6:30

IS NOT A TIME TO WAKE UP. It is a time to roll over, look at the clock and go. back. to. bed. It makes me hella grumpy to make eggs and toast at this unearthly hour when none of my friends are up because their awesome toddlers sleep until 8, or 10 even (though the friend who's son does that is about 20 months pregnant and she may or may not be in for a rude awakening). Oliver insists that it is indeed the time to wake up. He is wrong, but there is no talking to the child. I long for day light savings.

Henley has been going through what all babies go through when they hit about 4 months old and is waking up every hour or so. It is completely unfair that parenting books tell you at 4 months children should be able to only wake once. Yea, I guess they should be able to, except for the fact that this is the time that they 1. Learn to roll over 2. Learn that there is an outside world that is interesting 3. Need to take in the biggest amount of breastmilk that they will ever need. I really wish that they would include that, because without fail, women with children this age decide that this night waking is happening to only them and it must mean that 1. They are deficient 2. The baby is ready for solids 3. To let the baby cry cause it is being needy and manipulative.

I wish they would just suffer through it like I am having to do and stop reading parenting books. Parenting books for new moms are like fashion magazines for teenagers. They will only make you feel ugly. No matter what you are doing or how good you have it, you will never ever ever have the perfect baby they seem to think you should have. I am very much a fan of books that talk about child rearing philosophy but not so much on those that talk about specifics. How to books are for car mechanics, not mothers.

Henley is an amazing child. She talks so much, laughs often and is so interactive which is half the issue. Seems the child doesn't want to stop cooing for long enough to fall asleep. I never really understood that whole "mothering is so rewarding" thing with Oliver. He was so serious, he never laughed and rarely smiled so after a while I just gave up. After reading Nurture Shock I am pretty convinced that my lack of responsiveness was what lagged his language so far behind. I love both my kids of course, but, as a wise woman once said, "You should just throw the first baby out, like the first batch of biscuits." In otherwords, the first time around you are going to screw up and freak out about 100 times a day. By the second, it is down to about 50. You will ruin the experience with worry and fear that the child will never eat, never sleep and will never walk. I am trying very very hard not to do that this time.

Henley on the other hand, is a much more expressive child. Her cries even sound like "mooommy, daaaaddy!" and even though it is frustrating, it is still super cute to listen to. Thank god, for now she takes really good and long naps. Two hours in the morning, 2-3 in the afternoon and one hour at around 4pm. This is, of course, only true if I never leave the house and put her down exactly one and a half hours after she woke up. I miss my friends, my playdates and the inside of my car. I know this won't last forever, and I should take this downtime to reconnect with Ollie and catch up with my reading, so I will just let it be for now.

A Cluster of Caterpillars

Thanks to an interwebz friend of mine, I was able to grow some terrific looking sunflowers this year. Terrific, that was, until they were eaten in their entirety. At first glance it looks like the sun just got to these flowers, too much of a good thing perhaps. However, at second glance you may get the heeby-jeebies. An army of caterpillars - side note: I have grown to really enjoy what a group of things are called: An destruction of wild cats, a battery of barracudas, a congregation of alligators, you get the picture - has taken over my once vibrant plants. These are mean looking suckers! They have spines on their backs.



In my never ending quest obsession to teach my kids about nature lately, I am thinking what a wonderful way to teach Oliver about the metamorphosis of a butterfly. I really hoped it was a butterfly and not some icky moth, those things freak me out just a little. I think it is their lack of shame. Butterflies are pretty and they don't like to be caught, moths get tangled in your hair if you are standing too close to a lightbulb. Stupid moths, clearly the cocker spaniels of the insect kingdom.

So, not having an expert friend to call, I google it and come to find out, we have our selves a coven of "Painted Ladies" butterflies. All the information I could find on them were how to get rid of the little buggers. I guess they are a real problem for sunflower seed farmers across America. Darn butterflies, taking the seeds right out of the mouths of sunflower seed addicted people in this nation, what else would my sister nosh on during long car trips or while drinking lots of beer at the farm? Anyway, for my purposes, the caterpillars are welcome to stay, as they are not disturbing my other crops and they are getting fatter by the day.


Soon we shall have a bumper crop of chrysalises and then BUTTERFLIES!!! I am showing Oliver each step, but to be honest, even with the help of Eric Carle, I am not sure he is really grasping the concept. I sure am geeking out though, this is something I have wanted to do since I was a little feller and my grandmama tied a stocking on a stick and went butterfly catching. We never caught one, but at least we looked silly!!

Picnics

I hesitate to even write about this because I didn't get any video or photo footage of the event, and apparently some people who read my blog skip any post with out photos, which, quite frankly, hurts my feelers just a bit. However, the reason I started this blog is so that people could keep up with us as a family, even though they live far away and so that I could document the lives of my children. So in that spirit, it would be a shame NOT to post.

This weekend has been one of blankets on the grass, grease dripping down your arm, mosquitoes nipping at your nose and the discovery of stars. On Friday, we met some friends at an outdoor production of Annie in a local (not so local to the burbs) downtown park. Now, those of you who know us know that sleep is sacred to the Goss family and schedule is the idol at whose feet we worship. Dinner at 5, bath at 7, sleep at 8. The play started at 8:30pm. In an effort to make summer a magical, fun, exploratory time, we broke the schedule and went anyway. Luckily, Oliver slept from 2-5pm for his nap, so it threw the schedule off just enough to be workable.

A sea of bodies all perched on the side of a hill greeted us as we weaved in and out of the crowd to find our blanket. Thank god we have friends who went earlier and reserved a spot earlier in the day, we had nearly front row seats! As soon as the sun dropped below the merciful trees, the show began. I was nervous about how Oliver would sit still for a performance that was not animated, but he was transfixed to the stage! I caught him singing along to songs he has never even heard before out of pure joy and a need to feel a part of the action in front of him. He delighted at the dog (who was less than professional) who played Sandy, and even the baby was quietly happy during the performance. Side note, it is nearly impossible to nurse on the side of a hill. There is absolutely no good way to comfortably do it.

During a lull in the singing and choreography, Oliver looked up into the night sky. He gasped! "STARS!!! Mommy, daddy, LOOK STARS!!" Yes, there were stars, just starting to appear. I turned my attention back to the stage, but he kept looking up. I didn't get it until this morning that this was the first time in over 6 months that he has seen stars. Thanks to my stringent schedule, my son missed the stars. This is a lesson, never allow sleep to get in the way of enjoying the night and understanding the world. We all left that night tired and happy...except for the baby who screamed at such a fevered pitch the entire way home I thought she was being stabbed by goblins. Car seat goblins are terrible this time of year. She resolved her screaming into a rumbling growl by the time we got home, which sorta made us smile. She was too tired to scream, but by god she was still pissed.

The next day, Saturday, we headed out to the family farm for some downtime and running around hiking time with the kiddos. We had planned on mowing the lawn and doing other tasks for upkeep, but secretly I had plans of a hammock, me and a book. Unfortunately, that was not meant to be as one of my cousins had planned a "bachelor weekend" and all his friends were there playing poker and drinking (and mowing, thanks guys!). Side note, when going to the farm, you should NOT bring a 50" big screen TV. The whole point is to be outside, playing games and getting back to nature...TV will be there when you get back home.

So, we took the lunch that we had bought at the best sausage place in the entire world (love you Southside!!) and packed up the kids and went into the woods to enjoy our picnic. Oliver found the perfect place to have our picnic. We lay our blanket over the soft pine needles and thanked the trees for providing the perfect amount of shade. We ate our lunch, drank some beer leftover from the night before and talked. I will never forget the site of CT peeing on a tree and Oliver standing beside him with his hands behind his back, extremely serious looking, learning how to do the same. "You gotta lean back, son!" Oliver nods. I laughed and cursed myself for not bringing my camera. On the way back to the car, we see a gigantic spider, once again, I am angry we didn't bring the camera, and then even angrier I didn't see the barbed wire that afixed itself to my leg until it ripped into my calf. The spider was worth it though, especially since Oliver's favorite book right now is "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle.

Yea we were hot about 90% of this weekend. Sweat dripped into our eyes and the kids were both sticky, smelly and dirty. We got mosquito bites and chigger bites and I probably have tetanus. But there were smiles on our faces, lessons about growing up and parenting buzzing in our heads and for the first time in a long time, we got to say hello to the stars.

The Idle Parent

Long morning this morning, we got out at 9am to get gas before the Mother Goose Storytime at the library, and then we went to Old Navy at 10 to buy some super cheap duds (hello $2.50 flip flops and $2 camis!?!). I found myself not sure what to do with the rest of the morning before naptime at 1pm, so we headed to the park after I checked the temperature gauge on my dashboard. As it only read 88 degrees, we headed there.

First let me say that the park is not my favorite. Oliver doesn't really know what to do with himself because he wants me to play WITH him and to be honest, climbing around a playscape with a 14lb baby strapped to my chest in boiling weather is less than fun. He gets bored, I get grumpy, and we leave, usually within the hour. I have been reading several different sources about letting kids be kids, leaving them alone to pursue the joys and pitfalls of the world and living without being there every moment of every second of the day to catch them when they stumble. The idea is, kids NEED to stumble, they need to mess up and get dirty and fall down to learn how to get back up again. Falling is half of the fun and failing is most of the journey!


So, having read all of four chapters of the three books I want to read on the subject (listed below), I wanted to try an experiment. I would sit in the shade with the baby while Oliver explored his world. I would not freak out that I could not see him. I would not worry that the mother over there was judging me for letting him slide down a slide alone. I would allow him to interact with children of all ages and work problems out for himself. If he called for me, I would go, but once I helped him with what he wanted, I would go back to being an observer.

Guess what happened? He. Played. Let me go back to say that the child has rarely played by himself for longer than 5 minutes since the baby was born. I guess some kids regress with sleep, or peeing (did that too) but his major regression was play. He climbed to the top of the playscape, he slid down the slide repeatedly, he found a place where he could scare every parent in the park by swinging over a 4 foot drop, he ran over to some 7-8 year olds who were pretending to play restaurant with the twigs and rocks and ordered a pie (no joke, the kid asked for a pie). Eventually, a nosy parent went over to where four kids of varying ages and sexes were playing sweetly and politely together and ruined all of it by hovering and wondering why this long haired hippie boy was without parent.

So, Oliver lost interest and asked to go to the creek that runs behind the park. All three of us waded in it a bit, until Oliver got his shorts wet in the water and started panicking because he knows "wet pants=time to go immediately" but I assured him that he was okay, that the water getting him wet was not the same as pee getting him wet. After a while, I sat down on a rock, happy as a clam to watch him try to catch fish, poke at the moss with sticks, watch leaves go down stream, toss rocks into the creek and finally, find a "wand" that he would turn me into a baby bird so he could feed me worms.

While the kids played with a very nice, albeit boring and plastic playscape which was quickly heating up in the sun, Oliver poked around in the bushes barefoot with his poking stick and walked in a creek. Just by breathing, I was able to allow him to discover the magic of a summer day with nothing to do and no where to be. He played for almost two hours in that way. When was the last time your toddler did anything for two hours?

My only regret? I didn't bring a book. No really, the hard part about being an "Idle Parent" for me isn't really the idea that he is going to get hurt. My house has far more things that can kill him than the tiny part of wilderness we found today, but it was the eyes of other parents. The women who don't let their kids play alone, who hover and cajole and say "no" constantly. They are worn out and feel I should be too. I felt like I was being a terrible mom just by enjoying the day and letting him enjoy it without me structuring his playtime. I felt more relaxed at the end of our trip than if I had taken a nap. Best part? It was the best parent I have been in a long time, and all I did was sit, watch and enjoy my children.

Books to read on Idle Parenting/getting back to nature

Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
The Idle Parent by Tom Hodgkinson
Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy

I Love My Husband

You know that day? That day when you just feel so angry that you even HAD kids in the first place? That day when your couch smells like pee and your shoulder smells like puke? That day when the baby and the toddler are conspiring against you to see who can make you the craziest? That day when you lock yourself out side of the house on purpose just to have a moment of peace? That day when you yell at the toddler "watch your sister" and take off in the car to get the mail just so you can clear out the murderous thoughts in your head - only to feel guilty for doing so, even though it only took about 30 seconds to do it. That day when you call your mom to come over to help you cook something you really don't need help with, just to hear the sound of another adult's voice? Well that day was yesterday.

I of course bitched to my husband about how sad and pitiful my charmed life is. Poor pitiful me, I don't have to work and I get to stay home with my babies all day and live comfortably and don't really have to worry about money and my biggest stressor is that my babies want to touch me too much. Woe is me. I know, I know, stupid bourgeois problems. But they are MY problems, which make them huge and overwhelming. There isn't ever anything that "goes wrong" it is just an overall feeling of hatred at the day and situation.

The day got better, with help from a kiddie pool and some nap down time, but I was still feeling rough by the time my husband came home. When I saw what he had brought me, it made me love him all over again:They were eaten quickly, but will be savored always. He just got them for me on the spur of the moment, nothing huge, but to me, they were everything. From the top left, we have: creme brulee, salted butter carmel, pecan and cardamom. Dear lord, how that man must love me!!

An Alternative Lifestyle

I wanted to post my shot schedule here, as many people have asked, and it would be a nice way to look back at what shots were like in 2010, before the zombie apocalypse of 2025 (it will happen people, be prepared and have your axes sharpened).

But first, a look back as to what kids USED to be given, say in 1982 when I was the cutest baby alive. In 1983, the schedule consisted of 10 vaccines given to children before the age of 6 years. In 2007, 36 vaccines are given. Check it out yourself: http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/cdc_comparison.pdf Were kids dying at an inordinate rate in 1983 from things like chicken pox, mumps and diptheria? No. Did the drug companies figure out how they can make a shit ton of money off of vaccines? Yes!

I feel that vaccines are a personal choice, and range in necessity from family to family and even child to child. If I had a high risk child, or lived a high risk lifestyle (formula feeding or daycare exposure) my children would probably have been given the entire gambit of vaccinations. Maybe not even then, as polio has been extinct for years in 90% of the world and the HPV vaccine is killing a high percentage of the girls it is supposed to be "helping". So, my husband and I sat down after about three years of research on my part to decide, once and for all, what vaccines OUR kids needed. I am not a doctor, so please do not treat our vaccine schedule as medical advice, just an educated guess.

We decided to skip altogether the following vaccines:

Hep B - this is a sexually transmitted disease that babies are not likely to get, at which time my children are of age to make sexual decisions, they can at that time get that vaccine
Polio (IPV)- My grandmother had this disease as an adult, and it caused her much pain and weakness for the rest of her life, I get the horror of this disease. My children will not be receiving this vaccine as the disease has been eradicated from the majority of the world and the chances of getting it are about zero.
Rotavirus (Rota) - This vaccine has about a 50% fail rate and as my children are not in a high risk category, I am skipping it. The only people I know who get this flu are the people who vaccinate against it, no thanks.
Chicken Pox (Varicella) - Last time I checked, chicken pox was not a deadly disease, less so than the flu, this is big pharma stealing money from over concerned parents.
HPV - Another sexually transmitted disease that most women have had or will get. Some forms of it cause cervical cancer, however, this vaccine only vaccinates against a small percentage of the Human Papalmoa viruses, and not the ones that cause cancer at that. I HAD this disease (though my body healed itself and I don't have it anymore) and I still won't vaccinate against it. This vaccine is also killing many girls and has been made illegal in other countries to test or distribute.
Flu - Don't get me started on this one. Remember the swine flu?? Yea, you are still alive aren't you? Well so am I and everyone I know, and we didn't get the shot.

So what ARE we giving our kids? Don't worry folks, there are more shots than you can imagine, these are the ones we ARE giving our kids:

Diphtheria, Tetanus and Pertussis (DTaP) - Though no one has died from diphtheria since the Oregon Trail, they have decided to lump it together with diseases people still get often, tetanus and pertussis. Pertussis is rampant here, especially in the summer and can be deadly to a newborn-1 year. After that you are pretty much in the clear and it just results is a bad cough, but Oliver is fully vaxed against it cause he is around tiny babies all the time and I don't want him passing it on. If they made individual shots of these, I would give them to my kids, but they don't and I suspect the reason why is $$.

HiB - Very long name, very rare disease, but the side effects are minimal and if you get the disease there is a slim chance of survival so we said what the heck, lets throw caution to the wind and jab our kids with it.

Prevnar (PCV) - This guards against a disease that can cause spinal meningitis in small babies. It is rare, but kids still get it all the time. A friend of mine just had a baby in the hospital for a month recovering with this disease, so yea, we are getting it done. Too bad the stupid nurse gave our kids the WRONG EFFIN VACCINE last time...

Hep A - This is a food borne disease that we are giving our kids before they go to school because ever since the Bush administration, kids' lunches aren't even scrutinized by the FDA anymore and are about 25 cents worth of nutrition and hygeine standards, so yea, we will get this, but delayed as they are low risk at the moment.
MMR - Ah yes, the "autism" vaccine. If they would just split these up, I would have no issue giving my children this vaccine on schedule, however, they won't ($$) and keep promising to do it next year (sorta a free beer tomorrow situation). We will get this, but around the time the kids go to elementary school and not a moment before. This is a heavy duty vaccine, and I do not want their immune systems weakened by it. I care less about the shaky autism link and more about the link to celiac, lupus, crones, and other immunological diseases.

Our vaccine schedule as it stands today (I will change as I study, I am sure):
* 2 months:DTaP
* 3 months: Prevnar (Pc), HiB
* 4 months: DTaP
* 5 months: Prevnar(Pc), HiB
* 6 months: DTaP
* 7 months: Prevnar (Pc), HiB
* 15 months: Prevnar (Pc), HiB
* 18 months: DTaP
* 2 1/2 years: HepA
* 3 1/2 years: HepA
* 4 years: DTaP
* 5 years: MMR
* 12 years:Tdap
* 13 years: Meningococcal (or earlier)

Month Four

Poor Henley, it is like she is the back up singer for Oliver. The stage manager to Oliver's one man show. It isn't fair that the second kid always gets the raw end of the deal. Make no mistake, I definitely love her more. She sleeps on a schedule, almost never cries, takes a paci, both smiles and laughs and makes Julianne fries. Its just that, she hasn't done anything that we haven't seen before. Sure, it is cuter coming from a baby with a bow on her head, but it is the same rolling over and such we saw the first time around. Plus, if I tried to take pictures, or video or whatever, all you would see is either Oliver dancing in the frame, or me dropping the camera because Oliver decided to pick that moment of distraction to jump off the top of the bookshelf or something. Sometimes I think I should let him jump (lesson of the day: gravity!)

Anyway, back to the star of this show, lets give her the due 15 minutes of attention a day that all second children are due. We went for her four month appointment last week, and she is 13.5lbs and 25 inches long. 50% for weight, and 80% for height!! She is doing great in all aspects! The doctor warned us about keeping her out of the sun, and then told us to give her a vitamin D supplement - cause you know, common sense just doesn't work any more. We are okay to keep breastfeeding for now, but rice cereal MUST be introduced between now and 6 months or ELSE!!! I think one day my head will pop off my shoulders and my eyes will fall out of my head from all the nodding and eye rolling.

As many of you know we are on a alternative schedule with regards to vaccines (which I will post in its own post). Long story short, we get one or two each month and have decided to reject some all together (polio, chicken pox, hpv). At our visit, the doctor commented on how we hadn't done a certain shot yet, and I was so busy rolling my eyes and nodding that I didn't realize at the time that Henley should have had that specific shot last month. I called later when I came to my senses, and sure enough, they gave her the wrong shot last month. I am so glad that the three years of researching what toxins and disease I did and did not want in my baby's body was all for naught because a nurse doesn't know how to listen. So, we are behind on our schedule which means I have to drag my two kids back up to the office one more month than we would have had to previously. This time with my shot schedule in tow.

And now, you will have to excuse me, my son is ticked that this blog took 15 minutes to write and now is sobbing in the other room because he is bored and I am a lazy and terrible mother for not attending to him at all times of the day. When did he forget how to play alone?