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Motherhood

Everyday Moments: The First Tooth

The tooth had wobbled for weeks. Then at a regular trip to the dentist a couple of weeks ago, the dentist said “feel free to keep wobbling that tooth and playing with it as much as you want. It’s about ready to come out.”

My memories of getting teeth pulled involved small hand tools, my grandfather reached into my small mouth with a pair of pliers, straight from his toolbox and unsanitized, and yanked them out. We suggested this to the little man but, understandably, he didn’t take us up on the offer. So we waited patiently until it was hanging on by the tiniest of threads. All it took was a tissue and a quick tug and out it popped.

The little man shrieked with excitement as he examined the tiny tooth in his hands. He then rushed to the bathroom mirror to check out the new gap in his smile.

We found a small Lego box to put to the tooth in so that the Tooth Fairy could actually find it in the middle of the night. My brief market research study on the going rate for the Tooth Fairy seemed to show that a £1 coin was fair market value. (Though there were certainly some outliers in my survey with some well posh Tooth Fairies.) We clearly have some work to do educating the little man about how money works. In the morning he was excited to show me that the Tooth Fairy had swapped his tooth for a coin but it was also clear he’d rather her just leave him some Lego.

But in the midst of all the excitement around his first visit from the Tooth Fairy, I couldn’t help but feel a small sense of loss. The years are ticking by so fast and he’s growing up. Baby teeth move over, it’s time to make room for the big teeth.

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This Everyday Moments post is part of a regular photographer’s blog circle that I join. Through images, we share moments that celebrate the everyday adventures that make up our lives. Please follow our circle around to see what Everyday Moments Erin captured this month.

July 31, 2015

Everyday Adventures, Motherhood

Everyday Moments: My Little Mop Head

After six months of growth, my little man develops a glorious mane of curly blonde locks. It’s shaggy and unkempt, largely due to the fact that I rarely comb it, but it’s carefree and a bit wild, like childhood should be. I imagine an older version of him and that hair catching waves on a sunny California beach. (Note to self, teach him the word “dude.”)

I’d leave it alone but eventually it gets in his eyes and he wants it cut. I let him decide. I feel like it’s important for him to know that he has choices in life, even about something so mundane. And that I trust his judgement.

And, so just sixty minutes after I captured this, my little man’s shaggy locks were gone. Now he’s older, wiser, and clean-cut. Now I imagine the older version of him in a prep school jacket and tie, surfing the stacks in the library.

Snip. Snip. Sniff.

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March 31, 2015

Motherhood

Why I Decided to Lean In

It’s a new season. And autumn is bringing cooler weather and winds of change.

Change in life has brewed as well, and this week, after much soul-searching, I’ve returned to work at a full-time “day job” doing what I know, geeky technology stuff that I don’t even want to begin to explain in this space. Let’s just say my job title includes the word “engineer,” I make lots of spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations, and know more than the average person about where all those photos you post on Facebook get stored.

So why? Why have I chosen to return to this new but familiar path? The reality is that as much as I love my son dearly and am grateful for the time I’ve had with him over the past two years, I’ve never felt settled as a stay at home parent. And I’ve had a bit of an identity crisis as I’ve tried to navigate the uncharted waters of stay at home motherhood. Almost all the women in my immediate and extended family worked and had careers and I’ve recognised that I want to follow in their footsteps. Having a professional career and an identity separate from “mum” feels like what I need to be a whole person, to fill in the missing pieces that makeup the puzzle of me.

I know the challenges which led me to leave the workforce over two years ago haven’t changed or gone away. But I feel like I’m in a better place to manage them than I was with a one year old in tow. Do I feel anxiety and guilt about not being with him as much? Of course. And I’m already filled with fear of missing out on playdates and other activities during the week. But I know I’m a better parent when we have time apart and when I feel better about myself. And the reality is that whether I work or not, school beckons and soon he will be otherwise engaged every day. So having a career gives me confidence, purpose, self-esteem, and independence. And that’s the woman, the example that I want to set for my son.

I’m not suggesting that my path is the right and only path, every family, every mother’s personal situation is unique. I am just thankful that I’ve had the opportunity to sit on both sides of the fence and have a choice. Some women aren’t that lucky. I treasure the time I’ve had with my child during his earliest years and these years outside the workforce have also allowed me to discover and cultivate other talents that will serve me throughout life. I’m still passionate about photography and writing, passions which I’ll continue to follow as I want my right brain to keep getting a bit of exercise. I now understand that pursuing these interests and having a professional career aren’t mutually exclusive.

What Leaning In Means to Me

The funny thing is that versions of this post have sat in my drafts for over two years, an essay about the challenges women face working in technology fields. But I could never finish it. It felt disingenuous to write about encouraging more girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) when I’m sitting at home.

Then a few months ago I read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In and it felt like she’d been digging around in the deep recesses of my psyche. She knew. She knew what it felt like to be the only woman in a room full of pinstripes. She knew about the struggles young girls have trying to fit in. And she knew about the importance of having women in the workforce, in leadership positions, breaking down gender stereotypes and showing young girls that, above all, they have choice.

“As a girl you know that being smart is good in lots of ways, but it doesn’t make you particularly popular or attractive to boys.”

Recently, a friend told me the story of the career counselling she received in high school. A professional educator looked at my friend and told her that becoming a hair dresser or a secretary were her best options and then proceeded to hand her a pamphlet which spelled this out in black and white. It listed boys careers and girls careers in separate columns and she needed to choose one from the girls column, the counselor told her. The most shocking thing about this isn’t that it happened, it’s that it happened in the 21st Century and not in the 1960s. Luckily my friend is full of moxie and rightly knew her “counselors” were full of shit. She went on to get her Masters degree.

But what about girls that aren’t that confident? Girls who believe the stereotypes and accept them as truth. Girls who have an interest in fields like computer science but will accept it when told they can’t be good at it or that it’s just for boys. Girls encouraged to play with Barbie but not LEGO. Girls who at the age of four already know that being a princess makes them fit in better than being a super hero. How do we encourage these girls to dismiss the stereotype and reinforce that they can do anything they put their mind to?

“When girls are reminded of their gender before a math or science test, even by something as simple as checking off an M or F box at the top of the test, they perform worse. Stereotype threat discourages girls and women from entering technical fields and is one of the key reasons that so few study computer science.”

In high school, I wasn’t the popular or pretty one, hanging out instead on the outer edges of the “in crowd.” I enjoyed science and had a biology teacher, a woman, who encouraged me to enter science fairs and competitions, things that certainly make high school teenagers gravitate toward the geek end of the spectrum. And to balance that out, I spent a lot of energy trying to be something I wasn’t, was the cheerleader who never quite fit in. I want to look back on that girl and tell her you like science, good, like science, excel at science no matter how cool or uncool it seems. Because high school will be over one day and you’ll learn that fitting in is much less important than being true to yourself.

And teenage me enjoyed computers, taking lessons in BASIC one summer and learning to use an IBM PC. But when I looked around at my girlfriends in high school and college no one was into computers. There was no path, no example, no female mentor or role model who I could see. So I fell into my first career based on a summer job I felt was “interesting” but that I was by no means passionate about. And, not surprisingly, it was one that I abandoned early on. Doors opened that led to a career in technology and I walked through.

“In my school’s computer science department, there are more Daves than girls.”

Thinking on these stories and experiences and the path I wanted to follow, I began to feel like it was important for me to “Lean In” as Sandberg calls it, to step up and get back to work in an environment where I knew most days I’d be the only woman in the room. I’ve sat in a room full of thousands of men taking part in pretend war games in the name of team building. Did they teach me anything? No. Did they fuel the testosterone in the room? Yes. I’m not excusing big tech firms who spend money on “training” that alienates the minority in the room, but, honestly, the organisers had simply catered to their audience. To change that mindset, you’ve got to start changing the audience. And if I walked out, how could other young women see themselves walking in?

“In comparison to their male counterparts, highly trained women are scaling back and dropping out of the workforce in high numbers. In turn these diverging percentages teach institutions and mentors to invest more in men, who are statistically more likely to stay.”

I’ve interviewed at companies where the only female in a team of systems engineers was the administrative assistant. Did I see myself there? No. I’ve had a senior partner of a firm ask me during an interview if I felt being pretty was an advantage. I wanted to punch him in the face on my way out the door. The fact that the one and only question that came to this executive’s mind when interviewing a candidate for a senior technology role was about her appearance speaks volumes about how much progress women still have to make in being taken seriously and accepted in traditionally male careers.

Just yesterday I came across this article, the stories from several girls who participated in a summer program called Girls Who Code. And their stories moved me to tears, stories about gender bias that still exists in 2013, and stories about what happens when girls are encouraged to break down those barriers.

“I myself had no idea what coding was eight weeks ago, and now I cannot look at my computer without imagining a network of connections, can’t cross the street without picturing the pixels of the stoplight, and I now know that I can go into computer science if I choose to. I don’t yet know what I want to do when I get older, but Girls Who Code has shown me that I don’t have to be afraid of STEM fields, and that with enough time anyone can learn this. The sooner we can erase the social stigma that accompanies certain people in certain jobs, the more productive we will be, and the better off the world will be.” – Corrina Blau

“I always had the idea that computer science was for males, and I could never be successful if I tried to study it. I now know that this is completely wrong.” – Nikki Allen

“Women must realize that the technological revolution is far from over and their contributions will slowly but effectively change the world.” – Emelyn Ruiz

So I want to be a small part of the solution and be the woman in a team of systems engineers, to Lean In. Demonstrating that women have just as much skill and smarts to drive the technology revolution means having a seat at the table full of pinstripes.

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What’s all this mean for the blog? Well obviously the time I have to devote to this space has just decreased exponentially. However, I’m determined to keep a presence here as I’ve come to love the creative outlet for my images and words. So I’ll be here but not as often. I have a 52 week project to try wrap up over the next couple of months and otherwise you’ll see posts 2-3 times a month on the usual topics, photography, race diaries, personal stories, and things that inspire me.

September 24, 2013

Motherhood

Our Food Revolution

This Friday, May 17th, is Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Day, “a global day of action for people to make a stand for good food and essential cooking skills.” So to celebrate that, I figured it’s a perfect time to start sharing a bit about the food revolution happening around our house, one that’s embracing cooking and eating fresh. And, one that’s reducing my stress around putting food on the table.

I’d honestly never paid that much attention to what I ate. But then I read Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and this book transformed the way I think about food. Our Western society has become so caught up in eating fast, that we’re forgetting how to eat well, instead filling our bodies with chemicals, preservatives, and junk. And we’re passing these habits onto our kids.

While Pollan’s book opened my eyes and made me think twice about everything I eat and where it came from, I still found it difficult to incorporate his ideas into my everyday life. I made small changes like buying organic and local, reading ingredients and avoiding as many processed foods as possible. Cheddar cheese is not naturally bright orange people! But on a daily basis, I was still struggling with what to eat for dinner each night, finding it all too easy to just order a pizza. And I found myself cooking the same things over and over, getting bored, failing to incorporate enough variety and certainly not including five a day. Cooking has never come naturally to me and I’ve never been a “foodie” so I always found it a chore.

But now with a child, I realize that making sure that he (and I) develop good eating habits is one of the most important things I can do for him as a parent. His food education is my responsibility and if I’m not teaching him about healthy food choices, where else is he going to learn? Who else is going to teach him about the importance of eating fresh versus processed food and about eating a variety of foods? And if I don’t lead by example, what kind of message does that send?

When he was first learning to eat solids, I actually found it easier, simply making all of his baby puree from scratch. At this stage, Annabel Karmel was a gift, mapping out his entire meal plan for months. But once he began eating regular foods, I again found myself taking the easy way out, resorting to frozen fish and chips all too often. Fundamentally, I knew I needed to put a wider variety of healthy foods on the table but when pressed, I’d go with the foods I knew he’d eat, fish and chips, cheese sandwich, plain pasta. And I’d find myself sitting around on a Monday morning stressed out because I knew we had nothing to eat in the house and yet I had no plan for what to get at the store or what to cook. Something had to change.

Enter my friend, Laura, who suggested I read French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Le Billon. This book really set things in motion. Le Billon reinforced that kids don’t have to eat junk and that it’s up to me as a parent to make the rules about what kind of food gets put on the table. I find myself repeating one of her key messages, “You don’t have to like everything, but you do have to try it.” And I’m finding the more often he sees something, the more likely he is to try it. Salmon with pesto sauce? Turned his nose up at it the first time, scraping all the pesto off. Now he eats it up and asks for the “green sauce.” Beetroot salad? Who knew he’d eat that? I didn’t until the day I decided to just put some on his plate. There really is no reason why kids can’t eat what adults eat.

I’m not going to sit here and say I only eat healthy foods and never touch junk food. Put a box of Girl Scout Thin Mints in front of me and I will eat the whole thing, in one sitting. I know my weaknesses. My only defense is to keep these things out of the house. If they’re not available, I don’t eat them. This is the same strategy I use with my child. He never asks for sweets and junk food on a daily basis because these things are never in the house. I don’t offer them to him and don’t use sweets as rewards for good behaviour (he’s happier with robots anyway). And when we want a treat in the house, we make something like banana cake or cookies from scratch so I know what’s in them. This doesn’t mean he’s never allowed junk foods like crisps and sweets. It just means I don’t encourage them on a daily basis. I leave the junk for days like when we’re out at Legoland or birthday parties.

So What Does Our Food Revolution Look Like?

As I started down this path of revolutionising what we ate, I actually sat down and wrote a list of what I was trying to accomplish. My key goals were to:

Cook healthy meals for us on a daily basis to encourage eating a wider variety of foods and making healthy choices.
Reduce the stress involved with meal planning and shopping by planning ahead and staying organised.
Teach my son about preparing food so that he’ll understand where food comes from.
Develop good mealtime and eating habits by eating together.

How to I make this work?

Planning and Organisation.

On another tip from Laura, I found Kacie of A Collection of Passions and her menu planning series. This is where everything I’d been reading about making good food choices finally came together in a practical, actionable form. Her tips on how to get organised and make a monthly meal plan have been like gold. Instead of getting stressed every week because I don’t know what we’re going to eat, I set aside time one day each month to make a plan for the next month. Yes, it takes a chunk of time to do this. But overall, it takes me less time and, more importantly, less stress than having to worry about it weekly. My Monthly Menu Plan for May shows you how I plan this out. I do it once each month and it’s done.

This process also means that I prepare my grocery list for a month at a time. I’ve created my version of a shopping list that works for me and how I shop. I fill this out each month with the food I need to buy each week and, as I’ve already got a list, it’s easy to add things as we run out. I do one bulk purchase each month for all the non-perishable pantry items, then buy the perishables once a week. This system isn’t perfect, I’m finding that meals sometimes have to get shifted around when things come up like unplanned days out with friends. And I also know that I need to make more of an effort planning variety in breakfast, it’s hard to break the cereal habit. But that’s OK though as these first few months are all about experimenting, about trying new things, and about getting more comfortable in the kitchen.

One thing I did at the start of this was invest in a few new cookbooks. Besides the fact that my current collection was uninspiring, the process of converting the recipes from my US cookbooks into metric equivalents was just adding another layer of complexity that I didn’t need in my cooking. And it was destroying my soul.

I’ll save cookbook reviews for another post but I will say that Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food is the first cookbook I’ve had that really made cooking accessible and from which I regularly cook. His simple recipes have given me the confidence to try new things. Chicken tikka masala? Never even heard of it a few years ago, much less cook it. Now it’s a staple thanks to Jamie.

Sharing.

It’s important to me that I get my son involved in this process when he’s willing to take time out from his robots. When we shop, I get him to help pick out items from the grocery store, especially the produce. And he helps with small tasks during the cooking. Yes, I can get things done faster and with less mess if he doesn’t help me, but he’s not learning if I do it all myself.

I’m also finding it helpful and inspiring to share in the food revolution with friends, fellow parents who believe as much as I do in eating healthy and helping our kids learn about good food choices. A few of us have started a small dinner group where we cook at each other’s homes once a month, sharing some of our tried and true recipes and expanding our collective cooking repertoire.

Want to Join the Food Revolution?

Head over to the Food Revolution site, it’s full of ideas and activities to get you involved in cooking at home, work, wherever.
Give monthly menu planning a try. Kacie writes this up fantastically and you can grab a blank template from her as well. I pretty much use this with some minor changes.
Download my Monthly Shopping List template. (I print this double-sided so that I have all 4 weeks on one sheet that I always have it with me.)
Get cooking!

Food Revolution Day

May 16, 2013

Motherhood

Elf on the Shelf: Creepy or Cute?

We’ve got a new friend with us this Christmas season, Bob, the Elf on the Shelf. I don’t know where I first found out about the Elf on the Shelf. I think from my friends in America. I certainly haven’t seen it here in the UK and everyone I’ve mentioned it to here has been like “OK, that’s a little weird.”

But, our elf, Bob, as he’s been named, has been with us now for a few days. And, I haven’t yet decided whether I think he’s cute or creepy. I think my son is in the same boat as he looks at him a little dubiously. The game of moving the elf around each night and finding him the next morning is definitely something festive to get us in the Christmas spirit. And, so far, it’s turned out better than last year’s attempt at an Advent calendar.

In one short week though, we’ve already had one incident where daddy picked up the elf (and child got upset at this) and one night where I forgot to move him. Luckily, my little man isn’t that switched on to whole the thing yet so we were able to move past these parenting failures. I know there are people who go mad coming up with creative ways to position their Elf around the house. But I don’t see this happening in our house. Just moving him around may be enough. Bob was riding a toy dinosaur the other morning but the little man didn’t think the dinosaur liked that very much and asked that I put the dinosaur away. Back to the shelf went Bob.

I do have to give Bob a bit of credit though. The other night his tactics successfully got my son to try salmon with pesto sauce and green beans. If he can continue to have that kind of success, I think I’ll keep him around for a while.

What Elf on the Shelf stories do you have? And, what’s your vote: cute or creepy?

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Christmas 2014 Update: Creepy. The Answer is Creepy. Bob sadly (intentionally) got lost in the move.

December 5, 2012

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