Motherfunker's Guide to groovy kids albums....Part 3

Beg, borrow or steal these fabulous albums - LOVE each and every one like a dear friend :-)

Easy listening, happy, soulful sing-along compilation album from feel-good Ziggy
with guest singers  Elisabeth Mitchell,  Jack Johnson, Paul Simon and others. Am listening
to it right now :-)

Oh how beautiful is Elisabeth Mitchell?  Songs about birds ranging from american folk to japanese nursery rhymes.  This is solid gold, honey drizzled, pretty pretty music. I love her cover of Velvet Undrground 'What goes on'.

Another sweet soothing folky, pretty album

"You are my flower" is also very pretty!

This is a charity album for Haiti with songs from some big names.  It is a moving
and gorgeous album.

A raucous, upbeat swingin jazzy album that starts off with Ella Fitzgerald's  super-funky
version of Old Macdonald Had A Farm

I love this little trio of albums. They are a right old mix up of kids tunes. American,
Canadian, English, all sorts. the beauty of these is their randomness. Go read up on
 amazon for a playlist.

This is old school american folk from the legend Woody Guthrie, recorded in 1947.
I had this on repeat play whilst pregnant with Finn and when he was a babe. These songs
 are etched into my heart forever. Only for hardcore folkies!

Mr Leadbelly sings gospel blues with a group of kiddos and belts out this gem of an album.
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! 

Grateful dead's gerry Garcia and pal David Grisman's sweet little album of campfire songs sung
 with an earthy american  humour including Elisabeth Cotton's freight train.
There ain't no bugs on me is a favourite sing-along from this album that we will
always have cherished memories of singing with pals.


What are your kids rocking, grooving, funking, jazzing or folking along to?

Xx MF xX

One-step-at-a-time

Something struck me today. I was thinking about my visit the day before to a dear friend's house where three of us mamas sat and drank tea together while the children played around us. The other mamas, wise beautiful women, were talking very knowledgeably about superfoods and how they process them themselves at home and what they do to the body and what properties they have and so on. And I suddenly felt a little overwhelmed by my own ignorance in this matter.I felt a little embarrassed and annoyed with myself for feeding my family ever increasing amounts of crap easy food.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean I have sunk so low to be feeding the kids pot-noodles, chicken nuggets and coco pops from dawn-till-dusk - we generally eat a fair bit of organic and Fairtrade food, eat our 5-a-day, but an increasing amount of processed food has crept in more and more in the last year if I'm truly honest with myself and especially more so just lately since hubby is working 18 hour days and I'm too damn tired/ lazy to cook every single meal from scratch. I cook at least one hot meal a day, and sometimes two, but it's seriously time consuming and makes a massive mess which needs to be cleared up.

But anyway, as I was munching on a dandelion from a delicious hedgerow salad one of my friends had put together, I vowed to stop feeling so overwhelmed by the whole food issue. Having eaten a MacDonalds (evil, evil, I know) on Friday afternoon, and being at my parents all weekend where they act pretty much like sweet dispensers - whilst I bit my tongue just enough of the time to keep things sweet because I didn't want any rows or horridness - I realise just how unhealthy our diet has become this last year. Crisps, biscuits and cakes have crept in to become more than treats aarts stead seem to have become part of our staple diet and are being eaten almost daily. Alf is a little fruit bat, munching his way through an orchard worth of apples a week, and whilst we're very far from being a turkey-twizzler type family, I still feel that we are out of balance a little.

I think I really need to shift the pattern of how we eat a little and start planning what and when we eat better. We've been doing a lot of supermarket shopping for easy practicality, but I feel really guilty about this. We do also do a fair bit of farm shop shopping but this can get seriously pricey for a family of six, as it tends to be a little gourmet. Ditto the health food shop although I just love buying from there and the ladies are so friendly and nice. But buying everything from there would be insane for us, so coming up with ethical alternatives that manage to tick all the boxes is hard. Who really wants to hand over their money to money-grabbing Tescos? The others are really not much better even if we think they're more cuddly brands. They're still money- grabbing supermarkets pushing smaller businesses out, whichever colour they market themselves. But instead of despairing about it I'm going to make tweaky tweaks... one-step-at-a-time!

Online bulk ordering of healthy staples would simplify our shopping habits, which are all over the place recently. Happily, we are growing our veg plot again this year, which brought so much satisfaction last year, and I am going to extend the amount we grow by introducing more pots and tubs to the garden. Tending and harvesting your own food is one of life's greatest pleasures. I've also decided that instead of feeling overwhelmed by my ignorance about some of the more unusual herbs and plants and their uses, and how to prepare them etc..I'm simply going to learn about them one at a time. No big deal. No pressure.

Following a one-step-at-a-time approach is sitting really nicely with me at the moment. Instead of trying to learn everything at once, I'm just focusing on one thing at a time. Instead of panicking about the whole picture, I'm going to pick up the brush and do little brush-strokes to change the scene!

What's intimidating you right now? Maybe you can take the one-step-at-a-time approach too? Let me know how you get on !

Xx MF xX

My boy is finally, truly, really, properly, reading!

Well ok, he's been reading for ages. But it's been mainly very short books, or snippets here and there - under duress - and he has really not enjoyed doing it, seeking any excuse under the sun to not have to do it. "My eyeballs are too tired". "This books too hard". "I need a drink/snack/the loo". "I'm just too completely busy right now!" And I have for the most part, apart from the odd short-lived panic attack, just let things be, preferring the gently gently approach so he can get to it in his own time. Today, he read me this entire book (64 pages) called Doctor Doolittle and the Pirates! Go Finn, go!

The beauty of home-ed is that a dyslexic lad like Finn can find his own way to reading, on his own terms, without being stigmatized or mocked or punished for it, without being endlessly tested in that medium, as if all his intelligence were tied up in that one skill. He has found it hard enough that Herbie, his younger brother by 18 months just suddenly took to reading over two years ago, and didn't have the least bit of trouble with it.

It has been harder and harder to hold our nerve as Finn got older. Being our firstborn, it feels a little like he has been the litmus paper of our home educating 'success' or 'failure' in the eyes of family and friends, and not everyone perhaps has shared our laissez-faire acceptance that our boy is doing just great as a non-reader. It's pretty unconventional to allow a boy to reach the age of 10 and not get into hysterics about his reading 'levels'. It's taken some guts, I can tell you.

One thing that we ditched some time ago was conventional literacy workbooks, when we realised that whilst he could complete books (a very frustrating process all-round), we would find soon afterwards none of it had really gone in or been truly understood. As we researched autonomous learning and gained confidence from other families' stories, we relaxed and decided that if we were going to be just like school, then our boys may as well go to school!!! So we've become less and less school-like - much to the raised eyebrows of some people I'm sure!

Anyway - I have written on this topic of reading before, in my article Life is not a race.... for EOS magazine. For those who are interested I'd also love to point you towards this wonderful collection of reflections posted on Lord Lucas' blog, from parents describing how their children came to reading outside of the school system - many of them rather later than the school age for learning to read. It makes for a really fascinating read.

So....... what do we do around here if we don't do workbooks, to encourage reading in the house?

Well, we are a pretty literate family overall. We are always reading so I guess we model for our gang that reading is fun, useful, etc etc. Our house is full of books on every subject - a couple of thousand spread out across the house. We converted an old bedroom on the landing into a library and have shelves of books in different categories. Science and nature. History. Mathematics. Languages (including English). Geography and peoples of the world. Gardening and Hobbies. Cooking. Then there are stacks and stacks of various different magazines - National geographic Kids, Birdlife, Learning is fun, Aquila, Anorak, First News, Lego magazine, plus the odd random one that we've bought. They read comics like Asterix and Tintin, and own a number of books on how to draw comics, characters, and do animation. We have a shelf full of colouring/ activity/ puzzle/ sticker books. We have joke books, books about the body, hardback story books, hundreds of paperbacks, reading scheme books - Peter and Jane, Jolly Phonics, Usborne Phonics, Red Nose Readers, Letterland, Magic key, 4u2Read and others. Books about dragons, legends, movie-making, origami, bike-riding, paper-making, cooking.....random books of every kind! We are often hanging out in bookshops, and to date the children have met four authors who they got to spend time chatting to before getting their signed books. Just today I bought some wonderful books in Waterstones including this fab large print, oversized paperback treasure by Roddy Doyle

which is a big hit in our household since we've heard the Giggler treatment so many times I reckon the disc will wear out at some point!

So how else do they read, besides books? Well they play a whole variety of games on their PC, and have had to read instructions and complete quests, enter, read, decipher and decode to be advance through different levels. Sometimes they play alone but oftentimes it's a really collaborative process, working together as a team. They play literacy games, maths games, logic games, adventure games, science games, role playing games, comic-making games where they insert their own photos, beat-em-ups (we are talking pretty tame ones here, like Ruthless Romans gladiatorial battles on the wii, definitely not graphic military style war games) - pretty much every type of game you can think of that's not really graphic or violent.

The boys have watched Magic Key DVD endless times, plus all manner of different BBC literacy programmes over the years. We are crazy about audiobooks, and just recently the How to Train your Dragon series has been on repeat play - the wonderful voices of David Tennant in glorious scottish technicolour, all music to our ears! Roddy Doyle, Atticus the Story Teller, Diary of a Wimpy Kid - all that vocab and warmth and passion in the telling. It all soaks in.

Trading cards have sped up all the boys reading skills and particularly Pokemon. I have been quite amazed at the rate at which Herbie in particular has learnt to spell some really tricky words just recently through his love of Pokemon. It has spawned a whole bunch of Pokemon related activity - inventing their own cards, drawing and copying characters on paper (refining their drawing skills), making posters and games and all sorts of other written and hand-drawn work. I say work, because they have treated these activities as important work, their inner drive to do it has been un-stoppable! Indie proudly tells me how something is spelt, and runs off again, delighted with himself. Alfie follows the boys around, wanting to be just like them, singing "P-O-K-E-M-O-N woooahhh..."

Herbie started a craze for comic-making, and ran his own comic-making workshop at our local home ed group last week, teaching other kids what he knows, and learning from them too. I forgot to take my camera that day so have no photos of it sadly. Anyway. To support this I invested in boxes of clickable pencils, drew up and photocopied templates of different cartoon-strip sized boxes, bought a couple of dozen technical-drawing pens in black ink (the ones that don't smudge, and flow beautifully), a box of artists rubbers, and two dozen coloured technical drawing pens, oh how they love them - they are drawing, drawing, drawing, and writing all sorts!

I have sometimes had moments of doubt that Finn never 'get there' as he has grown well past the school timings for reading - felt a little pink-faced when grilled by kindly but befuddled friends and family, wondered if our faith was misguided....

But here we are.....

They always get there in the end!!!

:-)

Conception 2012 and World Doula Week

Thank you all so much for sticking with me through my wobble. The Spring energy has charged my batteries with life, my friends have charged me up with their generous love, hugs, words, and thoughtfulness. Yesterday I was the lucky recipient of some home-made jam tarts with little hand-cut hearts on, and a fluffy pink dressing-gown from another friend, who knew how much I loved it. Its as pinky pink as my pink hair. Asking for help and receiving it in abundance has been a mega blessing, and I no longer feel like I'm treading water but rather, that I'm at the fun pool, frolicking with friends, with tequilas on the side waiting for me when I'm ready!

Woohoo!

And so, lifted up by my friends, who continually give me strength and hope and support, who have faith in me even when I have lost faith in myself, I am grateful tonight for all the love in my life both at home and beyond.

*********************************************************************************

Now then, let me explain the title of this post. The two things are interlinked a little. The idea of Conception 2012 was introduced to me by Lucy Pearce, my lovely soul sister across the Irish sea:

http://www.dreamingaloud.net/2012/03/conception-2012-vision-for-new-world.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FsjCeZ+%28Dreaming+aloud%29

The idea is to dream and imagine the future you want for the world and to help affect this change by focusing on it, and putting positive energy towards that goal. I do really believe the words of Mahatma Gandhi "Be the change you want to see in the world".

This week is World Doula Week http://www.worlddoulaweek.com/ and I am continually reflecting on my own capacity to do a bit of good in the world. I think for me, birth work may just be one of the most meaningful mediums to share a bit of my own light in the world, and bring it to others. I believe everyone has light in them, a higher self which we can listen to or ignore - we can try to dull it and mask it and cover it up but it just makes us sad. I know cos I've done it to my own light enough times. I think my recent funk has been to do with being afraid of my light. No more!

Helping Mamas and Papas to release fears, to trust in nature, to have faith in themselves is my dearest hope - to help return power back to individuals and away from institutions who may not have their best interests at heart. Helping others to reclaim their power, their voice, their birth rights, their pleasure and joy, is something I feel called to do. Helping them to have experiences where their own inner light can shine with all its strength feel like a good thing to do!

I am not alone in thinking that we have become so very afraid of birth, afraid of our own bodies, enculturated to believe that it is inherently dangerous and messy and that we have become broken. When the business of deciding how, when and where birth was to take place was taken over by men, a revolution in birth was set in place where women's wisdom was undermined, women's confidence in birth and their bodies was chipped away at until we have the situation we are in now, where we are supersticious and terrified of it, and ourselves. We say "oh but childbirth is much safer nowadays - women used to die...." This is true. Women died in their thousands in the 1700-1800's because physicians refused to accept that they introduced putrid particles into their patients vaginas by not washing their hands properly after performing earlier surgeries - and even autopsies. Those who tried to speak up were ridiculed. Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen, discovered the cause of cause of fatal birth infections by unwashed hands, as early as 1795. He was ignored. In 1847, a man named Ignaz Semmelweis, ordered staff at his Allemagne Krankenhaus in Vienna (once the world's largest lying-in hospital) to wash their hands in chlorinated water, which brought fever mortality rates post birth down from an astonishing 20% to 1%. Sadly, the ignorant staff ridiculed and privately flouted the new 'rules' behind his back, thinking his hand-washing regimes a nuisance and he ended up dying in a state run mental asylum in 1865. It wasn't until Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister argued the case for microscopic germs being the cause of fever mortality in mothers that women started to be spared these un-necassary deaths.

Life saving discoveries and procedures could have changed the birthing lot of women for the better, yet their rampant over- and mis-use means that sadly, with each new technological 'advance', women all over the world are increasingly forced into quite unnecessary procedures, inductions, caesarians, and general mal-handling as a matter of course, and are sometimes not given enough accurate information to reflect the genuine risks and dangers. When women are informed of their rights they often say "I had no idea I could do things any other way." I didn't know I could refuse x, y and z. They don't know because they are not told. They are not told sometimes quite simply because it is inconvenient for the system to have women not playing along.

As I have discovered through reading books such as those of the wonderful Birth Activist and anthropolgist Sheila Kitzinger, natural birth scares the bejeezus out of an ever growing populus on the planet, as a generally safe, natural process. Traditional and indigenous methods get replaced by technical births that remove a woman from her local support network of wise women (and men) and traditional lay caregivers who are so precious. We are getting so spooked out by birth that as a result, we are having a ridiculous amount of unnecessary interventions and procedures. Have our bodies really changed that much in the last few hundred years? Or is it the cultural mentality and the organisation and handling of birth that has changed beyond recognition?

Women used to have painless births before the christian concepts of shame, suffering and sin were brought to the birthing table. Women in indigenous cultures still experience low-fuss, easy births, since they are free from fear-mongering, and they remain physically active and in tune with their bodies. They think of birth from a spiritual perspective, not simply a clinical one, they know the many ways that babies come instead of trying to make all babies come in one of a small menu of ways, according to a schedule dictated by others.

Their safe and easy birthing is not a fluke. Their bodies are not built differently from us. What is different is the lack of social conditioning that complicates something which is essentially mostly straightforward. We are just forgetting. We are forgetting that there is a rhythm to our bodies that knows how to flow. We are forgetting our own power, because we don't WANT to own it. Because we are scared of it.

In the amazing book, The Mama Bamba Way by the Birth Educator Robyn Sheldon, is this brilliant quote

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkeness that most frightens us."

-Marianne Williamson, Author, lecturer, and spiritual activist.

Could this be the truth of it? That we are actually scared of our own power, because we now believe it when we are told not to trust ourselves?

Whether we believe in a god or whether we believe in the gods of machinery and men, mother nature has a rhythm and a power that we can embrace or turn our backs on. In the moment of our birthing, however we do it, we become the chain in history, the link that is forged in that moment. We are reminded of our place in the thread of our ancestral line, of our connection to our mothers and grandmothers, the generations who will follow us, the other mothers all birthing in that moment and who ever birthed and those who will birth in future.

We can reclaim our power and our pleasure and our bodies. We have the power to use technology wisely, when it is truly needed, to return to a more sensible way of birthing.

I hope to play my part in a revolution which empowers women and their families, the community and the wider world.

Check out this wonderful resource to find out more about the movement which is helping to effect change in the way we see birth! It is called One World Birth.

What part will you play in re-imagining life for yourself and others? Will you let your light shine, or hide it under a bushel?

Xx MF xX

Motherfunkin' tired.

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by my task at the moment if I'm honest.

The boys are bickering a lot. Hubby is working long hours.

I want to write about the shiny happy time we're having. The truth is I'm just darn tired. Too tired to work on the book. I'm feeling the kind of tired where even cooking and cleaning seem like gargantuan tasks.

My mother in law came over today and instead of hanging out here in this messy tip, I took the boys out so I wouldn't have to sit with her and have the boys being bouncy and me feeling bad about that. We had a great time while we were out but came home to the mother-of-all messes, which I have left.

Instead of having early nights and drinking herbal teas and eating nourishing foods I have started up smoking roll-ups by the back door, eating cake for England and watching episodes of Downton Abbey till gone midnight 'cos, whilst I am shattered, I can't actually sleep.

I wish I could get myself into a more 'wholesome' headspace but I feel crappy about a bunch of stuff right now. I feel sorry for myself, unsure of things, in a funk. I don't like to bring my friends down so I act cheery. I feel silly moaning, I like to be the one who lifts her friends up and offers good advice, sets a good example of living and thinking positively, being pro-active in improving our lot rather than whinging about it. But I haven't the energy to keep it up at the moment. Shiny shiny blogs by shiny shiny mamas managing a million things and doing it cheerily with a smile are hard for me to take right now. I don't want to know about how endlessly patient some other mama is. I feel crabby.

I always want to be the one who bakes the cake for someone, sends people nice packages and random little cards and letters, lends stuff out, tries to do nice stuff for everyone. Right now I'm just going to focus more on my own peeps. I have so little precious time that there isn't a whole lot spilling over for the rest of humanity right now!

So if I don't write or phone or bake you a cake or do something nice for you right now, please don't think badly of me. I still love you. I'm just freakin' tired.

XXX