Jasmine Carlson – Page 4

The community communion table

Food is a big deal in my family and in our community. Meals, especially dinner, are when everyone gets together. They are loud and they last a long time. No one seems to be in a hurry to get them over with.

Dinner prep is usually fairly chaotic with everyone in and out of the kitchen and the kitchen overflows with smells. We cook spicy and ethnic food a lot so curry and chili are regular smells in our kitchen.

Dinner is a community communion of sorts. You can feel the joy of eating when our clan gets together. We make food that is nourishing, made of as many whole foods — and organic when we can afford it — as we are able and food that is full of flavor. Our policy is that everyone should leave the table full in every way, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

Since shortly after my son was born he sensed that dinnertime was special. That there was something special about sitting down together and that it made eating something more than just nourishing our bodies but that it is something that nourishes relationship, something that nourishes the soul.

By the time he was a few months old he demanded to “sit” at the table with everyone. Usually on my husband’s or my lap. He wanted to be a part of what was going on.

As my son started to eat food I watched him enjoy food. My son loves both curry and chili. Granted he is now a very normal toddler and I have to come up with creative ways to introduce healthy food in to his diet but I am satisfied knowing that the meals we put on the table are full of nourishing food but it’s more than just the food he is putting it to his belly. My son sits at the end of our large dinner table and he engages in the conversation and laughter that happens. I am happy to see my son be nourished in every way around the community communion table.

Jasmine is a co-housing community living mama with a passion for fierce writing.

Photos used from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/forever5yearsold/2808759067/

Spring Mini Series Kick Off

Spring is finally coming! And with Spring, fresh ideas are flowing again, somewhat slowly like the sap in the trees but flowing none the less. So to kick off this spring I am going to embark on a mini series of the dangers of so called “baby training” and its effect on the parent/child attachment. This has been something that I have pondered for a while now as I consider parenting styles and how they affect the parent/child relationship. So this is my mini series introduction. Attachment is very important to me and I have seen and felt the effects of the lack of attachment in my life. The damage that it caused has been long lasting but the undoubted benefit of the experience has also reverberated through my life. I have also seen how the effects of well meaning but misguided parents who have either over-indulged and caused attachment problems or have read a book and followed some sort of baby training to the letter. I have seen first hand the difference between babies who are have been parented with attachment in mind and those who have been parented with schedule in mind.

It is not my goal to sound like I am anti-discipline. Actually it is far from it. I am all for polite, disciplined children. No one wants to live with a terror and nobody else wants to spend time with children who are undisciplined. I believe it is a disservice to a child to let them run the entire house because that is not how the world functions. But you can not schedule a child’s temperament and forced discipline is not self-discipline.

So here is the toast to a mini-series. Let’s make it a conversations.

Jasmine is a co-housing community living mama with a passion for fierce writing she blogs.

Photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robthurman/4446152353/

Daddy and Me

Sometimes I feel bad for my husband. He is a great guy and has been an awesome father. He was with me at every prenatal visit and right by my side throughout my labor. He cut our son’s chord as his eyes filled with tears. He was the one who walked our son all night long for the first two nights of our son’s life as he cried with colic. He helped my change my clothes and even took care of my postpartum pads. So now when my son cries when his daddy takes him or yells “NO” at him and reaches for me I feel a little sad. I know it is just a stage. I know that I am the “favorite” at the moment because my son and I spend all day every day together. Because I breastfed and have been up with him most of his other waking nights since Daddy went back to work. I can sometimes see a little pain in my husband’s eyes when our son refuses to go to him willingly and instead clings to me. Sometimes I have to force myself not to explain to him that this is “just a stage” once again. That doesn’t help. He isn’t looking for an explanation. His brain already knows; it’s just that sometimes his heart doesn’t remember.

I have noticed a few things about father/son time though. I step in too often. I tend to think since I am here all of the time that daddy needs to do things the way mommy does them and I am seeing that that is just not the case. I need to move over and make room for the relationship that they are developing, the one that I am not a part in. I need to remember that sometimes daddy knows best because he too invested the time to become firmly attached to our son. Now they have to figure out how to work out the kinks in their relationship and as they do they will learn more about each other and grow even closer together. As I have let go more and more and backed up and encouraged my husband in his relationship with our son I have seen some wonderful things start to happen. Daddy got him to start using the potty. Daddy is the one he wants to read him books. My son asks for daddy every day. They take naps together. They wrestle. They eat sweets and think that they “get away with it” because mommy didn’t find out.

I love my boys and look forward to seeing my son grow in to a wonderful man like his daddy.

Jasmine is a co-housing community living mama with a passion for fierce writing. She blogs.

(These are all photos my hubby and our son as a newborn and at a few weeks old. Our son is now 20 months old.)

Worn Down

I thought that having a newborn was difficult. And it was. I had a very “disorganized” baby. As time has gone on we have brought order to our lives. Together we have found a rhythm of sorts and though the disorganization is still there it is organized disorganization, if that makes any sense. It makes sense to me. It’s our life.

I thought that having a middle aged baby things were easing a bit. Or maybe I just found a way to function on four hours of sleep a night. And then he decided to wean himself and I lost the comfort tool. It wasn’t an option. I wasn’t ready. He was. End of story.

Now I have a toddler. Wow. Today toddlerhood has blown me out of the water. Today I am tired even though I got seven hours of sleep last night. I feel like I have run a marathon and he even took a nap. My brain feels like oatmeal.

I tend to get frustrated with myself for feeling tired and many times feel like I am not “doing” enough. Because how is it possible that one small child can drain ever last ounce of, well, everything out of me?

Really even though I have a very active child that really is not the reason for any of this. I don’t think that it matters what personality of child that we have. They seem to have been fashioned just right to completely wear down their parental unit.

I never knew that I could function with so little energy. How about you?

To Potty Consistently

Potty training. I had no idea what I was getting myself into! We started our potty training adventure last week and are having moderate “success”. I actually hate using the word “success” when it comes to potty training because, like all of life learning, there isn’t really a success and failure. I say that because there are many things in life that are automatic to us. Keeping ourselves clean, teeth brushing, using the bathroom, dressing ourselves, etc. All of these things seem like no-brainer activities. But we all learned them from someone; none of these are automatic behaviors and it took us all time to learn them. These are not success or fail-based things, they are life elements.

Back to potty training. It has been an interesting week and a half, to say the least. I have a very spirited child. I often wondered what that meant when I read that phrase in books. I no longer wonder. I completely understand. I have one and I am pretty much positive there may be a picture of him in the parenting dictionary as an example of a spirited child. The important thing for the both of us is to be consistent. I could have easily given up a couple of times this past week just because I was tired , wanted a day off, wasn’t quite sure I had made the right decision or if this was the right timing. Somewhere in my mommy-self I know that I have made the right choice for us at this time. We are ready. And now it is up to me to remain consistent for my sake and for the sake of my child. Spirited children may seem like they do well with change because they are constantly moving and changing every day. The truth is that they deal less well with change than a not so spirited child. Since he was a baby he has not done well with new stimuli and it remains so today. Consistency is key for us.

I know that there are many things up ahead of me in parenting that I will have to remain patiently consistent with. We have passed some of these things and we have hundreds more to go. Potty training is just another one of those steps and we are ready. So today I will purposefully, lovingly and consistently move forward.

And I just have to make a note that we are well armed with Potty Power! Which my son absolutely loves.

Jasmine is a co-housing community living mama with a passion for fierce writing she blogs at www.herscreed.wordpress.com

Photo: The Library of Congress

Parental Validation

There was a book about a bunny that my mom always used to read to us when we were young. It was about a little bunny being asked by many bunny family members what he wanted to be when he grew up. Did he want to be a fireman? A policeman? A doctor? A vet? The bunny just kept shaking his head, he didn’t want to be any of those things. In the end of the book the little bunny states that he wants to be a daddy bunny.

My adult brain now says to me “that’s it?” but that is not what it said when I was younger. That was the best book ever. The only change I would have made to the book would have been to make it a girl bunny so it could have been me! Somewhere along the line, even though my mom was a stay at home mom and was (is) amazing, I let the “that’s it” mentality sneak in to my head. Continue reading “Parental Validation”

Progression Not Regression

My son is in the middle of a regression. I don’t really know what sent him there but I am thinking it may be the combo effects of another little one being added to the community as well as the fact that he is interacting more and more with my 8 month old niece. Whatever it is that is creating this regression it is beginning to take its toll on mom! My (almost) 20 month old son is suddenly waking multiple times a night, he is whining throughout the day, he has serious separation anxiety, he hollers “MOMA!” every few minutes, he is not eating very well and has begun chewing on his clothes and fingers as well as babbling and sometimes screaming, using mostly baby noises that were no longer part of his every growing vocabulary.

So what has happened to my son? Is this regression or is this just a part of his progression? Now that I think about it labels like “regression” are all over the place, many times when a child acts out or does something out of his normal pattern it is called a regression. According to the dictionary the definition of regression is: “the reversion to a chronologically earlier or less adapted pattern of behavior and feeling.” Now I know for a fact that we are not going backwards in time, my son is never decreasing in intelligence and his feelings are only on the incline, his behavior even though it may seem to be moving to an earlier state is now just a way to communicate in the state that he is in now. Now the work really begins because as his mother I must now realize that my son is progressing to a new stage in his life and it is now necessary for us to both learn ways to deal with things in this new stage. According to the dictionary the definition of progress is: “growth or development; continuous improvement”

I am by no means saying that I have the answers because I still am not completely sure what to do with the fact that “MOMA!” gets hollered every few minutes in my home, that he hardly lets me move several feet from him and that I can’t seem to keep him from chewing on all his clothes right now or that he seems to think that his baby cousin is a pillow or that some days he seems to have completely forgotten how to communicate in any way that I can understand him. The first step for me is to realize that we are not regressing but progressing and that this is just a new stage with new challenges for us both to meet head on! We are both (like the definition states) “growing and developing; continuously improving.”

Jasmine is a co-housing community living mama with a passion for fierce writing she blogs.

Definitions from: www.dictionary.reference.com/browse/regression, www.dictionary.reference.com/browse/progressing

Trusting Birth

A few days ago I was putting together a letter for the 2010 Trust Birth Conference and it started me on a train of thought that culminated today as I was sitting having the second pedicure of my life at the local beauty school. Let me take you for a little ride.

Most of us know that your bond with your child starts at a very early age, pre-birth actually. They hear you and are able to sense many of your emotions. They can even detect some of your actions. A baby can sense when they are wanted and loved and when they are not.

From the very first moment I wanted my baby and everything to do with baby making to be healthy and holistic. Several people suggested I drink before my wedding night to make things “easier.” My thought was “Why? I want this to be the night that my husband and I become one, where we attach, where we form our life-long bond, why would I want to be anesthetized for something as amazing as this?”
Continue reading “Trusting Birth”