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AA and I had a fabulous date on Friday night to the Zuill Bailey and Navah Perlman concert sponsored by the St. Croix Concert Series. Sadly, it was a farewell concert for the series that has run successfully for 12 years. They performed Brahms, Chopin, and Schumann, and a special Tchaikovsky. It was truly spectacular!! Zuill Bailey played like the cello was an extension of his body, so gracefully and effortlessly! And Navah Perlman (yes, Itzak Perlman’s daughter) was remarkable, especially on the Chopin pieces. The Brahms was ferocious and vibrant, example here. Most notably beautiful piece of the night: Tchaikovsky’s Nocturne for Cello and Piano, example here but with an orchestra. They ended with Brahms’ lullaby, which is J’s night song (and more on selecting music for your child here). I wept at the beauty of it (yes, pregnant women are extra hormonal :). Here’s Bailey playing Bach’s Saraband from his cello suites in G: Breathtaking! Great NPR interview with him here. He is a master. The cello is a particular love of mine, and classical music in general, so this was a real treat to see two such artists at work. Experience beautiful music at every chance you get! If you don’t appreciate beauty, and take the time to do so, how can you instruct your children about it?
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We ate so well this weekend! It started with inspiration from Frugal Granola‘s menu plan: Carrot Cake Waffles from Willow Bird Baking and ended with Farmgirl Fare‘s delicious pizza. I hate to say I didn’t take a single photo. Not one. And we had fresh whipping cream that my sister whipped up for the top of the waffles, and pure maple syrup, and fresh fruit! The pizza ended up being a few cheese, a few andouille sausage, and a few veggie medley (artichoke hearts, yellow bell peppers, carmelized onions). I tripled her dough recipe to feed 10 hungry adults and one starving toddler. Yes, little J loves loves loves homemade pizza. My family did most of the cooking and I got to bask in the glow of happy feasting! Great food, good family time, and happy tummies. I hope you ate well this weekend!
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Being pregnant with baby number 2 gives cause for pause. And consideration about what steps need to be taken in a practical sense to be prepared, or at least, pre-prepared. I recently wrote about finding out the baby’s gender (just about 4 weeks away!) which will help greatly with the baby clothing situation. 1) Getting baby’s room ready. SuperBoy co-slept with us for about 3 months until he no longer wanted to nurse at night and in fact, don’t kill me with jealousy, he stopped waking up every 3 hours and slept about 8. This baby will sleep with us for a few months, so the actually sleeping arrangements aren’t as crucial to me as the baby’s nursery. Do I really need to have it all set up ahead of time? Well, for organization’s sake, it would be nice to have all infant clothing in one chest of drawers, a place to stash the cloth diapers (we’re doing round two with Do Good Diaper Service–love ’em as evidenced by our discussions of them in the world of cloth diapering and why to cloth diaper), and a place for baby to nap that’s quiet and away from SuperBoy. So that means moving him to his bigger boy room next door to his current nursery, and doing so with enough lead time that he doesn’t associate baby with stealing his space, right? 2) Getting SuperBoy’s new room ready. We already striped the wallpaper & repainted the room that used to have floral wallpaper and pastel…
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I totally get why people chose to not find out the gender of their unborn child. This is by no means a critique or criticism of that choice. Not at all! I’m just one of those “can’t-wait-for-my-surprise-tell-me-now” kind of people. After a conversation with my doula this morning, I thought this would make an interesting blog post. Here are a few other reasons why I like knowing the gender of the baby. 1) Relating to the child more fully. We are a gendered species, and I believe that gender spans more than mere physical sex traits. I felt like I knew SuperBoy better in utero knowing that he was a he. We also started calling him his name as soon as we found out his gender, although we kept the name (not gender) to our immediate families. Gender plays a large role in who we are as people, both metaphysically and physically. It helped AA and I feel like we were related to our baby more fully knowing he was him. 2) Preparation for parenting. Little baby boys generally differ from little baby girls in a few ways: the skills they develop early on, what they are visually interested in, aptitude in general, and the list goes on. You may disagree with this entirely, but this is what we’re going off of as parents from studies and our own experiences. I wanted to know who to be prepared to parent, in a general, vague sense. SuperBoy has access to dolls, trucks,…
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TV rots your brains, right? That’s what our moms told us as kids. But our generation had hardly anything close to the media use and screen time that kids are exposed to today. Media for children is a multi-billion dollar industry. Every cartoon character has lunch boxes, cereal, fruit snacks, back packs, placemats, cups, and more, all designed to get to consume more! More media usage, more material stuff, and more sugary unhealthy food. Two questions: why not have your infant/toddler use multimedia devices and how do you survive as a parent without them? 1) No media exposure for infants and toddlers: why not? The American Association of Pediatrics came out with a strong stance against television and screen time for children under the age of 2 in 1999 with studies backing up their recommendation. The recommendation: no TV under age 2, and very little TV from 2-4. The AAP came out this week with a renewed Media Use Statement (“Media Use by Children Younger Than 2 Years.” By the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Communications and Media Executive Committee. Pediatrics, Vol 128 No. 5, November 2011), and reiterated its prior findings and recommendations of no media use for small children based on its actual detrimental effects. So not only is there no evidence of positive effects of media exposure, but TV watching under age 2 is actually HARMFUL to brain development. Watch the presentation here. Really, if you have a TV, computer, smartphone, or any of those screen…
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Yesterday wasn’t one of our finest around here at the Whole Parenting household: Poor sleep with little SuperBoy’s enormous molars emerging on bottom, two rounds of throwing up for me, and a bucketload of new projects at work for AA. And it was Monday. Who also hates Mondays? But we survived and I reminded myself of a few things to help cope with pregnancy nausea and motherhood. 1) Low expectations of yourself. When you’re sick and yet simultaneously still mothering another human being outside of your womb, don’t expect much out of the bad days. Whether it means you are late to daycare & work, or you stay in your PJs all day, be forgiving! Although there were about 15 things that had to be done yesterday, only about 1 of them actually was accomplished. And that had to be okay. This is tough when you’re a type-A, do-it-all, work-aholic, attorney-type. But remembering that there are priorities and then there are actual priorities can be helpful. Feeding yourself (and your child): priority. Running all your errands after work or doing all the ironing during the day: not priorities. Delegate it out! 2) Make a realistic list of the work you can accomplish that day. This holds true for the office or the home. What can you actually get done that day when you are so sick? Keep it short and doable so you don’t feel double failure at the end of the day. It may be something as simple as one…
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