Parenting

Tired Week Musings on Rest, Minimalism, and Contentment

/ Bethany / Leave a comment

It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve posted. I had some arm pain last week so I needed to minimize typing. And once it felt better, I just felt….tired. So posting fell low on the list of priorities.

As for the low energy, there were a few different factors at play. It was time for a deload week with the barbell, so it was natural that I needed some time to recuperate. I’ve also been fighting a cough for the past month. However, last weekend when I looked at my habit tracking spreadsheet, I noticed that I hadn’t been checking off the “in bed by 10pm column” as often. Well, that was a good reminder of why I chose that habit. For the past few days I’ve been making a conscious effort to go to bed instead of watching TV at night. And boy do I need it – even with the extra sleep, I still feel tired. I have some catching up to do, clearly.

Lately I’ve been enjoying the benefits of minimalism in my life. I’ve been working towards a decluttering goal this year and my husband and I have gotten rid of more than double the amount of things I aimed to get rid of…..and we are still going! I’m starting to appreciate the benefits at this point. Such as – I actually enjoy spending time at home now, whereas I used to feel overwhelmed and stressed out and needed to get out a lot. Which left things undone at home. Which left me more stressed out. Which meant my rest time wasn’t as restful as it could have been.

But today, I am grateful that I have been working towards a restful space, and I have achieved that (even though there is more I can do, I am happy with the progress we have made!). When I woke up this morning, I could feel that I needed a restful day. Thankfully, today is one of my days off from work. So I slowly got ready to go out on the porch and lift.  I read the weather on my phone, got dressed slowly, ate breakfast and took care of my kid’s shit (literally and figuratively). After breakfast (almost 2 hours later!) we headed out to the porch gym, which, today, was also a pet shop. Or a ticket counter. Or maybe both. I’m not sure.  Since it was a bit rainy and I was needing extra rest, I did not schedule any trail walking into my day.

Later, a friend I hadn’t spoken with in a long time sent me a message asking how I was doing. I caught myself about to answer “we are having a lazy day.” And I realized that sounded so negative, when in fact, I was doing a positive thing by honoring my need for rest. So instead, I said “we are having a restful day.” That felt great, and not at all self-deprecating. I think I will try substituting “restful” for “lazy” in my language, when applicable (which is probably almost always)”.

In addition to “tired,” I have also been experiencing a sense of contentment lately. I like this quote by Joshua Becker:

Minimalism is the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of everything that distracts us from it.

Recently (definitely within the past year), I have found myself thinking self-pitying thoughts, especially about finances and lifestyle things that we can’t afford right now, such as a home with a bigger yard, and traveling to visit friends and family more. But my daily “name something for which I feel grateful” habit seems to be changing my mindset, and this morning I was feeling grateful for simplicity. Sure, I could work more, and I would have more money. I am a person who really needs a lot of downtime and time alone with my own thoughts though. And today, I am grateful that my lifestyle (and my husband!) is allowing me some of that time, several times per week. Especially since I have a child. I’m feeling happy with the way things are, right now.

Thanks for reading!

 

For Crying Out Loud: How I Woke Up From Natural Parenting Dogma About Crying

/ Bethany / 8 Comments

When I started this blog, I didn’t envision parenting being a primary topic. The description at the top of the page says “habit cultivation, body positivity, olympic style weightlifting, seasonal vegetable cooking, and an occasional side of parenting.” If the last couple months have been indicative, I should probably switch the last two topics. The description should read “an occasional side of vegetable cooking.”

Yesterday I read a post by Everyday Battles, and it struck a chord with me. I could relate to a lot of what she wrote.

I spent my entire pregnancy surrounding myself with empowering messages, images, resources, etc. I believed I was fit, strong, healthy, level headed, supported, etc. I was the “perfect candidate” for pregnancy, labor, delivery, mindset and motherhood. It was natural! Why should I be concerned? I’ll bounce back because of how healthy and educated I am about this process. This woman did it! That woman looks amazing! My head was filled with powerful affirmations and expectations. I was confident to a fault.

Well, fuck me. That mentality failed me big time…

I, too, spent my entire pregnancy surrounding myself with empowering messages, images, resources, etc. I, too, believed I was fit, strong, healthy, level headed, supported, etc. I, too, was the “perfect candidate” for pregnancy, labor, delivery, mindset and motherhood. My head, too, was filled with powerful affirmations and expectations. I, too, was confident to a fault. And like Brianna writes, that mentality failed me too, big time.

When faced with a very long, drawn out, prodromal labor, I was not unprepared for my mounting levels of fear and exhaustion. My birth was very different from the way I had envisioned it. The first few weeks of my son’s life were the darkest weeks of mine. I have never in my life doubted myself as much as I did then.

But birth expectations were not the only way in which I feel the natural parenting community fails parents and kids.

During my pregnancy, I was also immersing myself in beliefs that were not helpful to me at all about crying babies.

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Uncharted Waters: Food Seems to Have Lost Its Power

/ Bethany / 1 Comment

When I started working on my habit goals nine months ago, I knew I wanted to be open to whatever outcomes may come, without trying to dictate and manipulate the results. After a lifetime of chasing outcome goals, I was sick of it and ready to give up control in that area.

Over the past nine months, I have noticed a lot of great outcomes, both physical and mental. I am now starting the tenth month, and one of the outcomes I have noticed recently is that the role food plays in my life is changing. This post will include some observations about my relationship with food in different points in my life, and now. Please keep in mind that in describing this, I am not holding any judgment towards myself or anyone else who happens to identify with these statements. Just describing my experiences at different points in my life.

As a child, I loved food, but it was also a source of guilt. I did not find my family meals relaxing. During meals, my parents sometimes argued, and there was often food policing of my brothers and my meals or portions. I grew to enjoy eating alone.

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Turning Back the Clock: Bringing Back an Old Habit

/ Bethany / 11 Comments

I am in my 30s, as are many of my friends. It seems like a common experience that some of us feel nostalgic for our younger bodies. We would appreciate them so much more, we think (never mind that we hated our bodies back in high school too….). We wish for the energy we had when we were younger and could stay out late all the time.

Of course, getting a past version of ourselves back is impossible. Even putting aging aside, so many of our environmental conditions and habits have changed.  The hormonal climates of our bodies are different. We have different habits, different pressures, different responsibilities, different perspectives, and different values.

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Refining Goals, Saving Money

/ Bethany / 2 Comments

This weekend I decided to skip barbell club and go on a trail walk instead with my local chapter of Hike it Baby.  Now that the weather is cooling off, I’m enjoying being outside again, and finally gathering some steam for my walking habit. I love going to barbell club, but I know my hiking options will be more limited all winter.  Kiddo and I enjoyed the walk! And thanks to the porch gym equipment, I was still able to get my weightlifting in later. I’m very grateful to have that flexibility. Between the hike and weightlifting, kiddo and I spent a lot of hours outside on Saturday and we both loved it! One hazard of training with a kiddo: he dropped a .5kg change plate between two of the porch floor boards. Barbell math just got a lot harder! Oh well.

Earlier this week I wrote about stumbles while developing habits. I’ve been thinking about another habit that was on my list. Or rather, it wasn’t a habit, it was a goal. The goal was to save $12,000 this year, thereby finishing our family’s emergency fund (we started the year with around $2200 in this fund). This is baby step 3 in the Dave Ramsey baby steps.

Well, we were making some progress towards this goal…..and then we needed to replace our car. That setback really took the wind out of my sails on this one, and the fund has been stagnating ever since, nowhere near the goal for the end of the year.

So, I’m tweaking this goal. As I talked about in the stumbles post, there have been other goals (walking, bedtime) that needed to be changed a bit in order for me to really take off and develop the habits. I’ve decided to make it a habit-based goal like all the others, instead of an outcome-based goal. Instead of saying “get to $12,000 in the account by the end of the year,” I’m now saying “deposit $10 or more in the emergency fund, at least 15 times by the end of the year.” This will help with developing the habit of saving. It doesn’t seem like much, but it is more than I am currently saving, and once I develop that habit, I can look into saving more aggressively.

Shana Tova, all!

 

Habit Cultivation: Adults Have Developmental Stumbles, Too!

/ Bethany / 12 Comments

Today I want to offer a new perspective I am learning in my habit cultivation practice.

Whenever we learn a new skill, we expect to stop and start. We see this all around us. Babies take a few steps, then fall down. Kids ride their bikes a short distance; they don’t ride all the way around the block on the first try. When I learned to play the clarinet, I first learned Mary Had a Little Lamb, not the Stravinsky 3 pieces.

This is all normal and expected. We don’t beat ourselves up every step of the way. We celebrate every step.

With children, we also expect that each child will develop different skills at different times. Most children start to walk around the time they turn one year old. But there are some who walk at 10 months old, and fall down every few steps while they are learning. Other children crawl until they are 14 or 15 months old, and then start walking and almost never fall down.  The same is true for every milestone. Some kids meet a certain milestone early. Some late. Some kids meet one milestone very early and another milestone very late. Some kids meet most of their milestones right around the average expected time, without fail. This is all considered normal and we expect these variations. We also expect that most children will stumble many times while learning new skills.

When adults try and form new habits, it’s often the opposite. Instead of starting small and expecting to stumble a little, we start with big goals, then declare our attempts a failure and give up when we stumble. Then we beat ourselves up (either internally or to our friends). In the case of health-related habits, we talk about the fact that we started and stopped multiple times as though each attempt is isolated and separate.

What if it wasn’t? What if each attempt wasn’t an isolated and separate, but a normal part of the process of learning something new?

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Study: Diet Culture is Screwing Up Five Year Old Girls

/ Bethany / 2 Comments

“We can make this stop. I think the solution is to talk about the health of all children, instead of the size of some children. I think it’s helping kids develop a strong relationship and sense of trust with their bodies, it’s helping them understand their bodies’ needs instead of being terrified of being or becoming “fat.” I think it’s helping them try out lots of types of movement and giving them a chance to find something they enjoy instead of insisting that if they don’t like getting dodge balls hurled at them, or playing organized sports, or being judged on their ability to do a random group of exercises once a year (for which they get no training the rest of the year) then they deserve to be ridiculed. There are lots of things that we could do if we really cared about kids’ health, and talking about their weight isn’t even close.”

Another great post from Dances With Fat.

Ragen Chastain's avatarDances With Fat

grade on curveIf you were looking for proof that our culture is unbelievably messed up around dieting, health, and weight, you need look no further than the fact that a study has come out called “Dietary restraint of 5-year-old girls: Associations with internalization of the thin ideal and maternal, media, and peer influences.”

Yes, we have reached a point where we are studying dieting behaviors and thin obsession in kindergarten girls.  So what did the study find?

RESULTS:

Thirty-four percent of girls reported at least a moderate level of dietary restraint. While most girls were satisfied with their body size, half showed some internalization of the thin ideal. Girls’ dietary restraint was correlated with weight bias favoring thinner bodies, and greater internalization of the thin ideal, media exposure, and appearance conversations with peers. Media exposure and appearance conversations were the strongest predictors of dietary restraint.

That is straight up horrifying…

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Kids Loving Their CSA Shares

/ Bethany / Leave a comment

I work at a local CSA farm, and occasionally get to write some newsletter content for the members. Here is a piece I wrote for this week’s newsletter.

We received a heartwarming email from CSA member Rachel M. last week, on behalf of her two year old son, Paul. Rachel wanted to make sure we knew how much Paul loved his farm vegetables. Their family joined the CSA when Paul was just three weeks old, so he doesn’t remember NOT being a CSA member.

“Yesterday, when we were eating some roasted beets, he kept asking for ‘more beets Farmer Dave grow.'” Today, knowing we would be going to the farm to pick up more veggies, he asked me ‘Farmer Dave on red tractor? Picking more kale?'”…..All your veggies make me feel like a better parent — I love it that because of our CSA share, Paul says things like “me like kohlrabi! me have kale smoomie? (smoothie)”. So, from me and my son Paul, thank you for all the hard work you put into growing veggies for us!”

As farmers, this is a major reason why we do what we do and find our work so satisfying. We commonly hear about small children who have no idea that vegetables are anything but delicious. Toddlers look forward to the CSA box with just as much anticipation as adults.

“I want to open my Farmer Dave’s box! I’m so happy to open my Farmer Dave’s box. What’s inside?” – the son of a Farmer Dave’s team member

They help themselves to fresh fruits and veggies from the fridge, instead of (or in addition to) cookies from the cookie jar.

“I find half eaten cucumbers and peppers in random rooms in my house.” – A Dracut CSA member

Many parents feel a lot of pressure around feeding their children healthy foods. We love knowing that the work we do takes some of the pressure off, allowing the youngest eaters among us the joy of eating simple, fresh, delicious food because they love it, not because they have to. Their earliest memories of fresh, local produce are easy, pleasurable, and fun ones. We are proud and humbled to be a part of these important years in forming their lifelong attitudes towards food.

And for many of the adults among us, this is the time of year when life gets hectic, schedules become busier, and the school year begins. If you find yourself more overwhelmed with the produce this time of year, try taking a cue from some of these kiddos. Pull a tomato, pepper, cucumber out of the fridge and just much on it – no preparation required, or with a simple dip if you prefer. A few veggie snacks per day will make a serious dent in your weekly share! (And if you are looking to can or freeze some of it for winter use, we have some resources on our website.)

Here’s to simplicity and joy and wide-eyed wonderment!

Bethany
(filling in for Farmer Dave in this week’s newsletter, and mother of a three year old)

An Old Post: Our Birth and Lactation Story

/ Bethany / 1 Comment

I wrote this post before I had my own blog. It originally appeared on The Badass Breastfeeder. Though it’s only marginally related to what I write about on this blog, it’s my story, and I wanted to get it onto my own site now that I’ve got one.

My kiddo is now three years old. He still breastfeeds at bedtime (and most days that is all). He is a happy kid and my husband and I have no regrets at all.

 

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