We’ve been a  bit uncomfortable, in little or bigger ways, since we arrived in Costa Rica. And while we still love many parts of this country, we think it just might be time to move on.

For me (Arp will have to tell his own story), much of it has to do with the kids. I’ve felt for quite some time that our move has unfortunately limited their experiences. It’s been kind of the opposite from what I expected. I had great plans for them learning a lot from travel. Unfortunately, I’m beginning to think that only rich people can really give their kids that experience in this country. Our money situation, which is on the limited side of things, means that we can’t just pick up and spend the weekend driving to explore a volcano at the drop of a hat. So we tend to stay close to home.  In New York, this situation wasn’t quite so limiting since the US has the infrastructure to support libraries, free trail systems, playgrounds, parks & museums (payed for by special cards through our library). Here in Costa Rica, the books cost money and are often not available in English. Or we have to pay a lot of money to ship them from the US. Museums are almost non-existent. Trail systems are very limited here. Most of them are part of National Parks, which means entrance fees. It’s true that the fees are greatly reduced now that we are residents of Costa Rica, but still, the trails are few and far between. And my kids really miss playgrounds. I’ve seen very few playgrounds here. The ones I’ve seen are either extremely small or very outdated and dangerous. Like, maybe one of those scary metal slides that heats up in the sun and burns your butt. In summary, I feel that with our more limited money situation, maybe the US has more to offer our children right now. I hate to come to the conclusion that world travel is only for the rich, but maybe in some ways it is.

On my side of things, I’ve had a lot of trouble meeting people that I can really let down my guard with. Let’s face it – I’m pretty darn radical and I live my life very differently than most people. That can be very isolating. It’s a fact of life that I have to walk on verbal eggshells with most people I encounter. Most people I meet have very little experience with EC, tandem nursing, extended nursing, gentle parenting, non-coercive parenting, etc. Now, if you throw the entire concept of radical unschooling into the mix, I become very mind-boggling to most people. Believe me, I understand all this. So it turns out that I tend to have conversations with most people that involve constantly self-editing. I’ve tried just  being myself, but that doesn’t really work so well, and I end up endlessly explaining myself. I’m not sure what is more exhausting – walking on eggshells, or explaining how I really feel.

Back in the US, it was possible to actually find people (albeit a few) who I could be myself around. These are the people that I seem to actually approach friendship with. Here in Costa Rica, this is almost impossible to do. It comes down to the numbers. It’s generally not going to happen with native Costa Ricans due to language issues (I’m still working on my Spanish) and the fact that very few (if any?) Costa Ricans parent the way I do. Expats are generally few, and the majority of them are traditional parents also. So I end up with very few parents who I can actually talk to.  After 10 months here, I’m pretty sick of being isolated. Back in the US, we could always seek out members of our local unschooling group, but unschoolers are very very few in Costa Rica. The few families that we have really enjoyed spending time with live in places we don’t want to live.

It’s looking like our next move might be Florida. It’s warm or warmish, it has lots of beaches, and it has some areas where the cost of living is fairly cheap (cheaper than NY, at least). Our family is itching to move on. Arp and I are bored here. But we will be back again – at least to visit. Someday maybe we’ll want to stay again in Costa Rica. When we come back again, I’m sure we’ll be more able to enjoy the things we love about Costa Rica. We’re ready now for a new place and new people. And I’m ready to have libraries and a dishwasher again.

J has been nursing practically hourly for these last 2 weeks.  Any demand she has is phrased in the form of a whine, which is getting to be like nails on a chalkboard to me.  She wants mommy, mommy, mommy constantly.  And sometimes, all she can whine out is, “I don’t know what I want…..!”  My gosh- where did this creature come from?

So for the next week or two, I’m trying my best to do something that Dr. Sears taught me: satisfy the need.  Even though I’m not sure the source of the need (stress over the move, the coming baby, my own stress levels generalizing to the family), I’m really trying to answer J’s needs.  This is very hard, because my initial reaction is to pull away from her.  Her behavior is annoying enough to me that I want to run screaming in the other direction.  But if parenting has taught me one important thing, it is this: just when you want to run away screaming, that is the time when it is most important to come together, support each other, and huddle closer.

I guess I can answer that one.

We’ve had a great summer, so far. I know it’s almost over, but we have high hopes that we will be back to Costa Rica by sometime after Christmas and will be enjoying the warm sunny weather again.

We’ve been:

• Attending my sister’s wedding
• Still trying to sell this darn house
• Going on a wonderful camping trip to the old campgrounds that I visited annually as a child. Here’s some pictures…

We borrowed a canoe from some neighboring campers who were using our little beach area to park their canoe. Arp and BIL John decided to take the kids for a ride. I asked them both if they felt confident on how to use a canoe, and whether they knew how to get into a canoe. At first they claimed that they did. But then my sister and I watched them attempt to get in and get the kids in, and it looked like the whole darn thing might tip over. Boy Scouts they are not! So I gave them some pointers and took over the part where I give safety instructions to the kids. The whole thing was pretty funny. Once they shoved off, they were fine.

M loved climbing on big rocks, and we learned how they got to the Adirondacks when we went to The Wild Center museum in Tupper Lake on the way home. It was a truly fantastic museum that I would recommend to anyone who is going to the Adirondack area. We could have spent the whole day there.

Arp chills out on the way up to the top of Bear Mountain. He was nice enough to volunteer to carry J in the Ergo carrier all the way up the mountain and most of the way down. At the top of the mountain, a hiker took a look at his shirt and asked if we were from Detroit. I couldn’t help but chuckle when I said “No,” as I don’t think they would have had a clue about the meaning of the shirt.

M and J walk the last bit together on the way to the summit.

Here we are at the top. This is M’s first summit. I think that’s pretty neat because this is the same mountain where I had my first summit. M walked the whole way on his own two feet, just as I did when I was approximately 7 or 8 years old. M is 5. I feel drawn to this particular place. The lake, I mean. I camped there when I was pregnant with M and I have always felt that he, too, had a connection to it. M’s middle name is Forest, which I chose because I did I lot of communing with the trees when I was pregnant with him.

During this trip, Arp and I had also been planning to bury J’s placenta near the lake. It’s been sitting in my freezer for 3 years now. I’ve been threatening my annoying cousin with secretly serving placenta stew at Thanksgiving, but in truth, I’ve just been waiting to find the right place to bury it. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring it! All the craziness of planning what to bring and how to shove it all in the car caused me to totally forget the placenta in the cooler. I’m very sad about that, because we will be leaving this house, and the country very soon, and I don’t have another place that I feel strongly about burying it. I keep thinking about burying it under my favorite tree here at the house, but I don’t want it to be disturbed. I think the thought of the new owners being near my placenta might bother me. So I’ve got to find a new place before the ground freezes. Maybe J might have a place in mind? I’ll have to ask her!  It’s hard to let go of a placenta.

They have an entire webpage, entitled, “Babies sleep safest alone,” that pretty much misleads parents, in my opinion. While the page correctly states that co-sleeping can be dangerous, they fail to make clear that it is only considered dangerous in some very specific circumstances. In fact, parents can co-sleep with they children perfectly safely if they follow some easy (and pretty logical) rules. (See this page, from La Leche League, that lists the ways to co-sleep safely).

Here are some of problems that are caused by the above campaign:

• The webpage for the campaign actually seems to group the danger of SIDS with supposed (but wrong) presumptions that co-sleeping is dangerous. This is completely wrong and misleading. Research has repeatedly demonstrated that responsible co-sleeping with infants can actually reduce the rates of SIDS.
• Speaking of reducing rates of SIDS, breastfeeding also reduces the chance of your baby dying of SIDS. And what action can parents take at night to help their breastfeeding relationship? Co-sleeping! Of course, many breastfeeding parents successfully nurse their children and do not co-sleep. But many parents do find that co-sleeping has many benefits in terms of breastfeeding: helping the mother to breastfeed frequently during the night with little sleep interruption (and thereby helping to support a good milk supply), helping parents and babies to continue to be in touch with each other during the night, and making the baby feel safe and secure.
• The campaign missed the big picture. They fail to mention the many benefits of co-sleeping, while only mentioning the dangers. Many experts, including Dr. Sears, have pointed out the many benefits of co-sleeping, and how the scientific data does not, in fact, show a real danger to babies from the practice.
• They ignore thousands and thousands of years of human history. Human mothers have been sleeping next to their babies for quite some time now. If we look at the link from Dr. Sears mentioned above, we can see how it makes sense physiologically, how it probably helped (and still helps) human infants survive. Isn’t it obvious that hubris is at work when a bunch of crib manufacturers and a few government officials (from a western country that just happens to have a terrible rate of neonatal mortality and a skyrocketing cesarean rate) decide that they should wipe away millions of years of mother-child instinct?
• They assume that all parents are idiots, who either don’t care about their babies or are too stupid to follow a very short list of rules for safe co-sleeping. I admit it – I have met a few bad parents out there. Some parents really do not seem to care about their kids very much. But even though many parents are different than me, I’m working on the assumption that most parents actually do care about their kids and want them to be safe and happy. I’d wager that most parents are perfectly capable of following a few simple suggestions on how to co-sleep safely. When the government uses erroneous information and fear-mongering to force all parents to stop co-sleeping, then we all lose out. Even the good parents are filled with misplaced fear.

If you would like to co-sleep with your baby, read this link to learn how to do it safely: Sleeping Safely With Your Baby. It’s not neuroscience. If you can learn how to drive or how to use a stove safely, you can learn to co-sleep in safety. My husband has told me on more than one occasion how much he enjoys waking up in the morning and seeing one of our lovely children crawling over to him in bed. I agree – co-sleeping rocks.

What they are saying:

M: “I’m not a boy. I’m a superhero!”

J: “Boobies are good for me.” “No kisses. Just hugs.” “It’s not a tushie. It’s a butt.”

What they love doing:

M: Playing with superheros. Watching superhero movies. Telling his sister what to do, and getting frustrated when she wants to do it her own way. Reclaiming his spot in the family bed, and loving the cuddling. Inventing new superpower abilities and being absolutely convinced that he has them. Using Google PicLens to look at all sorts of pictures of his favorite interests: sharks, dinosaurs, dragons, Easter Island, and Nudibranches. Gymnastics.

J: Cuddling with Arp and I. Nursing hourly. Watching Scooby Doo. Listening to us read ghost stories, especially her “scary book” from the library. Playing in the sandbox. Creating nests in the top bunk with stuffed animals and her brother. Shouting out the names of the characters, along with M, at the beginning of the Justice League episodes. Debating which superhero is her favorite, and reminding me of the real names of each superhero. Going over all the names that everyone goes by (Daddy is also Arp, is also Arpy….Mum is also Mommy, is also Trish, is also Trisha…). Mixing up all the tempera paints until they look like mud, and then swirling in more color. Painting herself.

What I am loving about them:

M: How he has taken on the superhero persona and gotten this amazing confidence. He has none of the fear or shyness that I had for so long as a child. He believes that he can do amazing things! It’s so inspiring that I’m beginning to think that I can too.

J: She is just so darn cuddly and loving. We really care about each other, and it is so wonderful to have that relationship with my daughter.

Some of their quirks:

M: There are so many things that he wants to do all by himself (opening car doors, putting the ovaltine in his milk, velcroing his sneakers…) and yet there are some things that I absolutely have to do for him, like helping him get on his pullup at night, or his socks in the morning. His preferences as to who does each thing seem to have no rhyme or reason, they just are, and they are absolute.

J: She just loves to be naked. I know many little kids do, but she does it with such wild abandon that even I am sometimes amazed. The way she will throw off her clothes and then run out the door and across the yard so fast that it is all I can do to peek outside and see a glimpse of her tush streaking by. The days when I could be that free were so long ago, and I hope to prolong it for a while for J.

What I want to remember from today:

The talk I had with M about his impressions of New York City. The comfortable and safe feel of nursing J and reading to her. J’s happiness when she wakes up and sees her Daddy for the first time each morning and takes his hand. Rolling over in bed and seeing M awake and smiling at me, knowing that he is happy and trusting of me since he happily came back to the family bed, to welcoming arms.