What is Natural Parenting: An Introduction

In my “About me” section, I write that I am (learning to be) a natural parent. Natural parent isn’t a term that is heard regularly—I had never come across it until I stumbled upon the Natural Parents Network shortly after Gus was born. As I read about natural parenting and read the blogs of self-described natural parents while my newborn slept in my arms, I realised that this was a parenting philosophy that really gelled with the type of parent I wanted to be. It doesn’t (necessarily) mean that parenting a baby/toddler comes naturally to me, or that I am going “back to nature” to live like some mythical primitive woman.  Basically, natural parenting is striving to “live and parent responsively and consciously.” (NPN) Or, to use my favourite word to describe my parenting goals, it is saying that I parent intentionally.

That’s what a philosophy regarding parenting is, really, a set of goals and priorities. It certainly isn’t a list of things that I do perfectly day in and day out. We all have goals for ourselves as parents, for our children, and for our relationships with them. For myself (and Jon! although I do much more thinking about this sort of stuff than he does), I have found thus far that the ideals of natural parenting give me a good framework for setting my own long and short-term priorities.

You might also be wondering why, in the “About me” section, I have the parenthetical rider learning to be.  This is not because I think there is one right way to be a natural parent which I hope to emulate. It is more about the idea of parenting as a learning process. I do not think of myself as The Parent with All The Answers. Instead, Jon, Gus and myself (and any other children we might be blessed with in the future) all work together to figure out this thing of raising a person. I am sure I will make (have made!) mistakes, and there are things I will do differently as I go forward. But this is all part of the journey. The learning to be helps remind me that I am not going to get everything right every time, but there is no reason to beat myself up about it. With an effort to do things intentionally and a conviction to keep going and try to improve when I make a mistake, I set out to be the best parent I can.

I know that a lot of people don't like labels, as they can be restricting or perpetuate stereotypes. Personally, I like to have a label for this sort of thing because it helps me organise my thoughts around the issue and connect with people that might have things in common. I don't look at it as something that I (or anyone else) need to stick to religiously, though.. Over the next several weeks I am going to be writing about how the values of natural parenting are lived out in our family at the moment.

The Practices of Natural Parenting (from the NPN website)

• Attachment Parenting
• Prepare for pregnancy, birth, and parenting
• Feed with love and respect
• Respond with sensitivity
• Use nurturing touch
• Ensure safe sleep
• Provide consistent and loving care
• Practice gentle/positive discipline
• Strive for balance in personal and family life
• Ecological responsibility and love of nature
• Holistic health practices
• Natural learning

As this is not only a series on natural parenting, but on my own personal parenting goals and values, I am going to take the liberty of adding an additional practice encompassing the spiritual component: Raising a holy child of God.

I was hoping to write a bit about attachment parenting as a whole and its first principle, preparing for birth and parenting, today, but apparently I had too much to say by way of introduction to the series as a whole. I look forward to sharing those thoughts with you next time!

What's up, Gus?

We've been having such a good time over in our little neck of the woods lately, I haven't had time to write!  Well, we'll say that's what's happened, and ignore my very strong tendency to laziness and procrastination. ;)

play-dough time!

In all honesty, Gus has been a riot recently. We do have our moments of him not letting me move more than 6 inches away from his side (he likes to grab my hand, direct me to where I should be, and point to the exact spot on the floor where I should sit), but for the most part we have been having a lot of fun together. He loves to do anything that Jon and I do, so we take care of the baby doll a lot, feeding her, changing her diaper, cleaning her up. He will clean anything, actually. The moment he finds a scrap of cloth, he sets about scrubbing things down. I keep thinking about giving him a real cleaning cloth so he can help me with do the housework, but he is a bit erratic about what he cleans; he jumps from scrubbing the table, to the bottom of the shoes, to his hands, feet and face in the space of a minute.

playing with the balls and rainbow on the stairs

His brain seems to move just as quickly. Jon and I will  be talking and mention something--say a train--briefly, and Gus is off like a light to find his train and bring it to us. And he always knows where is toys are squirrelled away. Except for one bouncy ball that he loves to play with. The ball is clear with coloured stars suspended inside it, and we are forever losing that thing. Balls are one of his favourite toy at the moment. He's been throwing them down the stairs, bouncing them out in the back yard, and rolling them under the rainbow tunnels. The train and bus get plenty of time through the tunnels as well.

at the park

As always, Gus is still loving his animals. He seems to go through phases of what is his favourite. So for a week or two all I heard about was the chickens, then the cat, and now the pigs. He likes to look for these animals outside (well, we haven't found any pigs yet), play with the little animal toys and stuffed animals, and flip through books, searching for his favourite animals. He knows exactly which books have the animals he is looking for, and it seems like he even knows what page they are on!  (I was wondering the other day, what is the fascination of opening up the same book a hundred times in a row, always to flip to and stare at the same picture? I'd love to know what is going on in his brain!)

playing with ducks, distracted by an airplane

Gus is a real chatterbox at the moment, as well. I swear he learns new words every day, but, since he can only pronounce about half of any given word, and often with an incorrect sound thrown in, I am not sure that too many people can actually understand what he is saying. He can say a load of animal names and sounds, and mostly correctly! Cartoon-like animals can be tough, really, and I don't blame him when he thinks a drawing of a skunk is a dog or a Tigger stuffed animal is a monkey. He also loves vehicles of all sorts, so he can say (versions of) plane, car, truck, bus, and choo choo train.


Bedtime is one of our favourite times of the day at the moment. We usually have to read about fifty books, and it often takes longer than I would otherwise wish, but Gus makes up for it by giving Jon and me loads of hugs and kisses before finally settling down to sleep. Delaying tactic? Maybe. But also pretty much the sweetest thing in the world.

this way, Pa!

Making my virtual recipe box

I have heard that most people only have about 5 go-to recipes that they repeat week after week. Not me. I love food, and I love cooking all sorts of different meals. There are definitely a few things that I repeat pretty regularly, and some things that we'll eat every week for a month or two then forget about for 6 months. But mostly I like to mix it up, cook with the seasons, and regularly try a variety of new and forgotten recipes.

With that in mind, this week, I started organising my recipes.  Eep!  It's such a big job, but one I have been wanting to do for a very long time. I decided to use Evernote to do the organising. Jen at Conversion Diary mentioned ages ago that she uses it for her writing, but I thought it is exactly what I need for my recipes.

photo by penguincakes on flickr

Basically, Evernote is a program that helps you organise your thoughts. I think it was originally developed for writers and researchers (I can imagine it would have been great when Jon was writing his PhD), but you can really do anything with it. You can write notes or save images or websites, then tag them with every conceivable attribute, allowing for easy categorisation and retrieval later. This was what I really wanted for my recipes. I hate it when I have a head of cabbage in the refrigerator (I always have cabbage in the fridge at the moment--thanks, winter!) and I want to do something different with it. I look at the index in my cookbooks, but I swear they don't have half the recipes listed. And any recipes I have written down, ripped out of a magazine, or saved on the internet have no index at all. It makes my life very difficult (woe is me!).

So, I have started on the recipes I have bookmarked online. I have so many recipes in my favourites, and most of them have been completely forgotten about and never even been tried. I am saving each one to Evernote, then tagging by type of meal, major ingredients, type of cuisine, whether we've eaten it before (sometimes you're just not up for trying something new, you know?), or any other special attributes. There is also space to write notes about any changes or additions I like to make, or side dishes that I think goes well with it. Next I am going to list all the random recipes I have saved from magazines and such. I won't type out the whole of these recipes, just the title and tag by ingredient. I'd like to do the same with my cookbooks, but that might take forever!  And do I include recipes that I have always wanted to try and not quite gotten around to yet, or only tried and tested ones?  The possibilities!

I am really excited to get this together and start using it to find long-lost recipes. I might even start doing weekly meal planning again. I feel like a whole world has opened up to me!

How do you organise your recipe collection and plan meals?


This post is obviously not sponsored or in any way related to Evernote, it's just a program that I am really excited to use.

random thoughts

I had a dream last night that I was doing some calculus. This, to me, was not a nightmare. It was more like a wish. I often wish that I had a reason to do mathematical calculations: calculus, algebra, geometry, whatever you've got. 

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I'm reading a very amusing book called The Etymologicon. It is about where various words come from, making links between (seemingly) totally unconnected words. Definitely recommended for any logophiles out there!

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Gus can finally say Pa!  Up to now he has had a hard time with the "p" sound; it usually came out like an "m". But yesterday, he said it load and clear. Jon was very happy :)

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It snowed here on Saturday, but it is almost gone now. We went out for a walk today, and of course I forget to put Gus's waterproof trousers on him. The number of times I have put them on him when it is almost completely dry, and today, with all the puddles, snow, and mud, I forget. Oh well. He didn't seem to mind the soaked cuffs too much.

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I loved this post by Teacher Tom about coloring within the lines. An excerpt:

The paintings on the wall, the test scores, the grades only measure how well a child manages to stay within the lines, which is, after all, at best, a limited grounds upon which to form judgments. It tells us nothing, for instance, about what happens along the way.

I would love to raise children that understand society well enough to know when they need to colour in the lines, but are comfortable enough with themselves and their passions to scribble all over the page if that is how they feel at any given moment. Easy peasy, right?

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 It's so fascinating watching Gus imitate the adults around him. Right now he is sweeping my kitchen floor as I type this. What a sweetie!

Feeding baby doll a breadstick.
He made sure she had plenty of water as well

Kitchen Play

I really would have liked to get Gus a play kitchen for Christmas, but it was unfortunately not in our gift-buying budget this year. I thought he would get a kick out of mixing things together, making tasty "treats" to serve up to Jon and me. And it would be a great long-term toy, something that would last for years.

Of course, then I realised this week, that he doesn't really need a purpose-built mini kitchen and matching accessories to cook up delicious concoctions. So I set out to find some pieces that could bring the fun of the kitchen to him.

So far, the backbone of his kitchen play has been this stainless steel mixing bowl.

I actually received a pair of these (small and large) for Christmas to use myself but, remembering Melissa's suggestion, thought that they would make a great matching set for Gus and I to use together.  He already has access to our lower cabinets, which have a load of bowls, chopping boards, and saucepans that he sometimes gets out. I added some empty spice jars, a whisk, a spatula, and some play food that he got for Christmas, and his kitchen was complete! He stands on his little table so he can reach the counter next to me. As I chop vegetables for dinner, I pass him the peels and ends, which he mixes up diligently, adding this spice or that, transferring from one bowl to the other. Or, I give him a small snack in the bowl, which he can mix and taste as needed.

Trying to find a clear space on the counter in our
little kitchen is the hardest part of this game!

To me, this doesn't sound nearly as exciting as a brand-new, brightly painted purpose-built model kitchen, with burners, an oven, cabinets to open, etc, etc. But I think sometimes the flashes and bangs are more for the parents--I mean, how many times have we heard the story of children opening expensive new presents, only to play with the cardboard box the toy came in until it disintegrates underneath them. We've only really been cooking together for a week now, but so far, Gus's reaction has borne this out. He seems to love cooking. He has even tried to pull the table in from the living room to the kitchen on his own to start playing. This is great, as it forces me into the kitchen to tackle the never-ending pile of dishes I have stacked in there!  (I am also trying to convince him that he can actually cook while standing on the floor with the bowls on his small table, but he doesn't believe me so far. He is going through a phase at the moment where the way a thing was done the first time is the way things ALWAYS MUST BE DONE FOREVER.)

I'll probably still keep an eye out for a good price on a little kitchen, but I am really happy with this solution. In some ways, this is even better, as it gets the two of us in the kitchen together, and he starts to learn about food and cooking--an important life skill, and a great source of enjoyment.

What I did on my Christmas vacation

I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, I have just been on vacation!  I spent the last 3 weeks visiting my wonderful family back in the US. Now I am back to the real world, trying so hard to get back into the swing of things where washing dishes and laundry and general cleaning must be done--by me! A few of my/Gus's favourite things from our trip:

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Gus's absolute favourite game while we were there was the "where is it?" game. He started making a sign for where (arms out from the elbows, palms facing up) the last couple of weeks before we went to the US. But when we got to my parents' house, he was having some separation issues (new environment + jet lag = a little boy who did not like his mother to leave his sight even to use the toilet), so my mom picked up on this and started a game with him of looking for me when I left the room. Where's Mama? Is she under the couch? No.

Oh my goodness, he loved this game. They would look in one place, and he would shake his head back and forth (long hair going every which way!), then point to a new place to look. After a while, he would play it pretty much any time he saw my mom, and she never knew what they were looking for if he started a game.

He now also loves to shake his head no, which I think he largely learned from this game. Usually he shakes his head because he really doesn't want whatever is on offer, although I think sometimes he does it just to feel his hair move around.

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At our house, the garbage can is locked away under the sink, so Gus doesn't really ever see or use it. At my parents' house, the garbage can is just tucked away at the side of the kitchen, but freely accessible. Gus was very interested in this. At first he just sort of looked at it or tried to take things out of it, but he soon learned what it was for and how to use it. He thought throwing things away was one of the best things ever. I remember one day he found a scrap of paper on the floor. When I told him it was garbage and he could throw it in the bin, his face just lit up and he raced out to the kitchen to take care of it. We did have to watch him closely though--his definition of garbage was not always the same as ours!

Really, he just loved (loves) putting things in and taking them out in general. He is great help with the laundry, and he does like tidying his toys, although keeping them tidied is a different matter. He spent ages putting various toys in the laundry baskets and pushing them around. He comes up with the funniest games sometimes!

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We had snow a few days before we left. I was really happy about it--I am a snow lover, although I don't really like to go out in the snow. Mostly I like to look at the snow, then curl up in the warm house with a cup of tea and a book. I did take Gus out in the snow a couple of times. He seemed to like it, although he wasn't really interested in doing anything with it. We went for a walk with him in the stroller, and he seemed to have a great time looking at the world covered in snow. However. Every single time we walked to the river near my parents' house, there were no geese! We saw them plenty of times while driving past, so I think they may have been avoiding us.

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Gus loved spending time with his cousins (ages 10, 6, 2, and 3 months). He is a pretty quiet guy when he's around other children, often just watching the action. So he did a lot of watching. The older girls were really good at playing with him, and he started to become more comfortable and join in. And I think he learned a few things from Ben (the 2-year-old). Especially about climbing!  The two of them were very sweet together; Jon and I took them on a walk one day, and Ben took Gus's hand while we were in the street. So adorable!  

My mom has a little old-fashioned cast-iron stove that her dad had made for us grandkids when we were little (Grandpa Dave was a pattern maker so could do cool things like that). All 4 of the big kids really liked playing with it. They made many a dish together, often made using the birds from the nativity set, although one day I kept being served shoe soup--not really my favourite. Gus certainly enjoyed "tasting" all their creations!

Gus wasn't really sure about baby Luke, though. Luke still couldn't control his body very well, so he often made kind of jerky motions. And he is very vocal--lots of squeaks and squeals!  Gus didn't like that so much.

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My favourite thing Gus has learned in the past couple of weeks is kissing. I die!  We ask him if he wants to give either me or Jon a kiss, and he either shakes his head no (which we love anyway) or leans in a plants a wet one right on our lips!  I don't know where he learned that kisses go on lips, because we generally don't kiss him on the lips. Jon thinks it might be because he often kisses his reflection in the mirror, and that is obviously a kiss on the lips. I don't know, but it is super cute.

I'll leave you with a picture from this evening: Gus reading his book. While sitting in a box. Obviously. And I just noticed, it looks like the duck is listening very attentively!

7 Quick Takes (volume 13)

-1-

Christmas vacation has begun!  Jon was supposed to work this morning, but decided yesterday that he had finished what needed to be done before his break and took all of today off. So we are officially relaxing :)  Well, we will be relaxing once I get all my packing done. Plus I still have gifts to buy/make/wrap. Whatever--Jon is done with work, so we are officially on holiday!

-2-

Also, cannot believe that Christmas is already here. The fact that it was 50 degrees F today certainly didn't help that. And all my high hopes for making this a spiritual Advent season came to nothing. I didn't even try to plan too much: just Advent candles on the table for meals and a Jesse tree with a Bible story for Gus every morning. The Jesse tree didn't get made, the Bible stories lasted less than a week, and the Advent candles fizzled out around the third / Gaudete Sunday. I know Gus is young, but I wanted to start some traditions. But I seem to be physically incapable of doing the same thing day after day. Even my novenas--which are sent to me every day by email!--get patchy around day 4 or 5. New Year's resolution?

-3-

I did, however, have a lovely Christmas treats swap party this weeks with some mom and baby friends. I invited a load of people, assuming that most would be unable to attend, but in the end we had 10 mother/baby (really I should say toddler probably!) pairs. In my little house! It was busy, but I was able to clear some things away in the living room and there ended up being plenty of room for them to run/crawl around. I had a really good time, and I think everyone else did too. But, man alive, just watching all those kiddos play is exhausting!

-4-

As I was getting things ready for the party, I felt like I should organise some sort of activity for the children. In the end, I did not, as I wasn't sure what to put on for them. But at what age do you start planning activities for playdates? When we go around to friends' houses, Gus seems happy enough to just have the opportunity to play with new toys. But surely at some point we should be more proactive in their activities?

-5-

I have been spending way too much time on Foodgawker recently. I just have an urge to bake cookies at Christmastime, but there aren't really enough people around when we're at Jon's family's to eat all the cookies I want to bake. So I am just living vicariously through food blogs instead. 

Also, this is why I have resisted signing up to Pinterest (so far!). This is my fear if I were to sign up:

(amount of time I spend on Foodgawker) x (all the other things, besides food, that are available on Pinterest) = completely abandoning my real life for a beautiful life on the internet

Well, it probably wouldn't be as bad as that, but I need me some limits.

-6-

I mentioned last week that Gus now makes a sign for where. It has quickly turned into a new favourite game. He will hide something (e.g. put a rubber duck in a basket) then look at me at make the sign. Repeat, repeat, repeat. It really is very sweet, though.

He has also started making his first attempts at putting words/signs together. Once he made the where sign while saying Pa when we were upstairs and Jon was downstairs. A second time he was looking at a peekaboo book with a duck under the flap, and he signed duck then where. It's like you can see those little brains working right in front of you!

-7-

Merry Christmas! Especially wishing safe travels to everyone. And if I had actually taken a photo for a Christmas card, I would leave you with that. But that is another pre-Christmas activity that did not happen, so you'll just have to imagine my little family smiling out at you :)

 Be sure to head over to Jen's for more Quick Takes!