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.

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”.

Why should I read this? March 14, 2010

On Friday mornings I take the kids to the library.  I put AJ in the stroller as I peruse the new books.  After a minute of this Robin is whining, and AJ is thrashing around so hard I worry if he’s going to flip the stroller.  I grab wildly at any title that looks interesting and stuff it in my bag.  Ignoring the glare of our intimidating 6′ 2″  librarian, we head over to the children’s section.  I let AJ out to roam and he grabs 5 books off the shelf and stuffs them in the bag, then heads off to the water fountain.  As I try to boost him up to get a drink, Robin insists “I want to get an Angelina Ballerina book!”, as she has done every week for the last year and a half.   I direct her to the Angelina books and she starts flipping through them.  I distract AJ from the water and settle him down to do a puzzle.  I use my moment of quiet to grab a few higher quality children’s books.  By now AJ is getting antsy and I we need to leave before he starts racing around the stacks and dumping out the books.  We brave the librarian’s evil eye to check out the books and breathe a sigh of relief when we walk out the door.  Upon arriving at home, the first thing the kids do is to each grab a book and run to me yelling “Mommy, read this!”   We settle down on the couch and start to read.  I’d like to share what we learn with you in this blog.