getaway

Posted in advantageous adventures, parenting apparently?, Travels by ElaineMarie

photo D5631691-F061-45F8-8C70-C553859F05BE-20814-00000EAEE6F34267_zpsa87a5fd0.jpg

in case i hadn’t sufficiently rubbed it in your face that we spent the first couple of days this week in the woods, communing with birds and spirit animals then here is a whole entire post dedicated to just that.

i was having myself a time. my sweet mother joined us so this meant i was afforded some alone time and i spent it in the woods, in glorious natural woods. i feel i really need to make an effort to spend more time doing this. i really have no excuse since there are so many parks and green spaces in and near columbus. i take darla to the parks a lot and we do go on hikes but i don’t make alone time to do this and i think i really need it. my brain kept tapping into some of my most cherished memories as a child which always involved some camping trip in the woods or a stay at scout camp. i could feel how my brain operates differently in that setting. most of the time i feel like my brain takes in way too much information and i can’t focus in everyday life but in the woods my information inundation has a purpose. i feel like my vision is in panorama view the entire time. it feels right. i mean, i saw a spirit deer for cryin’ out loud.

i enjoyed little quite moments of solitude that left me yearning to make a solo cabin trip someday soon. nothing too long but maybe a 2 day excursion to the woods to have myself a walden weekend. please universe?

my daughter on the other hand had a different experience. this cabin had 3 tvs in it. 3 TVS!!! i was hoping this would be a break from television but it wasn’t for her. that’s how she chose to spend her time. can you see her up there in that last photo fighting the forest? because that’s what she said she wanted to do. i think darla may not be as much of a nature-girl as i am. and that’s ok….i guess. maybe she’ll come around but i know i wasn’t as focused on television and electronics at her age. i wanted to be outside, up in a tree, at the creek or in the woods. it makes me sad for her that she’s not getting to know the freedom of a rural childhood.

but she’s got her own thing going on. like turning party hats into unicorn horns that she has to use to impale a bull to the moon. i have the visual arts to thank for that.

so, i’ll be carrying a little bit of the natural world around with me until i can get back. and next time we’ll be renting a cabin without 3 tvs.

21Oct2013

weekending 42

Posted in familyness, gratitude adjustment, i dig music, it's cool to school, love and happiness, parenting apparently?, weekending by ElaineMarie

it’s boot weather. this weekend was very much out and about. friday is looking to be our family day this fall. we braved the homecoming crowd to take in the blues for smoke exhibit in the afternoon. this was a precursor to our friend’s performance there friday evening with Lonnie Holley. Both performances blew my mind but Lonnie gave me a new catch phrase that’s been stuck in my head: thumbs up to mother universe.

between the two wexner events we walked past a new little donut spot {literally named the little donut shop} and had to stop in for some tasty maple bacon goodness. mike got a samoa and darla got her standard sprinkles special. those last two pics are us as cheerleaders for the columbus marathon. this was my first time as a spectator at a marathon and it was more inspiring and entertaining than i thought it would be. that might be due to the pair of sideliners dressed up in the horse mask, followed by his friend clapping cups behind him up and down the road. it was fun to cheer on the runners.

i guess this is the only time of year we visit the wexner center since the last time we went was about a year ago. it’s a great way for me to make observations about darla’s cognitive progress, though. last year she didn’t really want anything to do with looking at the exhibit. this year she was just really motivated to look at only the things she wanted to take in, which is pretty wonderful in my book. no standardized tests needed here!

but it does make it a bit hard for mike and i to have a personal experience. luckily, the wexner offers free tours on thursdays so we can return again at a later date.

but what i mainly want to say about life thoughts from the weekend is how thankful i am to have this little family that runs around getting involved in so much life. i can let myself get pretty stressed out at times about the fact that laundry piles up, dishes don’t get done and there never seems to be enough time to clean up all the messes. and then i remember that’s a sign that i’m living my life. i’m not simply maintaining it. a clean house is life management, not life. we get out there. that may be our strongest area as parents up until this point, we get darla out for experiences. she’s done a lot in these short years. she’s learned to be the master of her own universe. she’s learned to seek out life. and for that i’m thankful.

16Jul2013

daily moment

Posted in daily moment, parenting apparently? by ElaineMarie

this was taken outside a port-o-john station in the scioto audubon park. i’m pretty confused about the ideas of feminine attire in this sign, especially in a park…where people hike…

apparently i’m not the only one. darla asks “momma, why does she have an umbrella up her dress?”

10Jul2013

daily moment

Posted in daily moment, Momma Needs a minute..., parenting apparently? by ElaineMarie

i love that my little girl grabs a bumbershoot and galloshes {can you tell i’m feeling very retro at the moment?} and heads out for a good time during a rainstorm. i dislike that my first reaction is to try and control it and think how this activity will interfere with my routine. she lives life in the moment and each moment to the fullest. please, universe remind me not to squash this out of her.

19Jun2013

easy

Posted in Momma Needs a minute..., parenting apparently? by ElaineMarie

not too long ago a phrase that i said to myself quite often was “why can’t anything ever be easy?” nothing ever seemed easy. in fact, the only thing that was easy in life was making myself feel horrible about myself and my life.

and then something changed. i changed. i stopped looking for everything to be easy and then suddenly, it was.

i realized that our world has programmed us to think life should be easy & “convenient.” i realized that nothing ever worth anything in my life came from “easy”. easy never put a dime in my pocket, a lesson in my head or a true smile in my heart. i started to take inventory of my life to see if the actions i habitually made were authentic ones that matched up to how i want to live my life or if they have been placed in my brain as a conventional, easy way of living life.

today i ride my bike everywhere i go, do my dishes by hand and hang our laundry on the line. why? because that matches up with how my authentic self wants to live life. my authentic self believes that i should take advantage of the energy my body provides and that i was not placed on this earth to be a consumer. i feel better when i put my energy out, not when i am using energy up to live my life. some of this is unavoidable, for instance the energy to cool and heat our house. some of the energy is negotiable, say the energy it takes to write this blog post. i try to keep a better balance these days. i can feel the weariness in my body at the end of the day and know that it was a good one because i am now spending my life putting myself out there into the world. it’s an amazing feeling.

this post is not about convincing you that you should live life my way. it’s about convincing you you should live life your way.

i do these things because it is what my authentic, deepest self believes and some of these small changes in life have made me infinitely more happy with my life path. my life is simpler. my focus is true. my goals are more clear. and all i had to do was to start living my life the way i want to instead of what is expected of me. i’ve learned to stop comparing my insides to everyone’s outsides. i’ve learned to respect the paths of others because i respect my own. i fall off this horse a lot but at least now i get back on.

are you living the life you truly want? are you living the life you think is expected of you? are you making decisions based on your authenticity or is it to live up to some standard? whatever that may be.

i think my greatest lessons on this have been from parenting. are you a new parent? i want to tell you something: put down the parenting books.

YOU CAN DO THIS IN WHATEVER WAY SEEMS RIGHT AND GOOD TO YOU.

ok, now you can pick them back up again because there is actually some good information in there but please put that phrase in your head and remember to read the books as an exercise in discovering your own true philosophies and not as a manual. your babies and children don’t have to do anything one certain way. as long as you are making informed decisions based on your authentic self you and yours will be fine.

but that is not a guarantee just in case there would be some kind of legal liability attached to this blog. caution! contents hot!

this is just my experience and my opinion. this is what has made me happier and more confident as a parent and person of this world. parenting and life are not easy. nor should we want them to be. at least i no longer desire for them to be. i know i will get a whole lot more out of it if it requires a lot of effort on my part.

so i’ll be here, no longer expecting life to be easy. i’ll be putting my energy out there and making myself open to the returns. because i now know that “not easy” doesn’t have to mean the same thing as “difficult.” i’m pretty sure some kind of bumper stick is going to come out of this.

i’m thinking LIFE: REQUIRES EFFORT.

12Jun2013

climb thoz treez!

Posted in kiddie-do, parenting apparently? by ElaineMarie

my daily moment post prompted some thoughts about tree climbing to start swirlin’ around in my brain space so i thought i might as well dump that here too.

oh gawd. that was getting long and preachy and stupid so i just scrapped it and am starting over by saying what i really want to say.

i was a crazy monkey child growing up and darla is too. i loved the feeling of mounting the obstacles. i loved the satisfaction and pride it swelled up in my tiny, gangly body. i can see it in darla too. can you see her face right there? maybe not because it’s hard with the sun {or is it jesus?} shining right down on her. but she’s really good at it and even though she’s small, i’ve let her from a young age.

and i don’t mean that i’ve helped her. i mean that she’s been climbing trees {and various other items} on her own for a couple of years now. i feel it’s really important for her to see that i trust her and that she can trust herself and her own body. i just think that’s where all the magic happens during an ol’ fashioned tree romp. for a lot of kids, it’s the first big risk they get to take and come out successful and triumphant. who am i to deprive her of that by hovering too closely and directing her from branch to branch. of course i’m nearby but the act is all her 99% of the time. plus, remember when falling out of a tree and getting a bump, bruise or… gasp…even a broken bone was just part of life and learning lessons? not that i want my child to get hurt but i know it’s not my job as a parent to prevent anything bad from happening to her. it’s my job to show her how to recover from the bumps, bruises and breaks. and it’s my job to show her that 99% of the time they do not happen.

we can trust our children. if we trust them more now when they are small we’ll be able to trust them a whole lot more when they are big. that’s just my opinion though. check in with me in 12 years when darla’s climbed out her bedroom window and the jack daniels is missing from the liquor cabinet.

ha! we don’t have jack daniels or a liquor cabinet. squashed that little plan of yours there, missy. you can’t pull anything over on this hawk squaw.

oh anyyyyyyway…

last summer our neighborhood festival brought a rock-climbing wall for the kids. darla was only 3. i could see the desire in her eyes and she quietly told me “mommy, i really want to make it all the way to the top.” i told her to be brave and never give up. well, her turn came quickly and she proceeded to climb all the way to the top. even when she lost all footing and was hanging on by just one hand. even when the bigger kids around her gave up. she did it. and she came running to me with a huge triumphant smile after. the folks working the climbing wall said they were amazed that she was able to do it but i wasn’t. i was confident that she would.

ok, so that last paragraph was some parental boasting but everything before that was me just putting it out there how i feel about letting my girl get up in a big ol’ tree, or sometimes small ones, and figure it out on her own.

my tips for letting a child {in this case mine but could be yours if you like what i’m puttin’ down} swing from the boughs:

1. don’t do it for them.

2. don’t do it for them. i repeat this. even from the beginning. getting up into a tree should be the child’s effort entirely. that is what makes it an important part of childhood.

3. do help them spot and locate a safe branch if they are stuck. this is different from giving them a play-by-play on how to climb. if she needs help, i direct her and reassure her on which branch to try next.

4. it’s ok and probably best if they don’t wear shoes. our feet are designed for this kind of stuff and have better gripping potential than any sneaker. i have witnessed a surprising number of parents yelling at their child to get down out of a tree for not wearing shoes to climb. this is usually initiated by the fact that my child is running around barefoot so other kiddos follow suite. but this leads me to…

5. don’t yell at your child while they’re up in a tree. this could scare her and cause her to fall. even, if i’m scared or surprised by her climb, i calmly instruct her to come back down.

6. let go and know that it’s going to be ok. i let her try for herself even if it makes me uncomfortable. we’re both learning from the experience in that way. and even if she falls, or has a close call…i know that it’s all going to be ok.

9Jun2013

Daily moment

Posted in daily moment, love and happiness, parenting apparently?, Uncategorized by ElaineMarie

The moment Darla sits down on the downtown sidewalk and says to herself “concentrate. concentrate.”

6Jun2013

daily moment

Posted in daily moment, Momma Needs a minute..., parenting apparently? by ElaineMarie

yes, she has her shirt on backwards.

yes, she’s running around the fountain.

yes, she fell in.

and it was all ok.

5Jun2013

how to take my kid to a festival

Posted in advantageous adventures, familyness, i dig music, parenting apparently? by ElaineMarie

i would name this how to take your kid to a festival but i don’t know how to take your child to a festival. i just know how to take my child. hubster and i kinda think of ourselves as seasoned veterans at this point. so get ready for some pix in your face and then my rundown of the 2013 nelsonville music festival with our child in tow.

if it looks like we just spent the weekend doing cool stuff against a beautiful back drop it’s because we did.

ok, so nelsonville music festival is just simply my favorite thing about living in ohio. yeah, i’m bolding that. this weekend is just magical for me every year. and every year gets a little easier with our little gal.

ok, so steps for taking our child to a music festival:

1. pick the right festival. for me nelsonville is hands down my favorite to bring kiddos. we’ve also done pitchfork a few times which is pretty doable and forecastle which didn’t seem to jive as well for a family affair but NMF seems as though it’s a music festival happening around a kids’ art camp. as i wrote last year, the main goal of the fest, in my opinion, seems to be creating a family friendly event. and it just works. it works really well. they put so much thought into making the children welcome. i love it. can you tell?

kid friendliness of this year: kids’ tent where darla painted murals, made sock puppets and put on plays, played at a water wall made of repurposed plastic bottles, painted masks, tried out different instruments and made a fairywreath crown. a really cool new addition was the bindlestiff family circus. they performed all day on saturday. darla also participated in a parade and had the most amazing pink jetpack custom-made for her out of balloons. she had her face painted on multiple days at multiple locations and beyond that the whole place is like a kid free-for-all. games of soccer and frisbee going and always a new friend to meet. and you gotta love a festival that moves everyone into the gymnasium during bad weather and organizes kids’ games.

2. be at peace with not really getting too close or getting to watch the bands. i’ve not been the best at this in the past but this year was better. this was due to the combination of our girl being more independent and my accepting the fact that i’m just going to have to be content to be in the presence of live music even if my eyes have to be fixed on a roving target.

3. be at peace with the roving target. mike and i have been able to become much more comfortable with darla’s independence. we’re getting into the age of “you can go anywhere you want as long as we can see each other” and sometimes i have to break out of my fear and trust that she’ll be ok. we have more practice now at trusting her own interactions with people and nelsonville is the perfect opportunity for her to exercise a little more independence from us: it’s a contained environment with trustworthy people most, if not all, of whom are fine with a 4-year-old stranger crawling up into their lap to cuddle. in the past i’ve felt guilty about her intruding into others space but i’ve learned that it’s also up to other people to give her the message if she crosses their boundary. and that is fear based thinking any way. several of our coolest interactions happened this past weekend because darla has no social boundaries. really, most people are more open than we are made to believe.

4. choose your bribes wisely. i tried to bribe darla into being good for the whole festival with the promise of a tiara she had her eye on that she would receive on the last day. that was quickly shortened until the end of saturday when we spent a good number of hours on both thurs and fri standing at the tiara tent while darla tried the tiara on and stared at herself in the mirror. this was then further shortened to midday on saturday when we figured we might as well get it instead of spending many more awkward hours with the tiara lady. in the end it was much better to have something that we could take away if things weren’t going so nicely. also, save food and drink bribes until the very last straw. do not start these too early with her because you will end up in a vicious sugar cycle. also, don’t feed her after midnight.

5. be free and be open. taking darla anywhere means i have to be free and open-minded to whatever the experience is going to be instead of trying to manage the situation. sometimes i fail at this but i feel i did pretty excellent this past weekend. i had to remind myself that this was an experience for darla too and that it’s really in my best interest if she enjoys herself as much as possible in the ways she sees most fit. sometimes this means things happen that would normally be deemed outside the social norms {for some} like playing in the dirt for hours or walking around without shoes or adopting herself into a family of strangers. nelsonville is perfect for this. and really, parenting seems so much easier when those things can be tossed.

6. make a trade-off schedule in advance. so, since some of the acts go on past darla’s bedtime we usually end up trading off nights for who takes her back early to bed. {and i use that early term loosely since camping means staying up a little bit late to tell spooky stories} this ensures that a) we each get a little bit of kid free time at the fest to enjoy some of the headliners b) at least one of us is better rested for getting up with her early in the morning. this was the first year we were proactive enough to make the schedule agreement first instead of making it up during the trip. talking about it ahead of time really helps. you are really smart and probably would have figured that out sooner.

7. go with friends who also have kids. and make friends with the other parents who brought their kids and also have better snacks than you. trust me, both these things are really helpful. this part means i’m not-so-subtly suggesting you should come with us next year.

well, that’s all i got on that. thanks for taking a look at a small bit of our festival experience. i’m really just trying to tell you all to join us next year. i promise you won’t be disappointed.