It's all about the money

There's a big hullabaloo going around the Internet about raising your kids for free.  It started out as a blog about not spending money on kids' stuff, and now references to it keep invading my Internet space, so now I'm invading yours.

I have to say that the blog itself isn't quite as annoying as the hype surrounding it.  The blog itself is nice--a chatty, cheery synopsis of not spending money on a kidlet and a baby (though I think she cheated when it came to cloth diapering--they offered her a trial period, and she took it), and the rather clever ways she goes about swapping and and trading and making do.  It's what I would do if I thought people cared about raising our kidlet on a rather-tight-but-not-severely-crippling budget. But really, I don't do things all that differently from any of the other gazillion frugal-mom bloggers out there, and I just don't think that filching an abandoned bike is a postworthy event.  (We waited 4 days before we took it.  It needs new nozzles and a new seat, but otherwise, we have a kidlet bike!)

But what galls me to no end is the implication that you're a better parent if you don't buy your kids stuff--the idea that there is even such a thing as a "better" parent.  I think it's safe to say that, if you're not neglecting or beating your kid, if you're at least trying to put food in their mouths and a roof over their head, that makes you a decent parent, depending on how well you succeed.  But what about going above and beyond the call of duty?  Is there such a thing as being better than someone else?  If you work hard to keep your house in a good school district, does that make you better or worse than a parent who doesn't live in a good school district but is able to stay home and give her kids all the time they need?  If you have to put your kid in a playpen for an hour a day so that you can have a clean house, are you better or worse than someone who's okay with a couple dishes on the coffee table?

I don't think so.  I mean, sure, it's easy to look at a mom who's got her perfectly-behaved kids in spotless, coordinated outfits and say that she's a better mom than someone who's got her ill-behaved brat in mismatched and dirty clothes.  But can you really say that?  What is the magical point when spontaneity becomes impulsiveness, when order becomes confining?

I don't think I'm a better parent than someone who can just run out and buy everything they need.  I don't think I'm a better parent than someone who carefully imparts life lessons in every activity.  Our kidlet loves us.  That's all that really matters.

Better than Never

In 2012, I swore I was going to do cloth diapering.  Or at least, give it a shot.  But the kidlet didn't like it--he couldn't bend his legs at the hips, and I was flummoxed by how to get the poop out.  So after a few tries, we threw in the towel and went with disposables.  And this worked pretty well, for a while.

In recent months, though, he's moved up a half-size in diapers, from what here is called a 4 (7-18, or 7-15 kg) to a 4+ (9-20 kg).  This isn't because he's gotten that much heavier--he's been at 11 kg for quite a while, now.  It's because he's getting longer, and partly because, well...we've been having blowouts with the 4 diapers. I could regale you with horror stories of shit-stained babies at 3 am, but that would be a lie, since a) he doesn't poop at night and b) the blowouts aren't that bad, but they do warrant changing everything he's wearing, and that can be kind of irritating if happens 90 minutes before his bathtime.

But my main reason for switching to cloth is simple economics.  I am too lazy to go to the Kruidvat, which is the only place that carries 4+ diapers in the voordeelpakken that makes it economical to do disposables, and too cheap to spend the almost-€8 the not-voordeelpakken cost every time we need to get more.   And, since I was already doing laundry every other day or thereabouts, it made sense to launder a few extra diapers along with everything else.

And I have to confess, I'm kind of kicking myself for not having figured this out sooner.  It's not difficult, even though I've had to resort to the enormous-honking safety pins designed for diapers (the snappies started coming loose and biting into his leg after he'd been crawling around for a while). The dilute bleach solution that I keep the diapers in (until wash day--I use what cloth-diapering moms call the "wet bucket" method) smells only faintly of bleach, which isn't unexpected for a bathroom.  It did take a few tries to figure out how to handle poop*, but now that I've got a method to the stinkiness, it's easy. So stinking easy, I'm really wondering why I didn't stick it out earlier.  Especially when I remember how much money we've spent on diapers.

We're still keeping the disposables around, though:  they're handy for longer trips to town and travelling, and I don't want to wake up at 5 am to change the diaper of an uber-cranky kidlet when he realizes he's wet.  Still, it means that we've cut our disposable use down to 1-2 a day, and for that money, even I can stand buying the smaller packages.

*What works best is to flip the diaper so that the inside bulges out, and stick that in the stream of a flushing toilet, and keep a spatula by the bucket to scrape off whatever's still there.  Then dump the whole thing directly into the dilute bleach solution.  The bleach inhibits bacteria; I've heard you can also use vinegar, as well.  On wash day, chuck the diapers directly into the wash, add whatever other laundry you're doing, and flush the water of the wet bucket down the toilet.  If you normally run a cold load, remember to turn up the heat.  

Eye of the Tiger

This isn't a personal journal, but it is something that's been going on for a while, and I just thought I'd share it, because I think we've all been there, done that.  And it'll end with a bit of insight about what it takes to get fit, lose weight, eat healthy, and basically resuscitate your New Year's resolutions again.

In October of last year, I bought a gym membership to kickstart a fitness program of sorts.  At that time, the idea was to take some classes, use the weights to get stronger, and work out on the ellipticals for a while because my knees hated running more than usual (I have flat feet). And then, about two weeks after I joined, I went for a run (4 k according to Google), and it was like the clouds of my fitness funk parted and the light of glory shone down on me:  my knees didn't hurt, I wasn't completely out of breath after 300 meters, and I got it again--what's known as your "second wind", when you've run past the point of exhaustion and suddenly everything clicks again and you're flying.

So I thought:  Problem solved, I can run again.  Except I couldn't, not really, not yet, anyway.  I made the amateurish mistake of building up too quickly.  My knees began to hurt like hell again, especially when climbing the stairs carrying the kidlet.  And then there was the matter of weight:  I'm not going to lie and say that it wasn't a factor in this undertaking, because it is actually the main reason why I elected to start running again.  Between breastfeeding and keeping up with the kidlet, most of my pregnancy pounds dropped off pretty quickly, but I still had five more pounds to go when it all just stopped.  All the running and gym classes and weights that I was doing wasn't budging the scale.

Now, at this point, I could have just given up.  And had I not already announced of Facebook that I would be running a 10K in May, I probably would have.  Public announcements can be a great motivator to find a different route to your eye of the tiger.   After a while, I came to the conclusion that I needed to take it slow, and go back to running the 3 k route for a while, so that my muscles would have time to gain strength and equilibrate (one of the main causes of knee pain in runners is an imbalance between your hamstrings and quadriceps--a lot of runners are comparatively weaker in one set of muscles than the other).   I needed to start doing crunches again, because strong core muscles are the basis for good running technique.  And the Christmas money I received would cover a decent pair of running shoes.   I haven't bought anything yet, as the current pair still have a couple months left in them, but I'll definitely need to replace them soon.

I also realized that I had to change what I was eating.  I'm in my thirties, now--it was foolish to expect that I would snap back into shape the way I did when I was 18.  My diet was always pretty healthy, but there were still chips and cookies sprinkled in there, a lot of bread and white flour, and drinking a lot of juice.  I stopped buying chips and cookies (the kidlet still gets his baby biscuits), and began buying nuts and dried fruit from the halal butcher, making my own snack mixes.  I started buying zero-calorie sodas--I know, I know, water is best, but the fact is I like a bit of flavor to my drinks.  I wasn't going to stop drinking juice unless I had something similar to replace it--and frankly, eliminating the chips/cookies was already taxing my willpower enough already.  I am still in the process of incorporating lentils and beans, and decreasing the starches, but so far it's been going pretty well.

But the biggest help has been my husband, who (for no apparent reason) decided to see if he could complete a 100-push-ups-in-8-weeks challenge.  And who talked one of our friends into signing up for the Zevenheuvelenloop in November--15 k of scenic, Dutch countryside and getting your @$$ whomped by runners from unlikely places on Earth (everybody knows the Ethiopians and Kenyans, but Japan?).  With us--and this was before I'd committed to the 10 K.  He hasn't asked me once for a bag of chips since this started, and he's been more than accommodating when it comes to staying home with the kidlet so that I can squeeze in my runs.

And finally, finally, all of these things have slowly started to do the trick.  The scale is finally moving.  I feel a lot better now, and I'm noticeably less moody and more patient with the kidlet.  Life is good.

The moral of the story?  Figuring all this stuff out took me three months, one tweak at a time.  Sometimes it was one step forward, two steps back--I tried, for about a week, eating a high-protein diet, but quickly discovered that I'd rather not-eat than cook two separate meals (the kidlet, for all his baby-fat, is at a perfectly healthy weight), which meant that I didn't have the energy to work out.  You have to figure out what works for you.  Give things a week or two, try to get into a groove.  If you can't, there's no shame in dropping it and moving on to the next thing--provided that you keep moving towards your goal.

The other moral is to have support.  I am fortunate that my husband decided that he, too, would get back into shape with me (though, honestly--the guy has never been out of shape).  We work well together--sometimes in the evenings, we trade off, first I go for a run, and then he goes for a run.  I endeavor to make tasty, healthy snacks--and he enjoys them, and doesn't buy chips to tempt me.  But the strange thing is, even though I know the guy and we love each other and all that jazz, it still took me a lot of courage to work up the guts to tell him, "I'm joining the gym, and getting back into shape."  Part of it, I suppose, is due to the fact that any previous attempts to exercise and diet were actively sabotaged by my mom, who to this day lives in mortal terror that we don't eat enough.  Part of it was also working out--for my own sake--how our intertwined lives would work, now that I was off doing my own thing.

Circle of Life

I bought pretty much everything for the kidlet secondhand, or else people gave us things as gifts.  The fancy-pants stroller, which turned out to be suitable as a jogging stroller, was a scant €50.  We committed highway robbery when we bought the changing table.  The crib was gifted to us.  I bought all of the kidlet's clothes from moms looking to unload their kid's clothes.  I'm fairly certain that his current set of clothes were at least thirdhand, based on the wear and tear on the patch and the gentle fade of the onesies.

I am fairly certain that there is a cadre of stuff, for babies to kids of about five or so, that just floats around Marktplaats, getting passed around from one family to another.  Somewhere on Facebook or bounced around on Gmail is a picture of some little kid wearing the shirt that the kidlet wore when we got married (oh, did I forget to mention that?  I got married last year).  There's a kid who remembers being taken on walks in our stroller.  Someone played with his keys.  And now, someone else is going to get his keys again, and his pots (one of the few things I did buy new).  I'm passing on the bottles, as well (I asked if they wanted them, first).

Yes, friends of ours are having a kidlet--their first.  And between his almost-unworn clothes and his barely-played-with toys, there's a ton of stuff we have that we can't wait to get rid of.  It's a relief, really, except they elected not to find out the gender of their baby, so we still can't lose the obviously-boy things.  We're giving them a lot of baby clothes, a couple of toys, a package of wipes (the nice-smelling ones), and muslin sheets--giant squares of thin white fabric that are just incredibly useful, as emergency bibs, or a layer between your kid and a public changing table, or a towel, or an emergency cloth diaper.  They're also getting our Moby--there was a bit of a debate about it, because it is expensive, but then we figured that, if we do have another kidlet, all the money we'll have saved by having stuff already will offset the cost of replacing it.

Some people may think it's cheap, giving used baby stuff.  Personally, we were glad for whatever baby things people wanted to give us, regardless of how many babies had used it before.  And if you think about it, it's not like the baby's going to know that he wore secondhand clothes for the first year of his life.  The baby doesn't know that his toys were played with.  And a lot of the stuff--the clothes, the toys--get so little wear-and-tear that it's a shame to toss them when another family can use them.  But mostly, I think the little bit of connection is nice--when you buy new stuff, you don't know who made it, you don't really care.  But when you buy or get stuff secondhand, you have to at least get acquainted with the seller, you know who used it before you, and there's a history to it.

My Year as Mommy

It goes without saying that parenthood is a challenging and life-changing thing.  Everything you thought you knew about parenting goes out the window--or so it might have for us, had the kidlet been a more difficult one.  As it turned out, he really was the easiest baby ever--sleeping well from the first, no colic, bubbly and sunny and happy to play and loving his food.  I may have gotten some stink-eyes from the consultatiebureau (child care office) when he ended up above the 99th percentile for weight at 4 months (yeah, he was a fat little guy), but since then he's started to elongate and now he's smack on the 50th percentile for everything.  So I don't know that I actually learned anything about myself, other than the fact that changing a baby at 3 am really isn't that big a deal so long as he's got his lovey.

The consultatiebureau--or, as I write it on the calenders, consternatiebureau--is a health care office whose sole purpose is to make sure your kid is growing up...and growing Dutch.  They were the ones who suggested that I feed the kidlet boterham for lunch (a slice of bread, usually spread with something).  They are the ones in charge of sticking the kidlet with needles; they are the ones doing the well-baby checkups so that doctors don't have to spend their time looking at perfectly healthy babies.  (If your baby should fall sick, then you take him to your huisarts, and he'll refer you to a pediatrician.)  Despite our name for it, the only part of the visit that causes any consternation is the trip there--it's incredibly inconvenient by public transit, and at least 40 minutes on foot.  I would, of course, ask Karel to drive me, but the appointments, which must be made at least 3 months in advance, never coincide with his days off.

Besides discovering my deep, downright hatred for sanctimommies and the like, this year has taught me that the day is longer than you think it is--I have never gotten more done in one year (ghostwriting four admittedly-crappy books, growing the business, sticking my toe into translations, joining and sticking with a gym) than this one.  This year has taught me what I am really in control of--more and less than what I think:  I am in control of more of my life than I thought, and less of the kidlet than I want.  This year has taught me that being married doesn't make diaper changing any less stinky, nor my husband any more committed than he already was.

I'm bracing for a lot of hijinks and frustration this coming year, as our little guy becomes his own person--who demands to be read the same book 7 times in a row--and starts pushing the limits.  So far, he's a good kid who only requires a stern talking-to and maybe one or two extra attempts before he decides something's not worth it. Maybe next year, I'll discover the real limits of my patience. 

Rant (Don't say I didn't warn you)

First of all, merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  Things got a little strange this year because there was an illness (several, if you count the various stomach bugs that have been going around) and uncooperative work schedules, so Christmas was three days late for us.  You might think, then, that we'd have been able to take advantage of post-Christmas sales, but remember what I said about the Dutch not really doing Christmas?  Yeah...they don't do post-Christmas, either.  As for why no photos...well, first I forgot to bring my camera, and secondly, I was sick for the big present night with a 24-hour bug that completely wiped me out for pretty much all of "Christmas day"--that, and I'd stayed up until 4 am making boxes the night before, but that's another story for another time...

There is one thing I've learned about myself this year:  I fucking hate sanctimommies.  You know what I mean--the smug, hindsight-is-20/20 women (they're men, too, but I find the most offensive ones to be women, if only because I am a woman) who tell you what you should have done three days after the fact, and then counter with their own example of their perfect child in their perfect home and perfect life--because we had it all planned out, they invariably say.  Becuase in their world, lives never go astray from the playbook and things always go according to plan. And in the meantime, the milk is still spilled and they're still not helping you get a rag to wipe it up with.  Like that woman in the V&D, who was tsk-tsking me as I was precariously balancing a tray on top of the kidlet's stroller while trying to pay for the food, when it would have taken her two seconds to get off the chair and offer to help with the tray, or call someone over.  Now, don't get me wrong--I'm not saying that I expected this.  Only that if she was going to tsk-tsk me, she'd have more of a leg to stand on if she had.  They oughta make a rule, though, that if you aren't doing anything to help the situation, you don't have a right to complain about it.  

Seriously:  just think of how many annoying-ass posts about kids, weight loss, being poor, etc. in general that would eliminate. Think of how many people would suddenly have to shut the hell up about poverty as they come to terms with the fact that every poor person they know works harder than they do just to keep food on the table, never mind the lights on.  Think of how many people would suddenly stop whinging about fat people taking up space on the plane when they realize how hard it can be to lose five pounds.  Think of how many "OMG THIS KID WAS BEING SUCH A BRAT" posts you could avoid reading if the only way you could post about it was to help comfort the little brat (and then realize that he his daily schedule got thrown out of whack on this one day because dad got sick and couldn't go to work, etc).

Don't get me wrong--I completely understand venting to your partner about a terrible flight with a screaming kid, and sometimes (like when I see a teen mom giving her baby blue drinks) there's nothing you really can do about a situation.  But I think having this rule would not only teach a lot of sanctimonious jackoffs that a) compassion is a lot harder than sitting through a sermon, b) the life of others isn't under their control, and c) people generally do try.  They might not have the means or the knowledge to do right, but they generally do try, and that, I think, is important to remember.  Most people don't try to be stupid or make bad decisions.  But the fact that they do anyway should really make us (the privileged classes) more aware of just how close we are to "failing", ourselves.  As the Baz Luhrman line goes:  "Don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either.  Your choices are 50:50.  So are everyone else's."

Thanksgiving Hazards

Despite having lived here for six years, I had never managed to host a Thanksgiving dinner.  Thanksgiving was never a favorite holiday of mine while I was living in the States--not just the turkey-fest (I was vegetarian before I had our kidlet) but the insane shopping spectacle known as Black Friday kind of wiped out any good will I might have felt for celebrating gratefulness with people that I have complicated relationships with.

But in the Netherlands, it is still possible to be thankful without feeling smug or guilty six hours later, because there is no Black Friday insanity and, the holidays in general are more sedate.  At least they're more sedate in Nijmegen.  Maybe it's crazier in Amsterdam.  But anyway, as I mentioned a few posts ago, the consumerism bug hasn't bitten the Netherlands quite as hard as it has in the United States, despite the marketing.

However, throwing a Thanksgiving in the Netherlands is not without its difficulties.  As the kidlet was born right around Thanksgiving last year, it made sense to celebrate his birthday and Thanksgiving with one dinner party (and my birthday as well, though mine is at the beginning of November).  The first difficulty is the date of the actual holiday:  The fourth Thursday of the month is not a special day to the Dutch (or indeed, to anybody esle in the world).  People tend to have things like "work", or else they've made other plans on that day.  Eventually it was decided to have the Thanksgiving dinner the Sunday before the actual Thanksgiving.

The next difficulty was finding a turkey.  Unlike in the US, turkeys are eaten for Christmas in the Netherlands--at least, I suppose they are, given the onslaught of flyers on the subject (despite having celebrated many Christmases with Karel's family I have never actually eaten turkey on Christmas).  As far as I know only the Albert Heijn carries turkey, but even then you have to pre-order them because apparently they cannot be stored safely in the regular store.  Most expats make do with chicken, and just try to find a really big one.  But we had a secret:  the Kaufland, in Germany.

Prices on many things are substantially lower just across the border, and there are many things that are sold in the Kaufland that are difficult or impossible to find in even the best-stocked tokos, here.  Things like whole rolled oats, seventeen types of Nutella, and enormous whole frozen salmon, whole frozen turkeys, whole frozen geese, and substantially lower prices on diapers are all to be found in the Kaufland.  So we were able to find a turkey, as well as sweetened condensed milk--I didn't even try looking for it in the Netherlands--and one or two other things that we needed.  The kidlet screeched happily from the cart.

The next difficulty lay in cooking.  The actual cooking of Thanksgiving dinner does not involve any fancy tenchniques or gadgetry.  Planning everything out, on the other hand, was more akin to a military undertaking than it was cooking:  I drew up a schedule of the three days--yes, three, because two days before, I needed to make the pie crusts and do the baking--and meticulously wrote out everything I had to do (Stuffing:  separate parts made, Caramel Pie:  assembled but no whipped cream) and everything Karel had to do (Turkey--one thing, but it is the most important).  For three days we baked, tossed, fried, washed, cleaned, cooked, and cooked some more.

The morning of the event, I woke up and realized that we wouldn't have enough plates.  I kicked Karel out of the kitchen (because I still had to make an apple pie) and sent him to the local thrift store to find some plates.  He came back with twelve nice, porcelain plates.  With the fancyware--who knew we had real silver silverware?--it even began to look like a fancy-schmancy dinner.  The apple pie came out all right--the crust was underbaked, but Karel had to start the turkey at noon in order to have it ready by the dinner hour.

The stuffing was tossed one too many times and ended up looking like a gray mush, but despite that everybody loved it and I got several requests for the recipe, which I found odd because I don't like stuffing, in general.  The kidlet feasted on stuffing and string beans--the turkey wasn't ready yet for his dinner.  And just when I thought everything was going well, someone spoke the words that sent spikes of dread straight through my heart:  "This is really great.  When are you doing this again?"

Me:  Again?

Karel:  Well, of course.  It's expected now. Congratulations, honey, you've started a new tradition.