How to Simplify for Stress-Free Holidays

There is a common assumption that although the holidays are joyful, they are also, by nature, stressful. The holiday season conjures up images of parents going store to store, buying extravagant gifts to create the perfect Christmas for their kids.

The supposed perfect holiday includes ideal and plentiful gifts for everyone, lavish meals, and envy-inducing decorations, and advertisers try their hardest to sell us each of these ideas. I cringe at toy catalogs arriving in October, encouraging kids to “find” their Christmas wishes, and after-Thanksgiving sales starting ever earlier, promising amazing deals on things people didn’t even know they wanted and probably don’t need.

It doesn’t have to be this way! Ever since we got married, my husband and I have tried to keep the holidays simple in our home, and we have redoubled our commitment since we had kids. We want to create family traditions that bring us together and create memories of people, experiences, and faith, not just piles of gifts or Martha Stewart-approved decorations and parties.

We want something different for our family, something truly meaningful. Here are some of our strategies.

Dream of what you want the holidays to be

A simple holiday will not look the same in every family. Simplifying just means cutting out the unnecessary to make room for more of what you love.

You know that you don’t want stress and materialism to rule your holidays, but what do you want instead? Do you want to have a fun time as a family, playing games or music, watching holiday movies, baking cookies, spending time in nature? Do you want to explore your faith, share holiday stories with your kids, or volunteer in your community? Do you want to spend less time shopping so you can host a holiday party for your friends this year?

When your kids are grown and starting their own families, what memories of the holidays do you most want them to cherish? Keep that image in your head as you decide where you want to simplify or what you want to add to your celebrations. The chances are good that what you are imagining does not cost much money or center around extravagant gifts.

Examine your motives

If the idea of a simpler holiday makes you nervous, it is likely that you are subconsciously trying to impress someone – your relatives, friends, parents, or neighbors. Do you worry that your sister-in-law will ask your kids, “What did you get for Christmas?” and your kids won’t have impressive responses? Do you go all-out, National Lampoon-style, on lighting displays to impress your neighbors?

Or perhaps you worry that a simpler holiday will mean letting your kids down. I find it very sad that the expression “she wants to give her kids a good Christmas” means “she wants to give her kids a big pile of presents under the tree.” Most of us will readily admit that money cannot buy happiness, and yet we seem to forget this around the holidays. More presents will not make your kids happier; in fact, it could have the opposite effect.

Set limits on gifts

We all enjoy giving good gifts to our children, myself included. I love surprising my kids and seeing their reactions, and hey, it’s been a long time since we all got to play with toys ourselves. While some families choose to simplify by cutting out gifts entirely, I would guess that most of us like the gift-giving aspect of the holidays.

The problem with gift-giving is when it all becomes too much, when it overwhelms both the giver and the recipient. Parents pore over catalogs to make gift lists (or have their kids do so) and spend time wandering malls or circling parking lots. Kids become so starry-eyed and overwhelmed by a pile of gifts that they rip each present open, glance at its contents, and move on to the next, truly enjoying none of them! And in the flurry of activity around gifts, we forget the real meaning of the holiday and the vision we have for our family.

Limits can help by reducing the stress on both the giver and recipient. The giver can enjoy getting just a few well-chosen gifts and stopping when enough is enough. Buying fewer gifts means that each gift can be of high quality and well thought-out. The recipient can better value each gift because it does not get lost in a pile.

Setting limits will look different depending on your specific goals, but decide on a guideline and stick to it. This could be a number of gifts or a budget, or even a theme. Some families choose to do three gifts for each child: one toy, one book, and one new article of clothing. Other families dispense with store-bought gifts and limit the gift exchange to homemade gifts.

We usually aim for three gifts for each child and one or two for each adult. Sometimes we even do joint gifts. For example, when my oldest was about to turn three and could play more board games, we had a Christmas when we stocked up on board games, both kid games and family games. Although we labeled the gifts for specific people to open them, we knew that the games were meant for all of us to enjoy. Last year, we got some musical instruments for us to learn as a family, some percussion for the little ones and a guitar for the adults.

In all of this, the goal is to use gifts to express our love and build memories together, not to make them the focus of the season.

Manage expectations

If your kids are old enough to have memories or expectations of what the holidays should mean, you’ll need to explain that things might be different this year. Market the new-and-improved simplified holiday by telling them about your dreams and vision. For example, they may get fewer gifts, but they will get more time with you doing fun things. If you have specific plans to attend holiday events or do activities together instead of spending time shopping, tell them about those. Most kids will prefer the idea of more fun time with Mom and Dad to a pile of anonymous gifts.

Rather than piling up gifts under the tree over the course of December, we put a pile of (unwrapped) holiday-themed picture books under the tree to be pulled out and read together. This way, kids aren’t constantly fixated on the pile of wrapped gifts, wondering what they could be. (This strategy also prevents babies from eating too much wrapping paper!) We put all the wrapped gifts under the tree on Christmas Eve. 

Last year, when I was reading the Christmas chapter of Little House in the Big Woods with my son, we came to the part where the children opened their stockings on Christmas morning. Each child received a peppermint stick and a pair of red mittens, except for Laura, who received a doll. The author says that all the children “were all so happy they could hardly speak at first.” Can you imagine your children getting so excited over something so simple? Children are not naturally greedy, and no one wants their kids to fret constantly over the toys they didn’t get. This leads to entitlement and subsequent unhappiness. With simplified expectations comes increased gratitude in your children.

Make your vision clear to extended family

Grandparents and aunts and uncles often love to give holiday gifts to children, which can be a challenge if you are trying to take the focus off of gifts this season. As early as you can, try to explain your vision to your extended family, just as you explained it to your children.

Relatives may be on board, may even be excited about your simplified holiday, or they may not. Grandparents who are tired of the rush to buy gifts for multiple grandchildren may welcome the chance to relax. On the other hand, grandparents who are completely sold on the marketed version of the holidays may not understand. They might even be hostile toward your ideas, especially if you are trying to do something different from the way you were raised.

Try to be charitable and calm, and remember that one of your motivations for simplifying the holidays is to build better family relationships. If your relatives start throwing around the G-word, remind them that even the Grinch himself discovered that “Christmas doesn’t come from a store.” If necessary, it’s fine to set limits on the gifts your relatives give your children, as long as you do it with a spirit of gratitude. You wouldn’t want your children to learn bitterness from your exercise in making the holidays more meaningful!

Rest, and breathe

Finally, when it’s Christmas Eve and the stockings are hung (or not) and you didn’t do everything you wanted to do this season, or you did too much, cut yourself some slack.

Take time to breathe, relax, and love your partner and kids. Remember that the holidays are meant to be a time of rest and love.

The details are just details, and the holidays come around every year. If something worked well this year and you found yourselves building some wonderful family memories, then do it again next year. If something didn’t work, try it differently next year. But be sure to take a moment by the fire with some hot chocolate just to enjoy the season.

The #1 Way to Keep Children from Running into the Street

There seems to be an epidemic of children running into the street. I'm not basing this off of any statistics, but judging from many "discipline" discussions around the Internet and in parenting books and magazines, young children, poorly disciplined, want nothing more than to run into the street.

Anytime a parent disagrees with another parent's discipline methods, or feels those methods are too "soft," the immediate question posed is almost always, "But, how will you teach your children not to run into the street???" Personally, I happen to agree with Sara over at Happiness is Here that children too young to understand that streets can be dangerous should not be playing near automobile-containing streets without supervision in the first place.

But as this seems to be such a pressing problem in America today, I thought I should throw my two cents in as well. So here goes... the number 1, almost-fail-proof method for preventing children from running into the street is...

Walk with your children. Walk with them a lot.

Walk with them when they're babies, in carriers or wraps and then strollers. Walk with them when they're starting to toddle by themselves. Walk with them when they're walking confidently, and then riding their bikes.

Walk to the park. Walk to the store. Walk to the library. Walk anywhere you possibly can do so safely, with your children. Make sure to include a variety of types of streets and intersections. Make it a part of your daily life, if possible.

If you walk with your children often, as a way of life, they will learn very early and very quickly what roads are about. They will see cars, driving fast (it is very difficult to gauge just how fast cars are going if you only ever see them from another car). They will see you, walking on the sidewalk, and looking both ways before crossing the street, and waiting at stop lights. They will begin to understand what you are doing, and why, and they will do so too with very little explanation on your part.

And you know what? Children who understand the street because they walk there, a lot, will understand why their grown-ups don't want them running into the street. They will understand on a visceral, intuitive level that they need to be careful.

By the time my son was a young toddler, maybe 15 months old, he seemed to understand about traffic lights and walk signals. He had almost never seen them from a car because we lived in an extremely walkable neighborhood, but he stopped with us at the corner and waited for the light, without being told. From the time he learned to walk, he had been walking with us, not just fake walks to the end of the block, but real walks to get somewhere. When he wasn't walking on his own down the sidewalk, he was in a stroller going somewhere, on a daily basis. It was never necessary to say to him, "Don't step onto the black," or other seemingly-arbitrary explanations I hear adults giving to toddlers to try to keep them out of the street.

My youngest is now 16 months old, and she occasionally slips out the door and down the driveway, with one of us trailing close behind to scoop her up. But I have noticed that she never aims straight for the street. She gets to the bottom of the driveway and then veers either left or right, onto the sidewalk, because she knows that we never walk right out into the street. Children who walk a lot (or are walked a lot) will imitate the behavior of the adults who walk with them.

I am of course not suggesting that you release your toddlers to play by the street unsupervised, but it is comforting to know that children value their own safety almost as much as we do. They will avoid danger once they truly understand that something is dangerous.

Should it be the case that streets in neighborhoods containing humans are dangerous to those humans? No, of course not, and there was a time when children played in the street without care or worry. It was once considered the business of the drivers, horseback riders, motorists, and bicyclists to avoid the children, not the other way around. But until that is the case again, let's stop worrying about how to teach our children to stay out of the street, and show them.

Our Homeschool Day in the life with a 5-, 3-, and 1-year-old

I haven't written much about our home preschool approach recently, but I'm linking up (a little late!) with the Simple Homeschool day in the life post.  As everyone says, there is really no "typical" day in our lives, but this one was fairly representative (at least of what I hope our days can be like :-)). We are pretty unschooly in our approach with these little ones, so you won't find any set curriculum or required schoolwork here, mostly just lots of play and reading.

This day was actually a Sunday, but we don't discriminate between days for the most part.

6:00 AM

The baby wakes up. She sleeps in our room, so she usually just plays on the floor for a while until I get up (which is decidedly not at 6 AM). Although I have ambitions of waking up before my kids, the baby still doesn't sleep through the night at 14 months, so early mornings just aren't happening this season.

8:00 AM

The older two kids wake up and start wandering in to our room.  I help get everyone dressed and downstairs.

9:00 AM

We have breakfast outside on this beautiful spring morning. I make two dozen muffins that only last us through the afternoon! The kids do some impromptu crafts with construction paper and scissors and then play in the digging/mud area in the backyard.

10:00 AM
The 14-month-old goes down for her nap. She is at an in-between stage when she sometimes takes two naps and sometimes just one. When she takes two naps, like she does today, she and my 3-year-old do tag-team naps and I never have more than one kid asleep at one time.

11:00 AM
I have been reading and loving Playing with Math, published by the Natural Math folks, so I am very motivated to let the kids "play math" as much as possible. I get out our Cuisenaire Rods and we play with them for a while, building pyramids this way and that and making designs and "trains."

12:00 PM
We spread out the picnic blanket in the backyard and read picture books in the sunshine.

12:40 PM
The baby wakes up and we have lunch. While the kids are eating, I read some poetry from The Random House Book of Poetry for Children. I have a list of about eight poems or so that I would like the kids to memorize (just to have in their repertoire, not to recite or anything), so I usually read a few of those every day, mixed in with some new ones.

1:10 PM
My 5-year-old is looking at a dinosaur book and discovers that it has games at the back, so we get out game pieces and a die and play it together (with "help" from the baby).

2:00 PM
The 3-year-old goes down for a nap, and I ride my bike to Trader Joe's (this is the only thing that probably wouldn't happen on a weekday). While I'm gone, the baby takes a second nap, and the 5-year-old plays a computer game with Daddy for a bit.

3:30 PM
Mr. 5 loves workbooks of various kinds, so he does some math games in one of his workbooks. My mother-in-law was the first to buy him a workbook when he was about 3 1/2, and I was none too pleased. I was afraid his creativity would suffer and that he would either become a slave to the directions or shy away from any writing or math as a result. As it happened, I left the workbook around for a while and never insisted he do it; he started picking it up from time to time on his own and doing some of the activities. He will occasionally ask us to read the instructions or help with an activity. We don't correct or grade them; I see them as just a supplement to what he learns through play. The grandmothers add workbooks to his collection, and he does them when the mood strikes.

5:00 PM
Miss 3 is up from her nap, and she and I make the blackberry fool from the lovely picture book A Fine Dessert with occasional help from Mr. 5.

6:30 PM
Daddy takes Miss 3 for a ride on his bike while I make dinner. We eat and then enjoy the blackberry fool.

8:00 PM
I put the baby down to bed while the two older kids get ready for bed. I read them a chapter from Ramona the Brave and lie down next to Miss 3 while she falls asleep. Mr. 5 stays up a bit longer reading and drawing in bed.

It is past 9:30 by the time all the kids are asleep. I do some laundry, and Daddy and I watch a DVD and read some before heading off to bed ourselves.

Thanks for joining us on our home preschool day!

How We Keep Toys Manageable (Part 2)

Last week, I wrote about how we keep toy clutter to a minimum in our home by remembering that kids don't need toys from a store and keeping toys simple and beautiful. 

Manage expectations

It's obviously okay to say "no" to a toy your kids want if it is not something you want to buy or have in your house for whatever reason. But how do we keep from running the gauntlet whenever we're in a store? How do we help our kids to be satisfied with what they have, not just to avoid clutter but as a good general life attitude? 

First, we stick to commercial-free TV or mute the commercials, especially around the holidays. Kids can't want something if they don't know it exists (and aren't bombarded with dishonest and manipulative advertising that they might not be able to understand yet). We love to tell a story from when my son was about 2 1/2. He had a new baby sister and so had been (ahem) watching a bit more TV than usual, to give Mama a bit of sanity. My own sister came to visit and was cleaning up a mess made by one of the kids when my dear boy recommended, "You should use Oxi-Clean. It gets out tough stains." Kids absorb advertising messages, whether or not they even understand what they're talking about!

When we go to a store that has toys, we try to explain ahead of time whether this will be a trip to get something for the child, to get something for someone else, or just to look (these trips are rare). I like to have some stores where I never buy toys, like the supermarket, Target, and Ross. We might look, we might get crayons or other art supplies, but not toys. Now they rarely ask for toys in those stores.

Finally, we find that having fewer toys, mixing things up by rotating toys (more on that next), playing outside, and playing with our kids can help them appreciate and enjoy what they already have. 

Purge and rotate

Whenever I am starting to feel overwhelmed by the volume or quality of toys in my home, I purge! Get rid of (or fix) those broken toys that are hanging around, and donate or sell ones your kids have outgrown or that don't promote the kind of play you want in your home (or if you just hate them, that's okay too).

If you still have more toys out in the living area or your kids' rooms than you want, start a toy rotation: box up some of the toys for storage, especially if you have several different versions of a similar kind of toy, such as puzzles or play sets. Rotate toys out and back on a biweekly or monthly basis so toys will stay fresh and new in your kids' minds. Kids will also be able to play better with more space and fewer choices.

Keep grandparents in the loop

I don't know about your parents, but ours LOVE to buy toys for our kids. Love it. It can get a little crazy around Christmas and the birthdays, which in our case is one month-long celebration. While we are grateful for their generosity, we have found that we need to help them to channel their enthusiasm in directions that serve our vision and values for our family. 

Of course, if relatives give our children toys we don't want or have room for, we can always give them away, but I would rather they spend their gift money on things we can get behind. Websites like the SoKind Gift Registry sponsored by Center for a New American Dream can include secondhand items, experiences, donations to charity, and other alternative gifts. I recommend starting a registry well before the holidays or birthdays so givers have time to order things if necessary. 

Other alternatives to toys could include magazine subscriptions, museum or gift memberships, gift certificates for other family activities, experiences with the grandparents (get Grandma to take the kids to a jumpy castle place for a couple of hours - a gift for you too!), art supplies, or books (we rarely buy new picture books for the kids, but grandparents are happy to do so). 

If you need to, you can set a gift limit for birthdays and holidays (say, three gifts including one toy only). Try to explain your vision for your home, either in terms of avoiding clutter or encouraging imagination in your kids. I know from experience that limits without an accompanying explanation can lead to confusion, especially when you are choosing to do things differently than your own parents did.

Play!

This is probably the hardest suggestion for me to follow, considering all of the other things I need or want to do when we're at home. Without exception, getting involved and playing with my kids is the number-one way to keep toy clutter at bay. I am their favorite toy! When I play with my kids, either by building something with them out of K'NEX, doing a science experiment or craft, reading aloud, going outside with them, or making a block tower, a number of magical things happen. 

My kids are less likely to ask to watch TV or get new toys because they aren't "bored." I gain more of a sense of what they like to do and can suggest other activities when they tire of one game or another. They get the sense that their toys are interesting because Mama finds them interesting. They get new ideas for how to use the toys they have. As any parent knows, yelling "Go play with your toys!" while we are doing something of our own and ignoring the kid never works, no matter how many toys she has.

How do you avoid toy clutter in your home? 

How We Keep Toys Manageable (Part 1)

This is part of a series on my home decluttering efforts.

Most Americans assume that you cannot have a simple, clutter-free home with kids, and toys are a major reason for this assumption. Toys are seemingly pervasive where children are concerned: there are Christmas and birthday presents, gifts from visiting relatives, gifts from in-town relatives, souvenirs from vacations, and of course, toys from visits to the dentist, doctor, supermarket, and post office. We obviously don't have to get toys from every (or any!) one of these sources, but they are there, and it can be easy to give in a little too much and end up with toy clutter. I find that too many toys quickly make a house feel cluttered, which frustrates parents and frazzles kids.

Kids can become overwhelmed by too many toys and react in whatever way their craziness happens to tend (because we all have that crazy just waiting to come out). In one of my all-time favorite parenting books, Simplicity Parenting, Kim John Payne describes noticing that an overwhelming environment, including too many toys, clothes, and even books, caused undue stress in children, prompting them to display behaviors we associate with anxiety, OCD, and ADHD.

So... with all this temptation to keep getting fun, cute, and "educational" toys, what is a simplicity-minded parent to do?

Remember that kids don't need toys from a store

True confession: I really love buying toys for my kids. Not all toys; some I find unbelievably obnoxious, but when I feel like a particular toy will make a particular child happy, or contribute to an interest, or lead to some new ways of playing, I can be a woman possessed. I sometimes even feel annoyed at having to give away some of "my" toy ideas for my kids so relatives can buy them Christmas and birthday gifts. It's silly, but there it is.

That being said, my reasonable side tells me that in reality, kids don't need toys at all! Anyone who has observed children deep in play can attest to this. For about 20 minutes now, my kids have been digging in the dirt in our front yard. I believe they are pirates digging for buried treasure, and their tools consist of one adult trowel and one kid-sized sandbox shovel. The real toys are the rocks and the dirt, and these are free and plentiful.

A German kindergarten recently drew international media coverage for agreeing to participate in a research study to remove all the toys from the classroom for three months. At the end of the three months, there was less fighting and more imaginative play among the children than before the experiment. Instead of toys, we try to give our kids good outdoor space (including local parks and natural areas!), access to grown-up activities like cooking and cleaning, and lots of art supplies and library books.

Keep toys simple

The simpler a toy is, the more kids can do with it in imaginary play. A super turbo character superhero spacecraft with sound and light buttons does pretty much one thing, and the kids do pretty much one thing - push buttons. With these toys, kids aren't the creators of stories; they become toy operators. The toy is so complex and self-contained that it doesn't require any imagination. 

Simple toys like blocks and building toys, sticks, fabric for dress-up, pillows, ropes, and simple dolls and animals, can be used a million different ways, so kids don't need as many toys. They also evolve as the child grows. We have a set of wooden blocks that we got when my eldest was one year old, and four years later, our kids play with them almost every day, making complex structures or pretending they are treasures of one sort or another.

Let toys be beautiful

This may seem silly. What does it matter if toys are beautiful, and do kids really care? First of all (and this was our primary motivation when we started getting beautiful toys for our kids), handcrafted toys made of natural materials like wood and fabric look nicer in the adult areas of your home, which makes it look less cluttered (even when it is). I like to use natural woven baskets for toy storage, and canvas bags like these for plastic pieces, to make our home look more uniform and make cleanup easier. Bright plastic toys and storage bins stand out more against a background of adult decor.

As to whether kids enjoy beautiful toys more, a quote widely attributed to Plato has it that the most effective education for a child is to play amongst lovely things. With beautiful, natural toys, young children are exposed to a variety of textures and weights. They learn aesthetic principles by handling handcrafted items, and they can learn to imagine how their toys were made (and subsequently learn to make their own). 

To me, beauty is a good in and of itself, so filling our kids' lives with more beauty surely can't hurt. Finally, as an added bonus, beautiful toys cost more, so you (and the grandparents) will likely buy fewer of them!

Check in next week for Part 2 of how we manage toy clutter.

Our Favorite Children's Books (Ages 4-8)

(If you're looking for books for younger kids, check out my favorite books from birth to 3.)

Reading beautiful children's books aloud is one of my favorite perks of being a mom. No matter how our day goes, as long as we manage to fit in some good read-aloud time, I feel that my time has been well spent. Our time spent in books is fun, it's sweet, it's the cornerstone of our home preschool, and it sparks some of our best conversations.

I have found reading aloud to be more and more fun as our eldest can understand and pay attention to longer and more complex books. He still loves flap books and simple rhymes (which is lucky for our 2-year-old), but he can sit still for longer picture books and even some short chapter books.

When I say "sit still," of course, it is a relative term. He is still a 4.5-year-old boy. He might be in one of our laps, or he might be playing with clay (I save the real grown-up clay for when I'm reading a chapter book aloud), drawing, playing in the dirt, or whatever he can do and still listen.

My age range of 4 to 8 is just an estimate as I don't really know whether my 4-year-old will still enjoy these as an 8-year-old, but I can't see why not! We adults genuinely enjoy all of these, too.

This list is by no means even close to exhaustive. These are just a few of the many, many lovely books for kids of this age.

Picture books

The Pink Refrigerator  by Tim Egan

Metropolitan Cow and others by Tim Egan. In addition to unusual stories with moral lessons that don't punch you in the face, Egan's books also feature beautiful, walkable neighborhoods.

No Such Things by Bill Peet

Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpent by Bill Peet

Encore for Eleanor by Bill Peet, and anything else by Bill Peet.

The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss. I cannot say that I enjoy reading much Dr. Seuss aloud, but this is one I can read over and over again.

Jumanji and others by Chris Van Allsburg

Lilly's Big Day by Kevin Henkes. If you're looking for an irrepressible and delightful heroine, Lilly is your mouse.

Sheila Rae, the Brave and others by Kevin Henkes

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and others by William Steig

I'm a Frog! and other Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems. The Pigeon books are wonderful too, but Elephant and Piggie start treading into the beginning reader category without being mind-numbing to read aloud.

Frog and Toad are Friends and others by Arnold Lobel. These are another series of beginning reader books that are pleasant to read aloud.

Chapter books

Starting chapter books with a preschooler can feel both daunting and exciting. It is rewarding to finally get to some of the chapter book classics we remember, and yet we are still dealing with discriminating attention spans and wiggly bodies. I would recommend these as good first chapter books to read aloud.

Two Times the Fun by Beverly Cleary. This was one of the first chapter books we read with my son, and he loved it.

A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond

My Father's Dragon and sequels by Ruth Stiles Gannett

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. I loved Roald Dahl as a kid, but as a parent, I have found some of his novels to be darker than I remember. This one is a good bet for younger ones.

Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard Atwater

Poetry

Scranimals by Jack Prelutsky. If you like Shel Silverstein, you will love Jack Prelutsky.

Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant by Jack Prelutsky

I've Lost My Hippopotamus by Jack Prelutsky

A Family of Poems edited by Caroline Kennedy

Shakespeare's Seasons by Miriam Weiner and Shannon Whitt. This is a gentle introduction to Shakespeare as short quotations from the Bard are paired with charming illustrations.

Nonfiction

I have been astounded by the variety and quality of children's nonfiction books. I am convinced that even for adults, there is a kids' nonfiction book to serve as the foundation for any area of interest. Now whenever I am looking to get a good overview of something, whether it's Shakespeare or Darwin, learning how to draw or how to play the guitar, I start in the kids' section.

Here are a smattering of books we have enjoyed so far.

The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth and others by Joanna Cole. Magic School Bus books are a bit tricky to read aloud because of all the different images and insets, but my son loves them and follows many of the scientific concepts. If the format becomes too cumbersome, I skip the sidebars and just read the story.

I Face the Wind and others by Vicki Cobb. These introduce basic concepts to the youngest scientists.

Motion, Magnets and More by Adrienne Mason. This is slightly more advanced than the Vicki Cobb books and introduces a variety of physical science concepts using simple experiments.

Sunshine Makes the Seasons by Franklyn M. Branley and other Let's-Read-and-Find-Out-Science books. Despite the cumbersome name, this series has something about pretty much any science question my son has thrown at me.

How People Learned to Fly by Fran Hodgkins

Pitter and Patter by Martha Sullivan. This playful book follows two drops of rain as they move through the water cycle.

On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein by Jennifer Berne

Henri's Scissors, a picture book biography of Henri Matisse by Jeanette Winter

The Iridescence of Birds: A Book about Henri Matisse by Patricia MacLachlan


What have I missed? What are your favorite children's books for this age group?



  

Kids and Libraries

I love taking my kids to the library.

Let me rephrase that. I love the fact that my kids get to go to the library. Taking them there myself just happens to be the only way to get them there.

As someone who only recently discovered my love of libraries, I enjoy giving my kids an early introduction. I want them to grow up feeling comfortable in libraries and confident finding books, doing research, and asking the librarians questions. We attend a weekly story time for preschoolers, and it's a good chance for my kids to play with other kids and hear books read by someone besides us (and for me to talk to fellow adults, huzzah). As the kids get older, I'm excited for them to get their own library cards and be immersed in a world of literacy and literature. And let's face it, children's picture books are expensive, and the library allows us access to many more books than we would want to buy or keep in our house. I have nothing but love for libraries. Love. Love. Love.

But.  BUT... Taking young children, especially a small herd of young children, to the library is not always a fun experience. It's a lot like taking young children to a church service. I know we're allowed to be here, but... do they actually expect my children to be quiet? How can I let my kids explore without destroying anything or disturbing anyone? Why oh why do they have to put computers with colorful keyboards in the kids' section (I take my kids to the library in part to keep them away from screens!)? How exactly am I supposed to nurse a baby while I have two older kids to manage? And seriously, when is my 2-year-old going to outgrow pulling books off of the shelves, pushing books through the shelves to the other side, and lying down on the shelves (this is a new one)?!

I also just have to admit that taking kids into the library bathroom is the least favorite part of my week. Changing at least one diaper while trying to keep at least one other kid from getting soaking wet or, God forbid, touching anything, is not my idea of a good time, especially when other women, who could be either doting or judgmental depending on the day, are sharing the space. 

And yet, I do look forward to library day every week. It would be easy enough to go to the library by myself to pick up kids' books on the weekend while my husband watches some kiddos, but it hasn't come to that. Deep down, I really do want them to come with me and to enjoy spending time in the library. Here are some ways we make it work.

1. Go during story time

Not only is story time fun for the kids (and for me); going to the library on story time day guarantees that there will be a flock of other children in the library at the same time. If I'm lucky, some of them may even be worse-behaved than my own children so I'm not embarrassed.

And as another mom pointed out to me once, anyone who uses the library to get research or work done is probably smart enough to avoid the library on Tuesday or Thursday mornings during story time.

2. Reserve books beforehand

We use our library's reserve system liberally. Rather than trying to wrangle kids and find books at the same time, I can do my research and request books online a few days before story time day. Given that I like to get at least ten and often more books per week, this saves a lot of time and stress. I'm also able to put more thought into the books I get, rather than simply grabbing whatever books happen to be on top of the shelves.

3. Find diversions and events for kids

Our library has some toys in the kids' section, as well as preschool-level puzzles and board games that my kids can do with some help. Once I have a kid set up with a puzzle, I can often duck over to the adult section for a minute or two to (gasp) look for a book for myself. Oh frabjous day.

Depending on the season, our library offers special kid-friendly events like holiday tea parties, themed story parties (Pete the Cat was a recent one), and family movie screenings, and on a regular basis, they set out building block sets and craft supplies for kids to explore. 

And yes, I have to confess that I finally gave in and let my 4-year-old play games on the library computers. Those keyboards are just so darned colorful, aren't they? We don't have kids' computer or tablet games at home, and it keeps the oldest occupied while I manage the higher-maintenance under-3 crew, so I figured, why fight it?

4. Let kids pick books and DVDs

This seems obvious, but I only recently started encouraging my kids to pick some of their own books and DVDs. I don't have them choose all of the books we'll get because that would be insane at this age, but they usually each pick one or two. I've found that even the 2-year-old is more manageable when I direct her to the board book section and read her choice aloud before we go. I usually also take advantage of this time to nurse the baby, as there is a couch right next to the board books. I often end up reading several selections before we're done.

5. Snacks!

This should be on the list of how to do anything with kids, shouldn't it? Because our library trip usually cuts into lunchtime and we have a 45-minute walk home afterward, I must bring snacks for the kids. In addition to keeping our blood sugar in the normal range, snacks are also a handy bribe to get them out the door and back into the stroller.

6. Make a day of it

As I mentioned, our library is about a 45-minute walk, and conveniently, there are a number of businesses and a beautiful park between here and there. I will often (but not always) stop on the way home for an item or two at the grocery store or pharmacy, or at the playground if the weather is nice. We might have lunch at a cafe, or (more often than not) at least grab a chai tea for myself for the walk home. Because taking kids to the library is stressful. I figure I've earned it. 

Coming Back

It has been a while since I've written here, and I'd like to say it's because I've been so busy on other projects. That is partly true: I took on the rather consuming project of growing and birthing the third child in our young family, a project that has involved much thinking and planning about what our car-free lifestyle will look like with three kids (more thoughts to come on that subject).

Since late summer last year, we have also been traveling off and on, travels that have reinforced our notions about what we value in a city. On top of this, there has been a seemingly endless parade of local walkability and transit issues taking up my head space and mental (and sometimes physical) energy. Some have turned out well, some have been annoyingly contentious in this sometimes backward community, and some are still in process and make me want to plug my ears and sing "la la la la la."  

It can be frustrating to live in a place with beautiful natural surroundings, wonderful potential, and a committed cohort of involved citizens striving to develop that potential, and yet to see change happening so slowly. When it comes to walking, biking, and transit development, nothing here can be taken for granted as it might in a more progressive city. Every project or levy to improve transportation choices has to be explained, debated, and justified in painfully simplistic terms. The community at large, as well as a few very powerful business interests, often don't understand (or refuse to concede) that walkability, bikeability, and centralized, reliable transit are good for business, public safety, and the community. 

Car is king here. All too frequently, the attitude one hears is, "We don't have congestion here, and everyone is happy driving cars. Why would we possibly need new transit/sidewalks/bike infrastructure?" Here, transit is for poor people, sidewalks are for the downtown business core only (and should be obstructed as little as possible by actual people), and bicycles are for trail riding only (after you drive your bike to said trail, obviously). 

This is by no means an unusual state of affairs for a mid-sized American city, and Spokane is certainly not the worst. It passed complete streets legislation in 2012, and many encouraging projects to make the city more human-friendly have been completed in recent years. The city is undoubtedly improving as a place to get around without a private vehicle. But for a family with young kids deciding where to settle down for the long term, I have to admit that the overall culture is discouraging. 

I am the first to say that one shouldn't complain about something one is unwilling to work to change. Especially where walkability is concerned, I believe in making the most of your situation, even when it is not ideal, and advocating to improve it. But if I may be honest, I would prefer not to spend these years of my life - while my children are young and require so much of my energy already - in a place where living out our values has been made so very difficult, when we know that there are other places further along the development path. Until my children are old enough to walk and bike the required distances on their own, it would be great to live someplace where those distances are shorter and safer. And I definitely don't want to succumb to a culture where strapping children into car seats is considered the normal way to get them from place to place on a daily basis. To me, a place where children cannot walk and bike safely everywhere they need to go is not a "great place to raise a family," a claim one often hears about Spokane.

Whew. But. Enough venting. In the meantime, here we are. We are fortunate to be able to live in one of the most walkable neighborhoods in town, and we are enjoying ourselves as spring is in the air. I want to continue documenting our adventures with our now three small children, as well as some new thoughts I've had on education, creative expression, and simple life at home with kids. 

One Year of A Walking Mama

One year ago this month, I started this blog as a way to work through my thoughts and ideas about designing cities for people, not cars. Okay, let's be honest - I started writing to vent my frustration about living in exurban exile. Much has changed for the better over this year, and I'm glad to still be writing, occasionally about smart growth and occasionally about simple, slow parenting.

I am very thankful to be living in a walkable, livable neighborhood yet again, and I am thankful for any and all of you who have stuck with me this year (or joined us recently).

Things are still changing as my youngest is now old enough for the bike trailer, my eldest is outgrowing the iBert seat, and we're moving into our first summer in our new neighborhood. I'm looking forward to sharing all the car-free fun we'll be having around here in the coming months.

Our (Home) Preschool

My eldest recently celebrated his third birthday, and for about six months or so, people have been asking us about preschool. "Is he going to preschool?" "Where is he going to preschool?" "I know of a great Waldorf-Montessori Spanish immersion classical school that I hear is good..." Apparently, in the quarter-century or so since I was a preschooler, preschool has become a "thing," especially among educated, middle-class parents. I didn't attend preschool as a child, and I get the feeling that preschool then was a different beast altogether.

For one thing, kindergarten seems to be getting more competitive. My sister recently told me that where she lives (a very wealthy, educated, high-tech region), kids are basically expected to come to kindergarten already knowing how to read. And there was the recent outpouring of concern on one side and rage on the other about the state of Oregon testing incoming kindergartners and finding them wanting. I find the trend of demanding more from young kids to be very sad, when it already feels that kids don't have enough time to be kids anymore. And as someone who loves and values reading, I find it troubling when I read research that kids who start formal literacy training at age 4 or 5 have the same reading outcomes but don't enjoy reading as much as those who start at 6 or 7.

Just a few days ago in the supermarket, a woman in her sixties or so asked me if my son, who was perusing the kids' birthday card display, was reading yet.
"No, he's only 3," I clarified, as he is tall for his age and often gets mistaken for a 4-year-old.
"Oh, well, you can still teach him at that age! I'm an old schoolteacher," she replied.
I really couldn't do anything but give her a strained smile in return. To what end and purpose should I try to make my 3-year-old learn to read? How exactly would his 3-year-old's life be improved by knowing how to read right now?

In defense of preschool, I know there are some wonderful preschools that let kids be kids and learn the way kids learn - through play, and lots of it. And if I didn't work from home and I had to deal with childcare anyway, I'm sure I would find a good play-based preschool. But for a number of reasons, we are doing preschool at home with my son. We didn't realize this was such a "thing," either. Sometimes people assume we plan to homeschool, which we don't, but for our situation, home preschool was a no-brainer.

And of course, even for the home preschool set, there are workbooks and videos and curricula galore. We have one such workbook that was given to us by a well-meaning relative, and though my son begs me to read the instructions and pretends to do the work, honestly, I feel like he will have to spend enough of his life filling in bubbles, if schooling continues on its current trajectory.

So then, what are we doing? Lately, I've been envisioning an unschooling / Waldorf approach, with good doses of:

• Outdoor free play time, every day if weather permits. This will be in our backyard, which has a variety of plants, a soon-to-be vegetable garden (I hope), a sandbox, lots of cozy hiding spots, and plenty of critters, or at any of our local playgrounds.
• Indoor free play, using open-ended toys made of (mostly) natural materials for optimum sensory experience and lots of imagination.
• Art, art, art: painting, drawing,collage, dough and eventually clay, nature and seasonal crafts, and crayoning (This is a fancy Waldorf way of saying "drawing with crayons." I feel fancy just saying it).
• Stories, both library books and stories we make up. 
• Nursery rhymes and songs with hand motions.
• Helping around the house. He helps in the kitchen, so he is learning hands-on about measuring, cutting and peeling vegetables, following a recipe, and all of the various chemical and physical processes that go into making bread rise or water boil, not to mention all the math involved in cooking. He has a child-size broom and dustpan, and there are child-accessible rags for cleaning up after spills.
• Child-directed learning. I don't know what this will look like just yet, but I love the idea of unschooling, and this is basically what this is - looking for learning opportunities everywhere, following the child's leading. When my son shows a new interest in something, I try to follow his lead by finding library books on the subject, telling stories about it, or finding other ways to explore it. Lately, he has been interested in bugs, especially spiders. We've read spider books (there are a lot!), looked for spiders around the house (there are a lot!), drawn webs together, and made a "web" out of rope.

You'll notice that this looks a lot like everyday life with little kids, and it absolutely is. We're combining these experiences with a bit of more structured time out of the house around other kids, such as library story time and the local children's museum. I don't know yet exactly what these years will look like, but I am feeling so blessed and excited to have this special time of learning with him.

Our Favorite Children's Books (Ages Birth to Three)

(For books for older kids, check out my favorite children's books for ages 4-8.)

As I already have my book list  for grown-ups, I wanted to start a list of our favorite children's books (so far). Kids grow through book stages so quickly that it's hard to even remember what they like at different ages if we don't keep track. The age listed is the youngest age at which my kids have liked these books. Of course, they continue to enjoy many of them well past these suggested ages.

I will continue adding books as I remember them, or as readers suggest them in the comments, so please let us know what your favorites are!

For babies (birth to 12 months):

Peek-a-Who? by Nina Laden. We have already gone through two copies of this and need a new one. Even the youngest babies love it, and my almost-3-year-old loves to "read" it to his baby sister.
Who Loves You, Baby? by Nina Laden
Ready, Set, Go! by Nina Laden
Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt

All the Indestructible books are wonderful for babies who still just want to crinkle and chew. I disagreed with the decision to portray broccoli as "yucky" in Baby Faces, but otherwise, they are great.

For 1- to 2-Year-Olds:

Tip Tip Dig Dig by Emma Garcia

Tap Tap Bang Bang  by Emma Garcia

Trucks by Byron Barton

Really, anything by Byron Barton. I confess that his writing style (simple, direct sentences) annoyed me a bit at first, but toddlers love it, and it has grown on me.

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

Barnyard Banter by Denise Fleming (the link is to the board book, but we've found the full-size picture book at our local library)
Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young edited by Jack Prelutsky

Word books from DK Publishing like My First Words.

For 2- to 3-Year-Olds:

Freight Train by Donald Crews (again, the link is to the board book, but we have read the picture book).

Other books by Donald Crews, such as School Bus, Carousel, and Bicycle Race, were favorites with the child but not always with the adults who have to read them repeatedly.

All the Mouse's First and Little Quack books by Lauren Thompson.

Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by James Dean. The other Pete the Cat books are wonderful too, but this remains the favorite.

Whose Mouse are You?  by Robert Kraus

Bear on a Bike and the other Bear books by Stella Blackstone. 

Wheels on the Bus (Raffi Songs to Read). There are obviously other versions of "Wheels on the Bus" to read and sing, but I love the French town portrayed in this book.

Extra Yarn  by Mac Barnett. Yes, the knitting is nice, but the story is warm, lovely, and intriguing to both kids and adults, and the illustrations by Jon Klassen are rich and beautiful.

This Place in the Snow by Rebecca Bond. Poetic without the silly rhyming typical of children's books, this book captures the enchantment and majesty of winter.
Quick as a Cricket by Audrey Wood
The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper. We love this edition with luscious illustrations by Loren Long.
Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg

Our Gear

We finally feel satisfied with our gear for walking, biking, and riding transit with kids (as well as doing all these things with cargo, usually groceries). Because gear often makes or breaks our ability to live car-free, I wanted to share some of the specifics of how we do what we do. I've already written about my bike, and my husband recently got the men's version of the same model, which he is very happy with, so I'll focus on our other gear.

The Double Stroller/Bike Trailer: Burley Encore 2011 with Two-Wheel Stroller Kit

This beauty essentially makes our life possible. We have used it mostly in stroller mode thus far, as my youngest is still too young to be pulled behind a bike in it. I found our trailer used on Ebay, but I made sure to get a newer version so that I could use the swiveling two-wheel stroller attachment. If you just want a bike trailer, Craigslist or your local garage sale can set you up with any number and brand of trailers in great used condition (I myself got a chance to use my sister's Via Velo from Costco this summer, and it was wonderful as a bike trailer, though a bit narrower in the kids' shoulders than the Burley Encore). Our two small children fit comfortably in the Burley, along with quite a bit of cargo, maybe a week's worth of groceries. The seats fold down to accommodate tons of cargo if you're traveling sans kids. 

This model is still about as narrow as a wheelchair, so it fits through standard doorways and the security gate at the library. Before I found this trailer, I was seriously considering a new Croozer two-child trailer, which has quite a bit more shoulder room inside and individual bucket seats for the two kids. Unfortunately, it is very large at 35" wide, so it would not be convenient to take indoors anywhere. My hope is that by the time my oldest outgrows the trailer, he will be able to ride his own bike, or we might consider a trail-a-bike.

City Mini Single Stroller

When I know I'll be going on a bus, my toddler rides in the City Mini while baby rides in a carrier. Hands down, the best feature of the City Mini is the one-handed easy fold: you just pull up on a strap in the seat, and the whole thing collapses flat to about the size of a small suitcase. Its footprint is comparable in size to an umbrella stroller, but it swivels nicely with only one hand, so it is ideal for dealing with two kids of different ages in small spaces. It reclines flat, so baby can take a turn in it too if the toddler wants to walk or ride his balance bike. The only downside of the City Mini is limited cargo space in the basket, but it is still enough for the library or a small grocery run.

Strider Balance Bike

When we bought this guy on Amazon, I thought we were getting a toy, an alternative to a tricycle or a bike with training wheels, for my toddler to ride around in the driveway. As it turns out, the Strider has become like a hands-free stroller. Our 2 1/2-year-old is skilled enough on the Strider at this point that it is a viable transportation option for trips under 3 miles or so. He is actually quite a bit faster than my walking speed, so I stick to smaller streets (though we stay on the sidewalk, of course) and carry his bike to cross busy streets. We have even gone to the grocery store with him on his bike: I just throw his little bike in the cart when we get to the store.  

Baby Carriers: Um, One of Each, Please

I confess that I'm a sucker for baby slings. I started with a homemade wrap (equivalent to a Moby or Sleepy) and then kept adding to my collection on a quest for the perfect one. As babywearing moms will attest, no carrier is perfect for every stage of babyhood:

• The wrap continues to be my favorite for young babies.
• My Baby K'Tan, somewhere between a wrap and a structured carrier, is the best all-around carrier for different ages and holds, but you have to get it in your size, so it probably won't also work for a daddy or other caregiver;
• I got a Mei Tai from Etsy to be able to carry baby on my back. Back carrying is more comfortable on long walks but is usually only safe for an older baby (6+ months). I have even carried my 30-pound 2-year-old in a Mei Tai fairly comfortably!
• The Dr. Sears sling (Balboa Baby Sling) is adjustable, so it was useful for Daddy to walk the little baby down to sleep and trade off if necessary. It's generally very versatile and very quick to put on, but I confess that I haven't used mine very much lately.
• We also have a structured carrier that Daddy prefers but I've never worn. 

I know many moms swear by their Ergos, but that is one I haven't tried yet. 

It feels like a lot of gear when I write it all out, but really, we have our routines set so that deciding on a method of travel is always easy. Library? Both kids in the double stroller. Bus to downtown? Toddler in the City Mini, baby in the Baby K'Tan. Local park? Toddler on his Strider, baby in the City Mini. Living successfully without a car (and, you know, still actually going places) is just a matter of preparation.

Feel free to brag about your favorite baby- and child-toting gear in the comments!

Kids as Billboards

At the risk of sounding a bit too bourgeois bohemian, I have to say that I love PBS. Quality programming, no commercials (except for those commercials that aren't supposed to be commercials, you know the ones), and often addictive documentaries and mini-series. When I give in to the temptation to use the TV as a babysitter for my toddler, I appreciate the Daniel Tigers and Sid the Science Kids who help me to feel less guilty about it.

But I have to say that my snobbish, "Oh no, my children don't watch commercial television" attitude was in for a rude awakening the first time I walked into a store with the aforementioned toddler and experienced the barrage of "Thomas!" "Elmo!" "Dinosaur Train!" Oops. It would appear that even PBS is out to ensnare parents trying to protect our kids from materialism.*

Kids are great business. According to Simplicity Parenting, marketers spend $16 billion per year to target kids directly. My most recent experience of this phenomenon pertains to children's underpants, that symbolic graduation from babyhood into bigness (and apparently, into consumer culture). My search for said intimate apparel has turned up Superman, Thomas the Train, Sesame Street, Angry Birds, and the Avengers (which is a PG-13 movie anyway, so theoretically 2-year-olds should not have even seen it).

And this is for my son. I dread the orgy of Disney princesses that will be available when my daughter is learned in the potty arts. Plain colored underpants with non-branded trains, cars, and dinosaurs required a special order online.

So what's the big deal, after all? I've had to ask myself why Avengers undies bother me so much. I'm not convinced that superhero underpants will turn my son into a sociopath (or a superhero, for that matter). My reasoning comes down to a few concerns:

1. Kids are gullible. It hardly seems fair to trick them into buying something when they don't have the critical thinking skills to combat marketing tactics. It's just too easy.
2. Manipulation should be reserved for adults. In the same vein, if someone should be manipulated into buying stuff, it should be adults. At least they have (ideally) developed the ability to say "no" to something, even if they've seen it on TV. Adults are better able to assess whether a product is really better quality, or if it just has a character on it that they happen to recognize.
3. For my own children, I hope to instill in them the principle that buying things does not equal happiness. Hey, don't get me wrong: I like buying new clothes as much as the next person. But clothes for kids are not an end in and of themselves. The same is true for toys. The stuff of underwear and T-shirts and toys should fade away as the real substance of childhood - play and mess and learning and friends and brothers and sisters and more play and more mess - takes center stage. 

In many cases, this means that the simpler choice is often the best - even if it requires a bit of extra research.

*To be fair to PBS, I believe that proceeds from their merchandise go back to support PBS programming. Did I mention that I love PBS? Please don't stop supporting PBS.

Oh So Much Walking

As I've mentioned, we moved about a month ago from our suburban exile to an older, denser, more walkable neighborhood. Now, this isn't DC, we're not kidding ourselves; it is definitely not the "pop out the door at 10 PM to pick up a bag of chips" kind of convenience we're accustomed to, but that being said, so much about our new life here over the past month has been so glorious.

Walking is once again our go-to form of transportation. For quickness or convenience, we might jump on a bike or grab the bus, but for shorter trips to the park or grocery store, we need look no further than our own two (or four, or six) feet.

We're meeting our neighbors and others in our community. We walk past their houses, they walk past ours; we see kids and size them up for playmates. The denser neighborhood, sidewalks, and multiple walking destinations mean we just see our neighbors more.

We are developing systems and building up our resources. This sounds very unromantic. Let me explain: as opposed to driving a car, the car-free life is ultimately about problem solving. Still not romantic enough for you? Everything eventually falls into place and becomes second nature, but starting out in a new place (especially now with two kids, which we didn't have in DC), every trip requires an assessment of what methods will be most efficient - kids in the double stroller? Baby in the single stroller, toddler on his bike? Toddler in the single stroller, baby in a wrap? Walk? Bus? Bike? While it sounds tedious, I feel like this way of thinking makes me an active, thoughtful participant in my daily life and challenges me, keeping my brain from getting flabby. In this way, we also build up our repertoire of strategies for various key trips and our own personal resources for getting around and just dealing with life.

We feel healthier and stronger. Especially with the hills around our new home, it took only a few days for both of us adults to start feeling trimmer and stronger - no gym membership required for our needs. When movement is integrated into daily life, we're more likely to stick to a fitness routine (you know, the one called "life"). Our 2.5-year-old also gets a lot more opportunities to ride his little balance bike to "real" destinations (as opposed to riding in the driveway) because there are sidewalks anyplace we need to go.

Our kids get to see walking as the default form of human transportation. I'm often surprised when I bring up the importance of walking and walkable neighborhoods with new acquaintances, and after a blank look crosses their face, they clarify, "Oh, you mean like walking for transportation?" Well, yeah, like using your legs to get somewhere that you need to go. It's amazing that we have turned the most basic form of human transportation into an exercise regimen or a leisure activity. It is both of those, to be sure, but it is wonderful for kids to be able to see real grown-ups walking as a way of life.

Learning About Rhythms

We just finished moving for the second time in a year (the third time in three years, come to that). This wasn't a dramatic or difficult move, in many ways: we moved only 13 miles, most of our stuff was still packed from the last move, and we had access to a car to be able to make several trips over a few days. On the other hand, this was our first time moving with two kids, one of whom is now old enough to notice and care (and who inconveniently developed a low-grade fever just in time for moving day). This move, though a wonderfully positive one in many ways, threw all four of us off our game. Naps were skipped, meals refused, uncharacteristic tantrums thrown. Now that we are mercifully settling anew into a household and family routine, I've been thinking about the importance of rhythms for family (and indeed, any) life.

Let's be clear: I am not your meal plan, nap schedule, laundry day kind of mama by nature. Oh, no. Nor is my husband the dinner-on-the-table-when-I-get-home-from-work kind of guy. We often do things in a way that he terms "organic" and I call "waiting until something absolutely, undeniably, unavoidably needs to be done right now, or preferably until someone else does it."

But that being said, I am learning. First of all, because young children have a way of forcing even the most laissez-faire into some kind of schedule. And second, because based on the efforts I have made to this end, rhythms and routines, while intimidating on the surface, really do make life easier for parents and calmer for kids.

Routines and predictability are so important for young kids because really, they are just figuring out this big, confusing world over which they have no control. In The Baby Book, Dr. Sears talks about toddlers' need for a feeling of mastery over their environment, and how seemingly small changes may elicit extreme reactions from them.

Imagine, if you will, that you've been at a new job for six weeks, and you are just starting to feel comfortable. Then one day, you arrive at work to find that all of the offices have been rearranged without warning. You can't find your own office, let alone your colleagues'. The next day, they've moved the offices back to normal, but the coffee maker is now on the opposite side of the building. The day after that, you're issued a completely new procedures manual, and all of your work has been changed, effective immediately. I think any of us might throw a tantrum at this point.

This approximates how a toddler might feel when rules, schedules, and surroundings are changed on a regular basis. Obviously, kids enjoy seeing and doing new things, going to new places. But the novelty must be set against the safe and secure backdrop of an environment they have mastered.

And whether we admit it or not, adults also need a home base from which to branch out, try new things, meet new people, and create.

That explains a bit of my motivation behind developing family rhythms. Now here are some of the home routines I'm working to develop.

• Getting up before my kids - The day goes much more smoothly when I have even a bit of time to take care of myself before the kids call. This also necessitates going to bed at a decent hour. Ahem.
• Plenty of unstructured time - Every moment doesn't need to be full of appointments and play dates. Kids need time to just play and even be bored sometimes: they can develop wonderful abilities to entertain themselves and be imaginative if we are not constantly entertaining them!
• "Full" days and "empty" days - Weekends tend to be busy for us, so I try to leave Mondays open for time at home to relax and regroup, as well as catch up on any household chores from the weekend. On "empty" days, a trip to the park or grocery store may be all that we "do."
• Meal routine - This is an idea I got from Simplicity Parenting. The goal is not to eat only the same seven meals, over and over, but for dinner each day to have a theme: Monday is rice night, Tuesday pasta night, Wednesday soup night, and so on. It sounds intimidating at first, but in reality, it makes planning and cooking each night so easy. What's for dinner? Well, what night is it? The details can change, of course, so you can still serve a wide variety of foods. This routine should also help the habitually picky eater to know what to expect and settle into it.
• Chores routine - A work in progress for me. I got inspiration for this idea (though it's obviously not a new concept) from Large Family Logistics - though ours is by no means a large family, I figure I have a lot to learn about efficiency from larger families. The book suggests making Monday laundry day, Tuesday kitchen day, Wednesday office day... you get the idea. When I tried this in earnest, my house was spotless without a whole lot of effort. I had only one child, and I still fell out of the routine after a few weeks, but like the meals routine, a concept that sounds overly strict can actually be quite freeing (if you stick with it).  There is no need to decide each day what needs to be done around the house, and in addition, nothing ever gets very dirty if you clean it at least once a week.  Right now, I am trying to decide which of her "days" work best for me, in order to integrate those into our existing routines.

I hope you might find some ideas here to make your own family routine a bit more predictable and just a bit calmer for everyone involved (especially you). 

Walking with Children: The Basics

How has a blog by A Walking Mama failed to address the basics of walking with children as a way of life?  I have no idea.  I must discuss this with the management. Ahem.  In the meantime, if you are looking for ways to incorporate more walking and less driving into your daily life with your kids, here are my suggestions for getting started.

1) Get the right equipment.

When my son outgrew his baby carriage, we decided to buy a reasonably-priced umbrella stroller - not the cheapest, but certainly not top-of-the-line. The idea of spending hundreds of dollars on a stroller our child would only use for a few years seemed ridiculous.  Less than a year later, we had run that poor little stroller into the ground and had to buy a replacement.  This time we went with a Baby Jogger City Mini, which cost more than I would have imagined spending on a stroller... but had we just gotten a high-quality item in the first place, we would have saved ourselves the expense of the cheap stroller, as well as the hassle of finding a new one (on vacation, no less).  Our City Mini still looks and feels new a year later, and I know we will be packing our kids around in it for years to come.  

If your children are too young to walk the distances you will be covering, you will need a reliable and comfortable carrier, stroller, double stroller, or some combination thereof.  My 2 1/2-year-old can walk further than most (and you can bet we're proud of that fact), but after about half a mile to a mile, walking with him becomes, shall we say, inefficient.  You know the drill.  Even as he gets older and more focused, I'm sure there will be times when we will tire him out with the distances we want to cover to get our errands done.  Don't be embarrassed to be seen with your 4- or 5-year-old in a stroller if you're covering long distances (and make sure to have a stroller that will carry them comfortably). 

If walking will be a part of your daily life with your children, allow yourself to splurge a bit on good-quality equipment. Think of this as an investment that will ultimately make it possible for you to save money by driving less. Please take note, I am not giving you free rein here to go out and buy a brand-new, thousand-dollar Bugaboo that will just sit and collect dust in your garage until you sell it on Craigslist in a few years (though if money is really no object, be my guest - they make some pretty amazing stuff). But I am giving you permission to look beyond the low-end umbrella strollers.  Read the reviews - those cheap Disney strollers are for getting your kids from the minivan into the mall, not much more.  Spending a bit more upfront will save you money, sanity, and health in the long run.  If you enjoy using your stroller, you are also going to be more likely to use it more often.

2) Be prepared - but not too prepared.

If you're used to traveling by car with kids, you're likely in the habit of storing everything you could possibly need in the car - extra clothes, toys, diapers, snacks, shoes, hot and cold weather accessories - just to have your bases covered for any eventuality. After all, in the car, you have space for it, so why not? When you're walking, however, you will have less room and, really, less need for all the "just in case" gear. If you will be within walking distance of your home, most emergencies can be handled by just going home.    

When we lived in the DC area, we always marveled at the parents and nannies who had strollers stuffed full of snacks, toys, and extra clothes.  If our child got hungry playing on the playground, we went home for a snack.  If he spilled something (rare because we didn't carry food with us) or got dirty, we took him home to change.  Unless you will be out for the whole afternoon or day, only bring with you what you will need for your trip. And remember, even kids who get bored in the car will likely be entertained enough by the walk, nature, and your almost-undivided attention that they won't need toys or snacks to distract them.

3) Combine trips.

This seems like a no-brainer for parents, even those who drive everywhere, but it is surprising how often we give ourselves more trouble than we need to by not combining trips. If you are walking to the grocery store, is there anything you can pick up at the hardware store next door, or the library on the way?  Does it make sense to go to a different grocery store that is a bit further away in order to stop in at other stores you might need?  

This mindset makes sense for anyone doing errands without a car, but it is especially helpful for parents of young children.  If you can work it out so that boring errands are interspersed with interesting or fun ones, or if you can squeeze in a trip to the park on the way home, then so much the better. 

Beyond combining your own errands, is there any way to make your family's errands more efficient overall?  Perhaps your spouse or a friend can pick up something for you on the way home from work, if it will be more convenient for them. If you need to make a purchase that will take some research, do the research you can online or even by phone first, rather than going to many different stores to see products in person.

One of the things I love about the car-free life is how this kind of thinking becomes second nature.  Much less time is wasted driving around to different stores you don't really need, just because you can.  It can make life with children much more pleasant because you also aren't dragging them to places unnecessarily, tiring everyone out in the process.  Even errands that might normally be difficult with children become easier when the journey involves healthy exercise and fun interaction.  

Moving to be Car-Free (Again)

As you have probably gathered, we have been living against our will as exiles in suburbia for the last several months.  I started this blog partly in response to our situation, to remind myself of my values in an environment that seems designed to undermine them.  That sounds overly dramatic, and I know that there are people who manage to live simple, non-materialistic, non-car-centric lives in the suburbs. But really, trying to live car-light in the postwar suburbs is like trying to lose weight living next door to a McDonald's: possible, but unnecessarily difficult.

For this reason, I'm thrilled that our liberation from suburbia is now imminent!  Our situation has become secure enough in our new city that we will be able to move into a more permanent home in August. We have already located said charming bungalow, so I wanted to expound a bit on our thought processes in choosing a home that supports a car-free life with little ones.

The Fabric of Our Lives

I do love cotton. But in this case, I'm referring to the geographic fabric of the places we choose to live and be. 

For myself, I feel that my life's fabric is a cohesive whole when I know I can walk to anyplace that I need on a daily or weekly basis. That is our general guiding principle for choosing a place to live. That doesn't necessarily mean that I will walk to all of these places; I may bike, take public transit, or carpool, depending on my needs, time, energy, and the weather, but I like to know that nothing I need on a regular basis requires me to run across a freeway, walk more than a block or two on those hideous 6-lane tributes to postwar engineering (you know the ones), or generally take my life in my hands. Even if Trader Joe's is 5 miles away, I like to know that I could walk there safely if the mood were to strike. 

WalkScore.com is a very useful tool to determine whether the neighborhood you're considering is generally walkable. It has features that allow you to plot your commute by time and mode of transport (a 30-minute walk, for example, or a 10-minute bus ride).  It does have some limitations, however, so it is necessary to check into the specifics yourself.  For example, an outlying area covered in strip malls, big box stores, and wide streets will receive a high walk score, though no one in her right mind would like to live there.  I know WalkScore is working on a new Street Smart feature to mitigate this problem, but it is not operational yet.

With those general ideas in mind, here were our specific guidelines for choosing a walkable home.

#1: Walking distance (or one easy bus ride) to working spouse's work.

In How to Live Well Without Owning a Car, author Chris Balish argues that if you can get to work reliably and regularly without your own car, then you can live without one altogether. Work is the one place you need to get to on time, on a daily basis. Everything else is negotiable. For us, walking distance is under 2 miles or so, a 30- to 40-minute walk. 

The house we settled on is even closer to my husband's work than we planned, more like a 20-25 minute walk. Keep in mind that 20 minutes of walking is not like 20 minutes of driving: it is 20 minutes door to door. No looking for parking, no waiting in traffic, just 20 minutes of fresh air and exercise. Forgot your wallet? No U-turns or driving around the block necessary: just stop, turn 180 degrees, and continue walking down the sidewalk until you get back home to pick up whatever you left behind.

This is actually the first time we will have the luxury of living within walking distance to work. Walking Daddy is looking forward to leaving behind his two-bus commute and having a bit more freedom. I will also be able to walk to meet him with the kids for lunch or after work for evening activities downtown.  For lazy days, running-late days, or bad weather days, there is also a bus that can take him to work in 5 minutes.

#2: Ten-minute walk to at least one real grocery store.   

Not a convenience store or just a farmers' market. This may or may not be where we do our large weekly grocery run, but it needs to be a place where we can pick up bread at 10 o'clock at night, or eggs for a last-minute birthday cake.  We then like to have other grocery stores or farmers' markets within a 30-minute walk or an easy bus ride.

#3: Ten- to fifteen-minute walk to at least one park with a playground. Multiple parks preferred.

With young kids, a park within walking distance is a necessity and sanity-saver. We prefer to have more than one park to choose from so the walk is interesting and varied for us parents as well.

#4: One library within a comfortable walk or a very easy bus ride.

See my last post on libraries: the library is a weekly necessity for us.  In our new home, we will actually have three libraries within a 2-mile walk, including the main library branch.

#5: A neighborhood where we want to take walks.  

Walking is the major leisure activity for the adults in our family, so some elements we look for are sidewalks, interesting homes, mature trees, businesses for window shopping, and multiple parks.

#6: Other amenities desirable but not necessary for daily/weekly life: A hardware store, coffee shops, clothing and household stores like Target (we do much of this kind of shopping online anyway), churches, bookstores, restaurants, theaters, community centers, doctor's offices, or natural parenting stores (I only mention these because our city just got one - Bella Cova).

Note that our list of priorities reflects our current life stage and needs... if we didn't have kids (or if we liked bars), then bars, clubs, and restaurants would figure higher on the list. With very young kids, we're not too concerned about schools yet, though we will have one right across the street, which will be nice for the playground and comparatively slow traffic.

 But doesn't that cost more?

To paraphrase the bookseller in You've Got Mail, yes, housing in a community like I'm describing is worth more. There are ways to cut the extra expense, such as choosing a smaller dwelling, picking an apartment over a house, or living in an up-and-coming neighborhood. We are fortunate to live in a city where the cost of housing is low enough to begin with that we don't have to compromise any of our house wants (size, style, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, yard, etc.) to live in a location we love, BUT we would be willing to sacrifice any of those things for location in a heartbeat if we had to. When we lived in the DC area, we did sacrifice quite a few things we wanted in our home itself in order to be able to afford to live in a walkable neighborhood.

While our housing expenses may be higher than they would be in an outlying suburb, our overall cost of living is much lower. By living in a walkable community, we save hundreds per month on car ownership (about $8000 per year according to Balish), not to mention gym membership. We're healthier and happier being part of the fabric of a community, rather than having the different parts of our lives divided up into pieces. Is all of this worth either higher housing costs or less square footage?  There is no doubt in my mind.