It seems each child of mine pops up in a whole new stage this time of year. Like a new part of their being is born, new skills are mastered, new ideas are formulated. It’s wild to watch them slide into the next and it’s inspiring too to those of us supposedly past all these developmental spurts.

Our three year old has just learned the art of drawing people. A circle. Two arms. Two legs. Two eyes. And, for him who is obsessed with ears, two of those as well.

The 7 year old has moved onto chapter books and a whole new world awaits her.

The 10 year old is speed skating down the alley in his new roller blades. Olympic dreams in his head.

The 12 year old is drawing like crazy, doing portraits in black and white. In a style we’ve never seen in her drawings before.

These new skills sometimes present in a troubled way at first.  As they work toward the newness, the shift, the big idea, they take a step back. They protest things a little bigger and a little more. They forget things they used to know.

Sometimes I remember that in the shifting comes the discomfort and the agony. But I don’t always. And I ask, “what the heck is wrong with them? Why are they acting this way? Why are they yelling/fighting/resisting/etc.?” And then the newness. And I smack myself on the forehead in recognition of the learning curve.

And me? I’m trying on this new hat of public speaking and loving it. Readings of essays. Story telling. Talks on parenting and slow family and any other topic that hits me close to home. It was a push to my edge at first. Now it’s a new love of mine.

I love spring and all the possibilities it presents. All the newness and the challenges to live our lives more fully as ourselves.

And I love when struggles have an explanation.

In the Huffington Post today there was an article about women and sleep – and whether getting more of it could help women rise to the top of their fields, professions, games. Motherlode author Lisa Belkin wrote about it too and pondered whether the issue was really a choice for women or whether they often really just had more to do on the homefront – i.e. nursing, waking to a child’s cries, domestic duties, hormonal insomnia, etc. and therefore couldn’t get more sleep even if they wanted to.

I agree that when the wee ones are truly wee, the ball often lands in the mom’s court as far as sleep is concerned. Biologically it’s the deal and there isn’t a whole lot to do about it short of extra work at some other point in the day in regards to pumping and bottling, etc. But I think that after that, when the kids actually do sleep through the night, it’s about choice: Will I get everything done, myself, my way, every night, and suffer the fatigue? Will I solicit some help from the family in regards to domestic duties? Will I turn off the computer and head to bed? Will I even occasionally leave things undone and go for the extra sleep even though the laundry, dishes, paperwork or more is left for another day? I know for myself, there has to be the turn-off point. And whether I do it at 10:00 or midnight, there is never a point of everything being done. And that’s with a partner who does A LOT.

Last fall I was lucky enough to have a consult with a local herbalist, Ginger Webb of Texas Medicinals. I went to her for problems of memory loss. After talking for a while she said, “You’re not suffering memory issues, you’re suffering overwhelm.” She prescribed “profound sleep” (more than 9 hours at a stretch) and an herb tincture called ashwaganda. I love the term profound sleep and I use it now as a guiding force making sure that at least one night a week I get my recommended 9 or more hours. Other nights too I try to cash it in a little earlier than I was leaving my night owl tendencies behind on nights where the morning comes at 6:20 a.m.. And I take the tincture nightly as a way for entering calmly into deep and restful sleep. Both have made a profound difference in how I feel and communicate and go about my days.

Just this past week, in an effort to lighten the work load on both my partner and myself, we reinstituted our family job chart. We had it going for a while, a while back, and then, somehow it just kind of stopped. For nearly a year we’ve been without it – instead randomly assigning jobs and more often too, just deciding to do the jobs ourselves instead. For many of the tasks, somehow we decided it was easier to just do it ourselves – which is only true for the time being, definitely not for the long run. Not that we didn’t have the kids doing things but it was way more random and way more special occasion too. And now, daily tasks are back. With it’s sleek new design and added bonus jobs, and older kids at the helm, I can already see it’s impact on the house. Regularly things get done. With a lot less nagging too because, well, it’s there on the chart.

So, to the sleep challenge presented by Arianna Huffington, in a roundabout way, the job chart is going to allow me to get more sleep. Because there really is less to do. And even if it’s not done that night, it’ll get done the next day and it doesn’t all have to be done by me, or by my husband either. Do you want to take the more sleep challenge? And if so, how would you go about it?

I started to spiral a little bit into holiday blues this past week. I was worrying about the consumption of it all and not exactly finding the spirit needed to bring me joyfully into this season. In an effort to combat the blues and bring in the cheer, I made a short list of what I wanted this month…

• connection with family and friends
• celebration of the season
• baking
• crafting
• sharing my good fortunes with others
• kindness
• a spirit of giving
• comfort and joy

As I looked at the list I realized all the things I want are completely attainable. And all are well within my power to make happen. We hung our Advent Calendar (finally) which consists of tiny pockets full of trinkets which get pinned onto the tree. In each pocket I also stuck a little note full of ideas for giving of the spirit. I crafted with some mama friends last night. And today, on this chilly rainy Sunday afternoon in Austin, TX I plan on doing a little holiday baking with the kids. And each time I start to spiral into overwhelm, I’ll look at my list for inspiration.

How do you create the spirit you want around the holidays? Do you know how you want the holidays to look and feel? Will you count down the days with joy this holiday? Or cross them off in a race of endurance?

If you need some ideas, we are having a tele-class Monday night from 7:15-10:00pm central time.

It’s sometimes hard to remember that our children are our people. They are the ones we are tending to now as small children, and the ones too we’ll want to spend time with later, as adults. And, though it’s hard to remember sometimes, in the thick of early parenting, our relationships with them as adults will be for a whole lot longer than our relationships with them as children.

This realization is one of the very founding reasons we created Slow Family Living. Our goal is not to tell people how to parent, but rather to offer ideas, tips, tools  and inspiration for finding ways to build that sustainable connection with your children; with your people.

While Slow Family Living is about offering lots of ideas, it is not about offering more dogma. It is not about supplying one way of doing things.

It is about slowing down long enough to find ways to build connection.  And it is about encouraging families, parents, children to see that family life can be enjoyed, not merely endured. Here is a very simple list from our Slow Family Living workbook of what we think Slow Family Living is…

• Continuously asking “Is this working for us?”
• Finding ways to live the life you love
• Knowing you have choices
• Consciously making decisions
• Doing things because it feels right for your family
• Taking into consideration each member of the family and their stage of development
• Making the family unit your priority
• Sometimes taking a stand against the status quo
• Possibly doing it differently than the way it was done for you
• Trusting that what you have to offer your family is enough
• Seeing, hearing, appreciating each other as individuals while seeing the family as an entity
• Believing that there is no right way, just the way that feels right for your family

Sometimes it’s about checking out. Other times it’s about joining in. And it’s always about slowing down, connecting, and finding ways to enjoy family life, now and for the life long haul.

In an interview recently we were asked, “What is slow parenting?” Here’s how I see it…

Slow parenting means finding presence and connection in your family life. It’s about pausing on a regular basis and asking yourself, “Is this working for US?” It’s not about doing nothing. Rather it’s about checking in with your own self, your partner, your kids and the family as a whole, and determining whether this particular schedule, activity, arrangement, is working for the family. And it’s about asking that question continuously, “Is this working for us?” If the answer is yes, keep doing what you’re doing. If the answer is no, figure out a way to change it.

Slow Parenting is about understanding too that in order to process all that is seen, felt, learned and heard in a day, there needs to be that pause. Pausing now and again is a surefire way to integrate each day’s information into the whole being and into the whole family. Slow Family Living is about finding the presence and connection in your family life that works for now and helps build a sustainable connection that will last a lifetime.

What do you think about that?

I have known Ginger Webb for many years now and have long been a fan of her herbal work known as Texas Medicinals. She makes a wide variety of tinctures, teas and tonics of the herbal variety – gathering many of the herbs herself during her wild harvest walks. I could list a whole host of my favorites -  with the number one being the mama’s little helper known as Stress Less. The names alone give comfort with tinctures such as Cough Calm, Digestive Cordial, Mental Clarity and more. And her teas too with names such as Strong Mama tea and Romanticka, which tends nicely to the heart and all it encompasses.

Ginger occasionally leads wild herb walks around Austin during which she shows and discusses the edible and medicinal plants that live amongst us. This month we are honored to be included in the first, of what we hope will be many, Slow Family Wild Herb Walk.

If you are going to be in Austin over Thanksgiving weekend we hope you will join us as we walk through Roy Guerrerro Park in East Austin and explore the edible and medicinal plants in our fair city. Here’s the details…

• Sunday, November 29th
• 10:30 a.m. to noon
• $15.00 per person or $25.00 per family
• 8200 Grove Boulevard, 78741 – (oddly it is not allowing a link to the proper address so just type it into google maps!)
• Please r.s.v.p. to Ginger Webb if you plan on attending

Seems like a way better option than heading out to the mall.

If you’ve been on this site for a while you may remember a post about a documentary called Consuming Kids. It’s put out by the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood and it’s all about making sure that the marketing machine that is aimed directly at families and kids stays regulated. And believe me, they’ve got a big job ahead of them.

Just recently this same center had a big victory with getting Disney, (yes, big giant Disney) to offer a refund for any Baby Einstein products purchased since 2004. The threat of a class action lawsuit regarding false advertising claims of smarter infants and toddlers and kids was what convinced Disney to take this step.

It’s a limited offer, so help us spread the word by sharing this info with any parents and especially grandparents you may know. The grandparents seemed to be an equally large target for those claims of producing bigger, smarter, faster infants.

And now does this mean that infants and kids can be left to their own pace? Well, it’s a step in the right direction to be sure.