This is what I reckon...

Sending in armed forces to deal with international situations violently MAY close down a regime...eventually. Within months, maybe within a generation. And it sustains fractured and disenfranchised views of the aggressor, harbouring resentments and hardened ideologies on the way.
The following is a bit raw and unpolished. It's late and I'm getting this out before it manifests itself another way that I can't control as much. Writing it out soothes my nerves about it.
***
Memories remain, are replicated, passed down, and they ferment.
Children are the victims of war. That sounds twee. Sounds like the name of a song, even. Whatever. It's true. Think about it.
Then they react to what they've seen. They have to. They don't just forget, they're not goldfish. Memories go somewhere. Even if not on a conscious level, then deeper underground where they become unpredictable in the minds of children whose brains are quickly adapting and fragmenting reality for the sake of survival (just like children in our communities who experience trauma). Seeing what they see for what it really is would fry a child's brain into non-functionality. One minute life ticks along at its already maladaptive pace, next minute the only life they know is having the bejesus blasted from it with missiles falling from foreign aircraft, flown by foreign people engaged by foreign governments, who probably have supported the rebels, who are most possibly interested in gaining power for themselves and access to privilege and not in 'liberating' said children and their struggling families from their everyday oppressions and human injustices.
Picture your own child, and if you don't have one, a relative's child, or even yourself as one (yes, you WERE one, or have you forgotten?). Put yourself in the mind of that child, seeing the world from that perspective. You have already been told and had it reinforced a gazillion times that you are not in control of your own life (unless you're a lucky one from a more progressive family) and your older brother has been killed, your father has been detained in custody and come back home with an eye missing, untold bruising and a permanent limp (hey, I'm just jamming here; this is a pretty picture compared to many small people's realities) and you are told to make sure your twelve year old sister stays indoors or she will be raped. And you know what that means. Your family name will be worth nothing if your sister is no longer a virgin.
One day you hear the big people talking in low tones, and an already tense atmosphere becomes positively charged with anticipation. There will be bombs. The intent is for military and strategic targets, but your family knows this means your whole town is in danger. You can't go to school, you must all stay together. Your uncles go out to get what food is left on the shelves in the local traders' stands and come back with a meagre stash and a wound to the head after a brawl to get the last bags of flour. The kids are told to stay inside and stay with the big people. You cry and your mama holds you and tells you she loves you and you pray together.
Everyone goes to bed late after a meal, and as you snuggle in under a blanket with your siblings your ears are shattered by the sound of the neighbour's house being blown apart, men shouting and women screaming. Your neighbours are people who live ten metres away. Well, they were. The kids went to school with you and their mum was the lady who helped you be born. Dead, all of them. That's all you have time to think of, because now you have to choose whatever you can carry in your arms and your whole family is on the move to another neighbourhood. You may not see your home again. Your whole little life wasn't very happy before and now you don't know if you'll see morning.
Years later, you are an adult. Let's say you were picturing a boy-child in the previous exercise. What are the chances that you are a peace-making citizen who never got involved in the local militia as a teenager? How do you view those foreign invaders? Are you grateful that they bombed your life and culture away so that you didn't have the previous bad-guys to deal with anymore? Does your mind have a lot of room for advanced thinking about how to spread peace and acceptance of difference in your town?
And if you were a girl-child, do you think you live a peaceful life now? Did you get away without being raped whilst growing up? Do you think you have a violence-free home life? Are your kids living the kind of life you only dreamed of, free of fear, with happy parents who have the head and heartspace to show lots of affection and warmth and a peaceful parenting approach?
Just say you made it to another country, even. Years of detention. Seeing your brothers and father brutalised, all of you dehumanised, denied visas numerous times (because the 'system' can't have you being accepted first or even fourth time round without a fight, cos the voters in key electoral areas - which are worlds away from your own detention centre and main resettlement areas -  wouldn't like that), all your natural talents and academic learnings meaning very little because you haven't achieved them in English, and your life having turned out very, very differently from what you assumed would be your future before those bombs fell.
If you made it to another country, presumably you even made it out of that detention centre in time to go to school. If you were a girl-child in that exercise, maybe it was even for the first time. AND you didn't have to wear the burqa that was customary to wear according to the culture of your area. Still, no-one talked to you for months because you would do weird things like jump at the sound of a binder having its rings snapped shut.
Or you're a boy and you just ploughed into the boys who eventually just got too much in your face and you showed them how men fought in the town you lived in years before. You get together with other boys who come from towns like yours and you feel safer. Especially because your dad still lays into you at home when he's stressed and can't send your mum out to the shops all bruised (they don't like that here in this country, and you really, really don't want the police coming round to check your visas if someone reports an injury to your small and lovable mama).
My artistic licence might not be up to much, and I'm sorry for that. I didn't grow up with refugees from countries like Afghanistan or Iraq. I grew up with other refugees, though. Damage followed them. I can't imagine what kind of damage follows the kids who have come here in the last decade. Or the kind of damage that kids who stay in those countries normalise and replicate because there is no mitigation of the damage. There is no funding for an intervention program in those places, no counselling and debriefing services.
For the kids who do make it here, they don't just bring it with them. They bring it into our communities. The violence that happens in other countries at the hands of world powers does not occur in a vacuum. It affects YOU. It affects ME. It will affect the kids who go to school with them. These kids will one day be your mechanics, your hairdressers, your caregivers, or they will one day be the burglar, the bag-snatcher, the drunk-driver. Depending on what, if any compassion is offered to them to circumvent the patterns of violence in their short lives.
This isn't an essay about refugees and Australia's ethical and legal obligations to asylum-seekers. It's a reaction to the unquestioned use of violence to bring down regimes that won't negotiate oil pipelines into Iran, to exact revenge on one man, to show a dictator that his brand of leadership isn't wanted and he will be taken out violently (and/or the rest of his family) if he doesn't give over because that is what will make the world a better place.
It's not the wanted man who is hurt when he is killed. It is the lives of millions of children who will grow to be adults (if not killed first) in which this violence will be reflected. War is redundant. War is a cop-out. War destroys more than it achieves.
And I'm sick of having to turn the radio off AFTER the announcer has just read the initial tagline about someone being shot dead by Western forces (or whatever forces), then having to explain to my son that he doesn't have to hear about the horrible things that happen in war while he's a kid, when he's asked me what war is and who the man was that was shot dead. When all I want is the weather forecast, but have to settle for checking on the internet so that I can put the iPod on and save my children's innocence. Because at least I have that luxury.

Ponies and potties

Winter approaches and this week could have fooled me! It was sunny and mild all week - great horse riding weather (apart from some wind earlier, with which the horses were picking up on far away noises, giving rise to some toey behaviour under saddle...) and great for getting things done.
After driving all of Good Friday to Bendigo and Kilmore en route, we've chosen two ponies who are coming to our home very shortly. A beautiful Welsh mare was on offer and we had to pass her over for a cute little Australian Pony - not as beautiful, but more educated and, well, cheaper. I was already reconciled to the idea of breaking in a pony from scratch, but this little pony, Karedon Mia, has already had some time under saddle and passed the Small Boy test. With her comes a 2yo Shetland gelding that will be started from scratch, and that will be fun. My kids are so lucky and they'll never know just how so. They'll learn so much from the horses.
Meanwhile, on the Elimination Communication front, Small Girl is now effectively night-continent. I won't say she's 'sleeping through', because I can't quite figure out what that means. She will go to sleep in the evening, might wake up and need to do a wee and then stir for a breastfeed once or twice in the night. She'll begin wriggling between 6 and 7 and do a long wee. How cool is that? She's 18.5 months old and hasn't worn a nappy in months! We went to NZ for 11 days and nary a nappy was used, though three were packed and served to take up valuable suitcase space. As with her brother when he went nappy-free (at about two years of age, but not night-continent till 6 months after that), it's easier for now to keep her out of undies. So, she's either getting about the farm with no pants on, or I take her out in longer dresses or in pants with no undies. The 'training pants' I bought are just an unwieldy extra step that her little hands can't deal with, and if she's wearing a dress with them, she forgets and will pull up her dress to wee...in the training pants. So, I'll dispense with them for now. She can 'hold on' for an impressive time, too. Those doubters who told me fervently that children can't control their bladders till after 2 years of age need to ditch the conventional wisdom of nappying and broaden their horizons, because Small Girl is following the normal trajectory of EC'd kids (if not a bit later, actually - not sure why, maybe it was the 'just in case' nappies she wore for about 6 months when she could have come out of them and learned sooner - but we didn't have the luxury of living in our own home with our own tolerances to consider). I'm reaping the pay-off, as I only have to leave the house with my normal bag. Except these days the wipes and spare clothes in the car are for her motion sickness...ideas about tackling this are welcome. Thumbs up for Elimination Communication!

Bread matters

We're fine - we're living in a caravan, annex and shed, our dogs roam free, the kids do the same and I buy food from an independent supermarket when there's no farmers market. That's more than fine by me!
My biggest kid started kinder this week and loves it. He'll be fine.
My smallest kid is loved wherever I take her round these parts and that bodes well. She'll be fine.
My big fella is down here with us on leave from work, before heading back to wind up work and metro life. Plenty of work down here. He'll be fine.
I've started Zumba here, I've joined a riding club, I've met some people from my prospective new fire brigade, I already know some great chicks from the local Booby Club, I have a friend in Inverloch who's invited us for a meal (I did the Horse Property Management course with her), and, well, I'm only looking up from here in my new town. I've also learned that cooking in an electric frypan offers a world of possibilities (pasta, french toast, beans and rice).

I'll be fine.
I've already lost some girth from the week I was here with the kids by myself - a couple of walks up and down the road each day (one of those is the evening constitutional, or, "The Wombat Hunt", as Small Boy knows it) and some trips up the hill have seen to that. Nice surprise, actually - I can fit into that little skirt I bought, with much optimism, a couple of months ago...that's always pleasant.
It's the little things. The bakery in town has a daily bread specialty. Mondays is Irish Soda Bread...well, THAT makes me very happy! Of course, I could always ask my dad for his recipe...such memories eating this bread evokes! My dad used to bake this on a Sunday (when he was on shore leave) and we'd have a massive loaf for the whole week. It keeps very well, unsliced, and tastes great when toasted. One sandwich of this bread would be very filling for lunch at school, where two sangas of the supermarket variety always left wanting. This, and Small Boy's new favourite bread, Malti-Oat Bran loaf, make living here just that extra bit better. We have two very good bakeries in town, and Burra Hot Breads is my hands down favourite. Great muffins, great breads and fabulous pies. Love my new life.

'Neigh'-bourhood

Our new neighbourhood and me are gonna get along just fine - I've got loads of people to talk 'horse' with and DO 'horse' with. At the district Christmas party I got to know the locals. One of them is a member of the local club and has offered me a lift to a clinic with Will Enzinger in January...the clinic I thought I couldn't go to because I couldn't get there! So, now I get to go (if there are places left), get to know the clubgrounds and some club members, for when we finally have a float and I can join that club, as well as the neighbouring club, further up the road that I just joined. This particular neighbour just happens to have an older pony her kids have stopped riding that Boy can have rides of, in preparation for when we find him his own pony.
In further horse news, I met Dante's soon-to-be paddock buddy, Nook. A big, black Warmblood/TB, who doesn't like to tie up, but is otherwise quite a nice, fat boy. I put the call out to my new club and one of the members and I have come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. Nook will be on loan to us for as long as we need him, then she can take him back to reintegrate him into her herd. This gives us time to find Tom a suitable horse, Boy a pony and, possibly, my second horse.
On Sunday, I also visited the local artisan, The Gooseneck Pottery. I have been wanting to see the wares since we first bought the farm and I just get ensconced in farm life, forgetting my intentions until we leave again and see the signs. So, I made a special effort and met the American apprentice who lives on site, Jennifer. She took me through the pottery to see the massive, wood-fueled kilns and the workshop. The pottery is just divine, with prices to match the quality and exquisite nature of the work! There IS, however, a bargains and seconds section, for plebs like me who don't see the need to adorn an old caravan and cow shed with fine wares, so take heart.
I'm loving being a farmer, and since 'planting' my Tibetan prayer flags, I feel much more part of it, having offered up my assurances to the elders past that I intent for us to look after the land whilst it is ours to look after.
Now, to get Christmas and New Years over with so that we can get down to the business of MOVING!

Natural Infant Hygiene (Elimination Communication)

This is a photograph of an element of a key parenting tool we have been utilising since Small Girl was 2 weeks of age. It's a chamber pot, to confirm your worst suspicions. A vintage, enamelled child's chamber pot. It's green. It's a bit chipped. It was a bargain at a local recycler.
I found out about such a thing as Natural Infant Hygiene, or Elimination Communication, not too long after Boy-child was born. I thought of it as a wonderful thing to try, just not something for us. But the concept nagged at me. And nagged some more. So I borrowed a book about it from the library, by Ingrid Bauer. It changed my view on a few things, and I decided that I would implement EC into Boy-child's night continence learning. He was out of nappies during the day by 2 years of age and I didn't like the idea of withholding liquids from him overnight, just to keep him dry; believing it was just dehydrating him, rather than learning continence.
The book backed up my thoughts and Bauer's explanations of the human elimination system and cultural conditioning opened up a new world for me. It explained night-wakings to me and I recognised various moments in Boy-child's life when I could have implemented EC. It was time to begin on night times, at almost two and a half years of age.
It took only a couple of weeks of sleeping in the boy's bed with him to wait for his body to stir so that I could prompt him for the potty. There was initial resistance to this new thing - moving from deep sleep to light sleep and then having pants pulled down and taken to the potty was a big adjustment. Soon enough, he knew what was happening and that it was much nicer to just get rid of the wee into the potty, and, eventually, to head to the loo (right near his then-bedroom) and stumble back to bed. I resolved then that the only major change to how I would parent the next child would be to start EC'ing much, much sooner. True night continence meant that Boy-child could still have his breastfeed or two overnight and also at bedtime without fear of having a wet bed, apart from the odd occasion of a missed trip to the loo.
So, in the lead up to our girl being born I bought a chamber pot. Dr Sarah Buckley writes about EC'ing her babies and that was enough inspiration for me to give it a red hot go. It took two weeks, however, for me to move from my comfort-zone into a new reality. The hardest part, it proved, was starting!
It was the week we decided to sell the house, and the day that we had the newborn photos done by Susan D'Arcy. I had been making my observations of Small Girl's body language and took the plunge.
The first time I caught a wee, and I was so excited that it 'worked'! I kept 'catching' wees so that it was no longer 'fluke' and it was a combination of timing and using cues (a 'pssss' sound to encourage letting go of the bladder function). I started catching poos, too, mainly in the mornings, but also through the days in the early weeks.
Soon enough, pooey nappies were becoming a rarity and more a reflection of the time I was spending attached to my baby via sling than luck or coincidence. I was really in tune with this baby and it was really enhancing this newborn caring that I had been resistant to whilst pregnant with her. 'Success' was also reflected in the significantly reduced washing of nappies required each week. Except that I was having to change my pants a couple of times a day when I missed moments during nappy-free times...ah, well!
The way I implemented EC was just one way to do it, and it has so many variations depending on lifestyle and budget. We have been predominantly full-time nappied, part-time EC'ing, sometimes full-time EC'ing and part time nappied, and sometimes full-time EC'ing and nappy-free, sometimes part time both. I have found that when I have to spend more time studying I rely on nappies more, because my attention simply cannot be on both my studies and on being in tune with my girl. I get sad about this, and it's just the way it has to be for a little while longer.
When we're out, we're able to hold Small Girl over a bush or garden bed. She's still mostly breastfed, so she's pretty organic! She hardly ever needs to poo when we're out, because we catch poos in the morning, as most human babies do, and most human adults will if given the chance. I don't carry around receptacles any more, because I've decided that most places we go have loo facilities I can duck off to with her, and if they don't, then there will be some plantlife that will appreciate a drenching.
When Small Girl was about 8 weeks of age we did our first long drive. 3 hours to East Gippsland. She slept until we got to Stratford, did a wee on the grass and then slept till Bairnsdale, wee'd on arrival and voila! Dry car trip! This has been the way travel has been conducted ever since. If she wakes while we're on a drive, we pull over and let her wee and then we have a happy camper thereafter.
EC'ing works best with babywearing and breastfeeding, but these aren't essential ingredients. EC'ing is another way to have a relationship with your child. For me, it makes sense. For us it enhances the way we relate to our children and is the best thing to happen to my parenting toolbox. It imparts empathy and responsiveness that I previously thought only breastfeeding and/or sling-wearing could do. It also connects me to my grandmother and the wisdom she practiced to raise my mum, aunts and uncles. There was no money for nappies (and I'm talking cloth nappies), no polluting water ways with the washing of soiled baby nappies. I love that when my mum first learned of my intentions to EC she thought it was brave and odd. As I continued and normalised to her what I was doing, her own mum's practices became more apparent to her and memories began to surface for her. We both felt more connected to my grandmother.
I'll split this blog post up and write next about how we've gone about EC'ing at night, EC'ing 'on the hop' and the progression towards continence in Small Girl's first year.
I'll leave it on this note. Yesterday, Small Girl was wandering around nappy-free and I lost track of her. I encountered her in the laundry, sitting on the potty:

And in it, was a respectable, definite, self-initiated wee.
Last night she breastfed about twice overnight and I didn't offer her the chamber-pot once until the morning. She remained dry. And I might mention that she was also nappy-free.
Whaddya reckon? Weird? Time consuming? Effective? I reckon it's a lost art that is slowly coming to the consciousness of more and more parents in our society. And it's truly liberating, for all involved!

Head down, bum up

While I wait for a lecture to download I'll pop in a blog entry...
I was about to quit uni this week. After speaking about the logistics, ramifications, implications and risks involved with pulling out with intention to return to the course much later down the track with the postgraduate coordinator, I have decided to soldier on.
This will require doing something I have hitherto avoided - dragging friends into the fray. Expect a phone call, some of you! The next month will be insane. My kids may become temporarily alienated. I may not see much of the farm. I may not see much of humanity outside of Boy-child's activities during the week. I HAVE to do this unit. Then I'll have next semester free before launching right back into it for a final unit...the fun unit of Abnormal Psychology.
Ok, back to it. One day, this being a student caper is gonna get real old. Meanwhile, my lecture is ready to listen to and there is a blanket ban on kids or me getting sick until some time in 2012. OK? OK. I'm going in...

My fella

My fella brings me flowers and gifts, unexpectedly.
He says he loves me throughout the day.
My fella gives me unsolicited hugs and kisses that make me tingle, make me feel luckier than most.
He believes in me, more than I do and wouldn't swap me for another in a heartbeat.
He loves my giving body, unconditionally, and can't wait till I have another baby in my belly.
My fella's face lights up when he comes home from a long day, and he shares with me what he's done.
He asks me how my day was and helps me with my bags.
He hates to see me sad and he knows when something is wrong.
My fella apologises when he upsets me and brings me breakfast in bed.
He loves me in a dress and calls me a princess, believing no others can compare.
He is guilty of ignoring my needs and I often allow him to believe I exist to serve him.
My fella would buy me my dream horse, and ride alongside me.
He likes to photograph me and we laugh at each other's jokes, even the silly ones.
He can be a slob and doesn't always lift the toilet seat, and aren't most fellas?
He forgets my birthdays and can't recall the date we met. Typical fella.
In his eyes I see myself, and after a hard day I am his soft place to fall, and he feels safe falling apart.
Nothing makes me and my fella happier than waking up entwined in arms and legs.
He's a lover, not a hater and charms with his witty, articulate conversation.
I support him in everything he seeks to achieve, encouraging him to trust his instincts.
He brings out the best and the worst in me and he forgives my moods.
I hope I go before he does; life without him would burn my heart to ashes.
Sometimes I am defined by my relationship with my fella, and that's a great honour.
I'm so proud to be my fella's mama.
I held him in arms and slings until he wanted no more.
He watched his sister being born, feeding me water and nuts while I meditated her into water.
He takes from my breast to start his day and will until it's no longer important to him.
We shared sleep for so long and still do from time to time.
My fella and I have a magical understanding, he knows me better than all others.

I love you, boy-child.