the sling - lots of clanking and splashing and movement), and interact with both me and whoever else may be around.

These days, when I see a baby at a store in a bucket it makes me sad.  I mean, mom probably puts the baby in the bucket at home, puts the bucket into the stroller or shopping cart when they get to their destination, maybe does the same at another store, then goes home and maybe even leaves the baby in the seat even longer if they are asleep.  The baby spends the whole morning getting little to no human touch or interaction unless they cry for it.  As I was walking into Chipotle yesterday with Ivy in the sling, I found myself kissing her head and patting her butt.  If she had been in a bucket, she certainly wouldn't have been getting that kind of interaction as I walked in the door.  It's little things like that that add up and I think are really great for her.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not judging the moms carry babies around in those buckets.  That was totally me three years ago.  I've done that hundreds of times without batting an eye.  But I feel like my eyes are open now and I would never go back.

P.S.  The Hotslings instructions says their product is also good for pets so OF COURSE I had to try it out on my furbaby lol - she likes it.

Ivy's Space

I can't title this "Ivy's Room", because she doesn't have a room.  But really, does an infant need a whole room?  I think not.  A while back I told you all about my plans for the "baby nook" so today I thought I would update with pictures.  You won't see Ivy in any of them because she is sleeping in my bed with Mitchell right now, but I had a quiet moment so thought I would let you see what we've done.


After using the space a bit I decided that Ivy needed a play space up in the livingroom, so I took some of the elements I had prepared for her nook (like the mirror) and created a corner for her upstairs also.  She also has a crib mattress in her room instead of the futon we bought for her because for the first five weeks my husband slept upstairs on the futon instead of with us while he waited for Ivy to get her days and nights straightened out.  We just haven't switched things back around yet and really, since she's no where near rolling yet, I don't think there is a pressing need.

The corner upstairs turned out really nicely.  And since her area is flanked on three sides by a bookshelf, a wall, and an armchair, she is able to be on the floor pretty safely and not really in constant peril of being stepped on.

Now, don't think that my whole house is this clean and the "maelstrom" in the title is a bit of exaggeration.  Rest assured that directly around and behind me where I am taking this picture is plenty of insanity.  Pretty much my entire mothering life, the cleanest spots in the house are the baby's area.  They are too little to mess it up.  Once it becomes a toddler area instead of a baby area though, look out!

A Culture of Milk

I pretty much have all this breastfeeding stuff down cold. I can nurse with no hands, nurse two at once, nurse anytime and anyplace with or without a blanket. Or so I thought. I recently read an article about breastfeeding as a part of family culture.  As I was reading it, it occurred to me that often, when I am breastfeeding around family, I leave the room or move to a less occupied corner of the room.  No one has ever said anything negative about my nursing or given any indication that I should leave the vicinity to do it, I just kind of figure I should.  But the funny thing is, I don't do it for my own comfort.  I am very comfortable nursing in front of people.  I have no problem nursing in front of my mom or my friends or strangers at the park.  But I guess I just figure the rest of my family would probably rather not see it even though they've never indicated that.

So I was thinking, in these days of small families where mom may be done nursing the last one before the first is even out of diapers, many children and teens and young adults just aren't seeing much breastfeeding going on around them.  So, why would they see it as a totally natural and great thing when they've never really SEEN it much at all?

This will not be an issue plaguing my kids.  Mitchell is 8 and he is already very supportive of breastfeeding.  He brings me the baby if he thinks she's hungry, and he has no qualms about coming up and hugging and kissing Ivy while she is latched on.  To him breastfeeding is as normal as changing a diaper.  And many of our friends are pretty public nursers so all the kids witness breastfeeding on a pretty regular basis even when i'm not currently nursing anyone.

It never occurred to me that by nursing in another room, perhaps I am doing my younger extended family members a disservice. Far be it from me to be one who keeps breastfeeding in the shadows.  I want my female family members to feel comfortable nursing around me - I would never want them to have to go in another room (unless of course they really wanted to). I am the oldest child in my family, one of the oldest cousins too.  And many of the younger family members are just starting to get to the age of having babies of their own.  What better way to show them that it's okay to nurse with us than leading by example?  So if this next generation is going to have a strong family culture of breastfeeding, let it begin with me.

Ready As I'll Ever Be

The due date is just 12 days away and other than a general layer of filth over the household, I would say we are pretty ready for baby.  We have help in place for this month, all the unisex baby clothing is unpacked and washed and put in drawers, but most of all - the baby has a safe, beautiful, quiet place to be.  We've finished the baby nook.  I WOULD post pictures right now, but in working on getting our room clean yesterday, my dear husband tromped all over the baby's floor bed and decided the baby nook was a great place to store junk while he was cleaning.  I cleaned it back out again, but I still need to vacuum in there and the bedding needed to be washed after dirty junk was stacked on it.  So I'll take pics after the bedding is back in there.  But in the meantime i'll tell you what we did.  Amazingly I managed to finish just about everything on my list!


We started with a coat of light green paint, and my husband got it in his head that the baby should have carpet (the only carpet in our entire house) so he installed a brown carpet remnant on the floor.  We used a
 bookshelf we got off of craigslist.com for a room divider and covered the remaining distance with a Regalo Easy Step Extra Wide gate.  That combo seems to be working pretty well since we bolted the bookshelf to the wall.

The floor bed was from craigslist.com as well - a twin size futon.  It is quite firm and thin and low to the ground so while it would make a pretty uncomfortable night's sleep for an adult on a futon frame, it should work perfectly for our purposes.  I'm looking forward to being able to nurse baby to sleep laying down in THAT bed and then sneaking away for adult time with the hubby in OUR bed.  Nothing like nursing laying down to get a new baby knocked out, but invariably when you try to gently put them in their own bed, they wake up.  Hopefully this will be a great solution to that problem.

 We have some Wee Gallery wall decals up for decorations.  I had seen the Wee Gallery art cards in various Montessori catalogs and thought they were great, so when I saw that they also made wall decals, I knew I had to have some for the baby's nook.  They turned out very cute.  I'm not sure how long they will last (when Julia was two she ripped down the beautiful wallpaper mural we had up for her) but at least they were cheap and I know where I can get more in case these get destroyed (as often happens in this house).

I decided to skip the eyebolt in the ceiling for the mobiles for a couple of reasons.  First was that I could just see the kids going crazy and trying to hang on any kind of rope or string or elastic that hung down all the way from the ceiling.  And second was that I wanted more portability.  I'm not sure how much time the baby will really spend in that space so I thought that a portable mobile holder would make more sense.  So we ended up with a wooden toy arch from Ikea which has removable toys and is set up very nicely to be able to hang your own items from it.  We did hang a mobile from the baby's ceiling, but it is one just for looking at.  For that mobile we went with the Flensted swallow mobile.  I like it because it is high contrast (black, white, red) and contrasts well against our white ceiling, and also it is extremely lightweight so it moves in the slightest air currents in our house.  If you open up the window in the baby's room and lay on the floor bed you can see the sky and clouds out the window, the swallow mobile twirling, and hear the birds out in the backyard - it's lovely.

The other thing we have in the baby's nook was a splurge that I've been eyeing for a long time.  I wanted one with both Henry and Violet but just couldn't afford it or justify it.  It's an unbreakable child-safe mirror that mounts either vertically or horizontally.  I have it in the horizontal position right now, but once the baby grows out of that, I can put it vertically and the whole family can use it for hygiene and grooming.

As usual, the baby's room is the nicest room in the house.  When each of the kids were born we put alot of time and effort and love into their first rooms that we NEVER give to the rest of the house.  It's just so much more fun to make a beautiful nursery than it is to clean the livingroom or do dishes.  Another upside?  They don't make it dirty!  For about the first 6 months or even more, if you clean the baby's room, it pretty much stays clean.  Unlike the rest of the house which is filthy again about 20 minutes after you've cleaned it.

So while there is still (and always) more things to do around here, I think we are about as ready for this baby as we'll ever be!  Wish us luck!

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

So, with baby #4 on the way, i've been making some plans for how we are going to set things up for the new little one. In the past the middle bedroom has always been the nursery, but currently it is occupied by Jamie and Julie and I don't think moving them would be a wise idea. They are pretty happy and the room is pretty well set up and you know what they say about sleeping dogs. Our plan at this point is to make the nook at the foot of the basement stairs into a little baby sleeping space - kind of a mini bedroom. We'll have all the baby's stuff (dresser, misc baby gear, etc) in Mitchell's room, and technically the two of them will be sharing a room, but not really.

I've been doing alot of reading about Montessori nurseries and floor beds and the like. Mitchell's room is no place for a floor bed for sure. He is eight and the floor of his room is littered with legos and paper airplanes and chunks of dissected remote control cars. Not very baby safe. So we decided that while the basement nook isn't big enough to be a real bedroom, it does have room for a twin size futon mattress on the floor, a small shelf, a mobile, some low art and a mirror. And from what I have gathered, that is pretty much the essence of a Montessori bedroom for the first year of life so for now I think it will work.

Most of this is still in my head, but I did pick up a new twin futon mattress on craigslist this weekend and some foam puzzle mats to pad the floor (the floor is concrete) so we are on our way. Some other things on my list for the mini-Montessori nursery are:

*Paint the nook - it is currently stark white with gray concrete floor - not very calming or beautiful or anything. In fact, somewhat reminiscent of an insane asylum which really isn't that far off from the reality of our house. I'm thinking a light, gentle green.

*Cover the floor - like I said, it's concrete. A large rug or carpet remnant should do it though, with foam pads around the bed for extra padding.

*Fence off the area - not sure how we're going to do this yet. Probably some combination of bookshelves and a large gate. It's not a big area so it shouldn't be too tough.

*Montessori mobiles - an eyebolt in the ceiling should be doable, and i've found some cute, cheap mobiles on Etsy and Amazon. We'll start with something high contrast, then move to the Gobbi, then a grasping ring. Once baby is more mobile we'll find something beautiful to hang higher up just for looking at.

*An unbreakable mirror - i've found them for about $90 so I think this will be the most expensive part of the nursery. Well worth it though I think because we can use it long after #4 is done with babyhood.

So - those are my goals for now. We'll see how much of that comes to fruition, but here's hoping!