We’re in to that almost-fall part of summer, where you almost want time to stand still, but not quite, because fall is just so delicious. We’re big failures on the camera-toting front, so very few pictures to be had, but, a few wonderful things of late:

*Running in to friends at the farmer’s market early on Saturday morning, and then, spur of the moment, spending the entire day with them. Babies napped in cosy beds in the absolutely stunning cottage. Multiple trips down to the water to swim and play on the dock. Naked kiddos just doing their thing. Many eyes to watch children, so that mamas could swim, alone, out in the deep coolness of the lake. Good, market food shared in the sunshine. Peas fresh from the garden. Ice cream on the beautiful drive home, and the discovery of an absolute treasure of a place that promises ski and snowshoeing trails and home-cooked meals afterwards in front of a fire with friends.

Maren likes to dress herself these days, "a skirt an' a dress" being the preferred outfit

*Buying practically nothing from the grocery store. Seriously. We spend about 30$ a week on things like soap and olive oil and salt, and other random, not available at the market things. We have a CSA that we pick up on Thursday nights, typically by riding our bikes and towing the kids in the trailers and then huffing and puffing back up the hill, children nearly suffocated by local, fresh, organic eggs, veggies, berries, mushrooms, bread, and sometimes even chicken.

*My early morning solo trips to the farmers market in Kingston on Saturdays. I load up the kids, and off we go, a little drive, a ferry ride, another short drive, and then we trade in our empty mason jars for fresh ones full of raw, whole milk. We trade empty egg cartons for ones full of free range eggs. We scoop up extra blueberries, purple potatoes, and anything else that strikes our fancy. We buy bacon for Maren’s daily breakfasts with Papa while Mama and Nate sleep/nurse until the last possible second. Maren and I share two muffins. She gets strawberry-rhubarb, I get “morning glory”, and Nate sucks on the lid of the bottle of squeezed-before-our-eyes orange juice. Maren runs around. We chat with the farmer who supplies our dairy and meat. There’s usually live music and a bunch of also-running-around little people. And I feel incredibly blessed to have access to such real, whole food, to have the money to buy it, and to be able to expose my children to the magic of the whole experience.

*Swimming. I did some research and found out that if I swim between 6 and 11 am on weekdays, I can pay a relatively small amount of money to have a membership at the (only!) pool in the city, which just happens to be a 6 minute walk from our front door. I am NOT a morning person, however, I’ve been feeling really crummy about my body post birthing of this large babe. I walk a lot, carry Nate and/or Maren in a sling, bike a decent amount and do the occasional yoga session with Maren, but I knew I would feel a lot better about (and in) my body if I could get some sort of regular, just for me, exercise. So, now when Nate wakes me at 5h30 or 6 to nurse, I feed him and get him back to sleep (well, the sleep part doesn’t always happen!), and then I sneak out in to the hall and pull on my swimsuit and walk out the door. And then I swim. And then I get home, showered, dressed, and feeling like I’ve accomplished something. All before 8am. It’s a good feeling.

*Nate is crawling, pulling up on everything, and loves to walk holding our hands. He’s insanely mobile, but it’s fun. My guess is he’ll be walking by 10 months. He’s got four teeth, two more on the way, and a definite personality. He’s lovely.

 

Maren is what you might call “spirited”. She’s many wonderful things, and most of the things that drive me absolutely INSANE are awesome traits for a person to have. They’re just a bit of a challenge for a parent. Like, she’s really, really persistent and intensely focused on what she wants. Someday, she’ll be the person who kicks butt at her job, knows how to be assertive, and accomplishes amazing things because she does not back down. Today, she’s two. And I, more often than I care to admit, want to chuck her out the window.

That would be Maren on the left. The poor child on the right is her cousin. By the end of day two, all Maren had to do was look at the kid to provoke this reaction. Not. A. Good. Scene.

Really, is it a crisis if your underwear are blue? If the bath water is wet? (no that’s not a typo, there really was a tantrum over this!) If I have to move your chair/step stool to access the flour required to make the bread you are “helping” with? Heaven forbid we do something really insane, like wash hair or brush teeth!

And then there’s the violence. Who needs to say hello when you can just shove a kid over? Mostly though, Maren just reaches her saturation point, and she’s done. About two hours with friends is her limit. We can double that if we’re at our house, and even triple it if there is only one child visiting, especially if the child is easy-going. But, reach the limit, and the hitting, pinching and pushing reach epic proportions. I’m not exaggerating when I say I am sometimes fearful that people will avoid my calls, stop inviting me over, and start using me as the horror story of parenting gone wrong.

We’re both working really hard. I’m working to set Maren up for success. I try to keep our visits shorter. I try to avoid situations where there will be 15 kids running around like mad. I try to keep playdates outdoors, ’cause she does so, so much better there. I encourage break-taking. One of our friends has a cozy change table set up in her bathroom, and Maren can spend 15 minutes lying there recharging and extend her happy playtime. We bought a little hammock nest/chair for her to use at home in the same way. I try to keep her limitations in mind.

I try to keep my own temper in check. I like to be in charge, and I like to do things my way, or at least in the way I am accustomed to doing them. I’m working on remembering that I don’t need to stand in that precise spot as I mix my bread, or that underwear can be worn backwards. I try  to remember that she’s two and still learning to keep herself in check and to use words to express herself (oh, the sanity-trashing screaming!). I try to validate her intense feelings. I try to stay calm and compassionate in the storm of emotion and screaming. And I fail. Often. Daily, pretty much.

I apologize. I pray I’m not scarring the kid and that she’ll forgive me. I feel cruddy about myself as a parent (not all the time, but often enough). I wonder that I expect her to stay calm and even when my voice rises and my fists clench and my teeth grind. If I can’t do it, how on earth can I be expecting a two year old to?!

I read books where the solution is apparently to “expect the child to do as you ask”, and where  a firm voice is all that is needed. I look around and try to figure out how a get a kid who actually responds to such craziness. I can expect all I want, but if my kiddo doesn’t expect in the same direction, my expectations are NOT going to be met. She can out expect me any day.

What are your tricks for staying calm and compassionate? How do you enforce GENTLE touches? How do you discipline?

And yes, I have read “Raising Your Spirited Child”. I really liked it actually, and you should read it too! (http://www.parentchildhelp.com/SpiritedChild/tabid/59/Default.aspx)

We try to eat food. Real food. Sometimes we have sweet potato fries for lunch, and I often have a stash of chocolate hidden in the cupboard, and we have resorted to gummy bear bribery in the potty learning realm, but mostly we do pretty well. So, when the time comes to start feeding our babies food, well, I just grab something from the fridge, or off my plate, and toss it to them.

For the record, I’m not completely lazy about this. I did read about the way you’re “supposed” to feed children. We have allergies in our family, both from my side and from the donor. The kids’ half-brother had a crazy reaction to egg when I was there once, and it was scary. My brother pretty much dies if he touches tree nuts (for real). So, I was a little worried about making sure certain things were slower to be introduced, even though I know there is literature that debunks the whole delayed introduction = fewer allergies. So, we hold off on grains, dairy and nuts until after a year. But, this whole, “start with cereal, move on to single vegetables, avoid strawberries, etc, etc” thing? Yeah, I think it’s baloney (something else I don’t feed my kids!).

Maren’s first food was avocado. Nate’s was mango. However, before the real ingesting occurred, there were sprigs of lavender, mint leaves, carrot sticks to gnaw on, and any number of other substances. I pulled a really long piece of grass out of Nate’s diaper not too long ago.  Yum.

hmmm, not too sure about the bananas

 

We wait until babies satisfy a little list before we feed them anything:

- they have to be sitting independently

- they have to be able to pick the food up themselves

- the tongue thrust reflex needs to be history

- they have to be at least six months old

So, far, our kids have been a bit on the physically precocious side, so the physical readiness hasn’t been an issue. They’ve both been really interested in food pretty early on too. So, they’ve both been given food as of six months and a bit.

 

Nate’s really keen on egg yolk, and hamburger. I can’t believe, as a life-long vegetarian, that I actually fed my child meat, never mind hamburger, but this was a local, grass-fed, 100% beef patty, and, well, it’s what we were eating! He’s also totally obsessed with mango. And blueberries. See, did I mention I break all the food eating rules? And strawberries. Again with the rule-breaking. I don’t mash anything. I don’t cut anything into minute pieces. I just break it in to chunks if necessary and hand it over.

And then I am thankful for our dog’s one redeeming quality. She’s a living vacuum cleaner and mop all in one.  Halleluia. If you have small children, I would highly recommend a dog, if only for the floor-cleaning benefits.

definitely a fan of the egg!

Are you horrified? I get a little horrified when I see people feeding their children cereal, I will admit. I also gag a bit when they hand over huge, full sippy cups of cow’s milk. And hot dogs, those give me the creeps. How do you feed your children? Do you have rules? What grosses you out?

 

some of the books I read and liked on the subject:

http://www.amazon.ca/Real-Food-Mother-Baby-Planck/dp/1596913940/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310433757&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.ca/Baby-Led-Weaning-Essential-Introducing-Foods-/dp/161519021X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310433841&sr=1-1

(and if I had figured out how to make those snazzy link things that hide the url under a tidy little word, well, I would have done it that way. one of these days…)

We have a swing in our kitchen. A few years ago, I read about someone who had a swing in her kitchen (lex, over at totallysmittenmama.blogspot.com), and was immediately taken with the idea. It wasn’t until we moved in to our apartment here that we had the space to implement said stolen idea. Jonathan thought I was a little nuts. I thought, “I want to be able to swing in my kitchen, and if I can’t, the next best thing is having my kiddo swing in my kitchen!”.

So, we weren’t even really moved in yet, and I hauled Jonathan and Maren off to Kent. It was January. Baby swings are not that common in January. But, we found one! We have photos, but, unfortunately, they’re on the computer of death and no one is brave enough to risk extracting them. You’ll just have to take my word for it; the paint wasn’t even dry in the kitchen before we had that swing up and in use. It was great! I’m not sure who was more excited, me or Maren.

It continued to be great for quite a while. And I continued to wish that I could fit in the baby swing. And then, Maren was making her disdain for baby swings known at the playground. She only wanted to use the “big girl” swings. So, off I went to Kent, in January, again. If baby swings are uncommon in January, adult swings are, well, completely out of stock. We tried, unsuccessfully, Canadian Tire, Home Depot, and Toys R Us. Bummer. In April, I finally found one. I had to get the heavy-duty swing, because the normal blue playground swings are only rated to 110lbs. Let’s be realistic, if there’s a grown up swing in my kitchen, I’m going to swing on it, and I definitely weigh more than 110lbs.

I was pretty proud that I bought the correct hardware and managed to cobble together an installation on the hooks we had installed for the baby swing.

Most people end up with wider smiles than this, but, hey, I work with what I’ve got!

Most people think it’s sort of fun, and once they’re convinced it’s going to hold their weight, most people are pretty keen to sit on it. Children are completely delighted. I love it! I’m still not sure if some people think I’m a little fruity for having a swing in the kitchen. Ah well, it’s MY kitchen!

The only problem now is that Nate is big enough for the baby swing, and I know he would love it. Maren still fits in to the baby swing, so I should probably switch back, but then what would I do without my own daily swooshing session through the kitchen? We do have a few more doorways…

My mom gave Maren this book for her birthday this year.

It’s a sweet little book, and Maren loves the repetitiveness of it as well as seeing familiar animals do slightly off kilter things. The enthusiastic HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! at the end is also much-loved. What kid doesn’t like to shout?

Maren also has a doll. On her first birthday, Hayley arrived with wild hair and was happily ignored by Maren for the next six months. And then, slowly, Hayley became a sort of fixture in Maren’s life. Hayley had to come for car rides. She had to ride in the grocery cart. When Nate was born, I got Maren her own sling, and now Hayley rides in her sling to go to the playground, the store, friends’ houses, and anywhere else we go.

Today, as we read the “Birthday Book”for the umpteenth time, I asked her when Hayley’s birthday is. Today seemed like as good a day as any. Nate cooperated absolutely beautifully, staying sweetly asleep long enough for us to read the book, and make a birthday cake. The recipe is on the last page of the book.

As we were mixing it up, I realized that I’ve never made a plain old cake before. I have a chocolate cake recipe I use pretty frequently (it’s called Emergency Chocolate Cake, and we have “emergencies” fairly frequently), but I realized I have otherwise never made a from scratch cake. Oddly. This one turned out pretty well. We cut the sugar a fair bit, but it still turned out almost too sweet. I made a really lemony glaze for it, and topped it with a few raspberries from the freezer, and it mostly evened out. Note to self: if you want to get the cake out of the pan, greasing said pan would be recommended.

Nate conveniently saved his waking up for about four seconds after the cake went in to the oven. We had one of those delicious wake up cuddles, and then I popped him in to the Jolly Jumper while Maren and I sprawled on the floor in front of him to make Hayley a birthday card. And then we had cake. With a candle in it for Hayley. I sang Happy Birthday all by myself, because Maren was suddenly struck by shyness, which was a bit of a puzzle given our complete lack of an audience. I forgot about pictures until after the main event, but you get the idea.

It was fun. And easy. We spent the whole day at home alone together, my two little people and I, and it was perfectly lovely. Any excuse for a cake! Sometimes, when Two (years) is biting my butt, and the tedium of day-to-day threatens to do me in (how many times can you wash the same dish or vacuum the same floor?), I feel like a cruddy parent wasting my life as an at home mom. And sometimes, it is ridiculously easy to enjoy a day doing something I would never otherwise get the opportunity to do. Sometimes I remember how lucky I am.

Also, when your child dresses like this:

how do you not giggle and give that cute little bum a tap? (I grew up in a bum-tapping household. They were called Love Taps. Please note that they’re not at all the same thing as slaps or spanks, or anything of the sort!)

And now, both kiddos are in bed, and that cake is definitely calling my name!

And, curiosity satisfied. http://www.donorsiblingregistry.com/members/ListRegistry.php?dpIdentityNumber=BFM+9898

Clearly, donor 9898 and his 40% motility are QUITE sufficient. Given that he’s an ID release donor (when the offspring are 18, further info/contact is a possibility), I’m guessing that more parents are inclined to register with the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR) than with a completely anonymous donor. All the same, not all parents from this donor will have registered, and he still has 22 listed offspring! He’s also been “retired”, which would indicate a high number of pregnancies.

It’s a little mind bending to imagine having that many half siblings out there in the world. I’m quite happy that we’ve only got two lovely little people as half siblings to our two!

We were really lucky to get a family doctor here. There’s a 2+ year waiting list for a gp here, and I managed to circumvent it by hearing a random interview and then google-stalking a clinic and taking full advantage of my mother (ok, technically it’s my father) tongue: French. She’s, well, a doctor, a pretty average one, but she’s nice. Her receptionist is awesome. It’s lovely to have other people in our ordinary lives who speak french to Maren and Nate, ’cause I’m pretty sure she’s convinced I’m speaking a crazy, made up language to her. Outside validation is key.

The clinic here requested my medical records from Yellowknife, and then, to my surprise, the receptionist handed me a thick packet the other day. It was my medical records. In her words, “They’re your records. I put all the data into our system, and *I* don’t need these!” Reading through them was really interesting, especially the medical take on Maren’s birth (more than a little skewed!).

And then I got to a huge pile of papers that accumulated with our donor sperm process. I’m totally flabbergasted, and a little irritated. I had NO idea what the numbers were on our donor. I mean, we carefully pored over profiles, paid for extended profiles, assured ourselves we had a donor with ID release, etc, etc. We finally settled on donor 9898. We bought some vials, had to make a few special requests in order to get the vials to Yellowknife before the liquid nitrogen ran out in the tank, bla, bla, it was a bit of a gong show.

There was all sorts of stress trying to get the timing right. There were a few sweaty bike rides to the amazing gp’s office for insemination during a snatched work break. Lots more stress as we waited for results. And, of course, ultimately all of our cycles failed. I put it off to my stress levels, to the fact that frozen sperm isn’t as “potent” as fresh sperm, and maybe even just to the fact that donor 9898 and I weren’t compatible. As it turns out, while I’m sure those things were factors, donor 9898 actually has pretty cruddy sperm. 

I mean, those numbers could certainly be worse, and I’m not an expert on what they should be, and I’m sure there are minimum requirements and obviously his samples met those requirements, but I’m a little irritated. 40% motility!? Seriously, 40%!? The reference range for motility is >50%. Now I’m extra curious if anyone has had success with this donor! (I’m sure some have, especially because he was sold out for a period of time, but still, I’m curious as to numbers)

His count numbers look high, but they’re calculated using different measurements than the lab used for J’s analyses, so I have no clear reference range for them. Obviously a super count with average motility is better than a mediocre count with stupendous motility, but still.

Jonathan’s sperm has every possible problem, but even his motility hovers around 20%. And we were told that the only way for him to biologically be a father was through IVF with ICSI, ’cause his sperm would otherwise just not cut it. The difference between 20% and 40% seems pretty minimal, if you ask me. Both would cause you to fail any academic testing!

In the end, we’re both so insanely glad that the sperm bank donor didn’t work out. Donor 9898 is probably a really neat guy, but I think there’s a lot more value in being able to talk about our known donor in a way that we would never be able to talk about 9898.

Words to the wise though, if you’re using sperm from a bank, you should request to see copies of the accompanying paperwork. And random note: they are tested for diseases you’ve never even heard of. Pages and pages and pages…

I’m a reader. In fact, that very phrase is a family joke. I dropped that bombshell during a game of boggle one night after a particularly brilliant find, very smugly, in fact. And then I misspelled something ridiculously ordinary, like “dog” or “house”. I can’t remember exactly, but it was funny. Dumb announcements and mistakes aside, I spent many a long hour reading as a child. The library was one of my favorite places. Ever. I used to squint and twist to maximize hall light long after I was supposed to be sleeping. My parents exiled us to the basement when I was 10, to make room for our new brother upstairs, and I took advantage of the distance from light-aware parents to read late into the night. I miss those days, I must say.

These days I read in snatches while rocking a babe to sleep, or nursing a child, or for ten minutes before I conk out at night. I read a lot less fiction than I used to; there’s suddenly more need to read things like “Sleepless in America” or Aviva Jill Romm’s latest. But, I still read, and my kids see me doing it. Huge hurrah for the Kindle I got for Christmas. I read to our kids, and try to encourage them to “read” to themselves.

Until very recently, independent reading was not something Maren was in to. And then, a few days ago, she settled in to the papasan chair that saw many a long reading hour during my university days (and more than a few naps too!), asked for a blanket, and then announced, “I NEED books!!”. She NEEDS a lot of things recently, but I was happy to comply with this one.

There are many things I would like to instill in my children, but I think a love of the written word is pretty high up on the list. Formal education or no, good test scores or no, “good” job or no, as long as you read, there is a huge, huge world open to you. So, when I see things like this, I do a little happy dance and am ridiculously giddy for the rest of the day. I hope she’ll always find time to sit with a book. I hope I’ll always be able to find fun and interesting ways to encourage my kids to be readers.

There was an unfortunate incident involving downloading some video editing software and then deleting some essential system files while uninstalling said video editing software, which culminated in my computer dying a rapid, definite death. Bummer. Fortunately, my birthday (today!) provided a good excuse for a new computer. Or, well, my birthday present got wasted on a computer after multiple attempts to fix the dead one failed. A new one was necessary. Birthday meant poor hubby did not have to come up with a present idea. Bah.

All I wanted was one of those 15$ orchid plants from the grocery store! I even coached Maren, “What do you say when Papa asks what he should get for Mama’s birthday? Or-chid. Orchid. Got it? Or-chid!”. All for naught. I don’t think her rendition of “orchid” would have made much sense to him anyway! And I can hardly complain about a working computer, even less about a brand new working computer. It has all of its letters! It can stay open all by itself! There is no black screen of death. What’s not to like?!

So. My kids are still donor-conceived. Maren has his strong, able body-type. Nate still has his wonderful dimples. Who knows what else they have inherited from their donor. Who knows how they will deal with their conception stories as they grow. Who knows.

This is now. Now, we occasionally read “Maren’s Story”, a little photo album/story book I put together for her with photos of her mama and papa, of her donor, of my pregnancy, of her with her half-siblings, of her placenta tree in Yellowknife. Now, every time I look at Nate’s gorgeous chubby face I am thankful that he has his donor’s dimples. We wonder, aloud and to ourselves, sometimes about how their conceptions will affect them. I read whatever I can find on the subject, and am always curious to meet others who are parenting donor conceived children.

Mostly though, we live our ordinary lives. I struggle to give space and validation to Maren’s intense emotions, when all I really want to do is put her on the porch and lock the door so I can’t hear her. I am sometimes bored being “only” an at home mama. I am sometimes struck by random creativity. We get out and about. I try to cultivate friendships, even though I’m really, really awful at the whole beginning of them. Maren says clever things. Nate does clever things. I dream about more babies in our house. I think about homeschooling, and worry about how I am failing at maintaining a dual language home. We just live our lives. Donor conception is a small part. It is an essential part, for I would not be the mother to these amazing children without it, but it is just one thread.

I find that I avoid posting here, because I don’t always have something donor-related to say. I often don’t have anything donor related to say! So, no more restrictions! My journals are dusty and packed away. I haven’t kept one since third year of my first degree. Someday, I think Maren might like to read them, so I’m hanging on to them, but the bloggy world is somehow more accessible these days.

So here it is, our ordinary lives.