Gift Ideas for Baby #2

When you’re having a second baby, nobody is going to throw you a party. You have
already exhausted all your friends’ capacity for gift-buying with your first baby, which
likely came just a few short months after your destination wedding. (Or was that just
me?). BUT, if you do have a friend with baby #2 on the way, here are my suggestions for
what a mommy really wants:

• Pedicure, manicure, facial, brow wax — anything remotely considered pampering.
• Gift certificate for a great bra store (nursing section or no, we all need bras, and again this could be considered an indulgence).
• Gift certificate for family and/or newborn portraits.
• Food, food, and more food. I recently learned that Whole Foods sends gift baskets.
• A set of DVDs (Blu-ray, whatever) from your fave show (unless that show is about kids or parents getting illnesses and/or dying).
• Magazines (the sleazier the better).

As always:
Do not buy Sophie the Giraffe — she is great, but just don’t buy it.

Of course, we are grateful for anything we receive, and never expect a gift! And if all
you have to give is time holding the baby so we can shower or have a conversation that
doesn’t include Lightning McQueen, well, that is pretty great too!

-Tightrope Mama


[image: by Terry Fan]

Liebster Award

We are so honoured to receive the Liebster nod from Life on Peanut Layne.
We are a collective of women who are doing their best to raise 7 lovely children.
We have all learned a number of lessons and some insight along the way that we share on our blog three days a week.

In the tradition of the Liebster Award, a number of us answered the 11 questions,
and here is the summary.

Tightrope Mama

1. Do you have any phobias? Birds — especially peacocks
2. What is your favourite season? Fall
3. What is the inspiration behind your blog? Anonymity
4. What is your favourite place to shop? Carters, Osh Gosh, and for me [at
     the time] Old Navy Maternity
5. What is your favourite food? Butter chicken, pizza, ice cream, tacos…um, I
    am pregnant
6. Do you have a favourite room in your home? Any room that is quiet
7. Do you have a favourite quote? “Remember Ginger Rogers did everything
Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.” Faith Whittlesley
8. What made you start writing a blog? Bourbon to start
9. Do you have a Facebook page for your blog? No
10. Do you have any bad habits? Hundreds
11. What is your dream job? Oprah with kids

Drama Mama

1. Losing my iPhone
2. Spring
3. Encourage fearless confessionals safely
4. London Topshop and J. Crew online
5. Blue cheese paté
6. My bed
7. “Never apologize.” Katherine Hepburn
8. I want to be famous
9. “I don’t know; do we, ladies?” [nope]
10. I don’t sleep when she sleeps
11. Artistic director of theatre company in a small town

East End Mama

1.Confrontation
2.Summer
3.Using anonymity to talk about the truth of motherhood
4.New York City (I can dream)
5.Cheese
6.Backyard hammock
7.“She was never bored because she was never boring.” Origin hazy, but I
    got it from the Pet Shop Boys
8. Wanted to tell other moms that we are all dealing with the crazy, so they’ll
    all be fine
9. Nope
10. Procrastination
11. Travel writer. Okay, I take that back: a Lego artist


Gray Mama

1.I am afraid of heights
2.Fall
3.Mamas are all struggling behind the façade
4.Scotch & soda
5.Sushi
6.Bathroom, more specifically the shower — the only REAL place I get
   some ME time
7. “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed it is
   the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead
8. To express our thoughts and help other mamas feel normal
9. Not yet
10. Drinking vino
11. Stay-at-home mama

Finally, as requested, we have thought about it long and hard, and here are the 3
blogs that we have nominated for the Liebster Award:

The Hipster Homemaker

Big City Mama

I Like Beer and Babies


So, mamas — thanks for the acknowledgement, and we hope those we have
nominated feel warm and fuzzy for a moment and know that you have 6 mama’s
listening.

Elimination Communication

A few months ago I met with a former colleague who has also relocated to this small
town. She is on a maternity leave, and has two kids: a seven-month-old girl and a three-
year-old boy.

She texted me out of the blue.

“It’s a beautiful day, can you meet at 5:00PM at the park near the train station?”

Years ago we had acted in shows together. Recently she landed a great job at the
theatre company in this small town. I contacted her asking about childcare, we met for
coffee, and suddenly I am reconnected with someone I used to know. Sound familiar?
Someone I used to know professionally. Friendly professionally. Occasional drinking-
night-out-to-relieve-the-stress in our twenties professionally. We have shared some
personal details. And now, here we are, at the parkette, and her son has his pants down
and is pissing up a tree, and her baby daughter’s bum is swung between her legs, while
she, my friend, makes an “ssssss” noise, and out comes her baby’s pee.

Two things are happening inside me.

One is a kind of gleeful weird conservative worrisome thinga-emotion as I observe my
daughter, the Guppins, observing the first young boy penis in her two-year-old life, with
pee coming out of it. The second is a shocked admiration — a why-the-heck-don’t-I-
know-about-this feeling — at learning my old-colleague-now-mamma-friend has toilet
trained her seven month old.

By making a pissing sound.

“She holds it in now till I make the pissing sound,” she says, clearly making sure her
babe has ample opportunity.

“I saw people doing it years back in China. There were mothers everywhere with babies
not wearing diapers, with slits down the backs of their clothes.”

I am impressed.

“You work at becoming in tune with your baby’s need to go. It’s like how you know when
your baby is tired, or when your baby is hungry. You know when they need to go.”

This makes sense.

“She poos every morning first thing. And I think I’ve only ever changed five wet diapers.”

Okay, that’s it. Pennies are pummeling me in the head. The ever-constipated Guppins
runs around like a hyperventilating chicken once every two days trying to hold in the
poop she knows is going to hurt when coming out.

“It’s sort of infant potty training. The latest term is Elimination Communication.” She rolls
her eyes and I wrinkle my nose. “You would think they’d come up with something better
than that,” she says.

“You should come up with something,” I say.

This girl is a force to be reckoned with. On all fronts. And I feel just…stupid. Of course
there is some gentle natural process for communicating elimination. Of course there
is! Duh! I mean, what did people do before paper was invented? More than once I’ve
thought, “It’s just terrible that my baby is wearing paper around her privates almost 24/7.”

At this she says, “Well, that’s why we use cloth.”

Now I feel like a real lazy bastard. Uninformed tree-killer. Forcing my daughter to wear
paper. What is wrong with me? What am I waiting for? I grab the Guppins, pull down her
pants, and start to “sssss” like Kai in Jungle Book.

My poor kid, half naked in a public park with her bum swung between my legs, facing
me, uncomfortable, still reeling from the penis viewing, crying.

Wunderkind Mamma Friend gently reminds me there is a process to this, that you have
to take your kid to puddles and make the pissing noise or whatever.

We bundle them up, share a few stories, and eventually say good-bye. Another
informative day in Motherland…in which I feel inadequate. I guess it’s time to do some
research. I mean, last I heard you were supposed to wait until they were three. Maybe
I should stop hearing things and follow my own instincts. I know my daughter is craving
some kind of structure around this stuff. Time to get cracking.

On my way out of the playground I turn and see this:

And I feel just a little less like a bad mother.

-Drama Mama

The Times Are a Changin’

W loves Cheerios (aka “cheeries”); he eats them every morning — sometimes
with a banana, sometimes without a banana. He wakes up talking about cheeries
and grabs the box off the counter with gusto. Then one day, without warning
(and right after buying a HUGE box at the grocery store), he suddenly says, “No,
Mommy, no cheeries. Toast.” Where did this come from?

So I make the toast and he eats it. This is day 4 of toast with jam. Cheeries seem
to be a thing of the past. Why? I have no idea. None.

Kids are so weird.

-Tightrope Mama

[image: via pinterest]

Trip to the Nail Shop

Saturday we had a nice brunch and went off to my mom's. It was my sister's 30th birthday so we had things to organize. We did some shopping and prepared some food. Visited with my grandmother and his. And off we went to the nail shop to get Mom some new feet.

As we arrived, J-man proclaimed that we were at the dentist. I suppose it looked that way from his vantage point. We climbed into the big chair for a bumpy ride. Having a pedi with a pre-schooler on your lap is not the most relaxing thing in the world. But surprisingly it worked. When he got tired of looking around I pulled out the Leap Pad. J-man worked on drawing his letters and decorating photos of my feet.

Like Mom he got a little tired of the drying station. "We ARE ready to go," he told the owner of the shop. She bribed him with 5 more minutes and "You can have a pineapple candy." J-man, always the friendly child, found another woman who was waiting to start. She was texting away. J-man made a B-line and asked if she had photos. She had a bunch of her dog. It worked and Mom's nails were well dry when we left.

Okay, so I probably don't get the mom of the year award: kid in nail fumes, computer games, playing with strangers, and bribery with candy. But it worked. I got new feet (which I desperately needed), there's no permanent damage to the kid, and at the end of it all he said he wanted to go back. "Next time," he said, "I'll get new feet too!"

-Sleepwalking Mama

[image: pinterest]

The Monster in the Furnace

I’m not the best parent when it comes to screening age-appropriate media for my two-year-old. To be honest, I kinda take pride in not coddling her too much. She not only recognizes James Bond in a picture, she can recognize a James Bond movie within a few frames of car chase or fist fight. I’m not terribly careful with my language around her, but hey, at daycare she dances to OutKast, peppered with the “N” word, so it’s not just me. (Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t shoot my father-in-law dirty looks when he messes that one up. And it does mean I should probably pay a bit more attention to what goes on at daycare.) We ride the bus, listen to the news, watch sports — things that aren’t necessarily appropriate come up everywhere. At the breakfast table, I read aloud from the paper, “The sex club is four storeys of easy-to-clean surfaces…”, too enamoured of the idea of easy-to-clean surfaces to think of my audience in time.

Some of the books on Cookie’s bookshelf are too old for her — not by much, only a year or two, but the age gap makes obvious the monumental strides in maturity she’ll undertake in the next couple years. Like, how she’ll go from a smiley happy girl who loves everyone to someone who realizes that sarcasm is a thing. ’Cause these books are full of that: kids saying the things that kids say, but that Cookie doesn’t realize kids say yet. (Berenstain Bears, I’m looking at you.) And since she doesn’t fully understand the context, she thinks it’s okay to say these things.

It’s not the fault of the books, not really, although it does distress me that we think it’s okay to have characters say hurtful things to each other in early school-age books for the sake of authenticity. After our first reading of these books that end up in our home via hand-me-down or something someone saw on television, we hide them. But not always successfully, and Cookie has a hell of a memory, so the “shut ups” and “gimmies” linger.

But just as distressing is the prevalence of monsters and ghosts. Even in books written for her age. Cookie doesn’t know about these things until they show up unexpectedly mid-story. I mean, it’s not like we go around talking about monsters. Why would we even want to introduce the concept? But right there, in the middle of one of our otherwise favourite books, The Way Back Home by Oliver Jeffers, I have to explain what a monster is. And then that whole can of worms is opened. And then I have to explain every bloody time that monsters aren’t actually a real thing, trust me, please trust me, please. (Because god forbid I read it wrong. She notices. She always notices.) But reassurance doesn’t work, clearly, because now we’ve got nightmares. And fear of going to sleep. And fear of being alone in her room. And now, just as the teeth are in, we’re back to sleep training again.

Thanks a lot, monsters. She’s never sworn or crashed her toy cars, but she picks up on you?

-East End Mama

“I don’t want you, I don’t like you, I don’t love you”

That is an exact quote from W (aged 2.5 years) to me yesterday at bedtime. As a mother to a toddler, I am no stranger to hearing “I no want you, Mommy,” but throwing in the “L” word was a new one. And it did sting a little. Rational me knows it doesn’t mean anything, but where do children learn that saying something like that will have an impact? I certainly didn’t teach it, Dora the Explorer doesn’t talk like that, so where? Daycare — possible, I suppose. But I know that every kid does it and probably has been doing it for hundreds of years. What in their tiny heads makes them want to be rid of Mommy (or Daddy) when they feel out of control? Why when he is tired, hungry, angry does he want to be rid of me?

That’s just what I’m wondering about today. I also wanted to share it so that you know that if your toddler said that today, you aren’t alone.

-Tightrope Mama

[image: Robert Indiana, Love]

Future Classic Books from TED

I love TED talks.  I am always watching these amazing talks for people from all over the world. They have created a list of children’s books that they feel will be classics...the crazy thing is I have not heard of any of these books. Here is the list.

East End Mama wrote about some of her favourites in a previous post. What are your favourite children’s books? Do you think they will be classics?

-Gray Mama

[another list of Secret Mother faves here]

Mother / Daughter

I'm so troubled by the thought that history may repeat itself and that one January

30 years from now my daughter will sit across from her best friend and bitch about me.

She will unabashedly question how I live and spend my days. She will dig way back into her childhood for glimpses of the me that resembles the person I will be at 60. She will wonder if I was always crazy or if I am just in menopause. She will sip wine and roll her eyes as she wonders who raised her. She will say things like, “God, she’s acting absolutely fucked,” and, “Fuck, why would she DO that?”

My mom and I ended our Christmas together on less than great terms, and as a result the following things have happened to me in the last 7 days: I’ve cried at acupuncture, eaten 3 chocolate oranges, and had 2 nightmares. I am intrigued and confused by the moment in our lives when we all stop seeing our parents as leaders. Does this happen to everyone? Only women? Only people with their own kids? Only me? Why do I see so many faults in a woman I love so much and who I know loves me so much more?

I am saddened that I have to think about the complexities of our relationship. I have a husband now and two kids, I have to limit the amount of time I can really dedicate to outside drama, but I obviously can’t ignore that clearly so much is changing. I called my mom today to dissect “the Christmas episode” and I think it went well. I spoke without crying and I said what I thought. I felt like someone who leads a family, because I am. That isn’t her so much anymore — it’s me. I am sure that is hard for her; it’s strange even for me. I need there to be some mystique in our relationship at the moment. As in: I have parts I don’t share with her. My house is not her house, my marriage is not her marriage, and I am not the mother that she was.

So many of my girlfriends and I have talked about our moms recently, and many of us (some have kids, some don’t) seem to be confronting lots of mom-issues and are coming up empty when we try to search for answers. We label them depressed, anxious, controlling, withdrawn, but then inevitably move on to talking about other things. How can anyone ever truly tackle an issue as big as MOM?

All I know is that my sweet baby girl who currently smells like sour milk will eventually one day reek of sour grapes and there is nothing I can likely do to stop that.

Fellow moms, is there hope for LouLou and I? Because right now I am feeling just a tad at a loss.

-Tightrope Mama

[image: by Lisa Golightly at kikiandpolly]

Newtown

Gun violence.

Families grieving.

Obama preaching.

A world thinking.

Change.

I have been thinking a lot lately of the reality of mental illness.
Especially untreated mental illness.

In my family, there is a very long history of mental illness. Well, as my family would say, “He was weird,” or she had “bad nerves,” or she was “crazy.” How many of our families have a history of mental health issues that we all throw under the rug, or pass off as personality? It is this willful blindness that has created a nation in crisis.

When will WE consider mental health issues as an illness such as diabetes, heart disease, or cancer? When will WE in society see all of these other health issues as part of life? Why are WE so adverse to mental health issues?

I have struggled with mental health issues in my life. I have been down, been anxious, and have suffered with pain and fatigue. I am a mother, a child, a sister, a student, a social worker, a community member, and a partner. I have struggled with the impression of doing well, being successful, being available and not doing well, being a failure and being unavailable. Mental health is an invisible struggle that millions of people deal with every day, and many of us would rather sit in denial of the issue or struggle to get the help that is needed. To admit we need help is a very difficult predicament.

It may mean we are the crazy one down the street or we are struggling to make it through this journey intact.

Newtown has revealed the struggle of a young person with mental health issues. The struggle that has not been seen as a health issue, but as an isolated struggle for a family, which led to the loss of the lives of 26 people.

I hope that one day mental health issues are considered illnesses that are accepted and treated as cancer, heart issues, and diabetes are. I hope that the amount of money that is raised for these other issues is raised for mental health issues. I hope that one day a school will wrap around a young person with mental health issues as they do with a young person with leukemia.

I hope one day we will love the harmer as much as the victims — because they always have a story. And in that story, we would actually see that the person doing the harm is the victim.

-Gray Mama

links: Art Therapy

Something for Ourselves

Sleepingwalking Mama wrote a wonderful exposé on what marriage
can really be like, especially during the holidays. Despite her crazy job and
exhausting schedule, she was able to thoughtfully help her partner with his
issues even while feeling terribly insulted.

I can relate to this. I often feel like the smallest comments are loaded weapons
being pointed at me. Just last night, as my husband was leaving for work, he
said, “This house is growing over itself,” which I took to mean, “It’s a disgusting
mess in here.” I didn’t say anything since he was heading out for his second 12-
hour shift of the day (he’s self-employed) and it WAS a valid point. There are
toys everywhere (no thanks to the people who recently gave us a HOCKEY NET
and an ANTIQUE ROCKING HORSE — seriously, don’t do that, people) and the
Christmas décor is only adding to the chaotic look and colour scheme.

Learning to think and absorb before you speak is not easy to do, but essential.
And while it seems like I am the only one doing this, I am sure my husband
does it too. I am also sure he just does it less frequently than I do. It’s hard —
my toddler can’t control his emotions and is constantly lashing out at me, my
baby can’t speak, and my husband is a stress case. Who am I in all that? The
sounding board? The sponge who soaks it up? The soft place for everyone to
land? The glue that holds it all together?

I think I am all of the above, and no doubt that comes with the territory of wife
and mother. Some days it is just a tough pill to swallow. But as Sleepingwalking
Mama pointed out, it IS an accomplishment to avoid a fight. You should be
proud when even the smallest things are achieved: Tooth brushing! Healthy
dinner! No TV for a day! Sex! These are the accomplishments of a mom/wife. Not
glamorous in any way, but satisfying indeed.

So, this morning, in honour of myself, I blew off a coffee date and stayed home
to write two blog posts. Something I do for myself because part of being a
successful woman is also forcing time into your life for you — however short it
may be. If we don’t do it, this resentment builds and the time bomb fuse gets a
little too short.

-Tightrope Mama


[image: by David Fleck]

Sleep Training

I hadn’t planned on sleep training. Until I became so exhausted and sleep deprived
and sucked out I had to consider my options. Also, my return to the stage was upon
me. Acting is a night job, and at 12 months, despite my efforts, the Guppins was still
dependent on my boobs to fall asleep.

The very loving, very experienced Nanny who interviewed us ended our meeting
with this:

“Sleep train her. Or I won’t be working for you”

I was told 12 months is a good time to do it. Two Canadians wrote a book about
timing… though I didn’t read it. Too sleep deprived to concentrate. But I did learn
I was in a good “window”, whereas ten months would have been a terrible time. At
ten months, babies start doing that separation anxiety thing. If you’re considering,
it might be less painful in the long run to muscle through that phase. The Guppins
was not big on sleeping in the first place, but without my boob in her mouth it just
was never going to happen. And she wouldn’t take a bottle (yet). Months preceding
I followed the approach in The Sleepeasy Solution (thanks to Sleepwalking Mama).
I carefully timed the seconds from when she was just about to fall asleep, and pull
my nipple out… or something like that… it’s a bit complicated and you have to read
the book. It’s a way to prep your baby to “fall asleep on their own”. Ultimately, this
failed… though I do one hundred per cent believe it did prep my girl for the coming
storm.

I called the Sleep Doula.

Yes it is possible to work with a Sleep Doula through text messaging. The Doula took
in a lot of very detailed information about our family and our eating and sleeping
habits, and came up with a plan that involved my hanging a curtain between my bed
and the Guppins crib (the crib was new. We’d been co-sleeping up to this point.)
After a long telephone conversation with the doula during which I took copious
notes, I chose the night. I gently warned my daughter things were going to be
different. I turned off the light, cringed on the other side of the curtain, clutched onto
my iphone, watched the stopwatch (highly recommend this… it’s a sanity saver…
every second feels like an hour when your baby is hollering), and started talking,
sushing, non-stop. I did a lot of talking and shushing through that curtain, gentle but
firm, always meeting my baby’s vocal energy. I was right there with my voice when
she cried. She was never alone.

NIGHTY NIGHT TIME LITTLE GUPPINS, TIME TO GO TO SLEEP NOW, NIGHTY
NIGHT TIME!

Over, and over, and over. And then came the texting.

Miraculously… silence. A sleeping baby. My boobies safe on MY side of the curtain.
I couldn’t believe it. I had expected hours of agonizing horror and, frankly, to give
up and pay the $50/ hour 4 hour minimum fee to have the Sleep Doula come to
my home. But it only took fifteen minutes. The next night: seven. Then: none.
Tracey warns about “bursts” (there will be nights when you need to talk and shush),
especially with any change in routine. In other words, stay home for a while. Don’t
travel. Be there. Every night. The next step was to have our now familiar nanny or
a babysitter be part of the bedtime routine, sit on the bed with me in the dark and
learn how to sush through a curtain, in case they needed to. I think the proximity,
and the invisibility, is an ingenious way of comforting your child, yet showing you
are not physically available.

And then came training my overly sensitive Sir Dick. He was terrified, but when
he saw the results of the talking and sushing through the curtain, he became
comfortable with it. In fact, he was amazed. Although eventually he screwed it up
and rocked her to sleep. But we’d start over. We’d get it back.

So: preparation, research, mindfulness, and serious courage. I remember getting
advice from other mothers about sleep training. Oh there where all kinds of
confident and supportive analogies. But every time the same thing:

“How did you feel while you were doing it?”
“Actually…” (a pause here) “My partner was the one who actually DID it, but I did
the research and I can tell you all about it”.
“Oh. Where were you?”
“I left the house”. “I was in a sound proof room” “I was heavily medicated and
wearing earplugs”.

I do not judge you Mamas. Had I a partner capable, he would have done it. As it was,
he was on the opposite side of the city, in his own house, watching television. With
the phone off. Not unlike when I gave birth.

One final word of advice that I received from the Doula: Give your kid some credit.
Along with yourself. If it’s not for you, you’ll find another way. They do, eventually,
grow up. (and go to sleep).

-Drama Mama


links:
Bed Timing : The When To Guide to Helping Your Child To Sleep
The Sleepeasy Solution
The Sleep Doula