One Red Hot Country Mama!

As one of the first gifts for baby Allan, I made paintings of the “spirit animals” of both me and Matt, including a dragon. See the photos here. He loves to look at them after he gets changed and dressed!

We went to the prenatal classes at the hospital where we plan to have our baby this weekend. It was a very tiring weekend, but amazingly good. There were a lot of interesting people there, and the instructor taught us a lot. After the first day, we were like “yes, we can do this!” After the second day, after learning more about the ideals of breastfeeding and attachment we were thinking “geeze, do we really want to get into this?”

Some of the guidelines, such as having your child within a 15-second reach at all times and breastfeeding your child until they are two seem really challenging. And, although we would all love to be perfect and give our future-babies as much of a head-start as possible, I think some of these guidelines do more harm than good.

Information can be a real anxiety-reliever, but it can also be an anxiety-accelerator. I want to breastfeed, and I want to be as attentive to my new baby boy as possible. At the same time, if I follow the prescribed steps above, I will not be happy and engaged with the baby. So – I will have to make compromises about them while trying my best.

I think that all of this information sometimes accentuates the cycle of worry, and we should all follow our instincts about what is best for each of us, rather than needing scientific direction on everything.

As our baby’s due date approaches, we are trying to get as ready as possible. The parents I know say that it is impossible, that you can never really be prepared, but hey, we got to try our best anyway. So – we got a crib from my sister, a new changing table some fun decor such as a giant paper butterfly and a metallic lizard from this crazy importer of international stuff near our home called Primitive Designs.

Another thing that is getting ready for baby’s room is some cloth diapers. Although I am totally NOT into adding a bunch of complication in my life, I am going to try it out to see what happens. The happy surprise as I do the research, is that is an industry FULL of women entrepreneurs! I did my initial order at Caterpillar Baby. I ordered at 12:00 PM during a Monday, and got the order first thing Tuesday morning. They have a great article on their website called Why Cloth – 10 Good Reasons. Biggest reason for me is the landfill use – it is gross to think that the diapers will still be around in 100s of years, and the fact that their are 4 million diapers being thrown away in Canada alone is insane. It is also a good money saver, especially if we have more than one eventually.

The diapers we chose were Bum Genius. We got both the newborn ones and the expandible ones. The newborn ones are much more simple looking, they are just a cloth version of the familiar disposable. They have very hip colors (we got a soft blue and a bright green combo) and they are super-soft on the inside, so will be comfy for the new little boy. The expandible ones look a bit more complicated, so I think I may opt to get different sizes as he gets bigger, rather than stuffing and popping at different sizes.

As an entrepreneur, Bum Genius is a very cool looking company. The CEO is a woman named Jennifer Labit, and the company has grown significantly as the cloth diaper industry is exploding. Similar to the way that engineering entrepreneurs have been tinkering around in their garages creating companies like HP and Apple, it is cool that Labit, and other entrepreneurs like her are tinkering around with their sewing machines and creating such cool companies.

In my last month of pregnancy, I have no idea what the future holds… even though we can’t plan for everything, we might as well go into it as ready as possible!

I was recently read in The Guardian that Sandra Bullock’s new film, Blind Side, broke a box office record – it was the first sole-female led movie that broke $200k at the box office, beating out Julia Roberts and Reese Witherspoon.

I haven’t seen Blind Side yet, and I can’t particularly say that the story immediately appeals to me. But, this does represent a turning point. Whenever I talk about sexist stereotypes in movies, people respond that the reason it is like that is because young white men are the overwhelming majority of movie viewers. With the success of Sex in the City and the Twilight series, finally the men in charge of the movie industry are seeing that there is a large, female audience out there.

Because, while there has been a female revolution going on for the past 40 years, movies have not changed that much. The majority of movies targeted towards women are romantic comedies etc., which are usually centered around getting a man.

I would love to one day see a female-led epic, or even an action movie where the lead is a woman and the side-kick is a man. But, the key is not to simply put a woman in a man’s role. The key is to look at today’s audience as they are, and create characters that appeal to them.

♥♥♥♥♥

Originally Posted on  Chapters/Indigo

This was not an easy book to read, but it was an important story to hear. As others have stated, there is some controversy over the veracity of Beah’s account from newspaper, “The Australian”. From doing a bit of research, it seems that there is no “smoking gun” saying that his accounts were a lie (everything is hearsay). You can see the Wiki here, and the author’s response to the accounts here. The story is so awful, I think a lot of us WANT to believe that it could never of happened on this earth.

So, assuming that everything was true, I found the book heart-wrenching. Being a teenager is so difficult – and to layer drugs and violence on top of it, seems unbearable. Since we are about the same age, his music references (such as Heavy D and the Boyz) made me remember what I was doing at the time, and how much simpler my life was. Family (relatively) in tact. A stable political situation. Nothing to worry about other than school and friends. This book reminds us all that these are gifts.

The book was set well – I felt like I was living in a world of chiefs, villages and wild animals. He was honest about his relationship with drugs and violence, and did not get overly moralistic about it.

One thing I wish the book had more of was some insight into the “why”. I would have liked to understand how he went from a boy soldier to a reformed one. It seemed like the switch at the UNICEF centre was completely binary, and from what I understand of the human heart, things don’t play out like that. It is also a bit of a Cinderella story at the end, and I wish he discussed if there were any aftershock effects of living the life he did for so many years – such as if the drugs had long-term effects. Or, if he was numb to violence or super-sensitive based on how he lived. Or if he missed his homeland or despised it.

Overall, I would recommend this book. I think in the Western world we like to place war in the past or somewhere far away. A book like this reminds us of all of the awful things that war brings… to people that don’t deserve to be forgotten.

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