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Meanwhile in the trenches…

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I don’t remember when my last blog post was but I am reasonably certain it was a while ago. I think about blogging all the time but the opportunity to sit down for, say, 15 uninterrupted minutes seldom comes around. Or it comes around at 11 pm, squarely 18 hours after I’ve hit the ground running for another jammed packed day. I have a file folder full of half-started blog posts and a head full of half-baked comments. But the headlines come and go and the new Word documents remain untouched. I have developed an addiction to Facebook and Twitter or “how to have a social life in 15 seconds or less.” Life with six children is a constant source of wonder — mixed with exasperation, beaming pride and frustration —  but it is a busy life.

As I write these lines, it’s 10:30 am and there are floors to be vacuumed, three bathrooms to be sanitized, a supper to get on the way, a few plants to be re-potted, a baby to be consoled, a puppy play-area to be set-up, winter coats and boots to be unearthed and two kitty litters to be changed. The greatest thing about finding  happiness in small things — like writing instead of doing housework — is that you find more happiness. We are just wrapping up 10 weeks of kitchen reno during which I was making all the food and doing all the dishes on the deck in increasingly cold weather. When the tradesmen — no tradespeople around here: they’re all guys — come in and say “Wow! it must be nice to have such a great kitchen!” I say “I’m just glad to have an indoor kitchen!!” Small mercies I’m telling you, like indoor plumbing, are the spice of life.

In the last 6 months, I have meant to blog on life with teenagers, the HPV vaccine (did we agree to it or not and why), guidelines for neonatal resuscitation, euthanasia, raising children to be obedient and come out of attics when called (until it came out that the child was in fact being obedient by staying in said attic and my point was moot), avoiding DIY medical procedures like circumcision,  all the things I’ve learned about raising children by reading dog training books, H1N1 mass vaccination in Ottawa (I’m still waiting) and my latest “Parent of the Year award goes to…” Instead, we sold our house and moved into a new one, tore down some serious walls and rebuilt new ones, thought of writing a backyard cooking book, got two cats, mourned the death of one to coyotes, got another one, and a puppy, slept very little, remembered with shame all the friends who have yet to receive thank you notes following the birth of my soon-to-be toddler, and put more mileage on the truck from driving kids to athletic activities than we would have driving to Jamaica and back.

Someday I’m sure, I will have all the time in the world to write. But I’m also sure that I will miss the insanity  of my children’s younger years. Meanwhile in the trenches, if you will excuse me, the baby is chewing on a USB stick and the kitten just wrapped himself in a roll of boxing tape…

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Andrea adds: Véronique, I miss you when you can’t post, but when you are back, it is worth the wait. I laughed out loud three times reading this, and I’m not talking discrete chuckles. (“All the things I’ve learned about raising children by reading dog training books”??) We’re talking the kind of laughter that has people turning their heads in restaurants…now this happens to me quite frequently, I might add, but that doesn’t make this post any less funny.

Checking in from Planet 6

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Well, I’ve done it again! I have run the 40-week long race from gamete to infant for the sixth time. My little girl is now a week old and, as many will tell you, I can’t imagine life without her. As with previous deliveries and early postpartum periods, I am going through a roller-coaster of emotions – no doubt 90% hormonally-driven — and an uncontrollable urge to binge on carbohydrates and chocolate. Must. Stay. Awake.

Being a parent for the sixth time is a lot more fun than the first three. Sure, mild neglect of house chores tends to have bigger consequences faster. I am presently staring down a 1-foot high pile clean laundry that completely covers the surface of a king size bed. But my little bundle of joy is only happy when she is held. So there goes the laundry. And most of the meals. In fact, I am writing this post cradling baby in my left elbow so I can type with both hands. She is not the first newborn who will not put up with being put down. But I remember her siblings – particularly her oldest brother, now 11 – as fussy babies whereas I think this little one is pretty easy going… as long as I hold her. What 6 children have taught me is that the laundry will not have changed tomorrow but my little girl will. At this point, it is far more important for me to enjoy every minute with my newborn – her smell, her skin, her little noises, her little fingers, her hair – than take pride in having the best folded laundry in the neighborhood. In the mean time, my little girl learns that it’s okay to fall asleep, that someone will still be there when she wakes-up. And when I get overwhelmed and wonder if I will ever get anything done, I look at the big bodies that live in my house and am reminded how quickly the last 13 years have gone by. Before I know it, this little girl will be 13 and her biggest sister will be 26 and I will wonder where the days have gone.

I love the wisdom and perspective – and helping hands — that come with a large family. The more children I have, the more I truly enjoy and appreciate them. Now, to all the people who ask me if “six is it, are you finished?” I answer that with my first four children, I couldn’t imagine having one more. Since the fifth, I can’t imagine not. And whether or not my baby ends up being the last one – and she very well could be – I am thankful for the love she and her siblings have brought into my life. Because each child doesn’t take away from the love pie: it’s the pie that gets bigger.

You knew she didn’t do it alone

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When I was mad at my parents back in the day, I’d threaten running away. A twelve-year-old just doesn’t initiate court cases without help.

After discovering that, the father told his daughter she couldn’t go on the three-day school trip, which ended yesterday. According to Ms. Beaudoin, the daughter “slammed the door” and went to live with her mother, who was willing to let her take the trip.

However, the school wouldn’t allow the girl to go unless both parents consented or she obtained a court order. That prompted the girl, with her mother’s support, to take legal action against her father, culminating in the ruling.

Oh the joys of modern society: Behind every man is a woman seeking to undermine his efforts.

Mr. Mom

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pregnantman.jpg

A woman who underwent a transgender transformation to become a man is pregnant. The child is due to be born this July. Read more here.

Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child … I will be my daughter’s father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family.”

After all, family is whatever you want it to be in this day and age.

[Ethicist Margaret Somerville] added: “It’s a very touchy thing, this deconstruction of our biological reality and the institutions that have existed across all kinds of societies over thousands and thousands of years to establish stability, respect and certainty. I think we’re just playing with fire.”

Obama, poverty and families

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Obama’s recent speech discussed race and poverty: Here’s what he did not discuss. Marriage is an anti-poverty campaign in itself. The article is from a non-so-con source (very important-because so-cons are born with a pro-marriage, pro-life gene, as we all  know).  

Researchers estimate that the entire rise in poverty in America since the late 1970s can be attributed to “changes in family formation,” a euphemism for the decline of families headed by two married parents. … Given that a significant body of research now shows that children raised in two-parent, married families do better in school, are less likely to wind up in jail, and are less likely to end up on welfare, the startling racial divide in marriage tells us that a new generation of children, especially blacks, are growing up destined to struggle academically, in the job market, and in forming their own families. And policy prescriptions like a higher minimum wage or tax credits are unlikely to help many of these kids. What they mostly need is another parent-usually a father.

And lest you think the Republicans are doing any better on this issue…

Even Republican presidential nominee John McCain-whose economic agenda focuses on pro-growth policies, like corporate tax cuts-has little to say about the family, though the children of many fractured poor families will be in no position to take advantage of such tax cuts. … Comparing the rhetoric of the presidential candidates with the latest stark data on families is a reminder that, until we can at least begin to discuss in the political sphere one of the major causes of economic woes in America today, we can’t begin to take the necessary steps to reduce long-term poverty.

Is it primary season already?

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If I were in an endorsing kind of mood, I wouldn’t pick Mike Huckabee.  Nonetheless, his sudden uptick in Iowa is fascinating.  In a contest that has so far dealt largely with the economy, immigration and national security, rather than social and cultural issues, David Broder makes the argument that there is something going on under the surface (free registration req’d.):

Huckabee understands how middle-class anxiety is really lived. […] [R]eal middle-class families have more to fear economically from divorce than from a free trade pact. A person’s lifetime prospects will be threatened more by single parenting than by outsourcing. Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has.

Social and human capital are what enable individuals and groups to thrive.  When communities can’t generate this capital for whatever reason, governments step in, and their solutions are usually ham-handed, expensive, and inefficient.  Fiscal conservatism, small governments and shrinking budgets are only viable when most people are functional, stable, and autonomous, and there has yet to be a more effective way to develop such people than in a family.  I’m a bit puzzled that this theme has been lacking so far in the primary season, but perhaps it’s there, in the subtext.  It will be interesting to see if it emerges more clearly in the debates ahead.

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