The Mommy Club

My younger brother (Middle Brother) has an antique spinning wheel.  All but one of the spokes on the wheel are identical.  One of the spokes though is just a little bit different.  It's still part of the wheel, but just different enough to be the odd one out.
Much of the time I have felt like that "odd" spoke.  I might be part of a group, but never quite fit in.  I can be a little awkward, and just in general, different.  I never quite felt like I was at the same place in life as my peers.
In all the lonely times, especially as I got older, I held onto the fact that one day I would belong to "The Mommy Club".  The Mommy Club, in my mind, was the club that all mommies belonged to.  You didn't have to do anything to join except be a mommy.  Once you were a mommy you would belong to this unofficial club.  Every mommy would belong because they would all have something in common - they would be mommies!
Just over a year ago, I had a baby.  I could now be part of the Mommy Club.  Except I never found it.  I suspect that the mommy club is a lie, cooked up in my own psyche.  Yes, I have a baby (toddler?), yes, that makes me a mommy, but I'm still the odd spoke.  I still dance to the beat of my own drum.  I realize that the Mommy Club is as fictional as The Village in which the women all work together raising the children and looking out for each other.
They both sound like wonderful things, but like many wonderful things, they aren't necessarily real. Doesn't mean I don't often wish it were so.  I wish there was a Mommy Club, or a Village where I could kick off my shoes (or leave them on if I wanted), curl up on a couch, stretch out on the floor, or lounge on a pillow and just be with other moms who subscribed to the same philosophies that I do, or at least similar ones, or at the very least weren't adamantly opposed to them.  Maybe we'd drink some tea, maybe we would talk, or maybe we would just watch our littles be the little people that they are, not worrying about what the other mommies think about how we are parenting.
I am so fortunate to have found at least 2 other mommies in the neighborhood who I can mostly relax with - and as I get to know them better, and they get to know me better, perhaps we will become a Mommy Club.  But even if we don't, that's okay too.
The Mommy Club doesn't have to exist for me to belong.   My parenting styles don't have to match up with anyone else's.**  I do not have to defend my parenting to anyone else.   Having the support of other parents who follow similar styles is great, but I'm learning that it doesn't have to be shared face to face over a cup of tea.  My "village" is spread around the globe, and consists of hundreds of people. I can't talk to most of them about everything, but I can talk to all of them about something. I have a group I can ask questions about babywearing (however, getting hands on help for those back carries is hard on the internet!), another group I can ask about why my son has decided to stop using the potty, another I can ask about which essential oils will most effectively treat my husband's cold, and another I can turn to for support when it comes to sorting out thing related to Bean's hearing loss.  So it's not just one village, but lots of villages and I can travel from village to village with a click of the mouse.   This virtual metropolis will never quite replace The Village of bygone days (if that Village ever truly existed), nor will it replace The Mommy Club (which I suspect never actually existed), but it will be good enough.   Because when I march to the beat of my own drum, I know who will be with me all the way:

**My parenting style does have to be compatible with my husband - this parenting gig is a two person job, but other than him, everyone else can go fly a kite (and he can too, as long as he takes the Bean with him)

Surprises in Parenting: It doesn't have to be just one way

Before Bean was born I did some reading on parenting philosophies. I'd listened to some friends talk, read some blogs, and done a lot of thinking.  I had my mind pretty set on a particular style of parenting and planned on reading more about it and following it.  I figured that a solid base of one particular parenting style would be what I needed to get started on this journey of being a parent.
I was wrong.
I still don't have it all figured out, but I have learned that it is okay, and perhaps even good, to draw from multiple parenting philosophies to create the base upon which Husbandy and I want to draw as we figure out this parenting thing.
I've learned that it is okay to read through the tenets of a particular philosophy, choose the ones that work in our context and let go of the rest.  I've learned to be okay with modifying tenets of various philosophies in order to make them work better in our setting.  One example that comes to mind readily is how we looked at the Montessori guidelines for allowing an infant to start exploring self feeding - giving the child real dishes (plate, cup, pitcher, etc) that are their size, yet identical to the corresponding adult dishes, which means glass.  The Montessori guidelines emphasize that even very young children can be taught to use appropriate care when handling breakable objects.
The Montessori guidelines, in combination with the new Health Canada infant feeding guidelines affirmed our decision to skip the sippy cup and go with an open cup (child sized) right from the time we introduce a cup.  However, we could not get around the idea of giving a 6-8 month old child a glass cup (often a shot glass or votive candle holder is used to get a child-sized glass cup).  So we put our heads together and came up with another option - a slightly weighted, translucent plastic cup.   For us that was a way of modifying existing philosophies to make them work in our context.  We kept the idea of a clear, realistic, open top, child-sized cup, but decided to make it much harder to break.
Naturally we'll see how well it works when we try to introduce a cup in the next couple of months - We could be in for another surprise!
Overall, coming to the realization that parenting Bean doesn't have to be based on just one style or philosophy of parenting has been very freeing.  It has allowed me to relax more about what I choose to do (or not do) and not worry about breaking the "rules" of a particular style/philosophy.  In a sense, it's given me freedom to make my own rules and develop my own style - which, if I am to believe what other mamas have told me, will be completely different with Bean than it is with any future children!
And now, to finish off this post, a picture of Bean, Husbandy, and Wifey at Husbandy's graduation.

No more dirty diapers? A surprise in parenting

I don't remember the last time Bean had a dirty diaper. No, he's not sick.  Yes, he is pooping regularly - just not in his diaper.
I remember reading about something called "elimination communication" while I was pregnant, but I didn't think it was something I'd try with Bean until he could sit on his own and sign to me that he needed to go (baby sign was something that I was 100% on board with).  Bean however had other ideas...
We noticed very early on that Bean did not like to go to the bathroom in his diaper.  He'd start to fuss and nursing wouldn't fix it.  Burping him didn't fix it.  Rocking him didn't fix it.  So the next logical conclusion was to check his diaper.  We'd check it and find it dry.  But no sooner would we have the diaper off of him and he'd let loose - usually hitting David full on (I usually escaped the "shower" - I attribute that to the fact that I have more experience changing little boy diapers than David does).  So we decided to give him an opportunity to go on the toilet.  To my surprise it worked.  Bean was routinely peeing on the toilet at every diaper change.  Quickly it advanced to pooping on the toilet as well.
At first we simply held him over the adult sized toilet and let him do his thing, but I found him too heavy to do that and knew he was only going to get heavier - and he's a squiggler and doesn't hold still well.  So a trip to the store yielded a simple potty - designed for potty training.  We got some ridicule from a store clerk for buying a potty for our three week old, but we wanted to give it a try.  If it didn't work, we'd put it in storage until he was older, but it would give me the ability to have his weight supported while he went to the bathroom.
It worked.  More and more frequently he was going on the potty instead of in his diaper.  He fusses, we take his diaper off and set him on the potty.  We still have to support his trunk (he is only 3 weeks old!), but he was going on the potty.  We still have a number of wet diapers each day, but neither David nor I can remember the last dirty diaper he had.  And we're okay with that.
I guess this is just one of the parenting surprises that we will encounter on this journey.  I'm excited to see what else the journey has in store (hopefully some sleep in the near future!).