Growing Family

The Captain is Right...Again

The Captain is always ready to recognize the kids being ready for the next thing, while I swear up and down that he's wrong. The most recent example of this unfolded this week.

For quite some time the Captain has been bugging me telling me that he thinks The Sprout is ready for toilet training. No, I say. No. no. no. And by no I mean two things: I don't think she's ready, and I don't currently have the energy to clean up accidents on the floor, the rug, and to wash lots of bedding and extra clothes.

He didn't budge when I showed him my degree, with its concentration in child development, and said snootily patiently, "I know the signs of readiness and she just not showing them yet. I'll let you know when she is." Well he was merciless persistent, and when he started talking to other people about it I decided to buy some panties and training pants for her, just to make him think I was considering it, even though I wasn't planning on doing anything with said potty training items for at least another month or two.

I was unpacking the goods from my shopping trip when he calls from the other room, "Sprout wants to wear her panties so I'm going to put them on her, okay?" "Okay" was not so much of a question as an "I dare you to interfere with me doing this." I patiently (I know, I'm so patient!) said, "well, she's not ready but you can try. When if it doesn't work we can just try again in a couple months." I decided it would be best if he saw for himself how not-ready she was. That would teach him.

Well, that was a week ago and The Sprout has had three accidents in a week of wearing panties (including naptimes and most outings). I'd heard of these miraculous, easy to train girl-children before, but she's only two and a little years old. And really, she wasn't showing any signs of readiness! But he was right all the same. He graciously told me, "I don't want to say 'I told you so', but I was TOTALLY right on this one."

What really hurts is that about two months ago he told me that Small Sun needed to go to bed in underwear. I protested at length saying "the sign of readiness is that he wakes up with a dry diaper. He is soaking a diaper every night! I'll let you know when he's ready." Well, you can probably guess how that one went, too.

So rather than hang my head in shame, I'm putting my Bachelors to use. I'm cutting it up into squares to put next to the potty. We ought to get some kind of use out of it, eh?

Speaking Up

I have two family members, through marriage, that have different cultural backgrounds than I. A brother-in-law whose family is Italian, and a sister-in-law who is Korean-American. I am always conscious of the remarks people make (be they positive or negative) about blacks or Africans, because my child shares those ethnic and cultural roots. I am less attuned to the comments made about other groups, though I feel I am always sensitive to racialized or stereotypical or racist comments.

Today I found myself "outing" myself as part of a multi-cultural extended family when I was in the company of some people who were talking freely about both the (strong and distinct) Italian community and neighborhoods, and the Korean neighborhoods, here in Sydney. The comments weren't fully racist, but they were stereotypical. When I purposefully yet casually mentioned that I have Korean family members, the speaker looked startled and said "oh really?" The speaker was a teenager so I understand this his social skills are still developing. When he started going on about the inter-ethnic African on African violence happening in the neighborhoods in Perth (his hometown), his aunt, my recent acquaintance, started to reel him in and told him to be careful with what he said.

It was a strange situation. I found most of what they were saying to be borderline inappropriate. However, within Australian propriety, the young man must have crossed a line that his aunt recognized, yet I didn't. Or perhaps she stopped him because the statements touched on my son's heritage and she knows that he is a biracial black American? Both people were connected to the Italian community themselves, so I assumed that the statements they made about Italians are culturally appropriate.

This move is providing such a unique opportunity to sit back, zip my mouth, and suspend judgment. It is fascinating (and tiring) to re-evaluate every conversation and innuendo as having different ascribed meaning here. The trickle-down affect is hitting every part of my life.

For example, cloth diapers. Back home, cloth diapering was an environmentally conscious choice. Here, where there is a water crisis, and we are just allowed to wash our cars again, but still can't spray down our patios, cloth diapering is not an environmentally conscious choice. Here they make landfills into parkland, growing native plants, and installing playgrounds.

Anyway, back to my initial thought, it's not every day that I communicate my status as part of a multi-cultural family, aside from my immediate family unit. Doing so today was interesting, but I am still looking for the social queues that other people can so easily read.

Sorry so Quiet

You haven't heard even as much as a whisper from me lately. I'm sorry about that. We've been working through a crisis that I won't be blogging about, but needless to say, it has taken all our energy of late. I think I'll be back to writing some soon.

In the meantime, I'm still working on cloth diapering. I ordered some bumGenius all in ones. I only got two for each kiddo so it's hard to really get an idea of how many we need - how they handle poosplosions, etc. Does anyone know if the bumGenius 2.0 needs a cover? It would be nice if I could use the same size on both kiddos.

After I go to the grocery store (we're gnawing on stale pasta and canned water chestnuts here) and get some Dawn I'll keep trying to wash those fuzzibunz clean. It would be so great if I could get those working. They fit both kids, and there's enough to really get us started.

Sometimes, when life is overwhelming, you need a diversion. Trying to contain baby poo is mine.

Happy Pictures:

Small Sun wearing The Sprout's sunglasses

Carrying his baby in my hotsling

A Bum Wrap

Waiting for baby seemed to be a great time to jump into cloth diapering. I want to do cloth diapers with the Sprout so I bought sizes to fit Small Son, thinking I could get into the swing with him to prepare me for her. I have some Happy Heineys and some new and used Fuzzibunz. I thought that pocket diapers were the top of convenience these days. It wasn't until after I'd purchased them that I found out about the all in one diapers by Bum Genius. They look awesome.

Anyhow, so far cloth diapering is not working AT ALL. The first day I did two cloth diapers in the mix of disposables. Both soaked all the way through EVERYTHING. Today I'm giving it another go around and twice, SOAKED. I thought my mistake the other day was leaving them on too long so today I changed them much more frequently...or I was going to when I saw the wet pants walking around. What is the deal? Why isn't this working? The moisture is soaking right through the "waterproof" outer of both kinds of diapers. I mean, they are drenched. How is that possible if they are waterproof? One thing is certain, I am starting to admire the amount my son pees. I'm pretty sure it's more than he drinks. Those disposables with the gel inside don't really convey the true amount of liquid.

They say that when there's a poopy diaper you just "shake it off into the toilet" - voila! I think I even heard some asinine phrase like "with a flick of the wrist" or something like that. Well today I'm sitting there with rubber gloves scrubbing some nasty poop in the toilet. I had to flush again to get some clean water going after it gunked up the first bowl. THEN I had to clean out the brush that was all stuck with kidney bean skins! Why do people do this? I know disposables take, like, five billion years to decompose in the landfills but at this point I think I'd happily dig a hole in my backyard and start shoving them in! I'm not giving up yet but so far I think I'd be just as well off wrapping a towel around Small Son's waist. Any advice?

Oh, and yea, still pregnant.

Ouch

My belly hurts. I got out a hand held mirror today and found that the very low part of my belly that I can no longer see is sporting some angry looking stretch marks. I don't think they were there before. The baby dropped 2 cm since my last doctor's visit and I'm dilating and effacing right on target. It just feels like she's focusing all her weight on smashing downward, which I guess is good, but my low belly is paying the price.

I guess I need to say for the record, I think she'll be born tomorrow. If she's not I don't think I'll be upset or anything. In the meantime my body is going wacko, my legs feel like they're held on with rubber bands, and my whole pelvis is sore and stretching. This morning she was doing some kind of wild rolling around - probably engaging her head or something - thus making my pelvis sore.

So I'm just carrying on with nesting activities. Task of the day: find someone who wants our futon and has a single bed to swap (done). Find a twin size down comforter for the bed (done).  More laundry (done). Visit the thrift store across the street (found toy cars, some favorite books, and a cute knitted hat and sweater for the Sprout). Nap (done). Close craigslist cloth diaper deal (done). I still need to sweep and wash the kitchen floor but I'm going to rest again for a bit to try to relieve all this physical discomfort.

If you all are really sick of hearing about me being pregnant, I understand. It's kind of clouding everything else right now, though, so you'll have to wait a bit more to hear about other stuff.