Welcome to the Sunday Surf! Here are some of the
best links I've read this past week.
A quiet nursing moment during the wedding festivities
We went on our first trip as a family of four this weekend. We kept it small: a road-and-ferry trip to a friend's wedding that brought us about four hours away, and a night in a cabin. Still, it was on bunk beds, so that counts for something.
And here we are, back in one piece! (Or, I guess, four pieces. It's not like we accidentally got melded together on the road.)
Enjoy some links, then!
| Lauren: |
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| I was trying to think of what I wanted to say about the new no-kids ban in that restaurant, and then I thought: I'll just wait till someone I like says something clever. Procrastination pays off. This is a parody making a favorite point of mine (that if it were any other group banned, we would all rightly be up in arms about the discrimination), and here's a sarcastic post for further reading: http://www.becomingcrunchy.com/2011/07/people-officially-suck/ Love 'em both. For those who don't like kids being out in public, I keep thinking: You know, you can choose (usually) not to HAVE kids, but what you can't choose is that you WERE a kid once. So be nice. And that's about all I have to say. | |
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| Lauren: |
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| Thank you! Another passionate voice for rear facing kids in cars as long as possible (which is to the limits of the car seat). Cars are astonishingly dangerous for kids. Rear facing saves lives! | |
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If something is shown to be
500% safer than something else, and proven to save 92 out of 100 lives, why would you not do the safer thing?
World Breastfeeding Week
Enjoy breastfeeding-related posts here this week as well as on
Natural Parents Network.
Feel free to
link up your own breastfeeding posts on our bloghop linky, enjoy the ones listed there, and
paste the code on your own blog to encourage the conversation. Happy
WBW!
Write for the
August Carnival of Natural Parenting — submissions are due this Tuesday night,
August 2, on the topic of
Creating With Kids. Tell us how you and your little ones make messes and masterpieces.
I’m celebrating World Breastfeeding Week with Natural Parents Network!
You can, too — link up your breastfeeding posts from August 1-7 in the linky below, and enjoy reading, commenting on, and sharing the posts collected here and on Natural Parents Network.
World Breastfeeding Week promotes
breastfeeding awareness and education. The theme for 2011 is
Breastfeeding: A 3D Experience.
From the official site:
When we look at breastfeeding support, we tend to see it in two-dimensions: time (from pre-pregnancy to weaning) and place (the home, community, health care system, etc). But neither has much impact without a THIRD dimension — communication!
Let's help communicate about breastfeeding for this year's WBW!
Link up your breastfeeding posts below, and visit NPN to grab the code for your own blog. It will update automatically as posts are added!
(Visit NPN for the code to place on your blog.)
This post was submitted as part of the July “Families, Create!” Carnival, hosted by Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children and Dionna at Code Name: Mama.
Polly want a cracker?
Arr, maties! The theme for Families, Create! this here July be Swashbucklers, and here it be, one day before the end of the month, and there were no piratey craft in sight. Blimey.
I have this, erm, tendency not to do things unless there's a deadline — and then to wait until the last possible moment to make the deadline. So last night I was wandering around the house asking Sam things like, "Do we have any empty paper towel tubes? No?" And then muttering, "Hrm. That would have made an awesome telescope."
A parrot! I (finally) decreed. We could do it out of paper, which we had. We would make a parrot. Just as soon as I found out what one looked like.
Our inspiration, a macaw we met at the recent Seafair Pirates Landing
So I needed red construction paper. I made Sam look for it. He was strangely incurious about my pronouncement that I was making a parrot. He later told me, "At first I was surprised you were doing a project with Mikko, but then I figured it must be something for your blog." It probably didn't help that I kept asking him to photograph the proceedings.
Yes, fully shameful mommy-blogger disclosure: I get this ambitious only if there's peer pressure like a carnival involved.
I started brainstorming — maybe I should create a carnival or meme for every task I want to do. Mondays could be "Get Up and Play" days, and Tuesdays could be "Make Music," and Wednesdays could be…um…"Take a Shower and Clip Your Toenails For Crying Out Loud."
Fortunately, Mikko's not fussy about from whence the inspiration springs. He was game to start the craft and soon took over directing me. But, first, I cut out the body. I have no artistic skill, and I didn't feel like, I don't know, being accurate or whatever, so I was just winging it. ("Winging it"! Get it? It's a parrot craft! Oh, the hilarity.) You can use the leftover paper pieces for the long tail feathers.
I cut out a crappy beak and used some discarded foam sticker insides (if you've ever had foam stickers, you know that they have random pieces you have to pull off) for the eyes. Note that it's plural. Mikko wouldn't let me stop at just one side of the parrot. That was far too two-dimensional for him.
Mikko started pulling out our clearance bin "Gift-Tye Ribbon" to make tail feathers. Sounds good to me.
Then he cut little pieces for shimmery feathers on the body. You can use stickers, coloring, painting, collage, glitter — whatever you have available. Listen to me, acting like someone's going to replicate my eleventh-hour parrot craft!
Mikko concentrates on gluing. It takes a steady hand to wield the purple glue stick.
You know, robot and safari stickers make colorful feathers as well. Why not! Mikko told me involved stories about the names and characteristics of the sticker animals. ("This one called a 'High Monkey' because it climbs up so high! This purple one called 'Abubu Monkey.'" He sounded very certain of himself, so I'm sure it's all true.)
Make the tail long and glamorous. Any pirate would want it that way.
Ta-da!
We continue to be delighted with the inspiration and wisdom our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants share, and we hope you'll join us for the next carnival in August! (Check out
January,
February,
March,
April,
May,
July, and the
full list of 2010 posts if you missed them.)
Your co-hosts are
Lauren at Hobo Mama and
Dionna at Code Name: Mama.
Here are the submission details for August 2011:
Theme: Creating With Kids: Do you like doing crafts with your children? Sewing clothes for them or with them? Putting a garden together as a family? Teaching power tools from a young age? Let us know what you and your kids make together. It can be a specific tutorial, or a post about different things you like to do.
Deadline:
Tuesday, August 2. Fill out the
webform (at the link or at the bottom) and email your submission to us by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time: CarNatPar {at} NaturalParentsNetwork.com
Welcome to the Sunday Surf! Here are some of the
best links I've read this past week.
No real reason for this picture. I just liked it.
Mikko was enjoying himself during lunch at a local Mexican restaurant.
| Lauren: |
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| I really appreciated this article about "circumstantial infertility" — people who want to have kids but have no partner or are in other situations where it's impossible. I have several loved ones in the thick of this, and I hope they can find either a family at last, or a way through their grief. I've been thinking a lot about how such people are very definitely alloparents to us, helping us raise our sons even though they're not the biological parents. | |
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| Lauren: |
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| Glad to hear the experience of another mama nursing past the two-year mark, as well as the reasonable limits she's now set. It's helpful to see that gradual and gentle weaning doesn't have to be exclusively child-led or parent-led but can be a gracious mix of the two. | |
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I never thought I’d be breastfeeding a two year old. And yet, here we are two years later, and Claire is still nursing. As Lauren says, it just kind of creeps up on you and one day your nursling isn’t
| Lauren: |
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| Another (parent) company fails to support the WHO Code. So discouraging that enough companies flout the code that it penalizes the remaining companies and makes it hard for anyone to care about upholding it. Further reading from a retailer: "Victim Of Circumstance???" from Mommy News & Views | |
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| Lauren: |
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| How the WHO Code supports mothers and babies by protecting breastfeeding | |
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| Lauren: |
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| Yesterday we went to the library & I realized the summer reading program was on. And then immediately started getting frustrated that Mikko lately won't sit still for an entire book. Good reminder for me to value the process & the fun of reading! | |
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My answer is that if the interruption doesn’t happen, it is very likely that learning isn’t happening. We need to translate interruption as the child’s entering the process.
I'm so happy to have such a lovely guest post from
Amber of Birth Routes about how necessary babywearing is for a nanny — particularly one with multiple young children to care for.
On Thursday, as I was ECing (elimination communication) the 8-month-old in a public washroom, with the 12-month-old flipped on my back in my ring sling — I burst into laughter. I am that woman — arms full of love, attending needs wherever we are. Both smiley happy babies. My thighs likely becoming toned, as I peek over my left shoulder and see little pearly teeth and bright eyes smiling at me as I chant "pee pee, pee pee," then "that's it!"
Also? I would so love to hire Amber! We're fortunate to have my attachment-minded sister-in-law (also a fabulous nanny and the babywearer in the photo there) to
alloparent along with us, but the world could always use more like them, yes? (Along with that wish, I wish more of us could afford such blessed help!)
But back to the article — go check it out, my fellow babywearing fans, and give Amber some comment love for the beauty in it.
I'm Lauren Wayne, writer and natural parent. I embrace attached parenting with an emphasis toward green living. 
