It’s a fact: weekends should always, always start with a Dance Break (this one was to The Cardigans, Ray Charles, and M.I.A.). Bonus points if it happens before anyone has a chance to get out of their pajamas or brush their hair (or peach fuzz, as the case may be).
On Saturday, I had to go back to Cold Spring to take care of a few more things, so we thought we’d make a Family Day Trip of it.
I wore some very ridiculous (and very amazing) boots.
This is us on the train ride home, ready for naps all around.
On Sunday morning, we just laid around and ate this kind of stuff…
…before heading over to my Mom’s place, where I made her favorite dish for her birthday dinner.
I’m not really a bright-blue nailpolish kind of girl, but this is sort of great, no? Maybe better on the toes.
And finally, I spent a couple of hours last night immersed in this book. You know, right away what struck me is the author’s observation that in France there aren’t as many options when it comes to parenting – there are just things you do, and one of those things is to chill out a little bit and trust your gut. Which both reduces stress – because you don’t feel pressured to choose a “parenting philosophy” the moment you get pregnant – and reduces the amount of judgment coming both from yourself and from others.
One of the first things I noticed when I got pregnant was how dramatically ideas about the “best” way to parent differ, and yet how completely wedded to their own beliefs people can be, to the extent where they simply cannot comprehend that another woman would choose to do things a different way, and transform questions about sleeping patterns into questions about one’s very worth as a parent and capacity for love. Take The Pacifier Issue, for example: parents are all over the map with this one, and there’s a lot of judgment (verging on anger) from both sides with regards to who’s “right” (when the answer, of course, is that every child is different and every parent is different, and what works for some simply won’t work for others).
But this judgment that parents throw at each other is scary stuff, especially when you’re a new parent and not exactly rock-solid in your own beliefs about things…and maybe a little nervous about how you’re doing. Do you know, I’ve been pretty nervous to admit that we use (and love) pacifiers? To the point where I’ve thought twice, and then twice more, before posting any photo in which a pacifier is visible. But you know what? The things work for us, and have made all three of our lives run more happily and smoothly, and so that’s that.
I have to say, sometimes I definitely think how much easier it would be if there was a little more emphasis on “what works for you, because you are an individual with individual needs” versus “what worked for me and if you don’t do it my way you are wrong.”
I also am about twenty pages into the book, so these are just my initial thoughts. Have any of you read Bringing Up Bebe? Did you like it?
