We get some expert help...

In the two to three years before i got pregnant with Henry i was what they call "baby crazy." I was obsessed with having a baby and i channeled the delay before we were both ready into reading absolutely everything i could get my hands on. I was still supporting us both while JT went to law school so i read every parenting book in the Chicago library system and pretty much every book on the shelves of the Barnes and Noble-- while nestled into their comfy chairs.

By the time i actually got pregnant, i was basically done with pregnancy books and focused all my efforts on books about infancy, childcare, and toddlers. When Henry was actually born and had his various ailments including colic and sleep troubles-- i read what i could find on those topics as well. Once we thankfully moved on from these i was a bit burned out on reading and for approximately the past 3.5 years i've mostly winged it.

I have a monthly subscription to a parenting magazines so i'm up on the latest child-rearing sound bites. And i have a resident early-childhood expert on speed dial so i wasn't completely out of touch, but mostly we've felt pretty good about being able to tackle what came based on our own ideas and approaches.


But then, in the past several months we started having some real behavioral challenges with Henry. Nothing completely out of the ordinary but unpleasant all the same. He's defiant, easily upset, sometimes sulky and was starting to throw some serious tantrums. I'm a very patient person and i don't have that much of a temper. And yet, i was finding myself irritated a lot and getting angry and even, gasp-- yelling more and more. Between Henry's phase and Silas' normal toddler antics i felt like we just weren't doing the best we could-- for them and us!

So i've checked another round of books out from the library and the first one i read; "Mom I Hate You: Children's Provocative Communication," has proven extremely helpful. The author is a Psychiatrist and the books deals with helping you understand why kids say things that press our buttons and how to deal with these situations in a way that takes power away from provocative statements and teaches them how to behave better. We're experiencing pretty dramatic improvements with Henry just by using some of the initial approaches he suggests. Next up is a book called "Positive Discipline" so i'll let you know how that one goes.

Baby and Infant/Pregnancy Books

Pregnancy and Baby Book Reviews

Way before i was pregnant with Henry, and before we were even sure we were going to have children, i was in full research mode. I read everything i could get my hands on related to pregnancy, birth and infants. Of course by the time i was actually pregnant i was done with pregnancy books and focused on more specialized topics-- like child care. I read as many books about babies and sleep as i could get my hands on once Henry was born and found Weissbluth's book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child the most helpful.

I wrote mini-reviews of the books as i finished them and i've since shared this list several times with pregnant friends. So, i'm adding this to my resources section in the hope that it will help others embarking on their own pregnancies or child-rearing. I'd be happy to add some more recent reviews-- so free free to post your own in the comments section or email them to me through my profile.

Book Review- Jamberry and Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb

Books have been a favorite in our household for quite awhile and Silas is now starting to get in on the act. He won't sit to listen to any stories that i might read, but he will get a book, hold it up right in front of him, and jabber, jabber, jabber away as if he's doing a perfect imitation of what "reading" sounds like to him. I thought i'd periodically review some favorites in our house and i'm kicking if off with my favorite genre-- short and rhythmic.

We have board book versions of both (Jamberry and Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb) so when bedtime is calling they satisfy a request for a story without risking excessive delays.

Jamberry is like an exquisitely rhythmic poem-- it starts simple and slow

one berry, two berry pick me a shoeberry,

mixes in active, colorful and whimsical illustrations, does rhyming without being syrupy

Quickberry! Quackberry! Pick me a blackberry!,

and concludes with my favorite crescendo:

Moonberry Starberry Cloudberry sky
Boomberry Zoomberry Rockets Shoot by
Mountains and Fountains
Rain down on me
Buried in berries
What a jam jamboree!

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb starts off with a simple beat:

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb, one thumb, one thumb, drumming on a drum

Throws in masses and masses of silly monkeys with

rings on fingers, rings on thumbs

adds in more instruments

hands play banjos, strum strum strum
hands play fiddles, zum zum zum

and continues the forward momentum until the end

many more fingers
many more thumbs
many more monkeys
many more drums
millions of fingers, millions of thumbs
drum drum drum drum drum drum drum

Making Choices about Food

I recently finished reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollen. I found it a powerful book (although the last section could have used some additional editing in my opinion,) and it's been generating learning and discussion in our household in myriad ways.

The first section of the book lays out the path of our food system's industrialization from the 20s/30s to the present day. Key turning points and decisions along the way, such as crop subsidies, monocultures, and engineering cattle to eat grain instead of grass help you understand how things used to work and how they actually operate today.

Section two considers what he refers to as the "industrial organic" food system, i.e. whole foods. Pollen is an adept writer and is amazing at taking say, the history of corn and making it a page-turner. The conclusion i drew from the book can be boiled down to: the most important thing is to buy our food locally-- from farmers that we can "inspect" and have a relationship with. This cuts down on the petroleum fueled costs of transporting food across country, circumvents the industrial system of divorcing cattle from grazing and instead moving them to feed lots, and supports farmers that are farming in an environmentally sane way, i.e. merging animals back into the land so that animals fertilize the land and the land feeds the animals. Notice i didn't say organic anywhere in here. Of course a local farmer that isn't using pesticides if even better, but the chapter on industrial organic, or the large-scale organic food producers supplying whole foods-- was an eye-opener on how large-scale organic foods are as wholesome or logical as they might seem.



The book has been producing discussion and stimulating explorations of new skills in our household in a way i deem possible because of the rise of things like Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs), local farmers' markets, numerous blogs and other Internet resources devoted to people trying to implement the same principles in their life. In other words, you don't read something that speaks to you and then feel like you have to "go off the grid" in order to implement your ideals.

It seems imminently doable to remain in our house in the city where we don't drive much and have access to public transport-- source our food from local farms (meat, dairy and produce), make as much of the other stuff as we can (i think my new interest for the summer is soap-making), grow some of our own vegetables and use native and perennial plantings in our flower garden (gone is our sorry looking lawn), keep using our cloth diapers and dry as much as possible on the line outside.

I'm not planning on quitting my job or not using electricity, and i'm happy to run my dishwasher when it's full thank you very much, but there are lots of things that help our budget, make us feel better about the food we're eating and nourishing our kids with, and show our support for the alternative suppliers to the industrial supermarkets. It doesn't hurt that it's spring and we get to start working on some of these projects!

At the end of the month we have a day-trip planned to a huge natural plant nursery in St. Charles, IL. I'll be meeting with a garden designer who will help me plan a very small prairie for our front yard. The nursery is an extensive supplier of native plants for the region and hard-picks their seed stock from plants within 20 miles. Other day-trips this spring include a visit to the farm we ultimately pick to buy shares of and source of meat, dairy and produce from.