The Paper Dart
An ode to creativity and distraction

3 Easy Valentine’s Crafts to Do With Kids (And A Few Books To Read When You Give Up…)

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner! While finding the time to make and deliver Pinterest-perfect class valentines was never at the top of my list as a working mom, now that I’m home, I have found that I actually really enjoy having a little bit of extra time and energy to help my daughter make some cutesy Valentine’s Day crafts. Even though most of these will inevitably make their way into someone else’s trash can, I’m hoping that the process of making and giving these items away will also teach her a little something about friendship, and the power of a small act of kindness.

Before embarking on our crafting journey, Margot and I read the WONDERFUL book “In My Heart,” by Jo Witek (linked below). While it’s not necessarily a Valentine’s book, it is all about “hearts,” and I love how it personifies (and makes accessible for kids) the wide array of feelings our hearts can have throughout the course of a day. The art in this book also inspired our first craft of the season: our “feelings of the heart” googly eye garland.

Feelings of the Heart Googly-Eye Garland

My bookshelf and I both love a good garland. And I also love encouraging my alomst-4-year-old to practice her fine motor skills. This garland was a mixture of painted hearts, and decoupaged ones, but you could easily pick one medium or the other instead of doing both. While we’ll be keeping this first attempt for our own home, we plan on making another for a friend later next week.

Supply List

The supplies for this craft are as follows, and I have linked the exact items I purchased at the bottom of this section.

  • Wooden craft hearts
  • Twine
  • Tissue paper
  • Washable tempura paint
  • School glue
  • Paint brushes
  • Small jam jars (to pre-portion paint)
  • Stick-on googly eyes
  • Scissors

In my house, I try my best to set crafts up in a minimalist, Montessori-ish style. This means that I prep the supplies in advance, and make sure that the kids only have access to a modest amount of things like paint, glue, or tissue paper. This helps kids feel less overwhelmed by the task in front of them, and encourages them to use supplies responsibly.

We started by choosing which colors of tissue paper we wanted to use, and them my daughter was tasked with the work of cutting it into small, odd-shaped pieces. Working with scissors in this way is still a little challenging for her, but important for helping her develop better hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.

Once we had a pile of tissue paper scraps, we painted our wooden hearts with glue, and set work decoupaging. As you can likely see, my daughter did some on her own, and some with my guidance, but both turned out pretty fun.

While we waited for those to dry, we grabbed our pre-filled jam jars of paint, and set to work painting the remaining hearts. When all of the painting and gluing had dried (later that afternoon for us), we went back and added googly eyes and facial expressions to our hearts. This is where I reviewed the premise of “In My Heart” with my daughter, and we talked about what each of the hearts we had made might be feeling.

I have to say, the resulting lanyard is pretty cute, and who doesn’t love a good cyclops heart on Valentine’s day?

Supplies (Links)

We also have these tempura paint pens (Kwik Stix), and while we didn’t use them this time around, I definitely will if we choose to involve my 2-year-old in making any more of these hearts. They’re paint-based, so they work well on wood, but are way less messy than actual paint.

Contact Paper “Sun Catcher” Heart

I love contact paper. The crafting and laminating options are seriously endless with this stuff. For basically every season, my daughter and I have used contact paper to make “sun catchers” in the shapes of everything from Christmas trees and Menorahs to hearts and pumpkins.

Making the sun catcher is extraordinarily simple, and will use some of the same supplies as the previous craft. First, you will want to cut the outline of a heart out of construction paper (I won’t tell you how to do this, because I am assuming you, too, went to kindergarten). You then roll out a sheet of contact paper, and tape it down to something (we usually do the table, but you could also tape it directly to the window or door that you hope to feature it on later). Once the contact paper is secure (sticky-side facing OUT), you can stick the construction paper outline right on it.

Your child now has an outline they can fill in with the bits of tissue paper they already cut up for craft #1. In the past, we have also added sequins, glitter, or the tiny construction paper circles that live in our hole-puncher, but I’ll leave the level of mess determination up to you.

When your child has finished filling up the interior of the heart, you can layer another piece of contact paper down on top of it (sticky-sides touching), and smooth it out. Cut the extra contact paper off around the outside of the construction paper outline and voila! You’ve got a sun-catcher.

Supplies and Links

  • Contact paper
  • Tissue paper
  • Construction paper
  • Scissors

Wood Bead Necklace

This last craft was inspired by my son’s love of wooden beads. That kid can sit for a solid 20 minutes, stringing giant beads onto a piece of twine, dumping them off, and doing it all over again on repeat.

So, when I sat down to ponder what he might enjoy making for his babysitter / my daughter’s pre-school teacher, beads were the first thing that came to mind.

Painting beads, even for a 4-year old, can be a bit challenging, so instead of using a paintbrush, we grabbed the tiny glass jars we use for portioning and storing paint, and filled them will a small amount of whichever color each child chose. Then, both kids (2 and 4) dropped their beads directly into the jars, screwed the lids back on, and shook them up. Once it looked like the bead was covered in paint, the kids dumped the beads onto the paper-covered table, and let them be. You could add a step and roll the wet beads in sparkles or glitter, but I had already vacuumed 3 times before we started this craft, so the glitter was staying securely in the craft cart.

My older daughter also helped me paint a few of the beads with glue, and then decoupage them with the leftover tissue paper. I think the combination looks pretty adorable, and while our beloved preschool teacher will likely never wear this eccentric piece of jewelry, I think my daughter took a lot of pride in making it for her (and I’ll be sending it over with a bottle of wine anyway).

Supplies and Links

  • Paint, twine and mini jam jars linked above
  • Wooden beads (we ordered the 30 mm version of the brand linked below and they fit well in the mini jars).

More Crafting Awaits!

If you’re in the market for even more adorable Valentine’s Day craft ideas, head over to my friend Asheigh’s site. Ashleigh is an accomplished gardener, cook, and fellow lover of great kid’s books and activities. She recently did a roundup of some of the most beautiful crafts she and her kids have done over the past few years, and it’s definitely worth checking out.

Books

Now, if you’ve made it to the end of this post, and already feel exhausted by the thought of actually planning and executing any of these crafts, I feel you. So here are a few Valentine’s-related books that you can read instead–they’re less mess, but get the same message across, and you can even re-gift them as “Valentines” when you’re done.

5 Things I’ve Learned From My Time in Quarantine:

And How It’s Changed Me For The Better.

I initially saw “And The People Stayed Home” by Kitty O’Meara all over #bookstagram several months ago. But, to be honest, I didn’t really want to read a picture book about the nightmare that I already had to live through every day, so I resisted the urge to purchase it. However, when a friend of mine recommended it, and told me how positive and lovely it was, I changed my tune, and decided to check it out.

And guys, it is really lovely. Not only is the artwork “frame-worthy,” but the incredibly short and simple prose really lifted me up, and caused me to pause and reflect on all the good I have been fortunate enough to glean from this overall pretty ugly year.

So, below, I have laid out the five main things “staying home” this year has taught me, and how I hope to be changed for the better going forward.

1. You Don’t Have To “Do More” To Be Good Enough

One of my favorite lines from this book appears when the narrator is describing how “the people” changed during quarantine. In short, he says that they rested, exercised, made art, and “learned new ways of being.”

Before the pandemic, I was “running on a treadmill” in a lot of ways. I wanted to do more at work, have a more “Pinterest-perfect” classroom, eat healthier, meal-prep better, workout more often, etc. A lot of these things “matter,” and are, in a way, worthy endeavors, but my mindset towards them was all wrong.

Because when I look back on it, I was already doing all of these things. Were they perfect? Nope. But the effort (and the positive results) were there. Yet, for some reason, I never felt like any of it was “enough.” Like I had to keep going, and keep getting better, in order for any of it to be “worth it.”

But that way of thinking essentially invalidates everything that I’ve done up to this point, as well as everything I will do, before achieving some non-existent embodiment of “success.” If I never go back to the classroom again (which is unlikely), I still will have had a very “successful” teaching career. If I skip a week of working out, or serve my kids fewer vegetables, I’ve still cared for myself, and for them, the best I know how.

This pandemic, and the choices I’ve made in the face of it, have reminded me that at the end of the day, a lot of the stuff I thought mattered, really doesn’t. And that a lot of the things I thought I had to keep doing (and doing better), because I had been doing them for so long, were actually things that I could let go of, freely, and without regret. And as I sit here writing this, for the first time in a long time, I don’t really have a plan for what I want to “achieve,” or “do more of,” in a lot of facets in my life. And boy, does that feel good.

2. Less Stuff Means More Time

I’ve always liked stuff. I don’t own a lot of clothes, or jewelry, or shoes (my dog just eats those anyway…) but I do have a lot of things. My husband and I have gone through many phases of life together: the phase where we traveled and went skiing several times a year, the wedding registry phase, the biking and hiking and honeymooning phase, the “our newborn doesn’t sleep so I will purchase anything marketed towards exhausted parents” phase, etc.

And while I’m good at collecting things, I’ve realized this year that I’m not so good at letting them go. I think, for me at least, it’s sometimes hard to part with something that is somehow symbolic of a certain phase of life. By selling my skis, I feel as if I am officially saying goodbye to the freedom I enjoyed in my 20s. By throwing away stacks of curriculum I wrote during my years in TFA, it’s like I’m deeming all that work worthless, and practically unusable.

But this year, I’ve learned that saying goodbye to something doesn’t have to be sad. In fact, it can be very freeing. While saying goodbye to some of my travel gear could be a reminder of what I don’t have, it could also serve as a reminder of the new, and even better, blessings that are currently keeping me at home. And while throwing away that curriculum box could be incredibly frustrating, it could also serve as a testament to how hard I’ve worked over these past 10 years, and how far I’ve come as both a teacher, and a learner.

Most importantly, once the stuff is gone, I don’t have to waste time or energy thinking about it anymore. And that has freed up a lot more time in my life, and space in my heart, to focus on the good stuff that’s right in front of me.

3. Sometimes Self Care Is Impossible. Grieve That, And Move On.

“Self-care” is all the rage these days. Everyone seems to have advice how necessary it is, and where you can find it. However, there have been times over the past several months when self-care simply did not fit into the equation for me or, I’m sure, for many of us.

And I have spent a lot of time being frustrated by this, and complaining about it, and desperately seeking out ways to eek some self-care out of my jam-packed weekends, only to be disappointed, over and over again.

But recently, with baby #3 on the horizon, and the end of the pandemic still a bit further out than I would have liked, I have come to accept the fact that there will be weeks, or months, in which I am unable to do pretty much anything for myself. And while that sucks, and I am allowed to grieve it, and find someone to complain about it to, I can’t let my bitter feelings about it infiltrate other areas of my life, and make me forget all the joy I can get out of being with, and taking care of, others.

And I can’t let the current moment allow me to forget that one day, even if it feels really far away, this too shall pass, and I will be able go for that haircut, or that date night, or that trip to wine country with my girlfriends that I may or may not have been planning in my dreams for about 8 months now…

4. Reprioritize Relationships That Really Matter, and Let Go Of Rejection.

One really fascinating thing about this pandemic is that it has fundamentally shifted a lot our social relationships. Everyone has a different level of risk-tolerance, a different level of risk, and different social-emotional needs. Because of this, we’ve all had to reprioritize some relationships over others, or even back away from some entirely.

The hardest part of this, for me at least, has been that while I understand my own reprioritizations, I can’t, and probably never will, understand other people’s. And as I spent some time this year thinking about why certain people stuck around, and other’s didn’t, it made me reflect on who I really missed, and who I didn’t.

And while I know that all of this is definitely going to have a long-term impact on how I approach relationships from here on out, I want to make sure that impact is a positive one. I want to move away from the fear of rejection, and the wondering “why,” and focus more on the things I can control, and the worthwhile relationships that have been able to weather the storm.

5. It’s Never A Bad Idea To Get Some Perspective On Your “Stuff.”

All of us are a little kooky. All of us come from different families, and were influenced by different peer groups, religious affiliations, political backgrounds, communities, etc. Because of this, we all have at least a little bit of baggage, and for many people, this pandemic, and our time in quarantine, has caused that baggage to split wide open, make a huge mess, and confront us with the reality of what’s been locked away in there for who knows how long.

If you, like me, have looked around you at some point in the last 9 months and thought, “I’m not sure I’m equipped for this…” you may want to ask for help. It doesn’t have to be a therapist (although I’m always pro that), but it never hurts to talk out your weirdness with a trusted friend, family member, or partner. If they challenge you on something, learn from that. And if they validate you, be comforted by that. Because even though none of us really likes hearing that we’re wrong, or need to work on something, there’s never been a better time (or more time) to do something about it.

The Book (And Other Resources)

First, the book itself. It’s short, sweet, and very beautiful. (The image below is an affiliate link)

The journal below is a really wonderful guided gratitude / decision-making journal that helped me clarify a lot of these thoughts. I highly recommend it.

10 Things I’ve Learned in 8 Months of Blogging on Instagram

  1. Authenticity matters. To me, and to most people on the internet. Whenever I feel like I’ve posted something that isn’t quite true to myself, I feel pretty weirdsies about it, and I think other people feel that way as well. My favorite thing about Instagram (and one of the things that happens to be important to the algorithm as well), is when I share something real that I’m working through or dealing with, and people who I only know online, or who I haven’t talked to in years, reach out to commiserate. It is SUCH a nice reminder of our shared humanity, and is something that usually only happens when I am being wholly and genuinely myself.
  2. You can cultivate genuine connections online. When I first started on Instagram and heard other bloggers talking about their “blog friends,” I kind of thought they were faking it. And then I started exploring more accounts that were similar to my own, and actually reaching out and/or engaging with those people, and when they started responding, and engaging back, it was like I suddenly remembered that, like me, none of these people are just squares on the internet: they’re real people, with interests much like my own, who may not be able to get real-life drinks with me on the weekend, but can still be a very real value add to my life.
  3. On the other hand, most people don’t have the time or energy to engage on a deep level–and neither do you. Then again, Instagram can be a real time suck. And while I am grateful for the people I have “met,” and the relationships I have built on the platform, it’s important to remember that it can’t take up too much space in your head, or your heart. And, when those internet connections disappear, or disengage for a while, it’s usually far from personal, and more a result of a necessary reprioritization of limited mental and emotional space.
  4. You have to put in the work to find your people. You won’t just start an account and meet boatloads of like-minded people overnight. It took me a while (months?) to find people I really connected with on the gram. And then to remember who they were… Be patient, poke around a little, and you’ll find your people.
  5. You really do need to stay in your niche(s). People will usually find your account through a single post. So each photo you post should, in some way, relate to the overall message you are trying to convey. While I found this reality very limiting and frustrating at first, it’s actually kind of motivating now. The idea of a “niche” allows me to think about, and narrow down, what, exactly, I am trying to put out into the world, and who, exactly, I hope finds, and connects with it. It has given structure and accountability to my blog, and each of the pieces I write, and has challenged me to do some pretty personal introspection as well.
  6. Reciprocated engagement always wins over competition. No one is going to “win” Instagram. Unless, maybe, you were a Bachelor contestant… Lifting others up will always bring you more joy than trying to compete with someone else, so “like” all the pictures, save stuff, share stuff, and build people up. It will come back around to you 10-fold.
  7. The algorithm really is that confusing. Do half of my followers even see my posts? What feeds do my stories show up in? Why did that random picture of my dog get so many likes? Ultimately, I don’t recommend wasting your time trying to figure it out because it will likely all change again tomorrow. (But you CAN encourage your friends and followers to like, save and share your stuff, because some combination of that will always help.)
  8. Instagram is a photo sharing app–so it kind of needs to look pretty. Sometimes I loathe taking pretty pictures, and “styling” a neat corner of my perpetually messy house. But when you think about how much time the average Instagram user (including YOURSELF) spends looking at your content, you realize why it’s so important for your stuff to be instantly easy on the eye. Even though we all want people to really read and engage with our stuff, the mindless double tap matters too.
  9. Sharable content does well (and yes, that can be frustrating). If people laugh at your content, or resonate with your quote, or want to bake your recipe, they’ll probably send it to a friend who wants to do the same. And for those of us who like writing less nicely “packaged” stuff, that can be hard to hear. But it may also be a good reminder to alter your preconceptions about what it means to “do well” on the internet, and whether the number of followers you have really does determine your “success.”
  10. Bloggers need to sell you stuff to survive, and it’s hard not to resent that part. Ads never do as well as authentic content. People don’t like to like it because it seems shady. But we also have no problem paying for a newspaper subscription, or cable TV, and we shouldn’t really have a problem “paying” for the content we consume online as well. So if you’re annoyed that the influencer you like is selling you Tide Pods, just like the dang photo and consider it payment for all the other fun stuff they provide you (FOR FREE) every other day of the week.

And On A More Personal Level, Here’s Where My Head’s At Now:

I spent a few hours in the car this past weekend reflecting on what I’ve really enjoyed about my foray into blogging, as well as what I haven’t. To start, I have truly enjoyed having a side project that is wholly my own, during a phase of my life where I feel like I am giving everything to my kids. While I do enjoy involving my kids in a lot of my content (mainly because they’re around…. all day…), the writing, photo-editing, and “marketing” pieces allow me to exercise the parts of my brain, and my selfhood, that I otherwise wouldn’t during a typical day at home.

When reflecting on the bits and pieces of this blog (and Instagram) that have been the most valuable to me, I realized that what I enjoy writing about the most are the parts of my motherhood journey that have confused, and challenged me, and, in some cases, continue to do so. I love writing about the bits of advice I have received over the past few years, and then actually hearing that it helped one of YOU as well. I adore finding something in a storybook that challenges me to reexamine a part of myself, or my values system, or my parenting style, and then working out how to act on that realization through my writing.

Overall, I think future me is going to be very grateful that I have a record of this time in my life, the struggles I faced and overcame, and the books my kids and I enjoyed together. I hope that I will look back on what I’ve written in years to come and find some sense of peace in how much I’ve learned, grown and changed.

However, there’s also some stuff I haven’t loved about putting these pieces of myself online. For one thing, the blog and Instagram world is insanely oversaturated. Success in Instagram depends on the “shareability” of your content, and I haven’t been great at finding a consistent way make my content fit that mold, while also staying true to myself. I often find myself waffling back and forth between wanting to “fit the mold,” and staying dedicated to “doing it for me.” And I think it probably shows sometimes.

Before beginning the Instagram part of my blogging journey, a few people warned me about the angst the “algorithm” would inevitably cause me, as well as the time investment required to be truly successful on the platform. At that point in time, I didn’t really care if I was “successful” or not (I was just really bored), so I didn’t pay much attention to this advice.

But I quickly learned that what the behavioral psychologists say is true, and that Instagram does a masterful job of getting you hooked on the platform, and the little oxytocin hit you get when a post “does well.”

Over time, I found myself analyzing the posts that got the most likes, and trying to replicate whatever I thought had contributed to its success. Because of this, I found myself spending a lot more time planning and taking pictures than reading and writing, despite the fact that I had started this project primarily out a desire to do more of the latter.

The engagement piece of Instagram is also pretty tricky. If you’re not on the platform in a business way, you may not know that the number of likes, comments, saves and shares really matters when trying to increase your reach or market yourself to potential collaborators. The more time I spent on the platform, I realized that my engagement increased dramatically when I was liking, commenting on, sharing and engaging with more of the other content that was closely related to my niche. And while I have come across some really amazing people and accounts this way, it also meant that I was spending a lot more time on Instagram. Time that I could have spent reading, writing, or nurturing more of my real life relationships.

There have been weeks where I’ve felt really bouyed by the relationships I’ve developed on the gram. It’s allowed me to feel connected during a time when connection seems so elusive, and I can honestly say I’ve developed a handful of internet relationships that I think really could translate into real life ones in the future.

But there have also been a lot of weeks where I’ve felt invisible, or annoyed, or just plain sick of being online. There have been times when I’ve wondered whether anyone really cares, or if we’re all just running on the same treadmill to nowhere.

And it’s the prevalence of those weeks that have reallly made me take a step back and reevaluate what it is I’m doing on this little corner of the internet, and who I’m doing it for.

Because at the end of the day, I want to read, and write, and have an outlet for the hopes, dreams, frustrations and fears that I’m much better at expressing and working through “on paper” than out loud. I want to read more, and really take the time to think and reflect about what I’ve read. I want to be more intentional in my parenting practices, and the values I am choosing to model for my kids. I want to create a website (and Instagram) that I can look back on and be proud of, and one that I always remember as something that added to my family life, instead of taking away from it.

So what does this mean? Honestly, I’m not sure yet. But I am definitely going to take this “vision” of what I want to get out of this blogging journey (as well as what I want to avoid) and tape it to a corner of my desk in hopes of reminding myself, especially on the days that I allow what’s happening on the internet to make me feel “frustrated” or “less than,” why it is that I’m really here.

Preparing for Baby #3! (And what I did differently the first and second times around)

When I first told my friend (and 3-child parent) that I was expecting another baby, she asked me if I had “forgotten” that I was pregnant yet. I laughed, because I was in the first trimester, and was so miserable that it was pretty much impossible to forget.

But now, 29 weeks in, I see what she meant. My kids are almost 2 and almost 4 and I have no family in the area. Things are busy. Some days I wake up, and fall asleep at the same time my kids do. I am spending so much of my mental energy trying to figure out how to keep everyone fed, watered, bathed, and safe, that I often do forget that there’s another one on the way.

But I’m getting to the point where I really need to take a step back and check in with myself, and this little fetus of mine. Because even though the baby in my belly may be the easiest one right now (guys, he hasn’t talked back to me once!), that won’t be the case in a few months, and I really do owe it to myself to make sure I’m as prepared as possible for his arrival.

So, in an effort to remind myself of the steps I took the last few times around to ready myself, my home, and the rest of my family for a new arrival, and possibly as a support for some of you, I am going to break down how I prepped for babies 1, 2 and 3, as well as what I wish I had skipped, or done differently the first and second time around.

Baby #1

My first pregnancy resulted from fertility treatments (specifically Letrozole and an HCG trigger shot). It was also initially a twin pregnancy, and I lost the second baby around 10 weeks. While I didn’t have a ton of morning sickness the first time around (I was a little nauseous and more tired than usual), I did spend a lot of time worrying that I would lose the healthy twin as well.

Because of this, I didn’t really put a ton of energy into actually preparing for the impending arrival of my first child, until I had my anatomy scan at 20 weeks and realized, “Holy smokes! There’s actually a kid in there!”

Prenatal Books and Classes

After this ridiculous and long-overdue realization, the first, and best, thing I did was enroll in a local Bradley Method class for expecting parents. The Bradley Method is a usually-in person course all about preparing moms for a natural (aka drug-free), partner-supported birth. But before I go further, I want to preface this with the fact that I never intended on having a “drug-free” birth, and I didn’t back down on that desire. I did, however, find all of the information provided in this course super informative and beneficial, and even though I personally diverged from a lot of the things the Bradley Method recommends, I felt really empowered by the information I received. AND, the best part of the experience by far was that my husband and I (who were the first of our close friends to become parents) were able to meet, and go through this journey with, several other like-minded couples: a few of which we (and our kids) are still friends with today.

To sum it up as briefly as possible, The Bradley Method course taught me how to eat to support a healthy pregnancy (protein first ladies!), how to prepare my body for an easier labor (lots of stretching, cat-cows, and bouncing on a yoga ball), and, most importantly, what to expect before, during, and after labor (For me the most unexpected highlights were the descriptions of what contractions really feel like, how to know if and when you’re dilating, what the placenta does, looks, and feels like, and how to care for stitches in some pretty sensitive areas…).

The only think I didn’t love about the Bradley Method was that it sometimes depicted the medical community in a bit of a sinister or “out to get you” kind of way. I come from a pretty “medical” family, and also have a close and trusting relationship with my care team, so while I agree that patients need to be aware of their choices (and the consequences of those choices) in order to advocate for themselves, I think it’s more than possible to do just that in respectful partnership with the medical professionals whose main job it is to keep you, and your baby, safe.

If there aren’t any in-person Bradley classes happening in your area (or if they can’t happen because of Covid), you can purchase the book on which the class is based (Natural Childbirth The Bradley Way) here. The class also included a workbook which I found to be very helpful, but I think you would have to get in touch with a Bradley instructor in order to get your hands on it.

At the end of my pregnancy, I also enrolled in the baby-care and infant CPR class at my local hospital, which I would also highly recommend to any new moms out there (I have taken a virtual refresher course, and felt like I still got a lot out of it in that format as well).

Most Importantly: CONNECTION

But even more than the the books and the classes and the trying to maintain a healthy diet, the number one most wonderful thing I did before having my first baby, was making an effort to meet other moms who were also expecting their first babies. I will be forever grateful to my lovely friend Kelley who found out I was pregnant and immediately set me up on a friend date with her equally pregnant pal. The friendship of both of these women was absolutely life-saving to me during the first few months of new parenthood, and today, and I honestly don’t know how I would have gotten through some of the tougher stages and phases without them.

Baby #1 and aforementioned “best friend”

In addition to nurturing the friendships I already had, I also spent much of my the first few postpartum months searching high and low for any and every opportunity to connect with other new moms. I joined this new mom’s group at the hospital where I delivered, the mommy and me class at my local JCC, and my local branch of Fit-4-Mom, which I still participate in almost four years later. I have also heard wonderful things about The New Mom School, which just expanded into my area, and while I didn’t enroll after my first baby, I probably will this time around. Overall, if I learned anything that first time around, it’s that new moms need other new moms, and that putting yourself out there is always worth it.

Baby #2

As they say, every pregnancy is different, and this has certainly been the case for me. My second pregnancy was incredibly difficult (physically and emotionally) and I was in total survival mode until well into the second trimester. When I finally stopped puking, fainting, and stressing, I managed to drag myself to a Bradley refresher course, as well as another round of infant CPR, and was pretty proud of myself for that meager achievement.

The Induction Option

The second time around, I also had the experience of a previous birth, and I knew that A) I make big babies, and B) the epidural didn’t really cut it for me. So, I advocated for myself and made a plan with my doctor to do everything we could to “naturally” jump start labor well before 41 weeks (which was how long I went the first time around). Together, my doctor and I decided that if all the other tricks failed, we would induce me around 39 weeks.

I am not a doctor, and I know that there are definitely some risks associated with early induction, but I can honestly say it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. My labor with my son was so easy I would almost call it enjoyable. I felt rested, mentally present, and I was able to immediately connect with my son in a way I wasn’t physically or emotionally capable of after the birth of my daughter. While I hope to do it the same way this time around, I know that every birth is different, and won’t be holding my breath for an equally-enjoyable experience.

Induction with baby #2

Better Postpartum Prep

While, the second time around, I prepared for the birth itself in many of the same ways as I did the first time, my preparation for the postpartum period was vastly different. With my first, I was so worried about the actual birth part that I didn’t spend a ton of time thinking about what came after. And with my second, I knew that what comes after is, in many ways, much more challenging than the birth itself.

So, early in pregnancy #2 I spent a lot of time setting up my support systems. I made sure I had family members lined up to help during the first 6 weeks with baby, and babysitters waiting in the wings for emergencies. I conferenced with my daughter’s daycare teachers, and made sure that we worked together to help get her be as ready as possible for the huge change that was coming her way. I enrolled in all the new mom classes, and pre-arranged playdates with friends because I knew that being social and connected would be crucial to my mental health.

Newborn Sleep

I also purchased a few baby sleep books, including Babywise and The Baby Sleep Solution, and started following, and learning from, one of my favorite baby bloggers, The Peaceful Sleeper. While I know decisions surrounding sleep training are always deeply personal, my biggest tip to other new moms is always to LEAVE BABY ALONE unless they are really letting you know they need something. Most baby sleep books are centered around the theory that babies need to learn to self-soothe, or be gently soothed by you (aka putting your hand on their chest and rocking and shushing them back to sleep) in order to eventually become good, independent sleepers. (Related side note: if you buy one dumb baby gadget, make it The Shusher. Trust me.)

Again, I know that lots of moms are against the self-soothing ideology and prefer to co-sleep / nurse around the clock, but for me, good postpartum sleep has always been the most crucial component of bolstering my mental health and staving off the baby blues / PPD, so I’ve always tried my darndest to encourage my babies to SLEEP, in a way that was minimally traumatic for everyone involved.

Fostering an Independent Baby, and a Supported Mama

I also decided the second time around to be more diligent about trying to get baby to take a pacifier early on (self-soothing means better sleep for mom), and introducing the bottle early, and regularly, so that I didn’t have the bottle aversion issues I had with my daughter (and so I could leave the house for more than 45 minutes at a time… which is also an important component of maternal mental health). I also made an appointment with a lactation consultant before I gave birth, as a reminder to myself that it’s completely normal to struggle with feeding your baby, and it’s always OK to ask for help.

And then, after all of this preparation and diligent forethought, my son was born with terrible reflux. And he didn’t sleep. And he got approximately 600 viruses and infections, as well as meningitis, and was hospitalized in the PICU for a week. But, in the end, that’s probably the most important thing that preparing for my second baby taught me: that no matter how “prepared” you think you are, there are always going to be curveballs, and that the absolute best preparation we can do as soon-to-be parents of new little ones is to accept, and come to peace with, the fact that so much of it is completely and utterly out of our control.

Baby #3

When I first imagined myself having a third baby, I pictured myself surrounded by a thriving and vibrant community of new and experienced mothers, support providers, teachers and friends. But then 2020 happened, and the pandemic that I was “sure” would be resolved by April, has yet to be resolved.

And I think, in a way, it’s all been really good for me. Because while my son’s early trials and tribulations introduced me to the hard truth that I am not, in fact, the protagonist of reality, 2020 has really hammered it home.

Do I have in place the support system I will need in order to manage two kids and a new baby in a healthy way? Nope. Will I have access to in-person networks and communities of new moms to help me feel connected and seen? Probably not. Will my son and daughter have social outlets that I deem safe as the parent of an infant with virtually no immune system? HECK NO! But we’re doin’ it anyway!

Because to me, life is all about making choices, and the most rewarding choices are usually the most reckless ones. So while I’m still going to my Fit-4-Mom classes, trying my best to connect with other pregnant mamas, doing my yoga, and rallying as many of my support systems as I can, I know that this time around is going to present a unique set of challenges that I just plain can’t prepare for.

We did, however, rent the SNOO. If you don’t know what that is, look it up, and judge me if you will, but we’re parenting in a pandemic so I’m allowing myself this luxury.

Thanks for reading, and for following along on this journey with me! Next week I will be writing a post about some of the pregnancy and postpartum products I’ve used and loved, so be on the lookout for that!

Much Love,

Katherine

Ray Bradbury, Quality of Information & The Tragedy of The Capitol Coup

After the events of yesterday, I found myself scrolling through Instagram, and feeling really hollow. A lot of people were saying stuff, and a lot of it was good stuff, but very little of it had, as the great Ray Bradbury would say, “pores.” And not because the people writing it and posting it weren’t well-informed, but more because Instagram’s utility is in its briefness and immediacy. Everything I saw yesterday–and that I ever see–is determined by an algorithm whose sole goal is to encourage me to be spend just over a tenth of a second, but no greater than a minute being “influenced” by flashes of “information.”

The Instagram algorithm, and the internet in general, rewards users whose content elicits a reaction–whether positive, or negative, it doesn’t care. An article that thoughtfully lays out both sides of an issue, and causes one to reconsider their opinions in a way that makes them uncomfortable, or uncertain enough to feel hesitant about clicking “like,” commenting, or sharing on their own platform, will shrivel and die.

And as I was thinking about this truth (which is not revolutionary by the way, as I am sure even the most transient of Instagram users are aware of it), as well as the events that transpired in D.C. yesterday, I couldn’t help but draw some parallels between our current reality, and one of my absolute favorite fictional novels: Fahrenheit 451.

Now some of you might be tempted to stop reading here, because, TBH, it’s pretty alarmist and conspiratorial to compare our current reality to the truly horrifying dystopia depicted by Bradbury in his seminal novel. So I’ll tell you up front, I’m not trying to argue that we’re living in a dystopia. I don’t think big brother is constantly watching me (via a chip implanted in my body by a vaccine, as some might say…), or that our government is hiding some kind of mass conspiracy from us that will ultimately lead to our complete destruction (because I think we can all agree that a few of our key leaders are so completely incapable of keeping their mouths shut on Twitter that they would definitely have let that one slip a long time ago).

But I do think that, on a philosophical level, there are some important parallels.

Firstly, one of the important points I think a lot of people who have read this novel forget is that the dystopian world of Fahrenheit 451 was not created by an oppressive government, per say, but by a population who didn’t care enough, or know enough, to vote for anything different.

Throughout the book, Bradbury implies that even though the horrific nature of their current reality would seem to suggest that it had been forced upon the citizenry, it was actually chosen by them. Because, for them, and oftentimes for us, it is so much easier to ignore what is happening, than to really engage with it. Essentially, the world of Fahrenheit 451 is one that was built on a total rejection of information, education, and real human connection, and which values apathy and disengagement above all else.

I think that a lot of people who teach this novel would agree that the absolute best chapter is the one that details a crucial conversation between the protagonist, Montag (a one-time participant in the oppressive regime), and his newfound mentor, and former literature professor, Faber. This chapter is entitled “The Sieve and the Sand,” and we could spend about an hour digging into that title, but I’m pretty sure I’ve already lost about 4 out of 5 of my readers, so I’ll just move on instead.

In this chapter, Montag and Faber discuss what is missing from their society–the pieces that have, in their absence, allowed civilization to rot. And when I re-read this passage last night, I couldn’t help but feel like they are the exact same things that seem to be missing from our society, today. So let’s break it down:

  1. According to Faber, the first missing piece is “quality.”

“This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion… The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies”

Bradbury 79

When I think about what is missing from the conversation today, this is exactly it. When we call a group of “personalities” who go on TV to scream at one another and give credence to conspiracy theories (while openly admitting, on the sidelines, that their role is more to entertain, than inform) “The News,” we have undeniably lost sight of what “quality” of information even means.

When I was in college, I took a class called New American Literature. During one class period, my professor stopped our heated discussion and told us that we were talking to much (she may have rolled her eyes at us, but I could have just imagined that). She then made us sit there, in silence, and just think, or journal, or re-read the piece, and then only speak if we had a question to pose. No more “commenting” allowed, because it wasn’t really doing anything other than allowing us to voice perspectives that we already knew we had. If I had asked her to choose from the options Faber mentions in his quote, she probably would have told me that we were “raping” the text, and that she was really sick of it.

And when I look at the way so many of us, and our models on TV, speak with each other, or engage with each other online, we are most often doing just that. Very rarely are we taking the time to look at anything under a microscope, let alone the information guiding our values and beliefs.

When discussing why “quality” is important, Bradbury explains that people need to be “rooted” to something. That, if we aren’t connected to something substantial, and real, we grow weak, and feeble, and will perish as easily as Antaeus did when held off the ground by Hercules. So I challenge you to ask yourself, what am I rooted to, and how deeply have I investigated it’s truth?

2. The second missing piece is “leisure,” which is defined by Bradbury as something other than time to merely rest.

“Off hours, yes. But time to think? If you’re not driving a hundred miles an hour, at a clip where you can’t think of anything else but the danger, then you’re playing some game or sitting in some room where you can’t argue with the four-wall televisor. Why? The televisor is ‘real.’ It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protest”

Bradbury 80

In Bradbury’s world and, I think, in ours as well, people don’t like the fact that books provide us with the leisure to think complicated thoughts, and feel difficult emotions. Books can be argued about, disproven, rejected, and integrated into the very fabric of our beliefs and identities. A news correspondent, yelling at you through the TV screen, or via his or her twitter, is invincible. A meme, positioning one political party as more evil than the other is too simple to debate, and, as a result, is much more easily accepted, and shared, as a certain kind of truth.

Today, we are flooded with such small snippets of information or emotion that we don’t have the “leisure” to actually do any mental work around it. Or, even worse, the information is presented to us, but in such an angry or accusatory way that we are essentially discouraged from doing the mental work that would actually allow us to realize that we did, in fact, agree with and benefit from said information.

3. And lastly, Faber tells Montag that the final missing piece–the crux of what is missing from their doomed reality– is “the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two” (Bradbury 82).

In the novel, the “action” Faber has in mind is rebellion, and insurrection. He and Montag devise a plot to make copies of the banned books, and plant them in the houses of the “firemen,” and other government officials. They hope to turn burn down the system of oppression from the inside out. If you haven’t read Fahrenheit 451 in its entirety and think you would like to, you might want to stop reading now (spoilers ahead).

In the end, Bradbury allows his fictionalized reality to stray so far off course, that there is no possible avenue for self-correction. Ultimately, a society built and perpetuated by mindlessness can not save itself, and the story ends with an enemy force bombing all of the major cities. In the aftermath, those living on the fringes of society, who also happen to be the long-since rejected thought leaders of the old institutions, are the only ones left to start over.

So no, I don’t think there are any explicit parallels to be drawn here, because our society is not too far gone. We still have books, and people who read them. We still have evidence-based science, and a large majority of the population who believes in it’s value. We still have some quality of information, even though it is undervalued, and often difficult to find. And we have the ability to choose leisure for ourselves. We have the self-awareness to course correct, and retrain our brains to slow down and become more effective at filtering in what matters, and out what does not.

I know that this is more of a literary analysis of my favorite novel, than any kind of real comment on current events, and that’s largely because there are people more informed than me who I will be deferring to for political analysis of our current moment (and you should probably do the same).

But yesterday, I was truly despondent over the state of our country. I wanted to check out, and stop reading, and retreat into my own, insular version of reality. And I needed a book to remind me, as the late, great Elie Wiesel once said, that “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

And because of that, I think it’s important for me to stand here, on whatever tiny platform I have, and tell you all that I won’t be indifferent about what’s happening right now. That I will keep having hard conversations, and engaging with information, and trying my best to wade through the garbage that we, as a society, have chosen to let weigh us down. We can all do better (and a few of us can do a lot better), but the only person I can start with is myself.

Ray Bradbury’s Works (Affiliate Links):

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