All About me – Page 8 – a hippie with a minivan

I did it…

After debating the decision for quite a long time…

I woke up this morning and decided that it was the day last day that my hair would look like this…

I called my neighbor and got a recommendation for a Salon (I have not had my hair cut professionally in years!) and came home looking like this…

What a change!! it feels so light and well, short! (the braid that was cut off was about 18 inches so it is quite a change)

I actually was thinking of going shorter but the stylist loves long hair and she was cringing at even going this short…

Feels good…

I have said it in the past, yet I will say it once again. I have always wanted to journal, yet never found the medium that inspired me to keep at it. This blog is what changed that for me. Now, as more years go by, I am enjoying going back and seeing how much I have evolved as a parent and as a person… as I updated the blog I happened to find myself re-reading a few old posts. It is amazing to me how far I have come in the last years.

When I started this blog I was a mom of two… Xavier was 2 and Colin was about 9 months old, I was the moderator of the AP board on a very popular mainstream site and needed a place to rant. I defined myself as “AP” though I was past that “list” stage, yet it was still was a way to find like-minded people. I was not yet an “unschooler” though I did know that we would be homeschooling with little to no structure. I had ideals, I had a parenting philosophy, I knew what was important to me, yet I did not have the experience. I read what I wrote so many years ago and realize how I was so “new” at being a parent.

So many things have changed over the years, yet it has only evolved in what I see is a positive way. I remember being told “oh, you just wait and see…your kids are young/you only have one/you only have two” when it came to subjects that were not in the mainstream, as if my ideals would change as my children grew or I had more. I agree, they have, but they have not been crushed or been left behind, they have only evolved or have been reinforced.

I used to have ideals that I believed were true and possible, now I have the same ideals that I know are true and possible. I have seen my children learn to fall asleep without ever being trained or crying and without having sleepless nights, I have seen my children wean without weaning them. I have seen my children learn to walk though I always held them and wore them. I have seen how EC works and how amazing it can be to have a baby not wear diapers. I have seen my children learn to read without having taught them. I have seen my children learn boundaries without punishment, whether it be physical or emotional.

It is what I have seen and experienced that has made something change in me.

I no longer have the rants in me that I once had. I saw that shift when I decided to change the name of my blog from “Paxye’s Rant” to “a hippie with a minivan” back in 2007…

I knew that I didn’t need to rant as much anymore but I don’t think I understood why as much as I do now.It is in this respect that I see how far I have come…

I now see that my rants were often signs of defensiveness. Not defensive because I felt I was doing something wrong, but because it was all still so much of an unknown. I was parenting in a way that was foreign to the way that I grew up, that was foreign to the way those that surrounded me parented. I knew in my heart that it felt like the right to parent for us, yet I did not yet have a concrete example of the results that would be attained by doing so. Of course, I am still learning each and every day how to break the cycle of the way that I was brought up. I am still a fairly “new” parent with many trials ahead of me.There are still many mistakes to be made and that have been made, that I have learned from and am still learning from. But, I can see that it is no longer as easy for other parents to say “just wait and see”, I am now a more seasoned parent of four that is not only talking the talk, but has been walking the walk.

I look forward to seeing this post in another 6 years and again understanding how far I have yet again come from where I am now.

Holiday stress…

I love this time of year… the lights, the snow, the decorations, the mood, the stories, the crafts…

I hate the stress. I don’t know why, but the holidays have always been a source of stress for me. Even as a young child I would retreat from parties or actually feel physically ill after an hour or two. I am not a fan of crowds, they make me quite anxious, but I can manage well when it comes to friends.

The expectations…or perceived expectations are a big problem for me now. I enjoy having friends over, but when it comes to family I always feel like there is criticism. It might not be overt, and it might not even really be there consciously, but I always feel like it is. And of course I expect it to happen so I am often defensive.

What makes it hard is that no one (family wise) is used to having a lot of kids around. One child, two maybe… but with four kids in the house, things are rarely quiet. Throw in the excitement of a holiday, and having people over who are adults then there is mayhem.

I say adults because when there are other families over it is so much easier. With families, there may be double the amount of people but the kids are off and having fun on their own, we might not even see them for periods of time, but when just adults are over, the adults talk and the kids want attention, negative or positive, and when you have a very strong willed child around it makes things even harder.. It feels like whatever their behaviour is at the time is a direct reflection on our parenting and then it almost always leads to some topic that they don’t agree with…

This year there was an added stress to the holidays.

My mom and Grandmother came over on Xmas eve an we had a great time. We were supposed to head to my grandmother’s house on Xmas day as my uncle Marc was preparing a traditional Supper. However, when my mom and grandmother got home they found my uncle unconscious. My mom took his blood sugar and it was so high that it was not registering. They called 911 and he went into Coma, his body temp was 88, and his blood sugar was 64. His kidneys stopped working and he stopped breathing and needed to be put onto a ventilator. He was in bad enough shape that we were pretty unsure if he would survive or not and I headed to the hospital to be with my family. It was a very weird atmosphere to be there on Xmas day with a Santa Clause and an accordion player visiting the emergency room and people laughing and wishing each other Merry Xmas while he lay in a Coma.It has been a rough few days but finally we had a bit of hope today and he is starting to recover though he has a long road ahead and there are still many uncertainties.

Now, Simon will be going to work for two days, then we will Welcome the new year and then head to the Winter Unschooling gathering where we will be hanging out with like minded families for 4 days.

I have a feeling that it will be a great ending to the stress of the holidays…

Uncomfortable subjects…

I talk to the kids about almost everything in a very comfortable way, but the other morning I came across a subject that was uncomfortable to discuss. My family.

Colin was asking if we knew anyone named Justin, and I almost said no. Weird, since that is my step-brother’s name and we were once close. When my step-dad died almost six years ago, he was going through a tough time and we haven’t been in contact since. So I was telling Colin about him and that he was like a brother and was a brother by marriage but not a brother by blood. That led my to the subject of my half-brother… my dad’s son.

When my mom and dad were still together (before I was 18 months old) my brother was part of my life. My mom left my Dad, packed the car and headed across the country and I only saw him and my brother almost a decade later. I was about 10 when I met my brother again, he was 15. I have a feeling that I took away some of the already limited attention that he got from my father and he resented me for it. On my part, I looked up to him and wanted a relationship with him, but it always led to disappointment. A few years ago I let go of the hope of having a relationship with him and instead decided that I would cut him off completely. The other morning, when the conversation turned to him it became uncomfortable.

It was uncomfortable because as I explained that he was my Dad’s son and not my Mom’s, I saw him realize that parents are not always together. It was uncomfortable because I explained that we were never close and that we haven’t talked in years and I saw his confusion of having a sibling that is out there that you don’t see or talk to. It was uncomfortable because he asked to meet his uncle and I said that he probably wouldn’t, he wondered why… It was uncomfortable because I know that they would get along great if they were to meet.

Some subjects are really hard to talk about and they are often not the ones that I expect….

Remembering…

It is World Aids day today…

A day to raise awareness, to remember those that have died.

This morning I talked to the boys about Miguel, my step-father who died of Aids in 1997. I talked to them about HIV and Aids. I shared pictures and our story. It has been nearly 14 years since he died…and though life goes on there are days like today that are full of memories and a few tears.

So today I am Remembering Miguel and other friends that have died of Aids over the years…