The Many Non-Toys My Kid Loves to Play With

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Sprout has plenty of toys. Now, he doesn’t have as many as some kids, but there are plenty to hold his attention. But despite that fact, some of the things he likes to play with the most aren’t toys at all. Some of them seem pretty boring to me, but then I’m not a toddler.

Blankets and napkins: Sprout has embraced the great joys of peek-a-boo. Before, he just enjoyed watching us disappear. Now, he finds it hysterical to hide himself behind a blanket or napkin. He’s very aware there’s a performative aspect that he’s in control of. The photos from Disney that he’s smiling the most in are the ones where he’s peeking out from a napkin. Cloth napkins are also very good for random waving around at restaurants.

The remote controls: Of course. Unlike a lot of parents, we let him play with the remotes if we forgetfully leave them on the couch. We used to believe this was harmless, until he bought Sherman and Mr. Peabody On Demand. It couldn’t even be a good movie! Now that Chris set parental standards, it’s probably harmless. As we rarely let him watch TV, he’s more interested in pushing buttons for the sake of pushing buttons, as well as the fact that one of the remotes actually lights up.

The grass and dirt: In the spring and summer, I often brought Sprout to hang out in our yard while Chris makes dinner. Even when I brought a ball to play with, Sprout usually just ignored it. Instead, he’d sit in the grass and pull it up, or pick at clumps of dirt. This happened more when he was younger, as now our front porch has more allure due to the next item on the list…

All stairs, everywhere: We are still obsessed with stairs.

Doors and gates: He loves opening and closing doors and gates. He’s not tall enough to reach doorknobs, but he’ll swing an open door back and forth over and over again. He also adores the giant metal gate at the tennis court near our playground. What’s pretty amazing is how careful he’s always been. Even when it looks like he’s about to close his hand in the door, he draws his fingers or the door back just enough to avoid it. Occasionally, he’ll use his palm to close it all of the way, shutting us out of his room. We then knock on his door and say, “Can we come in?” Even though he has zero sense of privacy yet, it’s still good to model those respectful habits. Plus, he finds it hysterical when we ask. We have a fifteen-month-old going on fifteen years old.

The doorstop: Before having a child, I never thought about doorstops. They’re so low to the ground that adults hardly see them. But they’re at just the right height if you’re a baby. Sprout has spent an absurd amount of time batting at his doorstop, listening and watching it sproing back into place. He found it even more entertaining when he was crawling, as he’s getting a little tall now to reach it comfortably. But every now and then, he’ll stop, sit down next to it and start to flick at it, remembering, “Oh yeah, this is awesome!”

Chris and I: His mommy and daddy are finally starting to become his playmates, as in someone who actually plays with you. But a long time, he treated us much more like things to be played with – like really big toys. He scales us like we’re climbing structures, twirls my hair, and previously nibbled on our fingers (although we discouraged that). He still gives us raspberries on our stomachs that make the most realistic and hysterical farting noises. But better to be a whoopee cushion than a chew toy.

Figment the Magic Sleep Dragon

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Peter Pan may ask us to believe in fairies, but I’m putting all my bets on Figment, Epcot’s purple symbol of imagination. Because he truly can do magic. And not the cutesy, fluffy stuff – real magic, with real impact in the world. Because Figment made it possible for my kid to sleep.

As I’ve mentioned previously, Sprout was not a good sleeper. Far from the worst, but past his first birthday, he was still fighting bedtime with all his might and waking up multiple times in the middle of the night. At 10 months, he could fall asleep on his own when we left the room, but then that all went to hell when I went on a trip for work. At 14 months, sleeping through the night was still an occassion to be celebrated.

These habits started to worsen as we approached our Disney trip. While he had taken to sleeping on his stomach, he also needed me in the middle of the night to hold him. With his increasing height, these two requirements were often in conflict, resulting in random nights when it would take more than two hours to get him back to sleep. Out of desperation, I tried pulling him in bed with us, but he just took that as an opportunity to climb on Chris’s head. I was getting increasingly desperate, especially after he acted like a rabid raccoon and we had to resort to cry-it-out at my grandmother’s house.

When we returned from vacation, we had to address the issue for the sake of everyone’s mental health. I restarted sleep training, instituting a version of the Sleep Lady’s solution. While I think she seriously over-promises on results, the basic technique makes some level of sense. Every few nights, I moved further away from his crib, from the armchair to the doorway to the hallway before finally just leaving the room. I would comfort him every few minutes, but not allow him to fall asleep in my arms.

But unlike the first time I did this technique in the spring, he was still upset when I left the room. I’d be back in there comforting him every three to five minutes over and over again. We had a similar situation in the middle of the night. That was particularly rough because it was so tempting to let him fall asleep in my arms. While I could have made those intervals longer, I wanted to minimize the pain of transition as much as possible for both him and me.

This is when Figment worked his magic. I assumed a lovey was a lost cause, as we had tried a couple and he just ignored them. The Sleep Turtle had been helpful, but that helped calm him down rather than comfort him. But I noticed Figment was the first stuffed animal Sprout really showed affection towards. He hugged and even carried him around, a hilarious sight considering that Figment is about half Sprout’s height. Perhaps if he loved Figment during the day, he would help him go to sleep. The worst that could happen is that he’d ignore the toy and I still wouldn’t be getting any sleep.

Needless to say, my random hunch was far more right than I ever would have expected. The first night I gave Sprout Figment, he hugged him and closed his eyes. Just like that. There was no standing up and yelling, no angry protest, just peace. I might have gone in once to comfort him, but it was minor compared to what it had been.

Since then, Sprout has been both going to bed easily and sleeping through the night consistently. Even when he’s totally wound, he immediately relaxes when he hugs that dragon. He still wakes up once in a while if there’s a specific reason, like his leg being sore after he got his vaccinations. But those are rare and his schedule returns to usual once they are over.

Of course, this isn’t perfect. Since I started writing this blog post yesterday, he had a lot of trouble getting to sleep the last two nights. But even this is different – he was attempting to get to sleep and just wasn’t been able to. Before, he’d start wailing before I left the room; now he’ll be quiet for about five minutes and then complain once he realizes he’s having problems. The last few nights, we think it’s been teething, as he passed out almost as soon as I gave him Ora-gel.

While I can’t completely explain Figment’s magic, I have a couple of guesses. I think there’s a certain amount of newness that Sprout’s other stuffed animals don’t have. He’s seen most of those since he was born, so they became background furniture. In contrast, we got Figment just around the age where he was starting to hug stuffed animals. There’s also his size. Because we were worried about suffocation, our previous lovies were relatively small. In contrast, Figment is big enough that Sprout can wrap his really arms around him. Lastly, there’s just something in the power of imagination. I knew if I imagined hard enough, he would someday sleep. I just didn’t know I needed a mascot to do it!

Now, I’m in the recovery stage. I’m still waking up in the middle of the night even though there isn’t any reason to do so. It’s like someone who had a fire alarm go off every single night for a year. While you aren’t exactly afraid, you’re so used to being hyper-aware that it just becomes second-nature. My body is still recovering as well. The first few nights I got a lot of sleep, I was staggeringly tired. The adrenaline of the first year was wearing off and I had nothing to run on anymore. I’ve finally started catching up in the last week, allowing me to cut down from two cups to one cup a tea a day.

My little purple dragon friend, thank you for the sleep that you have returned to my life.

Old-School Childhood: Cabin John Regional Park

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 9 Comments

Old School Childhood_ Cabin John Regional Park

I’m a pretty radical progressive in a lot of ways, but I have serious nostalgia for a lot of kids’ activities. I believe children should spend lots of time exploring and that playground equipment is meant to be used “creatively.” I’m also a fan of kitschy stuff from the 1950s and 60s. So it warmed my heart to visit Cabin John Park last weekend with Chris, Sprout and my in-laws.

Cabin John Park is old and shows it. While the surrounding area is one of the richest regions in the country, you wouldn’t know it from the park. It’s neither shiny or trendy. Which is not to say that it’s dilapidated. Rather, it feels worn and comfortable, like a well-used armchair.

Continue reading →

Family Biking O’Rama

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

As I’ve found out through my Kidical Mass rides, family biking is probably the toughest nut to crack when it comes to encouraging cycling for transportation. All of the usual barriers – being and feeling safe, having enough time to cycle, carrying needed gear – are exaggerated to the nth degree. Then there’s the sheer logistics of carrying kids on a bike, as well as the physical strength needed to drag that extra weight. So I was thrilled that the Washington Area Bicyclists’ Association, as part of their Women and Bikes initiative and promotion of Kidical Mass, held a Family Biking Workshop last weekend. Besides picking up some tips for my own use, I’d like to run a similar workshop for Kidical Mass Rockville in the future.

I was a little surprised when I showed up 10 minutes late and I was the first one there, but we ended up having a small crowd. Before the workshop, I had the chance to meet Megan, my counterpart for the DC Kidical Mass rides. She’s been doing both family riding and Kidical Mass rides much longer than I have, so I was eager to hear her insights. The President of WABA’s board also attended, who I’m sure is quite familiar with biking in general. But judging from the snoozing infant strapped to him in a baby carrier, family biking appeared to be quite new.

In her presentation, Megan ran through the many issues unique to family biking, including equipment, weather, napping and snacking. Both I and the general audience found the equipment section the most helpful. Although we have a trailer, I haven’t been the most satisfied with it. Because he can’t see anything, Sprout doesn’t like it, which eliminates most of the benefits of bringing him on recreational rides. It’s also very isolating for him – he can’t really hear me and once he starts talking, I won’t be able to hear him either. If we have a second kid, we’ll run out of space in the trailer and have to deal with two squirmy kids rather than one.

Megan from Kidical Mass D.C. shows off her Yuba cargo bike, with two kids seats, "monkey bars," panniers, and a rain cover.

Megan’s Yuba set-up, complete with rain cover and monkey bars

In contrast, Megan’s set-up appeared to solve my safety issues with bike seats while allowing her kids to enjoy the scenery. It also seemed more convenient than the trailer, which setting up is a multi-step process. She has a Yuba cargo bike fitted out with kid-friendly accessories. She has a bench-style seat for the older kid and a traditional bike seat for the younger one behind it. She had installed “monkey bars,” aluminum railings that encircle the back seat area. Along with providing a place for the older kid to hold on to, they also protect the kids from hitting the ground if the bike tips over. She also provided a perfect solution for my other issue with cargo bikes – that they don’t fit in our shed. Because she lives in an apartment, she stores her bike outside. To protect it from both the weather and prying eyes, she covers it with a motorcycle cover. It was a solution that was absurdly simple, but I would have never considered.

It will still be a couple of years before we switch out the trailer for a cargo bike, but the discussion definitely sparked my imagination. Especially because she said they’ve actually come out with better options since she bought hers, like the Xtracycle Edgerunner, which further minimizes the center-of-gravity issues.

Much of the equipment discussion centered around the options for electric-assist, which interested me a lot less. Because Chris is the main caretaker and not an avid cyclist, I suspect we’re never going to bike for transportation with Sprout enough to make it worth it. Similarly, I think that’s too much of a leap for most suburban families to even mention if I was to do a workshop in Rockville.

Other sections brought up a few different points I had never considered. On a bike, not only do you need to deal with the mess factor for snacking, but also the possibility of the snack gumming up your gears and wheels. Megan recommended Graham crackers as a healthy and safe option. We also discussed what age kids can start riding their own bikes. She recommended kids start on a balance bike between two and three years old. As I was planning on getting Sprout a balance bike for his next birthday, I think that will work out perfectly.

It’s easy to feel unusual for bringing little kids on bikes, even in the cycling advocacy community. So it was great to talk in person to other people sharing some of the same challenges. This was a bit of a test case, so I think the next time around we can attract even more participants. The D.C. area actually has the greatest density of Kidical Mass rides in the country, which in and of itself is quite an accomplishment.

It will take a lot of work to make sure the next generation has access to safe, useful bicycling infrastructure and is educated on how to use it. But engaging them and their parents while they are young is a good start.

Hanging Out with My Favorite Little Guy

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

Last week, I turned to Chris and said, “These days, I don’t really know what a day alone with Sprout is like.” His schedule now is drastically different from when I was on maternity leave and Chris and I are usually together on the weekends. Seeing an opportunity, he responded, “Do you want to?” We didn’t have anything planned, so I gave Chris the “day off” on Saturday and had a whole day dedicated to mommy-kid bonding.

Of course, deciding on an activity was paramount. Both Sprout and I get antsy hanging around the house, so I definitely wanted to get out. I first contemplated going to a “toddler play date” advertised on Meetup, but then realized that I didn’t want to mar it with my awkwardness of needing to make small talk with strangers. I also decided against attending a local puppet show, figuring that Chris would want to be present for Sprout’s first theatrical experience. In the end, I decided to go to a local nature center (we have a lot of them around us) that we hadn’t been to yet.

The Nature Center turned out to be even cooler than I had anticipated. The largest room replicated a Mid-Atlantic deciduous forest, with a stream running into a pond populated by turtles and catfish. Sprout loved observing the turtles from a bridge over the stream – even more than he enjoyed climbing up and down the steps. Across from the bridge, there was a tunnel with a window into the pond, allowing you to peer into the pond at eye level. Unfortunately, holding him up to the window didn’t last long because my arms were starting to give out. There was also a mysterious “cave” that required crawling into a dark tunnel. While I was totally keen, Sprout was uninterested in exploring anything he couldn’t stand up in, backing straight out of it. At least it’s something to save for when he’s older.

Another room was super old-school, with a yellowed Mark Trail comic and beaver and fox pelts on the wall. He found stroking the fur fascinating, while I scrambled to rub his hands in sanitizer before he stuck them in his mouth. Those are so old that they can’t have bacteria anymore, right? It also had a kiosk where you could press buttons to hear different bird sounds. Pushing buttons plus high pitched noises equals toddler crack.

Outside offered more opportunities to critter-watch; the Center is a rescue facility for predatory birds. All of their birds, which include vultures, hawks, owls, and even a bald eagle, are so injured that they can never be re-released. We happened to be lucky enough to be there while the keeper was feeding the vulture. I found watching the vulture methodically tear apart a mouse fascinating, but Sprout was wiggly. In only a few years, I’m sure it will hold his interest far more.

We spent the rest of the time at the Center rambling along the hiking trails. I let him walk ahead of me, redirecting when he’d start to wander off the path. Besides it being good environmental stewardship, I also didn’t want to deal with the threat of poison ivy. He’d stop occasionally to pick up a stick, look at a leaf, or poke at a stone. However, he was surprisingly focused for his age. Our time ran out before his attention span did.

The rest of the day was more pedestrian – lunch, a nap for both of us, and a trip to our downtown area and grocery store. I even made dinner! But it was good to even have that ordinary time together.

I’m so grateful that we had our mommy-son bonding time. Sometimes I get jealous of Chris because he has so much time with Sprout alone. While I wouldn’t want to be a stay-at-home parent myself, I wish I had a little more time than the hour and a half before bedtime and the weekends.

Even when I’m there and all three of us are together, Chris can unintentionally dominate the play. He tends to be a little more physical with Sprout when playing, with more tickle fights than I do. He’s also just inherently funnier, being able to make up silly songs on the fly. I’ve learned a lot about being flexible from him and I’ve become much more comfortable as a mom, but I still feel intimidated once in a while.

Obviously, Chris benefitted from this time away as well. In fact, he attended a gaming group he found through Meetup and enjoyed himself! As he hates attending events where he has to talk to strangers, much less going by himself, I was so proud of him.

So this uninterrupted time with Sprout was refreshing. I could luxuriate in spending time with him without worrying about being back in time for dinner or anywhere else. I suspect we’ll make this a regular monthly event, as it seems to be good for everyone’s emotional health.

Guest Post at Rants from Mommyland

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

I’m super excited today because I have a guest blog over at Rants from Mommyland, one of my absolute favorite blogs of all time. Seriously, I have a total blogger crush on Lydia. I read the blog’s entire archives while I was nursing Sprout and it helped keep me sane in the dark hours in the middle of the night. She has a fantastic series called “Domestic Enemies of The…” highlighting the challenges facing mothers in all sorts of situations. I’m honored to be the latest in that series with Domestic Enemies of the Working Wife of the Stay-at-Home Dad.

Here’s the first paragraph:
I’m proud to be married to a stay-at-home dad. But it definitely comes with its pitfalls. While I’m so glad that I get to go to my job every day while my husband enjoys taking care of the baby and cooking, we’ve faced our share of Domestic Enemies.

Read the rest over at Rants from Mommyland!

Art in the Ordinary Moments

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

Art is good for kids and kids are good for art. While art usually hasn’t treated kids with a lot of respect, Mary Cassatt is one of the few artists who portrayed children in her art in an less-restricted manner. So when I saw a poster about an exhibit of her art at the National Gallery, I was eager to go.

What I like the most about Cassatt is that she painted people as they are, not how she wanted them to be. Historically, art has portrayed children as small adults, stuffing them in tiny formal clothes in stiff positions with blank or very serious expressions. (In some medieval art, baby Jesus is outright creepy.) Many of them look like zombie children or possessed dolls. In fact, a critic contemporary to Cassatt said that most artists of the time put mothers and children in “stupid and pretentious poses.”

In contrast, Cassatt – like many of the Impressionists – was interested in painting “real people.” Cassatt’s paintings often capture children’s lack of decorum. In what’s probably her most famous paintiLittle Girl on a Blue Armchair, Mary Cassattng, Little Girl on a Blue Armchair, a young girl is dressed in her Sunday best and absolutely sprawled out on the living room furniture. With her dog perched on a nearby chair, she looks out at the viewer with a relaxed but vaguely bored look: “What? I’m comfortable.” From her pose to her expression, she’s the opposite of a proper Victorian lady, but so much like the little girls we know in real life.

Another famous painting, Girl Arranging Her Hair, shows a teenager in her dressing gown, fussing with her long hair. What I found particularly interesting about this one is that Cassatt doesn’t paint her as conventionally attractive. In fact, she’s a little homely. But Cassatt finds beauty in the ordinariness of her face and the task at hand.

The exhibit also displayed a number of her lesser-known pieces, particularly a set of prints done in a Japanese woodcut style. My favorite of these was Maternal Embrace, which Mary Cassatt's Maternal Embrace, which portrays a mother hugging a young infant.shows a woman hugging an older infant to her chest. The baby is naked, as if he or she has just come out of the bath. The mother has her arms tightly wrapped around the child, her eyes closed and head resting against the child’s cheek. It captures a moment of deep intimacy, of what I imagine to be a mother contemplating how much she loves and cherishes her child. The baby is big enough to hug tightly but small enough to be vulnerable – perhaps around 4 to 6 months. The print resonated with me, because that was a time I particularly enjoyed with Sprout. He was smiling often and giving real emotional feedback. It captures a moment that truly reflects my lived experience, in a way that art rarely does for me.

Cassatt’s empathy for children was even reflected in her art supplies; the museum had a set of her pastels on display. When she had moved on to other mediums, Cassatt gave them to one of her friend’s daughters. The accompanying plaque quotes the recipient as saying that as a little girl, she had no idea what they were worth, so she just used them to create her own art. I suspect that was exactly what Cassatt intended with the gift.

Seeing these images of children sparked my thoughts about how we portray children today. Children are portrayed more now than in any period of time, between digital cameras, smartphones, Facebook and Instagram. While the mere act of photographing our kids may inspire them to ham it up and be less genuine, I do think that most photos try to depict children’s lived lives, just as Cassatt did. Of course, they usually show our kids’ best side and not all of the whining, but they aren’t trying to turn our kids into people they aren’t.

Instead, I think sometimes where we – and I definitely include myself here – go wrong is how we interpret other people’s photos. It’s so easy to look at other people’s photo sets and forget about the 10 photos they didn’t post where their kid wouldn’t sit still or was hitting their sibling or was complaining about goodness knows what. It’s easy to forget that these are just snapshots into people’s lives and even messy places can look beautiful with the right point of view. We long to have our lives look like other people’s, forgetting that we have our own moments of honest beauty, even if we didn’t have the camera ready at that moment. Or we get mad at other people’s lives being “perfect,” even if they never claimed such a thing. We try to compare our families to fictional people that exist only on a screen. It’s like being mad at the Pinterest moms that do everything – we don’t know the whole story and it isn’t fair to either of us. Instead, we need to extend grace to ourselves and each other, finding art in the ordinary.

Art is just one way to express beauty. When we portray children, we should make it as true to them as possible, but also remember we’ve only captured just one moment of many.

Fear Makes Companions of Us All

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

Lately, I’ve been struggling with fear. Unfortunately, I didn’t recognize it when it affected me the most – I misidentified it as anxiety or self-righteous anger. My fear has revolved around two major themes: not being a “good enough” mom to Sprout and not doing enough to “make the world a better place.” My fear around the first issue was most prominent during our Disney trip; the second emerged while I was washing dishes last week as an extended, angry, despairing rant about climate change, poverty and other injustices. Both are always bubbling under the surface. While I don’t believe God manipulates people to send personal messages, I do believe that if people ask, God will open their hearts to help hear what they need to from the noise of everyday life. This past weekend, I had a one-two punch of those messages, leading me to realize that I need to embrace my fears rather than ignoring them.

The first blow came on Saturday night, from a marvelous episode of Doctor Who. Even though it was advertised as a “properly scary” episode, it ended up being something very different indeed. Without spoiling the plot, it was fundamentally about how fear isn’t inherently a bad thing. Fear can make us stronger, quicker, and braver; it can make us super-powered. Fear comes from the knowledge that there are things we do not and perhaps cannot understand, but that’s okay. Whether the monster under the bed is real or not is irrelevant. Fear may be our constant companion, but instead of letting it control us, it can drive us to become better people.

The second hit came the next morning in church. My pastor has been preaching on the Beatitudes and what it means to be a peacemaker in the world. Last Sunday, he preached about how love and peace need to be at the center of our lives. That although we may have fear, we can’t let it drive us. That peace comes from breaking cycles of violence, whether physical or emotional. When we have peace at the core of our being, it acknowledges the pain of others and moves out from us.

The Doctor Who episode deeply connected with me, but I didn’t know why until hearing the sermon. Putting the two together, I realized that by trying to ignore my fear, I was allowing it to overwhelm me. To paraphrase the Martin Luther King Jr. quote on this week’s church bulletin, I was trying to merely drive out darkness instead of bringing light. But there can be no known without an unknown, no comfort without fear, no rebuilding without destruction, and no resurrection without the despair of Good Friday.

By worrying about not being a good enough mom, I don’t give myself the space to make and acknowledge the mistakes that are needed to grow. By being so concerned that I’m not doing enough, I make it all about me and deny the efforts of the folks around me. One of my favorite bloggers, Phil Sandifer, says that progressive causes like feminism involve both tearing down the current systems and making new mistakes in the process. As both a parent and activist, I have to forgive myself and others so that we can all make new mistakes together.

From now on, I will try to embrace my fears, realizing that they’re an outgrowth of how much I love my son and am concerned about the world around me. Instead of being afraid of caring too much, I will try to celebrate it.

Rolling Somewhat Merrily Along

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

When I started our town’s series of Kidical Mass bike rides for families, I was afraid no one would show up. Now that the summer has wound down and I’ve led four different rides, those fears have mostly been alleviated. But while I’ve had some success, the last two rides have shown that like many activist projects, it’s going to take a lot of hard work to get a big impact. Fortunately, I’ve also had some little wins that give me hope.

Going into this project, I knew that my town’s bicycle culture lagged behind that of D.C. and Arlington. While we struggled to get 10 people for our community rides, they would get hundreds. Rockville has substantially improved its bike infrastructure and policies, but we just haven’t attracted the sheer numbers of cyclists yet. On top of that, getting families to cycle is the toughest nut to crack and suburban parents are notoriously paranoid about safety. This was illustrated quite clearly when the East Falls Church Kidical Mass launch ride (a specific neighborhood in Arlington) had 32 people, while ours had 17, including me, my husband, and the organizers of an existing ride.

On top of not having as much of a cycling culture, my town poses other logistical issues for Kidical Mass rides. Being in the suburbs, businesses are more spread out, making it difficult to find destinations within a few miles of a starting point that are also on quiet streets. From my experience so far, parents expect to drive rather than bike or take transit to the ride, so you need to start and end in the same place, preferably somewhere with good parking. As Rockville has a number of rolling hills that challenge adult cyclists, I usually abandoned the “flat” part of the “short, un-trafficked, flat” routes recommended for Kidical Mass rides.

Knowing all of this, it wasn’t too surprising that we only had one family each for our last two rides. We had some adult helpers on both, so neither group was ridiculously small, but we aren’t attracting the numbers that a ride that has “mass” in its name implies.

Despite the low turnout, certain aspects of each ride were encouraging. On the August ride, I had planned to ride from a local nature center to Rock Creek Park, a lush gem that runs from the heart of D.C. into Montgomery County. But the ride has some serious hills, so my heart sunk when I saw a little girl show up with training wheels. I especially felt bad when I realized she and her mom had showed up for the July ride but she was too scared to even leave the sidewalk. Trying to hide my nervousness, I encouraged her to try the ride and let her know that it was okay to walk the hills. Much to my relief, she defied everyone’s expectations. She made it up many of the hills and wasn’t ashamed of walking up others. The route offered exactly the right blend of achievable and just-out-of-reach challenge. We turned around before we reached the park, but I was so proud that she made it as far as she did. It was such a huge leap up from just a month before. Even though her mom kept saying, “If I had known the route, I would have never brought her!” it was clear that she was glad she did. Even though she was the only kid there, her accomplishment alone made the ride worthwhile.

On the ride this past weekend, I was quite surprised that anyone showed up, considering it was a 50% chance of rain. In fact, I actually left Chris and Sprout at home. But one family with two kids in a trailer and an older lady interested in volunteering both made an appearance. While the dad of the family was an avid cyclist, his wife was much less experienced. She had just gotten a new bike and self-identified as a rather slow cyclist. They had been doing rides around their neighborhood, but this was the first community ride they had done. And despite the rain, she loved it! Afterwards, she promised to sign up for another community ride this weekend as well as future Kidical Mass rides. On top of making it good experience for her, they’re also interested in purchasing a Yuba cargo bike to replace their trailer, which would be an awesome addition to our Kidical Mass rides.

Our next two rides are going to be with our sister ride in nearby Gaithersburg, which has been around for at least a year. I hope that some of their experience rubs off on us!

We Do Still Want to Hang Out With You – Seriously

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

A lot of people without kids complain that when their friends become parents that they never see them anymore. They stop accepting invitations and don’t invite them to their own events. But before Sprout was born, I was determined that Chris and I were not going to be those people. Even though many of our friends live on the other side of the city, we still wanted to see them.

While we aren’t perfect, I think we’ve been pretty good at following through on that commitment. This weekend, we actually spent time with our friends on both Saturday and Sunday. So to all of the folks who keep turning down invitations, I say that you don’t have to be Those Parents.

In fact, here are a few solutions to the most common challenges I’ve heard. While these won’t work for everyone, I think they could help a few new parents spend a little more time with their friends.

“You don’t want to come – it’s going to be a lot of kids.”
Possibly, but you never know unless you ask! If someone doesn’t want to attend an event, they will politely respond “no” or ignore the invitation altogether. Personally, I like inviting all of my friends – with and without kids – to parties at our house. For Sprout’s first birthday party, we rented space at a local park, which worked out very well for both the adults and kids. As he gets older, his parties will focus on his friends, but you can still have all-ages Halloween parties, Christmas celebrations or summer BBQs. For his party, I think one thing that helped was that we encouraged people to donate to the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project instead of bringing gifts. That way, my non-parent friends didn’t have to figure out what to buy for a one-year-old, folks on tight budgets didn’t feel obliged, people who wanted to could contribute, and we didn’t end up with a ton of extra toys.

“People without kids don’t want to hear me talk about my kids.”
Then don’t – it doesn’t always seem like it, but there are other conversational topics in the world! Even if you’re a stay at home parent, you can talk about pop culture, the news, politics or other hobbies. Also, I’ve found that our friends don’t mind us talking about Sprout, just as long as we’re respectful. We try not to dominate the conversation, listen to people tell stories about their own lives (including their pets), don’t imply that our lives are soooo much harder than their, and don’t make them feel bad about not having kids. In fact, our friends have had a lot of questions, either because they do want kids in the future or are just curious. But avoid talking about your kid’s poop. No one wants to hear about toileting habits – unless it’s a hysterically funny story.

“Babysitters are really expensive.”
They totally are – which is why we’ve avoided finding one so far. Now, a lot of this is due to having a supportive social circle and family, but some of it’s just flexibility. Whenever either set of our parents visit or we visit them, we ask if they can watch Sprout for the evening. While we’ve spent most of these nights on dates, we could have also used them to set up time with kid-less friends. More recently, we did a “child swap” with friends of ours that also have a baby. We took their kid for an afternoon so they could go out and a few weeks later, they took Sprout. But you don’t necessarily need friends or family to provide childcare. If you’re part of a couple, you can actually switch off between the two of you. When one of our friends sends an invitation to an evening party, we take turns as to who gets to go and who stays home. As we had a four year long distance relationship and years of opposite schedules, we’re both comfortable going to events by ourselves. It’s nicer to go to things together, but it’s better to go alone than not at all!

“Nap times are so restrictive.”
We’ve managed to phase out the morning nap, but we know well the dangers of screwing with naptime. But if your friends without kids are willing to be flexible, it’s possible to plan around them, especially on weekends. In particular, we’ve found late brunches and lunches to work well. If your kid is bad at restaurants, places with sidewalk seating tend to be more forgiving when it comes to being noisy and dropping food on the ground. While a lot of folks go to dinner too late for us, barbecues that we can attend after his afternoon nap are great. If you’re willing to host something at your own house, you can really expand the possibilities. In theory, you can put the baby down for his afternoon nap right before people come over, allowing you a couple of adult-only hours. Of course, this doesn’t always go as planned. I hosted a gaming session where I was GMing (game-mastering) and inevitably Sprout decided that was the day he didn’t want to take an afternoon nap.

“But I can’t bring my kids to a bar and adults don’t want to go to Chuck E Cheese!”
Unfortunately, they don’t make neighborhood bars like they used to. Back in the day, my great-grandmother and great-grandfather brought my mom and aunt to the local joint where all their friends hung out. In light of this loss, there are a lot of places that can meet the needs of both adults and kids. Besides the aforementioned outdoor dining, perhaps a friend wouldn’t mind hanging out at a park where the kids can play on the playground. Or you can go to the mall altogether and make a stop at the children’s area. While the summer is quickly fading, a lot of outdoor movie series show awesome family-friendly films, like Frozen and Star Wars. Local events can be perfect too – the local county fair or Renaissance Festival can be very entertaining for everyone.

Now, all of this is not to say that new parents should be solely responsible for maintaining the friendship. We ask for patience and understanding from our child-less friends. We may be a little later than usual, we may have odd stains on our clothes, we will have limited schedules, and we may sometimes need to leave to deal with a child-related disaster, whether medical or behavioral. But taking all of that into consideration, we do still want to be friends with you.