Dream a Little Dream with Me

I was blessed to become a mother nearly seven years ago.  Nurturing my daughters has come naturally to me.  However, like many moms I have struggled with the important task of nurturing myself.  We make sure our children eat healthy, square meals while we get by on the discarded crusts or a candy bar nibbled in stolen moments from the high cupboard (I can’t be the only one).  We make sure our children get enough sleep, while we often feel like we could use some toothpicks to prop our own eyelids open.   We make sure our children are seen regularly for check ups, and we pause at their every cough, sniffle or wheeze but often overlook our own health.  We make sure they get lots of fresh air and exercise so their bodies will grow strong and healthy, while  we make a hefty monthly “donation” to the local health club.  We nurture their interests but leave little time to explore our own.  And you know what?  For the most part we don’t mind!  Our children are amazing little beings, and they are only little for that magical window of time.  I always rationalized my self-neglect with this thought - my children are the most important thing in the world to me.  They come first.  Then when I was at my most depleted, a very wise woman said to me,

“The mother is the well from which the whole family drinks.  Having an empty well helps no one.” 

Oh boy, was my well empty.

As powerful as this truth was to me, things did not change overnight.  It continues to be a challenge for me, finding the balance between one who nurtures and one who is nurtured.  

Part of my dream for Bloom is for it to not only be a magical, nurturing place for little ones, but also for their parents.  I want to support the whole family.  Families with young children need and deserve an incredible amount of community, love and support.  It is hard work nurturing these tiny beings, and it is the most important work we will ever do.  What deserves more support than that?  

So with that in mind, I want to hear from you, moms and dads, about what kind of support and nurturing you desire.   What do you want to do, see, hear, participate in? 

Prepared to-go dinners to take home at pick up time?  

Classes or workshops?  On what? Parenting?  Self care? Healthy living? Yoga or Meditation?

Handwork (crafts - knitting, felting...)?

Parent-child events?

Personal laundry service? (Okay, I think I’m kidding on this one but seriously, think outside the box!)

Please know that your input is valued regardless of whether or not your child attends Bloom.  I would like to open things up to the community as a whole whenever possible.  xoxox

A Garland of Experiences

Advent is swiftly approaching and Christmas decorations are beginning to spring up.  Personally, I love it.  Its not that I want to be rushed to celebrate Christmas sooner, but rather that I like to enjoy the holiday season for as long as possible.  There is so much richness to be enjoyed if we can remember to slow down and savor the moments shared with the ones we love.

Like most children, mine begin asking how many days there are until Christmas as soon as the turkey is off of the Thanksgiving table.  This is one of the reasons I love Advent calendars.  Although I suppose I have loved them since I was a child and my mother made one for my brothers and me.  An advent calendar gives a visual representation of time and also gives the children (and the parents) a little something special to look forward to each day.  Most are made of paper and a small window is opened each day to reveal a tiny image.  The one I had growing up was a large felt tree with 25 felt ornaments which were placed on it one by one.  My two brothers and I took turns placing an ornament on the tree each day, and this simple gesture was something to which we all looked forward.  We now take turns passing this family treasure from one sibling to another so we can each share it with our own children.

In the last few years I have noticed a lot of Advent garlands.  Different from the calendars, they are designed not only to represent the days of Advent, but also typically have pockets so that one may place a small gift in each.  Advent garlands are beautiful, but the idea of placing a gift in each pocket gives me pause for a couple of reasons.  First, who has the money (and the wealth of ideas?) to equip the garland with twenty-four little gifts, and then still have something left over on Christmas morning?  Of course, one could opt for inexpensive little plastic trinkets, but then you’ll have twenty five little plastic trinkets, which will inevitably end up going into the landfill (or into the family pet).  I also don’t like planting the seed that Christmas is all about receiving things.  So, last year I posed the question to friends: 

How about an Advent garland full of experiences rather than gifts? 

We came up with a wonderful list of experiences, each of which could be placed on a little note card in each pocket of an Advent garland.  You may need to really plan out which experiences fall on which days (weekday versus weekend, for example), as some require more of a time commitment than others.  I actually held our stash of cards aside and chose one each night to place in the pocket for the next day.  A couple of small handmade or well chosen gifts or bits of candy can be interspersed as well, but the overall sentiment behind this kind of garland is more about giving and spending time together than about receiving a gift.  

Here is the list my friends and I created:  

Have a treasure hunt to your stash of Christmas books (make a treasure map for the children to follow)

Do something kind for the Earth today

Do something kind for an animal today

Do something kind for another person today

Tonight we will have your favorite dinner

Wear your pajamas and have breakfast for dinner

Go outside and look at the stars after dinner

Write a letter to Santa

Call someone and tell them you love them

Draw a picture for a friend or family member 

Write a letter to a friend or family member who lives far away

Bring some food, clothing or toys to a shelter

Buy a toy for a child less fortunate

Bake cookies

Visit a new playground

Hike in a new location

Have special alone time with Mom/Dad/Grandma/Grandpa...

Make a Christmas gift for someone

Go to the Children’s Museum

Bring cookies to local community workers (police, fire department...)

Choose a friend to have over for a play date

Go to the library to choose some Christmas books

Have a scavenger hunt in your home for items red and green

Make a list of things for which you are thankful

Visit an elderly neighbor

Go caroling

Decorate the tree/Pick out a tree

Make ornaments

Invite a neighbor to dinner

Make some reindeer food (granola, bird seed, nuts, seeds - the birds like it too)

I welcome you to add more ideas in the comments below!  Have fun!

{Pictured is a simple garland I made last year from craft paper.}

iCamp

My family has part ownership of a rustic wood cabin built by a group of my great grandfather’s friends back in 1906.  It sits on a secluded pond surrounded by over 200 acres of woodland.  When I get out of my car there I breathe deeply, taking in the smell of the deep pine woods.  Just being there moves me, and passion for this place runs deeply through my family.  I watch my children and the children of my brother and my cousins frolic in the pond in just the way we did as children.  I see my parents enjoying time with their grandchildren in just the way I imagine my grandparents and great grandparents did before them.  Sometimes I well up just reflecting on the simple beauty of that - the indelible connection to family past, present, and future.

There has never been a land line at “Camp” (as we call it).  There was a time when if you needed to use a phone, you had to go to a neighboring house up the road.  There has never been a television.  It is simple and timeless, except...

These days when we go to camp, with me and my extended family come cell phones, iPhones, iPads, DVD players, laptops...I think on this last trip handheld devices may have outnumbered people two to one.  

Don't get me wrong, I am so grateful for wireless technology.  My small business has hit the ground running. Honestly, I would not have felt comfortable going away at all this summer had I not been accessible to potential clients and to contractors working on the school.  

For us grown-ups, I have accepted that having iPhones or cell phones at the ready is a necessary evil, even at Camp.  However (call me a hypocrite if you must), I still cannot get to that place of feeling they are a necessity for the children, particularly when we are in such a historically “unplugged” location.  

My family is amazing.  My siblings, cousins and I get along really well, despite often differing parenting styles.  If we can't agree we can usually laugh about it, sometimes pretty hardily.  As my family members read this, some will roll their eyes, while others will be giving me a virtual high five.  A good natured ribbing in each direction will likely ensue. 

There is no doubt that each of us loves the camp and (obviously) the children.  We all want the children to experience the joys of nature, and there is no doubt they do.   The kids run and swim and fish and row until they drop...and then they want their iPads...and maybe that’s just fine.  

Maybe I am just too nostalgic, but to me Camp should be about time spent enjoying simple pleasures. I love the idea of my children engaging in the same quintessentially “Camp” activities that were enjoyed in turn by my grandfather, my father and me...even if that includes occasional boredom. 

My grandfather probably couldn’t have imagined the kind of technology now available in this cabin in the middle of the woods, yet somehow I imagine him arguing that being at Camp without these amenities builds character.  Though, I can also imagine he would quickly be in favor of a way for the adults to enjoy a quiet drink on the porch in the evening without interruption.

Do you allow your children to bring video games, iPads and the like with you on vacation? If so, do you place limits on their use?  Do you feel that they have an impact on the overall experience, or are they a non-issue?

Toytervention

Hello, my name is Bethany, and I am a toy snob.  At least, that is what I was told this week by a close friend who is a recovering toy snob.  

I don’t like plastic toys.  I don’t like their typically short lifespan, the sheer volume of them in the world; the impact that their production and disposal have on the environment. Not to mention the issues I have with some of the actual toys themselves, particularly toys marketed to young girls...the impossible body image of Barbie and her friends; encouraging little girls to spend hours on end deciding which (typically inappropriate) outfit looks best.  

The worse offense, and it is certainly not relegated to plastic toys, is the blatant commercialism targeted at our most impressionable little friends.  “Do you like My Little Pony?  Great! Now you must buy everything from hairbrushes to shoes to potty chairs featuring My Little Pony!”  I think it sets children up to fall into a dangerous pattern of mindless consumerism, not to mention gullibility.  Do we really want to feed into the notion that soup with Tinkerbell on the can actually tastes better?

In Waldorf early childhood programs, toys are chosen very consciously.  They are almost always made of natural materials such as wool, silk, cotton or wood. They can be human powered but never battery powered.  They are non-commercial. The reason? Natural toys offer the appropriate sensorial experience to the impressionable young child.  Children’s imaginations thrive when they are given simple, open ended toys.  This makes a world of sense to me, and I have embraced this thinking fully when considering what toys to buy for my own children.  

Its not that my children live in a bubble, and I certainly don’t prohibit them from playing with non-Waldorf toys when we are out and about.  I don’t make a big deal about my feelings about toys in front of them.  I don’t want them to feel that certain toys are bad.  I try to be diplomatic.  For example, I have dodged taking home a couple of huge bins of Polly Pockets from my lovely aunts’ house by sighting our cat, who has a penchant for eating small bits and bobs, of which “Polly” has oodles (if you are familiar with Polly Pockets you know what I mean - Good God, the shoes alone!).  The girls have accepted this reasoning (because it is kinda true).  So, they have a Polly Pockets extravaganza whenever we visit my aunts.  We are all okay with that.

So this friend, this toy snob in recovery, is so very generous and she loves to give away toys that her children have outgrown.  She has given us many lovely toys, truly...and more recently, with a wink and a knowing grin, she has begun to send us home with contraband.  

It started with a plastic cash register.  I removed the batteries, and I was cool with it.  Then it was teeny, tiny Playmobile animals and Magnatiles (again, fine), but now we have started down the path of My Little Pony, Princesses and Polly Pockets.  It has been the proverbial “slippery slope”.  As we were walking toward our car from this particular friend’s house the other day, my three year old, who was clutching several new treasures, inadvertently dropped a small doll in the grass.  I noticed, but kept my stride, hoping to leave it behind.  My friend called out, “You dropped one!” and then “I saw you watch that drop, Mama!” (Did I mention she’s a stinker?).  I was not pleased.  Really, really not pleased.  It was then that I realized I needed to do some soul searching...about toys.  Really? Did I just say that?  Maybe, just maybe, I was taking this a little too seriously.  I am proud of sheltering my children for as long as I have.  But eventually, the world gets in.  If I make these toys taboo, isn’t that going to eventually backfire?  If my children have a strong foundation of imaginative play, will they use even these commercialized, plastic toys creatively?  My sense is, yes, they will.  

I still swear I will not buy highly commercial, plastic toys (a statement snickered at by friends who are parents of children older than mine).  If the toys are given to us second hand, in moderation, I think we will all survive...and, at the very least, we are saving them from the landfill. 

Saturday morning, my family and I were about to head out the door to the local farmer’s market.  “Can I bring my dolly?”, my little one asked.  I looked down, and in her little hand she was holding a plastic, miniature Cinderella, who was rescued the week before from a Rubbermaid graveyard in our friend’s garage.  For a brief moment I considered that I may be called out as a fraud when someone sees me, the owner of a Waldorf-inspired school, sharing my Saturday with mini-Cinders.  

“Sure, why not?”, I said.  If she is going to play with the contraband, I need to own it.  I need to keep it real.  After all, as long as Cinderella is willing to earn her keep around the farm, I guess I’m okay with her hanging around for a bit.

(Yup, that’s her...milking the cow...in a tiara.)

Postscript:

At my daycare and preschool, a Waldorf and nature inspired program, the classrooms  are free of plastic toys and commercialized toys and images.  Though it may be virtually impossible to avoid these things in the wider world, I do believe in the great value of providing a haven from all of these influences at BLOOM.  We work to create a mindful, natural environment wherein imaginative play and organic learning can flourish.

Nature's Ninjas

One of my fondest memories of childhood involves the large, golden field that lay beside my parents' house.  The soft, lush grass was about a foot and a half high.  I remember wandering out into that sea of grass as it rippled and danced in the wind, planting myself in the middle of it, and laying flat on my back.  There, in my own cozy nest, I would spend a lazy afternoon gazing up at the sky, searching for shapes in the clouds and being alone with my thoughts.  If I close my eyes I can bring myself back there...to the sounds, smells and even the physical sensation of laying there, shoeless in the grass.  

Today when my little one laid down in an patch of grass akin to that of my childhood memory, I was wistful and nostalgic, and {deep down} thinking about ticks.  Does this photo make you feel joyful...or nervous?

 

“Nature’s Ninjas” - I read that term last year (I cannot recall where) and its so apt.  Did you know that they sense the carbon dioxide we exhale and literally leap onto us?  Did you know they have a natural anesthetic in their saliva so we don’t feel them bite?   Recently a tick went through my washer and dryer and came out seemingly unscathed.  How is that possible?  If you live in New England, you’re crazy not to be worried about ticks.  Lyme and other tick borne illnesses are no joke, and I am afraid they are here to stay.  

But I refuse to allow this fear to cause me to de-nature my children.  I will check those kids over head to toe at night like a mama gorilla if I must, but just look at the bliss on her face.  How could I discourage her from interacting with nature in the way that children do...fully, viscerally, with all of her being? 

What measures do you take to protect your family from tick borne illnesses?  Do you find yourself afraid to let your children explore nature fully?  We are trying Nix Ticks from Lily’s Garden Herbals this year, its an all natural, plant derived tick repellent spray (www.lilysgardenherbals.com).