Maybe I Need a Book on Potty-Learning

I've been taking a break from blogging this week, as I've been thoroughly preoccupied with 5 different books simultaneously, not to mention the fact that Ted and I have discovered the vast library of DVDs available for immediate online viewing on Netflix. We're currently going through The Life of Birds narrated by David Attenborough as well as the first season of Heroes (after Cadence goes to sleep). I have to admit that I'm a little obsessed with the latter show. We don't have TV reception, so we can only watch it on DVD or online, and we're hurriedly trying to catch up.

So, have you guys noticed that the one thing about Cadence I never talk about on this here blog is her using the potty? There's a reason for that. It's pretty simple, really. She doesn't use it. So there's nothing to talk about. Unless I talk about her NOT using the potty, and how that's getting old. Ted and I are trying not to put too much pressure on her. She has peed on the potty on occasion, and she'll sit on it for a while for the heck of it, but she continues to resist on most occasions. For reasons I don't want to get into right now, I don't want to resort to candy or stickers or charts, so I guess we're just gonna have to be patient.

Sometimes I think to myself, "Goodness gracious, what have I done?! I've got a kid who still sucks on my boob, sleeps w/ me and wears diapers at the age of THREE!!" It's so easy to second-guess the way you've parented and wonder if everything you've ever done is just WRONG WRONG WRONG. I'll bet there are folks reading this who'd say, "Hell, like DUH! What were you thinking?! You were wrong alright." Well, I'm doing what I feel is right for Cadence and our family. And you know what? She's still totally kick-ass. There is absolutely no denying that.

Best Shots Monday--Blog Action Day for the Environment

Today is a Blog Action Day, a day when bloggers around the world will post about a single topic for the purpose of raising awareness and activism and discussion. This year, the topic is the environment. I normally participate in Tracey's Best Shot Monday on Mondays, so this week, I've decided to incorporate the topic of the environment into my post.

On Saturday evening, Ted and his brother Dave took our week's delivery from our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) subscription and cooked a delicious meal. What you see in the photo above are herbed potatoes, broccoli and leeks with some garlic cloves thrown in for good measure.

Our friend Erik came over, and we had a lovely spread on our table. The boys made a soup which consisted of 4 different squashes, and they even roasted the seeds from the squash to add to the green salad. Ted also made a pumpkin bread that was absolutely perfect (and the only thing Cadence wanted to eat).

And to top it all off, we toasted some of Ted's homemade dandelion mead, which was made from dandelion flowers that he and Dave and Cadence had picked themselves this past spring.

So what does a home-cooked meal prepared and shared with friends and family have to do with the environment? Well, let me tell ya...

As a non-farmer or gardener (like many urban dwellers), our family is dependent on other people to grow and raise our food for us. And more likely than not, most of us have absolutely no idea who or what corporation is responsible for the meals we put on our tables to feed ourselves and our loved ones on a daily basis. We may know what company is selling the products in the stores, but we don’t know much else.

CSA attempts to connect communities to local farmers so that they develop a relationship with each other that goes beyond the transactional. This way, we can "put the farmer’s face on the food," which is what the Japanese who pioneered the concept of CSA refer to as teikei.

And indeed, we DID think of our farmers Tony and Dela Ends, whose family-owned and operated Scotch Hill Farm delivers our CSA subscription every Saturday. We toasted them as we ate, knowing that our meal was the product of their sweat and tears, as well as their love for the land and commitment to stewarding it gently and naturally. Ted and I have been to their farm and seen the incredible amount of work that goes into growing food without the use of pesticides and other chemicals. The weeds, oh, the WEEDS. And to have to pull them up with your bare hands…

We are also lucky in that Farmer Tony is an eloquent writer, having been a journalist for 14 years prior to becoming a farmer. I look forward to his newsletters every week. Here is an excerpt from one of his newsletters:

"What it's all about--Every spring, Dela and I feel the same strange mix of sensations. In a progression that starts in January, we plan, budget, finance, order, purchase, seed, tend to the start of a whole season of vegetable and herb crops. The first few weeks of delivery, we sing in our hearts a joyful praise of delicious spring greens and herbal delicacies that arrive first among more than 100 wonderful plant varieties our subscribers will experience over the next 5 months. Yet as closely as we work with the cycles of life, we catch ourselves thinking these first weeks we should be able to give you the same uniformity, weight and variety you can find in any convenience-oriented store, any day or night of the year. Here we all are trying to be conscientious about the Earth, trying to do something daring and different, eating outside the Happy Meal box. We read and hear about what’s happening to the Earth and its resources every day. We all know human beings cannot conveniently and efficiently deliver mass quantities of plants and animals without mass quantities of synthetic chemicals, fossil fuels and farm and business practices that ironically kill Natural diversity, kill local economies, kill families. Yet when we have to adjust our appetites, food schedules, meal expectations to Mother Nature, we still feel somehow that she should be like a modern grocery store manager and warehouse distribution center. Seasonal eating can be delightful and frustrating. You are called on to be creative with each week’s fresh produce. We'll do our best for you. We’ll offer suggestions. We’ll give you what Nature gives us, on her schedule for this climate, these soils, this year’s rain and temperature. Yet we share in the discipline and the mental work of healthful change together." –Tony Ends of Scotch Hill Farm

This was the newsletter that opened the delivery season this summer in June. It was before we knew that there would be absolutely no rain in July and floods in August, wiping out a significant portion of his year’s harvest for Tony and Dela and so many other small family farms.

And this is the other thing our CSA-provided meal has to tell us about the environment…Global warming is real, and it affects small-time farmers in a big way. Tony mentioned in one of his newsletters how he and his fellow farmers experience first-hand the climate-changing impacts of global warming. It makes it that much harder for them to produce our food in an environmentally responsible manner. If global warming gets worse, it will have a grave impact on food production worldwide.

That being said, I want to focus on hope. I know there is a lot more to the environmental crisis than local farms, but this is the part of the story I want to share because it's something I've come in contact with in my own life that gives me hope. There are a growing number of small family farms that are committing to providing local communities with food grown naturally and sustainably. As a parent, I want to provide my daughter with food that was grown not with money in mind but the well-being of the land and water, animals AND consumers in mind. As a parent, I want to know that our kids and their kids and so forth have a beautiful world to look forward to, instead of inheriting the burden of environmental disaster created by greed and gluttony on the part of individuals and corporations.

Learn more:
http://www.localharvest.org/
http://eatkind.net/
http://www.familyfarmed.org/
http://www.sowtheseedsfund.org/

See who else is participating in Blog Action Day here. And see other folks' best shot Monday on Tracey's Picture This.

Thoughts on Emergence

I don't always talk explicitly about faith or God, but that doesn't mean I don't think about them. In fact, I think about them a lot. You see, my dad was a pastor. Even before he was officially ordained in the Association of Vineyard Churches, he was more involved in ministry than some full-time pastors.

There's a lot of baggage that comes with being raised "in the ministry," and I tried walking away from the whole faith, God and church thing. I tried and I failed.

Although I really tried to kick the whole organized religion thing in the shins, I just could not get over this growl of a conviction that at the heart of who Jesus was and is, there lay the key to unlocking the door to my deepest self.

I can't explain it. I've just always known since I was a little girl that I came from God. I've always known that there was something that connected me to God, even as an adult when I was trying to escape the whole "God" thing.

A few years ago, I discovered the Emergent/Emerging church. There's a lot of opinions on what the Emergent church is, some positive and some negative. To me, it's a conversation among a diverse group of folks in the Christian tradition who're trying to work out the whole faith thing in a holistic manner and trying to do it politely and lovingly and gently.

Anyhoo, one of the reasons I'm thinking about all this stuff is that I don't want to impart to Cadence the same baggage I experienced growing up in a spiritual environment that made me feel judged and never good enough. And yet, I do want to impart SOMETHING to her when it comes to faith.

Well, it just so happens that the Emergent folks are starting a new blog for parents called Emerging Parents, "a safe place for those involved in the emerging church conversation to explore holistic parenting ideas." I'm hoping to hear other folks' stories and maybe get some ideas on how to impart faith without the baggage to Cadence.

Best Shots Monday--Playing with Color and Perspective

I recently got myself Marina's Underground Set List for Adobe Lightroom. These are basically different settings (presets) that can be applied to my RAW (uncompressed)images in Lightroom to achieve specific looks. They are a lot of fun to play with. You can apply the setting and then adjust the exposure, color, etc to make the photo look the way you want it to. The setting I used for this one is called Mello MaiTai3.

It kind of gives the photos an aged, yet dreamy feel to 'em, which I really like. For those of you who have cameras that can shoot in RAW format, I highly recommend it. You have much more options when you edit photos for correcting exposure and color and whatnot. I've been shooting exclusively in RAW since Lauren's wedding.

Something else that I continue to play with is getting a different angle or perspective on my photos by "shooting from the hip." Basically, that means shooting without looking through the viewfinder. I often put the camera all the way to the ground to get a bug's eye view, so to speak. My aim kinda sucks, so I never know what I'm gonna get.

Like this shot here...That's not what I was going for at all. I meant to get Cadence in the shot, but of course I was too close and my aim too poor. Still, I really like the result, which I think is more interesting than what I would've gotten had I actually gotten all of Cadence in the shot.

Go see more folks' Best Shots for the week on Tracey's Picture This!

This One's For You...

For the Buddhist monks and the people of Burma and Aung San Suu Kyi standing defiantly--and yet peacefully--in the face of tyranny.

For the girls and women of Sudan who fear being beaten or raped every time they fetch water.

For the women in the U.S. Armed Forces, who are regularly subjected to sexual assault while those in command look the other way.

For those who have been imprisoned by the U.S. government and TORTURED (just f*cking admit it, GW, it's TORTURE) so that we in the U.S. could be free to plunder the earth and revel in our gluttony.

For the familes who have been separated by the 38th parallel in North and South Koreas, and who may finally be reunited someday soon.

For those who are denied basic civil rights because of whom they love.

For those who have hidden behind false identies and lived in the shadows and in self-hatred all their lives out of fear of rejection and persecution.

For those who live in countries where it is a crime punishable by death to be who they are openly, and for those who live in countries where they are supposedly free to be who they are, and yet who are still punished by death.

For Buddha.

For Jesus.

For Gandhi.

For Dr. King, Jr.

For Matthew Shepard.

For all of you, for Cadence, and for me too.