TV-free series: How we ditched the TV April 25, 2011

Growing up, I watched lots of TV.  I would turn it on when I got home from school, and keep it on until I went to bed.  The exception was in the summer.  I was lucky enough to attend a fabulous sleepaway summer camp from the time I was 6 until I was 18, and would spend the whole summer in the woods without a TV.   Coming home from camp, it would always take a few days to “catch up” with whatever new music, shows, etc. that I had missed over the summer.  When I met my husband shortly after college, he didn’t have a TV in his apartment.  I was amazed.  He was just too frugal to buy a set and pay for cable.  When we moved in together, he was happy to watch my TV.  Then we started down our parenting road fairly normally.  Robin and I spent many of  her early days nursing and watching reruns of Dawson’s Creek in the mornings, Oprah in the afternoon, and the Simpsons when my husband came home from work.  Robin even had her own Baby Einstein DVD to watch.  Shortly after Robin turned a year old, I was introduced to the book Last Child in the Woods.  After reading the book and doing a lot of thinking and soul searching, I decided I didn’t like the influence the TV had on myself or my family.  I didn’t like that it was distracting me from my baby.  I griped about the TV to my husband.  He took action and decided to unplug it and move it to our basement storage room.  We never plugged it back in.  The TV sat in storage for over a year before I realized that it was not going to be a part of our lives anymore and I was able to let it go.  I posted it on Freecycle and a nice lady came and took it away forever.

Too many books February 5, 2011

A couple of days ago, we were having a quiet afternoon at home.  I had just received my copy of Cinderella Ate My Daughter in the mail and was curled up on the couch with it.  The kids were quietly playing “Library” upstairs.  They occasionally brought down books they said they had checked out for me, and I didn’t pay too much attention to it.  Then I noticed Robin bringing up a handful of books from the bookshelf in the basement.  I decided I’d better check out the situation.  It turns out they had emptied the majority of AJ’s bookshelf, Robin’s bookshelf, the upstairs bookshelf, and the basement bookshelf and dumped them all into AJ’s room in a heap.  Thank goodness they hadn’t gotten into the big bookshelf in the living room.  After a lecture about how it was not a good game, the kids and I started cleaning up.  AJ was making trouble and kept dumping the books we had taken out back into the room.  Finally I had to have Robin distract him with a game so I could make any headway on the mess.  It took me about an hour to sort through everything and get them back in the right bookshelves.

As I sorted through the massive pile of books, it occurred to me that it just might be possible to have too many books.  So, as I put books back, I created my own large stack of books to sell to the used bookstore.  It was as if my kids had unknowingly staged an intervention for my bookaholic self.  In Simplicity Parenting Kim John Payne suggests having only two books available to a child at any given time.  When I read it, I immediately dismissed the idea.  Having more books is always a good thing, right?  It’s time to rethink that idea.  I’m not sure that I can be as extreme as limiting the kids to two books each, but I can see the case for having fewer books.  I think it’s time to make a rule for myself.  For every book that comes into the house, one needs to go out.  I also need to limit myself to using the library and not buying books.  Typically if I can’t find what I want at the local library, I’ll just buy it.  But, I know that if I just make the effort to get an interlibrary loan, I can get pretty much any book I could ever want.

January books February 3, 2011

I’m trying to track the books I’ve been reading:

Cinderella Ate my Daughter

While most of the information in this book was nothing new to me, Peggy Orenstein did a fabulous job of discussing the current culture surrounding preschool girls.   She used her viewpoint as a mom to make the book easy to relate to.  A more useful book if you’re looking for research and suggestions is So Sexy So Soon.

Connected

I found Connected to be inspiring about the effect we can have on our friends, family, and acquaintances.  It made concrete the suspicions that I had about what influences do flow through a network.  It will make me be more thoughtful in how I present myself, knowing that it can affect those around me.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time

This is the story of a teenage boy dealing with Asperger’s.  It’s a quick read and was different that anything else I’ve seen out there.   I was interested in reading more about Asperger’s, and found this book, because it was fictional, did not give me the insight that I wanted.

Parallel Play: Growing Up with Undiagnosed Asperger’s

The story of a man with a passion for music making his way through life.  This gave me far more insight into Asperger’s than anything else I’ve read.  The book doesn’t really focus on that, but the undertones are always there.

The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding our Families

Although this was written back when I was a teenager, I found it still quite relevant to my own family.  The main point that I found useful is that families today must work to shield children from the junk culture that they are surrounded by.

Kindergarten, Princesses, and Scooby-Doo January 11, 2011

Robin is starting to notice some differences between herself and the other girls in kindergarten.  Back at Halloween, she noticed that “All the girls dressed up as princesses, and all the boys dressed up as characters from Star Wars”.  I asked her if she liked princesses, and she said, “Not so much.  All the other girls really like princesses.”  This week she came home and announced that there was another thing that all the girls liked, and it was Scooby-Doo.  She said that she doesn’t like it because it is too scary.  It turns out that they watched Scooby-Doo in school, or else I don’t think she would have known what it was.  Why were they watching Scooby-Doo in school?  I don’t know.

I feel like I’m walking a fine line here.  On one side, I want to protect Robin from the media influences.  On the other side, I want her to be able to fit in with, and relate to her peers, who are heavily influenced by the media.  How much media exposure does she need to fit in with her peer group?  How much of the consumer culture will be transmitted to her through her peers?  So much is learned at school, and the stated curriculum is such a small part of that.

Salad with dinner every night January 8, 2011

Who has time to make a salad these days?  I usually have AJ clinging to my legs when he’s not fighting with Robin while I cook dinner.  So I need a super quick salad assembly method.  Here’s what I’ve worked out over the past year few months.  I buy pre-washed spinach (lasts longer than lettuce), shredded carrots, cherry tomatoes, and crushed walnuts (find these in the baking aisle) at the store.  There is no chopping involved.  I wash the cherry tomatoes the first day I get them from the store, then can just grab them as needed after that.  For awhile I had Robin making the salad for dinner every night, but then she decided she’d rather just set the table.  The point however, is that a 5 year old can do this.  I keep all the ingredients together, even putting the walnuts in the fridge.  Then I can grab it all in one handful, throw everything in a bowl, and salad is ready in under 5 minutes.   The kids do best with this salad, because it’s the exact same every night (unless I substitute sunflower seeds for walnuts).  They’ve grown accustomed to it, which means they will actually eat it.  This is not the most environmentally friendly, or even the best tasting salad, just the most efficient that I’ve found.  It’s worth a try if you want to make a salad part of your routine.

My minimalist workout December 21, 2010

The cold winter days have set in, and the candy canes and Christmas cookies are coming at me from every direction.  I’ve been trying to watch my weight, but how to do it in the winter?  During fair weather I enjoy running and biking with the kids.  When the weather dips below about 40 F, I don’t like to strap AJ into the stroller, it’s too cold for him to sit there with the wind in his face.  I’ve been searching for a way to workout.  I don’t want to spend the money on exercise equipment, and don’t have the room in my house to store it.  A gym membership is expensive, and I would have to find a place that has childcare.   A gym would also mean that to workout, I’d have to get the kids dressed, in the car, dropped off at the childcare room, then go workout, come back and get the kids, and pack them into the car again.  And manage to do this around their school/nap schedules.  So that’s not a great option for me.  I finally decided to work with materials I have around the house and make my own indoor exercise routine.  No fancy exercise machines, no gym membership, no worries.   I found that I have on hand a yoga mat, a small set of dumbbells, and a jump rope.  I’ve come up with a routine where I run up and down the staircase 3 times, then do some sit-ups and yoga moves on the yoga mat.  Then up and down the staircase 3 more times, and then a workout with the weights.  Then 3 times more up the stairs, then some calisthenics, and jumping rope 100 times.  It’s not anything special, but it just proved to me that it is possible to get exercise without buying more stuff.  And that’s fabulous.

Another way to get exercise in winter is just take advantage of exercise opportunities throughout the day.  If I’m at the mall, I can do a couple of laps of mall walking before I shop.  If it snows,  I shovel the driveway.  I dance with my kids and chase them around the house.  I occasionally brave the cold and go for a run or a hike.  I can do housework, there is always something that needs cleaning.  All these things add up, and I find that lots of times, I’ve gotten enough exercise without ever spending time on a “workout”.

Food in America November 15, 2010

My family was  on vacation last week and had the opportunity to stop by Lambert’s Cafe.  If you haven’t heard of them, they are famous for throwed rolls.  They have a server roaming around with a cart of rolls, and if you want one, he’ll throw it to you.  Following him is another server with sorghum and molasses.  Then another server came by with a huge container of fried okra.  And they just kept circulating.  They are also famous for having huge portion sizes.  Their menu boasts that they “threw in the whole  garden” for their salad, and that looks accurate from what I could see.  It was served in a bread bowl that was easily bigger than my head.  The drinks were served in oversized mugs that I couldn’t even estimate the amount of liquid they held.  This is an example of food gone wild.  Obviously, this isn’t the sort of place that one would visit regularly.  Instead, it serves as a reference point.  The next time I visit a restaurant with oversized portions, I’m likely to think back to Lambert’s and compare.  When I think “this is too much food, but at least it’s not as big as Lambert’s”, I’ll be lead to think that what I have isn’t so big, and eat it all.  And, the idea of portion sizes will continue to grow.

All in all, the kids loved the place and my husband and I enjoyed the visit as well.

Sarah Garland picture books May 24, 2010

We’ve been reading through a series of books by Sarah Garland.  So far, we’ve read Doing the Garden, Going Swimming, and Going Shopping.  These books are at the right level for a toddler, and two year old AJ loves them.  So does my 4 year old Robin, making them a fantastic find for our family.  The stories all chronicle common activities in the life of a mom and her toddler son, and older daughter.  The text is simple enough for young toddlers.  The images tell the story and are true to life.  I think my kids can relate to the kids in the stories.  We look forward to reading more of this series.

Library Lil May 5, 2010

Steven Kellogg is one of our family’s favorite illustrators.  So when I saw that he had illustrated Library Lil I had to check it out.  The artwork is top quality.  The story is too.  This tall tale features the heroine Library Lil who can lift an entire set of encyclopedias with one hand, and that’s not all she can do.  She’s anything but the stereotypical librarian.  She thinks TV is “the devil’s invention” and is out to get everyone away from the tube and reading books.  The target age is a bit older than my 4 year old Robin, but that didn’t bother her a bit!  She says simply “I really like this one!”.

The Big Turnoff: Confessions of a TV-Addicted Mom Trying to Raise a TV-Free Kid April 9, 2010

The Big Turnoff is the story of author Ellen Currey-Wilson trying to raise her child TV-free.  The problem is, she’s having problems giving up the TV for herself.  As a new mom with a fussy baby, she’s having enough trouble navigating mom’s groups, birthday parties, and the social scene at her son’s school.  Her insecurities get in her way, as does her critical view of the world.  Her approach to TV is a bit extreme, and she tends to go overboard in the things that she does.  However, this is a light, humorous read for anyone who questions whether TV is good for their child.   It’s a quick read, I was able to read it in just two nights with AJ on my lap, and have re-read 5 times since then.