Becoming Crunchy

Woohoo! Getting all caught up on my Mamatography this week!

I’m loving having all these picture to look back on and so looking forward to pulling them all together at the end of the year.

Bean has been growing by leaps and bounds in so many ways…it’s easy to feel she’s slipping from my grasp faster than I can hold on. It’s so great to have these pictures to remind me of things like her absolute joy in going on walks, the fun she has with our pets, and all the little games she initiates on her own.

Now I just need to get some recordings of her singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Ring Around the Rosie…

In the meantime, here are our pictures from Week 6!

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Posted in Mamatography 2012, Wordless | Tags: Becoming Crunchy, Crunchy, Diary of a First Child, mamatography, Mamatography 2012 | 3 Comments »

Welcome to the February 2012 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Respectful Interactions With Other Parents

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have focused on how we can communicate with other parents compassionately.

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“The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don’t know.”

This quote is one of the central ideas of the book The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver; it is a statement made by artist Frida Kahlo to fictional protagonist Harrison Shepherd, following a mutual revelation of previously undisclosed tragedy to one another together with the realization that both had judged the other wrongly.

The idea continues as a theme throughout the book and is one of the meanings of the word “lacuna” - a gap or missing piece of the story.

Shepherd ultimately becomes a famous author during the infamous McCarthy era in the US - first judged wrongly by most everyone who fawns over him, and finally judged even more harshly when the tide of public opinion turns against him.

Having recently read this book (twice – it is a really good one), this idea of ‘the thing you don’t know’ was one of the first that jumped out at me when I thought about the concept of respectful interactions with other parents that is the subject of this month’s carnival.

As most of us know, parenting is a pretty darn personal subject for a whole lot of people. Essentially, criticizing (or even gently communicating) a ‘lack’ in someone’s parenting skills amounts to criticizing or calling out who that parent is as a person – probably because when you become a parent, it becomes a major part of how you define yourself as a person. If someone has a problem with your parenting style, they have a problem with who you are. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Attachment Parenting, Debates & Dilemmas | Tags: Barbara Kingsolver, Becoming Crunchy, blog carnival, Carnival of Natural Parenting, compassionate advocacy, Crunchy, Frida Kahlo, natural parents network, the Lacuna | 28 Comments »