Baby Boom Echo

Posted under the wrong (Puffshouse) blog already.

For those who didn't know, this is North America's biggest baby boom in 50 years. While nowhere near the baby boom of the 50s, this is unlike any other in 100 years. In other words, mothers are older at the start of their journey into parenthood. Mothers are working for sometimes up to 12-15 years. Unlike the mothers of the 50s baby boom, they aren't having 4 kids, so it isn't as crucial to be a stay-at-home mom. In fact, it might be very hard to take off work for 10 years and go back at it age 40 rather than 30 like those before us. In Calgary we are having the greatest growth of babies in Canada. And we don't get to pay $7/day for daycare like Montrealites. Where they are NOT experiencing the same rapid growth of little monster-toddlers.


Yesterday I was out Easter-egg hunting with my little guy. I ran into the alderman who helped create a dazzling new playground in 2008 in our 'hood. You can see my little monster going down the slide below. I made a self-conscious comment about having to truck my kid up the playground to go down the slide because it only takes "one boot getting stuck once on that slide just once and you're the bad parent in town". The guy has the balls to tell me that the City actually advised them to not make this stupid slide a story off the ground with NO barriers because it would, and I quote "kill kids." He scoffs.

I say, "well yeah, it's not safe!" And he says, "I'm more of the free-range parent." So I start breathing hard and fast and point at his kid who is like, one, and ask, "would you let HIM go up there alone?" And the dude goes, "no, I go with him." As in, you aren't a free-range parent, or...?? Either way, it was uncomfortable and the dude didn't know his ass from a...well, I'm not good at sayings, but it seemed like a ridiculous convo.

Most playgrounds for older kids have barriers to getting up (like, um, a rock wall, or ladder thing) to stop little guys from getting up too high where they don't know that they could tumble off the side of a slide or a story off the ground with one mis-step. Not this playground. Oh, no, they built this in the name of FREE-RANGE PARENTING so our kids could play hockey in the streets like in the 80s, in a cul-de-sac (which doesn't exist in our area because we're not in the burbs). And they could walk to the corner store by themselves to buy their parents smokes like we did in the 80s, and go into the liquor stores to buy dad beer a la never, but you get the point. They're trying to recreate their youth.

I want a revolution. Never before have so many older (30s) women had kids in such high numbers while trying to keep their livelihoods that they had pre-kids. What do we want? We want subsidies for care. We want part-time work options with part-time daycare options that doesn't make no sense financially (daycares prorate daycares if you go fulltime). We want to know that taking 5 years off work for 2 kids won't make us 40 years old working at Starbucks. We want sensible playgrounds built by people who might have a clue about safety (the City isn't totally dumb in these areas, check out Eau Claire's indoor and outdoor playgrounds that are made to be totally separate for ages without parents' involvement chasing their toddlers away from stairs not meant for them). And parents who don't say "I'm more into this or that philosophy" as a way of distancing themselves from us and making us feel like morons. And on that point, parents who aren't too cool for school who act like their son is God's gift who pretend they don't know me when I walk up and say hi. I want more mommas like a friend I met at the garden. When I asked if she was considering a second she said "I don't know, it was just SO hard, no one tells you that the sleep is going to be so bad and it just keeps going." I hugged her so hard I might have hurt her.

We're part of a demographic. We're having babies and changing the world. Time to stop expecting our Boomer parents to do everything and make decisions for us and accepting the status quo of life as we know it right now paying more for daycare than most peoples' mortgages. We need to change this world. Now.

An Outdoor Child

This Easter long weekend of 4 days was special this year as it was unseasonally warm for an early March Easter. We spent 8 hours a day outside digging what will be a low-maintenance vegetable and fruit garden.
I can honestly say that I have never seen my son show so much imagination, joy and contentment as he did spending 3 periods of over an hour outside per day in these 4 days.

He laid in the dirt and pretended to take a bath, then a nap, then would roll around and do something else that only he could understand. He took his dumptrucks over and around the newly created beds and pathways. He followed me to and from a dirt pile, counting "one, twoo, twoo!" with me (I said three instead of two!). He sat on the deck for snacks just sitting there quietly with a little smile, watching and taking in the sun, the birds, mommy and daddy. Sometimes he would just say "momma" and wait for me so he could give me a smile of pure joy. This from a child who I often describe as impatient, a little grump, a little crazy. No, he was Buddha this weekend, and it makes my heart sing.

This is what I was waiting for. Years of hauling compost around, making vegetables and wondering, "what is this all for if we don't have little ones to share it with?" and yearning for a baby. Then Baby came and it's felt like life went still, stagnated, became a whirl of plastics, weight-gain, darkness in many ways, sickness and fatigue. This sharing of joy, cuddles, and seeing my son suddenly know what joy can be found on Earth is what it was for. Is what my life was meant for as a being on Earth. It's wonderful.

We still deal with bedtime, fatigue, plastic toy gifts in overabundance and everything else we thought we'd never let happen or have happen, but there seems to be a spark now of something bigger, grander and special in it all. Thanks be to Gardens.