Stranger danger

She runs up to one of the dad's at the soft play and asks him to build her a house out of the soft shapes. She is enthusiastic, cheerful, full of energy and oh so sociable. While her mummy is entertaining her baby sister, she is entertained by the attention of another child's dad, or mum. Later on, she will wave goodbye before leaving and say "see you again another day!"

She loves people, she trusts them without reservations. She will say hello to everyone passing by her house. Whenever the phone rings, or the doorbell, she absolutely has to say hello, or she'll be engulfed by tearful sadness. She thrives on adult attention and interaction, and connects so easily and charmingly to anyone willing to look at her.

It has been noted that she has no awareness of stranger danger. We, her parents have been advised that they should make her aware of the danger of strangers.

Herein lies the conundrum.

We are asked to destroy her innocence, her unwaivering belief in the goodness of every person. We are asked to instill fear into her.

While I understand why this is a responsible thing to do, I also understand why this is equally an awful thing to do. I remember a teacher of mine who made us explore the meaning of fear. He then continued to ask us for the antithesis of fear. It was trust - and how essential it was that trust was to prevail over fear. It's a lesson I still remember because I saw a lot of truth in it. Like an epiphany I realised how trust conquered fear and made the world a better place to live in.

There is a whole life ahead of her where she will have to decide whom she can or cannot trust. For now, she is protected by us and can rest assured that whomever we trust, she can trust as well. It is a gift. Her innocence and trustworthiness is a reminder of what things could be like in a better world.

And we're meant to make this evaporate into thin air? I cannot, for now, bring myself to doing this.
There's still time isn't there? Can she not be innocent for a little while longer?
Then, how will we know that the time has come to tell her how cruel and evil this world can be?

The hopeless idealist's plan for 2011

I don't really do New Year's Resolutions, not sure why, but have never done them. However, for this year I thought it would be quite good to make a few plans, or maybe even commitments, so that at the end of the year I can look back and see how I did. No pressure, just to be able to see if I followed the track, got sidetrack or discovered a totally new road. Which would be fine too.

So here are my plans for 2011:

1. Get chickens. Not sure when that'll be, as it depends on a few alterations in our tiny garden. Which means it may or may not happen. Cubling is dead excited about it. And so am I, even if a bit wary of the extra work they may involve and also the fox.

2. Grow more food. I'm nowhere as near to that as I'd hoped to be which is due to the snow. There are 6 berry bushes to be planted, one fruit tree waiting for a permanent hole. Ideally, I'd also like to replace lawn with food growing area. But this may a more long term ambition.

3. Buy less in general. Buy with less packaging. Buy more ethically. Buy more handmade. Avoid plastic

4. Make all greeting cards. Now this is ambitious. I love making cards, but in this card giving land of the UK, that translates to rather a lot of card making.

5.Learn 3 new things (high in the list of contenders are crocheting, basket making and wood turning, but it may be something totally different)

6. Declutter. Difficulty with this one is that it's relative and as much as I try doing it, more clutter appears.

7. Get back to a size 12. Yes I'm shallow. I want to fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes. I think I only need to continue breastfeeding and should get there (I'm one of the lucky ones whose weight just drops off magically while breastfeeding)

8. Learn how to use Lightroom. Which would also part fulfills no. 5

9. Reduce my carbon footprint. I'm not saying by how much because I'm a chicken and it's rather difficult. Apparently mine is way over 3 earths (as in, if everyone used as much carbon as I did, we'd need 3 earths, and that's although I'm a vegetarian and trying not to waste too much...) However, I'm doing not so bad as I've reduced my air travel in the past 6 months.

10. If I can find an illustrator, I'd like to create a simple bilingual German/English toddler book. You don't happen to be an illustrator? You see, I've had this idea for a long time but can't draw for the life of me.

Bonus round:
If I'm really ambitious, I'd like to think/set up a social enterprise. I have an idea for it, but probably neither time nor energy.

So there you have it. It's all green for next year, I'm a hopeless idealist but that's just grand by me.

Sit and knit a bit - for the missing women of the world

Did you know that there are 100 million women missing in this world?

When I came across this statistic, I couldn't believe it. The facts tell a different story.
If you take the natural distribution of male/female, there are 100 million women missing from our planet. Why?

Because baby girls are selectively aborted
Because baby girls are killed
Because women are killed
Because women aren't given an education
Because women do not get the same medical care as men
Because women die in childbirth
Because women are trafficked and sexually exploited

And all of this 100 years after International Women's Day was first celebrated on 8 March.

100 years of International Women's Day, one million women missing for every year.

To highlight the inequalities that still exist across the globe and are responsible for 100 Million missing women as well as the continuous gap of women being represented in decision making positions in the government, the workplace and the media, there is a great Scottish based initiative which tries to create a debate and... a massive blanket, with 100 Million knitted stitches; one for every woman missing. The great thing is that everybody can contribute to this, by knitting a simple square measuring 15 x 15 cm (6x6 inches). 100 million stitches is an awful lot though, as little as one stitch per missing woman does sound, so a lot of helping hands are needed.

So then, I challenge you my lovely readers to support this initiative. How? Simple. Sit and knit a bit. Knit a square, or two, or many. Ask your friends and colleagues to do the same. Blog about it. Follow on Facebook or Twitter. Organise a Sit and Knit a Bit evening  - in your home, in a cafe, in a community centre. And while you do all of this, or some of this, remember the 100 million women missing from our world today. There are so many ways to support this, do head over to the website to get inspired.

Please send your completed squares and stories by 8th March 2011 to Jetson and Janssen, c/o Tramway, Albert Drive, Glasgow G41 2PE, garterstitch100@gmail.com. If you blog about it, please come back to this post and add a link to your post in the blog hop below (and the blog hop code to your post, to link them all together).

Are you knitting yet?

Controlled Crying

Funny how sometimes two very different views on the same topic appear in your reader. A few days ago, Rachel at Really Rachel wrote a post on the blessings of Controlled Crying, while, Analytical Armadillo wrote a post on the curse of Controlled Crying/Crying it out.


Controlled Crying, for those who don't know, is when you put your baby down to sleep and allow her to cry, reassuring her without picking her up while leaving her for increasingly longer periods of time. It's meant to teach babies to self settle and sleep through the night. Crying it out is the same thing without any reassurance.

Attachment Parenting, which promotes responsive parenting, unsurprisingly advocates that controlled crying is not good for the baby. It cites not just parental intuition to support this, but also studies that demonstrate that if a baby's cry is repeatedly or habitually not responded to, this may result in a greater occurrence of depression, ADHD or violent behaviour in the older child and adult. A parent who is always responsive to the needs of the baby (who can only communicate through crying) will support healthy brain development and the outcome is hopefully a balanced person.

This is all nice and well in theory. Most parents try to be as responsive as they can, but we can't always be perfectly responsive. Two examples to illustrate:

Cubling was a "colicky" or "spirited" baby. She cried for hours in the late afternoon, evening and sometimes early night. Often, her crying could not be consoled with anything apart from constant breast feeding. I couldn't constantly breast feed her because I would not have any nipples left to tell the tale, or let her feed on my (nipple) blood (yes it was that bad). Her cry had stamina. She was able to keep herself awake for 12 hours when only 3 months old. She cried so much that I would have done anything to avoid further distress. Controlled crying or crying it out was a definite no no, because I felt she had already cried far too much. However, I did get to the point of sleep deprivation that made me despair. My decision was to try and supplement with formula at 4 1/2 months (which we stopped soon after as she wasn't taking much anyway) as I thought she was hungry. Then we sleep trained through cuddles and without tears at 17 months when she learned to sleep for a minimum of 5 hours without feeds. She eventually slept through at 2 years of age without further "sleep training".

My decision not to do controlled crying was based on feeling that it may tip the balanced which was already pretty bad in relation to amount of crying. I couldn't bear to cause crying on top of the hours she had cried without any cause by me. However, I also got to the point where I was so at the end of the tether that I understand anger towards a baby as well as severe sleep deprivations and its dangers. It may actually make you a short tempered parent which may lead to poor judgement and behaviour.

Second example: So far with Snowflake, while she isn't a great sleeper at night, I've not been severely sleep deprived and don't see a necessity to embark on controlled crying. Her two main problems are an inability to settle in the evenings and that she doesn't travel well on car journeys after night fall (the two may be linked). She does not comfort feed, and while she generally sleeps from 1am to 11.30 am, she wakens hourly to two hourly most nights. We co-sleep and I feed her back to sleep. I'm a good sleeper, and somehow I don't find broken sleep too hard going this time.

Both Cubling and Snowflake cry without me being able to be responsive. This is not in a Controlled Crying setup, but with Cubling it was colic and with Snowflake it's car journeys. With in-laws living an hour's drive away, and good friends in Edinburgh, we've had numerous journeys where Snowflake cried throughout the journey. We have stopped on such journeys, but the bottom line was that as soon as she's in the car seat, she screams and at the end of the day, we have to get from A to B.

Which brings me to my point. Of course we all want to reduce the amount of crying a baby does. But some crying surely must be ok, otherwise we couldn't live our lives, as other people have needs too. Controlled Crying, if it works, only involves a few days of some amount of crying and that's that. Surely that's no worse than us undertaking regular car journeys which cause crying? If 4 days of controlled crying for 1 hour or 30 mins each day means good quality sleep for the baby (which is a benefit for the baby) and the end of sleep deprivation in the parent (let's not underestimate the benefit that has for the baby - I did have violent thoughts and it only takes a slightly less controlled person than me to turn thoughts into actions), this surely is no worse than the car journeys we impose on Snowflake.

Of course, controlled crying may not work for your baby, and I still believe that I would not let a baby cry for 2 hours without picking her up (which is approximately the time I'm sure Cubling would have cried before falling asleep of sheer exhaustion had we done controlled crying). But if it works with relatively small duration of crying, I really don't see how it can be damaging for the developing brain, provided that the parents are responsive otherwise.

Nobody has to go down the route of controlled crying. I've read that for Pants with Names, it didn't work. If I can avoid it, I will. We sleep trained through co-sleeping at 17 months because Cubling had finished teething which messed up any sleep pattern we ever had again and again. It worked in a week without any tears.This is what worked for us, controlled crying is an option that may well be the right solution for others.

My advice to any parent is that patterns and routines can be changed, they are not set in stone and there are many ways of doing it. Pick what's right for you, do some research, be informed and then make a confident attempt at making a change. Chances are it will work. Don't do it because you feel pressurised by other parents or health visitors (mine kept going on about controlled crying). It's ok if your child doesn't sleep through at 24 months. Some take longer than others but will still get there. But if it stresses the living daylights out of you, then maybe you need to try something new.

As Rachel put it, if you can't cope, something has to change. Not just for you, but also the baby. There are two books which I found very helpful on the topic: The No-Cry Sleep Solution, Teach Yourself Baby Sleep, and of course this one: Secrets Of The Baby Whisperer. And if you do cope, there's most likely no need for controlled crying.

Have an idea? Here's money to make it happen!

The Co-operative Community Fund have money to give away.

Yes, you've heard right, someone is giving away money.

 

What you need to do for it? Well, this is what it's all about:

 

The Cooperative are looking for groups of people carrying out positive work in the community. For this, they are running the The Co-operative Community Fund grant scheme, which helps local communities throughout the UK. Thousands of clubs, community groups and local charities have already benefited. The scheme is funded by members of The Co-operative donating some of their share of profits, which is then given away in the form of small grants. This year The Co-operative Members have donated £1.2 million to local community groups across the country. 

To qualify for a grant, projects must:

• 
  address a community issue, 
• 
  provide long term benefit to the community, 
• 
  support co-operative values and principles & 
• 
  be innovative in its approach

 Groups do not need to have charitable status, so basically anyone can apply.

The grants vary from a minimum of £100 to a maximum of £2,000 and you do not have to be a registered charity to apply for a grant. You can apply by completing the application form which is available on the Cooperative Memebership Fund website.

I think it's an excellent opportunity for anyone to make something happen locally. So what would you do if you had a grant and could make a lasting change? In my workplace, groups of young people have come up with creating a community garden, another group completed a make over of their local youth centre. 

 

Of course, local areas are different and what works in one may well not be the right thing for another. I could imagine a whole range of projects and if I can get my act together, who knows, I may well be applying for a grant. 

For example, I could think of organising a street party for our neighbourhood, a party where people got to know each other a bit better - for ongoing support of each other. You see, we have lots of elderly people living here and I've never been asked for help, though I'd be happy to help when needed. It would be great if everyone in this our small estate felt confident enough to ask for help.And what better way of introducing people than a bit of a party!

Another idea that springs to mind is to organise a monthly skill share happening in a local community hall - where you could learn say sewing, knitting, crocheting, felting, weaving, basket making, seed saving, xyz making, or handy skills around the house. The grant would pay for hall hire, tutor fees and advertising.

 

Then there's different types of playgroups that I think would work well as a positive contribution to the community - the grant could really help the German Kinderclub, maybe even to set up a south Glasgow branch, by paying for hall, toys and craft materials. Or it could pay for organising an outdoors playgroup. It could also pay for setting up a sports group, to get kids more active.

 

Do you have any ideas for your own community? Please do share them in the comments, they may spark off an idea for other readers! And if you do have an idea, go for it, there's nothing stopping you!

 

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Ths a sponsored post for a grant scheme that in my opinion deserves maximum exposure so that anyone with a project idea that would benefit their community is aware of this scheme and can apply.

Cooperative Membership Fund









Sponsored Post

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The big freeze or I love snow

So we had some more snow. And once again, the media is full of it. It's rather surreal, I mean, in how many ways can you say that some snow has fallen and discuss the repercussions of the falling of snow?

Enter the British obsession with blaming the "authorities" with incompetence. Heads are rolling in Scotland, made into snowmen I'm sure.

Can we get some facts right?

Firstly, if a considerable amount of snow falls anywhere, it will disrupt transport and it is never a good idea to just ignore it and go about your business as if no snow had fallen. It should be obvious that non-essential journeys (and commuting to work is one of them, as is visiting your auntie as nice as she may be) should not be undertaken.

Secondly, if a considerable amount of snow falls in an area where this is unusual, it is normal that it takes a little while to deal with it. This is not a sign of incompetence. It's logical and thus to be expected. Stay at home if you can. Be patient. Relax. Have a cuppa tea.

Thirdly, if a considerable amount of snow falls in an area where this is unusual you have to wait until the snowfall stops before any action by "the authorities" can be undertaken. Nobody can make snow disappear magically from the roads.Honestly.

Fourthly, all of this applies to any such area. I'm sick of hearing that "Europe" deals with snowfall so much better. Europe doesn't deal with it better. If we have such snowfall in the Rhineland, it causes exactly the same travel chaos. If such snowfall happens in the Alps, where it is normal, and people have snow tyres etc, it's a different story.

Fifthly, the authorities aren't the be all and end all. How about clearing your own bit of pavement/driveway/car top first before you go all mad at "the authorities"?

Sixthly, it is stupid and utterly selfish to panic buy bread. And I know how to bake bread so you can't phase me.

Seventhly, ever thought how stupidly dependant we are on transport? Couldn't this whole snow business be an opportunity to reassess if we really need to commute to work or if there are other ways of doing business? What is an essential journey, and how could we get rid of non essential one not just for the snow, but, like, for good? Oh I'm such a dreamer.

Eighthly, a bit of snow should not be a reason to stop all outdoor play at nursery. Cubling told me that the nursery staff said it's too icy. Too icy me arse. It's perfectly fine and fun. Risk aversion taken more than one step too far, deprivation from some fun snow games more like. A playground only touched by bird footprints. Argh, such a shame.

Ninethly, oh I don't know. Your turn.

Tenthly, I love the snow. Bring it on.

Play it safe

My heart skipped a beat when I saw Cubling, only a few centimetres away from me, trying to climb up a bookcase. Snowflake was just in front of it and I knew what Cubling didn't, that it wasn't secured to the wall. Just imagine what could have happened if I hadn't been right there to interfere.

Cue: screaming mama, big telling off, breath and start again to actually explain the problem. The telling off should have been for us, for not securing our furniture to the walls. We never thought it necessary. Because when Cubling was still small, she wouldn't have been able to pull it over, and we thought that once she's big enough to pull it over, she'd have the sense not to.
Well, I should have known my girl better. It's not that she doesn't get the explanation, just that she's always on the go (run) and forgets. She doesn't usually think before she does, and risk assessment? Well, she's taught that in the forest kindergarten and thank goodness for that, but she is only 3 and doesn't realise that furniture may come towards her.

So how safe are you in your home? We all have stairgates and protect the corners of tables for the toddler days. We do our best, and so do we. Just that there are many dangers we aren't aware of. Yes, I turn the handles of cooking pans away, but then Cubling managed to set off the smoke alarm by playing toasting, and set the microwave on fire by microwaving a pipecleaner in her hat - I tell you, not a good idea, the pipecleaner inflamed in under 10 seconds and the hat was happy to rejoice in the fire - Cubling herself was so shocked that she didn't even need told that playing with the microwave is not a good idea.

Thankfully I've come across an excellent check list for home safety. It is comprehensive and I can only recommend that people head over and have a look to see how safe their homes are for children. After all, accidental injury is one of the biggest cause of death in the UK, with more children dying from accidents in the home than from illness. Children between 0 and 4 years of age are particularly prone to home accidents. Don't delay, check how safe your home is so that you won't have to make use of A&E for an accident. And accident proofing our home is now on our to do list, because we fall short on a number of counts.

There are a few fire safety tips that I've come across which are not listed here - for instance, never let your washing machine/dishwasher run or on stand by when you go to bed as it could start a fire. It is also advisable not to run them while out of the house, for danger of fire and flooding. Another fire safety precaution is to close doors to kitchens, or any doors between kitchen and bedrooms at night time before going to bed. In case of a fire starting in the kitchen (the most likely place if you don't smoke) it means that the fire can't travel to the bedrooms easily.

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This is a sponsored post for which I received payment from Claims Helpline. They provide the excellent check list for home safety that I linked to, I chose to write about it because I believe that it is extremely useful for any parent. If you have additional safety tip, it would be great if you could share them in the comments section.

Knits for calming nerves

Knitting does many things for me, and while we were in hospital it calmed my nerves. There were two projects on my needles: Soulemama's hat of choice, which for once was something just for me. I'm a strange one, in winter, I hardly wear hats, scarves or gloves, for various reasons. As to hats, I hardly find one that I like on me, so knitting this hat for me, even with my favourite yarn (Noro) was definitely a statement.

The pattern is easy, it knits quickly because of the thickness of the yarn, and when it was done, it was, well, far too small. So I unravelled and changed things here and there, I'd cast on an additional 7 stitches anyway because the swatch was already on the small side. I added two extra rows of pattern and 3 extra rows when decreasing.

It may have something to do with getting needle sizes wrong between US and UK sizes, because when I wrote my alterations up on Ravelry, I realised that the pattern there asked for 5.5mm size needles, while I thought it was 4.5mm. That may explain a thing or two. Nevermind, it all came out in the end and I left the hospital wearing a hat I love, which suits my strange head and keeps me warm in this rather unusually cold winter.

Photos taken by Cubling with my favourite toy, which, you know, makes it rather attractive to small hands.

The other project was a remote control holder. Much needed. We have like 4 remote controls and it's doing my head in, they are forever hiding in the toy box. So I picked a thick Shetland grown and spun lambswool yarn and a contrast colour from Alpaca wool and got going. Rather far. It's now sitting in front of me and all I can say is that I don't like it one bit.
The yarn is lovely, but the two yarns don't go together, one knits much thicker than the other.
And the woollen yarn just doesn't speak remote control holder to me. It says more like warm hat for Mr Cartside, or slipper socks. It looks plain wrong in this project.
I haven't yet brought myself to unravelling the whole thing, because I spent many hours knitting it in the hospital, but it's not going anywhere. It's a rubbish remote control holder. It did a rather good job as nerve calmer and tear catcher though. Sometimes something becomes much more important than getting a project finished. So, here's the remote control holder that was my best friend in the lonely hours and has done a good, if unexpected job and is now no longer needed.

So unravelling it will be, if another day when I feel more like letting go.

Review: Vertbaudet

When I was asked if I'd be interested in trying out some clothes for my girls from Vertbaudet's wide range of girl's clothing and baby clothing to review them, I was more than happy to say yes. While so far we've been more or less getting by without buying clothes (between presents and hand me downs), slowly I'm actually starting to shop for children's clothes, and most of the clothes I have bought actually hail from Vertbaudet.

If there's one thing that I've had enough of in my 3 3/4 years of parenting girls, it's the ever present colour of light pink. I never liked it to start with, but it seems to be on every single item of girl's clothing in the UK. And that's where Vertbaudet is different - the retailer is French based and it seems that similar to German clothes outlets, France goes easier on the pink.


Funny then that the items I got sent were pink. Nevermind, at least the shade of pink is different ;) Maybe the people at Vertbaudet thought that this being a UK audience, pink is the safer option? Don't get me wrong though, I got sent two beautiful outfits that I very much like, just that what I like most about Verbaudet is that they are different in their colour choices, with more neutral colours, the classic chic, while their clothes are easy to wear and very practical.

Add to that that if you're subscribed to them you will never be short of amazing special offers to get your clothes a good bit cheaper, which makes the prices very competitive. I also like the nursery furniture that they offer, and some of our recent buys include a clothes hook which I can confirm was the nicest and best value for prettiness I was able to find online. Vertbaudet also sells a wide range of maternity clothing.

The only slight criticism I have is that we get 2 copies paper mailings though we only have one registered account, and I get the offers through my email subscription too. Too much paper waste, even though it is nice to have the catalogue to browse through.

and the result of the Spanish jury is...

Oh man, what a build up to the hearing test results I got.
This is how it went: nurse does the test. Doesn't comment on it, but says the doctor will see us shortly.

Not a wording I particularly liked.

Thankfully the wait wasn't too long, we were called in by an extremely nice Spanish audiologist. Which kind of distracted me a bit, you see, I love a nice Spanish accent and so I was rather happy to chat away about bilingual kids and what walks of life from Spain make their way to Glasgow in general and in particular, while Cubling took apart an ear model with increasing interest. (mental note: a body model to take apart may be a good birthday present for her)

Eventually it was time to discuss the results.

Cue even more suspense by explaining:
a) why we are having this test (as if I didn't know that my baby had meningitis, pneumococcal at this, which has a 10% risk of death and in survivors, a 10% risk of hearing loss. Did I not already say that I hate medical statistics?)
b) what the ear looks like, what may happen during meningitis to what parts of the ear and how the test works
c) that the scope of the tests is limited but gives a decent indication

To finally be told that Snowflake passed it with flying colours.

And has to come back for a second test in 4 months time just to make sure.

However, the nice Spanish audiologist has no cause for concern.

And just to convince her ever worrying mummy, Snowflake just got a real good fright from a not so loud noise. I forget which, but it was more than obvious that she hears.

Phew. Breath and relax. One down, at least two still to go. But I think I may sleep a bit easier tonight.