Feminist Fare Friday: the Neil's Mom ROCKs! edition.

Somehow it is Friday yet again. I swear this week started super slow and then BAM! Friday, just like that. For the record, I am not complaining, just perhaps noticing the passing of time going way faster. Maybe that's what happens as we age, time seems to move differently.

Anywhooo... that's perhaps an existential discussion for another time.

Let's get to it.

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1. Neil Kramer is a fellow writer, Instagrammer and sometimes tweeter who asked his mom this past week if she is a feminist. He recorded this conversation and shared it on his blog, Citizen of the Month and over at The Broad Side. Here is a snippet for you.... Please go read the rest. I officially love Neil's Mom and look forward to meeting her one day.

Me:   Will you vote for a woman president?

Mom:    Sure. Like Hillary Clinton. But it’s not like I’m going to vote for that Kardashian woman just because she’s a woman.

Me:  Do you think a feminist should look a certain way?  Like not wear lipstick or shave her legs?

Mom:  She could do what she wants.   I mean, eventually, she’ll probably have to shave her legs at least once.  If she wants to date.  Or before her wedding.

Me:   And what do you think about the different roles of mothers and fathers?

Mom:    Well, I do believe that a parent should stay at home with a young child.

Me:   Aha!  Gotcha!  So, you think a mother should stay at home?

Mom:    No, it could be the father.

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2. Oh Barbie. Trying so hard to be whatever she wants to be and show girls that they can be that too, but still managing to somehow fuck it all up. In the latest instalment of Mattel trying to get us to believe that  Barbie is actually a good role model for girls, comes the incredibly disappointing "Barbie, I can be a computer engineer" book.

This book, released last June, was paired with another career-minded book called Barbie: I Can Be an Actress. All five reviews for the two-book set on Amazon are from baffled parents wondering why a story called I Can Be a Computer Engineer is sending the opposite message. In fact, according to the site's only three-star review (the others each give one star), it might more accurately be called "I Can Manipulate Boys Into Programming While I Sit Back and Take Credit." 

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3. Kim Kardashian was all over the internet last week trying to break it with her beautiful butt. But as any breastfeeding mom who has ever posted a picture on social media knows, you just have to be a woman being a woman to do that! Jessica Martin-Weber breaks it down for us in her HuffPo Parents piece this week:

There are those who think breastfeeding photos and Kim's shinny derrière are equally unsettling and inappropriate. There are also those who think women should be covered head to toe to leave the house and would pass out burkas to every woman. These reactions are all part of the ongoing conversation about what women can show of their bodies and why. From bikini selfies to breastfeeding selfies, from Kim Kardashian on the cover of Paper to Olivia Wilde breastfeeding in Glamour , people love to freak out over what women do with their bodies, how they dress them, how they share them, how many children they do or don't have with them, how they enjoy them, who they share them with -- you name it.

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4. I've been thinking about the whole #Shirtstorm thing all week and trying to wrap my head around it. I mean in the grand scheme of things, ie: landing a spacecraft on a moving comet, it really did seem like it shouldn't have been such a big deal. And then I read the line below in a post on the blog Women in Astronomy and two things became very clear to me... 1) It was not and never has been about the damn shirt! and 2) I still have so much ingrained sexism to unlearn in this life.

There is a problem with sexism in the scientific community, just as there is in many communities. I have been relatively fortunate in the men I have worked with and for, but I have a LONG list of friends and acquaintances who are not so lucky. The shirt might seem to be "not a big deal", but our world is the sum total of every "not a big deal". 

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Happy Friday everyone!

N~

Feminist Fare Friday: The Day 7 of NaBloPoMo Edition.

It is Friday, I have read some really, really good shit on the web this week.

And you know how I like to share...

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In response to the now viral Hollaback catcalling video, Elon James White, the CEO of This Week in Blackness responded in the best way... By creating the #DudesGreetingDudes Twitter hashtag. And even with some of the absolute hilarity of some of the tweets, there was a strong point to be made about the very nature of catcalling and street harassment...

“To me this is about basic decency,” White added. “And the fact that men don’t do this to other men is proof positive that this is a gendered attack, whether the men who do it consider it to be one or not. And we have to speak up to stop it.” 

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And speaking of that catcalling video... The eye gymnastics that Amanda Seales had to perform in her CNN interview with her fellow "mansplaining" guest was seriously Olympic status worthy! She recalls that particularly trying routine for us at XOJane this week...

I am the one with all the faces and all the side-eyes and all the eye rolls. Faces contorted into completely genuine reactions to my fellow guest’s emphatic defense of behavior that daily imposes upon the serenity and vulnerability of myself and women the world over. 

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Also this week, excerpts from Lena Dunham's new memoir have thrown everyone for another really, REALLY, uncomfortable loop. I have an upcoming post that will address some of the issues arising from this in more depth, but for now, I want you all to read what Elan Morgan had to say about it. Because it is powerful and made me really take a step back and think. AS WE ALL SHOULD in these situations.

Reading about childhood bodily exploration through Dunham's poorly worded, too-adult lens might feel uncomfortable, especially if in light of one's own circumstantial discomfort, but we are looking at a broader sexist sexual panic erroneously applied to the particular here more than we are looking at a particular instance of actual pedophilic abuse. We are looking at the demonization and shaming of natural female childhood curiosity.  

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There is a conversation that needs to be happening more in the parenting world and it is one that goes far beyond normalizing breastfeeding and breastfeeding in public. It is one about mothering and race. Because as this past week has shown, a white woman breastfeeding in her cap and gown is "adorable", while a few months ago, a black women breastfeeding in her cap and gown is "ratchett and ghetto".  Yup, we really are such an enlightened bunch. LE GRAND SIGH... come on people, we can do so much better than this!

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And finally, this video.

Because, OH MY GO....

[youtube]http://youtu.be/hR3ctoLrOHk[/youtube]

Happy Friday Everyone!

n~

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Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #25

I have that damn Friday song in my head! Which is a good and bad thing. It's good because, YAY! IT'S FRIDAY and bad because, OMG! that song. Either way, here's some of what I read this week that made me think. (Which is not what that damn song does!)

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1. Ready for another round of which Hollywood starlet wants you to know that she is definitely NOT a feminist and LOVES all the mens? Yeah, me neither, but you know, stupid sells. With some notable NOT stupid feminist actresses stepping up to the plate.

The actress Amy Poehler, 42, told Elle earlier this year: “Some big actors and musicians feel like they have to speak to their audience and that word is confusing to their audience. But I don’t get it. That’s like someone being like, ‘I don’t really believe in cars, but I drive one every day and I love that it gets me places and makes life so much easier and faster and I don’t know what I would do without it.’ ”

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2. Get into any kind of conversation about rape culture or feminism/anti-feminism or sexism or misogyny and you are going to hear from at least ONE person (usually male) tell you that NOT ALL MEN think/act/believe THAT way. For a brief history of every dudes favourite argument (and perhaps it's signalling of some kind of positive shift for SOME men), please read the following from Jess Zimmerman at TIME.

It’s true that previous derailment favorites like “patriarchy hurts men too” were paraphrases in a way that “not all men” is not. The demand is the same — “please move me to the center of your discussion” — but “not all men” is, in many cases, straight from the horse’s mouth; even an amateur Reddit spelunker can turn up plenty of sulky or defensive uses of the phrase.

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3. When Hip Mama magazine tried to publish it's latest edition with a photo of artist Ana Alvarez-Errecalde's breastfeeding her son on it's cover, the backlash was swift. It showed us just how far we have NOT come in our efforts to normalize images of breasts performing their primary function - breastfeeding. Vendors refused to carry the magazine in their stores and (not surprisingly) Facebook banned the photo multiple times from multiple accounts. Please read the following from Ariel Gore, the editor of Hip Mama, about what happened next.

Violence towards women begins with the repression of sexuality, the appropriation of childbirth, the interference with all vital cycles and the creation of manipulative roles. A negated mother will also negate her body and her presence to her children, so they will all ultimately conform to our unattended, unloved, and unnourished society. 

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4. Last Thursday was the end of this season's Grey Anatomy and the end of the era of Cristina Yang. I have watched this show since its beginning and have always been invested in the lives of these characters and the choices that they make for themselves. And it wasn't until Cristina uttered those final lines to Meredith last week that the full scope of what this show has done for women (and perhaps even for me) really hit me.

"Don't let what he wants eclipse what you need;

He's very dreamy, but he's not the sun.

You are the sun."

I just loved these lines; they perfectly define the secondary roles we adopt because we have been conditioned to think this is normal, natural. Women are malleable, and so, we sacrifice because we think we want to. It's easier, isn't it, to just go along with the unspoken rules?

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4. And finally, the video "Hugs" by JC Little is pretty much the best thing on the internet this week!

[youtube]http://youtu.be/SHFhepoy-Rs[/youtube]

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"HUGS" everyone!

Have a great weekend.

n~

Miracle Milk. make it, donate it, love it.

2,078 Days ago, I delivered a 3 lb, 6 oz baby boy. I kissed his tiny little head and then he was taken away, accompanied by his daddy, to the NICU one floor above me. This is how I entered the world of motherhood. It was at least 3 hours before I was able to see my child and another 5 more before I was able to hold him and all the various tubes and wires attached to him.

I had gestational hypertension throughout my first pregnancy. It was discovered early enough at 26 weeks and we knew that regardless of how well controlled we could keep my blood pressure, the chances were VERY high that I was going to have to deliver the baby before we reached full-term. Outside of my weekly visits to the neonatology clinic for NSTs and ultrasounds, I was put on bed-rest for the remainder of my pregnancy. And I read. I read every book about premature babies that I could find. I learned about the challenges that they face, the complications of early birth and the best practices for how to overcome them.

This was how I learned about the benefits of kangaroo care and babywearing. And this was the first time I heard the phrase "liquid gold" in regards to colostrum and breastmilk. This was also when I learned about the #2 killer of NICU babies, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). In medical speak, "necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is one of the most common gastrointestinal emergencies in the newborn infant. It is a disorder characterized by ischemic necrosis of the intestinal mucosa, which is associated with inflammation, invasion of enteric gas forming organisms, and dissection of gas into the muscularis and portal venous system." (1) In laymans' terms, part of a baby's immature gut basically dies and needs to be surgically removed. It is extremely painful and has both short and long-term complications.

I was fortunate to carry my baby to 35 weeks and have a rather uneventful, albeit quick, delivery. My son was very small and very jaundiced, but otherwise healthy. He even ripped off his oxygen tube in those first few hours in the NICU (a fact my husband is still kind of proud of). Because we had done our research before heading into the NICU, both my husband and I were very insistent that our child only ever be fed breastmilk. I started pumping within hours of his birth and then set my alarm for every three hours and religiously pumped either at the hospital or at home to ensure that my milk came in and that he would have enough human breast milk at all times.

Some of the babies in our "pod" in the NICU were not as fortunate and had indeed succumbed to NEC. I remember the young mom of the baby next to us coming in every day to change her baby's ostomy bag (she insisted on doing it herself) and hoping that this would be the day that the doctors told her that his gut was healed, he could have his next surgery and that the hole in his belly would be closed up.

NEC sickens 5,000 U.S. and Canadian premature babies per year, of which roughly 500 die from the disease. Feeding fragile and compromised babies human milk – whether from the mother or by donor — has been shown to reduce the risk of NEC by 79%. For all these reasons, The Canadian Pediatric Society says “human breastmilk provides a bioactive matrix of benefits that cannot be replicated by any other source of nutrition.” The American Academy of Pediatrics also recommends human milk, by mother or by donor, for all preterm infants. Both the AAP and CPS clearly recognize the life-saving power of donor milk for preterm babies.(2)

Yesterday, I participated in the first Best for Babes Miracle Milk™ Mother's Day Stroll. This North American campaign was started  to raise awareness, funds and donor milk to save lives and spare the suffering of our most fragile population -- preterm and compromised babies. This is the first year for the Miracle Milk Stroll and Edmonton was one of almost 70 sites – 11 in Canada, 57 in the US and 2 on military bases in England who participated.

There are still NICUs within Canada and the US who do not or can not provide human milk for these preemie babies and this is why we stroll. To raise more awareness of the importance of human milk for human babies and the need for donor milk and for more milk banks across North America. Parents, health care providers and hospital administrators need to know more about the critical importance of an exclusive human milk diet in a preterm baby’s care or about the accessibility, safety and life-saving power of donor milk if mother’s own milk is not available.

I was extremely proud that the kids and I got to be a part of this inaugural campaign and encourage you to find out more about how you can help these tiny babies in your community.

Yes, that is my preemie now in the grey sweatshirt. 

Find out where your local milk bank is and donate and please check out the Best for Babes website and all the ways you can help mothers and babies.

In Canada, we now have four human milk banks that you can donate to {monetarily or milkily} in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. Edmonton has it own Milk Bank Depot at the Grey Nuns Hospital where donations can be dropped off as well.

Tell your friends about how important human milk is for these compromised babies and how easy and safe it is to donate milk!

And of course, wear your Miracle Milk™ T-shirt with pride!

Happy Mother's Day Everyone!

natasha~

1.  Neu J. Necrotizing enterocolitis: the search for a unifying pathogenic theory leading to prevention. Pediatr Clin North Am 1996; 43:409.

2. Fast Facts: Miracle Milk from Best for Babes foundation.

Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #17

Today's edition comes with a BIG trigger warning. Some of the posts from this week are about childhood sexual abuse and how the Dylan Farrow/Woody Allen situation has brought this topic WAY out from under the carpets that it is often swept under in the name of "it's in the past, time to move on", "allegedly", "but he/she is the nicest person in the world", and all the other ways that society will more often than not choose a blissful shield of ignorance, rather than listen to or hear what happens to 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 6 boys in our world (Canadian Statistics). ***If you are not in a place to read these articles, please know this; it is OK, you don't have to. Skip #1. As an alternative, I give you cute baby animals instead! XOXO ****

*****For the record and in the spirit of full disclosure, I believe Dylan Farrow. I am one of the 1 in 3 girls that was sexually abused as a child by a trusted neighbour and there are still people in my life who do not know about it or who don't quite understand what that means to my life now.****

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1. Dylan Farrow's incredibly raw open letter to to the world about her sexual abuse at the hands of one of the most revered Hollywood directors of our time started a virtual whirlwind of he said/she said, opinions, analysis and thoughtful and not so thoughtful inspection of all aspects of this particular case and of the topic in general all over the internet.  Film biographer, Robert B. Weide posted an account on The Daily Beast of what he claims are all the details that everyone was getting so, so wrong about Mr. Woody Allen and his relationships with the women and children in his life 20+ years ago.

"Twenty-one years after the first allegations that Woody Allen abused his adopted daughter, that incident is back in the news thanks to the director’s ex-partner, Mia Farrow, and estranged son, Ronan Farrow. But what does a closer examination reveal?"

Seems to me a closer examination reveals more about corporate media and Hollywood going to bat for their stars and protecting the mighty, then it does about believing victims, protecting victims and providing any kind of justice for victims of sexual abuse at the hands of these "stars". Jennifer Pozner outlines corporate media's rapist problem in very great detail in this post for Salon.

"Whether it’s Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Vibe or even Jezebel promoting R. Kelly’s new “Black Panties” album without mentioning the allegations that he’s sexually assaulted dozens of adolescent black girls — or the Academy Awards giving a Best Director Oscar and a standing ovation to convicted pedophile rapist Roman Polanski — the music industry and the Hollywood film community just can’t stop enabling oh-so-talented predators."

One of the most powerful pieces that I read this week (and for better or for worse, the one that was the most triggering for me personally) was Andrea Grimes look at what exactly would make someone believe a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I can't really say much more about it other than I called my therapist the next morning to book an appointment and simultaneously decided to take a wee break from social media for the rest of the month.

I know there are lots of those people—people who would give the benefit of the doubt to literally anyone besides a scared, confused child or an adult survivor just coming to terms with their past. I wonder why there are so many of those kinds of people who seem unable to, simply, listen to survivors without transporting themselves into some crudely imagined, hyperbolic Law & Order: SVU episode full of idealized victims and nefarious abusers.

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On to lighter topics now....

2. Pussy Riot was on the Colbert Report this week. You'd think two years in a Russian prison would break someone's spirit. Apparently not if you are Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhin. It's a great interview to watch, especially as the ladies give as good as they get from Mr. Colbert, who had a hard time keeping a straight face at times.

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3. You know I am a sucker for anything with boobs! Especially when those boobs are feeding babies. This little diddy from Australian  duo Sparrow Folk is sure to "ruin your day" (ie, MAKE your day!)

[youtube]http://youtu.be/-dw2XHMUnyE[/youtube]

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4. Do you know about GIRL Rising? Well you should. And you should know that I will be talking a lot more about this incredible film and the upcoming screening of it in Edmonton on March 8th, which is also International Women's Day 2014. Watch the trailer below and look for a screening in your area too.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/BJsvklXhYaE[/youtube]

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5. Who knew how much power women yield over all the poor menfolk out there, with the simple snip of a pair of scissors! JLaw cut her hair and the collective gasp from men was heard the world over. And now Felicia Day, poster-girl for geekdom, has done the same and this is NEWS people. A woman got a haircut and it is newsworthy.... just let that sink in for a minute.... thanks sexism!

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Have a wonderful weekend and be kind to each other and to yourself,

N~

Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #8

I am very sorry, it's been two weeks since I've served up some yummy feminist fare for you. As you can imagine, a lot has been going on in the feminist realm and I'll do my best to get myself {and you} up to speed and back on track. This is what happens when a certain 41-year old goes to a blogging conference and stays up carousing until 2 AM for three nights in a row. At my age, it takes exactly 10 days to recover and get one's head out of the fog that those three days created!! But, I did have a REALLY, really good time and you can read all about it here. Now, onto the good stuff.

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1. Last week the internet was all up in arms about a T-shirt.  Granted it was a masturbating, menstruating vagina t-shirt from American Apparel and artist Petra Collins, but still a simple t-shirt none the less. And while I am not about to go out and buy this particular t-shirt, I do get that it is art and art is meant to provoke. And really folks, there are a lot more crazy and WAY more offensive things put on t-shirts these days than a depiction of someone's lady parts. Now, if it wasn't enough that the internet went all bat-shit-crazy on Petra over her t-shirt, her Instagram account was recently deleted as well. Why exactly is still not clear, but Petra herself has some thoughts on why an image of part of her unaltered body (that contains no nudity) may have caused this level of online censorship to occur and it is making me feel very, very angry.

"Through this removal I really felt how strong of a distrust and hate we have towards female bodies. The deletion of my account felt like a physical act, like the public coming at me with a razor, sticking their finger down my throat, forcing me to cover up, forcing me to succumb to societies image of beauty. That these very real pressures we face everyday can turn into literal censorship."

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2. And while we are on the topic of the female body, I came across this powerful poetry reading last night from Lily Myers called "Shrinking Woman".

[youtube]http://youtu.be/zQucWXWXp3k[/youtube]

This piece really gave me pause, especially because I have a daughter and I don't want her to absorb that kind of "accidental inheritance" from me about food, about my body or hers or about how much space women are "allowed" to occupy in this world.

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3. It is that time of year yet again. Halloween. Or as I like to call it at our house, "Hallo-avoid every commercial store and costume EVER because MY 5 YEAR OLD IS NOT SEXY AND SPIDERGIRL DOESN'T WEAR A PINK TUTU-ween". Beth Greenfield at Yahoo Shine examines what kind of messages these over-prettified and hypersexualized costumes send to our children. HINT-not good ones!

“I think it says to girls that everything they do has to fit in one small box—because even if they don’t want to be a princess, the Spider Man costume looks like a princess,” developmental psychologist Christia Spears Brown, author of the forthcoming book “Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue,” tells Yahoo Shine. “It says, ‘Your gender is more important than the costume,’ and ‘Being a girl is the most important thing about you.’” 

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4. Privilege. It's a word we hear a lot these days. Gender privilege, race privilege, socio-ecomonic privilege, it's out there people and for a lot of folks, privilege is a really hard thing to truly grasp. Which when you think about it, is incredibly ironic and sad. I had an interesting experience last week talking to a middle-aged, middle-class white man about women being shamed for breastfeeding in public. Do you know what he said to me? He interrupted me, told me he can't even believe that this is an issue in our day and age and dismissed the problem outright. Here's the thing. I am a white, cis-gendered, middle-class woman. I HAVE privilege up the ying-yang! But not until that very moment when my experiences and that of so many other breastfeeding mothers was so summarily dismissed by someone who has privilege that I do not, did the whole concept of PRIVILEGE come to full fruition in my brain.

In feminism, no talk of privilege can exist without intersectionality coming into play and I know that for some this can seem like some kind of high-level academic feminist balderdash. I assure you it is not and in this incredibly honest piece from Winona Dimeo-Edigar at The Frisky, you will see why it's as fundamental to feminism as the basic premise that "Feminism is the radical idea that women are people".

"...I think a lot of white feminists are like me — our goals and values might be in the right place, but our privilege has insulated us to the need for intersectionality and the diverse concerns of the diverse group of women who make up the modern feminist movement. We want to keep feminism simple to achieve our goals, but we don’t realize that “keeping it simple” often means shutting out voices and experiences that don’t look like ours. If we want to be part of a strong, welcoming sisterhood, we must understand the effects of our privilege."

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5. And finally, it's October, or "Pinktober" according to KFC, the NFL, Chambord, Pilsbury and a whole slew of other brands and retailers cashing in on "raising awareness" for breast cancer and donating a mere pittance of the proceeds from all their pink merchandise to actual cancer research. Cancer is not pretty. It is not pink. It is not about "setting the tatas free" on a ridiculous no-bra day campaign.  It is painful and devastating and life-altering and women young and old are fighting for their lives against this beast. The public needs to see this side of breast cancer and that is what The Scar Project is doing with this striking photography series of young breast cancer survivors shot by fashion photographer David Jay.  It's not easy to look at these photos, but it puts a reality to breast cancer that the general public needs to see before heading out to buy another big pink garbage bin. Please donate directly to your local cancer societies or to any number of organizations that directly help cancer patients and survivors and avoid all the "pinkwashing" of this terrible disease.

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On that note, I wish you all a safe and wonderful weekend!

Peace,

natasha~

Feminist Fare Friday: Edition #7.

Todays feminist fare is brought to you by boobs. Why? Because God knows that the sight of any part of one gets the whole damn internet/media/complete strangers in a crazy uproar! So without further ado. I give you the boobs of....

1. Amanda Palmer. This past June, the UK's Daily Mail reported on her little nip slip (and practically nothing else) after her show at Glastonbury. Amanda wrote this lovely little ditty for them.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/RRWp4B0qsW8[/youtube]

2. Tina Fey. It seems that last weeks Emmy's were so far from exciting that the only thing anyone wanted to talk about the next day, aside from Bryan Cranston being ROBBED, was Tina's nipple. So, talk all you want people, IT'S JUST A BOOB!

[youtube]http://youtu.be/NEqG---qVp0[/youtube]

3. Breastfeeding Moms Everywhere. It is World MilkSharing Week and human milk donations all over the world are helping to feed babies. Whether it is in our own informal milk sharing mother communities or through donations to milk banks, for some of these babes, every drop counts and is a labour of life and love! In honour of that, and for breastfeeding in general, I'd like to re-post this beautiful spoken word poetry from Hollie McNish.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/KiS8q_fifa0[/youtube]

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

XO

natasha~

A year of endings.

Since everyone else is doing it, I guess I'll jump on the bandwagon too. You guessed it, this is my "Year in Review" and also my Birthday post rolled into one.

Oh, don't worry, I wont recant all of my previous posts from this past year for you, that's what that handy dandy "Archives" button is for over there to your right and part way down the page. Click on it, choose a month and peruse at your leisure, I promise you, some of those posts were really, really good!

If we back up 365 days, turning 40 on this day last year was not as traumatic as I expected. I was with the three people I love the most in the world. I was spoiled with everything I asked for and more and it was a beautiful sunny winter day. It was perfection.

I had also made up my mind at that point to make some drastic changes in my world and all was well in my mind and in my heart with regards to my decisions. I did not make resolutions for 2012, I made choices that I needed to to be happy, healthy and present in my life and for my family.

Before I go one though, a word on 40th Birthdays.

They are a BIG deal. They should be celebrated with all due largesse and magnanimity. AND, in my opinion, that celebration should not just be for one day. I took some inspiration from a fellow blogger, Julie Harrison, and her #MonthofMe 40th Birthday celebration, and decided to stretch out my 40th birthday ALL YEAR LONG! My sweet husband indulged my desires (and my cheeziness) and surprised me on the 1st of every month in 2012 with a silly, yet totally AWESOME card and a small gift. Some months it was a night out to one of my favourite restaurants, one month a cool new camera lens for my iPhone, and another month it was the full Hunger Games series. Little things that he knew I wanted and that let me know that he actually does listen to me! It was fantastic and something I highly recommend you tell all your significant others about for your 40th birthdays (Just tell them Natasha said it is a thing, so they have to do it!).

{My dear husband also understood my trepidation with this rather BIG number and found a nice way to ease my transition into my fifth decade on this earth!}

What stuck me the most in the last few days of 2012, (and trust me, I had a lot of time to think about this as I was sitting here suffering from the zombie flu and blowing chunks of my brains out through my nostrils) is that I started out thinking that 40 was going to be a year of new beginnings for me. What it was, in so many ways, was in fact, a year of endings.

In February, I ended my foray into the online world of e-commerce with the closing of Natural Urban Mamas, the store. I've talked and blogged about this decision ad nauseum already, but just like a good party, it's always best to leave while you are still enjoying the night, and before you'll regret anything in the morning. I loved what I did with my business. I loved all of the mamas and babies and families that I helped. I have no regrets. It was a good party.

In April, as a family, we ended our time in our first home. A home that we designed and built for our growing family. One that bore the scratches and scuff marks of our puppy and our baby boy and then his little sister. The house that both our kids took their first steps in and the house where we celebrated our first family Christmas. The house that hosted many dinners with family and friends, birthday parties, massive playdates, mother blessings and kiddie pool parties alike. It was a good house. A home that we will remember fondly and forever.

Spring and summer were spent moving into our new home and finishing up all the bits and pieces that go along with that. Furnishing, decorating, landscaping, and getting to know our new neighbours and neighbourhood. Its been a big year and after building three houses in less than 10 years, I can most definitely say that we are finally done. Done, done, DONE!  I could not ask for more in a home and to be honest, don't have it in me to move or build EVER AGAIN! This home is the END to our construction bug! (Someone please be sure to remind either myself or my husband of this if ever our eyes or minds start to wander!)

My babies have grown so much this past year. Little C is not so little anymore and is so independent. He gives me a swift kiss and takes off to play with his buddies when I drop him off for kindergarten every day. And my shy little girl has come out of her shell and is a regular chip of the ol' block, kooky personality and all! And without even knowing it or realizing that it happened, our days of regular babywearing slowly came to an end this year.  With riding bikes and running like the wind and wanting to do everything on their own, we just didn't have the time or, as much as it pains me to say, the need for it anymore. The last time I got to wear L, my lovely friend Kyla came by and snapped a few shots of us and I am forever grateful that she captured these last beautiful babywearing moments. And while my days of wearing my own babies may be at an end, my arms are always open and my baby carriers always available to snuggle any and all babies that come my way!

Photo courtesy of Feschuk Photography

2012 was quite the banner year for breastfeeding. It was in the news, A LOT. From Facebook's continued witch hunt for and discrimination against mother's breastfeeding photos, to Jamie Grumet's cover shot on TIME Magazine, to celebrities talking about it and taking and posting their own beautiful photos. And in our house too, it was still a regular occurrence. Unlike her brother, who stopped at age three, L showed no desire to be done breastfeeding and so we kept going. I think that the concept of this part of our relationship being done was difficult for both of us and through lots of cuddles and discussions, my little girl and I came to the decision that we would stop on her fourth birthday in October.

Well. October came and we tried to stop and some days we nursed and others we did not. It went on like that for a while longer and then this past month, we are just... done. Another beautiful ending that came of its own accord and on its own time. She doesn't ask to nurse anymore, but does want to cuddle with 'her boobies' every now and then. I thought I would be a lot more sad about this ending than any of the others in my parenting journey, but I am not. I feel like I gave both my children all that they needed in this regard and I respected their needs and my own. Two children and six years is a lot to ask of my breasts, but they did their job and did it well. I am proud of myself, proud of my children and yes, I'll say it, proud of my "girls" too!

{You gotta love when they play with your 'waddle' while nursing!}

So you see. It really has been a year of endings.

The final ending of course being the chapter that is/was NaturalUrbanMamas.com, and you can read all about that in my previous post.

I saw a post and picture on Facebook today that said, "Chapter 2013, Page 1 of 365."

For me this is Chapter 41, Page 1 of 365. Many of those pages will get published here and some will not, but this year....

This is the one that will be all about new beginnings.

Happy 2013 Everyone!

Big Birthday Love and Kisses for all of you,

Natasha~