Slinging It - Continuing the Continuum

I am so excited as I am finally getting round to ordering a Mei tei - our first Mei Tei from new!

It is custom hand-made, and we cannot wait to recieve them and go for some lovely long walks over the Christmas period. 

Here is the make of Mei Tei we are getting:
http://melkaj.blogspot.com/


Our Baby Wearing Story Societal change requires a change in the way we view children and how we parent - and for me it started with realising that my instincts to respond to and nurture the children who share my life were always right.

Before the boy who shares my life was born I had a vision of orderly control. I painted a nursery and filled it with things. In the instant that he was born, time stopped just for a moment and then everything changed. When he came home with me and he didn’t go in the cot for long, soon we were co sleeping. I had a pram but I found he preferred to be mostly in arms. 

Then when I discovered that we were expecting twins, I wanted to have the same bond I had shared with my son with them.  So after some research on the long-term benefits of respectful attachment parenting I discovered "proper" slings. 

At first I was scared to put the twins in slings as it seemed too complicated, but it soon became second nature. We started off with a piece of jersey to wrap, then used thicker fabric to wrap but discovered that woven is better (Storch, girasol, Didymos). I have also test driven my friends Ergo and that is a fantastic buckle carrier, really comfortable but only goes up to around 18 months as far as I know.  Kinderpacks are also highly rated in the sling wearing community. I love mei teis but also love the double hammock wrap carry when I can do it right!

Making Paint

I have been slowly working through the house and trying to make everything non-toxic. Then I was loooking at the remnants of the "washable" paints we have and I thought how wasteful they are due to the plastic bottles, and then I wondered what is inside the bottle?

As luck would find me at the moment - I found a lovely home made paint recipe from the Greenparent magazine and we tried it. Success! The paint is a lovely consistency and the colours bright - the only set back is that you have to mix the colours before reusing.

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon of cold water
1 tablespoon of cornflour
1 cup of hot water
Food colouring

Mix the cornflour with the cold water to make a paste. Add the hot water a bit at a time - then add some colours of choice. Put in a jam jar and use!

A Day in the Sun

I always find that it doesn't matter how bad I am feeling, how tired I am, how caught up I am in my negative thinking, as soon as I go outside and potter around the garden,  or go for a walk on a sunny day, I just feel great.

Today we had a long day out, we drove to our nearest town, parked and began strolling through the park down to the town centre.  We went to the health food shop and bought some freshly cooked spanacotas (I cannot spell it - spinach in filo!)  and lentil flan, and with babies in slings still walked to the Buddist cafe. I am so astonished at far one of my babies walked today, she was unstoppable!

I have been reading Deborah Jackson's book "Letting go as children grow" and while I am not even halfway through, it has really illustrated that as far as I have come, I am still trying to control my children. She explains that children, when left to explore naturally, do so safely. (Of course not in front of cars or with chemicals! But within nature they explore and understand their limits). So I have had tolet go because constantly trying to limit one's child can decrease their confidence and   actually hamper their development, making situations less safe for them. She also claims that you can make exploration more dangerous for your child by introducing fear and expectations that can then occur because of the seed of doubt - i.e. if a child is happily balancing on a wall and you say "arghhhhhhh! Look at you, you'll fall!" then knowing that, they'll be thinking about falling and thence fall, when not knowing that they may not have.  Roll on today when my baby is climbing everywhere  and I am having to not look at having to let go. She is climbing onto our dining chairs, then onto the dining table and crawling around eating fruit and then clmbimg back onto the chair and onto the floor. I watched as she once, twice tried to climb down from the table top where there was no chair.. she quickly pulled her legs back up and located the chair andsafely got herself down... on our walktoday Ihad to trust she knew how far she could walk and tried torespect her will and it was enjoyablebut notsomething I can do without support. Two babies need two adult hands!

Okay the kangaroo has nothing to do with a walk in England, I took it in Australia but this kangaroo illustrates the heat of the day and my sense of being in the moment!

Head shake moment of the day: Watching my husband watch the "four candles" sketch on uTube... again.

A Day Out

Today we've had a wonderful trip out. I'm still feeling rather low about the whole NHS-cut-up-my-face-without-bothering-to-ask-and-for-no-apparent-reason thing, so I needed the escape from my self-imposed sulking. I know deep down that there is no point in thinking negatively, use these thoughts to make change. I went to see a plastic surgeon for creams to reduce the scaring and he said that the pit in my lip will even out if I massage it firmly 20mins a day when the stitches fall out. And I have a voice so I can campaign for the NHS to treat people with more respect and honesty. I can make a difference for someone else, and that's a great opportunity.

In the vein of seeing opportunity from negative situations, today we acted on our "people shouldn't" thoughts and it yielded a positive outcome.

As we were walking round the Eco centre grounds, we saw lots of litter and dog mess everywhere. My husband and I often get angry, having thoughts like "people shouldn't drop litter, people should pick after their dog".  Instead of moaning, we decided to do our own litter pick.

While I often pick up litter, this time we had a lot of fun because the centre lent us pincers and a bag holder!

Our 4 year old loved it! We were all involved, the beautiful babies who share our lives watched and bobbed from the safety of their slings. In an hour we managed to fill a whole bin liner full of plastic bottles, wrappers, beer cans, cigarette butts, etc., and we all felt so fulfilled.

Litter pincers definitely going on my wish list.

Our next activity involved my walking ahead with a piece of chalk (okay I was sulking again - but I turned it into a game...) I used twigs to make arrows and drew arrows with chalk and my son and Captain Underpants followed us and loved it!

If you have an eco friendly activities for the family to enjoy please share x