Well, I'm Blogging!!

So, what is this oddly-titled blog about, you ask?  Well, anything I can think of, of course!!  Isn’t that the beauty of blogs?  But, since “anything” is probably a bit vague as a subject, and won’t help you decide if you are interested in reading any further, let’s start out saying it’s about me, an atypical ordinary mom, and my beautiful family as we go about life, learn about homeschooling, and continue getting crunchier by the day.  In order to decide if you are interested in reading further, or keeping up with my blog, you should probably like to know a little (or a lot) about me and my family, so here we go.

I am an Audiologist.  Strike that.  I am a mother of two, a wife, and an Audiologist.  I recently took a sabbatical from my career in order to focus on raising my beautiful boys and keeping our little old house as best I can.  I was a really good Audiologist.  I am a terrible housekeeper.  I am a great mother, and a pretty great wife, too.  But I’m only an OK pet owner.  I am also a great cook, but not so great at remembering to start dinner on time.  I am only a mediocre Methodist.  I’m a good daughter, and a good sister, I think.  I am always late.  I am really good with people, especially older people.  I claim to be crunchy, but I have never even considered going vegetarian or compulsively recycling.  I love to read and to write.  I am highly opinionated, and I love to share.  My opinions are sometimes well-researched, other times just whims, but they are always well-defended.  I can admit when I am wrong, though, and am not opposed to changing my opinion if presented with a good enough argument that holds up to my obsessive looking-into (I can’t really say research, because sometimes I use Google and online forums instead of peer-reviewed works).  I obsess.

My minor obsessions change frequently, though the major ones tend to be long-term, such as mothering and becoming crunchier.  I’m not sure where I picked up the term “crunchy” to describe more naturalistic, holistic, conscientious practices that go against the mainstream, but that’s what it means here.  My crunchiness is directly related to my mothering obsession, and probably is a result of my belief that children are born perfect, and we can only mess them up by adding things that are less than pure.  Of course, it is impossible (and not necessarily desirable) to keep children completely perfect, but I strive to make my children’s environments as pure as possible through breastfeeding, cloth diapering, whole food choices, and anything else I can think of and successfully adopt. 

What is so “atypically ordinary” about me, you want to know?  Well, I’d say that my husband and I are pretty ordinary people in most ways.  I am average height and build (in America), I have brown eyes and brown hair.  I drive a minivan, my husband drives a Fusion.  We have two children and a dog, and live in a 1600 sq. foot house built in the 1960s.  We are (struggling now that I’m not working) middle-class.  We have a mortgage and two car payments, as well as educational debt for four college degrees (we both hold Master’s degrees), and three credit cards which we’re trying desperately to pay off.  My husband is a Business Analyst (computer guy), and I am a stay-at-home-mom with a career on the back burner.  My dad was a Methodist Pastor until he recently “took an appointment outside of the church,” which means he became a full-time Executive Director and therapist for a church-affiliated counseling center in North Carolina.  My mom was a stay-at-home mother to me, and then got her Master’s degree at the same time I did (we went to school together), and is now a licensed addictions counselor.  My mother-in-law is a Captain of Police, and my father-in-law retired from the Sheriff’s department and now does private security.  All-in-all, I’d say that’s pretty ordinary.  As for the things that set us apart and make us atypical: we are an over-educated family (six Master’s degrees, three Bachelor’s just in our immediate families), we cloth diaper, homeschool without any planned curriculum, practice extended breastfeeding, our sons are intact, we bed-share, baby-wear, make our own baby food, are very careful about sweets we give our children, we don’t vaccinate, and we practice mindful parenting.  We had a son who passed away 17 hours after his birth 12 years ago, I attempted and failed two Vaginal Births After Cesarean Sections (VBAC), the second of which was an attempted homebirth.  Although any one of those things may not make me quite a freak in most circles, my passionate belief in the rightness of these things sometimes alienates me and makes it difficult to make friends with other moms.  Nevertheless, I love to converse, I love to share, and so here we are.  I hope that you are interested enough to continue reading and find out what crazy things might come out of my brain, and to share in little tidbits of my life as I learn how to homeschool my active five year-old while nursing my 9 month-old, and trying to keep the dog off of everybody.