Working Moms

I have always had the privilege of being a stay at home mother. With my two oldest ones I has able to stay home with them until they were about 2-3 years old before going back to work and I am a firm believer that they cherish that time just as much as I do. My youngest at the moment is one and I have been home with her the entire time but our newest addition arrives in July. With four little ones, a two income household becomes a necessity rather than a luxury and I will have to go back to work a few months after our baby arrives. With never having any of my little ones with a sitter or in daycare that young I was feeling uncertain, nervous and a little afraid at the prospect. The internet is pretty divided on the topic, with some mothers singing praises about their children’s experiences while others are standing strong against it. With the range of reviews being so wide I realized that is so much more than just whether or not infants should be in daycare. The negative reviews area lot of times formed by women who have the option of keeping their children home, as it is easy to be against something when you have other routes available to you. In the same way the positive reviews are not positive based on children attending daycare but instead are specific to the daycare or teacher the child has been with. Once I realized this we decided that instead of worrying about having to place the little ones into a center, we needed to spend our time researching and visiting prospective centers to make the most informed decision we can when the time comes.

Marriage after Kids

My fiancé and I have been together since we were sixteen years old and our oldest of four children is 5 years old. We have purchased a home together, have joint car insurance, and we have cosigned for each other’s car loans. It amazes me that even with our track record as partners and the life we have built we are sometimes still looked at as less than when others realize we are not legally married. When I was younger I had the same wedding fantasies most little girls have but becoming a mother really changed a lot of priorities for me. We honestly would prefer to spend money on a family vacation than an extravagant wedding. It does not mean we love each other any less, nor does it mean that our relationship is less validated than any married couples’, we just value different things. I am the maid of honor in my younger brother’s wedding which will take place in a couple of months so inevitably the topic has come up a lot more often lately than it has in the past. Let me just say that we are happier than plenty of married couples out there just as we are, and that if in the future we decide it is time to plan a wedding then we will. We function as a family with or without a marriage certificate because a marriage does not a family make.

Birthdays

Our youngest daughter will be one in the next few days and after two huge first birthday blowouts we have come to the conclusion that birthday parties before the fourth birthday are really just for the parents. For one, the children rarely know what is going on. Our son and daughter slept through most of their parties, they didn’t actually get to enjoy the bounce houses or any of the games, and they were terrified of most of the guests. The second point is, the children do not remember any of it! For my sons fifth birthday party we rented a Cars themed bounce house and our eldest daughter started to cry, sobbing that we’d never gotten her one before. The funny thing is we rented a princess themed bouncy castle for her second birthday and we had the pictures to prove it. For about a month this time around we went back and forth on whether we would or would not go all out for our little munchkin the way we have with the other two. We knew we really did not want to have a gigantic party when a small intimate celebration was what she would be happy with and enjoy the most but the guilt of not giving her what we’d given her siblings kept coming back. In the end we decided that what we want most is for her to know that it is her day and she is being celebrated, even if it does not abate our guilt.

School Safety

At a play date last Thursday, another of the VPK moms brought up the topic of safety in schools. She was concerned because what is considered school safety today is not the same thing that was considered school safety 20 years ago. I remember vividly the D.A.R.E. program representatives that would visit our classrooms monthly and educate us on the dangers of drugs and strangers. Well now our children need to be educated and prepared for a plethora of dangerous situations that we just did not worry about during our childhoods. Immediately I went home and fed my internet addiction by researching how safety in schools has evolved over the past few decades. Most of the sources I encountered seemed to agree that schools are actually safer today than they were 50 years ago, and that may be true. My thoughts on the matter though are that schools are safer today because of how much what we considered to be “safety” has changed. The schools, administrators and even students are now tasked with being prepared for the unknown, for situations that were not even brought up in discussions of safety 50 years ago. The point is that as long as our safety preparedness continues to evolve along with the situations that threaten our children’s safety we should hopefully be able to once again achieve peace of mind when sending our little ones off to school.

Baby Showers

We are well on the way to having our fourth child, and we keep getting asked whether or not we are having a baby shower. Truthfully the thought of having one makes us a little uncomfortable. Not because the pregnancy caught us by surprise or because we do not want to celebrate this baby as we have the other three, but because we are unsure about the proper etiquette when it comes to having baby showers. The first one was a given, no questions asked my mom put it together in secret. The second one was thrown by his mother and the third was orchestrated by his sisters. Our newest addition is not even a year old at this point though and we do not want to seem like we are in it for the gifts since for us it truly is about presence and not presents. We have searched online for an answer but the responses we have come across have all been extremely mixed. Instead we turned to our friends and family and were pleasantly surprised to be met with nothing but excitement and support. We celebrate every birthday and have a bridal shower before every wedding even though it may not be out first. This baby deserves the same welcoming festivities the other three have received and we cannot wait. 

Child Spacing

In some miracle orchestrated by the baby making gods out there my husband and I have managed to have two sets of children less than 24 months apart from each other. Our son and eldest daughter are considered “Irish Twins” born 11 months apart. Three years after the birth of our eldest daughter our youngest daughter was born and our current pregnancy will make her and the baby (sex still undetermined) 15  months apart.

Because of our family dynamic we are often approached by concerned or curious friends, family members and even strangers regarding the topic of child spacing. All of these people are generally surprised to hear that we plenty of pros to offer up on closely spacing your kiddos and very few cons. Our two eldest are inseparable and can easily be considered each others best friends. They participate in the same activities, are in the same grade in school, enjoy the same movies and books, and play with most of the same toys. We were concerned at first about double costs but we soon realized both the activities they take part in, like soccer and gymnastics, and the preschools they have attended provide sibling discounts. Despite the organized chaos that was our daily lives raising two under two, we have experienced with our third baby what it is like to start over years after the other two have left the baby stage. We have had more time to bond with the baby while our preschoolers are in class but we often feel she is left out of their activities and play and we are looking forward to her having a built in best friend of her own.

Bed Time

From an early age my husband and I implemented a bed time into our little ones’ routines. Since the two oldest are so close in age – 11 months apart to be exact – they basically went through their toddler stages at the same time. Somehow the older they have gotten the more challenging bed time has become. In their innocent toddlerhood they did not see bed time as a bad thing, but instead as a time where they got hugs, kisses, cuddles, stories and plenty of “I love you’s”. Now they spend the 45 minutes following their supposed bedtime wreaking havoc, so much so that we have had to move up their bed time by 30 minutes in hopes that they will actually be asleep by the original bedtime.

We did all the necessary research when we decided to incorporate bedtimes into our lives. We know that children who have them are less likely to have behavioral issues and that irregular bedtimes have been shown to be linked with difficulties such as hyperactivity, acting out and being emotionally withdrawn. When the going gets tough we pep talk ourselves with all these fabulous reasons why we need to keep enforcing their lights out routines but that does not mean we enjoy it. We have looked up strategies for winding them down before the cut off time, reasons why they may be going through this phase and a multitude of solutions to this very irksome horror hour to no avail.

At the end of the day we have come to the conclusion that we may just have to wait this one out.  Bed time for the foreseeable future will just have to include 100 tuck ins unlimited forehead kisses, and “don’t hit your sister/brother” on repeat. The pros, to us, still outweigh the bedtime tantrum cons.

Tablet Time

Last year for Christmas Mammy and Tito, my children’s ever doting grandparents, bought them Kindle Fire Kid Tablets. I was horrified. My children were already prone to begging for television time and the last thing I wanted was for them to have another screen to become addicted to. Despite my early concerns though the tables turned out to be great gifts. First they come in different colors so by gifting my son a blue one and my daughter a pink one there was no risk of bickering over which one belonged to who. Secondly the kid fire tablet came pre-loaded with all sorts of content just for kids through the FreeTime App and all of the content was based on their age range. There is so much available for them though that the kids have no idea that they are even being limited. The FreeTime App also serves as parental controls. Once the children are in the app they cannot get out of it without the adult profiles pin. There are no loopholes, no back doors, no home button or backtrack trick exits, it is completely secure. With a timer option to limit how long kids can play as well as a reading tracker that blocks all games content until the reading goal is met this tablet was truly the best option for children.

Race Talks

My husband and I took our five year old son and four year old daughter to see Black Panther last Friday when it was released in theaters. As a Haitian man, my husband is a huge supporter of Black owned businesses and any black empowerment movements so he could not wait for there to be a movie that our children could see were a black man was not only a super hero, but the protagonist. We bought them Dashikis, freed their hair from their braids and went to see what was honestly a fantastic movie that not only we loved but our children did as well. On Saturday morning though, at the breakfast table, my son turns to my husband and says “I’m yellow and mommy is yellow but daddy you are brown and Yani and Maia are brown too.”

The thing is I am Cuban/Colombian, so my husband and have three beautiful biracial babies, our son being the lightest of the three. We have always tried to convey to them that they are Hispanic and Black no matter how light their skin may be but as a five year old our son is having trouble understanding this concept because when he looks at his skin he doesn’t consider it black or brown. We know that at some point we will need to be prepared to have a conversation with them explaining that there will be people out there who will take an immediate dislike to them simply because of the color of their skin but we were unsure how to approach this particular race talk with our son.

I looked into ways of trying to explain to him that although his skin color may not reflect it, it does not take away from his identity as a Black man. At some point amidst my research, I realized it is not my job to define his identity for him. As a mother of mixed-race kids, I know I have two important tasks. First I i need to help my kids to understand both sides of their heritage, African American and Hispanic. Secondly, I need to help foster a strong sense of self-esteem in my kids. My goal as a mother is to help them see that yes, they are different from non-mixed kids but they are unique and special, in part, because of their mixed heritage, not in spite of it. My hope for them is that they grow up being able to comfortably navigate both of their worlds, embracing who they are as exquisite individuals.

https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/01/supporting-mixed-race-children/

Public vs. Charter

Last year when my two oldest children, now 4 and 5, were starting pre-school my husband and I were ecstatic. I remember loving school and I just could not wait for my children to start sharing their experiences with me. Well now, just a few months later, it is time for us to start thinking about Kindergarten and the amount of decisions, preparations and things to take into consideration seems insurmountable. Any time I run into a fellow parent at the grocery store or we meet up for play dates the only topic we can discuss is what plans we’ve made for next year, where we are zoned, and what schools we have applied to. The truth is, none of us really know what we are doing. During the first days of January my husband and I rushed to fill out the applications for the three charter schools in our area where we wanted our children to be considered. These schools will have a lottery drawing and let us know if our children have been selected for slots sometime between February and March. Well this past Saturday our kids were invited to a birthday party where again the topic of next years school choices was brought up and my husband mentioned we were waiting to hear back from the drawing for the charter schools before considering other options. Another mom turned to us nodding her approval and asked what the difference was between public and charter schools and my husband and I turned to look at each other expectantly. At that moment we both realized that we were had applied for and were waiting on something with no idea as to why. How would attending a charter school benefit our children more than attending a public school? So far this is what I’ve learned.

Charter schools are funded by tax dollars in the same way public schools are but they are allowed to establish their own standards of conduct and curriculum. These schools are generally outside the bounds of traditional educational oversight by the state and instead are usually governed by a board of directors. Because of this freedom every Charter school is different and boasts different programs that students may benefit from. Just being a labeled a Charter school is not reason enough for us as parents to go jumping through hoops trying to get our children in. Instead it is our job to research the programs, curriculum and the benefits each individual school offers. Had we done this from the beginning my husband and I could have saved ourselves the time necessary to fill out one of the three charter school applications.

https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/public-private-charter-schools/