Random Acts of Kindness

The major philosophy by which I live my life is compassion for all living things. It is intensely personal, but something I try to embody through both my actions and my words. I am not perfect at it. There are times when I am frustrated, judgmental, jealous, or bitter. Sometimes it is almost impossible to separate myself from these emotions and attitudes. I am not a good person.

I hope, over time that I will get better at practicing compassion. I have a good roll model for it: my husband, who is the kindest person I know and who teaches me through his example, how to be truly selfless. He does not seek gratitude or recompense for his actions, even when they inconvenience him. He does it because it is right. As we now have little eyes and ears appraising our every action, it seems more important to model compassion and kindness as an end to itself, rather than a means to further oneself.

Why does this come up? Recently, without getting into too many details, there has been a movement in some of my circles to promote our "random acts of kindness." Not only are we being encouraged to be more kind and compassionate to those around us (which in itself is not a bad thing), we are urged to tell others within the group about those acts and even take pictures of them. I find this extremely distasteful. I really had to parse out my feelings. Do I feel this way because I am angrily having a temper tantrum and stomping my foot? Or do I feel this way for another reason?

I feel that a random act of kindness loses its spirit of generosity and compassion when it is shared in this manner. It seems more like an action for ego stroking than for goodness in itself. Not only that, it cheapens the act of service. If I offer to do something for a friend they assume I'm doing it for the sake of this challenge, not because I genuinely want to help.

In today's culture, that is increadibly focused on instant gratification and self promotion, I feel it is so important to take a step back and do things without an audience. I mean, I get it, I post things that I am excited about, and get more excited when people "like" it. But do I really need to share the fact that I let someone in while driving? Or that I donated some goods to charity? Or that I save my empties to give to kids who come to the door fundraising for their sports/schools/etc? I don't have a lot of extra money or time, and I give where I can. Isn't that enough without promoting it?

The End of My Last Maternity Leave

I returned to work for the last time.

I returned to work and thereby ended my last maternity leave. We are done having children, and our family is complete.

My feelings on this, as they have been since Omega was born (and back into my pregnancy as well), are bittersweet. I don't really like being pregnant. I am not naturally good with babies. The older my children get, the more I feel comfortable engaging with them. And yet.

And yet.

Never again will I feel kicking inside me as a new life grows. Never again will I feel the pride of having that bump and growing someone from scratch. Never again will I reach, gasping and sobbing, for a tiny, bloody baby that I worked so hard to deliver. Never again will I hear those signs of contentment as I nurse my baby. Never again will someone need me so completely.

So yes, despite the fact that I am angry and uncomfortable through pregnancy, and that postpartum I am driven to the depths of despair, I am mourning the loss of my reproductive years. That phase of my life is over, with many more to come.

Every last milestone that Omega achieves will be the last time I will witness such an amazing feat with so much pride.

Even though I joke and laugh about how glad I am that we are done, and intellectually, I realize that having another child would be disastrous for our way of life, inside, I am sad.

That sounds so banal, but I have no other words to express it. I am sad.

I am sure that most other women who have had children have felt the same as I, upon realizing that there will be no more babies, and they go on, recover, and raise their children. As will I.

But for now, in the depths of the night, or during the drive home, I will allow that thought to creep out from my heart, and allow myself to feel the sadness of never again.

My Average Child

As I write these words, I imagine my son stumbling upon them as a teenager, full of angst. He will read that I consider him "average" and be hurt and infuriated that I set my sights so low for him. I feel that this is something I have, in turn, felt against my parents. How dare they feel that I'm not the most specialist snowflake in all the world and be president of everything.

So here is my response to that hypothetical: Calm down. This is less of a critique of your abilities and talents, my son, and more of a way to ease myself down from the competitive parenting band wagon.

At 4,  he is really good at some things, and also really not good at others. For example, he learnt how to ride a bike (with training wheels) last year. He didn't really get braking and steering until this year. He now can start, stop and steer with some confidence, although he still gets nervous when the ground slopes and the bike starts going without his control. Being the proud mama I am, talking to other parents, "I'm so happy that Alpha has learnt to ride his bike so well, wow, your son is really good too, how old is he?" I ask, expecting the answer to be somewhere over 4. "Oh, he just turned 3," they reply. Oh. So your 3 year old already rides better than my 4 year old.

I see the same thing when he runs around with other kids. He is small and slight of stature, so invariably, he falls behind the other kids. And how I yearn for him to be first. Really though, looking at the giant grin on his face, he doesn't care, so why should I?

He is able to build Lego sets, at 4, that are for ages 6+ or 8+. He has mastered the art of building new things from Lego, and creates entire worlds and scenarios for his mini-figures. He will play for hours, content with his creativity and ingenuity. How many 4 year olds can boast that?

What this means, as far as I can tell, is that I need to stop putting my expectations on him. Alpha is who he is. He has strengths and weaknesses. As do we all. His cautious nature means that he needs to test a new situation before gaining the confidence to go full tilt. I need to let him learn on his own terms, and give him the confidence to either succeed or fail. Easier said than done, right?

Birthday Party and Soup of the Week

This weekend was Alpha's 4th birthday party, and I have to say I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. He wanted an Angry Birds themed party, so with the prodding of my mama bestie (evil glint in her eye), I turned to Pinterest. Oh Pinterest.

Alpha

Don't ask me why I decided to do so much work for a 4th birthday party. Will he even remember this? Who knows. I sure don't remember too much from when I was 4. Maybe because I was on maternity leave and had the time to pull it all together? Maybe because I'm insane? Maybe a little of column A and a little of column B?

At any rate, it turned out fantastic. The weather was hot and beautiful the way May hasn't been up here in the frozen north for many years. The kids had a water fight, threw water balloons at a giant king piggy target I painted, and generally ran amok. The littler siblings crawled around, ate dirt and sat in the water table. The only hitch came when I decided that they should play a "party game" aka throw a giant red bird frisbee at piggy milk jugs I had made. Oh wait, 4 year olds don't like to take turns? Whoops. There was a bit of crying and pouting on that one. My bad.

Everything was fairly quick and easy to do too. Here is a breakdown:

Decor:

Lanterns and crepe paper - fairly standard crepe streamers, balloons (the package I was sent had green and red, left over from Christmas perhaps?). I took cheap paper lanterns bought at the dollar store, printed off faces from the internet (there are numerous sites where you can purchase templates for bird and piggy faces) and taped them on. My sister-in-law then hung them from the windows and lights to make a cute effect.

Batteries not included.

Food:

Here's where we got creative. Pinterest got us started with a few ideas from other wonderful people much smarter than I, and then we ran with it to get all the food that we wanted.

Red bird: strawberries and bananas (dipped in lemon juice to prevent discolouration), with blueberry accents and an orange crescent beak.

Piggy snouts: sliced cucumbers, I used a big drinking straw to puncture the cucumbers to make the nostrils.

Yellow bird: sliced yellow peppers, with olive accents, mozza eyes and orange pepper beak.

Blue bird: blueberry bowl with mozza eyes and orange crescent beak

Black bird: blackberry bowl with mozza eyes and orange crescent beak/eyebrows

Piggy punch: I made lemon/lime punch (and added some green food colouring to get it a bit greener), and taped on some cardboard eyes and snout to my jug. 

White Bird and Piggy

Red bird and Yellow bird

Pizzas: I bought a 4 pack of cheese pizza and then added decoration and more cheese ('cause come on. Cheese). I also had friends coming with different dietary restrictions (thankfully no vegans, due to all the cheese) so I had to make sure they had something too. White bird (from Pinterest) is plain cheese with olive accents and an orange pepper beak. I used fresh slices of mozza to make all the eyes. Piggy was mushrooms (under the cheese) and spinach, with a cucumber nose. Red bird was the other from Pinterest, with pepperoni, cheese and yellow pepper beak. Yellow bird was ham and pineapple. They turned out super well, and I'm glad I made the investment of 2 more pizza trays, so I could just pop them in the oven without any transfer. The kids mostly ate the cheese, and the adults enjoyed the more "sophisticated" ones.

Party games:

I had 2 main games set up. The first went over really well. Alpha doesn't like water splashing, so a plain old water fight was right out. Instead, I painted a big target on a piece of plywood, and put king piggy in the middle. I then blew up a bunch of water balloons and the kids had a fantastic 30 seconds whipping them at king piggy. The paint ran and now he looks like something out of a horror movie.

Ok so he did before too.

The other, as I mentioned, didn't go well with this age group, but they still sort of had fun, after they were done having a tantrum. I painted a bunch of milk jugs green, and printed off some piggy faces and glued them on. The kids then could knock them down like bowling balls. 

Lastly, my latest Soup

So I have this amazing cookbook, 400 Soups. It has soups from around the world, stocks, vegetable descriptions and tips. It also has colour photo pictures of the different steps of preparation to get a better idea of what you need to do. If you're like me, and want to do more cooking but are overwhelmed by the amount you don't know, this book is perfect. 

Anyway, I made a chilled roasted pepper soup from this book for a family lunch. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about chilled soups. They almost seem to be missing the point? However, this one was very tasty, and easy to prepare. It involved roasting veggies, blending them and then mashing them through a strainer to get the pulpy bits out. It gets points for ease of preparation, cheapness of ingredients, but looses some for a bit blandness of flavour and chilled soup not really being soup. Alpha tasted it but did not want, and Omega gobbled it up (being a baby she doesn't know any better I guess).  I would give it a rating of: my first choice of soups if I'm entertaining vegans on a hot summer's day. 

Delicious

Rough Play: Boys will be boys or an excuse to let your child be an ass?

Recently, I read an article on Scary Mommy extolling the virtues of letting "boys be boys" and play rough with each other. My opinion on this matters extremely little for two reasons; 1, I'm insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and 2, Alpha will play rough whether I want him to or not.

Alpha is a boy's boy. He likes cars, diggers, explosions, super heroes and fighting (and cooking and wearing the occasional Tinkerbell wings, lest you think I'm raising a little hellion). My days are filled by constantly warning him, "gentle with the cat. Gentle with the baby. Gentle. Hit again and I will take it away." Followed promptly by the toy being taken away. And he never learns. Ever. He hasn't figured out that the cat is not a good person to play rough with. His arms are a crisscross of scars as a result of those play fights. I have learnt to reflexively turn to the side when I see him approach, so that he bounces harmlessly off my hip, rather than anywhere else (a lesson Skeptidaddy was slow to learn). I've had my mom call me, asking to pick him up, because he was playing too rough and she was running out of ideas to distract him from his rough play.

I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. Children learn through play, and Alpha is learning the limits and boundaries of what his body can do. He's exploring his physical space and his relationship to the other people in that space. I don't like however, the implication that all such behaviour can and should be excused because that's how boys are. I feel, aside from a bit of hand waving about gender studies, that is what the author of the piece is implying.

First off, it's painting every boy with the same brush. Any boy who doesn't engage in rough play is obviously being stifled by his parents. Perhaps that was the old expectation, back in the "good old days" when boys were boys and men were men. People weren't interested in the spectrum of difference in gender, and so stereotypes, for the most part, ruled. Secondly, what about girls? I know just as many girls who play rough as any boy.

The author didn't really mention girls at all, so perhaps this is some projection on my part. But, I think it is an interesting tangent. The idea that boys will be boys, and girls are little ladies is pretty deeply ingrained in society. How many girls are told that "girls don't hit," or "girls don't fight?" I almost wonder if this isn't party of the reason that girls (and women) can become so catty? We never learn a more physical expression of our emotions, or are never allowed opportunities to play physically (never mind about differences in communication types yada yada, I've never studied gender differences, nor am I sure how much of the "brain science" about communication between the sexes is true). Perhaps burying these impulses at rough play lead girls down the path of psychological bullying?

That leads me to my third thought: allowing boys to play rough all the time could lead to bullying. If we excuse all rough behaviour as how boys should normally be, where do we draw the line between two boys wrestling and enjoying themselves, and one boy being forced into a situation he does not want to be in? Do we let one boy wrestle with another, even though he doesn't really like it (but may play along out of self defense, because obviously most parents would remove their child if they were really upset) because we feel rough play is good?

The answer for me anyway is context. If I can teach Alpha context in play fighting, I will feel like I have done a good job. He should learn that Daddy is ok to wrestle with, but Mama and kitty aren't (at least in our family Mama doesn't want to). He needs to learn that some friends like to play fight and some don't. And he also needs to learn to listen to what his playmate is saying to know when he is pushing too far. Hopefully he learns soon, because I'm tired of bruised hips!

Well, here we are

Today, I woke up feeling bored and dissatisfied. All morning, my thoughts were travelling to last week, when one of my friends declared that she liked the things I wrote about, and how I should start a blog. Apparently, I'm the type of person, where if my friends decide to go jumping off a cliff, I will pull out my phone and say "yeah, that sounds great, let me put it in my calendar," because here we are.

 So what should I expect from this? To be honest, I'm not sure. I like to write, and I like to think. I like to discuss things I'm thinking about with other people. Why not do it in written form? I will try to post once a week about something that interests me. Since I'm a parent and parenting takes up a good deal of my time, I expect that discussions revolving around those issues will happen more often than not. However, I am a woman of diverse (albeit geeky) interests, so I'm sure other things will pop up from time to time.

I want to emphasize that these are my opinions, and if anyone reads this, they may have differing ones. And that's ok. I remember once I replied very snarkily about something a friend cared about, and she just looked at me and laughed, saying "how are we even friends?" I'm glad she laughed, because in this day and age, it seems as though we become surrounded by echo chambers. Our google searches, and facebook feeds, and everything we interact with online becomes tailored to suit our opinions and make us feel comfortable. I don't want that. I'm proud to know people from various cultures and backgrounds with different political views, orientations and religions. How boring life would be if I only spoke to people who thought the same way as me.