Real life

This evening I stumbled upon a post by The Happiest Mom with a brief interview with the author of 'Instinctual Parenting,' a giveaway (me please!), and a question about parent moments where information or advice is contradictory to our gut feeling or just our reality. I wrote a really long comment in response because, once again, this is very pertinent to what's been on my brain lately (I love the mommy blog world!); so I figured it was worth sharing here -
Oh so many examples of 'Subway' moments! [That will only make sense if you go read the post I was commenting on, which I recommend but it's not necessary for the rest of my post to make sense.] I guess a current ongoing one relates to pottying and EC. I so very much wanted to do EC (Elimination Communication) and actually, even before I knew the term existed I was doing some of the suggested practices with my daughter - cloth diapers, sitting on the potty from early on, communicating what she as doing, etc. She seemed to be getting close to being out of diapers at 15 months when her sister was born and I didn't have the time, energy, brain cells to keep up our routine much. She's now 26 months and resists gong #1 in the potty. And her sister doesnt get much EC'ing. I've been to one EC meeting and saw 4-month olds telling their moms they needed to go potty and waiting until they were placed on the potty to go - and I felt hugely inferior! I still feel like I missed the boat when my daughter was ready.
My husband says I'm too hard on myself and he's right; but when I'm being nice to myself I tell myself that even having an infant or young toddler potty trained, it's still a lot of work because they are not very independent, unlike and older toddler. And I'd rather spend time enjoying them and with them, then spending a lot of time in the bathroom. So for now I'll just deal with a squirmy infant who doesn't like to lie still for diaper changes, and extra laundry, and in the summer we'll go diaperless when we can!

Little accomplishments!

I may have discovered both another use for my blog and a way to finish more craft projects! I always have a mental list of projects I'd like to be working on and there's usually a few little piles of things I've begun, usually knitting or sewing. And I also usually have a BUNCH of tabs open in my browser (my husband uses a different browser so he doesn't have to navigate my tabs!) with ideas, inspiration or tutorials. I've tried creating organized bookmark folders but I rarely go back to those so tabs it is until I find a better way.

Then earlier this week I decided to post a few links on my blog (near the upper-right corner) to a few of those pages. And doing that I finished the hobby horse I've been working on in 5-10 minute segments for weeks and I made sweet (and oh so simple) matching dresses for my girls. I love feeling like I've accomplished something!

I'll have to add more links soon!




(Picture of hobby horse to come - it still needs a harness!)