A Nourishing Home

The Real Challenge of Motherhood Is This: Growing Up And Keeping Childlike All At Once

August 9, 2010 By Vina Barham 3 Comments

I’ve talked often about not wanting balance in my life a countless times. And how I would rather learn how to live gracefully with the Tension. (And by tension, I don’t mean stress and chaos. But the kind of tension required on a string of an instrument to make a pitch-perfect note. The right kind and the right amount of pressure applied at the right time.) And one of those Tensions I’m discovering these days is the Tension between growing up and keeping childlike.

Growing Up
To become a parent is to grow up like a million times over. We plunge into this world of Caring For Another Human Being all the while learning to keep our sanity and joy intact. If THIS does not mature us, I don’t know what else will. But often, we get so hung up in being responsible and taking care of our children and protecting them and teaching them all sorts of wonderful things that we forget the other side of the Tension.

Keeping Childlike
In which we reconnect with our curiosity and playfulness and wonder. In which we see the world through our children. In which we slow down considerably and honor our little people by learning from them and becoming like them sometimes. In which messiness and exploration and monotonous repetition are the awesome stuff that life is made of. In which we learn to go back to the simple and the true: that time holds still when you are fully present and in the moment, as your child experiences life this way every single minute of the day.

The ability to know which to way to go and when is an art I want to master. Some days I keep childlike when I ought to be growing up and vice versa. But oh, this is the real challenge of motherhood, isn’t it? May we persist and learn through it well.

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Filed Under: Nurture Tagged With: balance, motherhood, tension, This + That

A Mother’s Work

July 29, 2010 By Vina Barham 3 Comments

Today, my daughter and I had the most fun-filled spontaneous day ever. At least it was for me. And we didn’t have to spend a single dime.

We started out the day hanging out in our pajamas and taking our sweet time eating breakfast and getting ready for the day. A little bit of chores here and there with some 80′s music in the background. The weather was too cool for a beach day so I strapped her on to the trailer and I braved hauling her around on my bike for the very first time. Of course we didn’t venture far from our neighborhood. Our destination was the playground three blocks from our house, but we took the long scenic route. I wanted to get the feel of riding my bike with her behind me before we explored further out. But that was just the beginning of fun.

There was nobody else at the playground, which meant TOTAL FREEDOM to do whatever we wanted. I decided that instead of watching her play by herself, I was going to be fully present and play. Like, really play. Something I don’t always do, especially when there are other people around.

We had a blast. She insisted on pushing me down the big slide and she insisted on going by herself without Mama’s help. I swung on the monkey bars (or at least tried to) while she laughed at me. We rolled around the grass, chased each other until we were laughing so hard that we had to stop, and had our lunch in the sun with birds for company. A seeming ordinary day that felt extra-ordinary, because I chose to be Present.

Is this really my day job?

It so is.

THIS is my life’s work for now. In which keeping the house squeaky clean is completely optional.

Filed Under: Nurture Tagged With: being present, motherhood, This + That

Nourishing Your Children With The Uniqueness That Is You: Mothering With Authenticity

April 19, 2010 By Vina Barham 7 Comments

Photo by Web and The City

Motherhood is rigorous work. We all know this. Oh. So. Well. Which is why often we turn to communities of all sorts, online or in person. For support. For tips. For resources that can help us to love what we do, to embrace especially the mundane and the monotonous stuff. Rightly so. I am an advocate of putting back the sacred in our everyday tasks, of letting motherhood change us, of slowing down, of simplicity. Anything that can spur us to keep doing the hard things day after day. Often we grasp for tools outside of us, but today, I want to focus on the tools within us. The unique tools God has entrusted only us with. Loving what we do is good, but so is doing what we love, and consequently being who we are in our homes.

Because mothering with our best self is an expression of God’s glory.

Someone once said that the glory of God is (wo)man fully alive. And one aspect of living fully is to live authentically, to embrace all of who we are just as God does. The good and the bad. For many of us, the multi-faceted role of a mother and a homemaker brings us face to face with parts of ourselves that we don’t necessarily like. Which will be for another post. Today, I want to start with the parts of ourselves God has made nourishing, naturally.

Mothering With Our Positives:

Leverage Your Strengths: Because We Can’t Be Everything To Our Children. We have to do a whole lot of things, but we don’t have to excel in them all. Instead, we can focus more on what we do best and then strategize how to tackle tasks we are not so good at. I’m not the best chef, so I try to simplify in the kitchen. I’m not the cleanest housekeeper and I’ve lowered my expectations for what a clean house looks like. I just try to make sure the essentials get done and instead, I focus on decluttering and having a minimalist home, something that comes naturally to me. I’m not very crafty, but I sure can sing and dance which I often do with my daughter. When I do these tasks as often as I can, I end up enjoying myself and giving a gift to my family without much effort.

What are your Verbs? If you haven’t given it much thought lately, I invite you to think of “verbs” that you do well. The stuff that comes naturally to you. Find ways to showcase these strengths daily. It’s a way of honoring God, who made us this way. And it’s a gift to our family to see mom enjoying herself so much that it doesn’t seem like work at all!

Mothering With Our Personalities

The Steady You: Our Inborn Temperament. Few of us go from one extreme to another. There’s a steadiness to the personality we are born with, though we grow and change over time. Know how to bring out the best in your personality. We often have ideas of what an ideal mom should be, the ideal mom your children can have is you being simply you! I am a strong introvert and can’t handle too much people time without an equal amount of alone time (or I get really crabby!) When I am able to recharge throughout the day and week, I am also able to give undivided attention to my daughter joyfully.

What Are Your Adjectives? There’s a lot of different personality tests out there, like the MBTI and the Birkmann. I like them all, but if you are not an avid test-taker like me, just a simple observation will do. Where do you get your energy? Do you like to plan ahead or do you like to keep your options open? How do people describe you? When we nurture our nature, we respect how God made us. We are then able to embrace differences with others and learn to work with them. We are better able to nurture our children’s nature as well.

Mothering With Our Passions

Dare to Live Your Life. God calls you to be no one else but You. To live out your story. Model that for your daughter. We can’t force our values on them, but we can reflect them in our choices and actions. I’m born to live cross-culturally and I identify with those who have been uprooted from their home culture well. My husband and I have chosen to live in a multi-culture community where a lot of refugees and immigrants resettle. One day, I hope to live overseas again. We also host international students in our home and are currently thinking about possibly becoming foster parents to unaccompanied refugee minors who are waiting to get resettled in the U.S. These choices are just part of who we are, and not because we feel like we should. And our daughter is growing up with plenty of opportunities to see our passions lived out in simple and practical ways.

What are your Nouns? What is it that gets you fired up? What are the dreams God has given you? List them all and figure out ways to live them not in the near future, but now. Motherhood does not mean we have to give up on them. We just need to get a little creative.

What do you think? What are your verbs, adjectives and nouns? Please do share!

Filed Under: This + That Tagged With: authenticity, embracing our strengths, embracing the everyday, motherhood, This + That

Nursing a Toddler: Our Journey and Some Thoughts

March 19, 2010 By Vina Barham 10 Comments

Photo Raphael Goetter

A friend asks, with a tone that is not so clearly positive: “You’re still nursing?”
I respond rather awkwardly, since the answer is quite obvious right there in front of me: “Uhm, yes.”
Uncomfortable silence ensues.

{Pause}

So my daughter is almost 20-months old and she is still nursing like a 6-month old. I have no idea when she will all of a sudden have no interest in her lovey, but I don’t anticipate it being anytime soon.

Some days, I feel pretty confident about our choice to let her wean herself from nursing. Just as we have chosen to let her wean herself from sleeping with mama and dada. Just as we have chosen to let her wean from being worn in a sling.

But some days, I am shot dead with doubts from head to toe.

{Pause}

What is it about mothering, and breastfeeding anyway that divides us women so much? Mothers go absolutely insane when talking about issues concerning breastfeeding. There’s always some guilt involved, whatever path you have chosen.

{Pause}

I then remind myself, meeting dependency needs now does not thwart independence. Independence can’t be forced. It has to be chosen. And when she is ready, she will know. And she will let me know. And then it will be all over before I know it.

{Pause}

Just because she is a little person doesn’t mean she has no choice in these important matters. Just because she can’t verbalize her needs in adult language doesn’t make them any less important either.

{Pause}

Food For Thought:

There Seems To Be A Huge Disconnect By TheHumanPacifier

Benefits of Extended Breastfeeding by KellyMom

Advantage of Breastfeeding A Toddler by La Leche League

A Different Kind of Baby Led Weaning by PhD in Parenting

Filed Under: Nurture Tagged With: attachment parenting, extended breastfeeding, motherhood, nursing a toddler, This + That

Inspired Mothering Mondays: What If God Was A Mother?

March 8, 2010 By Vina Barham 6 Comments

Photo By Patrick Q

Then, She’d be the most awesome mother I know. Let me explain.

The Fierce Love of a Mother
I never knew this kind of love before I became a mother. I mean, never. It feels like it’s coming from a different part of me, distinct from the love I have for my husband. Not better, not worse, just….different. That part of me that is so inclined to sacrifice time, sleep and boundaries for my daughter’s sake. That part of me that is so inclined to lose myself in mothering her, to give of myself forever and ever to her. That part of me that aches like death when she is sick and in pain, like she is today.

Some people are quick to say, oh no, you are guilty of idolatry, you are letting your children rule your world. Well, that’s one perspective. But what if, just what if, God, the original, ultimate Mother of all, feels this way for us, Her children? What if, the Creator who is neither male nor female, is graciously giving us a glimpse of Her heart for us all through motherhood? That if I, limited and oh so imperfect can be a source of Love not bound by conditions or covenants, how much more God?

The Nurturing Love of A Mother
Before I become a mom, I hardly knew the difference between butter and margarine. Nor did I care. Motherhood changed that. Now I am passionate about learning everything I possibly can to nurture my family – body, heart, soul, mind. This desire to nurture took over me full force. Suddenly, the domestic life took a whole new meaning for me. It became a place of vocation, of service, of opportunity, of grand ambitions, of revolutions of sorts. Homemaking is a calling I am proud to pursue with every bits and pieces of me.

And just as we find God in the fierceness of our love for our children, we also discover God in this domestically inclined love for them. God, being the first homemaker of all, put the stars and sun in place and every beautiful thing we can conceive of. God, who cares about our bodies, gave us every imaginable source of food that is truly good for us.

Maybe Motherhood Isn’t So Much About Us

Last week, I wrote about letting motherhood redefine us here. But maybe just as important to let it redefine us, is to let it redirect us. That our role as mothers is a means to find our way back Home, back to the Mother that is God, the One who fiercely loves us without end, and who forever nurtures us in every way.

What do you think? How do feel about approaching motherhood or God this way? Does this sound irrelevant, or irreverent to you? Or am I on to something here? I’d love to hear from you!

This post is part of Steady Mom‘s 30 Minute Challenge.

Filed Under: Nurture Tagged With: motherhood, This + That

The Beauty of Monotony

April 29, 2009 By Vinajoy Barham Leave a Comment

I’ve had no time motivation whatsoever to blog these days. I just feel so…tired. And with that, uninspired. And I need to be inspired to write (although sometimes, the inspiration comes after I start writing.) I read all these blogs by moms who have not just one, two, three but FOUR kiddos and I wonder how in the world do they do it. Dirty diapers and everything else can’t wait in my day (and night) job and so I think these super moms know some special tricks that I’m not yet privy to. I struggle to keep our house in decent form and I’ve given up on having laundry done in one day. Yes, I now do our whites on one day, colors the next, and then Naomi’s diapers on two separate occasions. And that doesn’t even include folding them. I try, but then baby girl thinks it’s cute and funny to grab exactly the neatly folded pile of diapers and fling them out of the hamper. It’s cute, but NOT funny. Not when I have to do it for the nth time.

Ah, yes, this is my monotonous life. Wake up, change diaper, feed, tidy up the house, play, go for a walk, put Naomi down for a nap, and then back to change diaper all over again after an hour or so. Some days we have playdates or errands to run or places to visit. But it looks pretty much the same day in and out. And it’s mostly because it’s what’s best for Naomi right now. Although we do go places and visit with people, she seems to prefer the familiar confines of our home, and pretty much likes to do the same things over and over and over again.

So here’s the thing. As much as I love that I am able to stay at home with my baby girl and be the constant presence in her life, I must confess that some days, I just can’t breathe. I just don’t handle monotony very well. I mean, who does, right? I want variety, spice, adventure, change, busy.

But I came across this passage by G.K. Chesterton from his book, Orthodoxy, that hit me in the heart and is challenging me to see my current station in life in a radically different way:

‘Because children have abounding vitality…they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’ and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun and every evening ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike. It may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them.’

Wow. Who would have thought that I need to learn how to exult in monotony? I want to find the grace to do that. To see the beauty of monotony, the way my little one does. I’m not sure how yet, but I suppose I’ll just keep folding her diapers until it makes me smile.