Let’s welcome Zoey Martin to GreenKiddie!

CHILDHOOD IS A BAD BET

26^th March 2010

That’s the assertion made by Elisabeth Badlinter in her new book, discussed in this article. The idea being that it’s a bit of a waste for a parent to sacrifice every part of their life for a child, given that we live for an average of 85 years and childhood is temporary. Her theory is that women get their life back by any means necessary – formula, childcare, whatever it takes – and get back to enjoying their life with a drink and a cigarette. And while I do enjoy both drinking and smoking, I do not concur with Ms Badlinter.

If you feel resentful about a sacrifice, it’s not a sacrifice. If you are continually listing all the things you are missing out on, you are not making a sacrifice. You’ve just made a bad choice, but it’s not a sacrifice. To my mind, a sacrifice is giving up something freely and willingly for something far more important.

If you don’t want your life to change, then don’t have children. Because they will change your life, regardless of whether you choose to breastfeed or bottle-feed, co-sleep or not, or use childcare instead of staying at home.

I have to say, I didn’t really relate to this article at all. Although Megan did and she raises some really interesting points here. And what Badlinter is saying is not that outlandish really. A whole swag of experts encourage women to maintain their relationship with their partner as the primary relationship, children are temporary etc. etc. And while I absolutely agree that doing things for yourself is important, and doing things with your partner just as a couple is also important, I tend to see things the other way around. Childhood IS temporary, so why would I want to miss out on it? They’re babies for such a tiny amount of time really so why outsource them and miss out on all the fun stuff?

I like being at home. If I had a choice between my pre-baby recreational activities and what we do now. I’d choose what we do now. I loved breastfeeding her. And if anything it made my life easier, rather than harder. I didn’t have to get out of bed in the middle of the night (hello co-sleeping), I didn’t have to sterlise anything and I didn’t have to take bottles and formula with us when we left the house. Both me and my husband loved co-sleeping with her. Sometimes I still go in and get her from her room so she can sleep with us. I like that our life has changed in a really big way. My husband and I have more quality time as a family because we are both not working full-time. It’s a better lifestyle for us this way.

As Megan said in her article there is plenty of time during the day for other interests – and there’s never been a block of time that I couldn’t fill up with some project or other. Whether it be working, house renovation, writing, reorganising, cooking or crocheting. But I also knew early on that I wasn’t going to feel like I was missing something by staying at home with her. Not everyone is the same of course, which is the benefit of all of those hard-won choices we now have.

And I can’t help feeling like the ideas put forward by Badlinter are antiquated. There are more choices than simply staying at home or being a high-powered career woman. You can also work from home, stay at home, work outside the home part-time, work full-time out of the home or any manner of different options. Motherhood isn’t oppressing women, the idea that we all have to fit nicely into the box of ‘earth mother’ or ‘career woman’ might be.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

26^th March 2010

Breakfasts aren’t my problem. She’ll eat breakfast, second breakfast, even third breakfast. Dinner on the other hand, is my problem. Or to be perfectly accurate the lack of dinner.

Riley probably eats dinner once or twice a week. Although she is very keen on redistribution of food. From the bowl to a cup to a tray and back again. Although some how snack food pilfered from her father seem to escape the whole dinner embargo. Like corn chips this evening. Jammed into her little mouth as fast as her little hands would go. But somehow my delicious (and healthy) bean, veges and rice was beneath her dignity. Go figure.

At least I still have bananas.

Somebody has a birthday coming up. I can hardly believe that my beautiful little baby is going to be 2. Two. Two whole years. 24 months. I guess I have to stop keeping track of her age in months now.

It’s hard to believe that the walking and talking toddler was once this tiny little baby:

It’s hard to believe that the little person who doesn’t ever actually walk but runs everywhere, once upon couldn’t get around on her own. That even once she had learned how to roll on to her stomach, she used to cry because she couldn’t roll back on her own.

It’s hard to imagine that the restless toddler who tosses and turns, kicks the wall and generally likes to sleep sideways as a baby never moved a muscle in her sleep. But it doesn’t surprise me that she liked to be swaddled for a long time, given the current situation with her flailing limbs.

It’s hard to even remember that her first tentative baby laughs were cheeky little giggles and not the full-body belly laughs that double her over.

It’s hard to accept that she’s not a baby anymore.

11th March 2010

I have a confession to make I have no recollection of my childhood. That’s an exaggeration. I do have three or four things that I remember, but basically up until I was in High School is blank. It’s weird, I know. I don’t think it hides some deep-seated childhood trauma. I just, don’t remember. So for this month’s Carnival I’m going to be focusing on what greent things we do with Riley, because I have no way of having any idea what we did when I was a kid.

When we were pregnant, we wanted to move into a house and not be in an apartment, with no backyard. So we moved to an area where we could afford. The house that we bought was built in the early 80s and it looks like it. What is with the yellow and brown? Were they too high to realise it was awful? Oh and the fake wood. Kill me now. And the front windows which are nice and big have an aluminimum grid over the top. Just in case what you always really wanted was to feel like you were in prison while you were sitting in your living room.

So why did we buy it? It’s all part of my cunning plan. My plan to buy a really crap house with loads of potential so we could make more money from it when we sold by renovating it along the way. See? The plan is working.

One of the things that we didn’t notice when we bought the house was that our hot water tank was the teeniest water tank in the universe. If one of us had a shower, the other one would have to wait for half an hour before hopping in. It was 80L. Apparently the standard is around 250L. You get the idea. And it was corroded and leaking. So the laundry floor was always wet and gross. Plus, apparently it could have exploded at any time. Awesome.

But I resisted replacing it. Because out of all the renovating projects I had on the boil, replacing the water tank was so not sexy. I wanted to do the floors. And then I noticed that there was actual green moss growing in our laundry. And even I conceded it was time for action.

In our area, there are only two options for hot water. Electric or solar. We have no access to gas. Which means that my stove is electric as well. The phrase ‘cooking with gas’ isn’t running around for nothing. I loathe that stove.

At the time I was looking for a replacement, there were a few government rebates for having a solar system installed, which made it affordable (oh no! I’ts socialised energy!). It was also almost the same outlay as having an electric system installed. We went with evacuated tubes rather than the flat solar panels which means 95% of all our hot water energy is provided by solar. The big bonus? A 270L tank – hello consecutive showers. We’ve even got more room in the laundry, because the tank is outside. Which means when I walk in there in the morning I can think about what I want to put in the newly created space – freezer chest or linen shelving – or both? The decisions! And I can do all of that day dreaming without cringing because my feet are wet.

The bottom line? Our energy bill is now half of what it was. It’ll pay for itslelf within a year.Which is just as well. I’d hate to think that we had to pay for something so un-sexy.