**This is a post from my Art of Homemaking blog...I will be posting more there..you should follow me at that one too!

The wind is blowing. I can hear it as it whistles past the building I sit in and I watch the tips of the pines outside bending and swaying. It is also raining, a chill patter fueling the steady dripping of the roof that adds a rhythmic counterpoint to the winds howls. Two days ago it was snowing. And not just a little, but two and half feet that buried the horses, the fences, and many people's cars. Before that we had a day that was sunny and almost fifty. A day that made spring sing in people's hearts and the river's ice break apart and flow in one of nature's great spectacles.

I never meant to stay here. I moved to the Adirondacks for love or so I told myself. Following a boyfriend to the wilderness for no other reason than I was bored with what life was offering me at the moment. Tired of the sometimes glitzy, but mostly gritty backside of the racehorse industry and the emptiness of Florida nightlife, and impatient with cooling my heels in Western Massachusetts with my family, I was looking for a different path. A year was what I gave myself. I would try the mountains and the relationship for a year.

Life sometimes fools us and the boyfriend became a husband and the year turned into three than five and finally eight. My daughter was born not in the comfortable and familiar surroundings of Western Massachusetts in a perfectly planned homebirth, but in a small hospital in the middle of nowhere as I watched ice fisherman patiently watching their holes. That winter with a newborn was no longer than any other Adirondack winter, although maybe it felt it. Both Eowyn and I longed for the sun by the time it was done.

And now we have decided to stay here. We will make our home in this land that is so unpredictable, with sun then snow then rain. The growing season 40 minutes off of the mountain where we live is 100 days. As I look to planning my garden and starting my seeds I wonder what the actual growing season is here, at this elevation. 90 days? 80 days? In my experience so far, not long enough to turn my green tomatoes red. I admit to longing for Massachusetts where it feels like you just drop a seed in the soil and reap the bountiful harvest. I know it is not this simple, but sustaining a garden here sometimes feels like a climb up Everest itself. But I am committed. Both to making a good, sustainable life for my family here in the mountaintops, and also to figuring out how to ripen my tomatoes.

Sometimes the wind blows us far from where we thought we would be. Sometimes it blows us where we have the most to learn. I will slowly learn the walk to the beat of the different seasons here. My garden will flourish as I slowly learn when to start things and when to plant and what grows best in such inhospitable conditions. And I assure you I will have red tomatoes, maybe not this year or maybe not in three years, but definately by eight.

Perfection...or Not

The drive to be perfect is strong in some people...kind of like the Force. Some mothers want to present to the world the perfectly behaved child, the perfectly clean house, the perfect, happy marriage. I watch them worry about their curtains, the type of car they drive, and what they and their children are wearing. I am no longer one of these people. But I used to be. I cared so much about what other people thought. I worried about how to define myself...mother, horse rider, librarian....what exactly was I to other people? What do they think of me? I am starting to learn to not worry about who I look like to others or how they define me. What is important is how I define myself to myself. With this realization perfection has become less important in life.

So I am here to admit that my house always borders on chaos. And quite frankly I really don't mind. I am in the process of minimizing to make the house cleaning easier, but it doesn't matter to me anymore how fast it gets done. At some point in the future I will get rid of those useless items, but when is no longer important. I can only achieve so much in a given day. So if you come to my house and the rug needs vacuuming and there are dishes in the sink you will have to deal with it. At least my house is filled with love along with the mess.

My marriage is as chaotic as my house. I am not afraid to say it. We are a true partnership and all of those have bumps and not so pretty moments. We fight rarely, but misunderstandings abound. We try and talk them out, but sometimes someone loses their temper or pouts. I use to think I needed to change all this so we were in perfect accord every moment of every day. What would Eowyn think to grow up seeing her parents disagree? But I realized we are not perfect and she will have to learn that. But she also will see love and respect and a hell of a lot of laughter. She will see that two people can love each other and argue and that they can work through it. She will learn to admire a healthy relationship with give and take that has no need to present a perfect facade to the world. Who needs perfect when you have wonderfully flawed?

I will also admit to not having a perfectly behaved infant. Eowyn is wonderful exactly because I let her be herself. I am not a perfect mother. I have flaws. Maybe I should care more about where she is in her cognitive development. Perhaps, I should be doing things to help her physical, mental, and emotional enrichment, but honestly I don't. I just enjoy her. I play with her. I accidentally let her bump her head too hard. Sometimes I cannot figure out why she is crying even if it is something obvious. Occasionally, I wish she would just go away so I could meditate or ride or read a book. Eowyn is Eowyn, not perfect, but magnificent all the same. She is joyfully loud in public places. I have given up being embarrassed and instead I am enjoying her love of the world. She fights naps and gets cranky. I am enjoying long walks to help her to sleep. She makes the hugest mess you will ever see while eating. I really don't care if her clothes get food on them or something gets on the floor. She has a thousand tiny habits both endearing and frustrating. Mistakes are made everyday, but I am realizing it does not matter much as long as she is loved. I am not a perfect mother, but I am a real one.

So I am calling out to all people, especially mothers, to let go of that search for perfection. Instead of running around trying to produce the perfect clean house, the perfect meal, the perfect child, throw down the dust rag and go outside and play in the dirt. Life cannot be controlled, dishes have a way of piling up, and your kids are only kids for so long. Go hug your husband and realize it doesn't really matter if his laundry is on the floor as long as he makes you laugh. Practice the art of doing nothing and perfection be damned! Because in the end all that perfection is an attempt to define yourself to other people. To present a face to the world that you think is acceptable and then hide behind it. I refuse to be defined by other people anymore. I will teach my daughter to be divinely flawed and to follow her bliss and let the dust bunnies pile up while she is at it! Life is not perfect, go embrace it.

Let Them Eat Grass!!

It has been awhile since I have posted. There is actually a wonderful reason for this. We did the best thing for a family that wants to appreciate nature and be more environmentally sound, we went and lived in a rustic cabin for the summer. This meant no television, no internet, no clothes dryer. It meant spending time together instead of spending time in the same room while one or both of the adults stared at an Iphone, a computer, or some other gadget. And for our beautiful Eowyn, who is now seven months old, it meant a summer of amazing experiences.

There is nothing like watching your child start to really interact with the world. As any mother knows, the age around six months is just incredibly exciting. They learn to sit, they talk up a storm, they start having interactive play, and they learn how to move themselves from place to place. Eowyn did all these things while we were hiding from the real world. She talks up a storm to anyone who will listen, she sits up by herself, she hands me things and then wants them back, she shakes her rattles in time with me, and she moves. A mixture of crawling, rolling, scooting, and what Zack and I have affectionately termed flumping gets her where she wants to go. Flumping, of course, is a push up where at the apex of up she thrusts herself forward by her legs and nose dives toward the floor. Awkward and sometimes painful it still results in quite a bit of forward movement, which is all she wants right now. And most of all she spent the greater part of her summer outside.

And this, I think, is the best way to foster a love of the world in any child. Get them out in it! Eowyn rolled around in the dirt and she sat on horses and chewed their manes while giggling excitedly. She also went for walks to see the sheep, the dogs, and anything else that caught her fancy. She helped hang clothes out on the line to dry which she enjoyed quite a bit although it certainly did not make it go any faster for the person hanging the clothes! And scariest of all for some parents is that she experienced her world tactilely. Yes, this means she ate grass. She not only ate it, but joyfully smeared it all over herself, threw it in the air, and offered some to anyone passing by her. And she did not die. In fact, she didn't even get sick. I didn't try to keep her on a freshly laundered, pristine blanket all the time. While I taught riding lesson she sat and tasted her world. And she loved it! Sure, she occasionally actually swallowed a small bit of grass. And yes, it is true that she did not avoid getting a few random bug bites. But seeing the absolute joy on her face as she explored was worth it. The dogs always kept her good company, happily laying or rolling in that same grass that Eowyn was shoving in her mouth by the fistful. I have rarely experienced the contentment that came with watching my daughter love nature even at her young age. So my advice is get outside with your baby, child, loved one and really experience the world. Get away from the internet and other gadgets. And most of all, let them eat grass. It rarely hurts them and the joy that they get from truly being in nature and not just looking at it will awe you.

Hope

So here I am writing again finally. Eowyn has turned four months old and I realized that the time has slipped away so easily. It is good that my daughter is so wonderful, as during my time away from the blog so many awful things have happened. An uncontrolled oil spill is ruining multiple fragile ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico and the Yellowstone Bison are being harrassed in the name of big business cattle interests. Everywhere you look in the news ( which I try not to do too often) there are tales of woe politically, environmentally, and socially. It is enough to make one wonder why I bothered to have a child at all with the world the way it is today. It seems that we as a race are determined to self destruct and take everything we can with us.
Yet there is still hope. It can be found out in the woods and fields. To celebrate Eowyn's four month old birthday we hiked up Cobble Mountain for the first time. It was just the two of us and three very happy dogs. Everywhere I looked signs of renewal where sprouting. From the Painted Trilliums and Trout Lillies, to the leaves unfurling of off branches long bare, the whole world seemed to be waking up. Eowyn laughed and burbled and touched all the leaves and branches she could grab, totally enamored with the world around her. We stopped and smelled the flowers as the dogs frolicked and harassed the local squirrels and chipmunks. She thought that was just spectacular! Eowyn's obvious and complete love for the world around her gave me hope.
And that, my friends, is one of the most important things we have to do for ourselves and the future. We must encourage the next generation to keep that instinctive love of the world. And we have to help them figure out how to save it. But if our children continue to grow up and lose that wonder for the natural, if they fall into the trap we have fallen into with profit, materialism, and consumerism as the idols we worship then who knows what the future holds for our species and all the others that share this planet. So I am dedicating my next few blogs to ideas on how we can nurture that instinctive love and wonder of nature in our children as they integrate into mainstream society. I will brainstorm how we can better our own lives so that we give a good example to our children as they grow. Because it is there. All we need to save the world is there in the ecstatic smile of a baby as she touches her first flower.

Back to the Grind

So today is the official end of my maternity leave. I cannot begin to explain the emotions that this causes as I look at Eowyn, happily burbling to her pal Chester the horse, as she sits next to me. On the surface, I know I should feel lucky. I have managed to tweak our life so that I am only going back part time. Today, I only have to perform dorm duty and that does not even start until 5:15 tonight. And after that I only have to work in the library on Thursdays and Fridays. But still I have this sinking in my heart. I am lucky, I just have to keep telling myself that. But I don't really believe it. Because no matter how little time I have to spend away from Eowyn, it is still time that I will never get back. Every smile that I miss is one I will never see. And every diaper change I am not here for is a missed chance to interact with my daughter and deepen our bond. I may miss milestones like her first real out loud laugh, or her first time turning over. I cannot rewind and be there for those things once I have missed them. I never thought I would want to be a stay at home Mum. All I could think was how boring that must be and how I could never do it. But I was wrong. There is nothing more special and time consuming than watching and helping your baby grow. It reminds you of the wonder of life and the simplicity of what we need to really survive. Sure, some days are frustrating and tiring, but the rewards outweigh those days by a hundred fold. So in some ways I am lucky and in some ways I am desperately trying to figure out how we could survive if I didn't work for awhile, at all. Because as I return to the grind, even part time, I am aware with every fiber of my being what I am going to be missing. I am going to be missing moments of life and love and laughter just to make a few bucks. Maybe neither my daughter or I want to settle for that.

Greening the Baby

So one of the things I struggle with is how to be green while raising a child. I think anyone who is environmentally minded and has children faces this dilemma.Because children have a lot of stuff. A lot of it comes from China. And unfortunately they outgrow their stuff at a rapid rate. So here is a list of strategies I have used and am using to try and green our child.

1. We use cloth diapers. This allows us to not fill landfills with disposables that take hundreds of years to break down. It is easy to do and I actually enjoy it. These days there are so many options that I think there is a cloth diapering system for everyone. If you are dedicated to disposables look into chlorine free diapers like Seventh Generation. But cloth is the cheapest and best way to go in my opinion.
2. In that vein, I had a winter baby, so I use an indoor drying rack and only put my diapers in the dryer for a short time to get the water out. I hang them to dry the rest of the way. When summer comes I am going to line dry them all the way, outside, no dryer needed. I also pre-wash them by hand to limit the cycles I have to use on the washer.
3. When I buy something for Eowyn, I buy less but better quality. I try to find organic clothes that were made in the U.S. or at least closer than China. I buy organic, local made natural toys of wood and cloth. Sure they are more expensive, but really how many outfits and toys does she need anyway.
4. I encourage people who want to buy us stuff to do the same, but I use whatever they do buy. If they bought it, it is a waste to not use it. Anything I really cannot bring myself to use goes to a local thrift store to be used by someone else with different tastes.
5. Hand Me Downs. I try and get everything I can second hand from family, friends, or a thrift store. It saves money and reusing stuff is always a good environmental move.
6. Breastfeeding. I know this sounds strange, but it is environmental. We don't need bottles and storage containers and formula containing who knows what, made who knows where. Her food travels with me easily, relieving me of yet another bag full of stuff. And it is healthier for me and for her. I love breastfeeding!
7. Babywearing. Okay this one is maybe a little silly, but it saves us from consuming all kinds of strollers and chairs and bouncy things. I have a piece of cloth called the Moby Wrap. I put her in it to walk, hang out, dance, settle her when she is fussy, and anytime I don't know what to do with her. It works like a charm and is way easier to transport than a stroller. I do have a jogging stroller. It was a wonderful hand me down gift from my lovely Aunt and it does come in handy for jogging, the one thing I am not comfortable doing in my baby carriers. I also have one chair/seat thing, another generous hand me down from a good friend. We use it sometimes to eat and when she has a stuffy nose she likes to sleep in it.

So there are some easy, simple, and sometimes cheap ways to be a little more environmentally minded with a little one. The best advice I received though is don't be a consumer. Eowyn wants attention, love, and care. She does not need a ton of other stuff that takes resources to make and has to be shipped to your home using even more resources. Think twice about what you buy and where you buy it. I am sure I will have many more ideas on greening the baby as she grows and I will be sure to let you know!

Simplicity

Eowyn has many things to teach me. I believe that I am going to spend the rest of my life learning from her. It is a mistake to think parents teach children, when really the relationship is much more reciprocal than that. In fact, if we learned more from our children perhaps we would be better people as adults.
The most important lesson I am learning from my beautiful daughter at this moment is simplicity. Simple, wonderful, simplicity. As we grow we have a tendency to complicate our lives so much. We collect things, we work hard to have money to collect things, we scurry around from task to task, and we often ignore the important things in life both physically and emotionally. Eowyn asks for nothing but the most basic of needs. Feed me and love me. Certainly she needs some other things to survive like clothing. But what I have realized is she doesn't care if she has one outfit or twenty. She doesn't care what color or style the clothing is as long as keeps her warm when she is cold or cool when she is hot. And her amusements are simple. Think about it. Her favorite thing to do is look into her parents faces and smile. What would the world be like if we were all so happy just looking at each other and smiling? If our faces are not available she is almost as happy to stare at a plant or a dog or the sun shining on the floor. She doesn't need computers, television, toys of all sorts at all, although society might like to make us think that. She just needs the world around her to inspire awe, laughter, and tears.
I think adults complicate our lives emotionally as well. We often lie to ourselves and others, we bottle up emotions and problems, we put unreasonable expectations on each other, and carry around all sorts of other emotional baggage. Eowyn does none of this. If she is unhappy or has a problem, she lets us know. If she is happy she lets us know. She doesn't hold grudges if we have trouble figuring out what she needs. She loves fiercely and with all her little being. My goal in life is to live more like that. I want to need less toys and enjoy the world that surrounds me more. I want to deal honestly and openly with the human beings that I share this world with and let them know if I am happy or sad or any of the other million emotions. I think if I can follow the example of my child I can live a happy, more honest, more simple life.