Nesting At Home

From the moment my bags hit the floor at Grampa's and the kids jumped off the stairs into my arms, they have been randomly hugging me and cooing, "Aw, Mama...." It is especially endearing when Isaac says this. He then kisses me and says, "I you love, Mama."

Of course the minute I got home they also, all three, burst into fevers. Four, if you count Chad. They have all been a sweet, sorry lot this weekend.

So, I brought out the pot and made soup with a whole head of garlic, stocked up on cranberry juice and tea, and cancelled all outings for the week. I feel a slight pressure in my head too, but I am taking elderberry and trying to keep it at tickle level instead of full blown plague.

All three kids are really into legos. We have to get more regular blocks. Imaginative building is so much fun!

Deconstructed and Sacred Space

When we deconstructed the holiday tree, Lily took the ornaments and lights upstairs to storage, only the lights did not make it.....

She already had a strand of LED lights under her bunk bed, she thought three more would be that much better!

Truly, it is magical. She has a bean bag, her art supplies, her nature displays with bones and shells. It is a lovely and calming place to be. Somehow she found my Good Will Hunting soundtrack and chose Elliot Smith as her background music. So so soft and cooing.

I will look for more things to help her create this sacred space for herself. Having a special, calming space is so very important. One of the reasons we made the office into her own bedroom was to give her some of this for herself, a place she could have her not baby safe things, a place to be the big kid.

She still finds her way to the little kids' room in the night, so not to be alone. That doesn't mean she doesn't need this other place though.

Yummy Learning

Lily insisted that I take action shots of the whole process. Future food blogger!

Blueberry muffins= math lesson in fractions, chemistry in cooking, reading instructions, bonus sanitation and life skills lesson. Learning is life. Life is learning! And yummy.

Touchy Subject of Touch

I do not make my children hug or kiss people they don't want to. I don't make them hug their friends after a fight to make up. I don't make them accept it when other people want to hug them. I early on taught them to say, "This is my body. I don't want to be touched/tickled/picked up."

They are the sentient occupants inside that mammalian machine we call a body, they are the owners of their flesh. Just as I don't like unwanted touch, even affectionate touch, especially affectionate touch sometimes, I don't expect them to allow it when they don't want it either.

It is called consent. This is how we teach it. This is how we model it.

Sometimes I have to walk the walk and that means when an adult thrusts a toddler at me for a hug and that toddler does not know me.....I have to step back. I always explain that I am a stranger to that child and forcing affection from a stranger is not acceptable. It is dangerous.

Wait, what if you are a relative? No. That part does not matter. In fact, it may even matter more. The majority of abuse and sexual abuse is committed by adults related or known to the child! Being related by family does not entitle affection. Teaching children that it is? Oh, that is so scary. If I am a stranger to that child, I keep my distance. If the child offers me affection while I am still a stranger? I gently redirect and look them in the eye and remind them that I am a stranger.

You see, it is also my body. I get to choose when I am touched too. People I don't know touching me does not feel good to me, even handshakes between strangers makes me uncomfortable though I see it as a necessity of fitting in to our community. Touch can be healing but it can also be destructive and invasive.

When a child says no, let's all respect that. As a community, let us also take a minute to think about how we touch others and what kind of lesson we are teaching our babies.

I am also going to make the jump here into discipline. When a child is struck with a hand or object (spanking) that is also an unwanted touch. When a loved one does it? Is that the message we want them to learn? That violence from someone who loves you is acceptable? That they have no say over their body at that moment, and it is because they have done wrong and you love them? No. No.

No.

NO.

Touch should be loving. Touch should be welcome. Touch should be from people they trust and know.

So, when my relatives went all a flutter because I stepped back from a toddler niece who I have only seen maybe 5 times in her life and four of those times were when she was a newborn, and she was not asking for affection on her own but being ordered to and physically picked up and thrust at me for a hug? This is why I stepped back. I said at the time, I am a stranger to her at her mother's choice. Let's all respect that choice and not teach her she has to give affection to strangers.

There is a history of sexual molestation and violence in our family. I am not about to take part in a cultural norm that grooms children to give affection to people they don't know or to trust people just because they are related to them.

I will not back down from this. I will not shut up about it either. Respect our children's bodies and minds and let them choose who they give affection to AND model for them appropriate affection.

What? You thought the feminism label on the blog was the silent undertone? Hardly. I am the mother of two bright and beautiful girls and a lovely boy. Consent is one of the most valuable lessons there is. Hug your children today, give them a million kisses, tickle them until they can't stand it.....but when they say, enough, no, stop!......listen and let go. When they hesitate to hug an aunt they have never met, don't force them to. When they act or even say they are uncomfortable around a certain cousin, let them follow their gut and keep their distance. Do not let people who are known child abusers babysit just because they will do it for free.

Let us do better by our children and really teach them consent.

Supplies for a Well Stocked First Aid Kit for Homesteaders: Guest Post over at Simplify, Live, Love

I am Danelle, mother and farmer at the Stamps Family Farm. I write about my family's adventures in sustainable farming, special needs parenting, and learning to cook over at My Total Perspective Vortex.

 In 2009 we moved to a 40 acre farm in Southern Iowa with no experience and a BIG dream! Our blog is the story of how that happened and how we live our way through it and all the blessings that have happened along the way.  We now have a llama, Icelandic sheep, pigs, a cow or two, ducks, chickens, peafowl, cats, dogs, a parrot, and a corn snake.....oh and thousands of bees! SO MANY BEES.

On our journey we have had many mishaps, many bloody mishaps. This has caused me to slowly and thoroughly revise the contents of my first aid kit. I'm not talking about choosing one bandage brand over another, rather, changing the way I look at emergencies all together.

We live 5 miles from the nearest hospital. That hospital is not a trauma centre. Emergency care will require life flight to the nearest urban hospital 65 miles away. Our fire department is 5 miles away and crewed by volunteers. The one time we have had to call them out to our farm, the response time was 3 minutes. THREE MINUTES. When we lived in the city, 10-15 minutes was standard even living blocks from the station.

No, in the countryside I live in, the local farmers drop their tools and run to help. Lucky for us, our event was not life threatening or even bloody. Lily (age 6 at the time) was wedged in a hole and could not escape it, nor could I pull her out. It took five full grown men, firemen at that, to dislodge her. She was not in danger of dying, not bleeding out, just scared and angry.

The bloody events at our farm have involved livestock and it was those experiences that led me to rethink what supplies I needed for my kit.

1) Bandaids are useless. The are psychological tricks made for calming freaked out toddlers. Ok, not really, and I do keep a box on hand, but they are not much good in a real emergency.

What do I use instead? Disposable Diapers. One side is absorbent and the other non stick. Pair that with "med wrap" which is a stretchy bandage that sticks to itself and you have a decent blood stopping bandage. We have 10 rolls of it on hand. That is why I keep disposable diapers in my glove box and first aid kit. We had to wrap a ewe's (sheep) leg after a predator attack and this was the bandage the vet told us to use. The local pharmacy didn't carry sterile pads or gauze big enough. A real wound would need more than a 2x2 square. If I am doing field triage for livestock or people, I need to plan for it to be big enough. That may buy us enough time for help to arrive.

2) For our livestock we use "vet spray" to clean wounds. It is basically a gel alcohol with a numbing agent. It could technically work on people, in theory is a good solution for skinned knees of children running by....but the local pharmacy carries a similar and wildly more expensive wound spray that is approved for people. So use that one. Vinegar works pretty well too, but stings.

Basically, clean the wound (soap and water works well) pat dry and then bandage if necessary.

3) Epi pen. We keep bees. None of us need an epi pen, but a guest might and minutes count. For minor stings without anaphylactic shock, clean the sting site after the stinger is removed (or bite site since some wasps bite instead of sting). I apply a gel benedryl directly to the bite. I find this more effective than oral dosing. I keep the oral on hand for our cat though. She has had an allergic reaction to a vaccine and has to have this. The same is possible for people, but we've never had to dose for it.

4) Honey. Honey has a lot of good things going for it. We keep honey sticks on hand for electrolytes for people in heat stroke or shock AND for livestock in shock. I learnt this trick from a our goat keeping friend walking us through our first traumatic night after a coyote pack attacked our sheep. If we could keep them from going into shock, they might survive. In a major accident, the same is true for people.

5) We also have a variety of things on hand for the livestock: needles and syringes, injectable penicillin, various vitamins and minerals that can save their lives based on specific illness or trauma, wormer, iodine, lube, and pesticide sprays (animal safe, screw worm is the stuff of nightmares).

There are not human equivalents for these, but generally if people need these they can get them once under care of a physician. Livestock care requires quite a lot of instances where the vet is on the phone ans tells us to administer xyz. 

6) Industrial BURN GEL. Water-Jel is the brand. This is what Chad was given when he worked with giant print machines and it works like a miracle. We have a wood stove and Chad has had one too many mishaps with hot engine and electric arcs. I have scars all over my hand from oven grates and cast iron pan handles. Ugh. We buy this in bulk and have travel packets.

7) I have a lot of other things in our people kit too. Scissors, rubber bands, tums, razor blade, tweezers, coconut oil, asprin, advil, rash cream, alcohol wipes, floss, eye flush, nasal saline, ear cones, baking soda, citric acid, and mineral oil. Peroxide for puncture wounds. Customize for your own needs. I also have a lot of tinctures and herbal salves. Those are not for bloody, call 911, emergencies though.

I do know this though, the pre-made kit that can be bought at the grocery store won't cut it at our farm.

I would also recommend taking first responder classes when the opportunity presents. Get CPR trained. Even consider full on EMT certification. Technology has certainly changed the landscape of emergency care and first response, but the memories of my aunt's rural farm in the 1980's haunt me. There were no cell phones. She owned her own ambulance and firetruck. She was a paramedic. If she had not been medically trained so many people would have died. Too often car accidents on tristy rural roads had tragic endings, more would have been worse if my aunt had not been there. Now, cell phones and GPS and helicopters make for better outcomes, but I would not rely too much on such things. Helicopters can't fly in a blizzard and cell phone reception is still iffy out on the prairies.

 
So, what would you add?

Sisters Full Speed

Sisters. They woke up this morning, jumped up, giggling, put on their craziest dress up clothes, and headed down to dance. I love moments of closeness that our choices have made room for. If we parented and schooled conventionally, even if we homeschooled conventionally, the day would have looked a lot different. Not bad, but not filled with this kind of relationship and joy. Moments like this really help. Moments like this are what we live for.

Failure

Today the discussion over at Midwest Homesteading and Permaculture is about things that we've tried and then failed at. Also, about how dangerous and violent emus are, but that I already know all 

about....

Music. I have tried and failed to learn to play a number of instruments. It is hard, I have a lot of respect for those who can do this, but it is not something I enjoy enough to keep trying.

 

 See these? Oh, the picture is gorgeous but the filling had so much salt that we had to scoop it out and just eat the pepper and the bacon.

These fried green tomatoes were way too salty too. Salt has been a problem in my kitchen lately. I am having a hard time finding the balance since I switched from Kosher flake salt to fine ground pink sea salt. I have since switched back. One year I put too much cayenne in everything, or so I thought. I have since decided that there is no such thing as too much cayenne. Maybe that's why I can't taste salt...

Failure, as I tell my writing students, is an indicator of what needs improvement. It is a chance to revise and do better. If you always get it right then there is no learning, or if no one pointed out that you needed improvement, that is even worse. Revision is learning. Life is about failing over and over again.

When I was in the sixth grade I came home sobbing every day for a week and hid all my homework from my parents. A teacher had told us that if we failed an exam we would fail the class and that homework was just as important. It was history and the homework was stupid map colouring. I pointed out that one of the maps was wrong and I failed the worksheet. I got so anxious over failing the class that I couldn't eat or sleep for a week. I finally broke down crying to my dad and he called the school.

I had a B in the class. Also, failing that worksheet for pointing out an outdated borderline and country name is bullshit. I should have gotten extra credit.

Failing is not something to be afraid of. It is what life is all about, learning holds a lot of it intrinsically, and kitchen failures? My mistakes make me a better cook. Yes, I still have a fire extinguisher and activated charcoal in my first aid kit- I have set the oven on fire too many times and spent too many nights in the ER with Chad over food poisoning when we were first married to not be super aware of that. Those experiences made me research fire safety, food safety, and general health. Bonus is that I am pretty sure Chad is now immune to most food poisoning bacteria. So there is that.

I want my kids to fail too. Lily has burnt eggs so many times that she knows now how NOT to burn them. She used the wrong kind of paper to paint with and the paper ripped when she tried to move it, she knows now that details like paper thickness matter. She cut herself with her new pocket knife. She knows now not to cut toward her hand AND she knows how to deal with a deep slice of a cut. She is my brave girl and being fearless of failure has led her to fail a lot. Instead of shaming her and internalising it, we focus on how failure is part of the process and not a destination. It is only the outcome IF you stop there and do not keep trying.

Sometimes failing is a good place to stop though. Sometimes relationships fail and you just have to walk away. Sometimes there is nothing that can be done for the lamb attacked by a fox during birth and the vet has to put him down. Sometimes failure is a sign that it is time to move on. Is it still failure then? Maybe. Maybe we have too much tied up in that word as a culture to really embrace it?

 

I usually only blog success in the kitchen. Should I start including the failures too? What things have you tried and failed at?

What We Already Are

When I became a mother for the first time, no one said to me, "Hey, that's nice, but you are not a mother yet, maybe someday." No, I was a mother because I was doing it.

Today I was reflecting on something that I noticed with the amazing group of women that surround and support me and how they treat my daughter, who is often with me when I see them. They take her seriously as an artist. She won't someday be an artist maybe. She IS. She is because she is doing it. She is because she loves it. She is because it makes her happy and she cannot imagine a life without making art. She is 9 and she doesn't have to wait to grow up  to be something. She is.

Holly is a dancer. She works hard to learn more and practise her skills, but she goes to the studio, trains, and at the end of the year will perform on stage. She doesn't have to wait to think she will someday be something. She IS. She is 5.

Isaac? He loves trains and toys and running and painting. Right now he is loving just being with us and doing what we do. Soon enough he will share with us what he loves and we will nurture it. 

Nurturing a child is the critical point here. If we tell them, That's nice, but it doesn't mean anything significant. Move along. How will they ever really believe that they could ever be anything? I suffer that now, not sure if I can call myself a writer or a poet even though I do both and have even been published! Maybe it is because I don't really feel all grown up and so much importance was placed on being grown up before one could really be anything at all.

Holly wants to be a pilot too and a construction worker. She already builds things. She LOVES aircraft of all kind. You will never catch me doubting what any of my children are capable of. Not ever. Watch them fly!

The kids are also farmers, right by our side doing work that they love, hard work. They earn the credit for this work that most just dismiss the value of because of their age alone. That is so problematic. Children can and want to do meaningful work and my children do.

I will continue to be their biggest fan, encourage them to dream and see possibilities with every turn. I will carefully tend their imagination and help turn their dreams into reality. That is how we homeschool and how we parent. It goes beyond that though, it doesn't stop at my children. More and more, I have found myself cheering on and encouraging others, children and adults, to believe in their own possibilities. Who says that it is too late? Seriously? Who? If you want to do it, give it a try. Progress measured in inches is still progress.

What do you want to be when you grow up? Can you take the step and call yourself that now?

Holly's Art (aka ADORABLE!)

Tiny Time Lords and Chaos

With so much chaos going on all over the world, so much war and destruction and suffering, we are blessed to live in a land of plenty. We are grateful to have food, shelter, and health. I don't mean America or even Iowa, I mean that we are blessed in this little bubble of our farm. Some of our own neighbours do not have food security, one is currently in the ICU in recovery from a farm accident, and daily news headlines read about school lock downs, tornado destruction, and suffering.

We are blessed and we are careful not to take this for granted.

We do our best to meet our children's needs: physical, intellectual, and emotional. When humans feel safe, loved, and are well nourished they evolved to create art and pursue higher thinking beyond survival. When these needs fall short, we revert to survival mode. Knowing this about our natural make up, I set out to make sure that their needs are fully met.

For the last two days I could not get these children out of the dress up closet and into regular clothes. They played and played in their own little world, made their own meals, laughed at the food I set out, and got to know each other better.

People in a family forget sometimes that we are always evolving as people, and because of this, we must constantly get to know each other. This is doubly true for children as they learn and get to know themselves! Nay, 100 times true. They often turn from their parents and to their peers and that is why teenagers could feel distant from the family unit. I remember thinking as a teen that my family didn't get me, they didn't know me, and came to the conclusion that they didn't love me. I still don't know if those conjectures were born in truth or simply teen angst because those relationships never recovered from those years.

I intend that my children never feel that way. I know that I am not a Time Lord and have not the power of playing with fate like playdough, but as a mother, I must try. If I fail, I hope that I have given them enough space to form strong and healthy relationships with others, including their siblings. That is the purpose of the crazy days we have had, while they look unstructured and feel frustrating at times to the order of my house (gah, the mess!), they are so, so valuable. So important. So critical to their emotional health.

That is my mantra while the three of them tore through time and space and leave destruction in their wake, leaving me to wonder how much Time Lord they might have in them.....this is so important, this is critical to their personhood, this is part of their growing and thriving.

So if I seem like a crazy lady, muttering this as I follow the mess from room to room, picking up gobs of yellow feathers, legos, toy aeroplanes, and washing so so many bowls used for tea party and salsa snacks......please just hand me a coffee and chocolate and tell me I am right. Please and thank you.

Fixer Holly

We had to build a deck and steps to the porch for the freezer inspection coming up. Chad asked, "Anyone want to help?" and Holly was out the door, coat in hand, hopped in her boots. She was so excited! She is five, but from experience, we know that she is actually a helper and is very careful around power tools. Our friend Jessica comes to the farm regularly and has given Holly a lot of one on one instruction about them (though Holly is still not allowed to touch them, ever). Holly can hold a board steady, hold the end of a measuring tape, and mark lines with a pencil. She can also run for help if anyone slices their arm off. See? Very useful.  Chad also teaches her the proper names for tools and what they are each for. Holly is adorable, smart, and capable of building big things.

A Little Bit of Fall and A Lot of Laughter

Beautiful Dancer

Connection

Lily and I have taken a wonderful class series learning how to work clay at a local art studio. Every Tuesday night in 6 week chunks, we would drop the little kids off with Chad and head to get dinner somewhere and there we would chat, write, draw, and get to know each other. Then at 5 we might wander over to the coffee shop, then on to art class.

Art class ended and we can't attend the winter session because of the weather in Iowa in January and February and the fact that we live 1.5 hours away from the city where the class is. If it was a day class, maybe, but travelling Iowa roads in the dark and ice is just something I would rather avoid. Plus, winter chores are a problem and we just need to be closer to home more often.

She was sad, but said stoically, "Mama, I just like best that we have alone time together, like we used to before the other kids were born."

She had almost 4 years of being an onliest child and I forget that sometimes. Knowing that she needs that extra connection, that special time where she is not responsible for being an example, a big sister, or a playmate is important. Being the oldest is hard. Being the oldest in a family with special needs is more so, I think.

So now, instead of just watching television with her before bed, I picked up a couple art projects that are too complex for the little kids and only she and I can do together. We started earlier this week and so far so good.

I watch for lectures and events we can attend. Tonight we are attending a lecture on American Gothic by art historian Wanda Corn. It may be way over Lily's head, but that's actually a good thing. She will be challenged, maybe even a little bored, but maybe not. She will have to learn to mingle and socialise with people who are a "big deal" and are of different social classes than we are eventually and this is a safe place to do that and for her to see me do that too.

These are more than just decorations and outings, these are relationship building. Every moment I get to know her better. I may be her mother and it is easy to think that I know her best, and maybe I do, but much of her is still ever changing and a mystery to me and possibly to her as well. My job is to be here for her and help her get to know herself. It is a gift if she shares even a tiny bit of that with me.