This moment now

Woven through last week's New Year 2013 posts, a shared sentiment emerged among my momma blogger friends. In our own words we shared hope that the new year will bring opportunity for implementing, exercising, and appreciating greater peace and presence in the moments that make up every day. I sense it is an ideal we seek in order to create calm and to soothe our own anxieties, that if we can learn to be present we can somehow protect ourselves from the relative pain and suffering inherent to our role as mothers.

The built-in community that exists in this online space is part of what draws me to write here: validation and comfort knowing that my struggles are not mine alone. My experience is extraordinary to me because it is mine, but it is otherwise ordinary.

I feel what other mothers feel what I feel.

For me being present centers around conserving my energy. To feel deep stillness, joy, and appreciation in the moments that are perfection in the way I imagine it can be, but also when the opposite is true. That I can have greater clarity and awareness of my own needs. That I can be better tuned-in to this moment in order to meet my boys where they are and JUST BE, without judgement. Even if the moment is brief.

To feel the static of Merritt's wispy baby hair against my cheek or the pinching grip of his tiny fingers in my arms as he holds to me as we fervently dance across the hardwood floors.

To breathe in the sweet vinegar sweat left in Roscoe's damp hair after a good long nap.

To cut through the chaos of the 5 o'clock witching hour to meet eyes with Roscoe, raise my brow and elicit songs of peeling laughter. 

To accept with undivided attention his invitation to watch him move his cars to and fro, even when I feel I don't have time to stop moving forward my own weighty cargo.

Does fear drive my impulse to want to catalog in my mind the warm weight of his body in my arms, the pitch of his 3 year old voice, the cadence of their steps? We give everything to our children and yet there are no guarantees for their health or safety in this world. There are no assurances that when they reach adulthood they will love us, or feel loved by us, in the ways that we hope they will.

On the other hand, pining for the power and capacity to do it all, do it well, and to make the journey look easy-as-pie, all the while managing to avoid shifting into auto pilot, appears like fallout from the "parenting is a skill to be mastered" norm that constricts as it empowers the parenting of our generation.

Either way, I am motivated with intention to move through our daily rhythms with energy reserved only for what matters most. We know this is not forever, let's hold on tight to the good stuff so we can carry it with us into tomorrow. Save the stress, feelings of hurry, and anxiety about what comes next. Save the shame of not having been perfect in the past.

This moment right now is deserving.

This moment right now is enough. 

Happy New Year. It's 2013!

2012 was a pretty incredible year. It was full of adventure and the highlight was reconnecting with the people and places that matter most to us. We settled into our Richmond life after the big move at the end of 2011, and I focused the last half of the year on getting my birth work off the ground.

If 2011 was about establishing rhythm and routine, then 2012 was most definitely about settling in and finding joy.

For the upcoming year I'm not brimming with an ambitious to-do list. I'm feeling right at home and so full with all that I have right here in my lap. 

If anything, I want to keep a strong focus on the experiences and people that bring true pleasure and delight to my heart, which means that I need to continue to practice setting healthy boundaries for myself around work, and home, but especially in the relationships I share with those I love most.

This year I want to focus broadly on just six things in order to help guide my energy:
Writing, Marriage, Friendship, Work, Health, and Home.

WRITING

First, my writing is so very important to me. I regret shoving it to the side over the last 6 months, although the excitement and demands of building MamaBorn have rightfully taken much of my attention. I'm very excited to have the opportunity (a gift from a generous friend) to attend the Motherhood and Words writing retreat in Mid-February, and hope to take pure advantage of my blog here to share a more intimate portrait of life from my perspective and to experiment with new styles of writing as I continue to hone my craft. I am also looking forward to attending BlogHer '13 in Chicago come July.

MARRIAGE

Over the Summer, while walking with a girlfriend on a narrow path deep in the woods of Corolla, as we connected over our children and dreamt up elaborate plans for communal life (in another life), it dawned on me that the intention I devote to mothering is equally deserving for my marriage. The tides swept out sometime in the middle of last year and there we were, Andy and me, two people again. So we ran with it and prioritized date nights, bi-monthly maintenance therapy (highly recommend!), and made a more conscious effort to carve out time for each other when not in our respective parenting roles. After two back-to-back babies, we needed it, and we want more of it. So that is a definite for the upcoming year.

FRIENDSHIP

My need to nurture friendship and to lean on and learn from my girlfriends for encouragement and perspective seems greater now than ever before. With time we have become geographically removed from one another, which demands logistical planning and extra commitment to connect in person. As the boys are growing older and as their need for physical attachment wanes, I find myself with a lot of freedom for time and space away from home. I cherish the grounding effect that comes when I have the opportunity to connect deeply with people who understand me in the ways I need to be understood. I hope to regularly indulge myself in their love and acceptance all year long. Beyond the usual get-togethers, a few weekend getaways will be something to look forward to.

WORK

Over the Summer I transitioned my career from a programmatic role in public health to a birth educator and professional doula serving families in my community. My work now exists as a simple extension of who I am as a woman, mother, and lifelong learner. MamaBorn is everything I believe about birth and mothering and life, all rolled into one birth services concept that already feels like home sweet home. While frightening at times (I won't lie!), for me it has been an exercise in courage to follow my truth, and at the end of every day I'm left energized and affirmed knowing that I am right where I am meant to be! I'm excited to continue to grow my brand, advocating at the grassroots level for informed choice and birth rights, and especially to walk with women and their partners through the fragile and life changing event of birth. So inspired by life and birth I recently made a pact with a few close friends to delve into the world of ink. My first tattoo is on the books for 2013!

HOME 

Our home, our home. We are not loving the place in which we live at the moment. We're renting. We're busy. We're not all that invested in upkeep. We're feeling cramped for space. We have 8 months left on our lease. I'm under the impression that a few investments in comfort and convenience could go a long way as far as every day goes, not to mention the positive effects of yet another effort to declutter these tiny spaces! More interestingly, in a few months we will have to make a decision to either sign on for another year, or to look for a new place to live. Although living in the city has turned out to be pretty great for many reasons, we're ultimately craving more nature space and privacy. We've become increasingly unsettled about our living arrangement and it is because the way in which we are living (as lazy renters in a home not well designed for the way we would ideally use our living space) is out of sync with our core values. We spend a majority of our time in and around our home, it feels crazy not to be in love with it. We've continued to scout for properties to build on but haven't found anything near perfect. A change in attitude about our current place or a move to new digs on the other side of the river is in order.

HEALTH

This one has most to do with the food we eat. I want to continue on our path to eating good food from animals that led good lives, and to finesse our locavorism. Back in the Fall I committed to an 8-week Paleo Challenge that highlighted for me the benefits of eating a diet free from grains and sugar. I've found it more difficult to get on board with some of the other tenets of the philosophy, and have found that I favor more those supported by the Weston A. Price way of eating. All to say that implementing an eating philosophy that jives with our consumerism mentality in a way that still leaves me inspired and having fun feeding my family every day will be something to look forward to. With equal impact, exercise continues to be a daily source of positive energy. No pregnancies are planned for this year so I'm looking forward to becoming faster, stronger, and more mobile in the upcoming months. I haven't identified any concrete performance goals yet but last year I made huge gains in skill and strength and hope to continue the trend. I would like to run a race this year; another marathon would be a major training commitment so I'm thinking a half marathon might be a nice challenge. My post baby weight-loss saga continues, and to sum up my bottom line excerpted from a post I wrote earlier last year: "I have a desire to experience my life with my boys, through my body, feeling it all, and without regrets. I don't want to hide in this body. I want to live in it. And I want the freedom that comes with that." Pretty simple, I think. This year is the year.

I declare the theme of 2013 to be about feeling inner peace and living in the present as I center myself and nourish my mind and body in the best possible ways.

What are your plans?  

A post on cleaning rotations

We've been in our new house for almost 6 months now.  Already.

Cleaning has never made it very high on my list of to-dos, and it is my belief that there are plenty more important and enjoyable ways to spend my time and energy. Still, in a house as small (and old) as the one we currently live in, the messes just seem messier and lately we've been feeling that we'll never be able to keep ahead of the floor crumbs, and piles of dishes. The wood floors in the dining room see the most abuse (thanks to two fickle eaters) and the daily sweeping and scrubbing required is unreal at times.

I have a higher tolerance than Andy for general messes but even I have a limit.  We had a cleaning plan in place at our old house, and I had written an updated one a few months ago for our new place but never committed to implementing it. Feeling a little overwhelmed and in need of a restart, I hired a cleaning service to usher our home into Spring.

It was well worth the money and if I cared more, I might hire someone to come on a regular basis.

Instead I printed off the cleaning schedule that I made a while back and put a copy in my kitchen folio for easy reference.

I learned this system from Tsh at Steady Mom, who has blogged about the two different methods of cleaning just once a month, and cleaning rotations (completing one chore a day so that over the course of a month everything gets clean).

When it comes to chores, I favor taking one small step every day. To begin, I considered every room in the house and made a list of the essential elements to be cleaned on a regular basis.  Then I figured out how frequently each chore needed to be completed in order to keep the house in a "clean-enough-for-me" state.

Next, I divvied up all the items so that the heavy stuff was well distributed across the four weeks (I don't want to clean the stove, the microwave, and the fridge in the same week!), and so that the schedule made sense (if a chore needs to be done twice a month, I schedule it in complimentary weeks 1 and 3, not 3 and 4).

There are some chores that we do on an as needed basis, like sweeping the wood floors, which we left off the list altogether. We usually sweep more than once a day, and I can't wait for the chore list to tell me it's time. When there are crumbs and table food underfoot, it's time to sweep!

Also, I think it's nice if each week's list can be kept to 5 items so that the weekend is chore-less, but for now our chore rotation looks like this:

Week One:
Wash floors in dining room
Vacuum living room area rug and kid's carpet
Bathroom mirrors and glass in front and back doors
Stove top
Kid laundry
Kitchen countertops and appliances
Bed sheets

Week Two:
Wash floors in dining room
Vacuum living room area rug and kid's carpet
Bathroom sinks and floors
Stove top
Kid laundry
Microwave
Organize the kid's rooms

Week Three:
Wash floors in dining room
Vacuum living room area rug and kid's carpet
Bathroom mirrors and glass in front and back doors
Stove top
Kid laundry
Fridge surfaces
Bed sheets

Week Four:
Wash floors in dining room
Vacuum living room area rug and kid's carpet
Bathroom sinks and floors
Stove top
Kid laundry
Microwave
Wipe down furniture surfaces

Andy's responsible for changing the cat litter every week, and for washing the dishes every night.  Once a month he scrubs the tubs--or at least that is how this whole rotation thing is supposed to work!

I really need to be better about cleaning as I go, but that's a goal for another day!

How do you keep your house clean? Do you have a routine that works?

The 9 Basic Needs

In the same spirit as our Family Mission Statement and Family Rules, I want to share an exercise that we completed to redefine our basic needs.

Perhaps like many of you on the journey to your best life I've been striving to "simplify". To  do away with the clutter that threatens clarity and that steals my time and energy.  Whether the clutter is literal stuff filling up the space that we live in and work, empty or superficial relationships, processed and factory farmed foods, or busy routines that leave us exhausted and wanting. We aim to experience more of the good stuff in life and pursue as priorities only that which brings more joy and meaning to every day. 

One step to gaining clarity is to distinguish our needs from our wants. When asked to define my basic needs, I had only ever considered the literal basics of food, shelter, and water, which wasn't very inspiring. Of course we need those, and we have them. So what now?

Andrea from Frugally Sustainable wrote a blog post Redefining our Wants Versus our Needs as part of the 23 Day Frugal Living Challenge series that she created. In the post she paraphrases Donella Meadows from her book Beyond the Limits, and shares examples of how we might reframe what we really need.

• You don’t need a bigger house or car, you need respect.
• You don’t need the newest cosmetics, you need to feel attractive.
• You don’t need a closet full of clothes, your need variety and beauty.
• You don’t need electronics (i.e. TV’s, gaming systems, stuff with apple logos, etc.), you need something worthwhile to do with your life.
• You don't need material things, you need identity, community, challenge, acknowledgement, love, and joy.

She goes on to ask, Could it be that our longing to feel satisfied is leading us to all the wrong places? Through all of time and in all cultures these needs are universal:

food 

clean water

shelter from the elements

intimate relationships

participation in a community

recreation/leisure

the ability to create

insight into self

freedom

I considered these nine basic human needs and wondered how the list might translate to my own life.  What would it look like for Andy?

We spent some time expanding each category to encompass our values and interests. I focused especially on the Intimate Relationships category and defined in detail, by name, the individuals that I want to comprise my tribe. I omitted the full list here, but paring down my social connections was necessary and the result is that the small amount of time that I have to share with others is directed at those relationships that I really care to invest in.

Here it is, our version of the 9 basic needs (my content is above the line, Andy's below):

Simple, right?  Obvious, maybe. What I love about our list though, is that the 9 basic human needs serve as a compass when we're given an opportunity to make an investment of time or money. These items we identified are what bring authentic happiness to our lives. These are the elements that are truly worth spending our money on.  It helps us to know how best to allocate our time.

And it really does work. How would you redefine your 9 Basic Needs?

Family Mission Statement

I haven't shared my extensive list of New Year to-do's for 2012, but one of my favorite items so far has been to complete a series of exploratory writing exercises from which we have developed our Family Rules, Family Needs (I'll share more on this in another post), and Family Mission Statement. 

Whether you seek daily clarity or long-range guidance, a mission statement is such a great place to start.

To begin, I pulled content from our Family Values and Family Needs documents, and also took inspiration from Simple Mom who has a really helpful post on the how-to's of developing a family mission statement. 

To reflect on who we are collectively and as individuals, what our dreams are made of, where our priorities lie, and to define what we believe is our family's purpose--to each other and in the greater context of what we believe is the purpose of life--what we value, and how we aspire to live, brings tremendous insight to my responsibility of guiding our family into the future.  

  

Our mission statement unites the four of us and declares our intention to be true to ourselves as we move through life together. 

I love that our mission statement applies as much now to our young family of four, as it might ten years down the road to our future family of six (or more!). Timeless. Yet we are at liberty to refine it as we grow and change. 

Have you developed a mission statement for your family?

UPDATE: This document has been refined and revised over the years, for the newest version please click here. 

Family Rules

Establishing Family Rules seems to be a popular exercise right now.  I liked the idea of thoughtfully crafting and displaying a set of phrases that capture the essence of our philosophy.

After taking a look at many versions (and borrowing from them some phrases that I really liked), I spent some time one morning to develop my ideas--it may be a work in progress, although what I came up with really resonates. It was a meaningful exercise for the start of 2012.

Perhaps our list will inspire you to think about (and even write down)  the values and ideals that are paramount to the way that you live your life and for which you aspire your children to live theirs.