Healthy Mum, Happy Baby

Gayla of You Grow Girl sent along a few more links for ideas for gardening with kids. She suggested www.kidsgardening.com and a section on her site with realistic jobs for kids in the garden: www.yougrowgirl.com/garden/jobsforkids.php 

She also suggested starting small with “really simple stuff like starting a small herb from plant or seed…giving the kids one plant that is already there is a good start for a really young kid.”

A friend sent a link to an great article from Britain’s The Independent newspaper from May 22nd called Tyranny of the child gurus: You don’t have to be a paranoid parent which is well worth reading, it starts:

There was a time when parents were told that to guarantee family happiness, children should be seen and not heard. Today it seems, to some, that a role reversal has taken place. In the 21st century, it is the parents themselves who are being told to shut up and learn from their betters.

The once private world between parent and child has been annexed by an army of policymakers, so-called childcare gurus and supernannies proffering a bewildering array of daunting, if well-meant, advice.

And there’s great stuff on how mothering has been taken away from mothers and handed over to “the experts”, plus the whole hollywood mother image of losing all your baby weight post-haste etc. Plus there are low downs on the theories and practices of Jo Frost (aka Super Nanny), Sheila Kitzinger and Dr. Spock among others.

I was interested to read it because it crystalized some of the things I wrote about in the book like weight loss and knowing your own child and trusting your own instincts, so it really echoed with me.

Full article >> 

note: if you visit the site and the article isn’t available please email me and I can send you the copy.

I’ve found a couple of helpful links this morning while I’m battling my guilt about sending my not 100% preschooler back to daycare and adding an extra day of daycare to my toddler’s week. How am I justifying it? After almost a week of sicko preschooler and now a postop hubby I need some time to get caught up before the weekend with almost helpless hubby hits us.

All that aside, now that strawberries are coming into season did you know that they’re not just an excellent source of vitamin C and fibre but they’re also antioxidant-rich and thus can help promote heart health and protect against cancer and inflammatory diseases? They’re also an important fruit to eat organic if possible as per the Environmental Working Group’s list of most pesticide contaminated foods.
>> Strawberry source & >> EWG source

And channeling strawberries, Daily Candy recently posted a great do-it-yourself spring renewal facial with ingredients including yogurt and strawberries… >> Daily Candy 

And are you already a fan of Caring for Kids? It’s seaonally appropriate kids health info from the Canadian Pediatric Society and I find there’s almost always something worth reading in their montly newsletters.
>> Caring for Kids

Well I might have it, but Lucy doesn’t want it anymore, so I’m feeling a little sad. She’s been down to one nurse a day for ages now (first thing in the am) and it’s sort of our cuddle time and my time to sit for five whole minutes, but for the last week all she does is nurse for a few moments and then bite me. If I try again she bites me again. If I switch sides she bites me again. I love her and I enjoy nursing her but I am not willing to be bitten all morning long.

This morning I didn’t even try and she seemed fine with it. Since this is almost certainly our last baby this means I will never breastfeed again, ever. And that makes me sad, even if I sometimes found being a milk bar frustrating.

The upside? I may lose (some of) my blubby tummy that my body holds onto no matter what I do while I’m nursing (or at least that’s how it worked with Madeleine). Another plus? My “boo boos” (as M so charmingly calls them) may shrink, ’cause I don’t think I can live with an “F” cup for much longer!

Actually, none of us willingly picks (or creates) a picky eater, but if you have a child who is one, or think you’ve got one developing, April’s Today’s Parent has an article called Whining & Dining (gotta love the name) that has some handy tips. The article is taken from an upcoming book by the same name.

I was talking with another friend with a one-year-old and a three-year-old last night and she said, “Parenting is relentless!” And she’s right. She was talking about the bedtime routine, night after night, day in, day out. I was thinking washing the high-chair tray at least 3x a day, every day…I think it’s a cumulative thing too - with your first you have more energy (ie. less accumulated sleep deprivation) but by the time your second is into their second year, you’re worn down.

Hence my going on about The Balanced Mom and Breaking the Good Mom Myth. We can’t take care of our little ones if we don’t take care of ourselves! Another great book I was reminded about last night is the Three Martini Playdate - one of my favourite chapters is titled along the lines of Children’s Music, Why? Although I’d never have discovered Elizabeth Mitchell if it wasn’t for Madeleine. . .

Speaking of parenting tomes, I have found a great book called Breaking the Good Mom Myth: Every Modern Mom’s Guide to Getting Past Perfection, Regaining Sanity, and Raising Great Kids by a Canadian called Alyson Schafer. She’s a psychotherapist, parent coach and parent educator who’s attitude towards the whole parenting thing is that if we can let go of the need to be perfect and accept we’re not and ease up on ourselves we’ll get a lot farther. Rather like Healthy Mum, Happy Baby’s premise is that if you don’t take care of yourself you can’t take care of your baby, her book’s theory is similar (ie. self-care isn’t selfish!) but it’s on a larger parenting in general scale. I’m not all the way through it yet but I’d totally recommend it. And I got my copy at SuperStore where it cost $12.99 Cdn instead of $17.99.

And again, on parenting tomes, if you check the comments on that entry you’ll find some great suggestions from another mother.

Someone also pointed out to me that whole “how to comment thing was a bit unclear” as you actually have to click on the “no comments” link next to the post to add a comment…I’m going to see if there’s any way I can change that.

I’m a big fan of parenting books, I figure I can use all the help I can get, but last night I realized that a good solid 12 hours a day spent parenting should be followed up with chocolate and a glass of wine (and cleaning the kitchen, and sorting laundry and packing diaper bags to you can start the morning running) but spending all evening reading about parenting as well as all day doing it is adding insult to injury - which is in NO way to imply parenting is an injury. . .

Obviously I need a happy medium which is what? Only some nights spent reading parenting books, or being more selective in my reading?  I picked up two books from the library the other day. The first, Sippy Cups are not for Chardonnay by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor is kind of like Chick Lit parenting (maybe Mummy Lit/Parenting Lit?) light & fluffy but without enough info or helpful advice to be worth reading. The second, Mother Styles, Using Personality Type to Discover Your Parenting Strengths by Janet P. Penley (with Diane Eble) seemed more promising. Her premise is that there’s no one “right” way to parent and we have to accept our strengths and weaknesses and work around them rather than try and be perfect. So far, so good. But then you had to spend about three dense chapters figuring out your Myers Briggs personality type and maybe your partners’ too (I didn’t get that far) and how you related to each other and your children and OMG I didn’t have the energy, time or inclination. Admittedly I’m a bad sleeper and I have a three-year-old and a one-year-old so maybe someone more rested than I would have jumped at the chance but it’s not that I’m not willing to put work into my parenting, but not that kind of work.

I think obviously I need to be more selective, so I’m open to suggestions. Use the comments section to let me know what books you found helped with with parenting - which could be everything from sleep issues to discipline.

And at least I did take away the thought that none of us is a perfect parent or even can be a perfect parent and we’ll all parent differently according to our natures.