Mama Bean is a Narrative and a Statistic

You know what's great about the internet? No matter what your Weirdness, someone else has it, too. And they've got a blog or a tumblr or a pinboard, and inter-kismet will bring y'all together. It's the way of the (brave new) world. The internet makes bell curves come alive - your weirdness is just the centre of some weird bell curve, populated by a bunch of other weird people who are all, on average weird like you. Bell. Community. Interwebz are Love.

As a new mom, a young mom, and inexperiencedandbaffledandtired mom, finding my Self on another's blog, seeing myself in a meme, hearing my voice in someone else's post, holy shit was that a relief. Like whoooooosh   ...   relief. And then? I get to interact and comment and like things? I get to have a voice, too? And you're gonna agree with me? And affirm me? Wha? Ohshityes, sign. me. up.

But it doesn't stay that way. Or rather, this brave new world, this virtual group parenting, this Cloud Parenting, it's a double edged sword. Because, even when we share weirdness, we remain individuals. And in one way or another, there will be clashes, differences, confrontations. And there will be Trolls.

I was chatting with a friend about how frustrating it is when someone extrapolates their parenting experience out to the Whole. I'm not talking about the Well-meaners offering (unsolicited or not) advice. I mean the people who seem to misapprehend that the way they are living Parenthood is not the way everyone lives Parenthood. That, in fact, every child is different, and every mother, too, and every family and community beyond that, too also.

It starts to feel like you're being judged, because your experience doesn't look like theirs, and for whatever reason (familiarity?) they'd prefer if you looked like them. The scientist in me wants to scream at them (a little, just a little), "You have a sample size of ONE! That is not actual evidence. Anecdotes are not CONCLUSIVE!"

This is the paradox of Cloud Parenting. On the one hand, this blessing, this relief of finding your Tribe, where you feel your choices and preferences and experiences are accepted, where you belong. On the other hand, this struggle to assert your individuality, and its worth, to hold up your Story over and against the bell curve. It's a tension, and this generation of parents has to learn to navigate it in ways the grandparents did not.

I'm just saying, when I feel like myself or my kids are being outliers in some worrisome way, I am grateful for the opportunity to find some corner of the internet that affirms we are just plain normal. Or at least, we are statistically Within Range of normal. But, the power of the Cloud doesn't negate or lessen or cheapen our Shine - we are still sparkling shining snowflakes of specialness. And so there, I am grateful for the opportunity to just smoodge all over myself about our Sparkle in my corner of the internet. But I shouldn't fear that anyone's particular story sets a statistical standard for me to live up to.

I don't feel like I'm getting this out very well. I just wanted to say that there's a tension between the opportunities provided by the Internet to a) express one's (parenting, religious, whatever) Narrative as unique and special and b) find one's (parenting, religious, whatever) Group as inclusive and homogeneous at the same time. It's a tension that didn't exist for previous generations. That's all I'm saying.

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (without the Inadvertent Farmer this year)

The Inadvertent Farmer has gone MIA, so she's not hosting the KinderGARDEN blog carnival as in years past, but I still have a garden and I still have kids, so I'm carrying on the spirit of it, and praying everything is alright in her neck of the woods.

This collage shows (clockwise from top left): yellow zucchini, onion flower, teeny tiny beginning cucumbers, thinned carrots, Papa Bean watering the jungles, mini brown pepper, Hungarian yellow wax pepper, green zucchini. PB is watering the potato bed there, which also has the cucumber plants that are unfortunately shaded by the potato plants. They are very short, but with lots of flowers, so hopefully they still fruit. The middle bed has a tomato jungle that I cut back (drastically) tonight, tying up escaped branches and centering tilting cages - I will never underestimate indeterminate tomatoes again, we are concocting some sort of crazy heavy duty cages next year. There are also green beans in the middle bed, which we ate stir fried with shrimp for dinner tonight.

 

This is the third bed. The peas along the trellis are pretty much done, they were sweet and lovely, little Sprout loves to pick them one by one out of the shell. She also loves when mommy takes a pile out of the shell and she can stuff them all in her mouth at once. Bean kept asking for peas, but not really eating them. There are four out-of-control tomato plants at the end, and then rows of carrots, lettuce, parsnips, and beets. I have taken out the two rows of spinach because they bolted before I could eat it. If I ever try to grow spinach again, I'm planting it somewhere really shaded, summers are too hot here otherwise.

 

Here's a parade of my tomatoes, of which I am ridiculously proud :) First are the Green Zebras.

 

These are called Hawaiian Pineapple. They are oddly pale, and multi-lobulated (?)

 

This is the Nyagous plant, which has the most tomatoes by far of all the plants. It has crazy escapee branches going all over the place, trailing on the ground. I'm worried the tomatoes higher up will weigh the branches down too much, I'll be watching this plant very closely.

 

Black Cherry. I am fascinated at how, even as unripe green tomatoes, they all look so different.

 

This is called Japanese Black Trifele. I love the unique pear shape.

 

These are Green Bulgarians, they look a lot like the Green Zebras.

 

Tomatoes not pictured: Persimmon, which has no flowers or fruit on it yet :( Carbon black, sungold, sun sugar, and sweet 100s. If anyone from KinderGARDENs still reads here, please leave and comment with your own gardening post, I'd love to catch up with your gardens and kiddos this year!

Mama Bean is flipping the virtual bird at that creepy guy...

Today, I did week 5 day 3 of couch-to-5K, which is jogging for 20 minutes (or 3.2 km). When I was about halfway, I turned at the corner into this little parking lot that opens onto the end of a field across from our community centre. There was an SUV parked there, young 20s-ish guy sitting there with the window open. I jogged past, and he gave me a really creepy once-over, with his hand over his mouth in the universal gesture for I'm-a-super-creep-who-sees-you-as-an-object. (It's sometimes used by handsome actor types when they're trying to be sultry-meets-bashful, you know, the Canadian Ryans - Gosling and Reynolds - they're masters of it. Now you have it in your mind? It was creepy.) I jogged across the parking lot and field, cut across the alley and open lot onto the road by the school, and back up to the community arteriole (not quite a main drag, but those that live in the community use it to avoid the traffic on the main drag, you know?) About two blocks down, I feel before I see the same SUV drive slowly up behind me. And then he paces me. Just driving next to me, looking out his window, waiting for me to acknowledge him. I sort of just looked at him, and he did a weird nod, and kept pacing me. I was really scared. And then he turned at the next intersection away from me. And I remained scared all the way home.

I think the adrenaline of fear is the only reason I made it all 20 minutes. And for the first time since we've lived here, I found the quiet peacefulness of our street ("Oh what a nice quiet street!") to be threatening. Too quiet. Too alone. I have never been more relieved, for reasons totally unrelated to how tired my legs might be, to walk into my garage. And lock the door behind me.

You know, when I saw him sitting at the opening of the parking lot, I should have jogged straight to Main Street, a block away, and jogged home the long way along it, the busiest road in the city. I should not have cut through the empty lot. I should have stayed on the side of the side street with houses, so I could easily run up to a yard or front door, should he have re-appeared, instead of running on the side with the school. I should have looked at his fucking license plate! I should have flipped him the bird, or asked if he needed directions. I should have taken my ipod off so I could hear what was going on around me. I should have stopped that women with the two big dogs and asked her to turn around, out of her way, and walk the rest of the way home with me. I should have, could have done so many things differently.

And now I'm left shaken, agitated. Worried about going jogging again, in this neighbourhood I've always felt is so safe. I run when it's light out. I don't take the same route every day (I do three days/one week along one route, and then switch it up.) I resent that I feel the need to make these precautions, because I'm a woman, because I'm a target. I resent it but do it anyway. 

All before I even consider that this creepy guy exists in a world where my perfect, innocent children also exist. And then my head and my heart implode, and I have to stop thinking about this... sometimes, I hate this world.

Mama Bean spends too much time thinking about her garden late at night

 

We grew our first garden in the summer of 2009, when I was pregnant with Bean. This is our fourth summer of growing, and I am starting to feel like a Real Gardener! The best parts of this year of gardening will be: a) no more community plot and b) children who aren't babies anymore. We loved the community garden idea, but in practice, it was impossible to dedicate enough time to keep it even slightly weed free, and there were frustrating time constraints imposed by the communal nature of it, instead of imposed by, like, Nature. And with a baby each summer, having to travel to the garden wasn't working. I grew more food in my little 48 square foot bed out back, because I could tend it during naps and short breaks, and mornings and evenings, without having to drive somewhere, or make sure another adult was around to be with the kids. So, we've built two more beds, we have kids who play relatively independently, though Sprout has an unfortunate predilection for eating topsoil, and we have three years of gardening experience that lets us make somewhat more educated guesses about what will fit where and grow satisfactorily in our various flower beds, too. I want to do a sort of info dump post, more for my own reference, because we've already done a lot of work this year, and I want somewhere to remember it. Sorry if it's boring!

 

This is the original raised bed. We are growing peas along the south edge, and then short rows of carrots (3 varieties, including purple) lettuce, parsnip, spinach, and beets. I've planted two successions so far, you can see the first group at the end. I ended up with too many tomato plants (more on that later) so I've stuck four plants at the near end of this bed, which means I won't plant the third succession of greens/roots as planned. It will probably be okay, because we don't necessarily eat that many greens, but I will find creative ways to get more carrots somewhere, possibly the potato box. The tomatoes in this box are sun sugars, a delicious orange hybrid cherry that I searched high and low for, a carbon black tomato, and supersweet 100 (another cherry).

 

This is what is happening to my greens, especially my spinach - it is being devoured by the rabbit that lives in or near our yard *very very angry* It has eaten my spinach, lettuce, some peas, most of my soy, and some beans. I bought more of the dog gone coleus to stink them away, but they don't seem to care (more on that later). We may end up just building a fence around the whole darn assembly :( Harumph!

 

This is the primary tomato bed, there are eight plants: green zebra and green bulgarian, persimmon and hawaiian pineapple, sungold (a parent plant of the sun sugar hybrid) and black cherry, Japanese black trifele and nyagous (both black tomatoes). These are mostly heirloom types, and I got them for free from a lovely retired gentlemen who grows them for fun and gives them away, simply to keep the heirloom varieties alive. I would spend a fortune on these plants in the greenhouses, so I was tickled to get them, have nursed them very very diligently, and will probably keep the seed from them, too. He also gave me a red bell pepper, mini brown pepper, and hungarian yellow wax pepper, which I've planted in pots, and already have flowers (!) (He also gave me a ground cherry plant, but it's not doing so great in the flower bed where I found room for it, I don't think it's getting enough sun.) 

Next to this bed, you can see our third raised bed, which has a row of cucumbers along the northern edge. These will be trellised up that black fence looking thing, which is actually our broken futon frame that we took apart and re-purposed (and I think it looks really handsome.) The rest of that bed is potatoes: purple viking, alta blush (an Albertan variety!), and red norland. Eight plants of each. I think I will encircle or sprinkle freely carrot seeds around this bed, because we like our carrots. Unfortunately this bed is riddled with quack grass, I don't think it grew up from under the cardboard we laid down at the bottom of the bed, I think seeds were in the clippings/leaves we threw on there to compost during the winter. Hopefully digging up the potato harvest will also dig up all the grass root runners in the fall.

 

This is not a vegetable bed, I call it my fairy garden. Along the back are my stolen ferns which have flourished to nine plants this year (despite nearly drying to death in last year's hot summer when I completely neglected them), then some lamium, irises I just transplanted this year, and hostas that went crazy and spread I don't know how, and a new bugleweed plant I bought to fill in the front. I used to have lamb's ear there, but it died this winter, and I also used to have phlox there, but it also died or got choked out by grass. I want to get a few gnomes or fairies or something to go with my hippo friend (in the bottom right corner).

Our other flowers beds have giant mutant rhubarb plants, hostas, peonies, raspberry plants, alium and lilies, chives and irises, and I planted some zucchini. One section of irises needs to be thinned, not sure where to, maybe along the alley, maybe to the front? Our lily bed is being over-shaded by a lilac bush, and the lilies are being eaten by the scarlet lily beetle, which only just made inroads to this province recently. I may move them to our front garden beds, if I can find room (!).

 

I found seven baby rabbits in a shallow nest under my phlox in the shaded bed by the lilac bush. The same stupid rabbit built a nest in this phlox last year. It may in fact be two rabbits, male and female, though I didn't think they raised young together, but why would two females be tending the same nest? (I watched them explore the destroyed nest, the one seemed distinctly more frantic then the other, at one point it turned on the other one, and sort of scratched the top of its head, and then they both ran away.) They are not afraid of me, particularly when it comes to protecting the nest. They both brazenly jumped into the bed with the spinach while I was working at the other end planting tomatoes, as though to announce, here I am. And then one of them hopped through the potato bed right next to the coleus plant, so it obvious doesn't stink enough to really bother them. GAH! As far as I'm concerned, they are the same as vermin. I tried laying some thorny branches from our rose bush over the spinach and lettuce rows, only to look out later and see the #$&^$ creature sitting pretty between the branches, eating more of my spinach. GAH AGAIN! Not sure what to try next, likely a fence, but worried they'll just dig up my lawn to get under it.

In the front yard, we have two flowers beds on either side of the front steps. To the left (facing) there's a large rose bush we finally trimmed and tied back. Papa Bean evened out the top soil we unceremoniously dumped on the beds and weeded, too. We trimmed the scary bush, and I moved the lilies and mountain bluets forward, away from the cramped bush's branches. Then I planted some delphinium and hollyhock seeds to grow tall in behind. The irises are already blooming on that side, and the peony is about to. I moved the hens and chicks in two pieces to the new bed under our spruce tree. We will also have butternut squash growing in this bed. On the right side, we have some type of stonecrop/low-lying sedum and lamb's ear in front of the bush, then more lilies and irises which I shifted around today, and a sedum. I took out the spirea bushes, they weren't really growing well anyway. I planted more delphinium and hollyhock, and our pumpkin will grow on this side. In the bed under the spruce, I have planted three types of hens and chicks (spiderweb, a purple type, and the standard green ones), some pink poppy seeds and forget-me-not seeds from my mom (hope they'll still grow, she sent them last summer or the year before). Will also be growing snow-on-the-mountain, snowdrops, lily-of-the-valley, and whatever other hardy perennials I can get for free or cheap that will do okay in dry acidic soil. PB heard bleeding hearts grow well under spruce, so if I can mooch some plants or get near-dead ones for cheap, I'll give it a try. I may also try the spirea I dug out of the other flower bed under there, but not sure it will get enough sun. Okay I think that's my update, I'll definitely get more pictures up as things grow!

Mama Bean believes she deserves it

We've all heard the cliches that change is inevitable. Of course it is. Time passes, inertia science et cetera...things change. 

We change. Be it for good or bad, maybe small but meaningful, maybe shallow and inconsequential, maybe deep but silent. 

I don't know about you, but I want Good Change. I want things to get better, I want to be better. Better body, better worker, better friend, better housekeeper. Better wife, better mother, better Christian.

When we look at lists like that, it's easy to flip it around, and see it as a list of the things we're not. At least that's what I do. And what it boils down to is these awful things I tell myself about the way I am: I amfat and lazy. I tell myself these things about the Present as though they are so True and Real that nothing can be done about them. And I've stopped looking at that list like it's something about the Future. Because my (untrue-but-true-in-my-head) Present is all I see.

The thing is, I can't hate myself into being better.

We can't hate ourselves into being better.

I can't tell myself I'm lazy, and then expect myself to believe I'm strong enough to stick to a diet, or go on another run, or lift another weight, or put the cookie down. (Or finally clean the bathroom, or stop yelling at my kids...)

I have to believe I deserve it. I have to believe I am beautiful and strong and worthy right now. That's the great paradox about Good Change. I have to believe I am already good enough in order to follow through on the behaviour that will create the good change. If I don't believe I am already good enough, guilt and doubt will blind me, and the change I want will become the same inconsequential or damaging change that happened last time. And the time before that.

Now that I see the paradox, I can't unsee it. That doesn't mean I love myself all the time, all the way. But, when I start thinking The Nasty about myself (my self! my own beautiful self!) at least I know how to shut it down. And that means I eat fewer cookies. And I go on more runs.

(But I don't have a cleaner bathroom... yet.)

Mama Bean's little boy thinks everything has two syllables

It's pretty darn adorable.

I don't know where it came from, but for a week or two, Bean's been turning one syllable words - usually those with two vowels "walking together" - into two distinct syllables. I first noticed it when he was eating a meal, and calling the protein mee-yat. "Mmm, 'ummy mee-yat." Then I noticed he did it with eat, too: ee-yat.

He does it in this very toddler way, where his mouth moves extra lots, because little kids don't know that English is basically the laziest language in the world, we barely move our mouths to talk. So he's pursing his lips right together for the "first syllable" of shoes... "Mummy, put on shoo-ez? Put on shoo-ez, go ow-whut?" He looks like he's going to swallow an egg when he makes the ow sound of out :)

I'm sure this is a normal phase of language development, though I do repeat the word with an emphasis on its single syllable after he says it. But mostly I want to get it on video, because it's so darn cute!

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I have a word story for every member of my family, I just have to remember them. Sprout has learned her first sign, for "more." In my world, this is the word/sign that is most useful, because she can tell me what she wants. (I guess "please" is along the same lines, I'll teach her that next.) So mealtime is easier now, I'm gradually convincing her it's more effective to quietly and calmly sign, instead of screaming-grunting-rubbing-her-sticky-hands-in-her-hair-with-frustration. In fact, instead of please, I may teach her "all done." We'll see. Bean caught on to "milk" the fastest, but Sprout is not quite as addicted to that substance as my son was/is. Is. He is a milk fiend.

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On a recent car trip, Papa Bean and I were talking about Sprout pulling off her bib, to which The Precious (her soother) is clipped. I said he should have put on a bib with a button, instead of velcro, because she can't pull those off (as easily.) He said he didn't know we had bibs with buttons, which I didn't believe, because we had discussed numerous times when Sprout was young how we wished we'd known button bibs were so awesome when Bean was a baby, they're so much better than velcro. I rattled off the half dozen or so bibs I know for sure have buttons, to which he replied, voice dripping with semantical superiority, "You mean snaps, bibs with SNAPS?"

Oh pardon me. In my life, buttons and snaps are the same things, essentially. It's like squares and rectangles. A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not always a square. A snap is a type of button, but a button is not always a snap. They're in the same family. I mean, surely it was not such a stretch of the imagination that when I mention button bibs, I'm not talking about some exotic bib creature the likes of which we've never seen in our (vast, trust me, vaaaaaast) bib collection, but rather, I'm talking about snap bibs that we use often, with great pleasure.

So.

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I don't remember what the word story about myself was. I'll try and remember for later.

Mama Bean is, like, a runner now, sort of? Maybe?

Today, I ran three minutes in a row. A month ago I couldn't run down the block.

Let's back up. We have a friend who decided to see how far she could run. The next day she ran a little farther. And she kept doing it and going a little further, and making other changes to her eating and strengthening and emotional status. Now she runs for miles, and teaches spin classes, and by all accounts, is the happiest she's been in a long time.

It turns out I have quite a few inspiring friends like C.Lo, they're all over my facebook, running 10Ks and halfs and full marathons. They update their status with how much they hated that run, or how much they loved that run, or how the weather is interrupting their run. I have a friend who's had knee surgery, and she runs. I have a friend who continued running through, I dunno, six or seven months of her second pregnancy. (Though I did warn her to wait to run after delivery, to avoid prolapsing her uterus lol.) And I found, randomly, this guy, who started running when he weighed over 360 lbs. He ran a 5K race while still well over 300; I already weigh less than his goal weight, and he's completed two Ironman races. I sat and read his blog from start to finish on my lunches for a week. I found at least a half dozen or more other fitblrs (fitness/weight loss tumblrs) of women who've gone through ridiculous health transformations that center on healthy eating (obvs) and running. Just running. 

All this to say, clearly, running works. If you want to get healthy, if you want to lose weight, this is a good way to do it. And it may be that the old excuses, about knee pain or shin pain or I'm-too-heavy or it'll-hurt-my-joints may not apply. (They very well may, on the other hand, it's not my place to say that. Papa Bean is not a good candidate for running, but he's freaking great at cycling.) So. I decided to try it.

I went with the Couch to 5K program, because it is tried and true. The first day, my knees hurt and got swollen and could barely move the next day. I iced and stretched diligently. The second day, my knees still hurt and were still swollen - stayed swollen, in fact, night and day, through work and caring for my kidlets, for almost a week. I iced and stretched diligently. It may be to my advantage that I am a health professional, so I know how to self-treat? By the third day, I'd sourced a decent knee brace. Less pain and swelling. Less icing, still stretching. I decided to stick with it. The first day of any week is kind of exciting, to see if I can do the new challenge. The second day sucks. The third day I congratulate myself for the whole first half that I'm actually bothering to continue, and then breath you're-almost-done repeatedly the second half until I am, in fact, done. And then it's a new week! Week 2 was stretched out by spring rain and a nasty stomach virus from hell. Then I did a week 2.5, with distances and rest times kind of halfway between the week 2 and 3 times. Now I've finished week 3. I can run three minutes in a row, twice. I think I'm gonna do a week 3.5, too. Week 4 says to run five minutes in a row; I'm gonna ease in by running four minutes for a week. I think it's gonna be good.

The truth is, running isn't necessarily fun while it's happening. I feel like my thigh fat vibrates with every step, and everyone is peering out their houses to watch it jiggle as I lope past. I feel bad calling what I do "running" because I'm pretty sure a normal adult could just walk comfortably next to me and go faster. But the difficulty of it is directly proportional to my pride at finishing it :) I drop out of the last run interval and smile victoriously (through my panting.) It's truly a sickness, and I think I'm infected... the other day I got a flat tire on my way home from work, and my first thought was, crap now I'll be too late to go for a run. And when I got home and settled around 10pm, I went anyway. And felt really proud of myself after.

I really appreciate this perspective from bendoeslife: "The DVDs will end, P90X will give way to something even more Exxxxtreme(!!!), WODs will be replaced by some even cooler acronym, and we will get tired of Jillian yelling at us and telling us we’re fat... So, yes, enroll in that crazy ZUMBA class. Have fun and do INSANITY from time to time. But have a foundation with some of the lower-case lifestyles. swim. bike. run. jog. walk. lift. stretch."

Part of this decision was how lower-case this is for my lifestyle, right now. It's not financially practical for us to have gym memberships, and it doesn't fit into our parenting, with our kids as young as they are, to have one of us popping out for workouts, diminishing the hours of "team parenting" (which are precious to me, truly. I love my teammate, he keeps me sane.) It doesn't require extra equipment, not terribly. I already had the runners and yoga pants and ipod timer thingy. I had to get a knee brace. I need to get a sports bra. I drool over garmins, but it's hardly a necessity. I don't have to take a tonne of time, I don't have to drive anywhere. I step outside my door. Later, I step back in and take a shower.

I have to say, it's hard to measure the benefits of cardio exercise like this. It's not like weight-training, which my body and psyche is more tuned for. I don't know how to describe it, but I don't feel like running lasts into the next day - it lasts until the sweat is washed away! But I've started to notice I don't get huffy walking up the stairs to Bean's bedroom, I'm not totally wiped out pushing the kids in the shopping cart up the ramp from the parkade (Yes, my supermarket has a parkade, it's awesome. We have winter here.) I guess I can see a muscle get bigger, or feel it get stronger. But I can't tell, day to day, that my heart and my lungs are healthier. I'm starting to see these aspects of my health in a different way. To be honest, I've been dragging around this extra weight with a tired ticker for so long, it became my normal. So.

Here's to a new normal. I'll let you know how it goes.