not breathing

Today, in my rush to get the kids to school, I almost killed two of us. Turning left onto a street, I didn't see the white camaro coming up behind another truck turning right and I almost pulled out too far.

I slammed on the brakes. I swore. I scared my daughter. And my heart almost pounded itself out of my chest.

I was driving too fast, in too much of a rush, mad at the world, and all because *I* was late.

I am calm now. I am sitting in my little cafe, having my favourite tea latte, re-evaluating my mornings lately and gaining a little bit of perspective.

Here is what I think....

I don't know about you, but I feel like I am trying to DO too much.

I think this may be a MOM thing.

My 'TO DO" lists never seem to get fully finished. And my calendar is FULL! Everyday.

I drive my kids to two different schools in the mornings and then I take the dog for a walk.

While they are at school (for a whopping 2.5 hours), I try to get as much done as I can without them. This includes grocery shopping, random errands and appointments for me, a yoga class or workout and if I am lucky, one or two days of writing.

In the afternoons the kids have dancing and yoga on one day, swimming on another and we are trying to take advantage of our gorgeous fall weather right now and doing as much as we can outside and with our friends on the other days.

By three o'clock everyday we are all exhausted and both of my kids are still napping for at least an hour in the afternoons. On more days than I care to admit, so am I!

And then it is dinner, walking the dog again, bath and bedtime, whatever housework needs doing and trying to get in at least a 30 minute workout with Natural Urban Dad too. Last night I spent 3 hours folding what I like to call Mount Washmore. I swear laundry is my kryptonite, I actually start to feel weaker the closer I get to the laundry room.

I have Apps to remind me of appointments, two reminder alerts for every event in my calendar and stickie notes. Lots and lots of stickie notes everywhere to remind me off what needs doing next. And still I almost forgot that today was L's show and tell and snack day at preschool and have I mentioned that I completely forgot about picture day for Little C and sent him to school in a 'Hang Loose' t-shirt my sister-in-law bought him in Waikiki? It is only September and I am already sucking at this whole school thing!

The real kicker is that I have no excuse for all of this. The house is finished. There is no more store. I am a 100% stay-at-home housewife and mother. THIS is my job. If I was my boss, I would be having a pretty serious time management discussion with myself.

I am not sure why I can't seem to get this on track? OK, well yes, I do stay up WAY too late most nights and yes, I probably do waste a fair bit of time online, but still...

Something has to change. I wake up and feel like I don't breath until the kids are dropped off, the dog taken care of and all the other 'stuff' is done. It makes for some long, stressful mornings and I just feel like I am constantly yelling at everyone to HURRY UP!

Not the way I want to start my day and not the way I want it to be for the kids either.

I mean, it has gotten to the point that if I am really grumpy and yell-y, the kids ask me if I forgot to make my breakfast smoothie. And most of those days, I didn't forget, I just did not have enough time.

You see, I KNOW what I need to do. In everything that I deem "wrong" in my life, I know what I need to do to fix it. I just don't.

I don't go to bed early enough or wake up early enough. I spend too much time online. I forget to eat nutritious meals that will give me the energy I need to get going. I cop out on my workouts. I leave the laundry piling up until it truly is a mountain of rainbow coloured wrinkle-ness.

I don't know if it is just some Olympic calibre procrastination I have perfected here or if I am truly too physically and mentally exhausted to make the changes that I know need to be made.

What I do know is that I am functioning just fine. On the outside I appear to have it ALL together. I manage to get the kids to school, they are bathed and in clean clothes, we have groceries in the house and the laundry eventually does get folded. But to be perfectly honest, much beyond that is one hell of a struggle.

The reality is that I am a faker of epic proportions and I am not sure how much longer I can keep this up.

Because what if one day, while I am holding my breath, I really don't see that car and something really bad happens...

Natasha~

I have hair growing in weird places

I feel like I need to explain some things. As I look back at the last few weeks of posts, I realize that all of them are rather self-centred. I have not written a babywearing post since the one I wrote about why I don't do 'forward facing out' went semi-viral (in my world that is) or a breastfeeding post since my journey, (Oh hell, let's call a spade a spade. At this point, 5 years, 9 months and 12 days, I think it is more of a breastfeeding odyssey), is finally coming to an end.

This past week I attended a wonderful Modern Mama event in our city called Mama Blogs. The expert panel consisted of Tanis Miller from Attack of the Redneck Mommy, Jennifer Banks from Techmommy and Make Jen's Day, Felicia Dewar from Single Mom of Two and Jenifer Shaefer of City and Baby fame.  These fabulous bloggers talked to a room full of women about the why, what and how-tos of blogging in today's hyper-connected world. Through it all the one key message that kept coming up (for me) was about "knowing your voice" and "finding your voice" through your blog.

All of it got me thinking about my blog even more than I usually do.

So let me lay this out for you...

In the beginning, I did not want to blog.

True story.

If you know my old business partner, you can ask her. It was like pulling teeth to get me to write at least once or twice a month on our little business blog. I mostly wrote about our new products, why I loved them and why you should too and all other kinds of things hoping to drive more business to our little online natural parenting store.

And then, in the summer of 2010, something I like to call "The Twitter Effect" happened. Although I had opened my Twitter acount in December 2009, I really did not start using it much until the Spring of 2010. At that time I started to interact and connect with like-minded people and became a regular at the #BFcafe chats on Thursday nights.

One day I got an Direct Message that changed my {online} life. Claire, aka @lactating girl sent me a tweet asking me if I would like to participate in the Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival of blog posts for that year. I was flabbergasted! Really, I was. And I was not sure that I could do it! 14 days of blogging about breastfeeding. I mean, really, how much can one person say about it!

As it turns out, quite a bit actually. I blogged about breastfeeding at work, I blogged about breastfeeding under special circumstances, I blogged about nighttime breastfeeding and I blogged about what breastfeeding meant to me and for my children. For 14 days I wrote all about breastfeeding and in the end those two weeks taught me more about myself and the Internet and the power of words than anything else in my life so far.

Those 14 days turned me into a BLOGGER.

Perhaps it was the community I was becoming part of on Twitter and through the Carnival and on my blog. Maybe it was the comments that I was getting and the emails thanking me for my posts and asking me for advice. Maybe it was the thrill of capturing and remembering moments with my children that were long past. Whatever the reason, something awakened in me that summer and it felt amazing!

And the more I read of others blogs, the more I wrote. I discovered amazing blogs like Enjoying the Small Things and Phd in Parenting and Adventures in Babywearing  and Mom 101 and I started to see the potential and the kind of blogger that I wanted to be when I grew up.

Keep in mind that at this point my blog was still a part of my online retail business and while my focus was mainly on the store, the seed of writing had been planted and was starting to take root. And while I still wrote posts meant to drive traffic and business to the store, more and more the posts that meant the most to me and as it turns out, resonated the most with YOU, where the ones that were more personal and the ones that delved deeper into the parenting and world issues that concerned me.

Some of them were funny (in retrospect) and some very raw and soul baring. I started paying closer attention to the world around me and realizing that my voice just might have some itty little bit of power and that I could use it to advocate for change and awareness or even to just rant a bit! I used my blogging voice to chronicle the building of our dream home and to capture moments with my children.

In 2011, I decided it was time to attend my first blogging conference. And then I went to two of them in a span of two weeks. And boy oh boy, did I ever get an education about blogging! I learned so much from so many great people at these conferences. I met the wonderful and insightful Alex from @clippo (who was a business and personal blogger at that point as well) and spent some quality time with some of my blogging heros like  Tanis the Redneck Mommy and Elan "Schmutzie" Morgan.  To say that these conferences where eye-opening would be the understatement of the decade for me and I blogged about that whole experience here!

I continued to hone my blogging voice and took on a few 30 day blogging challenges to really get the creative juices flowing.  In the winter of 2011, after MUCH deliberation and discussion with Natural Urban Dad, I decided it was time to close my store. And yes, I blogged about that too.

After the store closed, my blog suddenly became less a place for me to talk shop and more a place for me to talk straight. To get all the rambling thoughts that were in my head out and onto the screen. It became a place for me to share more personal posts, to fully explore this creative and expressive part of me that was starting to take over and it became a place for me to let this process take it's natural course.

I was growing as a blogger and {dare I say it?} as a writer too.

As in all things in life, this is an ever evolving process. My blogging goals from three years ago are VASTLY different than the ones I have now. My writing style has improved tremendously (in my opinion at least) and I want to continue to work even harder and make it even better.

At the Mama Blogs event the other night, I mentioned to my new friend Sarah that I felt like my blogging voice was changing yet again and she said to me,

"That's OK, you are just going through blogger puberty."

And I couldn't have said it better myself!

So yes, in case you may have noticed, my voice IS changing. It may be a bit pitchy for the next little while, as I am sure I will hit some high notes and some low ones too. It is time to start using the grown up deodorant and deal with all the changes that this "coming of age" stage of my blogging career entails.

Trust me, it can {and will} only get better!

Bloggingly yours,

Natasha~

P.S. I started this post last night. I woke up today and read THIS wonderful post from Liz at Mom 101 and am even more resigned now to truly understand that if I LOVE what I am doing, my purpose will reveal itself.  It's all very, "If you build it, they will come!" up in my head today!

P.P.S Here is an actual picture of me in the throes of puberty! It's not pretty and by the looks of it, I was maturing into some kind of feathered being!! {It was the eighties, what can I say.}

beast of burden

You know when you have more ideas than time? When your draft folder is starting to look as big as your actual posts folder?

I am kind of at that point right now.

September hit and it was back to school and board meetings and activities starting up and well, let's just say that the kids have been napping every day for the past week and a half and more often than not, I feel like I should be too!

And because when it rains it pours, I have also been dealing with a really wonderful RA flare that is just draining all kinds of energy from me like a VERY leaky faucet.

So what I am saying here is, that I have been one very tired and sore mama lately and it is taking a tremendous amount of effort (and caffeine)  to keep both my brain and my body working simultaneously.

And truth be told, as of late I have also been wrestling with some demons of my past that don't seem to want to stay hidden in the darker recesses of my mind anymore. It is not debilitating in any way, but I do feel like I have some unresolved issues that I need to deal with and it has to be soon. Trusting my children into a school system that failed me miserably has been a bigger step for me than I had originally thought and has brought a lot of these issues to the surface.

I want to write about these ugly, demon-y type things, really I do, I am just not sure if this is the place for them. Or if I can even do it. My thoughts about these events of my childhood only go so far and then I start to panic and SLAM THE DOOR shut in my brain. It is a defence mechanism and I know that, but hey, it has {kinda} worked for the past 27 years, why stop now, right?

Right.

Even now, as I am writing this, a very familiar ball of anxiety is starting to form in my gut and I can feel my pulse rate quicken. If I write it all down, then everyone is going to know. My husband is going to know. The mom's who read my blog and that I see at my kid's schools are going to know. MY mom is going to know. And I dont' know how they are going to react or feel about all of this.

Because here is the thing people, I want to talk details. I want to talk about what was said and done to a young, vulnerable child and how that sticks with you for the rest of your life. I don't want to just say the 'legal' words for these things. Molested, abused, assaulted. Because while that is what happens, it is not what is said by the person doing these things. And while the acts in and of themselves are damaging enough, it is the words that stick in your mind, that haunt you, that make you question everything about your body, that make you wonder what is WRONG with you for most of your teenage and adult life.

Are you all ready to hear this? Am I ready to write it?

I don't know.

I do know that the big ball of panic that is taking up residence in me feels like a huge tub stopper. I feel like if I pull it out, all of this will get  washed away in the drain and dumped in the sewer where it belongs. For almost 30 years I have been carrying around so much shame about these events of my childhood.

Perhaps it is about time I unload this particular burden...

Natasha~

First day of school

So this happened this week...

My baby started Kindergarten.

He was pretty excited about school and has been practicing how to say his teacher's name for the past two weeks. (It's a French Immersion program and her name is very French).

I was excited for him too. Kindergarten is a wonderful time in a child's life. There is play, there are new friends, there is learning, and of course, there is RECESS! (Which so far, along with Gym time, seems to be the only things of importance that he can tell me happen during his days at school.)

The classroom is not a new thing for my kid. He has been at an amazing playschool for the past three years and has had some wonderful teachers, has grown so much in personality and confidence in those years and has made what I think will be, at least one life-long friend who happens to now also be in the same school and class as him.

So no, I am not the sappy, crying mom standing at the door watching her baby go into the great unknown without her. (For all you sappy, crying mamas, I give you all a big hug and say, "Dry your tears and go get a coffee. ALONE. Enjoy these few hours just to yourself. Trust me on this one.")

Fast forward a year from now and I know it will be a totally different story.

Grade One. ALL. DAY. LONG. Away from me. And in a desk, doing studious big kid things, navigating the majority of his day without me and then getting homework.

I guarantee you though, that the thing he is going to look forward to the most and talk about the most will still be recess and gym time!

I have a lot of deep seated school fears for my children. Elementary school was not a really fun time for me. We moved from a small three-room county school to the big city when I was in Grade 3. My mother decided to embrace her heritage and enrolled me in a French Immersion school (I took a crash course in French over the summer!). It was a rough transition for me and I just never really fit in. I was the new girl, the one who would cry every day because I didn't understand my teachers and I didn't have any friends. I was also one of only two kids in my class (and quite possibley the whole CATHOLIC school) that was from a family of divorce!

I was easy pickins' for the mean kids.

But that was me. And I survived it. Relatively unscathed (years of therapy and self-medication notwithstanding).

I have different hopes for my children. I don't want them to survive school. I want them to thrive in school! I want them to love learning, to be confident, strong-minded little people. I want them to do better than I did.

Because this also happened this week.

And she ROCKED it!

If this week is any indication of the future for my children in the school system, they will do so much more than survive!

And if all their dreams for the future pan out, I will be one well looked after senior citizen!!

Happy School Days Everyone!

Natasha~

A thank you to the ladies

This is for all the women in my life who inspire me. Who amaze me daily and who I am so proud to know and call friend, confidante, family, bestie, partner and more...

1. To the woman who finally realized her worth and although I can't even imagine how much this hurts, took the first steps to getting out of an unhappy situation. I am proud of you and am here for you always.

2. To the two women I call my best friends. Both with three children each, one working full-time with travel time away from her family, the other completely devoted to her role as a stay-at-home mama. You have both taught me so much about letting go, holding on, making the most of these moments and living life as a mother, a woman and a friend. Thank you both from the bottom of my heart.

3. To my Godmother. May your wish be granted soon, so that you can be together again forever and ever. No truer love story do I know than yours. Gros Bisous!

4. To my mothers. To my own for always showing me what it means to love unconditionally, without reservation or judgment and to give with a whole heart. To my husband's for accepting me for who I am and for learning from me as much as I do from her. (There is correlation here... I know it!)

5. To the women who are my 'posse'. My late night tweeters and play date meet-ers. The women who make me laugh, who share recipes for food, love and daily survival and who are my fabulous #MountainAshBeeches! This life would be so boring without you!

6. To the women who are gone but not forgotten. The ones who moved far away, the ones who are not far away but whose lives took paths away from mine, and the ones who are no longer with us in this world. Thank you for all that you did to shape and mould me, to teach me, to challenge me, to take me outside my box and make me take a good hard look at myself.  I am who I am today because I knew you once upon a time and because of the life lessons I gleaned from you along the way.

7. To my daughter. For that look in  your eye that tells me THIS is going to be one hell of a ride. And that Karma has no better embodiment in the world than a daughter who is JUST LIKE YOU!

I Love you ALL,

Natasha~

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Post 26 on Day 27 of the Summer Blog Challenge.

So close... just a few more days (+1)!!

Keep it up everyone!

Zita at The Dulock Diaries.

Meaghan at MagzD Life

April at This Mom’s Got Something to Say

Aramelle at One Wheeler’s World

 Jessica at 2plus2X2

and Liam at In the Now

On writing... {oh wait, someone else already wrote that}

Reading usually precedes writing and the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

~Susan Sontag

Yup. What she said!

There truly is nothing more inspiring than reading someone else's really great writing to get your own writing juices flowing. And right now, I feel like a flood-swollen river is raging through my brain.

I have just finished reading all of the Five Star Friday posts from Schmutzie's  weekly weblog round-up and all I can say is...

OH. MY. GAWD. It was one helluva good week for the writers of the interwebs!

I can't possible recap all of it, so just head on over there and read them all! It is well worth your time, I promise. (Also, I may be full-on fangirl crushing on Schmutzie right now, she really is kind of super-duper awesome!)

And speaking of WRITERS.

I said it last night.

Someone asked me what I do and I said, " I am a writer."

I am not sure that all would 'technically' agree with me on this one, but it is how I feel about myself. It is how I want to feel and think  about what I am doing with my life and since it now is what I am doing (in between all the mothering, wife-ing and life living stuff), I am going to say it again.

I am a writer.

I may not be a particularly GOOD writer just yet, but I am getting there. I am truly focused on becoming better at this craft and am right now setting new goals for myself in this regard! I have made the very tough decision to forgo any major blogging conferences this year in favor of taking a few creative writing courses and finding a great writing retreat or seminar to attend. I am getting serious here people!

And something else happened today. An idea popped into my head. One that has never happened before. A fictional idea.

A BOOK idea.

I have never thought of myself as a fiction writer (well, let's be honest, I have not really been thinking of myself as a writer at all until very recently), so the fact that I had this little brain toot today kind of came as a surprise to me. And I just can't stop thinking about it.

That must mean something right?

Now before I start getting WAY too ahead of myself, I figure I am going to need a few things to get me to the point that I (and others) can feel more comfortable identifying me as a writer. To that end, I am arming myself with some tools of the trade recommended to me by some amazing writers that I love and respect.

First up, On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King.

Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE that I know, who has read this book has said that it is life {and craft} changing! I have just finished reading the first two of his three forewords and I can already see that this will likely be the case for me too.

And because Mr. King said so in the second of the aforementioned forewords, the other tool of the trade that I am arming myself with is Strunk & White's The Elements of Style. I figure if I am to be any kind of writer, it is probably a good idea to have THE essential book of writing at my disposal. I am sure I am breaking all the basic rules of writing left, right and centre every day here, some of them I recognize, others I do not. Let's hope this helps me recognize the really awful ones and remedy what I can!

Writing is a funny thing. It is freeing, it is strangely addictive and it is incredibly empowering. It taps into that part of me that I often keep hidden deep inside. It lets me exercise my brain, work out my thoughts, ideas and feelings and it is something that is mine. ALL mine. I mean, I share it with all of you of course, but these are my words, my thoughts, my prose.

What I write may not always be that important or interesting to everyone, but for me, every sentence that I type is one step further into this world of words and thought and imagination that makes me feel whole.

And for the last few days all I keep thinking about are the books and blog posts and essays that I have read that have changed my life and I am wondering what it would feel like to be the one who wrote the words that actually did that for someone else....

Natasha~

Monkeys and Elephants and Giraffes... Oh my!

I took the kids to the Telus World of Science today and we went to see the IMAX movie "Born to Be Wild". [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYxqQODBfEo[/youtube]

You HAVE to see this movie. My kids loved it.

I loved it. A lot!

All day, all I have been thinking about, is how incredible those two women are to have devoted their entire lives to these precious and amazing animals.

And all day I have been day-dreaming about somehow doing the same thing.

There it is. My secret. My 'I wish I could do that when I grow up' desire.

I wish I could rescue and care for wild animals. Big, endangered, majestic, beautiful, jungles of South America and plains of Africa animals.

And the thing that you need to understand is that this wish didn't just start today.

In 2005, Natural Urban Dad and I took THE trip of our lives.We were invited to the destination wedding of a dear friend.

The destination? East Africa.

So off we went on the adventure of a lifetime to this incredible wedding in Dar Es Salaam and then a week-long safari through Northern Tanzania.  The whole trip was magical. And terrifying and eye-opening and spectacular and so many other big words that I can't think of right now.

I mean I stood at the very spot dubbed the 'Cradle of Mankind' for Pete's sake! It doesn't get much more incredible than that!

In the end though, it was all of the wild and wonderful animals that we saw on our week long safari through the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater, that made the most lasting impression on me.

My love of all things giraffe was born in Africa. They were one of the first animals that we saw driving into the park that first day. The only thing I can relate it to is that scene in Jurassic Park when they see all the dinosaurs for the first time and they big sauropods are walking by almost in slow motion. Seeing a herd of giraffes doing that not 50 feet in front of us was like that, but way, WAY, better!

Going to Africa was our last big hurrah trip. Our chance to do something truly adventurous before we started a family. These thoughts about family may have been heavy in my mind the whole time we were on the safari, because every chance I got, I took pictures (FILM pictures, I must add) of baby animals. Baby elephants trying to keep up with their mommies and aunties, baby monkeys grooming themselves, baby hippos resting on their mamas backs, fuzzy baby giraffes trying to reach the tall branches on the Acacia trees. I would make our guide Ali, stop the Land Rover each and every time we came upon a baby anything so I could get yet another shot!

Heck I even took pictures of animals MAKING babies!!

I loved that trip so much and I promised myself that when we did have kids, and they were old enough, we would do it again. Watching the movie today and seeing the looks of wonder and awe on my babies faces just solidified this desire even more. Natural Urban Dad and I talked about it tonight and agreed that yes, we will all make this trek once again in a few years time.

I think, in an ideal world, everyone should stand at the 'Cradle of Mankind' at least once in their lifetime and be humbled by it and truly understand where we all come from and that we are all connected.  And everyone should see all of these magnificent animals in their natural habitats to really know what it means to be 'born to be wild' and know why that matters.

Because it changes EVERYTHING.

At least it did for me.

Asante sana,

natasha~

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Day 22 of the Summer Blog Challenge and now all I want to do is plan our next trip!

Let's go see what these people are up to...

Zita at The Dulock Diaries.

Meaghan at MagzD Life

April at This Mom’s Got Something to Say

Aramelle at One Wheeler’s World

 Jessica at 2plus2X2

and Liam at In the Now

 

It's just a little spilled pickle juice

Silly title I know, but it is what it is and since I don't want to go to bed both mad and without writing something tonight... Here is a short list of things I am grateful for today.

1. My little girl and her two favourite friends having a tea party and two almost 6-year olds who needed the door closed so that they could play big boy imagination games.

2. Spinilates. It does a body good.

3. The lovely eye-candy that is the sweaty, shirtless men, working hard to give me a back yard. I know, so sexist of me, but WHATEVS...

4. Two-step oatmeal muffins that the kids can essentially make themselves and the ensuing house that smells like fresh baking.

5. Day Three of Natural Zen Mama. No yelling, no screaming, actively listening and stopping the busy-ness to just play.

6. Being photographed and photo-bombed by our children!

I need to get to bed before midnight. My mind and my body both need rest.

Goodnight all,

natasha~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is Day 21 of the Summer Blog Challenge!

10 Days left!

Go see what everyone else has been up to today.

Zita at The Dulock Diaries.

Meaghan at MagzD Life

April at This Mom’s Got Something to Say

Aramelle at One Wheeler’s World

 Jessica at 2plus2X2

and Liam at In the Now