My daughter Eva is a cat lover. Naturally, she’s the proud owner of quite a few stuffed cats. She’s got kitty stickers, kitty books, and tiny little kitty toys that fit in her pocket. Most days, she asks that I call her “Kitty,” dons kitty ears and a tail, and spends many (many) hours pretending to be my sweet baby kitten (I’m Mama Cat, of course.)

We also have two real live cats as pets, which, (though I know she’d miss them if they were suddenly gone) she doesn’t seem to have much time for, oddly enough. She’s in charge of feeding them and giving them clean water each day, and she proudly tells strangers that she has two kitties at home…but overall, I get the sense that until they learn to talk and take part in her “Kitty” games, she’s not overly impressed with them.

Anyway. You get the picture: my girl is a cat girl, through and through.

So you can imagine how surprised I was the other day when, upon seeing a stray dog in our yard through the window, she proclaimed “Oh! A dog is in our yard! I’ve always wanted a dog…and now she’s here!”

 Apparently, it’s time to start developing my role as “Mama Pup.” Kitties are so passé.

Posted by Shannon, a Dot-arilla Blogger

With today’s modern technology, every parent-to-be finds themself wondering whether or not they should ask to learn the baby’s gender before giving birth. When I told my grandpa at Christmas that we intended to learn our baby’s gender, his response was, “Oh, c’mon now! Don’t do that.”

There’s a lot to be said for the fun of suspense and the playfulness of making the announcement. But just because you want to know your baby’s gender (after all, there’s a lot of shopping to be done!) doesn’t mean that you have to miss out on any of that. Since neither of us are phone chatters, my husband and I agonized over how to tell everyone what we were having…until a friend of mine told me about “Gender Reveal” parties.

The concept is very basic. Bake a cake using the color that corresponds to what you’re having (pink or blue), frost it all over with gender-neutral frosting, and keep the gender a secret until the big cake-cutting moment arrives. Everyone had such a great time at my Gender Reveal (we titled ours “A Celebration of Chromosomes”), that other pregnant friends have also decided to throw their own cake-cutting parties. And we got a few small gifts out of the deal.

Posted by Stacy, a Dot-arilla Blogger

(Our friend’s Gender Reveal party featured these cake balls, catered by The Sweet Touch.)

When I was a girl, I had a pet cat who looked just like a black and white spotted cow. Naturally, I named her Bessie. Bessie lived to be an unprecedented nineteen years old…and just this past week, my parents had to put her to sleep.

By the time my own kids met Bessie, she was well into her “old lady” days—a gentle, fragile kitty who spent most of her days sleeping next to a heat register. But still, she was a cat…and to my kitty-loving daughter, that fact was enough to endear Bessie to her forever (she even named one of her own stuffed kitties “Bessie.”)

When my mom told me that Bessie was gone, I knew I had to prepare my daughter for the next time we visited Grammy’s house: she was sure to notice Bessie was missing. Death, however, can be a tricky topic to discuss with an almost-four-year-old. And, while death is not a new topic for her, this was a cat she’d actually known, and I expected a string of questions about what happens when we die and why people die and when will we see Bessie again?

So last week, with a trip to Grammy’s looming in the coming weekend, I took a deep breath, and told my daughter that Bessie had died. Bracing myself for the question barrage, I watched the wheels turn in her head.

And then my sweet, sweet girl said something that just blew me away. She said, after much thought, “Oh. Grammy must be sad. I bet she misses Bessie. But I’ll tell her it’s ok, because when I come and visit, she’s got me. And I can pretend to be Bessie for her.”

I just sat there, bursting with pride over her empathy and thoughtfulness…while snorting back laughter over her very simple solution to her Grammy’s problem.

And, believe it or not, she’s never yet asked a single question about why Bessie died.

Posted by Shannon, a Dot-arilla Blogger

Last week we had some gorgeous spring weather, and it got me itching to do some gardening. Unfortunately, in Wisconsin, balmy spring weather can turn to freezing in an instant, and it’s still too early to begin doing much planting outside. This time is for starting seeds indoors, and getting the gardens ready for when the weather truly warms up.

However, there are a few plants that thrive in, and even prefer, cooler temperatures…which is how my kids and I found ourselves perusing the lettuce seed section at the store.

I’ve been wanting to do some container gardening with my daughter for a while—containers are just the right size for a small-scale, child-sized garden, and are a bit easier to tend because they’re raised up (to perfect kid level!) I did a bit of research and found a list of vegetables that grow well in containers…and I was thrilled to discover lettuce was on the list!

So, with lots of day dreaming about the salads we’re going to make with our yummy crops, we spent a beautiful day out in the spring weather planting our small lettuce gardens. My daughter is so proud of her containers, and she’s watching them closely for any sign of growth…hopefully lettuce grows quickly!

If you’re itching to do a little spring planting yourself, and are interested in container gardening, here is a short list of vegetables that grow well in containers. You can buy pots or troughs to use as containers, or get creative and find something around your home—anything can work as a container, just be sure to add adequate drainage in the bottom!

Container-Friendly Veggies:
• Beets
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cucumbers
• Lettuce
• Lima Beans
• Onions
• Peppers
• Radishes
• Spinach
• Tomatoes

Posted by Shannon, a Dot-arilla Blogger

My husband and I decided last summer that it was time. Time to take the plunge, create a life, dare to be parents. I thought I was ready. I read all the fertility books, adjusted my diet to include lots of Omega 3 fatty acids, and worked out diligently.

Two months later, when the pregnancy test came back positive, I realized I wasn’t ready. My knees buckled. I couldn’t speak and cried when I handed the results to my husband.

Now, almost 8 months after that momentous day, I feel more confident but no more prepared. I laid in bed last night counting Braxton-Hicks contractions and thinking, “Oh my God, I’ve gone into per-term labor and I don’t have a bag packed.” (I hadn’t, of course; I only had two contractions in 30 minutes.)

What I’m worried about isn’t my ability to raise a little girl (yes, we’re having a girl!). I’m not worried about my husband’s ability to play dolls with her, teach her to throw a softball, or scare away unwholesome teenage boys. I’m worried that we’ll bring her home from the hospital and be missing something vitally important—that there won’t be enough onesies, that the breast pump won’t work, that our savings account will run dry and we’ll end up on the streets. I’m worried we’ll run out of diapers at 2am. I’m worried the synthetic dye in our rugs or the chemicals in our walls’ paint will send her into fits of epilepsy. I worry over whether I’m supposed to put a bib on her when she breastfeeds. I worry that not having a wipe warmer means I’m a bad mother.

But ultimately, our little girl will arrive. And ultimately, we will meet her needs and she will turn out just fine. Because ultimately, I know that we are responsible, mature adults with hearts so full of love that we needed to create another person just to keep from bursting.

Posted by Stacy, a Dot-arilla Blogger

Ah, spring. We’re finally enjoying some beautiful weather here in Wisconsin—weather which allows us to head outdoors once again without donning 15 extra layers of clothing. It’s beautiful! The Earth is warming, birds are chirping, leaves and flowers are exploding on branches…and my 8-month-old son has discovered a whole new host of things he can put in his mouth.

In no particular order, I give you a list of things I’ve removed from his mouth in the past week:

• Many, many leaves
• Four separate rocks
• A handful of dried grass
• Sand
• A lot of sand
• Seriously, about four cubic feet of sand
• A bunch of helicopter seed pods
• A ladybug

I think it may be a long season. I’ve pretty much given up on removing the sand and leaves and things like that—I figure he’s learning about the natural world, right? I draw the line, however, at ladybugs.

That’s just a little too “natural” for me.

Posted by Shannon, a Dot-arilla Blogger

That’s what my daughter yelled out the other day as she cracked open a brand-new sticker book I’d bought for her. “Let’s stick, Mama!” Which actually means “You sit next to me while I move these stickers around a whole bunch!”

Lately, my daughter’s really ramped up her interest in stickers. She’s always loved them, of course, but lately she’s discovered the joys of sticker story books where she can create a scene with stickers—and then re-create and re-create and re-create the scene until her stickers aren’t so sticky anymore.

Although I’m sure she wishes she could have a new sticker book every single day, our budget doesn’t exactly include a sticker column…so I have to get creative.

I save any stickers I come across: stickers we get from the bank, decals from organizations, address labels I receive as “free gifts” in the mail—even the occasional fruit sticker. I keep them in a pile for her, and she raids the stack frequently for her various decorative needs (my husband and I receive the BEST birthday cards.)

Both sets of my children’s grandparents live about two hours away from us, so we’re often in the car for long periods…and that stack of stickers regularly saves the day! Before we leave, I stock my daughter’s “car bag” with a handful of sticker sheets and some sort of book—a used pocket calendar, an old address book, or even a used check register. She spends most of the trip happily placing her “stickers” into her “book” to make her own story. And I think in the end the little sticker book kits I cobble together are way more engaging for her…even if they look a little funny to the rest of us!

Posted by Shannon, a Dot-arilla Blogger

I remember once listening to a radio show discussing behavioral differences between girls and boys, and a mother called in to share a story about her daughter. Apparently, the girl’s parents gave her a truck to play with one day; the little girl thanked her parents and ran off happily to play with her new toy. The parents congratulated themselves on successfully bucking gender norms…and then peeked in on their girl to find her lovingly tucking her truck into bed and kissing it goodnight.

Now, I took that radio program and that story (cute as it was) with a grain of salt because I really believe that whatever innate gender characteristics we possess are ultimately hugely affected by our individual experiences. In my opinion, there are as many kinds of people as…there are people.

That said, I have to tell you that my newest little kid is proving to be about as “Boy” as an 8-month-old boy can be.

His sister was a very low-key baby. She was barely crawling before she turned one—she seemed to embrace the attitude of “Why am I going to crawl when I can just sit here and let people bring me things?” And once she finally learned to crawl, she did it very conscientiously: if I told her “no” a couple times, she somehow seemed to understand. The fact that we never quite got all the drawer locks installed was a non-issue.

Essentially, she gave me absolutely no experience whatsoever in dealing with a mobile infant…and that’s exactly what her brother has turned out to be: Mobile. With a capital M.

He crawls. (Quickly.) He climbs. (Incessantly.) He does not walk. (Yet.) But just the other day he jumped. (JUMPED!) He pulled himself up on the coffee table and jumped straight up in the air like he’d been doing it all his life. He does a pretty accurate imitation of a spider monkey, and we’ve begun having to double-team him for diaper changes.

“He’s all boy,” people keep saying to me…and I’m suddenly, surprisingly inclined to agree. At any rate, we’ll be putting in the rest of those drawer locks very, very soon.

Posted by Shannon, a Dot-arilla Blogger

There was a certain ease to our days when we were a family of three. We had a rhythm, a routine. A nice comfortable predictability we all enjoyed. It was hard-won, and something I prided myself on as a mama: we may not have always had the cleanest house or the most exciting adventures, but at the end of the day, I knew our family and our home were, for the most part, happy. Content. Peaceful.

When I became pregnant with our second child, I knew things would change. Obviously, there would be physical hurdles, changes to our daily routine—I couldn’t always do the things I could before I had a giant baby belly to cart around. And my daughter (Eva) and I seemed to enjoy many, many more snack times throughout the day. There were emotional changes too—weepy pregnancy hormones to explain to my daughter (and husband!). Feelings of guilt and worry over the effects a new baby would have on Eva—and on my very close, very treasured relationship with her.

But for the most part, I was looking forward to adding a new little one to our family. I could almost feel the empty spaces the new baby would fill up—opportune times for cozy nursing sessions, or another little giggle in chorus with Eva’s. There was room in our routine, our rhythm, for another child, and I couldn’t wait for that day to arrive. We were ready!

Except that it wasn’t that easy.

My son is now seven months old, and I’m just now feeling like I’ve reclaimed a bit of that old peaceful ease in our days. For months, I was ending my days frustrated because I couldn’t seem to get a handle on things. It seemed I could either have happy children or a happy mama—one or the other. Not both. I felt like I was racing around, constantly playing catch up. There was always something to do, someone to feed, something to wash, someone to snuggle.

What had happened to those pockets of empty space the baby was going to fill in so perfectly? Where had our easy, comfortable days gone? I’d had it all figured out, why wasn’t it working??

The answer turned out to be very simple: in the back of my mind, I was holding out for our old, “normal” rhythm. Unconsciously, I was trying to fit our new Family of Four into our old Family of Three mold, and I was getting very, very frustrated that it wasn’t working. We didn’t fit. Shouldn’t fit, in fact—we were a whole new family with new dynamics. We had all changed, for the better I think, and the normal I was holding out for, striving for, just didn’t make sense anymore.

It took me seven months of driving myself crazy, but I’ve finally, finally realized that “normal” was here all along…I simply didn’t recognize it. And as I’ve begun to let go of my old securities a bit and embrace our new rhythm, I’m rediscovering those comfortable pockets of space that we’ll all fit into eventually. And somehow, all this “new” feels…familiar. Content. Peaceful.

Posted by Shannon, a Dot-arilla Blogger

March is always a welcome month here in Wisconsin. We’re typically still buried beneath mounds of snow (with a blizzard or two to look forward to yet), and the temperatures rarely rise above the forties, but…it’s March! The month in which Spring begins!

This time of year, in our part of the country, we all enter a community-wide state of denial about the weather. We stop shoveling our sidewalks because surely the sun will melt that newly fallen four inches of snow in no time! We drive around with our windows open—refreshing! This time of year is when you’ll begin to see otherwise intelligent people parading around in thin jackets and completely weather-inappropriate footwear. Because it’s Spring! Um…soon.

In honor of Spring’s (almost! really! any day now!) arrival, my daughter and I did a bit of indoor planting. We sat down with some good potting soil, a few seed packets, and a couple pots, and twenty minutes later we had a window sill full of cheerful soon-to-be herbs. It felt good to get our hands a bit dirty, even if we were only at our kitchen table, and it made us both eager for Spring to truly arrive so we could begin work outside in our garden!

If you’d like to do a bit of indoor gardening yourself, you can’t go wrong with herbs. They love window sills, and you can keep them inside year round or transfer them to your garden after the danger of frost has passed. If you need a little guidance, here’s a list of some easy-to-grow herbs:

• Basil
• Bay
• Chervil
• Chives
• Oregano
• Parsley
• Rosemary
• Sage
• Tarragon
• Thyme

Just follow the planting directions on your package of seeds, place them in a sunny windowsill, and wait for your very own bit of Spring to grow! Happy digging!

Posted by Shannon, a Dot-arilla Blogger