The other day, Sam, Alrik, and I wanted to head out to the playground — and Mikko didn't. Now, the playground is literally a block from our home. Mikko is 7 years old, nearly 8, and perfectly capable of amusing himself and retrieving drinks or snacks as needed in a short absence of parental supervision.

But we knew we couldn't leave him home alone, and told him as much. "But whhhyyyy?" he asked. Indeed, kiddo, why?

Because the neighbors might call the cops on us, that's why.

Instead, we had to cajole and bribe him into accompanying us. In fact, Alrik, Karsten, and I left first, and Sam followed a good forty minutes later, with new plans and relevant toys to meet up at the beach for a digging party, the activity Mikko finally agreed to.

Let me tell you a bit about my childhood in less (?) enlightened times. I walked to and from kindergarten in Alaska. My mom used to say she'd watch through the window until we disappeared into the fog. When I was 6 and living in Colorado, my mother went back to work, leaving me in my 10-year-old brother's care throughout the summer break. By the time I was 7 or 8, my best friend and I, and her brother and mine, would frequently walk as a group alone to the swimming pool. I remember wearing our towels in elaborate concoctions on our heads and pushing our bare toes into the hot, melting tar stripes on the pavement. When we got there, we swam without adults besides whatever teen lifeguards were on duty. By the time I was 8 or 9, my friend and I were going on walking or bike-riding jaunts by ourselves, visiting my dad at his office or the hospital (he was a social worker in the Army) or running errands for our moms, like picking up stamps or the newspaper. I began babysitting my little brother soon after he was born when I was 9. I had a chart to track my $1-per-hour payments. (I was surprised when I began babysitting for other families at age 11 or so and figured out they would pay me more than that.)

Welcome to the April 2015 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Family History

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have shared stories, lore, and wisdom about family history. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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Cuddling up for some intergenerational emails

Mikko is seven, nearly eight. He doesn't like to say he can't read yet — he says he's "in training." This is very true.

Since Sam and I both learned to read, organically, from a pre-preschool age, we weren't prepared for a child who was heavily resistant to the idea of decoding written language. We don't want to push him to do anything he's not ready for, but we also have relatives and neighbors and other well-meaning folk asking us repeatedly, "Can he read yet? … How about now?"

So Sam and I got an idea. We'd emphasize with Mikko how much fun reading is, and how practical as well. (He's a pragmatic soul.) We'd talk about reading as it comes up in video game screens (very important to him), we'd read aloud fun books together (Mikko and I are onto the second Harry Potter at the moment), and we'd ask for help from some of the very people expressing concern: his relations.

I emailed Mikko's grandparents on both sides and his sole, delightful cousin. I requested, if they would be so kind, occasional emails, texts, and even written letters — maybe one thing electronic a week and one thing snail-mail a month. I had an idea that if a correspondence could be struck up and the ball pushed into rolling, Mikko would get caught up in the enjoyment of the back-and-forth.

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The other night, I had a a dream that I was pregnant again. Since I don't quite remember and didn't understand, I'll spare you the weird, dream-like details of how this happened (something involving an evil queen, I think?), but whatever the cause, there I was, expecting another baby when my current one is just five months old. We would be having four children instead of the three we'd planned on.

In my dream, Sam and I had a reaction of: "Oh. Well, ok, then." I wasn't unhappy. I would embrace this child as I had the others, but…. But I'd have a newborn when this baby was only fourteen months old. I was just about to get rid of my maternity clothes (well, the ones I'm not still wearing, ahem). We had accepted that Karsten would be our last, and now here we were being thrown back into the thick of it again. I tried to wrap my dream mind around the concept that we would be a family of six instead of five — it wasn't what I'd anticipated, and it was a hard thought to surround, like something stuck in my throat.

When I woke up, I was relieved. Not at the fact that we weren't having a fourth baby, but at the fact that I was apparently more at peace with it than I'd thought.

If my subconscious was telling me a fourth would be a less-than situation, then stopping now must in fact be the right decision for us.

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I don't know if you've noticed, but things have been a little slow around here lately. It turns out it's challenging to parent a new baby, take care of and homeschool two other kidlets, run a home business, and blog. Who knew! (You can see a day in my life here.)

I thought something fun would be just to show off a few of the cute pictures of Karsten since the last time I posted a Wordless Wednesday when he was not yet two months old. He just turned five months and is a chunka-chunka burnin' love, but I've edited pictures only for the rest of two months through three months. Yup, photo editing is one of those things that's hard to fit in as well!

Anyway…here are some adorable pictures of all three kids from December and January!






Hipster baby


Mikko & Alrik writing on the sliding door with a gift of window markers from Nikolaustag


Big brother Alrik