There’s a new daycare between my job and our home, and a few months ago I went in to take a look at what it offered in comparison to the daycare where Ash goes. As soon as I walked in, I knew that it wasn’t right for us, despite its good location. It’s tiny (T.I.N.Y), and there were only a couple of children there at the time of my tour, not 18 like their maximum capacity is. The back yard is small, the inside is small, everything is smooched together and worst of all, there’s not even a bathroom for the children. Two mini toilets separated by half-walls for the 18-36 month olds, and one toilet separated by half-walls for the 3-5 year olds. At five years old, privacy is definitely an issue and I just did not feel comfortable there at all, so I left and never looked back.
A few of my friends in the neighbourhood put their children in there, simply because they had little other choice and/or the location (one friend of mine told me, “How could I NOT put him there? It’s just down the road!”)
They’ve gone through some growing pains, lots of staff turnover, pregnant site directors smoking on the front steps of the day care (and later fired, for whatever reason), lots of bad opinions circling between families, and overall just gotten off to a really bad start. I feel bad for any new business who’s so desperately trying to make it and floundering.
Recently they hired a man, with 14 years of childcare experience, to work there. I don’t mind men in childcare, at least I try not to. Ash had a man at his daycare for a few weeks before he quit. He just never really looked comfortable, but I felt that he did TRY to fit in, but some people just aren’t cut out for day cares (I’m definitely one of them). It would be a hard profession to go into as a man, people will often look at you with a sceptical eye. I don’t blame them, hell, I’m one of them, and a lot of the time it’s for good reason. The statistics say that most child abusers are men, and men that you trust.
Anyway, so they hired this man with lots of experience and a couple of weeks later they fired him because they didn’t like his performance. I’m told he didn’t really engage much with the children, often just standing back and watching. A week later, he was arrested for child pornography.
A parent’s worst nightmare. A pedophile had easy access to their children. With 18 children running around, there would have been lots of opportunity for this man to take advantage of any young child who isn’t old enough to know what’s right and wrong (besides the innate feeling that this is not right) and more- who’s not old enough to tell someone else what happened. Each child has their diaper changed three or four times a day, which is ample time to do something sickeningly inappropriate. I can hardly think about it.
Of course they did background checks before hiring him, and nothing showed up. He has just never been caught before. That’s how it works. It’s so sad. I was sexually abused before the age of ten, by a trusted family member, and it went to court and everything. And he was acquitted because there wasn’t enough evidence. It went to court when I was 12 or 13, many years after it happened, and by then my memory was foggy and there definitely wasn’t any evidence- it was just my word against his, and they couldn’t charge him under those circumstances.
So, in my case, it HAPPENED, and he got away with it. Scot free. His criminal record is clean, my innocence taken, and this disgusting man suffered no repercussions whatsoever. And let me say it again, IT HAPPENED.
I feel so horrible for the parents who have their children there, whose children spent eight or nine hours a day with this man. It would be so hard to trust the daycare again, because it was their unknowing fault that had their children exposed to a man who was into sick, sick things, it would be hard to trust ANY daycare again. If something like this happened to my family, I don’t know if I could go back to work- I would go into major mama bear mode and never want to leave Ash’s side again. These protection feelings I have as a mother is more powerful than I ever thought imaginable.
So, recently I found out that I had my identity stolen online for the past couple of years.
Yeah.
Cause I’m just that exciting.
It started with an email from a girl that I’m friends with on facebook. She said, “This might be a super dumb question, (I probably missed the reason for this awhile ago lol) but why do you sometimes call your son Ash and the other times you call him Dante?”
I, of course, had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. I’ve never referred to Ash as Dante- I’m not even one of those internet moms who comes up with a false name of their kids.
Then another person person came out of the woodwork within 24 hours accusing me of some really weird stuff, and seriously just confusing me.
I put the pieces together through a couple of facebook conversations with strangers:
The girl who initially asked why I call my son Dante must have added me as a friend on facebook telling me that she’s a friend of mine from a parenting forum [I'm "friends" on facebook with very limited strangers- even some old BME members I refuse friend requests unless they're already friends with Shannon- I don't need any more Rachel and Jen spies out there] that we both belong to, so I accepted. Turns out, she thought she was adding the impostor- someone who’d been “Gillian Hyde” using my stories and my pictures for years without me knowing.
So I commented on this girl’s facebook status who said she caught someone who had a double life, and another one of her friends saw me comment and she just happened to be the owner of this particular parenting forum, so she emailed me with details about this other Gillian Hyde.
This other Gillian had a whole story some of the same details of my life, some different- the “Clive” in her story was her brother, and she was engaged to another man named Ollie, but the biggest things were that she set up a facebook account with my pictures and had a photobucket account with pictures of mine as well.
Except.
As soon as I found out about it, everything disappeared. I never saw the facebook account, the photobucket link is empty, the posts on the parenting forum by this impostor Gillian are all gone, and the weirdest thing is that I cannot get a straight answer out of the three people I’ve been speaking to about this about WHAT parenting forum the impostor visted and made up this fake life under my name and using my pictures and videos. There’s absolutely no proof that this actually happened, except for hear-say from three strangers.
When I first found out there was an impostor I was kind of creeped out, but now I have no idea if I should believe this even happened. Regardless, I’m not worried. It’s over. It’s just weird.
(I would be pretty easy to steal from, though. YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Flickr, nine years of blogging behind me, I’ve pretty much let it all out and have very little to hide.)
A good percentage of my readers come from my “old life” on BME (hello, old-life friends!) so I thought I’d share this tip with you:
Shea butter, specifically Anointment Shea Butter Cream is the best, BEST thing I’ve found for making your tattoo look like it did the day you got it. It darkens blacks and it brings out the colours, and what’s best is that it stays like that all day! Every other lotion I’ve tried may make the colours pop for an hour or so, but this one really lasts. I never showed my foot without first putting a small amount of the shea butter on it first.
These pictures don’t even really do it justice to how well it works. There’s no colour touchups done to these photographs at all:
Dear Ash,
You’re 25 months old today! This has been a wonderful month, and I can’t wait to tell you about it.
The month started with a bang, or rather- a pop, because you we had a birthday party here with all of your friends! There was food and helium balloons (hence the “pop”) and toys and presents, even though we requested that there were none. Your favorite present was given to you by your friend Frances, a book called Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel. I think, between your father and I, you have been read this book about 50 times this month, with no signs of letting up or getting bored. You AB-SOL-ULTELY love it. Granted, it’s a nice book, but I would be happy to never have to read it again. Reading any book that many times gets a little boring! Actually, a few days ago we went to the library to get some new books to read, and what did you find, but another copy of Mike Mulligan and wouldn’t leave without it.
Mike Mulligan has brought out a whole bookworm side to you that has never really been there at this capacity before. I have always, always read to you- even when you were an infant. Here you are at about 2.5 months old with one of your first books (and the rooster crowing in the background is another book):
Anyway, we’ve always had a good collection of books, and when I was home with you we read every day, and now your father or I read to you every day, but you’ve reached a whole new level of wanting to read. You’d rather read than do ANYTHING else, including play on your tricycle or plasma car, play with your cars or dump truck, eat, whatever. You got some money for your birthday, and it went to second-hand books too. Our new favorite activity is going to the library and seeking out new favorites. I’ve actually been able to put away your “baby” books because you can sit and listen to the same story for 20 minutes, as long as it’s good. Your favorite books that I bought second hand are anything Franklin the Turtle. I think I found half a dozen of them, and you like them all. They’re your favorite potty books.
Speaking of pottys: THE CLOUDS HAVE PARTED, ANGELS ARE SINGING, ALL OF MY HARD WORK ECing WASN’T FOR NOTHING, YOU ARE POTTY TRAINED!!!
At two years and two weeks, I officially (via Facebook and Twitter) declared you potty trained, after sending you to school without a diaper on and you had no accidents. It took you a couple of days to get fully used to it, but it’s been two weeks now since any accidents, and even at night time and during naps you’re staying dry (the odd time asking in the middle of the night to go pee) and I am SO happy that you’re potty trained during the day, but this night time stuff is blowing my mind. You used to need a three-layer hemp insert to last you through all your pees at night, and even now- with the same amount of nursing, you’re able to hold it for a lot longer.
[For those of you who are interested, potty training worked like this for us:
1. All summer was diaper-free time whenever we were home. It only took about four days of a few accidents (pee) on the floor before he clued in that he should pee on the potty.
2. Lots of reminding him not to pee on the floor, the chair, in his pants. He still says to himself, “no peeing on the floor!” “No peeing on the table!” “No peeing on the cat!” (the last two are his own creations, haha.)
3. At first, we’d stop reminding him not to pee when he was wearing a diaper, but eventually we started asking him not to pee in his diaper. It didn’t really work- something happens in his brain that says that when he’s wearing a diaper, it’s okay to pee.
4. I bought a pair of cloth training pants (Mother-Ease if anyone is wondering) and told him that they were his big boy underwear and that he wasn’t supposed to pee in them. They didn’t work for us. They triggered his brain just like a diaper did and he’d pee in them.
5. We bought real “Big Boy” underwear and he started wearing them at home. Accidents still sometimes happened, and he needed to pee every 20-30 minutes for at least a month. It was annoying, but he didn’t have the muscle strength to go much longer and I knew it wouldn’t be forever.
6. If we asked if he needed to pee, he’d ALWAYS say no, but we’d put him on the potty anyway, and most times it resulted in him peeing.
7. I always paid attention to his cues- was he grabbing his penis? GET HIM ON THE POTTY. Was he holding his butt? GET HIM ON THE POTTY. Did I have a feeling? GET HIM ON THE POTTY. I ignored nothing.
8. After a while of having great success with big boy underwear at home, I took him shopping without a diaper on. I reminded him that he wasn’t wearing a diaper and that if he needed to pee, to tell me. And we spent all afternoon out, with using a public pool’s toilet and a toilet at the mall!
9. The last step was having him go to school with just a few changes of clothes and no diapers, and telling the teachers how often he needed to be asked. After the first day with lots of accidents, his teacher set her watch to beep every 30 minutes, and she took him to the potty. And then, things slowly started changing. He was able to hold it longer. He started going up to his teachers and asking to pee or poop. And now, we have no accidents, and lots of communicating back and forth about whether or not he needs the potty.
10. BOOKS were key to get him to sit on the potty long enough that he could poop. Sometimes we read to him, sometimes he’s okay to sit by himself and look at the pictures, or try to retell the story to himself.
11. I didn’t over-praise him, I have a “pooping on the potty, havin’ a potty party!” song, and I do tell him that he did a good job telling me that he needed to go, but other than that, we try not to make a huge deal about it. We didn’t do stickers or rewards. We really avoided calling his poop “gross” or “stinky” because I didn’t want him to feel any amount of shame or embarrassment. We followed his cues and it took several months, but it was hardly painful at all.
Patience and routine worked best for us.]
Can I just take a moment and brag about how smart you are? You’ve known your alphabet for months now, but you find entertainment in saying it really, really fast. The whole way through, no missed letters, nothing. Your father introduced you to a Leapfrog video (on his sister’s recommendation) called “The Letter Factory” and after watching it THREE times, you memorized each sound that every SINGLE letter makes. It also helped you remember what every letter looks like- you knew a lot of them, but not all of them, and now there’s no question that you know ALL of them. You’ll be reading in no time!
The weather’s cooling off now and so we’re not able to do so many things outside, but we did get to take a family trip to a wildlife park this month. Your favorites were the raccoons and skunks, but we got to see a moose up really close for a long time, and that was wonderful- and was the animal that I was most excited about seeing. It was somewhere that my mom and grandmother brought me when I was a little girl, and although I only have small fractions of memories from it, it’s a nice thought that I’m able to bring my own son there too.
For the most part, you’re a really well behaved child. You usually do what I ask, even if it takes a few times of me asking in different ways, but because you’re basically on a sugar-free diet, you’re not climbing the walls or hyperactive, which makes life with you very pleasant. One day, however, while I was on the phone with my boss, you got very quiet. I found you in the bathroom with the entire roll of toilet paper unraveled in the toilet. I knew that day was coming, and I had an inkling that morning that if it was going to be ANY day, it was going to be THAT day because you’d shown an interest in putting toilet paper in the toilet between your legs just a few hours prior. As I was taking pictures, you decided that it was a great time to flush, so I had to reach in, without a second though, and grab a huge handful of that soggy, disgusting toilet paper so that the flush wouldn’t clog the toilet. Yuck. Then, because I didn’t have anywhere to put it (no garbage with a leak-proof bag), I just put it in the bathtub (!). I guess your dad finally did away with it, because I never saw nor heard of it again. Your dad is a good man.
Nights are the same as they always are, but this month has been great for you sleeping all evening without waking. One evening, your father and I found you here, off your bed and in the closet where you’d landed on some of my underwear and your father’s swimming trunks. We laughed our heads off.
And even though this is a very intimate part of our life, I wanted to record it because I don’t know how much longer it will last, or if I’ll be able to remember just what you sound like in the middle of the night. For the past couple of months you’ve been quite verbal at night, asking and whining for milk and cuddles- whereas before I’d just sense that you were stirring and give you the boob, but now you immediately vocalize your needs. When I’m asked when you’re going to get your own room or when I’m going to stop nursing, I tell people that it’s up to you. This is my proof that you’re nowhere near ready yet.
Your best friend is still Sam. You guys just adore each other. I love seeing how excited you both get when you spot one another. Sam’s first instinct is to run towards you, and your first instinct is to run AWAY, almost as if you can’t stand the sight of him because you’re so excited.
You and I have been alone for a few days, your dad is in NJ on business, and I thought I’d be really worn out and be annoyed at being the only parent, but you know what? I’ve surrendered to this responsibility, and I feel like you and I have laughed together more usual. I ENJOY having you all to myself. I ENJOY getting up in the mornings with you. I ENJOY every single second with you, having our meals together- just you and I. Sure, we both miss your dad, and drop offs at day care are extremely hard for both of us, but I really feel lucky to have all of this time together. You’ve skipped naps two days in a row at daycare which means you’re ready to sleep much earlier than you usually are, and I actually find myself sad that you have to go to sleep so soon, because I just want to see more of you.
Ash, your smile makes me feel so good. So good about being a parent. So good about my relationship with your dad. So good about the world. I look at this smile, this smile that was brought on by a stupid Christmas fridge magnet, and it reminds me that there is hidden happiness is everything, and sometimes it takes an innocent two year old to see it. I feel so lucky that I have you to open my eyes.
I remember being a little girl and telling my mom that someday I was going to write a book on how to be a perfect parent- but I wasn’t going to wait until I was an adult and had forgotten all of it, I was going to write it when I was still a child. I remember her encouraging me to do so, but of course I never did. There are a few things I remember feeling strongly about as a child however, and if I ever did write such a book (haha! wouldn’t that be brazen of me!), here are a few things that my nine-year old self would have brought up:
I remember being asked why I did something, and the first thing out of my mouth was “I don’t know.” “WHY did you slide down the playhouse roof?” “WHY did you steal that piece of gum?” “WHY did you hit your sister?” “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” Here’s the thing: it wasn’t a cop out answer- I DIDN’T know WHY I did these things. I just DID them. Maybe my sister made me mad. Maybe I thought it would be thrilling to climb up the tree that fell on my playhouse roof and slide down the other side onto a rusty old mattress (dude! it was awesome!). Maybe I just wanted that piece of gum and didn’t want to part with my nickel, but here’s the thing: nine year olds DON’T THINK LIKE ADULTS so I couldn’t actually reason WHY I did something. Thus, “I don’t know.”
It was SO frustrating and SO scary to want to answer I don’t know when I really, really didn’t know when I knew that the outcome was going to be anger and even more frustration from a parent (specifically my step father) who HATED hearing “I don’t know.” I promised myself as a child that I would never get mad at my future child for saying I don’t know.
Now, as an adult, I know that hearing I don’t know a million times over is going to be aggravating, likely infuriating, but I hope that I am able to keep my cool more often than not and maybe be able to work through their actions WITH THEM in order to find out the real reason behind what they did. Those of you who have older children are probably guffawing at me, but I don’t care.
Having someone you trust and look up to angry at you is devastating, and it really, really hurt my feelings as a kid, and I don’t want my son to feel that way about me, ever.
Another thing that I hated when I was a kid was not feeling respected. This was a biggie for me. I started “standing up for myself” when I was nine, but of course in adult’s eyes I was “talking back” or “being a brat,” but I didn’t see it that way. My step father didn’t know how to be a good parent. He was brought up by really weird and abusive parents and although he never beat us (other than spankings), his words and actions stung more than his spankings did. My siblings and I were always trying to make him happy, something that he never let us to, no matter how hard we tried, it was never good enough. If we brought in wood for the stove without being asked, he’d find some bark on the floor and get mad at that. If we folded the laundry, he’d find a pile that we’d missed and get mad that we didn’t complete the job. I mean, it was with everything, and by the time I was nine, I had enough. If he wanted to say something mean to me, I’d tell him that it wasn’t right (but not in so many words, heh). I’d get mad back, and our fights seriously escalated, and continued right on through my teen years. I moved out when I was 17, and haven’t spoken to him since (my mom divorced him two years later).
Having him disregard my thoughts and my feelings hurt more than the horrible names he’d call me. They hurt more than the fights he’d pick every night, just so that he wouldn’t have to eat dinner with me. He didn’t respect me as a PERSON, to him I was just this horrible little child who didn’t know anything. I just wanted to be listened to (thank god for my mom, because she was always there, trying to please him yet still comfort me), I wanted my thoughts and ideas and feelings to be heard by him, to be considered and discussed and to talk things through. I always felt shut off, turned down, pushed away.
I want Ash to feel like he can come to me with however he’s feeling, with whatever he’s going through. If he’s feeling something, even as a two-year old, the first thing I do is acknowledge it. If he’s sad or scared I will immediately let him know I understand that he’s feeling something negative, rather than knowing he’s scared and saying something like, “Don’t be sad, let’s go do something else.” It’s OKAY to feel sad, there is nothing wrong with it, and I don’t want to make him think that I’m not hearing him. His sad feelings are just as important as his happy ones.
Take tonight: he dropped a glass cup he was using on the floor and it broke. It scared me and I yelped. He looked at me and said, “wha happen?” I told him that he dropped his cup and that we have to be careful of the broken glass and I picked up a piece and showed him. He moved closer to the shards of glass and it scared me and I said firmly- “Ash, go into the dining room!” He was still scared and was sensitive about what had happened and he took my firm voice personally and burst into tears. I took him and held him tight and said the words for him, “you got scared of mommy’s voice. You were scared of the loud noise. You don’t like it when mommy yells.” And I got more sobs and confirmation back that those were his feelings. I didn’t dismiss his tears, I didn’t continue on with cleaning up the glass- he needed me at that moment- he needed to be comforted, and so that’s what I did. And soon it was over and we both felt better.
Having someone you trust and look up to dismiss you is devastating, and it really, really hurt my feelings as a kid, and I don’t want my son to feel that way about me, ever.
This weekend I got into a conversation with a friend about crying it out, in part because a customer at the store came up to me and asked what I thought about CIO and in part because Dooce touched on it because of that Momversation episode that aired recently.
I told the customer what I thought of it honestly, that it goes against every instinct we parents have, and that I think it’s wrong, however, people do it because it works. She agreed that it felt awful, but she was concerned about having to go back to work and how the baby (who, right now, is a mere six months old) is going to get to sleep. That short conversation had my mind spinning for days. I wish I had underlined how much things can change, even in a few days, when it comes to sleep, and by the time she goes back to work she may have it figured out. I told her about the No Cry Sleep Solution book I’ve heard is good, and said that there are lots of other options that are better than CIO.
The conversation with my friend brought back memories of hers, of being left in her crib alone, to cry, a memory that is over thirty years old, and you know what, it brought tears to her eyes, at 35 years old, at the thought of how sad she was at being left alone. She said that all she wanted was her mother to pick her up and hold her. That’s all she wanted. Just to be held.
You know my stance on crying it out already. I think it’s one of the most horrible things you can do to a baby, and I have never, and will never, EVER do it. Bedtime sucks for most people, it is definitely not my favorite time of day- to lay there with Ash, nursing for 20-30 minutes, but I do it. It’s my job as a mother to make him comfortable as possible, it is what I signed up for. Sure, I wish I didn’t have to do it, sure I wish I had more alone time and that I could tuck him into bed, kiss him on the forehead and have him blissfully fall asleep on his own, but he doesn’t. Not yet.
Letting him know that I’m there for him is giving him a solid foundation of trust. He is a baby, a toddler, a little kid for such a small fraction of his life, that when I step back, do I want to remember night after night of him crying, screaming, begging for me to come and get him, or do I want to remember nights of cuddling and breathing deeply together, often falling asleep together? There’s no question in my mind that I’m doing it right.
I don’t care if CIO works. I agree with the woman in the Momversation clip that CIO doesn’t teach your baby to sleep, it teaches them that you’re not coming. The parents who are trying to get their babies to “self soothe” may be forgetting one important thing: their babies don’t see the world like they do. This is what it boils down to- they cannot rationally understand why their parents are leaving them alone to cry, so eventually they do what anyone or any animal would do, and that is: GIVE UP.
Having someone you trust and look up to ignore you is devastating, and I don’t want my son to feel that way about me, ever.
I was recently approached by a brick and mortar store called Bento in Honesville, PA to carry my cowls. It looks like a really neat store, so I said sure! Here they are, all packaged and ready to go.
This weekend I asked my mom’s husband to help me make some wooden buttons. My mom and I took Ash out back of their house to the woods and found some old dry cherry branches from a couple of years ago. Derek brought out his miter saw and through a bit of trial and error, we were able to cut through them without the pieces flying away, never to be found again.
I brought the pieces home, dremeled some holes, sanded them and finished them up with some pure beeswax, which brought out their details and voila. Done. I just love the way they look!
I’m going to handsew them onto the next series of cowls that I make since they’re too fat to machine-sew.
People who know me as a parent know me as a pretty product-aware one, and even though I may not agree with it completely, it probably would be fair to call me paranoid and maybe even slightly over protective with the things that my kid is exposed to. We spend $24.99 on a small tube of safe sunscreen, we aren’t able to do 100% organic food anymore (since he is in day care half the week and is eating a lot more than he used to but our food budget has remained the same), but we do avoid the dirty dozen and then some, he really only has wooden toys and everything that goes on his skin is natural.
I plan on using Anointment soaps once I’m all out of my Carrot Tree stock (I used to do their website and have a zillion bars) and Earth Mama Angel Baby Shampoo and Body Wash once my Druide stuff is gone because it smells SO GOOD. Speaking of smelling good, Anointment’s Om Shanti soap is FUCKING amazing. It’s literally the best smelling soap I’ve ever, ever smelled.
Anyway, I never wanted to use normal bubble bath with Ash, despite it being so much fun because of the warnings on the bottle (rinse after a bath, only for ages 3+ etc), and I just don’t trust it because of that- not even doing outside research on WHY. This kind comes with a bubble wand so that you can blow bubbles, which I think is just an amazing idea.
Clive dropped Ash off at school yesterday and it was a horrible morning, of Ash not wanting to stay and freaking out crying whenever Clive tried to put him down to say goodbye. A very smart little three year old saw what was happening and said, “He probably misses his mommy.”
HEART. BREAKING. When Clive told me that I had to excuse myself from the dinner table and sob alone in the kitchen so that Ash wouldn’t see.
Stefanie:
Hello, I have been a follower of yours since the BME days… and have always found your blog fascinating. This came across my blog today, and I though
Amandette:
Everyone needs a break now and again. Come back soon, I enjoy your sharp-as-a-tack-wit.
Gillian:
I'm not saying I won't be back, or that I've even left... just saying that I'm not around as much as I used to be. :)
Flickr PhotoStream
About
I'm Gillian, a world-traveller turned natural parent. I believe in primal parenting; breastfeeding, baby wearing, cosleeping, cloth diapering, elimination communication, vegetarianism and all things natural. I have very strong parenting views. There's nothing better in my life than my days with my kid. Also: sushi and sweet white wine, skinny jeans and black tshirts, torrents and sugar.
My sustainable accessories company Pip Robins keeps me busy in the evenings.
