clearbluecup

Today Beatrice had her first taste of brown rice cereal...

"Eh, I'm not so sure about this stuff..."

She ate a fair bit for her first attempt, and more went in her mouth than on her clothes so we are proudly calling the introduction of solid foods a success.

As I'm sure you all have noticed, I'm having a bit of a mental block when it comes to writing blog posts. I get trapped between the everyday minutae and ideas that are so broad and expansive they are impossible to pin down into anything but a vague generalization, and even if I do have an idea that I think is interesting enough to write something about, I get distracted somewhere between that idea and physically sitting down in a chair and putting the words on the screen.

There are lots of ideas though.

One was sparked by a thread on mothering.com about being a Stay At Home Mom (SAHM) and mental health. Does being a SAHM pose unique challenges to remaining sane and healthy? Are we at risk for becoming recluses, alzheimers patients, total nutters? How do you get a break from the overwhelming neediness of children and the "minutae" (my new favourite word) of life? You know, the endless dirty diapers, loads of laundry, crusted pots and pans, crumbs under the coffeetable?

In lots of ways staying at home to be a mom is a pretty great deal. You get to be there as your children grow and learn new things, you can hang out playing on the floor with a shaker and call it time well spent, you can go out to the shops during the day and avoid the weekend madness. There is this sense of open-endedness to some days where it feels like you could really do almost anything, just on a whim.

And yet (and yet!) there is also a freedom-crushing routine set out by the benevolent dictator that is one's child. Okay, crushing might be a bit harsh, but this freedom is seriously curtailed by the need for a well-rested child. And a well-rested child needs their naps.

Last week, and the week before that, and the week before that, I had really been trying to make sure that Beatrice was getting her naps on time and at home. Part of this was my great scheme to get her sleeping in her crib during the day before she became mobile as I had a terrible fear of her falling off our bed, which is where she had been napping up until the beginning of January. I knew that routine worked, and that if I just kept trying she would eventually become comfortable with sleeping alone in her own bed. So I passed on any kind of activity that inferfered with naptime, even things that I knew were good for me.

Before I knew it I had turned into the Nap Nazi and was reading horrible books from the library (recommended by the public health nurse, by the way) which said that one should leave your child to cry for up to ONE HOUR during the day and INDEFINITELY at night to ensure they learn to go to sleep by themselves. How is the sensitive parent to endure the torturous sounds of their hysterically crying child? Take a shower, the doctor suggested. Turn off your baby monitor. Repeat to yourself that you love your child so much that you are going to leave them alone so that they can sleep, because right now they need to sleep more than they need interaction with you. And I realized that I had become dangerously obsessed with early childhood sleeping patterns, and my child was a good sleeper, relatively speaking. How did this happen? I was just a curious parent, trying to learn about my child's development and suddenly I was reading desperate cry-it-out books from cover to cover.

One woman on mothering.com said that the one thing that she finds the hardest to deal with about staying at home is that it gives her so much time to mull things over in her mind. And it's true. Playing pat-a-cake, washing dishes and cooking dinner gives a lot of time to let things steep up there, and not a lot of time to work them out by journaling, running, yoga, etc, etc. In that kind of mental environment it is easy for a small thought to take root and explode in a tangle of creeper vines that cover the windows and choke out the rest of the garden. This is what makes SAHMing difficult, in my opinion. Well, that and negotiating with my inner Nap Nazi so that we can actually get dressed and leave the house before 3pm.

It's spring! It's spring! It's spring!

Guess what? It's spring here! :)

Yes, the sun has come out and transformed Vancouver. All the pasty white Canadians are emerging from their dens and gazing at the newly blossomed crocuses and snowdrops. I can feel the energy already - it makes me want to do things like sort photographs and finish my passport application and move every piece of furniture in the upper floor of our house to a new place (including the king-sized bedframe). The spring energy made Tom feel like shaving off all his hair, so one evening we took the clippers to it and now he looks just like Britney Spears.

Anyway, I moved all of our furniture because I decided that the reason Beatrice wasn't sleeping well during the day was because it wasn't dark enough in our room. Not because she just doesn't need much sleep during the day and I just can't accept that I am never going to get those 1-2 hour long breaks during the day that all the books talk about. No, it was definitely too bright. So Beatrice has her own bedroom now, with a functional shade on the skylight and curtains on the windows. It's working out pretty well so far, but whether she suddenly turns into a baby who takes long naps remains to be seen.

Also, I think Beatrice has skipped the rolling over stage and has gone straight to sitting up. huh?

By popular request, here are lots more photos.

I went to a yoga workshop last weekend that was on the practice of trataka - the practice of steady gazing. The practice involves gazing at an image, object or candle flame until your eyes begin to get tired or tear, then closing your eyes and gazing at the after-image, which remains for some time in the dark space behind your closed eyelids - the same space in which we see our dreams and imagination. It seems simple, but like many yogic practices it is actually quite difficult to do with focus and control. Your attention wanders, the after-image fades in and out of your vision or wanders from side to side. Your body becomes restless and your mind becomes filled with thoughts that snake along like brambles on the side of the road.

The instructor's remarks on the practice really got me thinking about focus. In order to do something we need to be able to visualize ourselves actually doing it. If we cannot imagine something, we cannot make it happen in the world. And so if we want to achieve things in our life, we must first be able to imagine it, and then we must be able to hang on to that idea in our mind and focus on it while the rest of life goes on around us. We must be able to cling fast to that goal amidst the crashing waves. So the first step to manifesting positive change is visualising that change and keeping the visualisation steady and strong in our mind.

In the practice of Trataka, you must choose a single point in your image to focus on. If gazing at a candle flame, you focus on the end of the wick. You cannot gaze at both the end of the wick and the tip of the flame at the same time. It is impossible. True focus necessitates a single point on which attention is directed.

Naturally, this got me thinking about my own focus in life. Where am I gazing? In what direction do I want to travel? What do I want to manifest in my life? I realized, not for the first time, that I am lacking a single point of focus. It is true that mothering has become a goal towards which a lot of my energy is being directed, but at the same time I am still letting my mind wander off towards a million other potential goals. All of this energy that could be focused into a strong beam is being refracted and dissapated.

I need to make a choice about my direction in life, I need to choose a single point of focus and gaze steadily there. What do I want to be doing in five years? ten? fifteen?

Do you have a single point of focus? What is it?