Preschool Graduation

Selena is done with preschool. The school had a small ceremony where they handed them a diploma and announced what they wanted to be when they grow up. Selena said she wanted to study bugs.  She has been mentioning she wants to be a poker player like her dad, but bugs ended up being cooler.  One day she says, "I don't have to decide right now.  I still have a lot of time."  However I can't get her to agree that being a computer programmer might be fun.

She had a friend at preschool named Jacob.  Apparently Jacob is really funny and does lots of silly things and tells silly jokes, like eyeball jokes which apparently everyone in my family, except for me, but including Floyd, think are hilarious.  I felt sad that she wouldn't see him anymore, unless he happens to go to the summer camp.  She just shrugged and didn't seem too upset.

We've been reading some bug books, and made an earth worm home. We found this really cool book called Bug Zoo at the library.  It has all sorts of interesting bug facts, and how to take care of bugs you find.  Did you know that aphids can be born pregnant?

Floyd also took the girls to Willis Tucker and caught a tadpole.  Selena named him Party, because he stays real still and then swims out like he is saying, "Surprise" at a surprise party.

Took her to well child checkup and she is still very small, no rise in growth curves. She is in the second percentile height.  39 inches and 34lbs.  She tricked me one day by standing on her toes.  I thought she grew an inch, but then when I measured her a week later she shrunk again.  Apparently I shrunk too.  I always thought I was 5' 1", but apparently I am 5' even.

I begrudgingly vaccinate the girls, and usually do just one shot at a time, but she needed just two more for school, so we did them at once.  She was really tough and was almost about to cry, but was able to hold back the tears.  We did one shot a few weeks before and it wasn't a problem, so I definitely think doing just one at a time is better.

We took the girls to the Shoreline All-Comers Track meet a few weeks ago.  Selena ran the 50m, 100m, 200m and mile.  The 50m took her about 15 seconds, 30 seconds for the 100m, and 66 seconds for the 200m.  In the mile she took out a bit fast and pushed herself hard and improved her time by just over two minutes and ran 11:00.  She was so tired when she finished that she just lay down across the finish line.  I had to carry her off the track.  I was impressed, and kind of shocked at how hard she pushed herself.

We have been watching the Olympic Trials and she has enjoyed watching all the events.  She was impressed with the fact that I had done so many of the events in high school and college, and she wants to run and jump and do all the events just like her mom. Awww.  However it did make me feel old when I told her, "When I was in high school women just started doing the pole vault."  And, "I was the first woman at my college to run the 3000m steeple chase."  I had become the granny saying, "Back in my day..."

Selena has also been interested in math lately.  She was telling me to quiz her on addition and subtraction.  Then she asked me if there was any math with letters.  I started explaining Algebra to her.  She said she didn't understand it completely, but she thought it was hilarious that x would pretend to be different numbers. I also downloaded a Math Bingo app onto my Nook.  She could do the easy setting for addition and subtraction but she wanted to try the multiplication.  I didn't think she could do it, but she insisted, and she could!  I was amazed. She understood the concepts of multiplication.  She was counting out groups of numbers on her fingers.  She also understood the commutative property and how she could switch the order and it was the same.  Then she taught Allie the identity property of addition.

She also has been teaching herself piano, to read music, or more accurately the keyboard.  We went to the library to find books on learning how to play the piano and read music.  Unfortunately they don't really have anything good.  We did find a little tin whistle book that had all the letters labeled on the music, so she has been playing that and practicing the rhythms.

I love how she loves to learn.  I love how she embraces new subjects all the time.  I love how she demonstrates that self-directed learning works.

Also I have been practicing a pretty effective discipline technique.  I have the girls run to the end of the cul-de-sac.  If they are being grumpy and annoying everyone, or whining, or hitting.  I tell them that they are having a hard time controlling themselves and if they run they will feel better.  And it works!  Most of the time they come back inside and can handle themselves.  But sometimes it is a struggle getting them in their shoes and out the door.

*Picture was taken courtesy of Amy Stonebraker from Amy Stonebraker Photography.  Check her out!

Instinct - Embracing Your Birth Experience

Welcome to the June 2012 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Embracing Your Birth Experience
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have written about at least one part of their birth experience that they can hold up and cherish.
***

Embracing your birth experience is tougher to write about than it initially sounded.  I attempted to write this post in my thoughts, and every time I thought of a wonderful part of one of my births, I would qualify it with a not-so-wonderful part.  Then I would backtrack and say to myself, “No, this is supposed to be embracing the good, not the negative.” 

I am choosing to write about instinct.  The wonderful moment where you don’t think, you don’t rationalize, you just know.

I had a moment when my first daughter was being born.  I was in the tub, listening to my Hypnobabies scripts.  I had probably been in the tub for a couple hours.  I had thoughts drift in and out of my head about how long this would last, but at that moment I had an empty mind.  Suddenly I became alert.  I told Floyd to get the midwife.  I asked before I thought, and I can’t pinpoint what triggered it.  The midwife came in and she said maybe I should try going to the bathroom.  I got out of the tub, sat on the toilet, and then I felt pushy.   The moment I became alert and asked for the midwife, I knew I was completely dilated; no one needed to check me.  I knew something had changed, and I knew it before there were any outward cues or internal feelings.   It was instinct.

A moment I had in my second daughter’s birth was the moment I knew I was in labor.  The last month I had had tons of Braxton Hicks contractions and I had had weird crampy feelings that I couldn’t identify.  But when I woke up, that Sunday morning, I knew that the feelings I were having was labor. It had started and it was “real”.

Another moment was not my own, but was my youngest daughters’.  My memory is kind of fuzzy. It was the middle of the night.  I had had a caesarean and was tired, sore, and not mobile.  I had been instructed by the nurses to keep Allie’s clothes on so she didn’t catch a chill, but I must have taken them off.  I don’t remember taking them off, but I have a memory of a bare baby crawling across my chest, finding my nipple and nursing.  The majority of the time in the hospital I had difficulty nursing, but at that moment there was instinct on her part, and nothing to inhibit it.  I was half asleep, and didn’t appreciate the beauty of it, till much later, when the memory surfaced.

I can embrace those moments, and reflect in awe of knowledge not learned, but inherited.

***
Visit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!
Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:
(This list will be live and updated by afternoon June 12 with all the carnival links.)

• I Had A C-Section. So What! — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama rewrites her birth story now that she has worked through the feelings of inadequacy and disappointment of not having the “perfect” birth.
• The Perfect Birth — Kellie at Our Mindful Life reflects on how a birth can be far from what we imagined, but still perfect.
• Own Your Birth: My Hope For All Expectant Moms — Andrea at Tales of Goodness shares how she owned her birth spiritually (while navigating it physically) in order to have a joyous experience.
• Carnival of Natural Parenting: My Birth Experience — It wasn't what Lily at Witch Mom wanted, but it was everything she needed.
• The Painless Natural Homebirth of BabyE — Shannon at GrowingSlower wants women considering natural birth to know painless births are possible.
• Reflections on Jemma's Birth ... 20 Months Later — It took a second pregnancy for That Mama Gretchen to fully embrace her first birth experience.
• Loving My Unnatural Birth Experience — Erika at Cinco de Mommy cherishes her very first birth experience, in all its unnatural glory!
• Be Careful What you Wish for in Birth — Amber at Strocel.com had two births, and it was the one that went to plan that she struggled with embracing.
• Redeeming an unexpected hospital transfer — Lauren at Hobo Mama looks back at her first, interrupted home-turned-hospital birth, and finds the beauty in what happened.
• All of it — Laura from Pug in the Kitchen had to learn to embrace the whole experience of birth even though it meant being naked . . . with an audience.
• Birthing Dreams & Realities — Momma Jorje never had a "dream birth," but she wouldn't change a thing about her births.
• Memories of Birth: Calm Amidst the Storm — While neither of her children's births had been quite what she expected, Cynthia at The Hippie Housewife cherishes one moment in particular from each of her birth experiences.
• Embracing Our Birth Stories — Luschka from Diary of a First Child shares a sensitive post on her recent birth which both did and didn't go 'to plan', and writes about the journey of coming to terms with the good and the bad.
• Two Beautiful Births — Sheila at A Gift Universe remembers how her mother brought out the beauty in each of her children's births, and tries to do the same with her sons' birth stories.
• Embracing My Supernatural ChildBirth Experiences... — Jenny at I'm a full-time mummy shares her fond memories on both her supernatural childbirth experiences
• Embracing the Hospital Birth Experience — Jenn at Monkey Butt Junction believes that sometimes a medicated, induced hospital birth is the right choice for a natural parent.
• Carnival: Embracing Your Birth Experience — Stephanie at The Other Baby Blog embraces the birth experience from a paleobiologist's point of view and takes a look at how humans defy their anatomy.
• Reflections on My First Birth and Preparing for a Second — Abbie at Farmer's Daughter shares the strength she didn't realize she had until she gave birth to her son.
• becoming a mama - embracing my birth experience — Meegs at A New Day remembers the birth of her daughter Gwenivere, and the empowered feeling it left her with.
• What About Us? A Poem About Birth — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment shares a poem she wrote about healing from an unexpected and emotionally painful birth experience.
• Be a Man: One Father's View of Birth — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children shares her husband's advice to other fathers and partners.
• A Birth Monologue — Kat at MomeeeZen shares a monologue she wrote during the process of healing from her birth experiences.
• Forgiveness: My Birth Journey — Leah at The Crunchy Farm Baby discusses what happens when her planned homebirth doesn't end up the way she wanted, and explains her journey of forgiving herself for losing that "perfect" birth.
• Patching together a perfect birth — KrissyFair at Think Mama, Think learned that sometimes a perfect birth happens in pieces.
• Celebrating and Sharing the Possibilities of Perfect Birth — Terri from Child of the Nature Isle joyfully shares details of her perfect births and wishes to inspire a more positive cultural expectation about birth.
• Instinct - Embracing Your Birth Experience — Laura at Laura's Blog reflects on instinctual moments during and after the births of her two daughters.
• I was Foolish Then — ANonyMous at Radical Ramblings describes how foolish lack of preparation for childbirth led to a feeling of powerlessness and fear, but that in the end she had her baby in her arms, and that's one thing she can celebrate.
• Sometimes no plan is the best plan — Tat at Mum in search contemplates that maybe she doesn't need a birth plan for her upcoming birth.
• Disturbing the peace — Kenna at Million Tiny Things thought she would be a calm, quiet baby-haver. Ha!
• Accepting the Unexpected During Birth — Emily at S.A.H.M i AM imagined herself laboring on a birthing ball but she never imagined where she'd really be most comfortable when the time came...
• Sacred This Time, Too — Kimber at The Single Crunch learned enough to know that the way she birthed wasn't they way she wanted to; but she also knew to enjoy it for what it was.
• The Birth Partner: A Great Natural Labor Companion — Justine at The Lone Home Ranger thinks that the secret to her pleasant natural labors was having a great support system.
• the Best Thing About My Labor Experience — Crunchy Con Mommy realizes that amidst all the things that seemed to go wrong with her labor, the love and support of her husband was the one thing she could always count on!
• Your Birth Was My Favorite — Dulce de leche describes some of the highlights from each of her four births and explains why despite the differences, they are all her favorites.
• Birth Story: Part One - Moon on a Stick! — Gentle Mama Moon tells the first part of her birth story to share some of the delight of labouring at home.
• Embracing My Birth Experience by Sharing My Birth Story — Dionna at Code Name: Mama made peace with her first birth by sharing the story with her son.
• Focusing on the Beauty of Birth — Julia at A Little Bit of All of It shares the beautiful aspects of her birth center water birth.
• A Joyful Induced Delivery — Amy Willa: Me, Mothering, and Making it All Work notes the meditations and perspective that helped her achieve an unmedicated birth despite being induced for medical reasons.
• Finding Joy in an Imperfect Childbirth Experience — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now tells what she learned from her two very different childbirth experiences.
• What's to like about a c-section? — Jessica at Crunchy-Chewy Mama is glad she her second child at home, but she also cherishes much about the c-section she had four years earlier.
• What Story Will I Tell? — Rachael at The Variegated Life realizes that the way she tells the story of her second child's birth matters — and could be exhilarating.
• I Quietly Put My Hopes to Rest E — Erica at ChildOrganics shares her emotional ups and downs with the highly intervened birth of her special needs daughter, Bella.
• Tale of Six Births — Jessica at Instead of Institutions appreciates that unique challenges and joys of each of her births.
• Labouring naturally: nature’s gift — Caroline at stoneageparent describes the most beautiful, spiritual aspect of the labour of her son, the first stages along a bumpy road to giving birth.
• All The Woman I Am. — Lindsay at This Woman's Work shares a poem about letting go and surrendering during the thralls of labor.
• A twin birth story: embracing the unexpected — Megan at The Boho Mama shares her twin birth experience and how she found the silver lining when faced with preterm labor, premature birth, and a two-week NICU stay.
• Giving Birth With Eminem — Kerry at City Kids Homeschooling shares how fiery rap music contributed to an empowered homebirth with her third baby.
• Two Different Births — Cassie at There's a Pickle in My Life shares how she learned from her first birth experience and how to trust yourself and your body.
• Embracing Our Potential: Birth as a Metaphor — Sheila from A Living Family guest posts at Natural Parents Network and expresses how birth has served as a metaphor to help her through other experiences in life.
• Little Sister's Birth Story: Our VBAC Adventure — Charise at I Thought I Knew Mama describes the recent birth story of her baby girl, her pride in an epidural-free VBAC, and how her story isn't exactly the birth experience she had planned for.
• A Journey in Birth Confidence — Shannon at The Artful Mama shares her experiences with labor during both of her sons' births.