Reflections on a New Year: Dreaming and Scheming

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

Goals are tricky little beasts. They’re so easy to pin to big, specific things or be swayed by society’s expectations. It’s easy to ignore the more subtle things that need to be done, like forgiving yourself or making space to enjoy nature. In our capitalist, consumer-driven society, those seem shallow, even though they’re essential to loving others or contributing to a larger community.

After reflecting on 2015 and considering how to approach the coming year, I moved into the process of goal-setting. I knew that the things that were both frustrating me the most and in my control (aka not Congress) were the difficult, slippery issues requiring a lot of emotional work. Because I was overburdened and under-satisfied, I needed to deal with those issues before I could worry about specific actions for my career or volunteer activities.

Thankfully, the Holiday Council provided a nice framework for thinking through that type of goal-setting. Molly, the leader, encouraged us to come up with five ways of being for the coming year, as well as a word that encompassed all of it. While I frequently think about what type of person I want to be, I’d never really considered those traits as characteristics put into action at any particular time. Considering my personal values and what I particularly want to work on in the coming year, I picked the following “ways of being”:

  • Showing kindness and acceptance
  • Empowering and trusting those around me
  • Embracing simplicity
  • Being at peace
  • Telling meaningful stories

After a such a stressful year, I wanted to find ways to be less anxious and more compassionate to myself and others while still “making a difference.”

Reflections on a New Year_ Dreaming and SchemingWord of the Year_ Listen

From those, I realized that my word of the year is “Listen.” It reminds me of the three steps set forth in a prayer by my former church pastor: “Let me listen, let me learn, let me love.” Listening – whether to others’  needs or my own – must be the foundation of my action.

This word and these ways of being helped me establish my goals, which balanced internal, family needs with external ones.

The first two goals were both ones that I would undervalue and ignore unless I purposely focused on them: 1) to let go of my harmful expectations for myself and others and 2) immerse myself without regrets in spending time with my family during maternity leave. While I would be full-time on maternity leave no matter what, I want to have the maturity to feel like it’s not time wasted.

My second two goals were more traditional, although they’re as much about discernment as old-fashioned hard work: helping my church through its transition and having a sense of direction for my career. In both, I want to have a vision moving forward so I don’t just feel like I’m flailing towards nothing in particular.

So far in the year, most of my efforts have focused on simplifying. It just seemed like the right place to start. During Lent, my former pastor always said that fasting wasn’t about giving things up so much as making room for new things. I realized that to have enough space for a newborn, I needed to make both mental and physical space in my life.

Oddly enough, simplification can be a massive project. To help, I drew inspiration from two books: Living the Simple Life and Spark Joy.

As part of our book clean-out, I found Living the Simple Life by Elaine St James. I got it as part of a holiday gift exchange years ago with another book about living in the woods, intending to romantically contemplate how to get back to basics. Appropriately, my busy life kept me from reading it until now. While a lot of the book is not applicable to my life or now radically out of date – it came out in 1998, when the Internet was still something most people didn’t use – just reading it sparked my motivation. Knowing it is possible to simplify helped me interpret what that may mean in my individual life. As the author says, it probably doesn’t mean selling all of your stuff and moving to a cabin in the woods.

For me, I realized a lot of my self-imposed stress emerged from having an endless list of things that “needed” to be addressed. In particular, my activist guilt is the most goaded by the flood of emails I get from organizations requesting I sign petitions or send them money. To minimize that, I’m trying to get myself down to only 15 mailing lists. While I haven’t gotten there yet, I’ve already made a habit of unsubscribing to lists immediately if it’s not what I want. I’m also trying to spend a couple minutes a day randomly erasing or archiving old emails so I don’t have that huge number staring me in the face. I’ve already reduced it down from more than 6,000 to 5,500. While it’s still giant, I’m glad it’s no longer growing.

The second book was Spark Joy by Marie Kondo, the follow-up to The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. After hearing a lot of good things about the previous book and seeing Spark Joy as a free offer, it seemed like something arriving at just the right time. With the need to clear out the future baby’s room that had been a bit of a dumping ground for “stuff we don’t know what to do with” for years, I definitely needed encouragement. While I didn’t follow her “tidying” instructions exactly – or in many cases, not at all – thinking about how my possessions spark joy or not has been really helpful. In addition to helping get rid of stuff, it also helped me consider about how to enjoy the stuff I have now. For example, I’m going to take many of the ticket stubs from concerts and postcards from travel and make a big bulletin board so I can remember those fond memories on a regular basis. I’ve already made huge progress on the room. As it previously inspired despair and now looks like a place where a child may be able to live in the future (after we move some furniture), I’d say the book made a difference. Having things physically organized makes it a lot easier to be mentally organized.

Messy baby room

Before: Yikes.

Almost clean room

Almost done!

Besides simplifying, I’ve also focused on empowering other people. My core urge is to do everything myself because I think I can do it better. Empowering others requires a level of humility and trust that’s both challenging and necessary. At work, I’m putting together an extensive list of reference materials so that other people can take on pieces of my job while I’m on maternity leave. It’s both weird and illuminating to get down all of the knowledge I carry around in my head in a form that makes sense to other people. In my volunteer activities, I’m allowing other people to take over some of my Kidical Mass rides because I simply won’t be allowed back on the bike by that point. As hard as it is to hand my projects over to others, even temporarily, it’s better that they can continue without me than be lost. More importantly, it opens the door for others to contribute their own vision and experiences that wouldn’t have happened if I clung to these projects myself. I want my work to help others to learn and grow rather than restricting them, so this is a great opportunity for that to happen.

As the year progresses, I’m sure these specific goals and steps towards them will shift. But I deeply appreciate the sense of structure they provide as I move through these major transitions in my life. The word “Listen” and ways of being have already provided a foundation for how I structure my time and think about my priorities.

Editor’s note: I didn’t get paid by Stratejoy to write these blog posts.  I just found that the Holiday Council helped me out a lot and wanted to work through some of these thoughts.

Reflections on a New Year: Seasons of Life

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

“You can do it all. Just not all at the same time and not right away.” – Cat Grant, Supergirl

My ambition has the patience of a two-year-old. “But I want it NOW!” it screams, regardless of my rational self’s attempts at talking it down. It’s not that I’m unwilling to work to achieve my goals. In fact, that’s one of my defining traits. It’s that I feel driven to work on all of my goals – personal, professional, relational – simultanously. Small wonder my mental to-do list is the length of the Oxford English Dictionary. But in December, I started to change that thinking, with the therapy session, Stratejoy’s Holiday Council, and of all things, the Supergirl TV show, illuminating an alternative approach.

Livewire

Cat Grant, my new favorite editor in the superhero world. (Bye, J. Jonah Jamison!)

While “You don’t have to do everything all the time” seems like an obvious statement, it’s one I’ve never allowed myself to believe. But hearing it from the therapist (or at least words along those lines) poked through that mental blockage. I realized that, societal expectations aside, I’m the only one in my life who actually expects me to do that.

To shift away from this thinking, the therapist suggested that I pick a couple of areas to focus on at a time. “But I can’t give anything up!” I cried, “They’re too important.”

But in the midst of saying that sentence, I saw a middle ground. I could continue to do things without going full steam ahead on every one of them. Thinking aloud, I said, “I don’t want to give anything up, but I don’t have to get an A in everything, right? I can get Bs in some things.” Now, while grading your own life is not exactly healthy, just the idea of letting myself purposely “get a B” was radical. Obvious stuff to the non-overachievers, but I had never framed it like that before.

Appropriately enough, the Holiday Council addressed many of these issues as well. Molly Mahar, who leads the calls, reinforced the idea that “I am enough,” no matter what my accomplishments list reads that day. She discussed the idea of seasons of life, where some aspects of our life fall back and others come forward. “You can have unlimited dreams and goals, but not unlimited priorities,” she said. Again, the distinction between dreams and priorities was one I had never connected the dots on.

Appropriately, amongst the exhortations to dream big, there was only space in the workbook for three major goals for the coming year. (Despite my newfound realization, I cheated and added a fourth. But before, I probably would have had six, so it’s an improvement.)

In needing to narrow my focus down to four areas – one of which focuses on improving my mental health – I could pick out my true priorities for the year. Now, rather than worrying about “not doing this or that,” I can look at my goals and if it isn’t on there, say with confidence, “Nope, that’s for next year.”

Of course, the hardest part is actually carrying out said goals. While some of them are big ones with many steps, others don’t have long to-do lists but will actually be more difficult. For example, even though it should be simple in theory, I haven’t actually fulfilled any resolution to regularly get seven hours of sleep a night in years.

But just as I’m learning to have patience with seasons of life, I need to have patience with myself with the goals I have taken on. While there are many cliches about this topic, my favorite reminder is from Anne Lamott. She talks about how writing can be radically discouraging if you try to think of it as a whole. Instead, she tells a story where her brother had to do a huge report on birds that he didn’t start until the night before it was due. Her father, advising him on how to approach it, said he just had to go “bird by bird.”

And that’s life, isn’t it? Even if you don’t know what’s ahead, writing is done sentence by sentence, parenting day by day, community building meeting by meeting. All are important, even if you never get to the goal. The moving forward needs to be enough.

Being satisfied with that forward movement while also being able to dream is ultimately what I’m struggling with as I back away from cramming “too much” into my life. It’s not coincidental that these themes keep arising in different, seemingly unrelated aspects of my life. As quoted at the top, media mogul Cat Grant, tells Kara Danvers (aka Supergirl) exactly what I needed to hear yet again. At one point in the Holiday Council, Molly Mahar quoted (from Lynne Twist), “Once we let go of scarcity, we find sufficiency.” That sounds a lot like the permaculture idea that there is no such thing as excess, only things that need to be used in a new way. Nature provides what it needs to function. My own life will too, if I only let it.

Reflections on a New Year: Looking Backwards to 2015

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 8 Comments

Trigger Warning: Pregnancy loss / miscarriage

Quite frankly, 2015 sucked. Nationally, the U.S. suffered from a series of mass shootings; racial-based violence; entire cities having their water supplies poisoned; the hottest year on record; and a racist, sexist bully leading in the polls for a major political party. Personally, I dealt with the trauma of having a miscarriage, followed by the added stress of restrictions on my next pregnancy, my church community going through a difficult transition, and a number of promising professional opportunities falling through. It was a year of crushed expectations, metaphorical doors slammed in faces. It would be easy to say “Good riddance” and not think about it again. But I’m not doing that, for a simple reason – I love to learn, and there are no better circumstances to learn from than terrible ones.

I didn’t feel this way in the beginning of December. At that point, I felt like my life had a tremendous number of moving pieces I was trying to keep in sync, all of which were exhausting and none of which I had any control over. Even though I was always doing too much, yet it never felt like enough. I wasn’t a good enough mother, co-worker, activist, wife, daughter, writer. I longed to have peace and satisfaction.

So I did two things that would have previously been anathema to me; I went to a therapist and joined a personal coaching group.

I had been thinking about the therapy since last year, when I had what I recognized after the fact as a panic attack at Disney. While I hadn’t experienced anything nearly so dramatic since then, Chris saw the toll that stress had been taking on me and encouraged me to talk to someone. I dragged my feet for months, taking weeks to answer emails that should have taken minutes. As a chronic over-achiever, I emotionally felt like getting help was weak, even though intellectually I knew that was bullshit. After all, I’m good at everything else – why can’t I fix myself? But I was too far inside my own head to know what was actually going on; I needed an outside perspective.

Fortunately, that’s exactly what I got with the therapist. Contrary to my Far Side-esque fears, she listened without judgment or even for the most part, recommendations. In fact, the most radical thing she told me was that what I was feeling was perfectly normal. My stress was understandable, considering the year I had been through. My feeling of never being or doing enough is common among folks who become invested in big causes, especially those associated with systematic injustices.

In other words, there was nothing wrong with me. Just hearing that was a relief. While I would want to get help if something was wrong, hearing that what I was feeling was justified (even if my coping mechanisms weren’t great) was so satisfying.

Following on this first dose of self-help, I signed up for Stratejoy’s Holiday Council. I had no idea what to expect, except that I felt drawn to it. In the past, I had dismissed this sort of thing as too touchy-feely or woo-woo. But my feeling of helplessness during the last year made me crave something to help me process it and move forward.

hoco15_header_date_final

My intuition was right – the Holiday Council was just the thing to fulfill that need. It consisted of three group phone calls, a workbook to fill out and exercises (like posting in the private Facebook group) to complete between the calls. Each of the three weeks had a different focus: the first on looking back during the year, the second on visioning for the coming year, and the third on concrete planning for 2016.

The first week inspired a deeper look at some of the realizations I had come to with the therapist. In particular, the challenge to post a photograph to Facebook that summarized the year brought surprising insights. While I had previously dwelt on the year’s disappointments, I also wanted to acknowledge the beautiful moments I spent with my family. In fact, it was often those joyous times, whether playing in the basement with Sprout or camping in the mountains, that buoyed me through the hard ones.

IMG_1995

Not the same photo, but also from Red Rocks.

I finally decided on a photo of Chris, Sprout and I at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, taken by my sister-in-law during our trip to Las Vegas. It was only days after I found out about my miscarriage, but I still have a genuine smile. On that trip, I experienced the freedom of being happy despite the surrounding circumstances. That lesson carried me throughout the year, teaching me how to function in spite of loss and disappointment. When I got pregnant again and then had complications, I found ways to revise our adventures around my restrictions instead of allowing my fears to control me. Sometimes that meant sitting on the ground at the Renaissance Faire because there were no seats available, but dirty pants were better than not going at all. Although I didn’t get a highly anticipated job, I coordinated a complex social media campaign while also launching a completely new website. Although I felt overwhelmed about the future of our church, I started chipping in so the congregation can run the services without a pastor. Reflecting back helped me realize how strong I had been, even when I felt helpless.

While just choosing the photo was a challenge, posting it to Facebook was even harder. It was the first time I had told anyone outside of my immediate family, my church pastor, and the therapist about the miscarriage. I held my breath as I hit post.

But even though I hadn’t been able to speak of it in more than a whisper before, sharing my story with this group removed the barriers I had been holding on to. It enabled me to confront my feelings and write the piece just published on the Good Mother Project. It drew it out of my head, reducing its power over me. Even though I had been haunted for months by those images, writing about the experience was like writing about something that happened to someone else. I wrote that piece on the way up to my parents for Christmas break and was able to talk to Chris and Sprout as I wrote, even occasionally laughing. I can’t say I’ve moved on completely – I don’t think I ever will – but the safe space the Holiday Council provided allowed me to process and then share my story.

I’m glad 2015 is over. But I’m also glad I took the time and energy to consider how it changed me and what that means going into 2016.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow (or the Obligatory Blizzard 2016 Post)

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

The Great Blizzard of 2016. Snowzilla. Ragsnowrok. Whatever you called it, the D.C. area got several tons of snow this past weekend. (Chris estimated that he shoveled approximately two tons of snow alone.) Specifically, we received at least 2 and a half feet of snow, putting us at more than double of what Anchorage usually accumulates in the entire month of January.

Snow ruler 1

Our biggest fear was losing power to the house. Both Chris and I are from upstate New York, so we’re used to getting a decent amount of snow. The first year I ever spent Christmas night at his parents’ house was because they invited my parents over for dinner and we physically couldn’t get the car out of the driveway. But we were also here for Snowmageddon in 2010, when we lost heat to our apartment for three days. Thankfully, we could drive up and stay with our friends in Baltimore who had heat. Between being much further from the highway and our friends no longer living there, we would have no such recourse this time around.

By Saturday morning, we were already past 20 inches according to our makeshift snow ruler.

 

Games, Baking and Other Distractions

We resorted to playing the first of many, many rounds of the Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game. Or as Sprout calls it, the “Neeky nacky quirrel game.” While it’s a cute game and I definitely appreciate that he likes his Christmas gift, any game that a two-year-old is capable of playing gets repetitive very quickly. One of the few saving graces is that he says, “Thank you neeky nacky quirrel” each time he gets an acorn, which is both astonishingly cute and polite. It also helps that he doesn’t actually get that losing is a bad thing yet.

Cheese crackersWe’re usually out-and-about on weekends, so I took advantage of being stuck inside to do one of the five zillion projects with Sprout that I have mentally bookmarked. I’m always encouraging Chris to cook with him, so I pulled out the recipe for Easy Cheesy Crackers I remembered seeing on 100 Days of Real Food. Because I wasn’t going for “easy snack” so much as “indoor activity a toddler will enjoy,” we used cookie cutters to cut the crackers into cute shapes. The angels looked more like gingerbread men and the bears just looked like lumps, but Sprout didn’t really seem to care.

In terms of taste, they came out okay. In retrospect, I would have used regular flour instead of whole wheat. I’m pretty sure the 100 Days of Real Food author uses whole wheat in the recipe because it’s healthier, but the finished product had an unpleasant graininess. Also, completely disregard the suggestion on her page that this recipe in any way resembles Goldfish crackers. These are closer to savory cheese cookies, not the crunchy, puffy, addictive crackers. They’re fine on their own terms – especially if we made them with regular flour – but there’s no way any child will mistake these for Goldfish.

I can’t say everything we did was highly educational. I showed Sprout the video of Tien Tien sliding in the snow. It immediately became a source of obsession and a lot of whining to watch it again (and again and again).

I was able to indulge in this suburban housewife-ness because Chris took on all of the shoveling. Hauling huge amounts of snow isn’t exactly recommended for women who are more than six months pregnant, especially when restrictions kept me from picking up my own son until a month ago. While I felt bad for him, I was not exactly sad about my restrictions for once.

 

Out and Not-So-About

But as the snow kept falling, I got more antsy than Sprout. There’s a very good reason I’m not the stay-at-home parent, and even if I was, we’d never be at home. I needed to get out of the house, even if there wasn’t an actual path off of our property. Despite Sprout’s lack of enthusiasm, I eventually talked him into letting me put on his snowpants and new boots.

Lump of snow

A not-snowman.

Unfortunately, the moment we stepped on the front porch, the wind whipped in our faces, feeling exactly like the 12 degrees F the weather reported. Sprout refused to move a step beyond the front door. He squatted for a few minutes while I tried to squash snow together into something snowman-shaped. Hearing his plaintive whimpers, I pulled him inside after less than 10 minutes, leaving a not-very-big lump of snow on the porch.

The snow stopped that night, but the next day was just as isolating.

 

Snow at door

Hello, snow. So much snow.

I wanted to get outside, but Sprout’s experience the day before had soured him on being outside. “Don’t you want to play in the snow?” I asked. “Naaah,” he replied.

Better snowmanWith a sigh and a feeling that somehow this wasn’t my child, I snuck outside while Chris was taking a break from shoveling. Sprout’s been obsessed with the book The Snowman since he received it on Christmas Eve, so I made building one my mission even though the texture of the snow was completely wrong for it. Through the power of my own mitten-covered hands, I transformed the powdery substance into something moldable and eventually snowman-like.

Sprout acquiesced to venturing out in the afternoon, mainly because I promised him hot chocolate afterwards. Upon his request, I added my hat and a green scarf to the snowman to make him look even more like the book.

With some coaxing, we made our way down the street about a block, holding hands and dodging the bizarrely fast plow before turning around.

Trees and snow

 

Job? What is this job you speak of?

The next two days were more of the same, except that I took a couple hours each day to do work for my job. (The federal government was closed, so I wasn’t required to do anything, but I had a lot to catch up on.) This morning, I faced the exquisite balance of talking to a co-worker on the phone while trying to entertain a two-year-old, which was a special kind of challenge. (Chris was still shoveling.)

I’ll be working all day tomorrow, albeit telework. I’m bringing the computer to Starbucks though – there’s no way I can spent another day in this house.

Guest Post on Good Mother Project: We Left Everything Except My Broken Body

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Trigger Warning: Pregnancy loss, miscarriage

One of the most difficult things to talk about as a mother – for very good reason – is the loss of a pregnancy. I had the misfortune, in April to experience one in the 10th week of my pregnancy. In the hope that it helps other women who have gone through the same thing, I wrote about the experience for the Good Mother Project this week.

I was waiting for blood. Every time I went to the bathroom, I was waiting for those spots. But they never came. No sign that the life that had been developing inside me wasn’t any longer. That I was pregnant one minute and then wasn’t the next.

Read the rest of the post at the Good Mother Project: We Left Everything Except my Broken Body.

A Few Recommendations for Interacting with Me While Pregnant

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

I wrote this a while back, but haven’t been able to post it until now. Fortunately, a couple of these no longer apply – the doctor lifted my restrictions about a month ago, thank goodness.

Maybe it’s my badass attitude. Or maybe it’s the fact that I obviously respond with my lunch order when you ask “Do you know what you’re having?” Either way, I typically haven’t had a lot of strangers interact with me during my first or current pregnancy. Nonetheless, if you run into me, here are some rules for dealing with me while pregnant. While these rules aren’t universal, I’m pretty sure they apply widely beyond my personal situation.

1) No comments on the size of a woman’s feet. During my first pregnancy, I had some serious fluid retention. Towards the end, there was a single pair of stretchy shoes I could wear, which my feet overflowed out of like muffin tops at the end of each leg. If someone’s feet are twice as big as usual, believe me, she already knows it.

2) No saying “Oh, you’ll have your hands full!” Personally, I’ll respond poorly if you comment about how two boys will be so difficult for me to handle. For one, I’m not the primary caregiver – my husband is – so he’ll be the one juggling it the most. Secondly, my kid is the toddler version of Mr. Rogers; he loves button-down sweaters, enjoys quietly looking at books, and actually shares with other kids. Rather than having my bubble burst, I’d prefer to delude myself that our second kid will have a similarly calm demeanor. Similarly, no one else wants to hear about how their life is going to be a living hell – that’s what “You’ll have your hands full!” is the nice version of.

3) No donations of maternity clothes unless requested. I deeply appreciate the generosity of the many women who passed on maternity clothes during my first pregnancy. I appreciated the actual styles of said clothes far less. While they may have been attractive on some pregnant woman somewhere, they certainly weren’t on me.

4) No touching. This is pretty much a gimme, and yet some people just don’t seem to know (or acknowledge) it. Friends and family are an exception, but only if if they ask first. The only person who’s totally exempt from this rule is my toddler son and even I’ve yelled at him a bunch of times not to sit on / hit / squish / climb on his future brother. Good advice for life, really.

5) No horror stories. During my first pregnancy, I was a bit of a Smug Pregnant Lady at times. While I was nervous about becoming a mom, my pregnancy was pretty damn easy, all things considered. But this time around is different. Due to some heavy bleeding that sent me to the ER early on, I’m more wound up than a yo-yo on Adderall. I know a number of women for whom things went Very Badly and am perfectly capable of coming up with plenty more horrifying scenarios myself. And I know I’m not the only one. Neither I or any other pregnant women need your idle comments to feed our nightmares.

6) No saying “But it’s for the best” or “It’s all worth it” when we describe our restrictions. Due to said bleeding, I have some substantial restrictions on activities. Whereas during my first pregnancy, I walked a mile to the train every day, biked into my first trimester and was a yoga die-hard, this time I’m not allowed to walk for more than 10 minutes without sitting down. Taking away my main form of stress relief was awesome. In addition, I’m not allowed to lift my two-year-old (too heavy), which is super exciting when he plays the “I’m going to lie on the floor like a dead fish game” when I’m trying to put him in bed. Of course, following the doctor’s orders is for the best – I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise! But that doesn’t negate the fact that the restrictions still suck. I know plenty of women who have much more severe restrictions. If I or any other pregnant woman is complaining, please just sympathize.

7) Don’t treat us as some special category, but just people who will be having a baby in a couple of months. (Except for giving up your seats on the subway – that you can still do, thanks.)

Anticipating a New Member of the Family

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

My family of three is soon going to be a family of four. That’s right – I’m pregnant! I’m actually in my third trimester as of this week, but for a number of personal reasons, preferred not to reveal it on the blog before now. I’m due in April, about two months before Sprout’s third birthday.

To answer the first question everyone asks, it’s a boy. We didn’t have a gender reveal party or anything like that – I don’t like putting that heavy of an emphasis on gender – but I also don’t like being absurdly coy. So Sprout will be having a little brother. Chris suggested Sprig for his blog nickname, but I think that’s a bit derivative.

And to answer the second question, no, we haven’t decided on a name yet. We didn’t reveal Sprout’s real name to anyone (yes, that is a nickname) until our baby shower, so it’s about the same timing. Of course, that hasn’t stopped both Chris and my mother from making endless, unrequested suggestions, just like last time.

Besides picking a name, our other major priority is making sure the kiddo has somewhere to sleep. When Sprout was born, we put a bunch of stuff that had been in his room in our “office.” Even when we finished the basement, we didn’t stop cramming random stuff in the “extra room.” But now it’s no longer quite so “extra.” Unfortunately, it currently houses my dresser, Chris’s dresser, a giant desk, and a ton of random crap on the desk and floor. All meaning there is absolutely no room for a baby, much less all of his required equipment. My project for January is to totally clean out that room, so we can then fill it again with the baby’s stuff.

Fortunately, there’s very little we need to buy. Sprout’s crib converts into a toddler bed and he’s keeping his rocker, so we’ll need additional ones for the new baby. But almost everything else will be hand-me-downs from Sprout.

Besides sheer logistics, we’re preparing for the new baby in other ways. Sprout is now quite familiar with the fact that his brother will be arriving in the spring – or because he’s still pretty hazy on the seasons, when it gets warm and the trees start budding. I plan to go on maternity leave for two-and-half-months, so I’m trying to gets as much at work done ahead of time as possible. Unfortunately, communications is an unpredictable beast, so they’ll just have to figure how out to handle random media inquiries and needed talking points while I’m out. I’m quite fortunate that all of my leave is paid, a combination of the federal government’s fairly generous leave policy and the fact that I’ve been there nearly eight years.

As for the blog, I’ve been thinking of some special posts for that time, as writing is very difficult when holding and/or nursing a newborn. I’m looking at running some profiles and welcome any suggestions for guest posts!

Lastly, there’s my psychological preparation. While we’ve done all this before, having two kids is fundamentally different from having just one. Plus, this child’s personality is likely to be quite different from Sprout’s. Unfortunately, this isn’t an area I can turn to my parents for help on – I’m an only child.

Over the next few months, I expect to dive into all of these issues a bit here. While this isn’t going to become Pregnancy Central, I will have a number of posts on some of the challenges I’ve faced already and issues in the future. I invite you along for the journey as our family moves into its next stage!

My Best of Twitter 2015

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

I know I’m behind the curve posting my best-of yearly posts the second week of January, but we had a surprisingly busy two-weeks off Christmas holiday. All of that gift-wrapping, food eating, museum visiting, and Internet browsing doesn’t just do itself. As you may have noticed, from the sidebar, I’m on Twitter, posting @storiteller. Most of the time I post links to articles on social justice, bicycling, and other political issues, with a smattering of parenting commentary. However, as not everyone is on Twitter and there’s just so much traffic, I wanted to highlight some of my favorite tweets about parenting this year. (Yes, it only goes back to June – I guess I tweeted so much that Twitter cuts off by that point.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2015 With My Two-Year-Old

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

In my late 20s, years seemed slip together, distinguished mainly by what vacations I took or other special events. But as a parent, the transition from one year to the next feels much weighter, with time measured in huge milestones in your child’s life. While I usually reflect on major milestones on Sprout’s birthday, I liked Mommy’s Shorts reflections on her six year old for New Years.  Plus, Chris and I were just reflecting about how much Sprout has changed over the last year.

2015 with my two year old

This year, Sprout learned to –

Talk and actually have conversations: At the beginning of the year, he had a handful of words, with his communication virtually all non-verbal. After his language explosion just before his second birthday, he had a much bigger vocabulary, but still lacked the grammar and understanding to put it together. But in the last six months, he’s turned into a little conversationalist. He can tell you a bit about his day, narrate what someone else is going to do (we got a multi-part explanation of Chris pouring his cereal this morning), and describe the plot of a book. He even makes jokes, which at least he thinks are hilarious. Before his bedtime, we always ask each other what our favorite thing was that day. Invariably, he answers, “My favorite thing was going to the park,” even when he knows perfectly well we didn’t go to the park that day. When we reply, as we always do, “But we didn’t go to the park today,” he just giggles.

Make-believe and tell stories: At the beginning of the year, he loved to listen to us tell stories, but didn’t have the language skills to do it on his own. Now he regularly makes us pretend food in his kitchen, including tea and apple cider. He takes it quite seriously too – he was clearly hurt the other day when he “made” me coffee the other day and I reminded him that I don’t like coffee! He also loves pretending to talk on his play phone. The other day we had a series of conversations where he talked to different relatives who were all coincidently played by me. On storytelling, he’s already picked up on our “There once was a boy named Sprout” structure. Just out of the blue one day, he told us “There once was a boy named Sprout and he loved cake.” Not much of a plot, but it’s a start! To encourage his storytelling skills, I bought him this neat deck of cards for Christmas. While he can’t use them on his own yet, he seems to enjoy making them up with Chris.

Identify his alphabet, numbers, and colors: While we don’t super-emphasize the academic stuff, we do have a bunch of alphabet and counting books. Reading the Dr. Seuss ABC book so many times (even with its made-up words) seems to actually sunk in a bit.

Sing and (sort of) make music: This child loves to sing. (Unless it’s actually in music class, of course.) Chris and Sprout have now been attending Music Together classes for over a year. While we signed him up just to get some socialization in, it seems he’s actually picked up some musical skills, including a sense of rhythm. Considering I played saxophone for eight years and still have trouble keeping a beat, I’m quite proud of him. More importantly, he really loves music. He can sing a bunch of songs (including House at Pooh Corner, albeit garbled) and when he doesn’t remember the lyrics, just sort of says “la la la.” After we put him to bed tonight, he sang “Mary Had a Little Lamb” to his stuffed animals. He got a mini-drum set and kid’s “saxophone” for Christmas and they’re some of his favorite gifts. Earlier tonight, he was pretending to use a microphone and declared, “Needs more…saxophone!” As my love of music has brought me joy in good times and comfort in difficult ones, I’m so glad that I can share that with him.

Show emotions clearly: For quite a while, Sprout’s emotions were surprisingly hard to read. When he didn’t like something a lot, he let us know, but it was difficult to tell the difference between enjoyment and tolerance. These days, he smiles and laughs easily and often. Similarly, he definitely lets us know exactly when he doesn’t like something with a series of “No no no no nos!” He’s still a serious, focused little boy when there’s something he’s really interested in or in a new situation, but he’s not like that all of the time. Earlier, we could have urged him more to show emotion, but I’m glad we respected him where he was so he could feel free to become himself.

Form opinions on things: So many opinions. It takes 15 minutes to get him dressed because he wants to pick out his own clothes, resulting in some hilariously mismatched outfits. He knows what toys he enjoys the most, especially that great love of trains. He even has specific, quirky opinions on music – he’s requested Bob Dylan several times lately! (Mr. Tamborine Man, specifically.)

Run and climb: Sprout adores running, especially around the house and at church. (The long hallway at our church with a ramp and water fountain at one end is irresistible.) While he’s still cautious, he can scramble right up the cargo net at the playground. He has an absurd amount of energy, so that I actually fall asleep on the couch some nights after putting him to bed, even when he’s chatting to his animals for the next hour.

This year has been challenging, demanding and wonderful. Watching Sprout not just grow up but grow into himself is such a privilege as a mom. I can’t wait to see what happens this year.

 

Trains, Dance Parties and Veterinarians: The Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science and the Saratoga Children’s Museum

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Spending two weeks with your extended family for the holidays is lovely, but you really need to get out of the house sometimes. That’s why when we were recently in upstate New York, we brought Sprout to not just one, but two different local museums. Unlike the New York State Museum, which was a staple of my childhood, I wasn’t intimately familiar with either of them. Both the Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady and the Saratoga Children’s Museum had been completely overhauled since I had visited them, with the Saratoga Children’s Museum moving to an entirely different location altogether. In contrast to sharing my favorite experiences with Sprout, these museums provided chances for us to explore them together.

GE electric car

GE’s all-electric car.

The Museum of Innovation and Science is a bit of an odd duck. Schenectady is home to General Electric’s research division, so it has a deep regional history. In addition to a historical exhibit on important local discoveries, it also featured a large section on MRIs and an all-electric vehicle GE built in the 1970s.

But the museum doesn’t limit itself to its geographic location, touching on space missions, alternative fuels, renewable energy, fluid dynamics, and random “sciency” things like giant Legos. It had some terrific hands-on demonstrations, including ones where you control a mini-tornado and become part of a giant Green wallcircuit. The museum even had one of the very few things I remembered from childhood, a phosphorescent wall that left your shadow “imprinted” on it after you moved away. Sprout seemed to understand why it was neat, but was not impressed enough to stand still for it more than once.
Only one thing and one thing alone seemed to truly impress him – a huge model train exhibit. As the seasonal display, it was prominent at the very start of the museum. Sprout immediately clambered up on one of the stools nearby and watched it intently, as if anything was going to change in the hundreds of times the trains went around the tracks. Model train carnivalAdmittedly, there was plenty to look at. In addition to a normal town setting, there were two carnivals with tiny moving rides, a river with sea monster Champ, an ice skating rink, a train with an aquarium in it, and oddly, an oil refinery.

During our first round of train-watching, he parked himself in front of one of the carnivals, staring at the red and blue trains chugging around. We managed to drag him away to see the other exhibits, but he soon remembered his purpose and literally ran back to the trains. The second time, he practically cemented himself in front of the oil refinery section, a location that baffled and saddened my eco-justice warrior heart. Later on, I figured out that he just really liked watching the trains going in and out of the tunnel, a fact I picked up on after hearing him talk about the tunnel for the 10th time or so. Fhew – parenting crisis averted.

Between the two spots, we spent a full 45 minutes watching the trains go around and around. We tried to talk to Sprout, but the conversation rapidly devolved into him repeating the same observations over and over again. Rather limited subject matter. My mom, ever the extrovert, tried to engage the crusty old volunteer manning the display in conversation. However, he was hilariously uninterested in discussing much of anything, responding with dry, unhelpful, succinct replies.

While the featured exhibit was clearly the star of the Museum of Innovation and Science, we had nearly the opposite experience at the Saratoga Children’s Museum. Sprout was only somewhat interested in the event we went for, but enjoyed the rest of the museum heartily. With our friends unavailable on New Years Eve and no desire to tromp around in the cold, we thought we’d try something more kid-centric. Last year, Chris and Sprout attended a noontime New Years Eve count-down at our local nature center, and enjoyed it a lot.

The Saratoga Children’s Museum’s New Years Eve dance party seemed to fill a similar niche, wrapping up at the terribly late hour of 3 pm. Like any good New Years party, it had music, balloons and funny hats. Sprout gravitated to the crafts table, whereby the magic of glue sticks, glitter, and an enthusiastic toddler turned a mere sheet of construction paper into a big mess. He also wanted one of the golden crowns, which surprised me because he generally doesn’t like hats. It turned out he only liked the idea of it; Chris wore it the rest of the day, jauntily perched upon his head. While we danced a bit to disco music, we mainly threw balloons at each other and played a mini-basketball game. Overall, Sprout was a lot less interested than I thought he would be. He adores dancing at home, but just wasn’t that interested there. (He loves singing at home, but doesn’t sing in music class either, so maybe it’s just a private vs. public preference.) Instead, he wandered out the door after less than a half-hour. On the other hand, he did mention the dance party several other times that day.

Fortunately, there were plenty of other things to do at the museum. The very first thing he headed for was a fake fire engine, which was rather funny considering he refused to get on a real fire truck when visiting the local firehouse the day before. The upstairs also had a play veterinarians’ office, grocery store, bank, school and diner. While Sprout’s little too young to understand the bank and the school was cluttered, the diner and vet’s office were just his speed. He eagerly listened to the stuffed dog’s heart with the stethoscope and stabbed it with the toy needle. While I love that he loves animals, I really hope he doesn’t start asking for a pet!

Downstairs had the ever-popular train table and giant bubble ring, along with some more locally-oriented exhibits. One was a mock-up of the real Congress Park in Saratoga, where Chris and I had our first kiss. Along with a scattering of puppets, the “play version” had animal costumes where kids could pretend to be a bug in an exoskeleton. Sprout was tickled at pulling the sides of the ladybug around him, especially when I put the bug-eye glasses on him.

Trolley ticket boothBut the most unique thing was a large model of the trolleys that used to transport people between Saratoga and neighboring towns. The museum cleverly had a ticket booth with different colored tickets matching your destination. Sprout reveled in sitting in the driver’s seat, taking tickets, turning the wheel and saying “all aboard!” It was challenging coaxing him away from it so other kids could take a turn.

Because I didn’t have a lot of expectations either way, the only disappointing thing about both museums was that my dad couldn’t fully participate. Because of a torn ACL, he didn’t come to the Schenectady museum at all and spent the time at the Saratoga one sitting away from the action. There’s no way in hell he would have danced – my wedding and his own were the rare occasions that happened – but he would have been able to interact more if he wasn’t stuck sitting the whole time. Fortunately, we had a lovely lunch at a nearby restaurant beforehand, so we had quality time together there.

It was good to return home and rediscover some little gems that I would have never gone to as an adult. I’m glad to see the area surrounding my hometown is still serving its youngest residents well!