I found out that there's a carnival today called "This is What Nursing a Toddler Looks Like," sponsored by It's All About the Hat. (And it is all about the hat, isn't it?)

Since I just found out about it on the day of, obviously I'm not a part of it, but I recommend zooming over there to read the carnival participant links, particularly if you are (as I am) the mother of a toddler nursling. There are beautiful photographs, pictures of tandem nursing, a retrospective from an 11-year-old who remembers his nursing days fondly, links to research on the benefits of extended breastfeeding, and funny, funny stories of the shenanigans nursing toddlers go through.

I wrote "Hiding a nursing toddler" at 18 months when I was musing on the advisability and logistics of continuing to breastfeed a toddler publicly. Mikko is now 23 months and showing no signs of slowing down, and so far my solution to my dilemma has been...to continue to ignore it. I just keep on breastfeeding him when and where he wants. So far I haven't had any conflicts with looky-lous over it. Although I've realized, from comments even my closest friends have made, that they don't always realize that Mikko is breastfeeding. I guess I'm better at being discreet than I thought.

Anyway, I'm just glad that carnivals like this exist, so that I can feel part of a larger community of mamas who embrace and encourage the entirely natural but entirely unsupported act of breastfeeding past a year.

I'll just add in my funny nursing-a-toddler story here for the fun of it:

We finally had Mikko baptized a couple weeks ago. (Note: Explaining infant baptism vs. dedication and why we wanted to do either, and why we waited almost two years to get around to it, is out of the scope of this post, but ask if you want me to go into more depth.) We were standing in front of the church with two other couples (who of course had very young babies instead of huge toddlers) and Mikko was overwhelmed at all the attention — all those eyes staring at him! People laughing his way!

As he always does when he wants comfort, he started gesturing for "nummies," which is to point at his chest. I acknowledged in a whisper that I understood and told him we would have nummies soon. I was in a dress (for once) and wasn't brave enough to nurse him during the baptism ceremony. When his first gentle sign language didn't work, he got more and more emphatic, until he was gesticulating wildly, stabbing himself in the chest and heaving with frustrated breaths. I kept calming him down, and he'd forget for a few minutes and then start up again. His sign language having not had the effect he wanted, he resorted to sticking his hand down my dress. I hope this is all on the video we had a friend take! Don't worry, though — he was completely unfazed by the water on his head, and when we sat down, he had all the nummies he wanted, right there in church (but not in front of the whole congregation!).

The other breastfeeding carnival I missed somehow (I was kind of out of it during April, finishing my novel) was the Motherwear one. I'll just link to it here — The "How-To" Carnival of Breastfeeding — so you can check it all out. There are posts on how to be comfortable around breastfeeding mothers, how to breastfeed hands free, how to stop nosy questions, and how to teach your baby nursing manners, plus many more. Well, at least, those were the ones that sang out to me, with my mannerless toddler!

That was a sarcastic title, as I'm sure you'll figure out as you read on.

Here's a blog post that tells you "Baby sling carriers raise safety concerns."

Ready? Wait for it. According to this CR blog post: "Over the past 10 years, there have been at least 22 reports of serious injury associated with the use of sling-type carriers. The injuries include skull fractures, head injuries, contusions and abrasions. Most occurred when the child fell out of the sling."

What does CR then recommend? "For now, we think there are better ways of transporting infants including strollers, hand-held infant carrier/car seats and even other types of soft infant carriers."

Yes, those stupid plastic bucket things are sooo much safer.

Here's a PDF handout from the CPSC on the safety of plastic infant carriers (yep, the same anti-AP "experts" that caution against cosleeping): "CPSC knows of at least 5 deaths a year involving various types of carriers used to hold infants.In addition, there were over 13,000 estimated injuries in a recent one-year period. (This does not include incidents involving motor vehicles.)"

Hmmm...22 injuries over 10 years vs. 5 deaths and 13,000 injuries PER year. I realize I don't have the relative population sizes here, but come on! I wonder which would be safer?

Not being content to let this inanity lie (or retract it!), the blog recently published "Five products not to buy for your baby" and included, again, "slings" (which I think we can all agree is a generic, catch-all term that might include some very shoddy box-store specimens) as well as cosleepers (such as the reputable Arms Reach).

The blog backs up its assertions that cosleepers are more dangerous than cribs with...well, nothing. The author points out that one cosleeper (that I've never heard of) was recalled. How many gazillion cribs have been recalled? There's no point of comparison here, either.

I'll forego further commentary because so many of the commenters on both posts have done my job for me, as well as on a follow-up post that the blog author felt compelled to write: "Readers respond to advice on unsafe baby products." Since his follow-up post says something along the lines of "If you're so intent on using your crazy 'sling,' you hippies, at least go for a BabyBjorn!" several astute commenters have pointed out that the BabyBjorn itself has been subject to recall and has been criticized for poor design and value (standards that CR generally evaluates). In further unrecognized irony, the next post in line is about Jardine recalling more cribs! (Note that two babies had died using the recalled cosleeper, and there were 92 incidents reported to prompt the recent Jardine crib recalls.)

I'm not calling anyone to get into a flame war with this poor blog author, who's probably highly sick of APers by now, but a few reasonable letters to CR wouldn't go amiss, asking for true journalistic investigation instead of speculation, and backed up by research statistics on the hazards of cribs (SIDS, suffocation, etc.) and plastic baby carriers (falling, suffocation, etc.) as compared with keeping your baby close to you through safe babywearing and cosleeping. I'm all for increasing the safety standards of infant products. I would never recommend, for instance, using weak craft rings on a ring sling, or using soft bedding around a sleeping baby, whether in a crib or in a cosleeping situation. And I realize that CR's objective is to test and recommend products and point out flaws in design and practice. But CR's blog goes too far in giving blanket statements that safe slinging and cosleeping will always be trumped by putting your baby away from you into plastic isolation. That's not product evaluation — that's a parenting philosophy disguised as concern for safety.

I would like to highlight one hilarious response by Meg on April 30:

"This just in: Consumer Reports warns that carrying babies in arms is not safe. Parents want to hold their babies. And babies love to be held! Unfortunately, human arms come in many different sizes and strengths. There is no corporate funded testing facility for arms. Many new parents feel unsure of how to hold their babies—and we know they won't listen when Grandma tries to tell them how to do it. Injuries have occurred when parents doing a 'spit-up handoff' miscalculate distance and slipperiness and one of them drops the baton (so to speak.) And baby-induced sleep deprivation causes clumsiness—a parent carrying a baby might actually trip or even fall! ... Hold [your] baby when you absolutely must, but for [their] own good they really should be left screaming for love in a nice safe crib or slumped over in a $20.00 umbrella stroller.
Next story: Has your uterus been recalled? Is this untested device really the best place to grow a baby?"

In related news, I watched a pretty cool-looking father in line ahead of me in a deli yesterday. He had multiple piercings and dressed like he was used to bucking the status quo. But he had his newborn in one of those plastic seats that everyone uses, being driven by peer expectations and reinforced by thoughtless hype like that from the CR blog posts above. The newborn was mildly fussy, so the father bounced, bounced, bounced the seat by the handle while we stood in line for about 10 minutes. Then we all ended up on chairs outside the deli, and I looked over and the father had the plastic carrier on his lap, still jiggling it and trying to get the baby inside to hush. He looked like a good dad, like he was really trying to connect and soothe his baby. And all I wanted to do was scream, "Pick the baby up! Can't you see he just wants to be held?!" Poor baby, poor daddy. Poor missed connection. Thanks a lot, CR.

I've been writing my little fingers off.

The first draft of my NaNoWriMo murder mystery novel was finished in November, but as pleased as I was with it overall, I knew it still needed some serious work. But December was crazy with sales and holidays, and then it was local tax season, and then federal, and somehow months slipped by, and I didn't have a second draft.

Sam got it in his head that I'd promised to have it done by a certain date, and he started reminding me that I needed to finish. He started taking Mikko on longer and longer walks, and finally just shoved me out the door to a coffeeshop down the street every so often. Sometimes I'd cheat and just sit on the back porch swing so I could be close if mothering duty called.

When Mikko goes to his preschool twice a week, I head off for a few hours of writing time, bizarre and a little dull in how little I'm interrupted and how much I can get done. Yes, I've become one of those coffeehouse people, sitting with their laptops plugged into the wall for hours, and the Tully's baristas start my drink as I walk in. I make sure not to glare at any of the cute and noisy little kids who come in, though! (Or the chattering adults, for that matter.)

But I still didn't feel particularly pressured to get the second draft done by a certain time until Sam told me that if I finished by the deadline, I'd win a super-special certificate. And if I didn't — I would never see the certificate. Ever.

Game on, dude.

I copied and pasted huge chunks. I wrote new scenes. I made trouble for myself by having characters pop into scenes I had no intention of them visiting, but I went with it and wrote it all out, nervously eyeing the live page count at the bottom of the Word screen. As I added scenes, the finish line seemed to get farther away instead of closer, and it was all I could do at the last moments to sprint to "The End."

Finally, one minute over my deadline, I finished my second draft.

Sam gave me the certificate anyway. Signed by Agatha Christie.

(I'm wondering if it's a forgery, but I don't want to accuse Sam after he's been so helpful. I'm just trying to decide if I need to send Agatha Christie or Sam thank you cards so they know I appreciate them both.)

Sam has since read the novel for the first time, and he read it with enthusiasm and excitement, which made me feel proud all over, as a mama does. We all want our babies to be exclaimed over and recognized for being the greatest things ever.

He also had lots of improvements to suggest, mostly concerning character development, and unlike with a real baby, I appreciated his input. And, so, it's back to work.

But I don't have a deadline at this point. So hopefully I can keep writing blog posts as well this time around...

(But not if another certificate beckons.)

I'm not to the terrible twos yet as commonly referenced, but Mikko is 22 months old. That's a lot of twos, right?

We've noticed lately an increase in his frustration levels and a corresponding increase in his dramatic responses to those frustrations. Are they tantrums? Maybe sorta. I don't feel like labeling them, particularly since I haven't yet seen the stereotypical movie kind where the kid flings himself on his stomach and kicks his legs about. Mikko flings himself on his back. Much different.

I was praying last night, which is something I haven't done directly in awhile, and with thoughts of Easter, I thanked God the Father for letting go of Jesus the Son for death.

And it's so commonplace in our religion that I often gloss over the meaning there or think of it only in spiritual terms.

But last night I had a visceral kick to the stomach at the thought of letting my baby die.

There are too many deaths of children around me, and each one is too, too much. Too much pain, unbearable, there-are-no-words suffering.

It's not right. Children shouldn't have to die before their parents, and parents shouldn't have to endure that.

Today is Easter, and it's the day of hope, of rebirth, of life returning. I grieve with those who are grieving today, and I wish us all hope and new life.

Stephanie at Adventures In Babywearing has put up a babywearing clearinghouse post: "How You Wear". Add your own favorite babywearing posts, tips, or tricks, and check out all the wonderful links to other babywearers while you're at it.