Bearing-Erin wrote a fun post about how her former crunchy self and her current crunchy self align, and I've been thinking about it this weekend. I had very strong opinions about the right way to do things when I was expecting my first child, and I fear my 1996 self would not entirely approve of my 2011 self. My 2011 self thinks my 1996 self was perhaps a wee bit uptight.
Still Crunchy
- Long-haul breastfeeding
- No commercial baby food -- baby-friendly table food instead
- Co-sleeping. (Stella sleeps alone until she wakes up, and co-sleeps thereafter.)
- Babywearing
- NFP (ditto what Erin said)
Even Crunchier
- I've learned a lot about gentle discipline since 1996. My kids know that I expect to be listened to, and I know not to flip out if they need to be reminded. Mostly.
- Homebirth FTW. No placentophagy, though.
- I grow (some of) my own veggies and herbs.
- I have a little compost heap.
- We can afford to buy some organic food and humanely raised eggs now.
Decrunchified And Okay With It
- Farewell, homeschooling.
- Cloth:disposable diaper ratio runs about 20:1 right now.
- My 2yo goes to preschool (a lovely, lovely preschool where kindness reigns and where she loves to be, but 1996 me would have been appalled).
- The reason she goes to preschool is that I work part-time.
- I'm thinking about applying for a full-time job for next year. (1996 Jamie frantically attempts to ward off the evil eye. 1996 Jamie had drunk deeply of the Kippley Kool-Aid, which drew a straight line between maternal employment and teen suicide.)
- I use the childcare room at the gym. And on Wednesday? I went to pick up Stella and she said she'd like to stay longer. 1996 Jamie would have seen this as a certain sign of bonding failure.
Borrowing Erin's Classification of Theoretically Committed, But No Longer Able To Figure Out How To Do It, Ergo Constant Feelings of Inadequacy
- "No TV or videos for kids under six" -- if you had told me that in 2011 my 2yo would routinely spend more time in an evening watching videos than being read to, I might have thought my future self should be shot before she could head down such a path of destruction.
- "We don't eat that much sugar or packaged food" -- I used to look upon breakfast cereal with scorn, and now my kids eat it ~4 days/week. For about a 2-year stretch my pantry contained no white flour, no white rice, no white sugar -- now, not so much. On the upside, I cook a lot more veggies than I did in 1996.
I think I am happier as a mother now that I'm not so worried about living up to somebody else's standards. I think a lot (A LOT) about the employment question. But-- I love my job. My kids are generally happy in school and at home. The house is not very tidy, but then it wasn't very tidy in 1996 either.
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